Developing Program Infrastructure for Relationship-Building Between Native Communities and Premedical Students in South Dakota

Rural health disparities are an ongoing issue in the state of South Dakota (SD), specifically within rural and Native American communities. An explicit goal of the Sanford School of Medicine (SSOM) is to improve health care for the citizens of the state with an emphasis on rural and Native communities. Many initiatives have been undertaken by SSOM to address these disparities; however, few opportunities exist for undergraduate premedical students to contribute. A well-designed cultural immersion program has the potential to influence the career paths of pre-professional students. The ultimate goal of the program is to facilitate relationship-building between medical pre-professionals and their potential patient populations to influence future generations of SD medical professionals to address rural health disparities. Specific goals for individual program participants include engaging in critical self-reflection, learning Native history, and developing cultural humility. The program goals are to be accomplished through a variety of theoretical frameworks and best practices established through a comprehensive literature review. Discussion includes relevant theories, methods, logistical considerations, evaluation tools, practical applications, and other considerations for accomplishing the previously stated goals of an undergraduate cultural immersion program

Epistemic Practices in Professional-Client Partnership Work

© 2018, Springer Nature B.V. Relational aspects of professional practice demand increasing attention in research on work and learning. However, little is known about how knowledge is enacted in practices where different people work together. Working in partnership with clients surfaces a number of epistemic demands, responses to which are poorly understood. This paper analyses two cases of nurses working with parents in support services for families with young children. The questions asked are: What epistemic practices are enacted when professionals work in partnership with clients? How do they generate distinct modes of partnership work? Findings show how professionals’ and clients’ knowledge is mobilised and made actionable through practices of diagnostic reasoning, recontextualising, testing and contesting knowledge claims. A distinction is presented between partnership that unfolds as strengthening the client from a professional epistemic perspective, and that which validates and augments the client’s own epistemic contribution. This reveals how knowledge is made to matter and becomes a basis for action in the course of working with others, and informs a new analytical distillation highlighting key epistemic aspects of professional-client partnership

Software Effort Estimation as Collective Accomplishment: An analysis of estimation practice in a multi-specialist team

This paper examines how a team of software professionals goes about estimating the effort of a software project using a judgment-based, bottom-up estimation approach. By employing a social practice perspective that highlights the distributed character of expertise and conceives actions as mediated by cultural tools, the paper analyzes the interactional process through which the estimation tasks were collectively accomplished. The findings show how software effort estimation is carried out through complex series of explorative and sense-making actions, rather than by applying assumed information or routines. During the explorative work, the team alternated between the planning and the problem solving aspects of the activity. The requirement specification served several mediating functions in the interactional process, through which expertise was mobilised and coordinated. The paper argues that to grasp the complexity of software estimation, there is a need for more research that accounts for the communicative and interactional dimensions of this activity. Moreover, by revealing the interactional details of a planning activity the paper contributes to our understanding of the future-oriented and constructive dimensions of social practices

Sociomaterial Approaches to Conceptualising Professional Learning, Knowledge and Practice (Introduction)

First paragraph: Professionals' knowledge and decisions influence all facets of modern life. As Abbott (1988) expresses it, the professions have come to 'dominate our world. They heal our bodies, measure our profits and save our souls'. Some might argue that professionals' learning and work are not terribly different to other vocational practitioners. However, an important distinction is wielded by the internal and external regulation of professionals' knowledge, relationships and performance, and ultimately, their public accountability for what they know and do. This accountability has increased and shifted to more organisationally driven audit of performance outcomes, along with other fundamental changes to conditions of professional practice influenced by market pressures, network arrangements, declining discretion and public trust, new public managerialism and so forth, as many have argued (inter alia, Adler et al. 2008; Brint 2001; Evetts 2009; Freidson 2001). At the same time, the body of shared professional knowledge is not stable but increasingly challenged and subjected to continual transformations. New digital technologies, new textual audit regimes, proliferating transnational and virtual knowledge resources, interprofessional practice with its corresponding knowledge conflicts and new knowledge requirements -- such pressures are all raising questions about the complexities of professional knowledge and knowledge strategies