How do postgraduate surgeons-in-training learn through workplace-based assessments?

Workplace-based assessments (WBAs) are a central part of the education and supervision of postgraduate surgeons-in-training in the UK. This thesis explores what these surgeons-in-training experience, and learn, as they take part in a WBA. Existing research has viewed the WBA as an instance of assessment of a learner’s practice, focusing predominantly on their standardised outcomes and users’ perceptions of them. There is little research using direct observation of the WBA in-situ, thus limiting our understanding of how they ‘get done’ and how they are incorporated into practical routines. Therefore, there is no empirical basis for predicting the learning potential of WBAs, for justifying their outcomes or for explaining user perceptions of them. This study explores this research gap. Adopting a constructivist perspective, this research integrates ideas from sociocultural learning theory, workplace learning theories, and Goffman’s notion of social performance to better understand how surgeons-in-training learn through WBAs. I frame WBAs as social processes, woven into the fabric of everyday working practice. Data were generated through audiovisual recording and observation of clinical activities, the WBA proformas that learners completed, and interviews with each learner. My data analysis drew out how learners actively construct WBA documents as self-presentations. Learners select, omit, and mould different learning narratives that have themselves been constructed through each learner’s interaction with their dynamic learning milieu, as they participate in WBAs according to a set of tacit principles. Findings illustrate the highly individual, personalised ways that WBAs unfold. While WBAs are officially a standardised tool for objective assessment of learner performances, this work shows that the WBA is a unique, highly subjective representation of a learner’s understanding of their working world

Topological gravity localization on a delta-function like Brane

Besides the String Theory context, the quantum General Relativity can be studied by the use of constrained topological field theories. In the celebrated Plebanski formalism, the constraints connecting topological field theories and gravity are imposed in space-times with trivial topology. In the braneworld context there are two distinct regions of the space-time, namely, the bulk and the braneworld volume. In this work we show how to construct topological gravity in a scenario containing one extra dimension and a delta-function like 3-brane which naturally emerges from a spontaneously broken discrete symmetry. Starting from a D=5 theory we obtain the action for General Relativity in the Palatini form in the bulk as well as in the braneworld volume. This result is important for future insights about quantum gravity in brane scenarios.Comment: 4 page

Gauge Field Emergence from Kalb-Ramond Localization

A new mechanism, valid for any smooth version of the Randall-Sundrum model, of getting localized massless vector field on the brane is described here. This is obtained by dimensional reduction of a five dimension massive two form, or Kalb-Ramond field, giving a Kalb-Ramond and an emergent vector field in four dimensions. A geometrical coupling with the Ricci scalar is proposed and the coupling constant is fixed such that the components of the fields are localized. The solution is obtained by decomposing the fields in transversal and longitudinal parts and showing that this give decoupled equations of motion for the transverse vector and KR fields in four dimensions. We also prove some identities satisfied by the transverse components of the fields. With this is possible to fix the coupling constant in a way that a localized zero mode for both components on the brane is obtained. Then, all the above results are generalized to the massive $p-$form field. It is also shown that in general an effective $p$ and $(p-1)-$forms can not be localized on the brane and we have to sort one of them to localize. Therefore, we can not have a vector and a scalar field localized by dimensional reduction of the five dimensional vector field. In fact we find the expression $p=(d-1)/2$ which determines what forms will give rise to both fields localized. For $D=5$, as expected, this is valid only for the KR field.Comment: Improved version. Some factors corrected and definitions added. The main results continue vali