Anthony Paré

Learning in Two Communities: The Challenge for Universities and Workplaces.

This article reports on a longitudinal study of school‐to‐work transitions in four professions: education, social work, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy. Each of these professions is characterized by the need for an undergraduate degree for certification; extensive, supervised internships before graduation; and, to a greater or lesser extent, supervision for beginning professionals after graduation. Students in their last years of university, beginning professionals in their first years of practice, and the experienced practitioners who supervise both these groups were interviewed. The article draws on theory and data to help explain why the move from classroom to workplace is often so difficult, and make recommendations to stakeholders in the training and induction of new practitioners in these professions. The recommendations may be extrapolated to other workplaces.

Mentor or evaluator? Assisting and assessing newcomers to the professions

– A four‐year longitudinal study was conducted on the school‐to‐work transition in four professions traditionally called “helping professions,” namely education, social work, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy. One goal of the study was to understand the nature and process of the mentoring relationships that develop and sustain newcomers in their professional life, especially the possible tension between the roles of mentor and evaluator. It was expected that this would help us in our jobs of preparing student practitioners and supporting their mentors and would offer models of practice suitable for other occupations., – Teams of researchers visited university students involved in professional training and engaged in a practicum during their final year at university. The students and their supervisors were interviewed separately according to a semi‐structured protocol, and each interview, lasting between 40 and 60 minutes, was audiotaped and transcribed., – An inherent contradiction between supervision‐as‐mentoring as the literature defines it and supervision‐as‐evaluation – as the universities and professions demand was observed. Evaluation as it is practiced often includes intangibles, even though the intended evaluation seems well‐defined., – Although this study was focused on practice in four particular professions, it is believed that the findings may be extrapolated to any enterprise where experienced practitioners are placed in a supervisory role with newcomers and are expected to perform the potentially conflicting role of mentor and evaluator. If the same person must mentor and evaluate the newcomer, they must be trained in these roles, evaluation guidelines must be clearly defined, and dialogue is of prime importance., – The paper focuses on the role of the universities in the preparation of new entrants to the “helping professions” and offers some suggestions for their support – which are generalizable to any workplace where beginners are trained, mentored and evaluated.

Active learning in the workplace: transforming individuals and institutions

In order to keep current and dynamic, organizations depend on the careful induction of new members. In social work, as in many professions, that task is generally given to experienced practitioners who supervise and manage the gradual transformation of novices into effective professionals. The process is critical for both organizations and newcomers: the former require new practitioners who are capable of respecting and emulating current practice, but also able and willing to challenge and revise the way things are done; the latter require a quick, deep immersion in organizational life if they are to participate in and influence practice. Unsuccessful induction can lead to stagnation for individuals and the organizations they seek to join. This article draws on a longitudinal study of the school‐to‐work transition in social work, with particular attention to the conditions that are most conducive to the effective induction of newcomers. Social work students were interviewed during their final field education placements (ie internships) and again in their first professional jobs. Findings considered here include the student’s responsibility in the induction process, the importance of first impressions and activities, the ways successful mentoring is distributed across organizations, and the benefits gained by the organization through the induction process.

Speaking of Writing: Supervisory Feedback and the Dissertation

This chapter draws on writing theory and research to consider the challenging task of supervising doctoral student writing. First, the dissertation is presented as a complex rhetorical act that makes great demands on students and their tutors. Next, data from supervisory sessions are analyzed to identify the patterns of concern in supervisors’ comments. Chief among those concerns are organization and audience: supervisors strive to offer students advice on textual structure and tips about their disciplinary community. Finally, the chapter concludes with a description of practices that supervisors and institutions might adopt to create an environment for writing.

Fragmented care and whole-person illness: Decision-making for people with chronic end-stage kidney disease

Purpose The study reported herein sought to better understand how patients with multi-morbid, chronic illness—who receive care in institutions designed for treatment of acute illness—experience and engage in health-related decisions. Methods In an urban Canadian teaching hospital, we studied the interactions of six hemodialysis patients and 11 of the health professionals involved in their care. For 1 year (September 2009 to September 2010), we conducted ethnographic observation and interviews of six cases each comprising one hemodialysis patient and various health professionals including medical specialists, nurses, a social worker, and a dietician. Results We found that the ubiquity and complexity of health-related decision-making in the lives of these patients suggests the need for a more holistic interpretation of health-related decision-making. Discussion We propose an interpretation of decision-making as an ongoing process of integrating illness and life; as frequently open-ended, cumulative, and relational; and as fundamentally shaped by the fragmented delivery of care for patients with multiple morbidities. Conclusion Our understanding of decision-making suggests that people living with complex chronic illness need to receive care from institutions that recognize and address their multi-morbidity as a whole illness that is constantly being integrated into the life of a whole person.

Discourse and Social Action: Moffett and the New Rhetoric.

James Moffett is revered by many for his contributions to English education, but his interest in discourse and rhetoric led him beyond reform in the language arts curriculum to a vision of a radically reconceived approach to education, one in which disciplinary knowledge is subordinate to the processes of symbolic representation that creates that knowledge. This article traces the emergence of this proposal in Moffetts discussions of theory and pedagogy, and draws links between his ideas and the focus on language‐as‐social‐action that came to dominate North American writing studies in the 1980s.

Re-thinking the dissertation and doctoral supervision / Reflexiones sobre la tesis doctoral y su supervisión

Abstract The doctoral dissertation is the final obstacle for most apprentice scholars. This paper considers the place and purpose of the dissertation and argues that it no longer provides an adequate preparation for the types of work that PhD graduates will do within and outside the academy. The common dissertation format — book length, single-authored, print-based — is at odds with a world where knowledge is made collaboratively and disseminated digitally. Moreover, the effort required to produce a dissertation keeps students from writing the many other genres of academic discourse, and reduces the opportunities that supervisors have to mentor new scholars. The paper finishes by offering a number of alternatives to the traditional dissertation and examines the barriers to implementing those alternatives.

Disciplinary Voices: A Shifting Landscape for English Doctoral Education in the Twenty-First Century

The origins of this chapter were to move from the social sciences to the humanities to understand from a different disciplinary perspective the shifting, contested nature of the doctorate both within and beyond academe. In this chapter, the views of academics and students in a Department of English are examined as regards the changing nature of the doctorate, within the discipline as well as within institutional and policy contexts. What emerged was a picture of a discipline struggling with whether and how to re-define itself in a time of dramatic changes in popular culture, publishing, institutional drivers, and the job market for English PhD graduates. It becomes obvious, as the chapter unfolds, that some issues brought students and academics together whereas they held divergent and somewhat conflicting views about other issues.

Learning to Work: Easing the Transition

The final years of education and the first years of working life mark a critical period in the passage to professional expertise. The transition from university to workplace is a huge step in many professions, especially in those where school or university preparation has been largely theoretical, because the world of school and the world of work are radically different contexts. Processes of scaffolding the transition between the contexts differ by profession and by workplace: some rely on a final year of field education with close supervision and ties to school-based programs (e.g., internships and practica); others offer students periods of relatively unsupervised, worklike conditions (e.g., work-study programs); still others assume (explicitly or implicitly) that periods of apprenticeship within the workplace after graduation will ease the newcomer into professional practice. In all cases, the individual is transformed from student to practitioner with some degree and type of assistance from veteran practitioners. The mentorship process is