Symbolic meanings and e-learning in the workplace: The case of an intranet-based training tool

This article contributes to the debate on work-based e-learning, by unpacking the notion of ‘the learning context’ in a case where the mediating tool for training also supports everyday work. Users’ engagement with the information and communication technology tool is shown to reflect dynamic interactions among the individual, peer group, organizational and institutional levels. Also influential are professionals’ values and identity work, alongside their interpretations of espoused and emerging symbolic meanings. Discussion draws on pedagogically informed studies of e-learning and the wider organizational learning literature. More centrally, this article highlights the instrumentality of symbolic interactionism for e-learning research and explores some of the framework’s conceptual resources as applied to organizational analysis and e-learning design. </jats:p

Improving Access to Mental Health Care in an Orthodox Jewish Community: A Critical Reflection Upon the Accommodation of Otherness

The English National Health Service (NHS) has significantly extended the supply of evidence based psychological interventions in primary care for people experiencing common mental health problems. Yet despite the extra resources, the accessibility of services for ‘under-served’ ethnic and religious minority groups, is considerably short of the levels of access that may be necessary to offset the health inequalities created by their different exposure to services, resulting in negative health outcomes. This paper offers a critical reflection upon an initiative that sought to improve access to an NHS funded primary care mental health service to one ‘under-served’ population, an Orthodox Jewish community in the North West of England

The Atomistic Structure of Relationship: Robert Rosen’s Implicate Order

A careful synthesis of Robert Rosen’s theories about relational entities resulted in discovery of an entailment pattern between ontology and epistemology. We have called this “the relational atom” to emphasize its foundational status within a relationally analytical framework. This framework constitutes a natural philosophy and underlies material descriptions of reality, including current mechanistic theory. We believe this model represents, in essence, the natural structure of relationship, from which both traditionally objective and traditionally subjective entities arise. The essence of this understanding, however, is to objectify the entire model. The model and some of its possible applications are discussed