Writing about Caring. Discourses, genres and remediation in elder care

Karlsson, Anna-Malin; Nikolaidou, Zoe

doi:10.1558/japl.v8i2.123

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…This is rather contradictory to the largely negative picture of older people's care and mistreatment, as outlined in prior research (e.g. Grainger, 1993;Grainger et al, 1990;Heinemann, 2009) and communicated by the Swedish media (Karlsson and Nikolaidou, 2011). An important outcome of our work is thus to highlight for the sake of caregiving staff how they in many respects could not do much better, and that the resources that they do draw upon -such as their attentiveness, gestures, prosody and whatever available verbal resources are required -are valuable, rather than a lack or disadvantage.…”

Section: Concluding Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care

2018

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In this article, we explore the organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care. The data that form the basis for the study cover care encounters involving three residents with a language background other than Swedish, totalling 13 hours and 14 minutes of video documentation. The empirical data consists of a collection of 134 instances where residents seek assistance with the realization of a practical action. For this article, three examples that involve the manipulation of an object have been selected for analysis. We use the concept of ‘recruitment’ to encompass the various methods by which assistance is sought in the care encounter. In the first example, the need for assistance concerns the transfer of an object that is recognizable and physically available for both participants. This, in combination with the resident’s gestural work that pinpoints the description of the action, facilitates its realization. In the second and third examples, the realization of the action becomes more difficult because the object involved is not recognizable for the caregiver. The article highlights the collaborative ways in which residents manage to support their talk through bodily practices, and the strong and empathetic engagement with which caregivers become involved in interpreting the meaning of these practices. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for care provision in multilingual circumstances.

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Section: Concluding Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care

2018

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“…Cuban's (2008) study of women migrant carers in Cumbria discusses documentation as unaccounted and therefore unpaid work that women carers are obliged to do while subordinating themselves and their work roles. In one of our earlier studies on carers' literacy practices in the eldercare sector (Karlsson & Nikolaidou, 2011;Nikolaidou & Karlsson, 2012), we showed that documentation of everyday practices goes through a filter of regulations regarding what is adequate and appropriate information and, more important, what is appropriate and bias-free language.…”

Section: Lean and New Public Managementmentioning

confidence: 89%

The Textualization of Problem Handling

Karlsson¹,

Nikolaidou

2016

Written Communication

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This article reports on research addressing the role of incident reporting at the workplace as a textual representation of lean management techniques. It draws on text and discourse analysis as well as on ethnographic data, including interviews, recorded interaction, and observations, from two projects on workplace literacy in Sweden: a study in an eldercare facility and a study in a large factory. Analysis of the data set demonstrates striking similarities, both in the way incident reporting texts are structured and worded and in the literacy practices that contextualize them. Dominant characteristics in the texts are the absence of actors and the structured, process-based approach of problems and problem handling. The forms often generate conflicts in the ways workers are asked to textually represent an incident. In this article, we argue that lean thinking has penetrated texts and literacy practices of two considerably different workplaces, and this has a large impact on the way workers are instructed to think and act with regard to problem handling techniques.

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“…Whereas doctors and nurses have often been the focus in educational research (e. g. Thomassen 2009), the training of care workers, who are at the bottom of the medical professions' hierarchy, has received far less attention (for work on this topic, see Cuban [2009]). Because care work has traditionally been closely connected to emotional labour and typically female domains, i. e. traits that women come by "naturally", education was not considered necessary (Cuban 2008; Karlsson and Nikolaidou 2011;Makoni and Grainger 2002). In Sweden, this situation has radically changed during the last decade (Törnquist 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“She didn’t expect to get a slap”: Modeling “proper” conduct among teachers and students in training classes for care workers in Sweden

Jansson

Majlesi

2020

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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The current study is carried out in an ethnically diverse three-semester vocational adult education programme in Sweden for those who aspire to register as assistant nurses. The data is based on field notes taken during participant observations and video-recordings of the classroom interaction in a course on dementia care in the autumn of 2014. In Sweden, care work is framed by the goals stated in The Swedish Social Services Act, which is to promote the elderly’s right to self-determination and independence. In the class in which this study was carried out, this policy informed the teaching of “good” communication practices. The aim of this article is to demonstrate how the strategies taught in school that embody this policy come into conflict with the seemingly unavoidable dilemmas experienced by trainee students on the work floor. We analyse two examples of teachers acting out hypothetical scenes for the purpose of modeling proper caregiver conduct in dealing with frail, powerless individuals with dementia. The students’ descriptions of their own conduct in managing challenging resident behaviour are thereby considered as accountable actions. The article brings into focus the complexity of the power relations and institutional asymmetries at play concerning the teaching situation in training classes for care workers.

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Writing about Caring. Discourses, genres and remediation in elder care

Cited by 7 publications

References 7 publications

The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care

The social organization of assistance in multilingual interaction in Swedish residential care

The Textualization of Problem Handling

“She didn’t expect to get a slap”: Modeling “proper” conduct among teachers and students in training classes for care workers in Sweden

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