Equity in the Classroom and the Clinic: Understanding the Role of Sociology in Health Professional Education

Sociology teachers often encounter students studying to be future health professionals; sociology content can assist students to increase their understanding of patients, the social context of health and illness, and the social determinants of health. Engaging these students in sociological thinking can be challenging because of their diverse social locations and their identification with their future profession, which may emphasize clinical competence over broader reflective skills. In this conversation piece, we encourage critical reflection on the assumptions that underpin the teaching of sociology to aspiring health professionals. Through case studies of nursing, medicine, and speech-language pathology, we consider differences in the social locations of students and how sociological ideas are received by these professions. We argue that sociology teachers can assist health professions students to gain more from sociology by understanding these student cohorts and by reflexively considering power relations between teachers and students and between disciplines and professions.

Critique of the new hero in cinema (L.Visconti) and literature (F.M.Dostoevsky)

The article examines the philosophical basis of the figure of a new hero in literature and film. “New heroes” in selected literary and cinema works are compared within the context of existentialist philosophy and “philosophical anthropology”. Material for the comparative intertextual and intermedial analysis is the novel Demons by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and Luchino Visconti’s late films The Damned, Ludwig and Conversation Piece. The article attempts to broaden the intertextual horizon of research on Visconti by drawing new parallels between his films and Dostoevsky’s work. The work argues that the Italian filmmaker, follow ing the Russian writer of the 19th century and the European philosophers of the 20th century, criticises the “hero” who destroyed the old order on purpose to create a new one. Visconti’s revolutionary hero suffers from “the pathology of freedom” and refers to the figure of a nihilist from Dostoevsky’s novels, on the one hand, and to the figure of a sovereign in the philosophical and anthropological works of German and French writers of the 1930–50s, on the other. In his films The Damned, Ludwig and Conversation Piece, Visconti adopts not only a number of motifs from Dostoevsky but also replicates the main idea of the Russian writer who supposed that the enhancement of the human race was possible only after the second coming of Christ.

The learning company: the learning organization the British way – its origins, present, and future directions. An interview with John Burgoyne

Purpose This paper aims to provide an overview of the history, the present and the future or the learning organization as a concept and a practical approach, from the perspective of Professor John Burgoyne. Design/methodology/approach This conversation piece follows the development of the concept from its early days into the current debates and the possible directions for future development. Findings The interview highlights an interesting path the learning organization took in the UK, stemming from a drive for more and better management education, and evolving into a systemic view on various aspects of organizational capabilities, concerned primarily with organizational longevity and adaptability. The thinking behind Pedler, Burgoyne and Boydell’s model of a learning company is discussed. Several “hot” topics are identified, either overlooked in the past, or becoming more relevant in the modern world, precipitated by technological and societal changes. Originality/value The interview provides an insight into the thinking of one of the best known authors in the field. Understanding of the concept’s evolution path, as well as the influences from other fields such as innovation and CSR, could be useful for practitioners and academics working in the subject area, wishing to identify promising future directions for research and practice.

Ancora su Giulio Pignatti ritrattista. Il mondo dei Grand Tourists e degli eruditi a Firenze

Giulio Pignatti or Pignatta (1679-1751), a painter from Modena who specialized in portraiture, arrived in Florence in 1705 and remained there until his death. During the fourty-six years spent in the Tuscan capital, he made contact with the last members of the Medici dynasty and with Grand Tourists as attested by the Portrait of Sir Andrew Fountaine with four friends in the Tribuna of the Uffizi, dated 1715. Pignatti’s oeuvre can now be expanded by another conversation piece commissioned in 1721 by Giuseppe Aversani’s pupils in the University of Pisa on the occasion of the gift of a gold medal, and by the portraits of Ludovico Tempi and Cosimo Del Sera which testifies that Pignatti worked for numerous Florentine noble families. By focusing on these paintings, the paper intends to provide a better understanding of the artist's career and patrons.

Decolonizing History: Enquiry and Practice

On the back of the Royal Historical Society’s 2018 report on race and ethnicity, as well as ongoing discussions about ‘decolonizing the syllabus’, this is a conversation piece titled, ‘Decolonizing History: Enquiry and Practice’. While ‘decolonization’ has been a key framework for historical research, it has assumed increasingly varied and nebulous meanings in teaching, where calls for ‘decolonizing’ are largely divorced from the actual end of empire. How does ‘decolonizing history’ relate to the study of decolonization? And can history, as a field of practice and study, be ‘decolonized’ without directly taking up histories of empire? Using the RHS report as a starting point, this conversation explores how we ‘decolonize history’. We argue that, rather than occurring through tokenism or the barest diversification of reading lists and course themes, decolonizing history requires rigorous critical study of empire, power and political contestation, alongside close reflection on constructed categories of social difference. Bringing together scholars from several UK universities whose teaching and research ranges across modern historical fields, this piece emphasizes how the study of empire and decolonization can bring a necessary global perspective to what tend to be framed as domestic debates on race, ethnicity, and gender.

EXPLORING THE PERCEPTION OF PATIENTS WITH DEMENTIA ABOUT A SOCIAL ROBOT PARO IN A HOSPITAL SETTING

PARO, a robotic pet, was designed to provide emotional and social support for older people with dementia. This project aims to explore the perception of persons with dementia about the role of PARO in a hospital setting. Video-ethnographic methods were applied. Patient and family partners were involved in the fieldwork of data collection and analysis. We conducted conversational interviews with ten patients with dementia staying in a geriatric unit and video observations. Thematic analysis yielded three substantive themes: (a) “it’s like a buddy”, the robot helps persons with dementia to uphold a sense of self in the world, (b) “it’s a conversation piece”, the baby seal facilitates social connection, and (c) “it’s all about love”, PARO transforms and humanizes the clinical setting. Our findings contribute to providing a better understanding of the direct perspectives of patients with dementia on the use of the social robot.