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Phd Abstract, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Phd Abstract, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
This developmental research study concerned how trainers, drawn mainly from the commercial (pharmaceutical) sector of the field of clinical research, shared understandings of practice in a professionally localised community, as part of their continuing professional development. Trainers in this community had a heterogeneous range of identities including full-time and part-time trainers: clinical research trainers, training managers; clinical research managers, clinical research associates, compliance managers, auditors and others. The main aim was to explain conditions shaping this community and its concept of practice using Cultural-Historical-Activity-Theory.
Thesis Chapter 1, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Thesis Chapter 1, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
This research is a study of trainers, drawn mainly from the commercial sector of the field of clinical research, journeying towards becoming a community of practice (CoP). The focus of the study is the concept of practice among this community, formed within the professional body of the Institute of Clinical Research (ICR). Its scope is limited to discussing emergent features of the community, known as the Trainers Forum (TF), in terms of the ‘ecology’ of the commercial sector.
Thesis Chapter 7, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Thesis Chapter 7, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
Viewing activity from the perspective of respective actors in the system of activity enables a comprehensive picture to be built of the systematic elements involved. In addition, according to Lave and Wenger (op.cit.), the identity of members in terms of who they are, and what they do, is bound up with the activity or practice that defines them as a community. Consequently, describing who the subjects are within the system of activity, and the tensions between them, provides an insight into the social structure of the activity system in terms of the features of their shared practice, such as: a …
Thesis Chapter 10, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Thesis Chapter 10, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
In this chapter, the purpose, research questions and hypotheses of the thesis are revisited in the process of drawing conclusions. In addition, a critique of the methodology used in this research is offered to assess the contribution to knowledge. The overall aims of this research study were: to explain the conditions creating and sustaining a professional community of trainers and its concept of training practice against a backdrop of increasing regulation; and, to understand the effects of compliance culture on the sharing of practice and development of shared understandings in this community. The pertinent questions posed in line with these …
Thesis Chapter 9, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Thesis Chapter 9, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
The community constituting the Forum, the division of labour within it, and the rules affecting its activity and individual chains of actions were described and analysed in the previous chapter. Analyses revealed that trainers replicated the circumstances that they endured in their workplace through the predominance of a time-bound, content driven agenda, driven by a compliance culture that can be traced to the workplace, where it operated as a rule. In turn, this rule was traced to another neighbouring activity system, the regulatory environment, where compliance culture is used as a tool to enforce adherence to GCP standards (L1TO2d). In …
Thesis Chapter 8, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Thesis Chapter 8, Marie Mckenzie Mills
Marie McKenzie Mills PhD, CSci
The Trainers’ Forum is viewed as an activity system (AS) in its entirety through considering the continuous patterns of activity within sessions of Forum meetings. However, in order to proceed with analyses at the level of the declarative, procedural and social interactions/discourses that Engeström suggests are necessary for actual-empirical analyses, the community, its rules and division of labour are foregrounded. The object of activity can then be analysed subsequently in light of the conceptual models that have emerged in the Forum. Findings concerning the object of activity are therefore presented last in Chapter 9, in order to conclude discussion of …