Precarious Practices: Artists, Work and Knowing-in-Practice

This study presents a new perspective on work practice in conceptual art. Using ethnographic evidence from five visual artists, the study used a combined visual arts and practice orientated perspective to explore the materiality of their everyday work and the sociomaterial practices shaping it. Close scrutiny is given to the forms of expertise embedded in this through concepts of knowing-in-practice and epistemic objects. Emerging from the findings is clearer understanding of how an arts-based methodology might enhance knowledge about artists’ knowing-in-practice. Popular representations of contemporary artists often ignore the realities of precarious work. This is reflected in the professional education of artists with its concentration on studio-based activities and emphasis on the production and products of artmaking. This study reconfigures and reconceptualises the work of artists as assemblages of sociomaterial practices that include, but are not limited to artmaking – so providing a different representation of the work of artists as a continuous collaboration of mundane materials. The study identified seven sociomaterial practices, defined as movement-driven; studio-making; looking; pedagogic; self-promotion; peer support; and pause. As these practices are subject to ever-changing materialities, they are constantly reassembled. Analysis revealed hidden interiors of underemployment and income generation to be significant factors embedded in the mundane materialities of everyday work, revealing resilience and adaptability as key forms of expertise necessary for the assembling of practices. Further, the arts-based methodology of ‘integrated imagework’ created ways of visually analysing the materially-mediated, socially situated nature of knowing in practice, and demonstrated how relational concepts relating to knowing-in-practice might be better analysed. Findings indicate how the professional education of artists – particularly the way the workplace of the studio is understood – could be re-envisioned to support the fluidity of contemporary artistic practices. The studio itself is a form of knowledge – ever changing – forming and being formed by the practices of artists. Adopting this view of studio-based education would be a radical departure from current studio-based pedagogies in contemporary art education. Further, resilience – the capacity to sustain practices that are emergent and constantly unfolding – becomes a form of expertise central to the professional education of artists

Repositioning artistic practices: a sociomaterial view

Practices, positioned through a sociomaterial lens make visible everyday work, often challenging our understanding of practices in consequence. Artists, and the world of contemporary art offer interesting contexts to explore practices through a sociomaterial lens and render visible everyday work important in the accomplishment of art. As such, this paper presents a distinctive sociomaterial exploration of practices that reconfigures our understanding of professional practices and their pedagogies in art. Drawing on theoretical resources of practice and materiality, I present findings from an art-based ethnographic study of conceptual artists that combined art and practice-oriented perspectives to look beyond discipline-based processes of artmaking to practices as they happen. I present these findings first, and innovatively, as a series of photo-collages and then, using words, as mundane practices of looking, studio-making and pause, around which other practices coalesce including peer-support, self-promotion, pedagogy and movement-driven. The photo-collages, visually and literally, reposition artistic practices as those necessary in the accomplishment of everyday work, preserving a relationality sometimes lost in written accounts of sociomaterial practices. The paper thus presents novel and necessary insights into the professional development of artists; methodological insights for relational studies of practices; and questions for professional education broadly

Application of Alternative Nucleic Acid Extraction Protocols to ProGastro SSCS Assay for Detection of Bacterial Enteric Pathogens

As an alternative to automated extraction, fecal specimens were processed by investigational lysis/heating (i.e., manual) and by chromatography/centrifugation (i.e., column) methods. ProGastro SSC and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (i.e., STEC) indeterminate rates for 101 specimens were 1.0% to 3.0% for automated, 11.9% for manual, and 24.8% to 37.6% for column methods. Following freeze-thaw of 247 specimens, indeterminate rates were 1.6% to 2.4% for manual and 0.8 to 5.3% for column methods. Mean processing times for manual and column methods were 30.5 and 69.2 min, respectively. Concordance of investigational methods with automated extraction was ≥98.8%

TGFβ/BMP immune signaling affects abundance and function of C. elegans gut commensals.

The gut microbiota contributes to host health and fitness, and imbalances in its composition are associated with pathology. However, what shapes microbiota composition is not clear, in particular the role of genetic factors. Previous work in Caenorhabditis elegans defined a characteristic worm gut microbiota significantly influenced by host genetics. The current work explores the role of central regulators of host immunity and stress resistance, employing qPCR and CFU counts to measure abundance of core microbiota taxa in mutants raised on synthetic communities of previously-isolated worm gut commensals. This revealed a bloom, specifically of Enterobacter species, in immune-compromised TGFβ/BMP mutants. Imaging of fluorescently labeled Enterobacter showed that TGFβ/BMP-exerted control operated primarily in the anterior gut and depended on multi-tissue contributions. Enterobacter commensals are common in the worm gut, contributing to infection resistance. However, disruption of TGFβ/BMP signaling turned a normally beneficial Enterobacter commensal to pathogenic. These results demonstrate specificity in gene-microbe interactions underlying gut microbial homeostasis and highlight the pathogenic potential of their disruption

The impact of polyvictimisation on children in LMICs: the case of Jamaica

AbstractChildren who experience polyvictimization in high-income countries (HICs) are at higher risk for mental health-related trauma symptoms. There is limited information on the impact of polyvictimisation on children with high levels of exposure, as occurs in some low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This study investigates the impact of poyvictimization on Jamaican children’s intellectual functioning, achievement, and disruptive behaviors. Data from a geographical subgroup (n = 1171) of a 1986 population based birth cohort study were utilised. At age 11–12 years, the sub-group completed questionnaires on exposure to violence at school, at home and in their communities, and tests of academic and intellectual functioning. Their parents completed questionnaires on family resources (socioeconomic status) and children’s behaviour. Findings from Structural Equational Modelling indicated that for both genders, exposure to polyvictimisation had a direct negative effect on intellectual functioning, and a..

Leaders and their Learning

Leaders and their learning : professional development priorities for principals / compiled by Beryl Evans. (1993) for Department of Employment, Education and Training. 47 p

Early Impact: Assessing Global-Mindedness and Intercultural Competence in a First-Year Honors Abroad Course

Within the expanding field of study abroad scholarship, recent research on honors-based programming indicates an evolving understanding of how the goals of most study abroad programs align with those of honors programs (Camarena and Collins; Frost et al.; Markus et al.). The tradition of incorporating international experiences into honors education is longstanding, and recent descriptions of related programming highlight the diversity of disciplines, locations, aims, and pedagogies across institutions (Mulvaney and Klein ix–x). One common thread, however, is a desire to facilitate not only academic but also intercultural competencies in order to prepare honors students for an increasingly interconnected world. The following institutional case study is an investigation of the impact of a short-term, first-year honors abroad course in Turkey on students’ global-mindedness and intercultural competence. The findings help us understand how the program contributed to student growth in subsequent semesters, how that growth links to important university goals for all students, and how the program contributed to the strengths of the honors program as a whole. Honors international education literature is an important component of the large and growing field of general international education literature. Several large-scale surveys of alumni of higher educational institutions in the United States have demonstrated that study abroad has lasting impact above and beyond other influential components of higher education (e.g., Dwyer and Peters; Paige et al.). In a study conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE), student participants reported that studying abroad increased their self-confidence, expanded their understanding of intercultural perspectives and issues, and strengthened their academic commitment, especially to foreign language study (Dwyer and Peters 156; Nguyen 22–23). In the Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE) project, Paige and colleagues designed a retrospective tracer study of alumni who had been abroad between 1960 and 2007, with over six thousand who had studied abroad and approximately the same number who did not. Over eighty percent of respondents indicated that study abroad had a strong impact on their lives, far more than any other aspect of their undergraduate experience. Areas of their lives that were influenced included practicing voluntary simplicity, engaging in social entrepreneurship and international civic engagement, and obtaining a graduate degree. These studies reflect wide interest in understanding the depth, breadth, and longevity of benefits for all students who participate in international education through study abroad. It therefore seems natural for honors programs to develop study abroad opportunities because of the potential positive impact of international programs on their student learning outcomes as well as honors program and institutional goals. (See, for example, Frost et al.