Search results

This article focuses on the conditions that are conducive to effective work on reducing children's vulnerability to social exclusion. It draws on three studies of practitioners who are collaborating to prevent the social exclusion of children and young people. Two ideas are discussed: distributed expertise and relational agency. Distributed expertise recognises that expertise is distributed across local systems and that practitioners need to become adept at recognising, drawing on and contributing to it. Relational agency offers a finer‐grained analysis of what is involved in working in systems of distributed expertise. Findings include the need for professionals to develop relational agency as an extra layer of expertise alongside their core professional expertise and a concern that interprofessional work may result in seeing clients as tasks to be worked on rather than people to be worked with relationally. Implications for training and professional development are outlined.

Higher education research is replete with discussion of boundaries imagined as structural constraints in need of removal or circumvention. But, while foregrounding national–transnational frameworks, leadership strategising and institutional structures, the scholarship is subdued about how boundaries are actually dealt with at ground level. How do practitioners come together, day by day, across higher education boundaries; and what is required for desirable practices to be nurtured? It is on this issue, and in particular the theorisation of this issue, that this chapter will focus.

This chapter presents and develops a relational working framework, based on the work of Anne Edwards. We highlight three core concepts (common knowledge, relational expertise and relational agency), disaggregating each into constituent features. We then apply the framework to reinterpret previously published empirical studies, to demonstrate its broad applicability. We argue that the framework usefully conceptualises how practitioners work with others across boundaries; that it helps us to notice how many boundaries are, in fact, routinely permeated; and that it usefully highlights important aspects of local practices that are easily obscured.

The paper focuses on preventative services for children, young people and families. It argues that client‐led service provision calls for flexibility from service providers, using the distributed expertise to be found across the professions involved and a high degree of interprofessional trust. All this, in turn, requires a systemic response from the major agencies if they are to support this new professionalism.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce in detail a research tool, which was first used to examine how the motivated actions of leaders in public services, such as Directors of Children's Services, take forward their strategic purposes and subsequently adapted for revealing the strategic actions of Family Support Workers.

The theoretical bases for the research tool are given in some depth and examples of the tool and its possibilities for adaptation are provided.

This conceptual paper provides a resource for examining the connection between strategic purposes and motivated actions in everyday leadership practices.

The explication of theoretical foundations of the tool prepares the ground for further adaptations to meet the needs of other research studies which aim at analytically linking actions and strategies in studies of leadership in the public services.

The tool has proven potential as a resource for reflective practice and professional learning.

The arguments are based in cultural-historical approaches to understanding motivated action in institutional practices. This approach has been employed in a study of leadership in children's services, and the present paper gives detailed access to the main methodological device used in that study.

The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on how partnership practices that build resilience in families work. Two broad questions are explored: first, what are the forms of expertise required in practices that effectively build resilience through partnership?; and second, how can some of the challenges practitioners experience when working in partnership be addressed?

A theoretical approach is taken, framing partnership as collaborative knowledge work between practitioners and clients. Concepts of relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency are explored as means to understand the forms of expertise involved in partnership. An empirical example is provided from practices guided by The Family Partnership Model, an approach that has been widely implemented.

These concepts help to address three key challenges experienced by practitioners: client readiness for change, maintaining focus and purpose and using specialist expertise in partnership. This approach elucidates features of partnership practice that distinguish it from expert-led models, while highlighting diverse forms of expertise in play.

The framework presented in this paper is distinctive and can be used to identify how practitioners can avoid common dilemmas, even in challenging circumstances with vulnerable families where practitioner-client relationships may be perceived as fragile. It counters the idea that partnership work dilutes professional expertise. Instead, an enriched and augmented view of professional expertise is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the problem of achieving “organizational justice” for children within integrated children's services. Justice is understood, following Byers and Rhodes discussion of Levinas as respecting the “unique and indivisible” character of a given child.

The empirical material reported here is drawn from a large study of interagency working in children's services in the UK. Data are taken from Developmental Work Research sessions. Methodological details are outlined in Daniels et al. and Leadbetter et al.

The key finding discussed here is that in order to balance the outcome measures used in children's services, participants use a further abstraction “the outcome of improved outcomes”. The logical and practical consequences of this abstraction are analysed.

The paper offers an empirically grounded contribution to conceptual debates about otherness and ethics in organization. In particular, it argues that a concern for the other need not preclude a high level of concrete categorization and minute target setting. The philosophical debate is seen to be “resolved” in practice.

The Pure Food and Health Society of Great Britain held a conference at the Inns of Court Hotel, Holborn, on May 27. Mr. H. E. MORGAN presided, supported by LORD CAMOYS and Mr. S. F. EDGE. The principal objects of the conference were to discuss (1) the best methods of preventing food frauds and substitutions that are injurious to consumer and honest manufacturer alike; (2) some means of educating the public, preferably by advertisement, so that they can discriminate genuine and good from inferior, worthless, and fraudulent articles.

In many countries concerns have been expressed about the merits of educational research. This paper reports on the outcomes of a review of reviews of such research in Australia and the UK. Taken at face value, the latest round of reviews are largely critical in the UK (where they have generated much debate) and mainly favourable in Australia (where they have not). In accounting for this difference the paper suggests that it might be explained in part as a function of how the reviews were conducted. In the UK reviews have tended to begin with the research and work forward to practice whereas in Australia they have been inclined to begin with practice and work back to the research. It is suggested that policy makers, practitioners and researchers in Australia and the UK have much to learn from each other's experience, as have those in other countries planning similar reviews.

In this chapter, an overview is presented, related to complexities around transition to junior secondary schools for students who have experienced literacy difficulties in their primary school years. The personal and social consequences of ongoing literacy difficulties for those students is examined and the barriers to participation and engagement are identified. Then, current approaches to literacy teaching and learning in adolescence are considered, including specific references to personalised learning, strengths-based approaches differentiation and use of technology.