Work and power in post-Fordist production: A case study of four machine shops

American industry is shifting to a post-Fordist approach to production. The post-Fordist approach includes expanding use of advanced manufacturing technologies, decreasing organizational sizes, decreasing bureaucratization of the work place, and the abandonment of Tayloristic managerial practices in favor of increasing worker participation in decision making processes. This study examines the effects of the post-Fordist approach upon power relations in four work places in the machining industry. Interviews with 44 machinists, employers and community leaders in the case study site Machinist Valley show that the shift to post-Fordism is accompanied by declining incomes, fewer employment opportunities, lower benefits, and less job security in comparison to machining work during the Fordist era. While machinists exercise greater skills in the work place, they have less power to determine the pace and pay of their work. Declining worker power primarily results from owners\u27 abilities in Machinist Valley to instill and take advantage of the feeling of individual and collective job insecurity that pervades workers\u27 consciousness. These findings point to the need for further evaluation of the shift to flexible specialization. Findings of this study suggest that the optimistic scenario of craft control theory (Piore & Sable 1984), which asserts that increasing craft skills enhance worker power in the work place, is unlikely to be born out of post-Fordism in the current market conditions. The experiences of workers in Machinist Valley are more consistent with the projections of fragmentation theory (Lash & Urry 1987), which projects decreasing worker power due to declines in workers\u27 class capacities

Assessment of Sediment Contamination in Casco Bay

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Contaminant concentrations of sediment samples collected approximately 10 years apart are compared in an attempt to establish current status of contaminant concentrations in Casco Bay, to determine whether contaminant concentrations are increasing, decreasing or remain unchanged, and to examine any changes in the geographical distribution of contaminants. This process is complicated by the potential of re-suspension of older sediment back to the surface, the non-homogeneity of sediments, low concentrations for some analytes and variability of different analytical methods. In spite of these complications several trends are observed. As expected, most of the contaminants appear to be decreasing in concentrations. Total PAH concentrations in the sediment are an exception. When comparing total PAH concentration in 1991 and 2001, there is neither an increase nor a decrease when the analytical uncertainties are considered. The continuing increased use of fossil fuels that may add additional PAH to the sediments appears to be balanced by increasing controls that lower PAH inputs. Total pesticides as well as 4,4-DDE, 4,4-DDD and total DDTs indicate a decrease from 1991 to 2000/2001. Total PCB concentrations also suggest a decrease over this time period. Silver is the only trace element increasing in concentration at most sampling sites from 1991 to 2001. The reason for this difference is not clear. Concentrations decreased at the majority of the sampling sites for cadmium, chromium, mercury, nickel, and selenium with no apparent difference for arsenic, copper lead and zinc. Tributyltin and total butyltin concentrations decreased over the time period from 1994 to 2000/2001. The overall indication for dioxin/furans is no change between sampling periods. The planar PCB indicates no change (PCB 77) or decreasing concentrations (PCB 126). With the many complicating factors, the interpretation of these data needs to be done with care. There is no indication from these data that any of the contaminants measured has increased by more than a factor of 2. At most Casco Bay sites and for most analytes there is either no change or a decrease. There are sites where increases are apparent and many of these sites are at the shallow water sites or at the Inner Bay sites where concentrations are higher and new inputs are more likely Sediments from the Inner Bay region of Casco Bay; closest to Portland, ME; contain the highest levels of trace metals, PCBs, DDTs, and chlordane. For contaminants other than PAH (and these only at a few locations) and PCBs at one location, the levels of contamination in Casco Bay would not be considered high on a national basis, based on Macauley et al. (1994). The geographical distribution of most contaminants remains similar to those determined in 1991/1994. There are generally higher contaminant concentrations in the vicinity of Portland and other populated and industrial areas. Toxicity tests for selected sites and comparison of 2 contamination concentrations to ERL or ERM indicate the sediments are not toxic. The overall conclusion based on the available data is that the contaminant loading for Casco Bay, as a whole, is decreasing or remaining the same and these concentrations are not likely to adversely affect the biota. The geographic distribution of sediment contaminants is generally confirmed in the analysis of mussel tissue by the Casco Bay Estuary Project and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) (Doggett, DEP, personal communication)

Preparing medical students as agentic learners through enhancing student engagement in clinical education.

Publisher version made available in accordance with Publisher's copyright policy.Preparing medical students to be agentic learners is held to be increasingly important. This is because beyond sequencing, enhancing and varying of experiences across university and health care settings, medical students require epistemological agency to optimize their learning. The positioning of students in these settings, and their engagement with these is central to effective medical education. Consequently, when considering both the processes and outcomes of individuals’ learning to become a doctor, it is helpful to account for the interrelated pedagogical factors of affordance, guidance, and engagement. This paper focuses on the last set of concerns - the student’s engagement - with particular consideration to how they shape the relations between what experiences are afforded through the medical program and how they elect to engage with them. Evidence from a qualitative study is used to present five salient factors that are central to assist medical students prepare as agentic learners

The Curriculum and Pedagogic Properties of Practice-based Experiences: The Case of Midwifery Students

Author version made available in accordance with Publisher's copyright policy.This paper outlines curriculum considerations for the ordering, enactment and experiencing of practice-based experiences (e.g. practicums) in tertiary education programs developing occupational specific capacities. Increasingly, these programs are engaging students in practicum experiences (i.e. those in the circumstances of practice). These practice-based experiences require considerable investment on the part of all involved and so need to be used in ways that do justice to those invest- ments. However, such experiences are often provided and engaged in by students without consideration being given to their educational purposes; their likely contri- butions and how they can be sequenced and utilised to achieve those purposes. Here, the specific concern is to identify bases for considering these purposes and how these might be realised through the selection and sequencing of student experiences. A case study of two practicum experiences comprising midwifery students’ ‘follow-through’ experiences with birthing women and clinical placements is used to identify the kinds of learning that can arise through different kinds of practice-based experiences and how they might be most effectively organised. The concern, therefore, is to identify how the midwifery curriculum (i.e. pathways of experiences) can be ordered and augmented by particular pedagogic practices that assist realise the program’s intended learning outcomes. The two different practice-based experiences are found to gener- ate distinct learning outcomes for the students. The follow-throughs generate under- standings about the birthing process from the birthing mothers’ perspectives and provide goal states for midwifery work and understandings about midwifery practice, whereas the development of clinical capacities that arise through clinical placements. Consequently, the formers kinds of experiences might be best provides before, or in conjunction with second. Importantly, rather than viewing these experiences as being supplementary to what is provided within tertiary education institutions, they need to be consider as particular kinds of experiences on their own terms and engage with and utilise their contributions accordingly

Of words and whistles: Statistical learning operates similarly for identical sounds perceived as speech and non-speechOf words and whistles: Statistical learning operates similarly for identical sounds perceived as speech and non-speech

Statistical learning is an ability that allows individuals to effortlessly extract patterns from the environment, such as sound patterns in speech. Some prior evidence suggests that statistical learning operates more robustly for speech compared to non-speech stimuli, supporting the idea that humans are predisposed to learn language. However, any apparent statistical learning advantage for speech could be driven by signal acoustics, rather than the subjective perception per se of sounds as speech. To resolve this issue, the current study assessed whether there is a statistical learning advantage for ambiguous sounds that are subjectively perceived as speech-like compared to the same sounds perceived as non-speech, thereby controlling for acoustic features. We first induced participants to perceive sine-wave speech (SWS)—a degraded form of speech not immediately perceptible as speech—as either speech or non-speech. After this induction phase, participants were exposed to a continuous stream of repeating trisyllabic nonsense words, composed of SWS syllables, and then completed an explicit familiarity rating task and an implicit target detection task to assess learning. Critically, participants showed robust and equivalent performance on both measures, regardless of their subjective speech perception. In contrast, participants who perceived the SWS syllables as more speech-like showed better detection of individual syllables embedded in speech streams. These results suggest that speech perception facilitates processing of individual sounds, but not the ability to extract patterns across sounds. Our findings suggest that statistical learning is not influenced by the perceived linguistic relevance of sounds, and that it may be conceptualized largely as an automatic, stimulus-driven mechanism

Understanding and appraising medical students’ learning through clinical experiences: Participatory practices at work

© The contributors. This author accepted manuscript book chapter is made available after an embargo period of 18 months from date of publication (December 2018) in accordance with the publisher's archiving policy.This chapter explores the participatory practices of some medical students’ learning through their clinical experiences. Participatory practices are those that comprise a duality between what is afforded by the social institutions in which individuals participate (e.g. educational and healthcare settings), on the one hand, and how individuals elect to engage in and learn through those practices (i.e. their processes of experiencing), on the other. Privileged here is not only the contributions to learning from these social settings and what individuals already know, can do and value, but also the relations between them. Indeed, the explanatory account of these students’ learning is founded on the concept of relational interdependence. That is, the relational nature of the interdependence between the social norms, forms and practices that individuals are afforded in these settings, and their experiencing of, and learning from what is afforded them. These concepts offer an account of the learning process associated with medical education, in which judgements about the educational worth of these programs are founded on the kinds and qualities of experiences provided for students, their relationships with the kinds of learning that arise from them, and ultimately, how students come to engage within them. This engagement includes, but is not wholly dependent upon, how students perceive the invitational qualities of these experiences

Understanding and appraising medical students’ learning through clinical experiences: Participatory practices at work

© The contributors. This author accepted manuscript book chapter is made available after an embargo period of 18 months from date of publication (December 2018) in accordance with the publisher's archiving policy.This chapter explores the participatory practices of some medical students’ learning through their clinical experiences. Participatory practices are those that comprise a duality between what is afforded by the social institutions in which individuals participate (e.g. educational and healthcare settings), on the one hand, and how individuals elect to engage in and learn through those practices (i.e. their processes of experiencing), on the other. Privileged here is not only the contributions to learning from these social settings and what individuals already know, can do and value, but also the relations between them. Indeed, the explanatory account of these students’ learning is founded on the concept of relational interdependence. That is, the relational nature of the interdependence between the social norms, forms and practices that individuals are afforded in these settings, and their experiencing of, and learning from what is afforded them. These concepts offer an account of the learning process associated with medical education, in which judgements about the educational worth of these programs are founded on the kinds and qualities of experiences provided for students, their relationships with the kinds of learning that arise from them, and ultimately, how students come to engage within them. This engagement includes, but is not wholly dependent upon, how students perceive the invitational qualities of these experiences