Hospitals as a microcosm of global learning: spaces of learning and the geriatric

specialty

 Parvati Raghuram, Leroi Henry, Joanna Bornat

The Open UniversityESRC RES-062-23-0514

Spaces of Learning

• Spatial arrangements as the problem

• Spatial reconfiguration as part of the learning process

Our project

Two year ESRC funded project to undertake oral history interviews with working and retired geriatricians trained in South Asia in order to explore their experiences and contribution to the development of the care of older people in the UK.

http://www.open.ac.uk/hsc/research/research-projects/geriatric-medicine/home.php

Methods

60 oral history interviews with retired and serving geriatricians

• 32 Completed

Margot Jeffreys data set: 40 or so interviews with retired and serving geriatricians

Selection of informants

• Primarily recruited through British Geriatrics Society:– Invitation letters– Newsletter

• Personal contacts

• Searches of hospital and other websites

• Snowballing

Older people’s care – the spatial problem

• Spaces of older people’s care:

• Older people’s care and learning spaces

Spatial rearrangements as learning

• Rearranging space– Beds– Wards– Hospitals

• Creating learning spaces– Teaching– Institutionalising– Disseminating

Global microcosm

• Dissemination to new centres

• Postcolonial spatial relations and spaces of learning

Conclusions

• In discussing spaces for learning, neither these spaces nor the learning should be presumed. They are contingent.

• They draw on histories of previous arrangements, whether it be postcolonial relations that influenced who came to study medicine in the UK or what hospitals were deemed fit for teaching.

• Residual social and political relations can influence spaces of learning

• New spaces of learning can however emerge.

Conclusions (continued)

• The subject of learning and its content can itself be spatial so that learning can become defined as spatial rearrangements

• Certain spatial arrangements become institutionalised and the places where they are propagated become seen as centres of learning. Learning is defined as passing through these spaces.

• But these centres also become reified through people passing through them and spreading these new spatial practices to other places.

• In sum, neither spaces nor learning should be fixed. They both change together