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

Discourses of Digitalisation and the Positioning of Workers in Primary Care: A Norwegian Case Study

Primary health services are subjected to intensified digitalisation to transform care provision. Various smart and assistive technologies are introduced to support the growing elderly population and enhance the opportunities for independent living among patients in need of continuous care. Research has shown how such digitalisation processes evolve at the intersection of different and often competing discourses, oriented towards service efficiency, cost containment, technological innovation, client‐centred care, and digital competence development. Often, increased technology use is presented as a solution to pressing problems. However, how discourses are negotiated in work contexts and their mechanisms of social inclusion/exclusion in evolving work practices have received less attention. This article examines how care workers in the primary health sector are discursively positioned when care technologies are introduced in the services. We employ a perspective on discourses and subject positions in analysing strategic documents and interviews with care workers in a large Norwegian city. We show how managerial discourses that focus narrowly on the implementation and mastery of single technologies provide limited spaces for workers to exert influence on their work situations, while discourses that emphasise professional knowledge or broader technological and organisational aspects provide a variety of resources for workers’ agency. The way care workers adopt and negotiate subject positions varies based on their tasks and responsibilities in the organisation. We discuss the need to move beyond “solutionism” in efforts to digitalise care work in order to provide inclusive spaces supporting the contributions of various worker groups

Praksisnær undervisning med simulering og rollespill

Simulation in education involves creating situations that are similar to events, rituals and routines performed in the workplace – or in therapy, consultation, conflicts or similar situations. One recreates as many conditions as are necessary for the students to ‘live’ within what one imitates. Teachers instruct students and run the procedures as if they were ‘reality’. Some simulations, such as in nursing education, require expensive equipment and sophisticated use of ICT. Others can be set up as role-playing games with what one has at their disposal in terms of facilities. The article compares three cases of simulation that were closely examined in connection with a research project. The purpose was to find out if the students experienced this as good quality. The students’ ability to immerse themselves in the situation is of great importance for the benefit of the simulation. Most students find that the situations closely resemble real life and keep them engaged and alert. Teaching that explicitly tries to resemble reality is perceived as very educational.publishedVersio

Praksisnær undervisning med simulering og rollespill

Source at https://www.cappelendammundervisning.no/_praksisnar-undervisning--i-praksis-og-teori-9788202632588. Simulation in education involves creating situations that are similar to events, rituals and routines performed in the workplace – or in therapy, consultation, conflicts or similar situations. One recreates as many conditions as are necessary for the students to ‘live’ within what one imitates. Teachers instruct students and run the procedures as if they were ‘reality’. Some simulations, such as in nursing education, require expensive equipment and sophisticated use of ICT. Others can be set up as role-playing games with what one has at their disposal in terms of facilities. The article compares three cases of simulation that were closely examined in connection with a research project. The purpose was to find out if the students experienced this as good quality. The students’ ability to immerse themselves in the situation is of great importance for the benefit of the simulation. Most students find that the situations closely resemble real life and keep them engaged and alert. Teaching that explicitly tries to resemble reality is perceived as very educational

Enrollment of higher education students in professional knowledge and practices

Proceeding volume: Volume 3Peer reviewe

Beyond policy: Conceptualising student-centred learning environments in higher (music) education

While student-centred learning environments are placed high on the policy agenda for how educational practices can be developed, it is less clear what this term actually means and what implications it may have for teaching and learning. This article discusses how student-centred learning environments in higher education can be interpreted and conceptualized from an educational sciences perspective, in which the term is used to characterize learning environments that aim at placing students at the centre of the activities and facilitating their active participation and engagement with disciplinary and/or professional knowledge. The article also provides examples from recent research on how such environments are organised and experienced by teachers and students in different Norwegian higher education contexts. The examples are mainly taken from studies of common educational practices in the general field of higher education, such as practices employing problem-based, project-based and casebased learning. Reflections on what these insights might mean for the specific field of music performance education are included on the way, and discussed in relation to teacher collaboration as a means of supporting student engagement and learning in higher music education. The article builds on a keynote presentation given at the AEC-CEMPE conference Becoming Musicians—Student Involvement and Teacher Collaboration in Higher Music Education in Oslo in October 2018

Knowledge practices and relations in professional education

The dynamics of knowledge in society have transformed the conditions of professional work and learning. Professional expertise has become increasingly specialised, and practitioners are challenged to keep up with rapid developments in their fields. At the same time, the complexity of professional work requires the integration of different forms of knowledge and knowing. Against this background, the knowledge settings in which learners engage and the practices and resources these offer are of vital importance. This article addresses professional education as embedded in profession-specific ‘machineries of knowledge construction’, that is, the set of practices and arrangements through which knowledge and ways of knowing in a profession are generated. It is argued that such machineries span settings in education and work. Examples from research in three professional programmes are used to discuss how students are introduced to epistemic practices and resources in selected knowledge settings. Analytical attention is given to the dynamic interplay between people, practices, knowledge resources and educational arrangements as well as to how connections to work and the epistemic machinery are made. Taking these linkages into account is important for our understanding of what learning entails in different areas of expertise and how this may change over time. © 2018 Taylor & Franci