The role of philosophical context in the development of theory: Towards methodological pluralism

The research strategy dictates the major direction of the research and constitutes one of the important decisions made by the researcher. However, researchers’ understanding on theory at the outset of the research guides the design of the research. The paper presents an overview of the involvement of theory within different research philosophies, approaches and methods. The relationship between data and theory is an issue that has been long debated. Moving from data to theory is commonly discussed in social constructionism with inductive approach and ideographic methods. However, within positivism philosophy with deductive approach and nomothetic methods, moving from theory to data is common. However, the growing concept of philosophical pluralism and methodological pluralism challenges the polarised views on philosophies and approaches, which suggests that methodologies are best used in complementary way

The role of philosophical context in the development of research methodology and theory

The research strategy dictates the major direction of the research and constitutes one of the important decisions made by the researcher. However, researchers’ understanding on theory at the outset of the research guides the design of the research. The paper presents an overview of the involvement of theory within different research philosophies, approaches and methods. The relationship between data and theory is an issue that has been long debated. Moving from data to theory is commonly discussed in social constructionism with inductive approach and ideographic methods. However, within positivism philosophy with deductive approach and nomothetic methods, moving from theory to data is common. However, the growing concept of philosophical pluralism and methodological pluralism challenges the polarised views on philosophies and approaches, which suggests that methodologies are best used in complementary way. Keywords – Research Philosophy, Research Methods, Induction, Deduction, Theory, Pluralis

The role of philosophical context in the development of theory: Towards methodological pluralism

The research strategy dictates the major direction of the research and constitutes one of the important decisions made by the researcher. However, researchers? understanding on theory at the outset of the research guides the design of the research. The paper presents an overview of the involvement of theory within different research philosophies, approaches and methods. The relationship between data and theory is an issue that has been long debated. Moving from data to theory is commonly discussed in social constructionism with inductive approach and ideographic methods. However, within positivism philosophy with deductive approach and nomothetic methods, moving from theory to data is common. However, the growing concept of philosophical pluralism and methodological pluralism challenges the polarised views on philosophies and approaches, which suggests that methodologies are best used in complementary way

Value’s of Mathematics Education and Citizenship Education

Currently, the Indonesian plane of life is miserable, inparticular on behavior. It is shown by the mushrooming acts of corruption, bribery, anarchy, public deceiving, traffic incompliance, etc. This mean any problem in nation character. The nation character building is the duty of citizenship education. The mission of citizenship education in Indonesian is develop or build the nation character as the instructional effects and nurturant effects. Whereas, another courses include mathematics course have to develop the nation characters through the nurturent effect of the instructional. This paper discussed about the relationship between values of mathematics education and characters contained in Citizenship Education. Key word: value, character, mathematics, citizenshi

Language Acquisition: Seeing through Wittgenstein

This paper aims to exemplify the language acquisition model by tracing back to the Socratic model of language learning procedure that sets down inborn knowledge, a kind of implicit knowledge that becomes explicit in our language. Jotting down the claims in Meno, Plato triggers a representationalist outline basing on the deductive reasoning, where the conclusion follows from the premises (inborn knowledge) rather than experience. This revolution comes from the pen of Noam Chomsky, who amends the empiricist position on the creativity of language by pinning down it with the innateness hypothesis. However, Chomsky never rejects the external world or the linguistic stipulation that relies on the objective reality. Wittgenstein’s model of language acquisition upholds a liaison centric appeal that stands between experience (use theory of meaning) and mentalism (mind based inner experiences). Wittgenstein’s Tractatus never demarcates the definite mental processes that entangle with the method of understanding and meaning. Wittgenstein’s ‘language game’ takes care of the model of language acquisition in a paradigmatic way. The way portrait language as the form of life and the process of language acquisition is nothing but a language game that relies on the activity of men

Sciduction: Combining Induction, Deduction, and Structure for Verification and Synthesis

Even with impressive advances in automated formal methods, certain problems in system verification and synthesis remain challenging. Examples include the verification of quantitative properties of software involving constraints on timing and energy consumption, and the automatic synthesis of systems from specifications. The major challenges include environment modeling, incompleteness in specifications, and the complexity of underlying decision problems. This position paper proposes sciduction, an approach to tackle these challenges by integrating inductive inference, deductive reasoning, and structure hypotheses. Deductive reasoning, which leads from general rules or concepts to conclusions about specific problem instances, includes techniques such as logical inference and constraint solving. Inductive inference, which generalizes from specific instances to yield a concept, includes algorithmic learning from examples. Structure hypotheses are used to define the class of artifacts, such as invariants or program fragments, generated during verification or synthesis. Sciduction constrains inductive and deductive reasoning using structure hypotheses, and actively combines inductive and deductive reasoning: for instance, deductive techniques generate examples for learning, and inductive reasoning is used to guide the deductive engines. We illustrate this approach with three applications: (i) timing analysis of software; (ii) synthesis of loop-free programs, and (iii) controller synthesis for hybrid systems. Some future applications are also discussed

The Process of Thinking by Prospective Teachers of Mathematics in Making Arguments

This study aimed to describe the process of thinking by prospective teachers of mathematics in making arguments. It was a qualitative research involving the mathematics students of STKIP PGRI Jombang as the subject of the study. Test and task-based semi structural interview were conducted for data collection. The result showed that 163 of 260 mathematics students argued using inductive and deductive warrants. The process of thinking by the prospective teachers of mathematics in making arguments had begun since they constructed their very first idea by figuring out some objects to make a conclusion. However, they also found a rebuttal from that conclusion, though they did not further describe what such rebuttal was. Therefore, they decided to construct the second ideas in order to verify the first ones through some pieces of definition

Intelligent customer relationship management (ICRM) by EFLOW portal

Customer relationship management (CRM) has become a strategic initiative aimed at getting, growing, and retaining the right customers. A great amount of numeric data and even more soft information are available about customers. The strategy of building and maintaining customer relations can be described with 'if… then' rules acquired from experts. Doctus Knowledge-Based System provides a new and simplified approach in the field of knowledge management. It is able to cope with tacit and implicit rules at the same time, so decision makers can clearly see the satisfactory solution (then and there). It reasons both deductive and inductive, so it enables the user to check on the model graph why is the chosen solution in the given situation most appropriate. It is upgradeable with in telligent portal, which presents the personalized (body-tailored) information for decision makers. When we need some hard data from a database or a data warehouse, we have automatic connection between case input interface and the database. Doctus recognizes the relations between the data, it selects them and provides only the needed rules to the decision maker. Intelligent portal puts our experience on the web, so our knowledge base is constantly improving with new 'if… then' rules. We support decision mak ing with two interfaces. On the Developer Interface the attributes, the values and the 'if… then' rules can be modified. The intelligent portal is used as a managerial decision support tool. This interface can be used without seeing the knowledge base, we only see the personalized soft information. ICRM (intelligent Customer Relationship Management) helps customer to get the requested information quickly. It is also capable of customizing the questionnaires, so the customer doesn't have to answer irrelevant questions and the decision maker doesn't have to read endless reports

Design thinking support: information systems versus reasoning

Numerous attempts have been made to conceive and implement appropriate information systems to support architectural designers in their creative design thinking processes. These information systems aim at providing support in very diverse ways: enabling designers to make diverse kinds of visual representations of a design, enabling them to make complex calculations and simulations which take into account numerous relevant parameters in the design context, providing them with loads of information and knowledge from all over the world, and so forth. Notwithstanding the continued efforts to develop these information systems, they still fail to provide essential support in the core creative activities of architectural designers. In order to understand why an appropriately effective support from information systems is so hard to realize, we started to look into the nature of design thinking and on how reasoning processes are at play in this design thinking. This investigation suggests that creative designing rests on a cyclic combination of abductive, deductive and inductive reasoning processes. Because traditional information systems typically target only one of these reasoning processes at a time, this could explain the limited applicability and usefulness of these systems. As research in information technology is increasingly targeting the combination of these reasoning modes, improvements may be within reach for design thinking support by information systems

Learning to prove: enculturation or…?

Empirical evidence coming from a curriculum innovation experience that we have been implementing in the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Colombia), in a plane geometry course for secondary mathematics pre-service teachers, allows us to affirm that learning to prove, more than enculturation into mathematicians’ practices, is participation in proving activity within the community of mathematical discourse