Meg Bond

A learning team in the making

This paper draws on the evaluation of a research and action project based in an inner city doctors practice, which aimed to promote team working and to empower health workers and local people to respond to the health implications of poverty. Dechant, Marsick and Kasls (1993) emerging ideas for a model of team learning are used to provide a conceptual framework for a discussion of key findings from the project which was informed by Blackburns (1992a) team training handbook. Given current interest in the importance of learning for organisations and individuals but the relative lack of attention paid to date to learning in teams, analysis of the application of Blackburns ideas in practice makes a potentially useful contribution to the understanding of how teams of health and social care staff may develop a shared knowledge base and work more collectively on issues of major concern to local people.

Working it out for ourselves: Women learning about hormone replacement therapy

Abstract Drawing on Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule’s (1986) ideas about women’s “ways of knowing,” this paper presents findings of a study examining women’s choices to cease taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Analysis of conversations with 16 white European mid-life women, who told their stories of starting, taking, and stopping HRT, suggested that the challenge of managing biological changes in demanding social contexts had prompted women to seek knowledge about symptoms and treatments from a range of sources. They also attempted to enter into dialogues with their doctors about the relative merits and disadvantages for them of different courses of action and to reflect with enhanced confidence on the significance of their bodily experiences. Given contested understandings about the nature of menopause and about scientific findings concerned with HRT, for many women the decision to give up treatment seemed to represent the development and application of critical thinking skills and a growing knowledge about self-health care.

Understanding the Benefits/Wages Connection: Financial Literacy for Citizenship in a Risk Society.

Abstract This paper uses the example of engagement with UK welfare to work programmes to illustrate the complexity of the financial decision-making facing those who seek to make the transition between claiming benefits and waged work or to recombine both afresh. It highlights the ways in which British Government policies to reduce welfare spending and encourage low skilled individuals into low paid work increasingly require them to make sense of the inter-relationships between wages, social security and local authority benefit entitlements and the associated systems of payment. Adults with limited skills in financial literacy are ill-prepared to exercise such functions of citizenship in a risk society, yet little help is currently available to them. A programme of radical adult education, including access to independent and impartial welfare rights and financial information, advice and advocacy, is proposed to assist individuals in making informed decisions about the financial consequences of moving from benefits to wages.

Knowing mothers: from practitioner research to self-help and organisational change

Abstract Drawing on an action research project, this article explores the scope offered by practitioner research to extend learning on the part of social workers, their managers, service users and educators, and thereby to generate self-help and organisational change. Conducted in collaboration with mothers of children who had been sexually abused and colleagues in a social work team, this study serves as an example of research-mindedness in practice. It illustrates what may be achieved by committed professionals who conduct research as part of a course of advanced professional education, in which, from the outset, improvement and dissemination are taken seriously. The structuring of this paper is designed to convey this partnership as it extends into writing together.

What about the men? Reflections from a picket line on returning to learning

AbstractDrawing on in-depth interviews with sheet metal workers on a picket-line in Coventry, this paper explores the issue of working class mens non-participation in return to learn courses in the UK, in a context in which government policy to upskill the workforce is focusing on individual employability and partnership working with employers. Recognising the complex nature of (non)participation, the constraints of material factors and lack of access to free, impartial and comprehensive educational, vocational and related financial advice and guidance emerge as key issues.

Will enrolled nurses feature in the English National Board's equal opportunities policy research?

The English National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting is planning to evaluate the implementation of its equal opportunities policy with reference to the recruitment into nurse education and training of people from ethnic minority groups. This paper argues the case for including in this initiative a close examination of the processes of conversion from enrolled to registered nurse status and of the experiences of those nurses seeking promotion through this route. Past recruitment of many black and ethnic minority people into this level of nursing and their continuing service there makes this a potentially fruitful area of enquiry.

In the Field in the Library: methodological analogies for library‐based researchers

Abstract Library‐based work is integral to all research in the social sciences, whatever its methodological biases. Yet a key area of neglect in the literature on research methodology is that relating to this form of data collection and analysis. This paper outlines the ways in which library‐based activity contains within it key elements of the wider research process. It argues that a broader conceptualization of methodology which pays enhanced attention to the collection and analysis of textual materials is vital for the development of our understanding and teaching of research methods.