Critical Implications For Research Research Articles

The Effects of Contextual Factors on Hospital Chaplains: A Qualitative Study

Critical questions arise about how contextual factors affect hospital chaplains. We interviewed 23 chaplains in-depth. Hospitals’ religious or other institutional affiliation, geography, and leadership can influence chaplains both explicitly/directly and implicitly/indirectly—for example, in types/amounts of support chaplains receive, scope of chaplains’ roles/activities, amounts/types of chaplains’ interactions, chaplains' views of their roles and freedom to innovate, and patients’, families’ and other providers’ perceptions/expectations regarding spiritual care. These data have critical implications for research, practice, and education.

"The Whole Feminist Taking-Your-Clothes-off-Thing": Negotiating the Critique of Gender Inequality in UK Music Industries

This article considers the critique of inequality, exploitation and exclusion in contemporary UK music industries, in light of the latter’s growing internal concerns over work-based gender relations. The creative sector’s persistent inequalities are at odds with its professed liberal, egalitarian, meritocratic values and attitudes. Yet, within music’s industrial production cultures, a dismissive postfeminist sensibility has come under pressure through a reflexive critical moment of popular feminist discourse, expressed in trade press critique, between 2013 and the present moment. Drawing from a study of intermediary work in UK major record labels, the article takes a pragmatist approach to documenting and theorizing this critique – alongside institutional mechanisms, like company policies and corporate PR, that respond to it – in terms of growing industrial reflexivity. Tensions over the representation of work, the nature of inequality, intergenerational and epistemic injustice emerge as key themes, with implications for critical research on popular music industries.

“Globally adept citizens?”: Varying conceptions of generic graduate attributes by high school career advisers

Research on the conceptions of generic graduate attributes has focused on employers and higher education institutions and finds inconsistent conceptions and differing values attributed to them. Little work exists surrounding those charged with advising prospective students. Adopting phenomenographic methodology, this research establishes conceptions of generic graduate attributes held by Australian career advisers in NSW secondary schools: defining and describing two outcome spaces by which generic graduate attributes are understood. Advisers see generic graduate attributes as close to personal qualities, strongly related to employment, or important for self-development. Advisers value generic graduate attributes as “minimal” or “valid”. The hierarchical nature of the categories, and dichotomy of views on valuing generic graduate attributes, demonstrate varying conceptions, ranging from simplistic to an advanced understanding surpassing those found in the policies of employers and universities. The variation suggests those charged with advising future generations do not share a common understanding of generic graduate attributes and raises critical implications for research, policy, and practice.

The social life of Learning Analytics: cluster analysis and the ‘performance’ of algorithmic education

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that methods used for the classification and measurement of online education are not neutral and objective, but involved in the creation of the educational realities they claim to measure. In particular, the paper draws on material semiotics to examine cluster analysis as a ‘performative device’ that, to a significant extent, creates the educational entities it claims to objectively represent through the emerging body of knowledge of Learning Analytics (LA). It also offers a more critical and political reading of the algorithmic assemblages of LA, of which cluster analysis is a part. Our argument is that if we want to understand how algorithmic processes and techniques like cluster analysis function as performative devices, then we need methodological sensibilities that consider critically both their political dimensions and their technical-mathematical mechanisms. The implications for critical research in educational technology are discussed.

Mixed methods research in the real world

The article discusses the increasing use of mixed methods designs in applied research, particularly work commissioned by government. The roots of this trend are discussed in the UK and US context, drawing out particularly the implications for qualitative methods, the role of benchmarks and quality standards, and the implications for critical research. Examples from socio‐legal research and research on social aspects of health and illness illustrate the argument.

Covariation of self‐ and other‐directed aggression among inpatient youth: continuity in the transition to treatment and shared risk factors

Although other- and self-directed aggression covary in very high-risk youth, these forms of aggression infrequently are studied simultaneously. Understanding better their covariation is an important task for improving services to high-risk youth. In this study, data from the clinical records of 476 youth admitted to secure inpatient treatment were analyzed to examine relations among self- and other-directed aggression exhibit before and during inpatient treatment. Analyses tested the hypotheses that self- and other-directed aggression would tend to covary and display continuity from pre-treatment to in-treatment. Also tested were the hypotheses that youth with histories of co-occurring self- and other-directed aggression would show the highest levels of aggression during treatment and the greatest degree of personal and contextual risk on entering treatment. These hypotheses were largely supported. Exploratory analyses revealed interesting discontinuities in aggression (aggression emitted only before or during treatment) with critical implications for research and practice with youth receiving clinical care, especially those in institutional placements.

Charting the Course for Patient Safety

Several themes related to patient safety and the nursing workforce have been discussed by conference presenters. These themes include the surveillance role of nursing, the growing impact of healthcare services on patients and families, and the ongoing challenges related to nursing education. The interdisciplinary nature of healthcare and the implications that this has for collaboration in education and practice are examined also. All these themes have critical implications for research and leadership development. Until these pressing themes are addressed, the issues raised in the presentations today will remain unresolved.