1,720,980 research outputs found
'No coughing for me, but I'm okay!' – Learning to listen to practitioners' body stories in human service work
No full textThis blog article was authored by Jo Mensinga. Jo is a lecturer in the Social Work and Human Services Program at James Cook University, Cairns and is also a qualified yoga teacher. She worked in child protection, relationship counselling and with women's health issues for 15 years before becoming an academic. Her current research interest is understanding human service workers' use of the body and the ways they construct an embodied professional self in practice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Book review of "A practical guide to transformative supervision for the helping professions: amplifying insight" by Nicki Weld, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Sydney, NSW, Australia
No full text[Extract] Having what could be described as an insatiable interest in how we can better support and facilitate social workers' use of self in delivering "good practice," it was of little surprise that I found myself drawn to Nicki Weld's new book on supervision. The words "transformative" and "amplifying insight" immediately captured my interest and I found myself eager to explore what new could be said about these ideas and how the author proposed reintegrating them into present-day supervisory practices. In recent years, I have become somewhat despondent with the shift away from the supportive and educational functions of supervision that currently exists in many workplaces. While it has been easy to blame managerialism for focusing on case management and the administrative aspects of supervision, Tsui (2005) reminded us that this preference was also driven by practitioners in the 1990s, who perceived the supervision process as both invasive and placed them under unnecessary surveillance. By embedding the words "transformative" and "insight" so clearly into the title then, I wondered whether Weld was only reiterating my concerns, or whether she could offer some more compelling reasons for exploring the more personal aspects of a practitioner's work in supervision
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Quilting Professional Stories: a gendered experience of choosing social work as a career
Full text linkThe literature and research investigating why people choose social work as a career has tended to focus on motivational traits rather than on the choice experience itself. Whereas the vocational sector has moved to include a focus on the narrative processes involved with selecting a career, much of the social work research fails to capture the meaning-making processes individuals engage in to make sense of their career choices within their personal and social contexts. This research project describes the meaning-making processes two students participating in the social work program at Central Queensland University and I employ to understand our career choice experiences. Over a period of four years, using a research approach that combines Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) narrative inquiry with Riessman’s (2003) emphasis on social positioning within narratives, Geraldine, John and I explore the interplay between individual, community and professional agendas in our past, present and imagined career choice experiences – particularly focusing on the impact of gender. Identifying the importance of caring as a hallmark of the profession and what draws us to social work, this co-constructed research text highlights the agendas that predominantly support women’s entrance into the profession and challenge men’s participation. Drawing on the metaphor of a quilt to describe our career choice experience, this project draws attention to the importance for aspiring social workers to carefully choose, cut and join together bits of gendered narrative material to create a professional story that both legitimises their entrance into the profession and to position them within the larger career sector
'No coughing for me, but I'm okay!' - Mapping a human service workers' body stories as she engages with traumatised women in a domestic violence service
No full textRelational, body-oriented and brain-based approaches to recovery and change are increasingly popular modalities for working with traumatised adults. However, although these approaches encourage the awareness of and the harnessing of the workers' visceral experience, there is little in the literature to describe how practitioners navigate their own somatic maps in the process of doing so.
In a research project undertaken in 2010-11, I invited eight human service workers who worked in different agencies across north Queensland to tell and explore stories about their own experiences of the body that emerged during and/or in relation to their own professional practice.
A narrative methodology was used to frame the study and to facilitate a deep understanding of how the participants used their own bodies as a source of knowledge and/or as an intervention strategy with those whom they worked.
This paper maps the processes by which Coral navigates her own somatic map as she interacts with traumatised women and supervises other workers in a domestic violence service. Coral notes that while supervisees mention being impacted by the women's energies which often causes them to cough; she engages a process of co-regulation that prevents her needing to do the same.
Although Coral finds this approach successful, she is reluctant to share it with her supervisees for fear of imposing her own framework. By way of contrast, she feels comfortable in using the body as an intervention to help women 'reoccupy' their own bodies and as a tool to negotiate pathways in the sector
A narrative inquiry exploring social workers' understanding of yoga and its application in professional practice
No full textYoga is increasing in popularity. As a holistic practice, it is being applied and researched as a healing modality for physical ailments, assisting with mental health issues, and addressing traumatic symptoms. However, little is known about how social workers understand and include Yoga in their personal lives or professional practice. As part of a larger narrative study, practitioners in an Australian regional centre were asked: "What, if any, impact do embodied practices like Yoga have on your experience and your clients' experience?" This paper explores the stories told by three of the practitioners interviewed both individually and in focus groups. The dominant themes that emerged highlight that: a personal Yoga practice can be varied; the impact it has on professional outcomes is difficult to quantify; there is a lack of theoretical discussion about the body and embodied experience in social work; the challenges associated with introducing Yoga into social work practice are complex.
IMPLICATIONS
Embodied practices such as Yoga provide social workers opportunities to increase self-awareness, their capacity to engage with clients and self-care.
Theoretical understandings of the body and embodiment need to be better articulated in social work if embodied practices like Yoga are to be included in the professional conversation
Storying career choice: employing narrative approaches to better understand students’ experience of choosing social work as a preferred career
No full textNarrative methodologies promise an increased understanding
of the place career choice holds for those entering the
social work profession. However, as a novice researcher the
plethora of approaches to be negotiated can be overwhelming.
While narrative researchers tend to position their
projects according to the perceived purpose and the
emergent benefits of the approach, in practice they must
also make decisions about whether to understand a narrative
as a structural or a representational construct, explore
it holistically or categorically, and/or focus on the narrative’s content rather than its form. Several researchers using narrative methodologies to explore career/life choice stories provide useful insights into how participants make meaning of and navigate their way through the myriad of personal, social and professional agendas to make their decisions. However for me, Clandinin and Connelly’s narrative inquiry approach combined with Riessman’s notion of social positioning provided a deeper understanding about the gendered nuances of aspiring social worker’s motivation for entering the profession
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