Field Of Professional Practice Research Articles

AFFECTION AS A POTENT AGENT IN PSYCHOMOTOR THERAPY: A literature review

This research involves a discussion on affection as an essential guiding thread in Psychomotor Therapy within the Instrumental and Relational lines. It presents the benefits and aspects that directly affect the segmental and global progression of the body. The discussion also includes reflections on aspects of corporeality and the various fields of professional practice in Psychomotricity. The studies are theoretically supported by works such as "Expressão Corporal: Arte, Saúde e Educação" by Patrícia Stokoe (1987) and "O campo psicológico na Dança Educacional" by Helenita Sá Earp (1946), among other theoretical references that dialogue with the research. The objective is to explore the importance of affection in teaching and learning, highlighting its role in harm reduction and the improvement of human connections, as well as integrating reflective, theoretical, and practical aspects of Psychomotor Therapy. This study employed a qualitative methodology through literature review. The analysis reveals that affective interventions in Psychomotricity promote a closer and more effective connection among learners, emphasizing the importance of human affection for integral care. The study highlights the benefits of this integrated approach in the physical-motor, intellectual-cognitive, affective-socio-emotional aspects and the harms of its absence.

Ética, bioética y calidad educativa como dimensiones de la formación integral de los estudiantes de Odontología

Currently, a series of transformations are taking place for professional practice in the field of oral health and, along with these changes, concerns and debates arise about the relevance and updating of university training. This article aims to connect the deliberation on the meaning of “ethical training”, “bioethical training”, “bioethical health”, “educational quality” and “quality higher education”, as dimensions that are questioned on the comprehensive training of the dental career student, in a context of transformation produced by technological and social innovations in the field of professional practice; this through the review of studies conducted in the period 2014-2022. For which, a set of articles was compiled by searching Scopus and applied qualitative documentary analysis based on the results provided by each study. The search terms ethical training, bioethical training and educational quality were used, through critical sampling 32 articles were selected for the study. The analysis concludes that for the integration of ethics, bioethics and educational quality, they should be assumed as conscious practices of daily life, with social relevance and oriented through models that reflect the complex reality.

Obstacles to E-volunteering in the Fields of Professional Practice of Social Work in the Saudi Community: A Field Study

Obstacles to E-volunteering in the Fields of Professional Practice of Social Work in the Saudi Community: A Field Study

How are social procurement actors shaping a new field of professional practice in the Australian construction industry?

PurposeSocial procurement is becoming an increasing policy focus for governments around the world as they seek to incentivise new collaborative partnerships with private organisations in industries like construction to meet their social obligations. The limited construction management research in this area shows that the successful implementation of these policies depends on a new generation of social procurement professionals who are promoting these policies into an institutional vacuum with little organisational identity, legitimacy and support. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what these actors do to promote and build support for the implementation of these policies in their organisations.Design/methodology/approachA thematic analysis of in-depth semi-structured interviews with 15 social procurement actors in the Australian construction industry is presented.FindingsResults portray an experimental, disconnected and nascent institutional field of practice with a high degree of role ambiguity and conflict. In the absence of a clear organisational identity and legitimate power-base, social procurement actors are forced to rely on incremental rather than radical innovation and the power of stories to persuade others to engage with their vision for creating social value through construction.Originality/valueContributing new insights to the emerging “practice theme” in social procurement research, this paper provides important conceptual and practical information about the attributes which determine their success, how they fit into existing organisational structures and how they build support to achieve enabling institutional change. Academically, the results advance understanding of how social procurement professionals are implementing these policies into their organisations. Practically, they provide new information which enable social procurement professionals to improve their practices and construction companies to recruit the right people into these roles and design their organisations to more effectively support them.

In the beginning was . . . the word. Cycles of Influence: A historical analysis of some seminal influences on the evolutionary development of mediation principles, values and practice models

A historical analysis of seminal influences on the evolutionary development of mediation principles, values and practice models. This article will focus on the ideas of pioneering individuals who had a significant role and influence on contemporary mediation principles and practice. It will describe their professional field of practice; the particular principles and values that underpinned their practice; the theoretical models and styles of practice they developed and how those became transported into contemporary mediation practice. The relevance for mediation is to raise awareness of the centrality, significance, and importance of these key principles. Ideally, this will in turn impact on the quality of contemporary practice. Hopefully it will inform or remind reflective practitioners, trainers, and practice consultants of what constitutes the foundations of best practice.

Anthropology and development in Germany

The history of anthropology’s engagement with development in the post-World War II German-speaking world (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) can be divided into three phases: from being strongly rejected by most professorial chair holders (to around 1980), through the emergence of a subfield of anthropology (from 1980) and into the mainstream of the discipline (since around 2000). However, this perspective presupposes a broad definition of “anthropology of development” that encompasses more than the application of anthropological knowledge in development cooperation, as is often implied by the term “development anthropology”. In the slow modernisation process of German anthropology over the last fifty years – as defined by the discipline’s turn towards the modern world and its rapid internationalisation – the critical study of development as a field of professional practice has played a pioneering role by providing important theoretical and methodological stimuli. Together with their European colleagues, not least from APAD, German-speaking anthropologists have developed a particular style that has also been referred to as the “anthropology of development based on anthropology in development”. Today, the anthropology of development has evolved into an ethnographic inquiry of global social engineering.

Macro social theory, linguistic ethnography and interpreting research

This article presents an outline of a sociological and linguistic-ethnographic perspective as applied to contexts of community interpreting. It describes a theoretical and methodological approach which, drawing on Toury ’s descriptivist theory of norms and Bourdieu ’s social reproduction theory, considers how relevant macro-social features impact on interpreting activity. This approach has as its aim to theorise configurations of the social in lo- cal interpreting contexts and to demonstrate how interpreters, as pivotal players in these contexts, are caught up in larger social configurations of power and control, both internal and external to their professional field of practice. It suggests that norms of interpreting activity and training can be linked to the wider social and political contexts of their occurrence. A descriptive language of interpreted events is developed which reflects participants’ embeddedness in social and political processes, and how this impacts on both actual and potential discursive moves within interpreted interactions. The sociological and linguistic-ethnographic perspective takes the view that what happens at the surface level of interactions is more often than not a micro drama through which a larger social and political reality is acted out in a refractedform.

Taking Professional Certification Exams: The Correlation Between Exam Preparation Techniques and Strategies and Exam Results

Professional certification is viewed by the public as credible evidence of skills and knowledge within a field of professional practice. Professional certifications enhance the skills required by the profession and provide recognition by peers as competent within the profession. In this paper, we investigate the factors that could improve the performance of certification exam taker. We explore the correlations between various techniques and strategies used to prepare for professional certification exams and the corresponding exam results. This study examined several control variables that have both positive and negative correlations with the exam outcome across several professional certification exams. An understanding of the research findings will allow for improved certification exam performance and provide direction for prospective candidates who would like to be certified to enhance their skills.

THE SOCIO-POLITICAL SCENE AND HENRY’S CRISIS INFLUENCE ON THE CURRICULA OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION UNDERGRADUATE COURSES IN BRAZIL

ABSTRACT From 1980s to 1990s, the Brazilian Physical Education (BPE) was strongly influenced by the discussion concerning its identity as an academic discipline; the final period of the Brazilian military dictatorship; the regulation of the BPE as a profession. Hence, this study analyzed the influence of that epistemological and political setting on the curricula of three BPE undergraduate courses. The Political Pedagogic Project and the Curriculum Matrix of the three undergraduate courses, from public universities, were analyzed using two qualitative research techniques: body of knowledge analysis, and content analysis. The results showed that the curricula analyzed did not cover a definition of professional intervention procedures based on ethical conduct specific to the area. Furthermore, the knowledge basis of the curricula is mainly constituted by discipline knowledge, which contributes to distancing the student’s training from their field of professional practice . These findings may be associated with the insufficient epistemological discussion early initiated by Henry’s works and unclear definition if the BPE is an academic or professional area. This investigation suggests that political disputes related to professionalization of BPE overlapped the academic discussions, which might have contributed to the problems identified on the preparation through bachelor courses of physical education professionals.

The relational features of evidence use

ABSTRACT The use of research evidence is increasingly seen as critical to improving practice across many areas of public policy. At the same time, the role of relationships and relational work have become far more widely recognised in many fields of professional practice. This paper brings together these two developments by focusing on the relational features of evidence use. Drawing on two studies of educational evidence use, in England and Australia, the authors explore how concepts from studies of inter-professional collaboration – ‘relational expertise’, ‘common knowledge’ and ‘relational agency’ – might help in making sense of how research evidence is used and how such processes can be supported. The authors argue that these concepts can help in terms of: supporting more interactive approaches to evidence use; unpicking what is happening within the relational aspects of evidence use; and specifying what is involved in high-quality evidence use relationships.

Activity-Based Approach In Social Workers’ Professional Training

Social work education in Ukraine has changed dramatically over the last decades. It has a strong connection with the evolution of social work education as a field of professional practice. Recent changes in Ukrainian social policy, in particular the implementation of professional education requirements, based on the competency-oriented approach, the implementation of professional standards for social workers, the distinction of social work in a separate field of science and the complexity of social practice require the creation of unified training curriculum that corresponds to social needs and practice requirements. Creating a meaningful learning environment and raising awareness of professional objectives would be achievable by applying an activity-oriented approach to the professional education of social workers. This means that knowledge could never be isolated from activity. Activity-oriented educational practices contain the core components of professional activities and concern different aspects of social work. Profession-oriented practice includes general (volunteer activities, research, social project design, organizational and management) and additional (communicative, play and game, teamwork) forms and technologies, which demand from students to accumulate their experience in obtaining the essential forms of professional activities. Professional practice encompasses a set of principles, based on the prioritization of the social work profession, individual activity, participation and reflection, which make possible the development of the student's personal maturity and independence.

SOCIAL ASSISTANT WORK MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION POLICY

The study aimed to understand the importance of the Social Worker work management process in Education Policy, more specifically in the Coordination of Social Work Course. It was questioned whether the theoretical and methodological principles of management apply in the federal public sector, where the work to be carried out already obeys a previously planned and orchestrated agenda by the federal sphere, as it obeys plans and goals established by the managing bodies of policies public. Then, it was asked whether it would be possible to build the theoretical-practical process of management and how to carry it out in the field of professional practice, where the overvaluation of bureaucratic work directly interferes with professional action, a process that contributes to the construction of a practice emptied and uncritical professional. Also in this questioning guideline, it was also asked, what are the theoretical and practical principles of management that the social worker could appropriate as a work tool in his performance in the public sector, where the professional routinely runs into institutional limits and power relations established in the state apparatus. The documentary and bibliographic study was characterized by its exploratory character and qualitative approach. It was considered that the process of valuing bureaucratic work has been gradually encouraging the bureaucratization of practice and the professional void, a fact that conditions professional practice to bureaucratic and routine tasks. Work management and the ability to plan and organize professional action on a purposeful basis become instruments of great importance in the formulation of proposals to face the challenges posed to Social Service professionals.
 KEYWORDS: Management; Planning; Education; Social Work; Work.

The more you know, the less you fear: Reflexive social work practices in times of COVID-19

In this article, we present the results of a strategy to disseminate best social work practices during periods of social lockdown in Spain, in a climate characterised by post-truth, misinformation and fake news. Social work is challenged with the task of delivering reliable and quality information aimed at building a better society. At the time of writing, Spain was one of the countries most affected by COVID-19, with one of the highest numbers of deaths per million inhabitants in the world. With the population in lockdown, our strategy was to design a series of innovative web seminars on both the subject and the procedures involved in social work, with the aim of sharing information and best practices to counter disinformation campaigns on social media. The results show the growing demand – both by citizens in general and students and professionals in particular – for reliable information in the field of professional practice. One of the priorities of digital social work must be to disseminate its results in the digital environment.

Teaching Reflective Practice from within Classroom Experience: Implications to Faculty Development

Over the last few decades, reflective practice has flourished throughout various fields of professional practice and education. Business schools have assumed the responsibility of promoting reflective practice among its students and educators. Using stage- based models, reflective practice appears to be applied instrumentally and unproblematically, and in a way that leaves little space to be struck or moved to change ways of talking and acting. In this paper, I present an argument against this structured method of teaching and propose an alternative approach that aims at providing opportunities to co-construct understanding of what a reflective practice is from within classroom experience and in absence of a direct use of theory. This approach employs a learning-by-doing ethos. The paper is also about my experience in becoming a reflective teacher practitioner, breaking away from familiar, structured teaching to unfamiliar, less structured one. I discuss implications to faculty development and transformative learning based on my experience, problematizing the lack of a safe space and emotional support in institution-wide support initiatives that are dominated by performativity and teaching excellence measures.

Oral pathology and oral medicine in Latin American countries: current stage.

Oral Pathology (OP) and Oral Medicine (OM) are specialties in dentistry whose main objective is the diagnosis and treatment of oral and maxillofacial diseases, and aspects related to the academic training of professionals and fields of practice are distinct and heterogeneous around the world. This study aimed to evaluate professional training and areas of activity in OP and OM in Latin American countries. A questionnaire was sent to 11 countries, with a professional in each country responsible for answering it. The questionnaire had 21 questions related to the process of professional training, areas of practice, the existence of scientific events in each country, and also collected demographic and population information. OP and OM are practiced in all the countries studied, but the specialty is not recognized in all of them. Brazil was the first to recognize both as a specialty. Postgraduate programs designed to train specialists are available in various countries. Two countries offer residency programs, 6 countries provide specialization courses, 6 offer master's programs, and 3 have doctoral programs. Brazil boasts the highest number of undergraduate courses (n=412), while Uruguay has the lowest (n=2). Professional societies representing the specialty exist in ten countries. Brazil has the highest number of OP and OM specialists (n=422 and 1,072), while Paraguay has the smallest number (n=1 and 3). Although both specialties are widely practiced around the globe, professional training, the number of dentists trained and the fields of professional practice are very different between the countries studied.

‘We’re all brave pioneers on this road’: a Bourdieusian analysis of field creation for public health adaptation to climate change in Ontario, Canada

ABSTRACT Despite significant engagement with new and emerging issues in public health practice, the public health literature has few theoretical explanations for how new practices emerge, take root, and become institutionalized. In this contribution, we utilize Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological concepts of field, habitus and capital, and in-depth interviews with public health practitioners to document and describe the emerging field of public health adaptation to climate change Ontario, Canada. In doing so, we identify and explain three types of climate change action and associated practices – ‘wait and see’, repackaging existing actions and championing new actions – that practitioners relate to climate change adaptation in Ontario (i.e. business as usual, repackaging existing actions and championing climate new actions). We discuss the typology in relation to the dominant and emerging logics that practitioners ascribe to promoting practical action on this sub-field of environmental health practice to promote a discussion of how social change occurs within a well-established field of professional practice. Findings suggest, that change and innovation can result from exogenous shocks that force practitioners to adopt new practices (e.g. the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related impacts on health), how the ‘rules’ of a given field are interpreted by practitioners and made actionable, and through the negotiation of new rules by practitioners with a ‘radical habitus’ who champion particular issues, albeit resulting in significant professional risk. We discuss these findings in relation to Bourdieu’s theory, concluding there is significant room for practitioner agency to cultivate normative dispositions and influence the adoption of policy and practice-change.

North of the Future: Professional Youth Work and Digital Technology

New and emerging technologies are challenging certain long-standing ideas about work, education, play and even what it means to be human. The “digital revolution” is transforming not only unskilled work, it is now encroaching on many fields of professional practice and threatening the viability of traditional models of professionalism. Against a backdrop of considerable debate on youth work about the value of adopting the core elements of a profession, like a code of ethics or forming professional associations, youth workers now have the opportunity to think again about what it means to be a profession. This article suggests how the new and emerging technologies can play a major role in helping youth work develop new ways of being a profession while retaining its core commitment to enabling young people to flourish. This includes drawing on distributed innovation technologies to promote new decentralised forms of democratic, interactive and collaborative peer relations oriented to an ethos of subsidiarity.

Social Pedagogy as a Scientific Discipline, a Branch of Academic Studies, and a Field of Professional Practice

This article is based on productions dealing with aspects of social pedagogy analyzed by Hamalainen, individually and collectively, such as the conceptual ambiguity of social pedagogy, the nature of social pedagogy as an academic discipline, social pedagogical guidance in social work and work with young people, ways of using the concept in Germany (2011) and Finland, as well as the field overview, including semantic and historical considerations. Other sources of information are also used, especially materials in which national traditions of social pedagogy and debates about their nature are introduced, compared, decoded and clarified. Methodologically, this work is based mainly on the analysis of historical concepts.

Migration background – Statistical classification and the problem of implicitly ethnicising categorisation in educational contexts

Recent studies on ethnic boundary making have shown how deeply systems of statistical classification are intertwined with wider social and political relations. Empirical studies of this interplay have overwhelmingly focused on contexts of explicit ethnicising. This article, in contrast, discusses how ethnicised categories emerge and function in fields of professional practice in which categorisation practices, by themselves, are not necessarily ethnicising. The focus is on the field of education. Analysing categorisation processes in such fields of professional practice is crucial for understanding the social and political embedding of statistical classifications of migration and ethnicity: they are both part of the social foundation of statistical measurements and crucial contexts in which statistical classifications develop their broader societal effects. The article uses the German category of ‘migration background’ as an example to corroborate this argument. Drawing on findings from various empirical studies, it argues that the emergence of ‘migration background’ in educational contexts mirrors a more general shift from class-centred educational problematisations of the post-Second World War era to individualising and culturalising discourses of the 1990s and 2000s. Mirroring its historical development, current educational usages confound three dimensions of meaning (migration, ethnicity and social class), with important consequences for the problematisation of educational phenomena. The usage of this confounded category is deeply anchored in the structures of educational practice. At the same time, ‘migration background’ is full of tensions and increasingly incapable of classifying the ‘intended’ parts of student populations. Hence, the question about the future of ‘migration background’ as educational category and the problem of possible successors arise.

Implementation of evidence based practice in a development project on nurse students’ clinical education

Synopsis: The evidence based practice (EBP) movement started at the beginning of 1970s in the field of medicine. The famous definition by Sackett et al. (1997, p. 2) defined evidence-based medicine as ‘the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients’. The idea of EBP was later introduced to other fields of professional practice in health and social care, as well as to the education of health professionals such as nursing education. The project named Knowledge in development (KID) focused on the development of clinical preceptorship in the context of nursing. Clinical preceptors are registered nurses and practical nurses who have the responsibilities of caring for patients and teaching nursing students at the same time. Nursing teachers working in the KID project were enthusiastic to implement the evidence based practice approach in the project work, by using different evidence bases. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to present how evidence based practices in the project work were implemented and to describe the experiences of the project group members about the implementation of EBP. Project setting: Two universities of applied sciences, two vocational institutes and four health-care organizations in Western Finland. Year of project: 2009-2013 Target readers: Primarily project practitioners, project managers and teachers on the health care sector. Lessons learned: Based on the experiences gained in this project, the use of an evidence based practice approach in planning and implementing a development project in health care clinical and educational settings is recommended. Competencies highlighted: Information literacy Related theory: The structure of different evidence bases presented by Rycroft-Malone et al. (2004), including research, clinical experience, patients, clients and carers, and local context and environment.