5,050 research outputs found

    Creative pedagogies in digital STEAM practices: natural, technological and cultural entanglements for powerful learning and activism

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    This is the final version. Available on open access from Springer via the DOI in this recordThis paper delves deeply into the creative pedagogies which support cutting edge digital STEAM practice across primary and secondary school settings. It contextualises the research within current STEAM agendas including transdisciplinarity, and STEAM and technology and goes on to offer insight from the novel context of ocean learning to develop and extend a theorisation of creative pedagogies as entwining both creative teaching and teaching for creativity as embodied, democratic, dialogic and material processes. Intra-action between theory, praxis, nature, culture, the digital and humans enables an emergent perspective about changing the dynamics of power to develop ocean or environmental learning and related activism. Derived from research into an ocean education project, which aimed to develop students’ ocean literacy through the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies (Augmented and Virtual Realities), the research draws on data from six projects across primary and secondary school settings in Denmark, Spain and England. It used a ‘diffractive’ analytic technique, inspired by new materialist theory, to explore the messy mixtures of natural, cultural and technological environments that were being learned through. This involved the development of four material-dialogic assemblages each including diffractive switches. Each is presented first through a ‘piece’ which demonstrates each assemblage’s connection to the core question, followed by ‘ripples’, which briefly articulate the new learning and questions arising from that assemblage. The four assemblages cover the irresistibility of making kin, the relationships between lively bodies and virtual environments, the importance of spacetimematter in environmental edu-activism and trajectories between transience, stability and dialogic space. The paper leaves the reader/engager with a selection of prompts to highlight the research’s contribution to current STEAM agendas related to changing power dynamics, and to provoke reader/engagers’ own practices. These can include new pedagogies and activisms, as well as theoretical developments to the combined educative principles of creative pedagogies and digital technologies within STEAM education.Erasmus

    Non-Market Food Practices Do Things Markets Cannot: Why Vermonters Produce and Distribute Food That\u27s Not For Sale

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    Researchers tend to portray food self-provisioning in high-income societies as a coping mechanism for the poor or a hobby for the well-off. They describe food charity as a regrettable band-aid. Vegetable gardens and neighborly sharing are considered remnants of precapitalist tradition. These are non-market food practices: producing food that is not for sale and distributing food in ways other than selling it. Recent scholarship challenges those standard understandings by showing (i) that non-market food practices remain prevalent in high-income countries, (ii) that people in diverse social groups engage in these practices, and (iii) that they articulate diverse reasons for doing so. In this dissertation, I investigate the persistent pervasiveness of non-market food practices in Vermont. To go beyond explanations that rely on individual motivation, I examine the roles these practices play in society. First, I investigate the prevalence of non-market food practices. Several surveys with large, representative samples reveal that more than half of Vermont households grow, hunt, fish, or gather some of their own food. Respondents estimate that they acquire 14% of the food they consume through non-market means, on average. For reference, commercial local food makes up about the same portion of total consumption. Then, drawing on the words of 94 non-market food practitioners I interviewed, I demonstrate that these practices serve functions that markets cannot. Interviewees attested that non-market distribution is special because it feeds the hungry, strengthens relationships, builds resilience, puts edible-but-unsellable food to use, and aligns with a desired future in which food is not for sale. Hunters, fishers, foragers, scavengers, and homesteaders said that these activities contribute to their long-run food security as a skills-based safety net. Self-provisioning allows them to eat from the landscape despite disruptions to their ability to access market food such as job loss, supply chain problems, or a global pandemic. Additional evidence from vegetable growers suggests that non-market settings liberate production from financial discipline, making space for work that is meaningful, playful, educational, and therapeutic. Non-market food practices mend holes in the social fabric torn by the commodification of everyday life. Finally, I synthesize scholarly critiques of markets as institutions for organizing the production and distribution of food. Markets send food toward money rather than hunger. Producing for market compels farmers to prioritize financial viability over other values such as stewardship. Historically, people rarely if ever sell each other food until external authorities coerce them to do so through taxation, indebtedness, cutting off access to the means of subsistence, or extinguishing non-market institutions. Today, more humans than ever suffer from chronic undernourishment even as the scale of commercial agriculture pushes environmental pressures past critical thresholds of planetary sustainability. This research substantiates that alternatives to markets exist and have the potential to address their shortcomings

    UMSL Bulletin 2023-2024

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    The 2023-2024 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1088/thumbnail.jp

    Multidisciplinary perspectives on Artificial Intelligence and the law

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    This open access book presents an interdisciplinary, multi-authored, edited collection of chapters on Artificial Intelligence (‘AI’) and the Law. AI technology has come to play a central role in the modern data economy. Through a combination of increased computing power, the growing availability of data and the advancement of algorithms, AI has now become an umbrella term for some of the most transformational technological breakthroughs of this age. The importance of AI stems from both the opportunities that it offers and the challenges that it entails. While AI applications hold the promise of economic growth and efficiency gains, they also create significant risks and uncertainty. The potential and perils of AI have thus come to dominate modern discussions of technology and ethics – and although AI was initially allowed to largely develop without guidelines or rules, few would deny that the law is set to play a fundamental role in shaping the future of AI. As the debate over AI is far from over, the need for rigorous analysis has never been greater. This book thus brings together contributors from different fields and backgrounds to explore how the law might provide answers to some of the most pressing questions raised by AI. An outcome of the Católica Research Centre for the Future of Law and its interdisciplinary working group on Law and Artificial Intelligence, it includes contributions by leading scholars in the fields of technology, ethics and the law.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Conversations on Empathy

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    In the aftermath of a global pandemic, amidst new and ongoing wars, genocide, inequality, and staggering ecological collapse, some in the public and political arena have argued that we are in desperate need of greater empathy — be this with our neighbours, refugees, war victims, the vulnerable or disappearing animal and plant species. This interdisciplinary volume asks the crucial questions: How does a better understanding of empathy contribute, if at all, to our understanding of others? How is it implicated in the ways we perceive, understand and constitute others as subjects? Conversations on Empathy examines how empathy might be enacted and experienced either as a way to highlight forms of otherness or, instead, to overcome what might otherwise appear to be irreducible differences. It explores the ways in which empathy enables us to understand, imagine and create sameness and otherness in our everyday intersubjective encounters focusing on a varied range of "radical others" – others who are perceived as being dramatically different from oneself. With a focus on the importance of empathy to understand difference, the book contends that the role of empathy is critical, now more than ever, for thinking about local and global challenges of interconnectedness, care and justice

    UMSL Bulletin 2022-2023

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    The 2022-2023 Bulletin and Course Catalog for the University of Missouri St. Louis.https://irl.umsl.edu/bulletin/1087/thumbnail.jp

    Posthuman Creative Styling can a creative writer’s style of writing be described as procedural?

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    This thesis is about creative styling — the styling a creative writer might use to make their writing unique. It addresses the question as to whether such styling can be described as procedural. Creative styling is part of the technique a creative writer uses when writing. It is how they make the text more ‘lively’ by use of tips and tricks they have either learned or discovered. In essence these are rules, ones the writer accrues over time by their practice. The thesis argues that the use and invention of these rules can be set as procedures. and so describe creative styling as procedural. The thesis follows from questioning why it is that machines or algorithms have, so far, been incapable of producing creative writing which has value. Machine-written novels do not abound on the bookshelves and writing styled by computers is, on the whole, dull in comparison to human-crafted literature. It came about by thinking how it would be possible to reach a point where writing by people and procedural writing are considered to have equal value. For this reason the thesis is set in a posthuman context, where the differences between machines and people are erased. The thesis uses practice to inform an original conceptual space model, based on quality dimensions and dynamic-inter operation of spaces. This model gives an example of the procedures which a posthuman creative writer uses when engaged in creative styling. It suggests an original formulation for the conceptual blending of conceptual spaces, based on the casting of qualities from one space to another. In support of and informing its arguments are ninety-nine examples of creative writing practice which show the procedures by which style has been applied, created and assessed. It provides a route forward for further joint research into both computational and human-coded creative writing

    Mapping the Focal Points of WordPress: A Software and Critical Code Analysis

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    Programming languages or code can be examined through numerous analytical lenses. This project is a critical analysis of WordPress, a prevalent web content management system, applying four modes of inquiry. The project draws on theoretical perspectives and areas of study in media, software, platforms, code, language, and power structures. The applied research is based on Critical Code Studies, an interdisciplinary field of study that holds the potential as a theoretical lens and methodological toolkit to understand computational code beyond its function. The project begins with a critical code analysis of WordPress, examining its origins and source code and mapping selected vulnerabilities. An examination of the influence of digital and computational thinking follows this. The work also explores the intersection of code patching and vulnerability management and how code shapes our sense of control, trust, and empathy, ultimately arguing that a rhetorical-cultural lens can be used to better understand code\u27s controlling influence. Recurring themes throughout these analyses and observations are the connections to power and vulnerability in WordPress\u27 code and how cultural, processual, rhetorical, and ethical implications can be expressed through its code, creating a particular worldview. Code\u27s emergent properties help illustrate how human values and practices (e.g., empathy, aesthetics, language, and trust) become encoded in software design and how people perceive the software through its worldview. These connected analyses reveal cultural, processual, and vulnerability focal points and the influence these entanglements have concerning WordPress as code, software, and platform. WordPress is a complex sociotechnical platform worthy of further study, as is the interdisciplinary merging of theoretical perspectives and disciplines to critically examine code. Ultimately, this project helps further enrich the field by introducing focal points in code, examining sociocultural phenomena within the code, and offering techniques to apply critical code methods

    Investigating the learning potential of the Second Quantum Revolution: development of an approach for secondary school students

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    In recent years we have witnessed important changes: the Second Quantum Revolution is in the spotlight of many countries, and it is creating a new generation of technologies. To unlock the potential of the Second Quantum Revolution, several countries have launched strategic plans and research programs that finance and set the pace of research and development of these new technologies (like the Quantum Flagship, the National Quantum Initiative Act and so on). The increasing pace of technological changes is also challenging science education and institutional systems, requiring them to help to prepare new generations of experts. This work is placed within physics education research and contributes to the challenge by developing an approach and a course about the Second Quantum Revolution. The aims are to promote quantum literacy and, in particular, to value from a cultural and educational perspective the Second Revolution. The dissertation is articulated in two parts. In the first, we unpack the Second Quantum Revolution from a cultural perspective and shed light on the main revolutionary aspects that are elevated to the rank of principles implemented in the design of a course for secondary school students, prospective and in-service teachers. The design process and the educational reconstruction of the activities are presented as well as the results of a pilot study conducted to investigate the impact of the approach on students' understanding and to gather feedback to refine and improve the instructional materials. The second part consists of the exploration of the Second Quantum Revolution as a context to introduce some basic concepts of quantum physics. We present the results of an implementation with secondary school students to investigate if and to what extent external representations could play any role to promote students’ understanding and acceptance of quantum physics as a personal reliable description of the world

    Animal liberation? : the history, contemporary network, and impact of animal rights activism in Europe

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    Defence date: 14 May 2019Examining Board: Professor Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore (Supervisor); Professor Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute; Professor James Jasper, CUNY Graduate Center; Professor Clare Saunders, University of ExeterThis dissertation studies the history, contemporary network, and impact of the animal rights movement in Europe—a region that is often regarded as particularly progressive in matters of animal welfare. Each chapter connects to important debates in social movement studies. The first chapter analyzes the origins of animal advocacy in the 19th century by ‘bringing political economy in’. Such a perspective provides important insights for understanding a case of activism that has been typically regarded as primarily driven by ‘morals.’ In the second chapter I explore the network of the contemporary animal rights movement. Using an innovative methodological approach, I collect relational data on ‘SMO populations’ and trace the patterns of connections between more than 1500 organizations and groups. The remaining chapters focus on the impact of the movement. The third chapter studies the most public recent instance of animal rights activism in Europe: The Stop Vivisection European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) against animal experimentation. It shows how the ‘opportunity structure’ of the ECI benefits activists of populous member states instead of incentivizing Europe-wide campaigns. I also discuss the multiple consequences of Stop Vivisection beyond the failure to achieve policy change. The fourth chapter studies a largely non-public approach in the political conflict over animal experimentation: the push for the development of ‘alternatives,’ underling that new technologies are a neglected, and contested, outcome of activism. The fifth chapter analyzes the limited gains of activists in the regulation of egg production and animal experimentation more generally. Despite widespread praise for two major EU directives, this chapter argues that gains for animals have remained modest—and that issue-specific contextual factors matter for future developments. Overall, while the actions of the vibrant animal rights movement in Europe have produced a variety of consequences, gains for animals have so far been limited.Chapter 4 'New Technologies as a Neglected Outcome of Social Movement Activism: Providing ‘Alternatives’ to End Animal Experimentation?' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'New technologies as a neglected social movement outcome : the case of activism against animal experimentation' (2018) in the journal 'Sociological perspectives
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