Tacit Rules Research Articles

Pulling together and pushing apart: tides of tension in the ICU team.

Pulling together and pushing apart: tides of tension in the ICU team.

Learning oral presentation skills: a rhetorical analysis with pedagogical and professional implications.

Oral presentation skills are central to physician-physician communication; however, little is known about how these skills are learned. Rhetoric is a social science which studies communication in terms of context and explores the action of language on knowledge, attitudes, and values. It has not previously been applied to medical discourse. We used rhetorical principles to qualitatively study how students learn oral presentation skills and what professional values are communicated in this process. Descriptive study. Inpatient general medicine service in a university-affiliated public hospital. Twelve third-year medical students during their internal medicine clerkship and 14 teachers. One-hundred sixty hours of ethnographic observation. including 73 oral presentations on rounds. Discoursed-based interviews of 8 students and 10 teachers. Data were qualitatively analyzed to uncover recurrent patterns of communication. Students and teachers had different perceptions of the purpose of oral presentation, and this was reflected in performance. Students described and conducted the presentation as a rule-based, data-storage activity governed by "order" and "structure." Teachers approached the presentation as a flexible means of "communication" and a method for "constructing" the details of a case into a diagnostic or therapeutic plan. Although most teachers viewed oral presentations rhetorically (sensitive to context), most feedback that students received was implicit and acontextual, with little guidance provided for determining relevant content. This led to dysfunctional generalizations by students, sometimes resulting in worse communication skills (e.g., comment "be brief" resulted in reading faster rather than editing) and unintended value acquisition (e.g., request for less social history interpreted as social history never relevant). Students learn oral presentation by trial and error rather than through teaching of an explicit rhetorical model. This may delay development of effective communication skills and result in acquisition of unintended professional values. Teaching and learning of oral presentation skills may be improved by emphasizing that context determines content and by making explicit the tacit rules of presentation.

Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work.

This paper explores the conceptual and methodological problems arising from several empirical investigations of professional education and learning in the workplace. 1. To clarify the multiple meanings accorded to terms such as 'non-formal learning', 'implicit learning' and 'tacit knowledge', their theoretical assumptions and the range of phenomena to which they refer. 2. To discuss their implications for professional practice. A largely theoretical analysis of issues and phenomena arising from empirical investigations. The author's typology of non-formal learning distinguishes between implicit learning, reactive on-the-spot learning and deliberative learning. The significance of the last is commonly overemphasized. The problematic nature of tacit knowledge is discussed with respect to both detecting it and representing it. Three types of tacit knowledge are discussed: tacit understanding of people and situations, routinized actions and the tacit rules that underpin intuitive decision-making. They come together when professional performance involves sequences of routinized action punctuated by rapid intuitive decisions based on tacit understanding of the situation. Four types of process are involved--reading the situation, making decisions, overt activity and metacognition--and three modes of cognition--intuitive, analytic and deliberative. The balance between these modes depends on time, experience and complexity. Where rapid action dominates, periods of deliberation are needed to maintain critical control. Finally the role of both formal and informal social knowledge is discussed; and it is argued that situated learning often leads not to local conformity but to greater individual variation as people's careers take them through a series of different contexts. This abstract necessarily simplifies a more complex analysis in the paper itself.

Social Ontology and the Dynamics of Organizational Forms: Creating Market Actors in the Healthcare Field, 1966-1994

Social scientists have evidenced a long-standing interest in the cultural construction of ontologies - symbolic systems of categorization and meaning- but have yet to develop a widely recognized methodfor the empirical analysis of this process. Analyzing textual datafrom the area of health services research, this article illustrates a generalframework that can be employed to isolate the tacit rules used to structure an ontology and identifr changes in those rules over time. Focusing on the process of market reform in U.S. healthcare during the last thirty years, this study finds systematic variation in the dimensions used to differentiate discourse on organizationalforms such as hospitals, health maintenance organizations, and nursing homes. Discourse in the sector suggests that the symbolic integration offorms along the dimension of accessibility during the heyday of welfare state policies has given way to symbolic integration along clinical andfunctional dimensions with the rise of neoliberal ideologies. These segregating and blendingprocesses are discussed as a general response to uncertainty and the desirefor ontological security among organizational actors.

Petits arrangements entre acteurs… Les voies d'une gestion concertée de l'espace rural

In Brittany, local initiatives have been observed, which associate farmers and/or other actors about the management of the rural area : they try to co-ordinate their actions so that farming and multifunctional areas management become coherent. In that way, within networks of farmers, some sectoral agreements are made which aim at the use of practices meeting the requests of the other users of the area: farmers draw common rules, either tacit or formalised in a specification. In other cases, territorial agreements arise following conflicts of use or around projects of rural area management: they are the result of some dialogues which gather different groups of users, and aim at conciliating everyone's interests. Finally, farmers sometimes reject any responsibility about the rural area: some extra sectoral agreements then ratify that the community will assume the maintenance of areas included in farm holdings. The analysis of those processes enables to identify the building factors of the agreement and the organisational and agreement devices at stake. The issue of the agreement Is always to determine the rights and duties linked to the use of the resources and the area. The agreement can be tacit rules, contracts or specifications : it sets a reference point between the rights of the farmers and those of the users, at a territorial or a network scale. Out of that, we draw lessons about the modes and the interest of a governmental support for those initiatives on the one hand, and about the conditions that enable to obtain a compromise between farming and rural area management, within the framework of local forms of concerted management, on the other hand.

De L'Innovation Aux Usages. Dix thèses éclectiques sur l'histoire des techniques

Dans cet article, je propose dix thèses qui, si elles étaient toutes retenues, donneraient une image de l'histoire des techniques très différente de celle que l'on trouve dans la plupart des travaux actuels, qu'ils soient de vulgarisation ou universitaires. Le développement de chaque thèse se suffit à lui-même, mais les thèses sont interdépendantes et forment une argumentation d'ensemble. Son noyau tient au fait qu'une très grande part de l'historiographie (du moins de l'historiographie anglo-saxonne) traite en fait de l'innovation, et non des techniques en général — ce qui conduit à des résultats très regrettables. Les thèses soutenues ici sont incomplètes en deux sens.

Secular Society/Religious Population: Our Tacit Rules for Using the Term 'Secularization'

The increasing discussion of secularization is hampered by several ambiguities. What we need is not some new, academic definition, but to recognize that we already adopt several different meanings for the word, depending on whether we are referring to a society, a population, an institution, an activity, or a mentality. Therefore, treating secularization as a general decline of religion is hardly meaningful. This recognition will make it possible to make sense of the fact that Christianity and secularization have sometimes increased together. Finally, the magnitude of the subject is vastly increased when it is viewed from the far side of a historical divide which seems real enough, despite measures of continuing religiosity.

Models Rule, OK? A Reply to Fetzer

How do logically-untrained individuals make deductions? A prevalent view in thepsychology of reasoning is that they rely on tacit rules of inference akin to those ofa formal logic. In Deduction (Johnson-Laird and Byrne, 1991), we argued insteadthat the untrained mind is not equipped with formal rules of inference, but relieson the general semantic principle of validity: A deduction is valid if the conclusionmust be true given that the premises are true. Reasoners put this principle into prac-tice in the following way. They construct mental models of the situations describedby the premises, formulate a conclusion that holds in these models – if none isprovided by a helpful interlocutor – and check its validity by ensuring that it holdsin all possible models of the premises. This account has theoretical advantages. Itdovetails with other parts of mental life – perception delivers models of the world(Marr, 1982), and comprehension of discourse delivers models of what is described(Garnham and Oakhill, 1996). And it provides a unitary explanation of inferencesyielding necessary, probable, and possible conclusions. A necessary conclusionholds in all the models of the premises, a probable conclusion holds in most ofthem, and a possible conclusion holds in at least one of them. The account alsohas empirical advantages. It predicts robust phenomena. Reasoners are faster andmake fewer errors with deductions that require them to construct only one modelthan with deductions that require them to construct multiple models. And theycharacteristically err by drawing conclusions that are supported by one model ofthe premises.James H. Fetzer has been kind enough to review Deduction twice (Fetzer, 1993,1998), which is going well beyond the bounds of duty, especially as he does notseem to have a good opinion of it. We are grateful to him for the chance of replyingto his latest salvo. It is always tricky for individuals in one discipline to reviewwork in another discipline (or indeed to reply to such reviews). We hope that thisreply will help cross-disciplinary understanding.Fetzer argues that the tenability of our theory depends on the meaning of thephrase, ‘mental model’. We agree. And that is why much of our book is devoted tocharacterizing mental models and why much of our research is devoted to devel-oping computer implementations of mental models. We stress that our polemicalstance concerns only the merits of current psychological theories, not the merits of

Journalistic construction of news: information gathering

Describes the work carried out at doctoral level which investigated the ways in which journalists construct environmental news in Scotland. Focuses on the methods and tacit rules which reporters employ to locate, select and retrieve information for news stories. Journalists retrieve information from a complex range of sources. Addresses the information sources which are used in the news process. Examines the preference for human sources as opposed to library‐based information and discusses the influence of pragmatic constraints like time and space on the production of news.

Vem provocerades och varför? Om receptionen av Karin Widerbergs Kunskapens kön

The publication of Karin Widerbergs book The Gender of Knowledge started an unusually intense debate both inside and outside Academia. In the book the Norwegian professor of sociology Karin Widerberg analyses her own memories connected with gender, sexuality and the acquisition of knowledge and theorizes around such issues as niemory and subjectivity. Reviews contained praise or abuse both coached in highly emotional language, creating a polarized readership. This article tries to find explanations to this heated response through the means of a reception study. Thirty contributions, reviews as well as artides, have been studied, taking as a starting point Kjetil Korslund's review in Morgenbladet (Norway) The analysis shows that four themes recur: questions pertaining to theory of science and scientifie methods, university organisation, sexuality and language/ style. Arguments concerning these themes alone, however, do not explain the heated feelings found both in reviews and artides. One hypothesis put forward is that the Swedish context into which the publication of the Swedish version of Widerberg^ book took place promoted a very specific and touchy reading. The context was the publication and the reception of Ebba Witt Brattström's governmental report Gender, Pouier and the Challenge of Feminist Research in Higher Education (SOU 1995:110). A second hypothesis proposed is that Wiederberg in her concrete and sensual narratives of her memories both gråtes on our patriarchal ways of perceiving relations between men and women and breaks a tacit rule among women not to bring out their private experiences into the public area that an academic book constitutes. Whatever might be behind the polarized readings of Widerberg^ book its reception gives rise to important questions for todavs feminism.

Nothing is Concealed: De‐centring Tacit Knowledge and Rules from Social Theory

The concept of “tacit knowledge” as the means by which individuals interpret the “rules” of social interaction occupies a central role in all the major contemporary theories of action and social structure. The major reference point for social theorists is Wittgenstein's celebrated discussion of rule‐following in the Philosophical Investigations. Focusing on Giddens' incorporation of tacit knowledge and rules into his “theory of structuration”, I argue that Wittgenstein's later work is steadfastly set against the “latent cognitivism” inherent in the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules. I also argue that the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules is either incoherent or explanatorily vacuous.

Abstracts

The concept of ‘tacit knowledge’ as the means by which individuals interpret the ‘rules’ of social interaction occupies a central role in all the major contemporary theories of action and social structure. The major reference point for social theorists is Wittgenstein's celebrated discussion of rule‐following in the Philosophical Investigations. Focusing on Giddens' incorporation of tacit knowledge and rules into his ‘theory of structuration’, I argue that Wittgenstein's later work is steadfastly set against the ‘latent cognitivism’ inherent in the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules. I also argue that the idea of tacit knowledge and tacit rules is either incoherent or explanatorily vacuous.Scholars of the emotions maintain that all anger requires an object of blame. In order to be angry, many writers argue, one must believe than an actor has done serious damage to something that one values. Yet an individual may be angered without blaming another. This kind of emotion, called situational anger, does not entail a corresponding object of blame. Situational anger can be a useful force in public life, enabling citizens to draw attention to the seriousness of social or political problems, without necessarily vilifying political officials.In the first half of this paper I show how H. L. A. Hart's theory of rules can resolve, or at least clarify, a central methodological problem in legal anthropology that was first posed in Llewellyn and Egebel's The Cheyenñe Way In the second half I explore and develop Hart's theory (a) of rules, and apply it to problems of agency and behaviourism in legal anthropology, and (b) of legal development, and apply it to the problem of rule‐scepticism in legal anthropology as it is posed in Roberts and Comaroffs Rules and Processes and elsewhere.As human beings, we share many historically developed, language‐game interwoven, public forms of life. Due to the joint, dialogically responsive nature of all social life within such forms, we cannot as individuals just act as we please; our forms of life exert a normative influence on what we can say and do. They act as a backdrop against which all our claims to knowledge are judged as acceptable or not. As a result, it is not easy to articulate their inadequacies in a clear and forceful manner. However, within most of our forms of life, we have a first‐person right to express how our individual circumstances seem to us. And by the use of special forms of poetic, gestural talk—talk that can originate new language‐games—we can offer to make our own ‘inner lives’ public. In this paper, I want to claim that this is just what Wittgenstein is attempting to do in his later philosophy: by use of the self‐same methods that anyone might use to express aspects of their own world picture, he is offering us his attempts to make the background ‘landscape’ of our lives more visible to us. These methods are explored below.Proponents of the view that social structures are ontologically distinct from the people in whose actions they are immanent have assumed that structures can stand in causal relations to individual practices. Were causality to be no more than Humean concomitance correlations between structure and practices would be unproblematic. But two prominent advocates of the ontological account of structures, Bhaskar and Giddens, have also espoused a powers theory of causality. According to that theory causation is brought about by the activity of particulars, in the social psychological case, individuals of some sort. Consistence would demand that structure be those individuals. But neither Giddens nor Bhaskar wish to reify structure to the extent that would fit it for a role as a powerful particular. If only human beings can be powerful particulars in these contexts, the only way that structures can be real must be as properties of conversational (symbolic) interactions. Human action is social just in so far as people direct themselves to engage well in joint activities with others.

What Respondents Learn from Questionnaires: The Survey Interview and the Logic of Conversation

Summary Drawing on psychological theories of language comprehension and conversational conduct, I review what respondents learn from various features of questionnaires, including the response alternatives and the context in which a question is asked. This review indicates that many apparent artifacts in survey measurement reflect a systematic and thoughtful use of contextual information that is licensed by the tacit rules that govern the conduct of conversation in daily life. Implications for questionnaire construction are discussed.

Regional Social Policy

This article will discuss primarily the state of the social sphere, its problems, and ways of eliminating or alleviating them. Within the social sphere, the system of social inequalities (the elements of which are the social statuses of different groups) is singled out for special attention. Social inequalities are generated, reproduced, changed, and regulated by diverse mechanisms. Examples of such mechanisms are: the wage system, the system of laws and legally binding acts regulating citizens' residence in particular settlements and their territorial migration, the totality of open and tacit rules for filling various leadership or managerial positions, etc. These mechanisms include both those that are completely lawful, public, generally formalized but relatively unknown, sometimes closed and hidden even from those whose lives they regulate, as well as informal, unlawful, but nonetheless accepted mechanisms. All these mechanisms have been undergoing intensive change recently, which makes it more difficu...

Regional Conflict in Southern Africa and the Role of Third Party Mediators

'A momentous turning point in the history of southern Africa.'1 Those were the words used by the United States secretary of state, George Shultz, to describe the two peace accords signed in New York on 22 December 1988 by Angola, Cuba, and South Africa. The culmination of over ten years of American-mediated peace negotiations, the accords set the stage for the independence of Namibia and the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola.2 This paper asks whether the accords do indeed constitute a 'momentous turning point' in regional security relations in southern Africa. Specifically, is the era of destabilization by South Africa ending and one of mutual accommodation and cooperation beginning? Or, to put the same question in theoretical terms, are we witnessing the emergence of a regional security regime in southern Africa? The answer to these questions partly turns upon the definition of key terms and concepts in the literature on regime theory. Therefore the first section of this paper defines the concept of security regime, advances a minimum criterion for one to exist, and discusses the conditions under which one is likely to emerge. The second section then reviews the history of security relations in the southern African complex. This review demonstrates that there are certainly explicit and tacit rules of interstate behaviour

HIDDEN POWER IN MARRIAGE

Without patriarchal laws and legally permitted gender discrimination, it becomes clearer that a powerful draw back to gender equality springs from norms about gender identity, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and tacit rules of interaction between women and men. This article offers a theoretical perspective to analyze hidden power in gender relationships. The conceptualization is based on research into marital power carried out in the Netherlands. The focus of this research was not on the way the “power cake” is divided up between spouses but rather on the operation of power processes and mechanisms that can explain why change toward gender equality in marriage is so slow.