Finding your sea-legs : exploring newcomer embodied learning in an extreme context

Embodied learning involves developing not only socio-technical know-how but also the bodily capacity to execute practices competently. In extreme contexts, newcomers encounter threatening experiences that may incapacitate their ability to participate. How newcomers develop the bodily capacity to participate in such situations is a research area that requires further attention. Using ethnographic data from a study of novices working in the risky context of seafaring, we show that newcomers encounter threat experiences (imagined, immediate, and attenuated) that trigger them to engage in three types of body work: priming, battling, and enduring, from which they develop the capacity to participate. Our analysis suggests a model of newcomer embodied learning in practices in an extreme context and contributes to embodied learning literature by showing: (1) body work directed at capacity to participate, (2) the mutually constitutive relationship between body work and threat experiences, and (3) the temporal complexity of embodied learning anchored in the body work and threat experiences

Navigating turbulent waters : crafting learning trajectories in a changing work context

How do newcomers gain access to learning opportunities when they are denied opportunities to practice? Changes in the nature of work, such as labour outsourcing and technological advancements, have created challenges for newcomers to learn. They may be more easily relegated to low-level repetitive tasks, such as scutwork. In these situations, newcomers’ ambiguous position as learners can limit access to participation in practices needed to progress their learning trajectories. Using field-study data, we explore the situated learning of merchant-navy cadets. We show that, when newcomers are not permitted access to participation, the structural arrangements of practice – temporal structures, spatial territories and hierarchical arrangements – hinder learning opportunities. We show, further, that some newcomers leverage these same structural arrangements surreptitiously as resources to access participation, which we conceptualise as stealth work. Consequently, we unveil the soft forms of power at play in crafting access to learning trajectories, making three contributions. First, we show how structural arrangements of a practice can be leveraged to enable learning. Second, we show that gaining access stealthily, requires both normative and counter-normative performances. Third, we show the importance of access in crafting learning trajectories and unpack how such access is navigated by newcomers

Coventry UK City of Culture 2021 Performance Measurement & Evaluation – Supplementary Report

This Supplementary Report should be read alongside the previously released Interim Report. The Interim Report covers the period from December 2017 until November 2021 − the point at which Coventry won the UK City of Culture title, until Coventry was six months into the title year. This report covers the final six months of the UK CoC 2021 year, December 2021 to May 2022, and brings the headline statistics up to date and provides a contextual overview of the UK CoC 2021 year

Protocol for a cluster randomised waitlist-controlled trial of a goal-based behaviour change intervention for employees in workplaces enrolled in health and wellbeing initiatives.

Many workplaces offer health and wellbeing initiatives to their staff as recommended by international and national health organisations. Despite their potential, the influence of these initiatives on health behaviour appears limited and evaluations of their effectiveness are rare. In this research, we propose evaluating the effectiveness of an established behaviour change intervention in a new workplace context. The intervention, 'mental contrasting plus implementation intentions', supports staff in achieving their health and wellbeing goals by encouraging them to compare the future with the present and to develop a plan for overcoming anticipated obstacles. We conducted a systematic review that identified only three trials of this intervention in workplaces and all of them were conducted within healthcare organisations. Our research will be the first to evaluate the effectiveness of mental contrasting outside a solely healthcare context. We propose including staff from 60 organisations, 30 in the intervention and 30 in a waitlisted control group. The findings will contribute to a better understanding of how to empower and support staff to improve their health and wellbeing. Trial registration: ISRCTN17828539

The process of transition : becoming legitimate peripheral participants in the practice of seafaring.

My thesis seeks to develop the theory of legitimate peripheral participation by focusing on how it is accomplished in practice, through exploring the process of transition from novices to (relative) masters. In doing so, the study opens the black box of participation in studies of situated learning and focuses on two aspects that lead to a further development of legitimate peripheral participation. First, it looks at how newcomers undergo legitimate peripheral participation at two sites of practice and how movement between the sites influences the process of transition. Second, it focuses on the ways in which newcomers negotiate access to participation at a site where such access is not readily available. The research was conducted as a five-month multi-sited ethnographic study in the maritime industry; as such it focuses on the process of transition from cadets (newcomers) to officers (relative old-timers). Two research sites were used for conducting the ethnographic study, a maritime training center, and a merchant shipping vessel. Analysis of the data collected through observations and interviews at the two sites reveals key insights into the practical accomplishment of legitimate peripheral participation. The study shows the influence of movement between sites of practice and theorizes transition as an episodic process. Furthermore, the study explores the ways of doing through which newcomers are able to successfully negotiate access to participation. As such it develops a practice-sensitive concept of proactivity as a way of negotiating access to participation. Overall the thesis develops a more nuanced understanding of participation and shows how legitimate peripheral participation is accomplished in practice

How insights from the field of information behavior can enrich understanding of knowledge mobilization

Design/methodology/approach We conducted a narrative review using an exploratory, non-keyword ‘double-sided systematic snowball’ method. This is especially useful in our situation when the two traditions targeted are broad and relies on distinct vocabulary. Purpose We review the literature on information behavior, an autonomous body of work developed mainly in library studies, and compare it with work on knowledge mobilization. We aim to explore how information behavior can contribute to understanding knowledge mobilization in healthcare management. Findings We find that the two bodies of work have followed similar trajectories and arrived at similar conclusions, with a linear view supplemented first by a social approach and then by a sensitivity to practice. Lessons from the field of information behavior can be used to avoid duplication of effort, repeating the same errors, and reinventing the wheel among knowledge translation scholars. This includes, for example, focusing on sources of information or ignoring the mundane activities in which managers and policymakers are involved. Originality The study is the first known attempt to build bridges between the field of information behavior and the study of knowledge mobilization. The study, moreover, foregrounds the need to address knowledge mobilization in context-sensitive and social rather than technical terms, focusing on the mundane work performed by various human and non-human agents