Discourse Analysis: varieties and methods

This paper presents and analyses six key approaches to discourse analysis, including political discourse theory, rhetorical political analysis, the discourse historical approach in critical discourse analysis, interpretive policy analysis, discursive psychology and Q methodology. It highlights differences and similarities between the approaches along three distinctive dimensions, namely, ontology, focus and purpose. Our analysis reveals the difficulty of arriving at a fundamental matrix of dimensions which would satisfactorily allow one to organize all approaches in a coherent theoretical framework. However, it does not preclude various theoretical articulations between the different approaches, provided one takes a problem-driven approach to social science as one?s starting-point

Inclusive research and inclusive education: why connecting them makes sense for teachers’ and learners’ democratic development of education

Following pushes from the disability movement(s) and increased interest in children and young people becoming involved in research concerning them, inclusive research is growing within and beyond education establishments. Yet this arena is alive with interesting and largely unanswered questions. This paper discusses some of them: What do inclusive research and inclusive education have in common? Where have the moves towards inclusive (participatory and emancipatory) research happened and why? How viable are the claims to the moral superiority of inclusive research? What kinds and quality of knowledge does inclusive research produce? Finally the question is addressed of what all this means for inclusive education, arguing that inclusive research has under-explored potential to reinvigorate inclusive education and provide new connections to democracy and social justice in education

Critical Realism and Empirical Research Methods in Education

In the light of recent writings of Richard Pring, and in relation to the application of empirical research methods in education, this paper offers a corrective to a neo-realist viewpoint and develops a critical realist perspective. The argument is made that the deployment of empirical research methods needs to be underpinned by a meta-theory embracing epistemological and ontological elements; that this meta-theory does not commit one to the view that absolute knowledge of the social world is possible; and that critical realism is the most appropriate meta-theory to underpin the use of empirical research methods. Further to this, unhelpful dualisms between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and between structure and agency, are discussed in relation to neo-realist and critical realist perspectives

The effect of education and training on competency

This paper analyses the concept of competence and the important effect of education and training on the individual competence, hence the organizational competence. The purpose of this paper is first to describe the development of competence and define it; second, to study comparatively two different cases on the effect of education and training on competency. The paper addresses whether education and training has an effect on individuals’ competency and therefore on organisational competency. The literature review reveals two cases that studied the effect of education and training on competency. One case shows that there is an effect on competency, but the other case shows that there is no effect. The research methodology used in this paper is a comparative study. The comparative analysis method is used to investigate and analyse critically both cases through a comparative frame work in order to better understand the two different results. This comparative analysis reveals that there is indeed a positive relationship between education and training on competency despite the different result of the two different cases. The implication of the study is that education and training has to be properly implemented for there to be an effect on competence

Supplementary skills guides for built environment researchers

Deepening specialised knowledge-base and wider skills of researchers in a wider variety of disciplines are prerequisite for developing successful leadership in higher education, the public sector and industry. In response to this repeated calls for enhancing supplementary skills of the built environment researchers, TG53 (Postgraduate Research Training in Building and Construction) initiated steps to develop and nurture understanding of supplementary skills and providing a common frame of reference for use and further discourse and has developed 6 good practice examples highlighting skills for researchers within the built environment. Accordingly, this TG53 publication is in response to the repeated calls for enhancing supplementary skills of the built environment researchers

Imaginative Value Sensitive Design: How Moral Imagination Exceeds Moral Law Theories in Informing Responsible Innovation

Safe-by-Design (SBD) frameworks for the development of emerging technologies have become an ever more popular means by which scholars argue that transformative emerging technologies can safely incorporate human values. One such popular SBD methodology is called Value Sensitive Design (VSD). A central tenet of this design methodology is to investigate stakeholder values and design those values into technologies during early stage research and development (R&D). To accomplish this, the VSD framework mandates that designers consult the philosophical and ethical literature to best determine how to weigh moral trade-offs. However, the VSD framework also concedes the universalism of moral values, particularly the values of freedom, autonomy, equality trust and privacy justice. This paper argues that the VSD methodology, particularly applied to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies, has an insufficient grounding for the determination of moral values. As such, an exploration of the value-investigations of VSD are deconstructed to illustrate both its strengths and weaknesses. This paper also provides possible modalities for the strengthening of the VSD methodology, particularly through the application of moral imagination and how moral imagination exceed the boundaries of moral intuitions in the development of novel technologies

The moral psychology of Value Sensitive Design: the methodological issues of moral intuitions for responsible innovation

This paper argues that although moral intuitions are insufficient for making judgments on new technological innovations, they maintain great utility for informing responsible innovation. To do this, this paper employs the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology as an illustrative example of how stakeholder values can be better distilled to inform responsible innovation. Further, it is argued that moral intuitions are necessary for determining stakeholder values required for the design of responsible technologies. This argument is supported by the claim that the moral intuitions of stakeholders allow designers to conceptualize stakeholder values and incorporate them into the early phases of design. It is concluded that design-for-values (DFV) frameworks like the VSD methodology can remain potent if developers adopt heuristic tools to diminish the influence of cognitive biases thus strengthening the reliability of moral intuitions

Themes, iteration and recoverability in action research

This paper develops three concepts important to the practice of action research recoverability, research themes, and iteration by highlighting their applicability beyond single action research studies. The concepts are discussed against a program of action research, undertaken by a multidisciplinary research team, with a research focus on local, sector and national evels. This contrasts with the more usual pattern of action research in single situations. Action research is criticized on the grounds that it lacks generalizability and external validity from one-off studies. Goodness criteria have been derived to address these and other criticisms. The recoverability criterion, less strong than the repeatability of experimentation, is central to these. A second concept, that of research themes, links the recoverability criterion and iteration in action research. Iteration within and between projects and the notion of critical mass, of doing work in more than one setting, address the limitations of single setting studies

Helping Business Schools Engage with Real Problems: The Contribution of Critical Realism and Systems Thinking

The world faces major problems, not least climate change and the financial crisis, and business schools have been criticised for their failure to help address these issues and, in the case of the financial meltdown, for being causally implicated in it. In this paper we begin by describing the extent of what has been called the rigour/relevance debate. We then diagnose the nature of the problem in terms of historical, structural and contextual mechanisms that initiated and now sustain an inability of business schools to engage with real-world issues. We then propose a combination of measures, which mutually reinforce each other, that are necessary to break into this vicious circle – critical realism as an underpinning philosophy that supports and embodies the next points; holism and transdisciplinarity; multimethodology (mixed-methods research); and a critical and ethical-committed stance. OR and management science have much to contribute in terms of both powerful analytical methods and problem structuring methods