Lack Of Shared Understanding Research Articles

Education that lacks access to deaf experience: odd situations in Sweden

ABSTRACT This paper discusses disadvantaging situations that deaf students encounter in higher education in Sweden. We report two recent cases of deaf students’ academic welfare being put at risk. We foreground in these cases the ‘odd situations’ that arise when provisions that fail to access the particular nature of deaf experience also fail to secure deaf students’ participation rights, to be and become the deaf person they wish to be, lead the life they wish to live, and so on. Often, the ‘oddness’ of the situations that arise is in part indicated by no-one involved lacking in good intentions or not doing their very best: there is no lack of good will, but a lack of shared understanding. What deaf students know differently is rarely present in deliberation and not part of forward planning. We infer that situations of this sort reflect epistemic injustice. We propose that this form of formative epistemic injustice – educators not taking on board what deaf students know – can perhaps be overcome by higher education institutions proactively involving deaf students in matters that concern both them and future deaf students.

Speaking English as an additional language: using a Delphi technique to identify the competencies needed by EPs working with EAL students and families

ABSTRACT The proportion of pupils with English as an additional language (EAL) has steadily risen in recent years in England, reaching just under one in five of all pupils aged 5–16 in 2021, with a total of over 365 languages spoken between them. Despite educational psychologists’ (EPs) practice being concerned with reduction of barriers that prevent children from fully accessing education, a review of the educational psychology literature provides little information to suggest that EPs are responding to the increasing linguistic diversity of their client group. Further, there is a lack of shared understanding among EPs of the specific competencies needed to address the specific language needs of this population. Through a three-round Delphi, 90 statements were identified as key features required for EP practice with EAL students and families; these statements were then structured into a guiding framework for EP practice. The implications of this framework, and its limitations, are discussed.

Community-developer collaboration and voluntary community benefits in Scotland: Are community benefits a gift or compensation?

Community benefits are a key strategy for promoting social acceptance of renewable energy and ensuring distributive fairness of the energy transition. However, they can sometimes damage rather than strengthen the relationship between communities and developers. This paper examines stakeholder submissions to The Scottish Government's Good Practice Principles on Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments (2019) consultation. Communities perceive community benefits as compensation and express concerns about their voluntary nature, while developers see them as benevolent gifts, worrying about their impact on project viability. As the guidelines are voluntary, community benefit arrangements rely on collaboration between developers and communities, but power imbalance and a lack of shared understanding can impede this collaboration. Inspired by governmentality literature, this study analyses stakeholder discourses to understand how issues are framed, solutions proposed, and rationalities guiding these discussions. Qualitative system dynamics modelling is used to provide a comprehensive view of challenges in the design of community benefit arrangements in Scotland, highlighting risks to the developer-community relationship and trust in the energy transition. The analysis suggests that making community benefit arrangements mandatory or rethinking them is essential to preserve this relationship and trust.

Competence—One Term, Various Definitions: A Scoping Review for Sports Coach Education and Research

The competence of sports coaches is a key factor in athletes’ sporting success. Mindful of this, sports coach education and research have placed considerable emphasis on competence in recent years. A lack of shared understanding around the concept complicates the endeavour, raising the following question: How is the term “competence” in relation to coaches defined in coach education and research? I sought to answer this research question via a scoping review. In database and internet searches, I obtained n = 1,912 hits and identified n = 14 sports coaching frameworks. Following title and abstract screening and full-text assessment, I conducted content analysis on n = 47 publications. The results indicate frequent use of the term, with few attempts to define it. Where definitions occur, they usually fall into one of two types: Type A, found in empirical studies written in English, describes the term in relation to their athletes’ sporting success. Type B, found in all types of publications (theoretical, empirical and practical), defines it in terms of the knowledge and skills a coach requires in order to succeed in coaching situations. This paper concludes with a recommendation for a shared multi-faceted definition of “competence” in relation to coaches.

Institutionalized Social Entrepreneurship in Indonesia: A report on the challenges of state-driven social entrepreneurship promotion within the Five Cities' social assistance program

ABSTRACT The landscape of social entrepreneurship has undergone rapid evolution within business and non-profit sectors in recent years. However, there is a more recent trend in Indonesia, where social entrepreneurship is formally practised in public policy. This new approach represents an initiative related to what we call Institutionalized Social Entrepreneurship (ISE). In this article, we investigate the challenges faced while implementing experimental measures to transform cash transfers into social entrepreneurship programs based on 43 interviews with key stakeholders and end-users spreading over five regions. Our research findings indicate a lack of shared understanding among stakeholders when implementing social entrepreneurship programs. Furthermore, the beneficiaries face difficulties distinguishing between social entrepreneurship programs and regular cash transfers, leading to ineffective program outcomes and significant challenges in achieving community development objectives. This issue is exacerbated by an unbalanced power distribution between government and non-government actors involved in program implementation, which can potentially limit the program’s effectiveness and efficiency. Its unfolding transformation of social assistance and the application of social entrepreneurship in Indonesia highlight a new deal for welfare that responds to uncertain post-pandemic circumstances. This study adds to the literature on social entrepreneurship by highlighting the complexities of the state-society relationship in ISE.

Employee voice: a knowledge map to provide conceptual clarity and future research directions

AbstractThe increasing globalisation, the multiculturality of workplaces and the current challenges for organisations generated the need for researchers to support them to manage the workforce. Although the relevance of employee voice for these themes, a lack of shared understanding about this topic results in fragmented literature across and within research fields that limits theoretical advancement and deep comprehension of the phenomenon. Our first aim is to offer a literature review of employee voice by combining systematic and bibliometric methods; the second aim is to understand voice's main issues and implications by considering different research streams. The results present an integrated framework of the leading intellectual knowledge and reveal the main research focuses on voice in domestic contexts. The discussion underlines the cultural issue and context as critical elements for future research by proposing avenues for scholars and some implications for organisations to benefit from the contributions of their members.

Blood tests in primary care: A qualitative study of communication and decision-making between doctors and patients.

Blood tests are commonly used in primary care as a tool to aid diagnosis, and to offer reassurance and validation for patients. If doctors and patients do not have a shared understanding of the reasons for testing and the meaning of results, these aims may not be fulfilled. Shared decision-making is widely advocated; yet, most research focusses on treatment decisions rather than diagnostic decisions. The aim of this study was to explore communication and decision-making around diagnostic blood tests in primary care. Qualitative interviews were undertaken with patients and clinicians in UK primary care. Patients were interviewed at the time of blood testing, with a follow-up interview after they received test results. Interviews with clinicians who requested the tests provided paired data to compare clinicians' and patients' expectations, experiences and understandings of tests. Interviews were analysed thematically using inductive and deductive coding. A total of 80 interviews with 28 patients and 19 doctors were completed. We identified a mismatch in expectations and understanding of tests, which led to downstream consequences including frustration, anxiety and uncertainty for patients. There was no evidence of shared decision-making in consultations preceding the decision to test. Doctors adopted a paternalistic approach, believing that they were protecting patients from anxiety. Patients were not able to develop informed preferences and did not perceive that choice is possible in decisions about testing, because they did not have sufficient information and a shared understanding of tests. A lack of shared understanding at the point of decision-making led to downstream consequences when test results did not fulfil patients' expectations. Although shared decision-making is recommended as best practice, it does not reflect the reality of doctors' and patients' accounts of testing; a broader model of shared understanding seems to be more relevant to the complexity of primary care diagnosis. A patient and public involvement group comprising five participants with lived experience of blood testing in primary care met regularly during the study. They contributed to the development of the research objectives, planning recruitment methods, reviewing patient information leaflets and topic guides and also contributed to discussion of emerging themes at an early stage in the analysis process.

Barriers to Informed Consent in Interventional Radiology: A Pilot Study

BackgroundInformed consent is a central part of the relationships between patients and interventional radiology teams, but consent practices are variable and limited. PurposeThis study explored consent practices among clinicians and staff in an academic IR department to identify barriers to informed consent. MethodsSystematic interviews were conducted with 17 clinicians and staff about their roles in obtaining informed consent, perceptions of what informed consent and capacity determinations entail, and barriers to patients’ understanding of IR procedures. FindingsResults revealed four key barriers to adequate informed consent: limited procedural experience/knowledge by the consenting clinician, unclear division of responsibilities, inconsistent approaches to assessing capacity and surrogate decision making, and wide variation in patients’ baseline understandings. DiscussionThis variation seemed to stem from a lack of shared understanding about consent processes and responsibilities, highlighting an important area for quality improvement in IR that would benefit from a larger multipractice investigation of consent practices.

Qualitative Analysis of Team Communication with a Clinical Texting System at a Midwestern Academic Hospital.

Hospitals are increasingly replacing pagers with clinical texting systems that allow users to use smartphones to send messages while maintaining compliance for privacy and security. As more institutions adopt such systems, the need to understand the impact of such transitions on team communication becomes ever more significant. We conducted focus groups with hospitalists and individual interviews with nurses at one academic medical center in the Midwest. All interviews and focus groups were audiorecorded, transcribed, and deidentified for analysis. All transcripts and notes were independently read by two members of the research team and coded for themes. Twenty-one hospitalists and eight nurses participated in the study. Although study participants spoke favorably of texting, they identified more dissatisfactions with texting than benefits. There were disagreements regarding appropriate texting practices both within and between the hospitalists and nurses. Despite the benefits of texting, there is room for improving team communication and understanding in the realm of clinical texting. A lack of shared understanding regarding when and how to use texting may require long-term solutions that address teamwork and appropriateness.

Perceived challenges of early childhood educators in promoting unstructured outdoor play: an ecological systems perspective

ABSTRACT Unstructured outdoor play has been recognized for its beneficial impacts on children’s healthy development; however, unfortunately, opportunities for children to engage in meaningful play are limited. Early learning and childcare centres can be essential settings for unstructured outdoor play, and educators can play a vital role in supporting children’s opportunities, yet they face numerous barriers. We conducted five focus groups with 40 professionals working in the early childhood education field (educators, students and licensing officers) in British Columbia, Canada, to examine their experiences and perceived challenges in promoting children’s unstructured outdoor play. Participants’ identified challenges were mapped on the ecological system and ranged from microsystem concerns (e.g. knowledge and skills) to mesosystem concerns (e.g. lack of shared understanding with parents and colleagues), exosystem concerns (e.g. licensing regulations) and macrosystem concerns (e.g. societal risk aversion). We recommend evidence-based strategies to address each of the identified barriers, targeting each ecological system level.

Tacit knowledge in water management: a case study of Sponge City.

Sustainable, resilient urban water management is fundamental to good environmental and public health. As an interdisciplinary task, it faces enormous challenges from project complexity, network dynamics and the tacit nature of knowledge being communicated between actors involved in design, decisions and delivery. Among others, some critical and persistent challenges to the implementation of sustainable urban water management include the lack of knowledge and expertise, lack of effective communication and collaboration, and lack of shared understanding and context. Using the Chinese Sponge City programme as a case study, this paper draws on the perspectives of Polanyi and Collins to investigate the extent to which knowledge can be used and exchanged between actors. Using Collins' conceptualisation of the terrain of tacit knowledge, the study identifies the use of relational, somatic and collective tacit knowledge (CTK) in the Sponge City pilot project. Structured interviews with 38 people working on a Sponge City pilot project provided data that was rigorously analysed using qualitative thematic analysis. The paper is original in identifying different types of tacit knowledge in urban water management, and the potential pathways for information and messages being communicated between actors. The methods and results provide the groundwork for analysing the access and mobilisation of tacit knowledge in the Sponge City pilot project, with relevance for other complex, interdisciplinary environmental projects and programmes.

An evaluation of the assessment of advanced clinical practitioner trainees in derbyshire

Purpose: There are an increasing number of Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACPs) in health care but a lack of shared understanding as to what they do or how they should be trained. ACPs are healthcare professionals who come from a range of professional backgrounds including physiotherapy.

‘Between a rock and a hard place’: Challenging encounters between disability service clients and workers

ABSTRACT Professional relationships in the health and welfare sector involve many challenging client encounters. This study aims to describe what kind of client interaction social service workers in disability services find challenging and how they rationalise and manage these challenges. The study investigates disability service workers’ perceptions of challenging client interactions using data from 22 interviews with disability service workers in two hospital districts. Interviewees highlighted lack of mutual trust and lack of shared understanding as two issues arising in challenging communicative behaviours that disability service workers find burdensome and miserable. The interviewees’ accounts referred to four aspects of these challenges: 1) individual, 2) third-party, 3) structural and 4) experiential. In addition, six different management strategies were identified: 1) adjusting interaction, 2) listening, 3) negotiating, 4) problem solving, 5) withdrawing and 6) encounter interruption.

“Meaning in the present”: Understanding Sustainability for Digital Community Collections

AbstractLiving independently of mainstream institutions, digital community archives and digital humanities collections confront systemic barriers to medium‐ and long‐term viability. Their sustainability tends to be undermined by shifts in technologies, resources, and communities over time. Because these collections contain irreplaceable and invaluable evidence of communities and histories that are underrepresented in cultural institutions, their fragility compromises the completeness and equity of our collective digital heritage. Partnerships between institutions and community‐based collections often founder over a lack of shared understanding: of the expertise each partner brings to the table, of the scope and extent of mutual commitments, and of what sustainability even entails for a given project. This paper reports preliminary outcomes of a case study of the Lakeland Digital Archive, exploring how Lakeland's community understands sustainability in the context of their digital archive, as part of a broader study of community‐centered sustainability strategies for digital collections.

Exploring collective identity of a group of teaching-oriented academics amid research discourse: a Chinese case.

This article explores how a group of teaching-oriented academics—College English (CE) teachers in China—negotiate their collective identity at the workplace amid research discourse. Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework focusing on the interrelationship between discourse, practice, and social networks, the study reveals the field of research where CE teachers lived imbued by multiple, dynamic discourses and power relations, i.e., the discourse of illegitimate pedagogic research v. the discourse of officially valued research, the discourse of the lower-status department oriented to teaching and public service v. the higher-status, disciplinary department. Drawing upon discursive resources, CE teachers positioned themselves as marginal pedagogic researchers and inferior CE teachers. Meanwhile, CE teachers constructed their identity-in-practice as pedagogic researchers by developing a pedagogic research community through their daily teaching practice. The contradiction between identity-in-discourse and identity-in-practice suggests the complexity of teaching-oriented, public service-oriented academics’ professional life and the predicament they face, such as the limited access to research networks, and the lack of shared understanding in constructing a pedagogic research community. The study argues for more attention to be given to these academics who occupy the bottom of academic hierarchy in higher education context and might be the most vulnerable group in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Talking about walking: lack of shared understanding of common mobility terms among different healthcare professional groups.

Australian studies suggest a lack of consensus in interpreting mobility recommendations, particularly affecting the terms "supervision" and "stand by assistance", was common and a contributing factor in patient falls. In a web-based survey, where responses were obtained from 102/150 (68%) therapists, 79/152 (52%) nurses and 97/132 (73%) doctors, we asked participants about their understanding of what requiring "supervision" or "stand-by assistance" when walking means. Responses to all questions differed significantly between the groups and the magnitude of the differences was greatest for the "supervision" questions. Asked if stand by assistance means the same as supervision, 71% of doctors, 35% of nurses and 14% of therapists said yes (p < 0.0001). There were also substantial within-group differences even among therapists. The widespread confusion regarding the interpretation of mobility terminology among and between different healthcare groups may impact on patient safety, and standardisation of mobility terminology is required.

Numerosity, area-osity, object-osity? Oh my.

There is ongoing debate about whether number is perceived directly. Clarke and Beck suggest that what plagues this debate is a lack of shared understanding about what it means to perceive number in the first place. I agree. I argue that the perception of number is held to a different standard than, say, the perception of objecthood; considering this, I explore what it might mean for the number system to represent rational numbers.

SOCIAL WORK IN MENTAL HEALTH IN UKRAINE: CURRENT CHALLENGES

The importance of mental health social work is rationalized as well as its introducing into public institutions across Ukraine. Core challenges for mental health social work in Ukraine are described, namely: lack of coordination mechanism for professional activities of medical and non-medical staff which are subordinates to different ministries, lack of appropriate specific professional training on mental health social work, lack of clinical social work specialization, lack of certification and licensing for social work in Ukraine to ensure quality in social services provision and others. Lack of shared understanding of the core of mental health social work as well as its role and functions, is identified to be the key challenge for its development in Ukraine. The analysis is made based on classification of social work professions by the National Classifier for Occupations in Ukraine DК 003:2010. The latter ensures availability of a range of social work professions at different levels, which, however, sometimes have similar requirements in terms of education needed and functions performed. This leads to narrowing the social work profession understanding at the levels of community, clients, employees, policy makers. That creates obstacles for the profession development in Ukraine, as in most cases such perception of the profession is limited to individual care provided to elderly and disabled people. Also, the international approaches towards classification of social work occupations were presented by analysis of the three core groups of professions described in ISCO 08, including: 2635 Social Work and Counseling Professionals, 3412 Social Work Associate Professionals, 1344 Social Welfare Managers, as well as the relevant functions they perform. The need to review and to adjust the National Classifier for Occupations in Ukraine DК 003:2010 to the International Standard Classification of Occupations 08 is rationalized to address the above discrepancies on social workers’ functions in Ukraine.

Perceptions of the Key Stakeholders on Professional Development of Teachers in Rural Pakistan

Professional development (PD) has generally been associated with the learning opportunities teachers avail externally. However, the latest trends propagate grounding PD activities in the work place with the assumption that such shift will not only enable teachers to be engaged in ongoing learning but also help them to find contextual solutions for their specific issues. For other academics, however, PD refers to all the planned and unplanned activities which teachers avail to improve their practices. In this background, this research explored how relevant stakeholders in rural Pakistan perceive PD. Using a survey method and questionnaire tool, data were collected from teachers, school leaders, education department officials, and representatives of PD providers. The outcomes showed that majority of stakeholders associate PD to external learning opportunities provided to the teachers. In addition, there is a lack of shared understanding among different stakeholders with regard to the meaning of PD. These conclusions have implications for PD providers and educational reformers. Teachers should be oriented on latest trends in PD as well as supported to use the latest school-based PD models for their ongoing development.

An expert‐generated tool for assessing policy capacity

Abstract“Policy capacity” describes the ability of policy‐making systems to do quality work. Better‐quality policy work leads to more successful policies. There have been limited attempts to operationalize theoretical understanding of policy capacity, resulting in a lack of shared understanding and assessment metrics. In this Delphi study, health policy experts validated an existing multidimensional conceptual framework for policy capacity. Factors that contribute to policy success were identified and rated to represent aspects of policy capacity, and arranged within the conceptual framework, as were factor indicators. The resulting tool provides expert‐generated items for transparently and systematically assessing policy capacity.