Pragmatic Knowledge Services

Peer reviewe

Conceptual change and science achievement related to a lesson sequence on acids and bases among african american alternative high school students\u27: ateacher\u27s practical arguments and the voice of the other

The study of teaching and learning during the period of translating ideals of reform into classroom practice enables us to understand student-teacher-researcher symbiotic learning. In line with this assumption, the purpose of this study is threefold:(1) observe effects of the Common Knowledge Construction Model (CKCM), a conceptual change inquiry model of teaching and learning, on African American students\u27 conceptual change and achievement; (2) observe the shift in teacher\u27s practical arguments; and (3) narrate the voice of the Other about teacher professional learning. This study uses retrospective data from a mixed-method approach consisting of Phenomenography, practical arguments and story-telling. Data sources include audio-recordings of a chemistry teacher\u27s individual interviews of her students\u27 prior- and post-intervention conceptions of acids and bases; results of Acid-Base Achievement Test (ABA-T); video-recordings of a chemistry teacher\u27s enactment of CKCM acid-base lesson sequence; audio-recordings of teacher-researcher reflective discourse using classroom video-clips; teacher interviews; and teacher and researcher personal reflective journals. Students\u27 conceptual changes reflect change in the number of categories of description; shift in language use from everyday talk to chemical talk; and development of a hierarchy of chemical knowledge. ABA-T results indicated 17 students in the experimental group achieved significantly higher scores than 22 students in the control group taught by traditional teaching methods. The teacher-researcher reflective discourse about enactment of the CKCM acid-base lesson sequence reveals three major shifts in teacher practical arguments: teacher inadequate preparedness to adequate preparedness; lack of confidence to gain in confidence; and surface learning to deep learning. The developing story uncovers several aspects about teaching and learning of African American students: teacher caring for the uncared; cultivating student and teacher confidence; converting dependence on teacher and self to peer interdependence. The study outlines six implications: caring conceptual change inquiry model for the often unreached mind; developing simple chemical talk into coherent chemical explanation; using CKCM for alternative high school students\u27 conceptual change and achievement; engaging teachers in elicitation and appraisal of practical arguments for reconstruction of beliefs; overcoming challenges in teacher practical argument research; and storytelling as a way of unpacking teacher transformation amidst complexities of classroom teaching and learning

Building Social Media Observatories for Monitoring Online Opinion Dynamics

Social media house a trove of relevant information for the study of online opinion dynamics. However, harvesting and analyzing the sheer overload of data that is produced by these media poses immense challenges to journalists, researchers, activists, policy makers, and concerned citizens. To mitigate this situation, this article discusses the creation of (social) media observatories: platforms that enable users to capture the complexities of social behavior, in particular the alignment and misalignment of opinions, through computational analyses of digital media data. The article positions the concept of "observatories" for social media monitoring among ongoing methodological developments in the computational social sciences and humanities and proceeds to discuss the technological innovations and design choices behind social media observatories currently under development for the study of opinions related to cultural and societal issues in European spaces. Notable attention is devoted to the construction of Penelope: an open, web-services-based infrastructure that allows different user groups to consult and contribute digital tools and observatories that suit their analytical needs. The potential and the limitations of this approach are discussed on the basis of a climate change opinion observatory that implements text analysis tools to study opinion dynamics concerning themes such as global warming. Throughout, the article explicitly acknowledges and addresses potential risks of the machine-guided and human-incentivized study of opinion dynamics. Concluding remarks are devoted to a synthesis of the ethical and epistemological implications of the exercise of positioning observatories in contemporary information spaces and to an examination of future pathways for the development of social media observatories

DOING THE WORK: USING QUESTIONS, TASKS, AND SOURCES TO NAVIGATE TEACHING CONTENTIOUS SOCIAL STUDIES IN SECONDARY CLASSROOMS

This explanatory case study examines how two secondary social studies teachers use inquiry-based learning to mitigate the risks of teaching contentious social studies in a charged classroom. Research questions included: 1. How do two in-service secondary teachers use inquiry-based instruction to navigate teaching contentious social studies during charged times? 2. What curricular and pedagogical choices were made by the in-service teachers to navigate risk when designing inquiry-based instruction that features contentious social studies during charged times? 3. What curricular and pedagogical choices were made by the in-service teachers to navigate risk when delivering inquiry-based instruction that features contentious social studies during charged times? Through interviews, observations, and artifacts, this study examined the teachers\u27 instructional choices as they taught units featuring American Reconstruction and Europe’s interwar years and the rise of Hitler. Data was analyzed using Swan et al.’s (2018) Questions, Tasks, and Sources [QTS] Observation Protocol and Pace’s (2021) Framework for Teaching Controversial Issues. The author identified three broad themes: curriculum control, ideological distancing, and community utilization. The teachers exerted significant control over their instruction, privileging safety over openness in how they designed and delivered their lessons. Additionally, when instructing on topics in which they held different views than the school’s community, they distanced themselves from the contentious issues they taught. Finally, the teachers’ engagement with the community and strong positive regard for their students facilitated greater and more effective risk-taking in their teaching practice. This work speaks to the impact of official curricula on teachers’ praxis when teachers and communities hold different views of topics as open or closed to deliberation

Democratizing Animal Biotechnology : Inquiry and Deliberation in Ethics and Governance

Cock Buning, Tj. de [Promotor]Broerse, J.E.W. [Copromotor

A critical study of communicative rationality in Habermas's public sphere

This interdisciplinary research examines the public sphere as a communicatively-constructed realm and challenges Habermas’s model of public sphere communication based on the “public use of reason”/communicative rationality. It questions the model’s counterfactual normativity and its emancipatory potential in revisiting core concepts such as reason, power and consensus, while also considering social complexity, the media and counterpublics. This research is theoretical but informed by the quest for empirical relevance. Using critical hermeneutic methods, the thesis critically reconstructs Habermas’s theories of the public sphere and of communicative rationality, as these were developed and revised throughout his works, in order to lay the foundations for second- and third-order critique. The main critics considered in revisiting Habermas’s public sphere model are: Niklas Luhmann (functionalism and social systems), Michel Foucault (historical materialism, theory of power and rejection of universal norms), Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib (critical feminism, identity politics), Thomas McCarthy (critique of rationalism and normativity), James Bohman (social complexity) and Colin Grant (post-systemic communication studies). Drawing on these, the thesis proposes a renewed public sphere model consisting of systems and emergent publics, while rethinking communicative reason and power in conditions of overcomplexity (Bohman). Lastly, it redefines normativity in an empirically plausible light, connected to emergent communication practices