The short video below (its just over 6 mins), previews a new paper (link here) by Bronwyn Davies, who is a fabulous educational thinker and scholar. Here she talks about how it's getting harder and harder to think in a climate that is increasingly anti-intellectual and anti-critique. She suggests that the threats of neo-liberalism reach into all spheres of our life and achieve their effects without us realising their power. Davies calls for a new spirit of critique. … [Read more...] about The (im)possibility of thinking under neoliberalism
Posts worth reading – update on interesting posts and ideas from around the web
Here is an update on some recent posts from around the Internet that may be of interest: What scientific idea is ready for retirement? From Brian Christian at Edge.com Scientific Knowledge Should Be Structured as "Literature" In my view, what's most outmoded within science, most badly in need of retirement, is the way we structure and organize scientific knowledge itself. Academic literature, even as it moves online, is a relic of the era of typesetting, modeled on static, irrevocable, toothpaste-out-of-the-tube publication. Just as the software industry has moved from a "waterfall" process to an "agile" process—from monolithic releases shipped from warehouses of mass-produced disks to … [Read more...] about Posts worth reading – update on interesting posts and ideas from around the web
Staying healthy in the 18th century
Sanitary Systems Dumoulin, the physician, observed at his death that "he left behind him two great physicians, regimen and river water." Villars, the French quack, who, before the middle of the last century, made a fortune by an almost justifiable fraud, kept thousands of patients in good health by administering to them nitre dissolved in Seine water (sold at five francs a bottle), eat moderately, drink temperately, take plenty of bodily exercise, go to and rise from bed early, and avoid mental anxiety. And in the same way the English quack, Graham, whilst he presided over the "Temple of Health," prohibited to his patients the use of the "deadly poisons and weakeners of both body and soul, … [Read more...] about Staying healthy in the 18th century
Teaching and learning has always been subjective
"It seems easier to far too many teachers to imagine that students do work the way machines do — that they can be scored according to objective metrics and neatly compared to one another. Schools, and the systems we’ve invented to support them, condition us to believe that there are always others (objective experts or even algorithms) who can know better than us the value of our own work. I’m struck by the number of institutions that for all intents and purposes equate teaching with grading — that assume our job as teachers is to merely separate the wheat from the chaff. And I find myself truly confused when anyone suggests to me that there is a way for us to do this kind of work … [Read more...] about Teaching and learning has always been subjective
Critical physiotherapy – best of the web update
Here are a few highlights from the web over the last couple of weeks that might be of interest. This Longform article Autobiography of a body tells a really powerful story of a young woman's struggle with sexuality and disability: "Grealy visited the Sex Maniacs’ Ball in London, an annual event hosted by the Outsiders, an organization that promotes sexual freedom for the disabled. There she discovered that her sexuality was “part of something I am, a state of being rather than a state of action. And that’s true whatever my body looks like from the outside.” This piece from The Washington Post, features Sam Tsemberis, a psychologist whose radical solution to the problem of … [Read more...] about Critical physiotherapy – best of the web update
Rethinking Rehabilitation book now in print and ebook
A few months ago I mentioned that a couple of people from the Critical Physiotherapy Network had collaborated on a project to bring together a book called Rethinking Rehabilitation. Well the book has been published and is available for order on line. The book began in 2012 as a collaborative project between Barbara Gibson, Associate Professor at University of Toronto and Bloorview Children’s Hospital Foundation Chair in Childhood Disability Studies, and Kath McPherson, Professor of Rehabilitation at AUT University in Auckland, New Zealand. The authors met in Toronto for a two-day symposium in July 2012 where everyone presented and discussed their proposed chapters. From that came the … [Read more...] about Rethinking Rehabilitation book now in print and ebook
Social determinants of health – are we doing enough?
Physiotherapists don't generally think our profession is 'political.' We mostly work on people's bodies, in one-to-one sessions, and few of us use our social standing as respected, orthodox health professionals to campaign for community causes. There are no physiotherapy-specific models of population health, and subjects like primary health care and health promotion are only just beginning to appear in undergraduate curricula. So while physiotherapists are experts in the assessing and treating the body-as-machine, and we are increasingly interested in people lived experiences of health and illness, we are less aware of the social determinants of health. Social determinants are those … [Read more...] about Social determinants of health – are we doing enough?