H2CM: Some Reflections on Purposes

Of the purposes associated with h2cm:

1. To produce a curriculum development tool.
2. Help ensure holistic assessment and evaluation.
3. To support reflective practice.
4. To reduce the theory-practice gap.

(Source: Brian Hodges)

- the primary purpose must be to facilitate and support holistic practice. The reasoning for this runs (it is hoped) as follows:

Although reflection is often conducted with a particular task - frequently a question - and hence a set of associated experiences in mind; the individual should be encouraged to think universally. If in general reflection is constrained then perhaps the activity is no longer reflection?

If the curriculum developers intend to produce holistic practitioners* then once again holistic considerations should preempt and influence curriculum development.

Theory and practice are surely as 'holistic' as holistic is? This purpose though seeks to assist in closing the theory-practice gap and the existence of this gap suggests that there is something else – even if only space. This space means we must once again defer to holistic.

Or am I getting confused...? What do you think? h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk

*holistic in terms of the range of thought (holistic bandwidth) - not holistic new-age therapies.

Gardenfors' book - a quote and can that be, surely not ...h2cm?

The title of Peter Gardenfors' book Conceptual Spaces is enough to switch the four lights on in this house. In chapter 1 the conclusion includes -

So what kind of theory is the theory of conceptual spaces? Is it an empirical, normative, computational, psychological, neuroscientific, or linguistic theory? The answer is that the theory of conceptual spaces is used in two ways in this book. On a general level, it is a framework for cognitive representations. .... On a more specific level, the framework of conceptual spaces can then be turned into empirically testable theories or constructive models by filling in specific dimensions with certain geometrical structures, specific measurement, specific connections to other empirical phenomena, and so forth. p.30.

Chapter 5: Semantics gives us figure 5.9 (p.173):

Spatial relations between some abstract lexemes

EXISTENCE LOCATION POSSESSION OWNERSHIP

Here below is h2cm. I'll leave the explanatory connections to you:

intrapersonal sciences sociology politics

Since 1986 or thereabouts I've been teased by quadtrees, Voronoi tesselations, facet analytic theory, clustering methods et al. and set to believe there's something here that we can use....

On the website I started to explore some of the assumptions that underpin the structure and (what might contribute to) a theory of Hodges' model. The next 'paper' will assume that the reader is familiar with Hodges' model. The focus will be h2cm as a candidate conceptual space with Gardenfors' text as a key and initial source.

The domains, distances, dimensions, data^# it's all there: bar the door....

Many thanks everyone for passing this way - we are now at 10,000+ visitors
^#P.S. I'm actually not sure about the data - that is a real challenge.

Gärdenfors, P. (2000). Conceptual Spaces, Cambridge: CUP.

Note (blog post!) to Sir Michael Parkinson

Dear Sir Michael,

Many congratulations on your appointment as the National Dignity Ambassador on 20th May 2008. There's nothing like a bit of Northern grit and determination to spearhead the Government's drive to ensure that all older people using health and social care services are treated with dignity and respect.

I noticed the following conference being organised (prompting this post):

FOURTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE

A Practical Guide to Improving
Dignity in Care on the Wards:
Moving Forward

Implementing the recommendations of the Healthcare Commission ‘Caring for Dignity’ report

Wednesday 1^st October 2008
20 Cavendish Square, London

The subject for the e-mail I received read - 'Dignity on the Wards'.

Of course we all know that before dignity can put in an appearance on the wards, she needs to hitch a ride in the hearts and minds of all those who can make that real difference.

Like happiness, quality of life..., and its partner in care respect - dignity is a concept that can precariously be taken for granted, trampled upon, and is constantly the subject of academic - philosophical debate. It is often assumed that dignity is hard-wired into the essential humanity of the vast majority of us. Well your new role sadly reveals a truth.

Whether you still believe in the vocational view of nurse's devotion and attention to the -

REAL partners in care,
the real 'R&D' -
respect and dignity

Here's a tip - Hodges' model cun'elp jogt'memry of'sall...

Good luck lad!
Respectfully Yours!
PJ

2009 March Manchester, UK: 4th Oekonux Conference - Free Software and Beyond...

Call for Contribution - to the 4th Oekonux Conference in collaboration with P2P Foundation

During the past decade the phenomenon of Free Software has become successful and well-known. It is still amazing how in the realm of software the creativity of so many volunteers leads to products which are useful for the whole mankind. In 1999 the Oekonux Project [http://www.oekonux.org/] started with analyzing this phenomenon and trying to understand the special features of Free Software as a social and political enterprise.

Today, beyond the Free Software world, projects based on a similar approach of peer production are rapidly emerging, including Wikipedia and many more. It is time to look at peer production from a broader perspective.

This is the goal of the 4th Oekonux conference [http://www.oekonux-conference.org/] which is done in collaboration with the P2P Foundation [http://p2pfoundation.net/]. Under the title

Free Software and Beyond The World of Peer Production - we are planning a conference where

o researchers and activists meet
o intensive discussions are possible
o experiences can be shared and learned.

We are calling for contributions about the big world of peer production.
Possible themes include (but not limited to):

o Reports from peer production projects such as -

o Wikipedia
o Blogosphere
o Design communities
o OpenAccess movement
o Open Music
o Free Culture
o Sharing platforms like Flickr and YouTube
o Free Software

o Peer production and capitalism

o Theoretical approaches on their relationship
o Peer production and commercial interests
o Peer production and the state
o Peer production and political approaches of the past

o Peer governance

o Theoretical approaches to governance in peer production
o Peer ownership
o Maintainership and conflict resolution

o Material peer production

o Existing projects
o Theoretical approaches

If you want to - give a talk - prepare a workshop - moderate a round table discussion

Please submit a short outline of your idea (~300 words) together with a short bio to projekt AT oekonux DOT de. (Mails to this address are archived on the web. Please ask there if this is a problem for you.) If you want to add some other kind of contribution or have other questions please also don't hesitate to contact this address.

About Project Oekonux: In Project Oekonux different people with different opinions and different methods study the economic and political forms of Free Software and other peer production phenomenons. An important question is, whether the principles of peer production may be the foundation of a new economy which may be the base for a new society.

About P2P Foundation: The Foundation for Peer to Peer Alternatives researches, documents and promotes P2P practices in every domain of social life. It's a global cyber-collective and aims to be a knowledge and internetworking platform for open/free, participatory, and commons-oriented initiatives on a global scale.

That other 2nd-hand book - 'Conceptual Spaces'

In February I posted about a day in Sedbergh the book town with marvellous weather for the time of year.

In addition to the The Big Book of Concepts book, I bought a copy of Peter Gärdenfors' Conceptual Spaces. Oh, to be able to take a measured and systematic approach to this....!

I'm only just up to chapter 3 and it's a fascinating book. The ideas make this a key reference for anyone studying Hodges' model (and much more besides).

The preface sums up much about some of the problems researching* Hodges' model:

"... I will satisfy no one. Philosophers will complain that my arguments are weak; psychologists will point to a wealth of evidence about concept formation that I have not accounted for; linguists will indict me for glossing over the intricacies of language in my analysis of semantics; and computer scientists will ridicule me for not developing algorithms for the various processes that I describe."

The subtitle - The Geometry of Thought - says it all. There are so many key concepts here. I'm looking forward to chasing the references cited and other works. I don't vandalise books usually, but hey it's summer almost and the highlighter is doing its thing. The questions run thick and fast....

• Is Hodges' model one conceptual space or four...?
• What quality dimensions can I identify?
• What quality dimensions could a h2cm community identify?
• What existing multidimensional scaling work exists in health and social care?
• ....?

More to follow...

*or at least trying to research...

Physio-Political ... musings, songs and dances...

Just as the weekend dawned I shared Hodges' model as a loop-the-loop when it comes to interdisciplinary crossover and cross-fertilization. In that post I ventured that PHYSIO-POLITICAL is probably the one that is least familiar in health. What do you think - the four candidates being -

SOCIO-POLITICAL
PSYCHO-SOCIAL
PSYCHO-PHYSICAL
PHYSIO-POLITICAL?

If I had to justify PHYSIO-POLITICAL as least familiar, it is one of the most obvious individually; in that if you lose your freedom of movement, or freedom of expression and self-determination you are going to make a real (rather on-the-spot) song and dance about it.

Perhaps this is why it is only in the past few decades that disability rights and disabled access have come to fore in health and social care and government policies and law. There is also a realisation with ageing populations the extent to which PHYSIO-POLITICAL impacts on our quality of life. If you cannot transfer from chair to toilet let alone walk - that spells 'trouble'. This is a double-whammy when allied with the PSYCHO-PHYSICAL, suddenly cognitive abilities also enter the frame.

The 'PSYCHO-PHYSICAL' is mentioned in Gardenfor's book Conceptual Spaces (more on that to follow too), which set me to wonder that each of these disciplinary fields needs to be revisited regularly in policy terms. For example, bound within the socio-political is economics with the problem of poverty ever present in the news.

For individuals with learning disability from a psycho-physical perspective they may be further compromised with the social emphasis on visual, health and ICT literacies and the information society plus a reduction in the meaningful activities they can pursue. This is a difficult debate (raised in the literature I notice), but one that needs to be addressed.

If people also lack the mental capacity - PSYCHO-POLITICAL - to make decisions for themselves then PHYSIO-POLITICALLY speaking they will depend on others to make that song and dance on their behalf.

(I never expected to get so caught up with hyphens - weird that - when I originally selected the domain name for the website over a decade ago I used a hyphen. ...)

Holistic Care: Squaring the Wheel of Disciplinary Domains

Over the past two years on W2tQ, I've defined h2cm in several ways, covering the model's axes and care domains, houses and sailing....

In January (2008) a dialogue was posted with Barbara Rylko-Bauer who shared some very helpful thoughts and suggestions on the model's name and the incorporation of culture and economics into the title of the respective SOCIOLOGY and POLITICAL care domains.

Thinking around this and my still limited (frustrated) reading of Michel Serres' and others I realised that the axes can be replaced with hyphens. This subtraction results in an interesting addition to the model's structure, perceived and potential content (domains).

Around the time the links page content were justified (or not) I also posted about the INTERPERSONAL domain and how this domain is more accurately described as the INTRAPERSONAL. That particular point was about a domain, but Barbara's point invited much more. Four hyphens certainly don't deliver, but the focus here has shifted:

the scope is not 90° but 180°

The hyphen forces contemplation of two domains and the axis in-between. See what you think:

Although hardly novel to geographers and those of a political bent 'PHYSIO-POLITICAL' is perhaps the most unfamiliar of these terms to people in health and social care - outside of public (mental) health - about which more to follow. ...

Being @work2work and out-of-reach innovation

Apparently a web year (not to be confused with Internet time) is compressed in comparison to a calendar year. The rate of change on the web and technology in general is rapid; with health and social care constantly cited as key beneficiaries of technical and informatics developments.

In order to be beneficiaries though
what does this mean in terms of time?

It can be argued that to take full advantage of the 'latest and greatest' informatics (ICT) developments in health and social care means being in the early or late majority of adopters - the mainstream. Whichever way you define benefits (and measure them!) one of the factors and qualities must be time? But given the rate of change of technology just how much benefit can be accrued if you are late to the party?

There are articles and websites that extol the initiatives of Web 2.0 within health and e-Health, to the extent that this trend anticipation is labelled Health 2.0 - for example. You can see how the new Health 2.0 applications and personal health records will be the preserve of the new and nimble.

Back on the 'Trust' shop floor - if you try to access anything connected with social networking any e-mails end up in the corporate spam folder and social networking sites and blogs are blocked.

Well what do you expect?
We are @work2work
and that is not in dispute!

There are various studies that show what people get up to when at work with (free) web access. Maybe the filters are also not up to snuff?

Without some special provision - a secure sandpit for experimentation - there's a major worry that innovation and creativity could be marginalised.

This (vital) digital lockdown could mean that
while health and social care services deliver
outreach services, ...
innovative e-Health / ICT developments remain
out-of-reach.

Definition of e-Health: "Having your cake and eating IcT"

To follow: The four other labels for Hodges' model.

h2cm - supporting reflective practice

Image source (formerly): http://www.funkyfurnitureandstuff.com/FunkyMirrors.html

"Here is the news": Giving 200% and old conjunctions

There was an interesting conjunction today on BBC Radio 4 news:

The Today programme in the early morning has been featuring care of the elderly. This morning I listened to the latest report -

Care home life is 'slow death'

Deddie Davies is a sprightly 70-year-old.
But when she agreed to spend five days in a care home as part of an investigation into care of the elderly for Radio 4's Today programme, she found a pace of life far removed from her usual bustle.

Then driving home on PM (BBC Radio 4 at 5pm) there was discussion about the tendency for football players, their managers and many other people in the media to talk about "giving 110%", 120% and even 150% and so on. A mathematician discussed this with the presenter Eddie Mair as a light hearted news interlude - just how meaningful is this talk in this context?
This got me thinking about the heavy morning news and care of older people and the whole ever-present debate around the following:

1. caring as a vocation;
2. the aptitude of junior care staff;
3. the attitude of junior care staff;
4. what is that makes some (the vast majority!) junior care staff GIVE 200%;
5. the wages of junior care staff;
6. to what extent can 2-4 be taught and how can the gaps be bridged?

Between this diurnal news spectrum there is a further conjunction. This year a new solar cycle started (at last), the first sun spots have appeared.

So, POLITICALLY the weather is going to get stormy over the next five years or so. As far of care of the elderly is concerned it's going to be stormy for quite a while. Nursing or 'social care' - it is all about light and real heroes. ...

a Book? and DSLs on Weds night

On Wednesday night I plan to attend -

ThoughtWorks GeekNight Manchester - The 5 Ws of DSLs:

Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) have been around for a very long time; however, the past 2 years have brought a resurgence of interest to the topic. DSLs are a great idea, but they are the most beneficial when used appropriately. This talk will discuss who DSLs are designed to help, what is a DSL, when you should create a DSL, where you should apply DSLs, why DSLs are important, and how to get started with DSLs. We will begin at the introduction level, almost no previous knowledge of DSLs is necessary.

The other week I received an e-mail with a proposal: a future book and a role acting as an editor. The theme would extend the book chapter on Hodges' model, Michel Serres and (for me) would include conceptual frameworks for global health. I approached a few publishers about this global health aspect about 18 months ago. What other actual and potential tools are out there? What cognitive and practical tools could Africa, South American, Australasia and Asia ... bring to the table?

This is a ways off yet, which is why I need to know more, but needless to say I am definitely interested. It's a big responsibility (and here is me without any formal PRINCE-X training). I do enjoy reviewing and critically appraising documents and this could be a truly marvellous collaborative project.

ERCIM News No. 73 Special theme: "Mathematics for Everyday Life"

The latest ERCIM News is available and since the last issue highlighted on W2tQ I've been looking forward to this one. The copy covers Everyday Maths with articles on health and the human body pp.12-18, society pp.31-36 and much more. I was tantalised by The Continuum Hypothesis: A Mystery of Mathematics, p.37, which had me thinking - surely that is a mystery of the social sciences? ;-)

Something to contemplate in retirement that - reliving the pain of mathematical encounters as a youngster. I do plan to go back to school for maths - if granted the time. ...

What would it be like to see the world with true mathematical vision?
I wonder....?

P.S. Don't miss p.26 listed under Water and Weather 'Maths Improves Quality of Life: An Early-Warning System for Environmental Effects on Public Health'.

ERCIM: European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics

Drupal update and Drupalcon August Szeged

A piece of paper and a pencil. That's a great place to start. ...

I haven't said much about the 'new' website recently. Perhaps that is because I don't want Drupal CMS to look like it is somehow lacking. On the contrary Drupal is still exactly where the sweet spot can be found. It's possible to create a website very quickly using Drupal, the delay lies entirely with me and my penchant for learning by distraction and doing so on a part-time basis.

So in terms of news where are things up to? Well, I've explored Drupal 4.7, 5 and now 6.2. This constant need to update/upgrade or not is a challenge in itself. Drupal 6 is still lacking some key bits and pieces, but as a virginal Drupe I can afford to look to Drupal 6 and even anticipate version 7.

Regular readers here know I've ported over some of the static pages from the 'old' site:

• Brian's original notes I & II
• My initial introduction to Hodges' model and the site

On the old site I never got to grips with CSS (style sheets) so part of the problem at present is that I'm playing catch-up. In addition Drupal provides some core themes that give your web site a particular look and feel straight out of the box so to speak. There are many other themes to choose from; once Drupal is installed just simply download and enable. You can also roll your own. The same applies to modules which as the name suggests are a means to extend and enhance Drupal's functionality. As mentioned ages ago I fell in love with the Denver theme, but this isn't available for version 6 as yet. Trying Salamander I have arrived at Framework which is one of a group of base themes suited for use as a foundation for theme development.

So I'm learning Drupal and CSS with the addition of jQuery - a javascript library. The static pages have a forum (just two questions), several users and a book outline for company and are styled using drop capitals on the opening section paragraphs, discrete striping for tables and a specific treatment for quotations. Reading the Pro Drupal book on the form API and creating an example, I'd actually been wondering how to put two forms side x side. Reading a CSS book it suggested that if possible reduce the number of DIVs used on a web page. What to do...? Reading the Pro Drupal themes chapter (again) I realised what an idiot I am. It is that simple: use DIVs and float them this way or that. So I must give this try and the Content Construction Kit, Views, Panels and the more generic Drupal property of regions.

I'm still really itching to get back to Ruby & Rails and the benefits of immersing yourself in something like Scotland on Rails are quite obvious.

So I'm going to see if - funds permitting - I can get to Drupalcon 2008 in Szeged this August. There may be a group of us from Manchester heading that way. Any sponsors welcome and much appreciated!