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Using observations from a medical sociology course offered in two formats, we compare how undergraduate premedical students learned to see sociologically after (1) completing a one-semester course in which theory in medical sociology and fieldwork were taught concurrently or (2) completing a two-semester course in which theory in medical sociology and fieldwork were taught in successive semesters. We developed a taxonomy of stages to capture students' learning and measured their progress using video simulations that alternatively depicted scenarios in a more familiar setting (an academic hospital) and a less familiar one (a foreign cultural exchange). Students learned how to see in different ways: In the one-semester course, students came to see like medical sociologists, and in the two-semester course, students also came to see like sociologists more broadly. Educators interested in teaching students to "see more" outside of the health care realm may benefit from choosing the two-semester course option.

Ethnographers often study those who periodically meet to interact in multiple venues. This article focuses on how people who share and engage in tasks in recurrently visited venues define and change their social projects' problems and solutions. To address the complexities of this "meta-work," I introduce the concept of "tethers." Tethers are links across venues that people use to set and shift these problems and solutions that are continuously being contested. Drawing on examples from the author's fieldwork and other ethnographic accounts of professional work, I examine three types of tethers: focal participants, things, and language. Paying attention to tethers also results in practical implications for managing subjects' use of the ethnographer as a tether, making decisions about what venues to observe, and developing strategies for focusing one's observations when in those venues. I argue that a focus on subjects' use of tethers across venues helps mitigate the challenges ethnographers face when accounting for the influence of temporally and geographically distant sites of recurrent interaction.

I argue that the contemporary organization of professional work indicates the limits of answering typical questions about automation and technology in work to understand the practices of experts. Examining the case of automation in medicine, specifically Stereotaxis technology, I analyze a colligation of data on decisions about the uptake of this robotic technology among United States surgeons. I examine data including: procedure efficiency over time, the technology's affordances for the preservation of surgeons' bodily capital, changes in the profession's demographic profile, physician social networks, and clinical researchers' published assessments. The data suggest that automation of a central task can support and enhance the work of individual experts. They also show that using robotics does not improve efficiency. This case thus challenges the assumption that automation displaces work, at least in the case of professionals. And so, because Stereotaxis becomes more of a complement to surgeons' work as opposed to a substitute, this case points towards the importance of focusing attention less on job automation than on task automation. The case also highlights that users of the technology (physicians) value it differently than do purchasers (administrators). In addition, it identifies the differing considerations motivating their decisions to adopt or not adopt the technology. And in light of the finding that robotics use is more common among the rank-and-file than the elite, it may be that some professionals perceive automation to afford mobility opportunities. Based on these findings I propose new questions for scholarship on medicine, work, and automation, including those around "expert" versus "unskilled" labor, the body, and workplace divisions of labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates how physicians draw upon scientific and other forms of knowledge in different professional communities. We argue that because physicians will draw upon clinical research findings to improve their reputation with colleagues, and because the terms for accruing esteem in an academic hospital may differ depending on the dominant task structure of the organization, the form of knowledge that is valued by a physician will vary with his or her hospital's level of prestige. We use social network and multivariate analyses to test this theory in six U.S. hospitals with varying levels of prestige. We find that in lower-prestige hospitals, physicians can improve their reputation by reading a relatively broad range of scientific journals, whereas in higher-prestige hospitals, esteem is allocated to those with a more elite medical school pedigree. Statistically significant differences also exist between hospitals in terms of whether work with patients is valued, with physicians who engage in more clinical activity in the highest-ranked hospitals receiving less esteem from their colleagues. We finish by discussing how the functioning of higher- and lower-prestige hospitals is interconnected in ways that sustain both the development of innovations and their widespread adoption. (Contains 3 tables, 1 figure and 7 notes.)

The use of the Internet in the classroom has often been characterized as a practice that disconnects the teacher from traditional forms of externally imposed influence. This paper examines this assertion by mapping the emerging field of cybereducation and considering how endemic knowledge is contextualized by national curricular authorities. The field theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein are employed in order to demonstrate the relationship between expert discourse and classroom pedagogy, using the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) as a case study. This attempt to capture the dynamics of cybereducation ultimately suggests how this emergent intellectual field's fragmentation and decoupling from State education forces offers policymakers the capacity to influence use. Progress of the UK government in integrating knowledge from an emergent educational field with its incumbent priorities is gauged, demonstrating the way in which national education officials have attempted to constrain potential departures from unregulated, officially mandated curriculum.

Using observations from a medical sociology course offered in two formats, we compare how undergraduate premedical students learned to see sociologically after (1) completing a one-semester course in which theory in medical sociology and fieldwork were taught concurrently or (2) completing a two-semester course in which theory in medical sociology and fieldwork were taught in successive semesters. We developed a taxonomy of stages to capture students' learning and measured their progress using video simulations that alternatively depicted scenarios in a more familiar setting (an academic hospital) and a less familiar one (a foreign cultural exchange). Students learned how to see in different ways: In the one-semester course, students came to see like medical sociologists, and in the two-semester course, students also came to see like sociologists more broadly. Educators interested in teaching students to "see more" outside of the health care realm may benefit from choosing the two-semester course option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnographers often study those who periodically meet to interact in multiple venues. This article focuses on how people who share and engage in tasks in recurrently visited venues define and change their social projects' problems and solutions. To address the complexities of this "meta-work," I introduce the concept of "tethers." Tethers are links across venues that people use to set and shift these problems and solutions that are continuously being contested. Drawing on examples from the author's fieldwork and other ethnographic accounts of professional work, I examine three types of tethers: focal participants, things, and language. Paying attention to tethers also results in practical implications for managing subjects' use of the ethnographer as a tether, making decisions about what venues to observe, and developing strategies for focusing one's observations when in those venues. I argue that a focus on subjects' use of tethers across venues helps mitigate the challenges ethnographers face when accounting for the influence of temporally and geographically distant sites of recurrent interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]