Orchestral Conducting in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Roberto Illiano and Michela Niccolai

Clive Brown discusses this 2014 publication, edited by Roberto Illiano and Michela Niccolai. Illiano, R., M. Niccolai, eds. Orchestral Conducting in the Nineteenth Century. Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. ISBN: 9782503552477

Strategic approaches to enhanced health service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness confront multiple challenges that contribute to their poor health outcomes, and to the health disparities that exist in Australian society. This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to care and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness. METHODS Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with diabetes, chronic heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n-16) and family carers (n = 3). Interviews were transcribed verbatim and the transcripts were analysed using content analysis. Recurrent themes were identified and these were used to inform the key findings of the study. RESULTS Participants reported both negative and positive influences that affected their health and well-being. Among the negative influences, they identified poor access to culturally appropriate health services, dislocation from cultural support systems, exposure to racism, poor communication with health care professionals and economic hardship. As a counter to these, participants pointed to cultural and traditional knowledge as well as insights from their own experiences. Participants said that while they often felt overwhelmed and confused by the burden of chronic illness, they drew strength from being part of an Aboriginal community, having regular and ongoing access to primary health care, and being well-connected to a supportive family network. Within this context, elders played an important role in increasing people's awareness of the impact of chronic illness on people and communities. CONCLUSIONS Our study indicated that non-Indigenous health services struggled to meet the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness. To address their complex needs, health services could gain considerably by recognising that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients have a wealth of cultural knowledge at their disposal. Strategies to ensure that this knowledge is integrated into care and support programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people with chronic illness should achieve major improvements.This study was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council which provided funding for the project

Sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education: A conversational ethnodrama between South African teacher educators

This article explores the evolving trajectory of the Teaching Practicum (TP) models within a selected South African teacher education institution (TEI) to accommodate the localised challenges of shifting from face-to-face support of professional learning towards online modes of delivery during Covid-19 times. Over time, even before the onset of Covid-19, the specific institution was characterised by increasing diversification of its student body and increased enrolment of student teachers resonating with similar patterns across other TEIs nationally. The study draws on the ethnographic tradition of celebrating participants’ lived experiences within the field of teacher education by capturing how a teaching practicum coordinator attempted to deal with complex and multiple challenges to enact and sustain a re-imagined TP programme. The pattern of responsiveness continues even as the pandemic (potentially) wanes. A reconstructed dialogue represents the responses of the internal coordinator within the institution (foregrounding changing operational concerns) and a senior teacher educator external to the institution (foregrounding shifting theoretical and policy considerations). Drawing from ethnodrama traditions, this dialogical conversation acknowledges the lived experiences of everyday designing, delivering and using TP models. It includes the hesitance of school mentors, student teachers and teacher educator supervisors to adopt alternative practices to conventionalised rituals of TP. The conversation questions the academic rationale of the various models of TP in their bolstering of student teachers’ professional learning. The study’s findings indicate that the successful implementation of a meaningful and contextualised revised TP curriculum necessitates re-imagining the roles of the various partners involved in the TP endeavour: who are co-responsible for conceptualising and ensuring transformative professional growth and development

String Bowing

Es una traducción de: Brown, Clive. "String Bowing", en Classical and Romantic Performing Practice, 1750-1900. Oxford University Press, 1999, cap. 7, pp. 259-281.Sara Moneo Elejabarrieta (traductora)

El tempo en la música clásica y romántica (1750-1900)

Es una traducción de: Brown, Clive: “Tempo”, en Classical and Romantic Performance Practice (1750-1900), Oxford, © Oxford University Press, Inc., cap. 8, pp. 282-312.Juan Carlos Lores Gil (traductor)

Learning in Practice: Cost-effectiveness of Continuing Professional Development in Health Care

Continuing professional development (CPD) for healthcare professionals is an important strategic instrument for improving health. The Department of Health identifies CPD as a way of maintaining standards of care; improving the health of the nation; and recruiting, motivating, and retaining high quality staff. To this end, direct NHS spending on continuing professional development in 1999-2000 was about £1bn ($1.6bn). If we regard CPD as any method to improve health professionals’ skills the total resources devoted to it are probably much greater, particularly with the recent increased participation in response to the need for recertification and revalidation. To ensure the maximum gain from participation in CPD, these resources must be used efficiently. To assess the efficiency of participating in CPD, economic criteria are needed. Resources for health care are scarce, and money spent on CPD could otherwise be used for direct patient care. These opportunity costs are explicitly considered in the economic methods of cost benefit analysis and cost effectiveness analysis. The literature contains various reviews of cost effectiveness analysis in both health care and education. Such articles explain why cost effectiveness analysis (or another method of economic evaluation) is essential and how such evaluation should be undertaken, and they clearly define the set of economic terms (such as cost benefit analysis, cost effectiveness analysis, rate of return, and opportunity cost) that need to be incorporated into this type of research. Casebeer et al highlighted the need for economic evaluation of CPD activities, but they emphasised the use of cost benefit analysis, which requires monetary values to be assigned to measures of effectiveness. Cost benefit analysis is generally used to ascertain whether an intervention should be undertaken. Cost effectiveness analysis is used to decide which interventions (out of a number of alternatives) should be undertaken. However, cost effectiveness analysis in education research is rare. This is partly because of limited training for researchers, antipathy toward (economic) analysis that might constrain policy, and the dearth of significant results in studies of educational effectiveness.9 The quality of such research is also often poor: Clune found that only 1% of 541 “cost-effectiveness” studies of elementary and secondary education between 1991 and 1996 could be considered reliable, with strong design and analysis. In contrast, economic evaluation of healthcare technologies is increasing, and the methods for making such analysis are rapidly evolving. (Even here, however, critical reviews identify a substantial number of weak cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses.

Cerebral autoregulation is compromised during simulated fluctuations in gravitational stress

Gravity places considerable stress on the cardiovascular system but cerebral autoregulation usually protects the cerebral blood vessels from fluctuations in blood pressure. However, in conditions such as those encountered on board a high-performance aircraft, the gravitational stress is constantly changing and might compromise cerebral autoregulation. In this study we assessed the effect of oscillating orthostatic stress on cerebral autoregulation. Sixteen (eight male) healthy subjects [aged 27 (1)years] were exposed to steady-state lower body negative pressure (LBNP) at −15 and −40mmHg and then to oscillating LBNP at the same pressures. The oscillatory LBNP was applied at 0.1 and 0.2Hz. We made continuous recordings of RR-interval, blood pressure, cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV), respiratory frequency and end-tidal CO2. Oscillations in mean arterial pressure (MAP) and CBFV were assessed by autoregressive spectral analysis. Respiration was paced at 0.25Hz to avoid interference from breathing. Steady-state LBNP at −40mmHg significantly increased low-frequency (LF, 0.03-0.14Hz) powers of MAP (P<0.01) but not of CBFV. Oscillatory 0.1Hz LBNP (0 to −40mmHg) significantly increased the LF power of MAP to a similar level as steady-state LBNP but also resulted in a significant increase in the LF power of CBFV (P<0.01). Oscillatory LBNP at 0.2Hz induced oscillations in MAP and CBFV at 0.2Hz. Cross-spectral analysis showed that the transfer of LBNP-induced oscillations in MAP onto the CBFV was significantly greater at 0.2Hz than at 0.1Hz (P<0.01). These results show that the ability of the cerebral vessels to modulate fluctuations in blood pressure is compromised during oscillatory compared with constant gravitational stress. Furthermore, this effect seems to be more pronounced at higher frequencies of oscillatory stres

Early Music, Notation and Performance: an interview with Clive Brown

In this interview granted to Marcus Held, Clive Brown discourses about his career dedicated to the historical investigations related to the 18th and 19th centuries music, with emphasis on past performance practices. Brown, who witnessed the consolidation of the Early Music in England, recalls the processes of (re)discovery not only of the past repertoire, but also of the musical thought. With particular interest in musical notation and its intellectual processes, the researcher points that the approach to the score has definitely changed throughout the centuries and, from that, many challenges are posed for the activity of contemporary musical editing