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Common Understanding (common + understanding)
Selected AbstractsVirtual environments in machinery safety analysis and participatory ergonomicsHUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS IN MANUFACTURING & SERVICE INDUSTRIES, Issue 5 2007Timo J. Määttä The objective of this work was to evaluate the impact of Virtual Environments (VEs) on safety analysis and participatory ergonomics. The developed method Safety Analysis with Virtual Environments (SAVE) is based on Participatory Ergonomics (PE), Task Analysis (TA), Work Safety Analysis (WSA), the standard EN 1050, and three-dimensional (3-D) functional modeling of the objects being analyzed. The materials of this work comprised machinery systems of six plants in a steel factory, which were implementing ongoing modernization projects. The results indicate that the SAVE method was applicable for safety analysis in the machinery layout design phase. According to the results, 58% of all identified hazards in a steel factory could be identified with VEs. A common understanding of designs, possibilities of evaluating and developing the system by the workers, and of providing training for operators and maintenance persons were the major contribution when using VEs in a safety analysis and applying a participative ergonomics approach. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Hum Factors Man 17: 435,443, 2007. [source] Technical efficiency and embodied technical change in the Indonesian pulp and paper industryJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2006Michiel Van Dijk Abstract In this paper the dynamics of technological change and technical efficiency in the Indonesian pulp and paper industry are analysed. The industry is characterised by rapid growth of output and capacity, with some mills investing heavily in state-of-the-art machinery after 1984. Using stochastic frontier analysis, we distinguish between technological advances of best practice mills and the rate of technological inefficiency. We use a newly constructed micro-level dataset describing the complete population of Indonesian paper mills and paper machines from 1975 to 1997. We find an increasing divergence in technical efficiency over time, indicating that most plants have been not able to keep up with the technological leaders in the industry. Several of the plants operating the latest technologies have lower levels of efficiency than mills operating more outdated equipment. These outcomes qualify the common understanding of dualistic economic structures in developing countries, composed of less efficient traditional and more efficient modern capital intensive establishments. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Native American Graduate Nursing Students' Learning ExperiencesJOURNAL OF NURSING SCHOLARSHIP, Issue 2 2000Suzanne Steffan Dickerson Purpose: To identify learning experiences of Native American graduate nursing students in a university-based nurse practitioner program. Design: The phenomenological approach of Heideggerian hermeneutics. Method: A purposive sample of 11 Native American graduate students in a nurse practitioner program were given the choice of participating in a focus group or completing an individual interview to elicit common meanings and shared experiences. Findings: Four themes and two constitutive patterns: (a) Native American students' worldviews reflected unwritten knowledge that served as a background of common understanding, (b) academic environment as a rigid environment with only one way to learn and constant evaluation, (c) faculty-student relationship barriers to establishing a supportive learning environment, and (d) strategies to survive, including a commitment to succeed, conforming to unwritten rules, helping each other, and ultimately changing themselves. Constitutive patterns were: (a) value conflicts when students' values conflicted with academic behavioral values, and (b) on the fringe, when students felt isolation from the main student body, and open to attack (evaluation). Students struggled to be successful in their commitment to complete the degree, but often questioned the applicability of the program in their cultural setting. Conclusions: A more flexible supportive environment is needed to support students' goals to attain degrees, as well as to encourage dialogue on differing cultural values. Faculty who teach culturally diverse students may need to examine rigid behavioral standards that mandate an assertive practitioner persona and may be a barrier to attainment of goals. [source] Documents and queries as random variables: History and implicationsJOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Issue 9 2006David Bodoff The view of documents and/or queries as random variables is gaining importance in the theory of information retrieval. We argue that traditional probabilistic models consider documents and queries as random variables, but that newer models such as language modeling and our unified model take this one step further. The additional step is called error in predictors. Such models consider that we don't observe the document and query random variables that are modeled to predict relevance probabilistically. Rather, there are additional random variables, which are the observed documents and queries. We discuss some important implications of this idea for parameter estimation, relevance prediction, and even test-collection construction. By clarifying the positions of various probabilistic models on this question, and presenting in one place many of its implications, this article aims to deepen our common understanding of the theories behind traditional probabilistic models, and to strengthen the theoretical basis for further development of more recent approaches such as language modeling. [source] Awake anon the tales of valour: the career of a war memorial in St. Catharines, OntarioTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 4 2009RUSSELL JOHNSTON monuments aux morts; monuments; Rébellion du Nord-Ouest; Saint Catharines Memorials cultivate a common understanding of the past that is communicated through the celebration of select people, places or events. Because memorials are located in public space and crafted from time-defeating materials, the process of commemoration is inherently political. Scholars have studied this process to discover the agendas that inform the ideological content of memorials, but rarely how this content is received by its audience. This question is especially pertinent when memorials outlast the generation and the ideology that created them. This study attempts an answer by exploring the career of one memorial: the monument in St. Catharines, Ontario, dedicated to Private Alexander Watson, a casualty of the Battle of Batoche (1885). It finds that the monument's significance was transformed by political, cultural and historiographical shifts. While its local audience has forgotten its specific message, its generic intent to honour fallen soldiers is still recognized. L'éveil soudain des histoires de bravoure: la vie d'un monument aux morts à Saint Catharines, Ontario Les monuments aux morts permettent d'établir une compréhension commune de l'histoire transmise par la célébration de personnes, de lieux ou d'événements triés sur le volet. Présents dans l'espace public et fabriqués à partir de matériaux impérissables, les monuments aux morts s'inscrivent dans un processus de commémoration qui, de par sa nature même, est politique. Les chercheurs se sont penchés sur ce processus pour faire la lumière sur l'éventail d'actions sur lesquelles la base idéologique des monuments repose, mais peu d'études s'intéressent à comprendre comment cette base est accueillie par le public. La pertinence de cette question est renforcée notamment quand les monuments survivent à la génération et à l'idéologie qui les ont portés. Cette recherche entend apporter une réponse en considérant la vie d'un monument situéà Saint Catharines, Ontario élevéà la mémoire du soldat Alexander Watson, mort au combat à Batoche (1885). Il en ressort que l'importance accordée au monument varie au gré des changements politiques, culturels et historiographiques. Si le public local ne saisit plus le message véhiculé par le monument, il demeure néanmoins que, dans les faits, l'idée d'honorer les soldats tombés au champ d'honneur est toujours d'actualité. [source] Multi-Agency Collaboration: The Challenges for CAMHSCHILD AND ADOLESCENT MENTAL HEALTH, Issue 4 2004Gill Salmon The importance of multi-agency collaboration has been emphasised in virtually every piece of recently published guidance relating to the development of children's services including CAMHS. The Government Green Paper, Every child matters (DfES, 2003), which proposes the development of Children's Trusts, will further impact on this agenda. Surprisingly, there has been much less written about factors contributing to the success of multi-agency collaboration than there has about barriers to it. Research is beginning to emerge informing on key criteria required for the development of multi-agency collaborations for children with mental health problems. Much work remains to be undertaken on the use of language and definitions between agencies before a common understanding about children's needs and the services they require can evolve. [source] Rural Youth Migration Trends in Australia: an Overview of Recent Trends and Two Inland Case StudiesGEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH, Issue 2 2008NEIL ARGENT Abstract Much of what has been written on the topic of Australian rural youth migration trends and processes has often proceeded from data-free, or data-poor grounds. In this context, this paper analyses recent trends in youth (15 to 24 years of age) migration for a temporally-consistent set of Statistical Divisions (SDs) in inland rural Australia, and for local government areas within the Northern Tablelands and Slopes and Ranges of northern New South Wales and the Western Australian Central Wheatbelt. The paper finds that rates of youth loss from rural regions have increased over the past twenty years. Yet the patterns, processes, causes and impacts of rural youth migration are distributed in a spatially-uneven fashion. Some remote areas are receiving net migration gains while booming ,sea change' coastal regions have experienced heavy losses. While the ,flight to the bright city lights' syndrome is evident, relatively high proportions of young people in the Northern SD of NSW move within their immediate region. Nevertheless, some common understandings concerning youth mobility were also confirmed. Gender differentials in migration propensity between women and men are evident even at quite local scales. Young people are also more likely to search out capital cities than the rest of the population. Most inland areas still continue to experience heavy losses of local youth. A more precise understanding of rural youth migration trends is an important stepping stone in the establishment of a reinvigorated research effort into young rural people's perspectives of their changing life chances in their home communities. [source] Neoliberalism, Contingency and Urban Policy: The Case of Social Housing in OntarioINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF URBAN AND REGIONAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2006JASON HACKWORTH Various authors have argued that common understandings of neoliberalism are flawed because they do not adequately account for its geographical contingency or internal contradictions. Many have suggested that neoliberalism is either too internally riven with contradiction to be considered a singular consistent project, or that its implementation is so locally contingent that we cannot plausibly speak of one ideal-type placeless ideology. Primarily based on interviews with over half of the municipal housing providers in Ontario, this article explores the extent to which the meta-ideas of neoliberalism are filtered and manifest (or not) locally. Social policy has been neoliberalized in Ontario at least since the advent of the ,common sense revolution' in 1995, when a Tory government was elected on a platform of neoliberal reform. The experience of social housing in the province, before, after and during the transition offers a useful window into the debate about the dissonance (or lack thereof) between ideal-type and contingent neoliberalism. Based on this case, we argue that, despite its obvious conceptual flaws, it is politically and analytically important to understand ideal-type neoliberalism better. [source] A community of practice approach to the development of non-traditional learners through networked learningJOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2006K. Guldberg Abstract This paper analyses a sample of online discussions to evaluate the development of adult learners as reflective practitioners within a networked learning community. The context for our study is a blended learning course offering post-experience professional training to non-traditional university students. These students are parents and carers of people with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). We use Lave and Wenger's ,communities of practice' as a theoretical framework for establishing how students develop a learning community based upon mutual engagement, joint enterprise and shared repertoires. Those three aspects are analysed according to two measures. The first focuses on learner appropriation of the professional discourse, values and goals of the ASD carer through the network. The second relates to changes in the quality of collaborative activity over time. Our analysis demonstrates that students belong to an overarching community of practice, with different subsets who work at sharing and co-constructing common understandings. This shared discourse and common notions of what constitutes good practice help create a safe interaction space for the students. Once group identity is consolidated, more challenging questions emerge and the group are able to define further common values, understandings and goals through processes of resolution. [source] Mapping global inequalities: Beyond income inequality to multi-dimensional inequalitiesJOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 8 2009Ben Crow Abstract Current discussions of global inequality are trapped by their core reliance on measures of income. While our field has become ever-knowledgeable on poverty's multi-faceted nature (e.g. the Human Development Index, based on Sen and other's work on the capabilities approach), discussions and debates over global inequalities give short shrift to measurements and understandings of inequality beyond income. The papers in this issue all lend insight to how we may start the long-term process of moving beyond income inequality to re-think common understandings of inequality and to present new questions and opportunities in order to work towards a fuller understanding of the shape and pathways of global inequalities. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||