The Confluence of Intersubjectivity and Dialogue in Postmodern Organizational Workgroups

Nascent revival of dialogue is struggling to reach its potential within the postmodern organizational milieu. Concurrently, interpersonal intersubjectivity has steadily been de-pathologized, via reassessments of countertransference in the psychoanalytic sphere, allowing exploration of its utility in other domains of relational process. Effective use of dialogue is critical and foundational to developing meaningful and sustainable enterprise in the immediate future. Despite the risks, intentionally explored intersubjectivity is a powerful tool to enrich the container of dialogue. This paper qualitatively explores the literature on intersubjectivity and dialogue with an hermeneutic approach to discern the implications of their convergence for collaborative workgroups in emergent enterprise

Social Perspective Taking

The current mindset of the Army is that it must be able to win our Nation’s wars while at the same time ready to assist in stability operations (U.S. Department of the Army, 2008). A challenge is that Soldiers often have to bridge large cultural gaps and may lack the language skills to effectively engage with the host of individuals now present in these operations including the local populace, host nation security forces, coalition partners and other foreign governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Perspective taking – described more formally as “Social Perspective Taking” (SPT) – is an interpersonal technique which may address these challenges. SPT is a skill often learned throughout life but may be very difficult in cross-cultural interactions. This report describes the results of a literature review and SME and Soldier interviews regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to develop SPT and the methods used to train SPT. Based on this information a four module curriculum is proposed which utilizes a four-step method for the development of SPT. The curriculum trains Soldiers how to accurately consider the host-national’s perspective without cultural bias and erroneous assumptions and allows Soldiers to meet host-national goals while accomplishing U.S. missions and objectives

Development of a Concept for Assessing Shared Understanding by Means of Vision Videos in Requirements Engineering Based on a Systematic Literature Review

Ein essentieller Aspekt für ein erfolgreiches Softwareprojekt ist das Erzeugen eines gemeinsamen Verständnisses zwischen den Stakeholdern und den Entwicklern. Dieses gemeinsame Verständnis ist eine Voraussetzung für die erfolgreiche Kommunikation der Anforderungen, die an das zu entwickelnde System gestellt werden. In der Literatur existieren hierfür bereits diverse Ansätze die beschreiben, mit welchen Methoden ein gemeinsames Verständnis erzeugt werden kann. Einige dieser Ansätze sehen dabei die Nutzung von Videos vor, da durch die visuelle Darstellung der Anforderungen an das System mögliche Sprachbarrieren umgangen werden, die sonst bei einer traditionellen textuellen Kommunikation zu Problemen führen können. Die Darstellung von visionären Nutzungsszenarien eines Systems in sogenannten Vision Videos stellt dabei eine mögliche Umsetzung dieses Ansatzes dar. In diesem Zusammenhang existieren zwar einige Publikationen die zeigen, dass durch Vision Videos ein gemeinsames Verständnis erzeugt werden kann, jedoch gibt es noch keinen Ansatz, in dem eine allgemeingültige Methode zur Beurteilung oder Messung von gemeinsamen Verständnis definiert wird. Aus diesem Grund wird innerhalb dieser Arbeit nach Methoden, Metriken und Heuristiken gesucht, mit denen gemeinsames Verständnis gemessen beziehungsweise beurteilt werden kann, das auf Basis von Vision Videos erzeugt wurde. Zu diesem Zweck wird eine systematische Literatursuche durchgeführt, um geeignete Methoden, Metriken und Heuristiken in der Literatur zu identifizieren. Die identifizierten Methoden, Metriken und Heuristiken werden anschließend in den Kontext von Vision Videos übertragen, um sie für diese Arbeit nutzbar zu machen. Zuletzt liefert diese Arbeit ein Experimentdesign, in dem konkrete Ansatzpunkte für die Nutzung der Methoden, Metriken und Heuristiken zur Messung und Beurteilung von gemeinsamen Verständnis beschrieben werden.An essential aspect for a successful software project is the creation of a shared understanding between stakeholders and developers. This shared understanding is a prerequisite for the successful communication of the requirements that are posed to the system to be developed. There are many approaches in literature that describe methods with which it is possible to create a shared understanding. Some of those approaches intend to use videos, since their visual representation of the requirements of the system can bypass language barriers that would pose problems for traditional textual communication. The representation of visionary scenarios of use of a system in so called vision videos presents a possible implementation of this approach. While there are some publications in this context that show that vision videos can create shared understanding, there are no approaches that define methods for the assessment or measurement of shared understanding. For that reason, within this work methods, metrics and heuristics are sought which can assess or measure shared understanding that was created via vision videos. For this purpose, a systematic literature review is conducted to identify fitting methods, metrics and heuristics. Furthermore, these methods, metrics and heuristics are transferred into the context of vision videos to make them usable for this work. Finally, this work presents an experiment design which describes concrete approaches for the use of the methods, metrics and heuristics to measure and assess shared understanding

Coordinating in dialogue: Using compound contributions to join a party

PhDCompound contributions (CCs) – dialogue contributions that continue or complete an earlier contribution – are an important and common device conversational participants use to extend their own and each other’s turns. The organisation of these cross-turn structures is one of the defining characteristics of natural dialogue, and cross-person CCs provide the paradigm case of coordination in dialogue. This thesis combines corpus analysis, experiments and theoretical modelling to explore how CCs are used, their effects on coordination and implications for dialogue models. The syntactic and pragmatic distribution of CCs is mapped using corpora of ordinary and task-oriented dialogues. This indicates that the principal factors conditioning the distribution of CCs are pragmatic and that same- and cross-person CCs tend to occur in different contexts. In order to test the impact of CCs on other conversational participants, two experiments are presented. These systematically manipulate, for the first time, the occurrence of CCs in live dialogue using text-based communication. The results suggest that syntax does not directly constrain the interpretation of CCs, and the primary effect of a cross-person CC on third parties is to suggest to them a strong form of coordination or coalition has formed between the people producing the two parts of the CC. A third experiment explores the conditions under which people will produce a completion for a truncated turn. Manipulations of the structural and contextual predictability of the truncated turn show that while syntax provides a resource for the construction of a CC it does not place significant constraints on where the split point may occur. It also shows that people are more likely to produce continuations when they share common ground. An analysis using the Dynamic Syntax framework is proposed, which extends previous work to account for these findings, and limitations and further research possibilities are outlined

Travel writers, tourist writers, migrant writers: a sociological qualitative and quantitative analysis of factual literature on contemporary Portugal and Spain

Com base num corpus de nove obras de não-ficção sobre os países da Península Ibérica, é realizada uma análise sistemática das representações que essas obras transmitem, comparando-as com resultados da literatura das ciências sociais sobre esses países. As características estruturais dos textos associadas à produção e apresentação de tais representações também são consideradas. O ponto de partida para estas duas tarefas é uma definição de imagem do social, juntamente com o conceito de leitor de senso comum, visto que um dos objetivos é considerar representações tal como surgem ao público. As imagens são quantificados em termos da sua densidade, grau de generalidade, formas de conhecimento e fontes de conhecimento, bem como quanto aos temas que consubstanciam e às dualidades sociedade tradicional / sociedade moderna e diferença / semelhança fundamental da alteridade (sendo a quantificação considerada necessária para evitar o problema da quantificação implícita identificado nos estudos sobre literatura de viagens produzidos pelas Humanidades). Tais dados alimentam uma análise individual e comparativa de cada obra, complementada por dados qualitativos. Os padrões identificados – preconceito estrutural, tipos de autenticidade, apresent(ific)ação do passado e esteticização do social – são relacionados com uma tipologia de escritores (viajantes, turistas e emigrantes) elaborada com base nos estudos sobre literatura de viagens e turismo, bem como atendendo às circunstâncias materiais e epistemológicas do contacto dos autores com a alteridade. Algumas das associações – assim como a respetiva ausência – servem de base a uma discussão de possibilidades de causalidade (por exemplo, com base nas origens dos autores) e destacam possíveis funções culturais específicas desempenhadas pela literatura factual sobre a alteridade.Based on a corpus of 9 non-fiction works dealing with Portugal or Spain, a systematic analysis is performed of the representations those works convey, comparing them with views of the literature of social science on such countries. The texts’ structural features associated with the production and presentation of such representations are also analysed. The departing point for both tasks is a definition of image of the social, along with the concept of commonsensical reader, as one of the goals is to consider the representations as they would appear to audience. Images are quantified in terms of their density, degree of generality, forms of knowledge and sources of knowledge. They are also quantified in terms of the themes they convey and the dualities traditional society/modern society and fundamental similarity/difference of otherness (quantification being considered necessary to avoid the problem of the implicit quantification found in the literature on travel writing produced by Humanities). Such data feed an individual and comparative analysis of each work, complemented by qualitative data. The emerging patterns – structural prejudice, types of authenticity, present(ific)ation of the past and aestheticization of the social – are related with a typology of writers (travellers, tourists and migrants) based on literature on tourism and travel writing, as well as on the material and epistemological circumstances of the authors’ contact with otherness. Some of the associations – as well as their absence – underpin a discussion of possibilities of causation such as the origins of authors and highlight possible specific cultural functions performed by the factual literature on otherness

Early childhood problem-solving interaction:young children’s discourse during small-group work in primary school

It is widely accepted that problem solving and reasoning during small-group work with either peers only or with intervening teachers may contribute to children’s language and cognitive development, depending on the participants’ discourse. Most research is experimental of nature, focusing on teacher-initiated problems. Therefore, in this thesis young children’s construction of their own problems during small-group work in early childhood education is investigated, through a detailed analysis of videotaped and transcribed problem-solving interactions.The most important findings are: (1) Whether the teacher is present partly determines young children’s discourse. In teacher’s absence children produce significantly longer and more complex turns and sentences. Moreover, they accomplish different types of speech actions than in teacher’s presence. (2) Most teacher practices minimize young children’s opportunities to participate actively in problem-solving interventions, which follow a linear structure, as often advised in problem-solving textbooks. (3) Contrastingly, young children themselves construct also iterative, non-linear problem-solving interactions highly similar to adult business meetings. (4) By adapting their speech actions to the problem type, children construct three types of problem-solving interactions, which are all concluded, contrastingly to adult business meetings. (5) Both the type of reactions to other’s contributions and the type of accounts determine how children reason: accepting reactions and directly verifiable accounts conclude the problem-solving interaction, contrasting to oppositional reactions and personal, normative and tentative accounts enhancing children’s reasoning. All findings demonstrate that both problem solving and reasoning of young children should not be considered as an individual cognitive accomplishment, rather as an interactional sequential accomplishment

Translating Global Nature: Territoriality, Environmental Discourses, and Ecocultural Identities

In this study, I explore environmental discourses circulating among Indigenous transboundary organizations working on environmental initiatives at the border between Ecuador and Colombia. I focus on three global environmental discourses –sustainability, development, and climate change– as they are at the core of the global environmental governance vernacular. La Gran Familia Awá Binacional (GFAB), one of the few transboundary Indigenous organizations working along the binational border, utilizes these global concepts to frame their environmental initiatives and projects. I use a critical and interpretive qualitative approach to investigate, deconstruct, and rearticulate global environmental discourses circulating among and translated by two of the organizations forming the GFAB: Federación de Centros Awá del Ecuador (FCAE) and Unidad Indígena del Pueblo Awá (UNIPA) from Colombia. I conducted in-depth interviews with cultural and political elites working in, or related to, these Awá organizations. I analyze interview texts, Awá organizations’ community-based plans, official government documents, and NGOs reports to understand (1) How does the GFAB understand, construct, and reproduce their relationships with their territories?; (2) How does the GFAB translate the global environmental discourses of development, sustainability, and climate change at the level of the communities with which this organization works?; and (3) What are the politics of identity, ecocultural identities and positionings, that emerge from Awá’s translation of and engagement with development, sustainability, and climate change within Awá’s territoriality? To answer these questions, I investigate how transboundary Indigenous communities construct a sense of territory, navigate global environmental discourses, and negotiate multiple ecocultural identities. I describe the articulations among relationships and principles that configure Awá’s territoriality. Then, I situate the notion of translation in relation to Awá’s territory, katza su, to explore the system of meanings implicated in Awá’s translation of the global environmental discourses of development, sustainability, and climate change. I illustrate how Awá recontextualize and emplace these discourses once they enter the material and discursive realm of Awá’s territoriality. Finally, I further the notion of territory and territoriality to investigate the formation of Awá, mestizos, and Afros’ ecocultural identities. I illustrate how two dialectics, insider-outsider and respect-disrespect, work in the discursive positioning of these populations as restorative or unwholesome ecocultural identities. In closing, I propose a rhizomatic situational analysis framework to map factors, forces, and processes, and demonstrate its applicability by presenting a situational analysis of the Awá binational Indigenous people. The rhizome illuminates Awá’s translation of development, sustainability, and climate change, and the ecocultural identities that emerge through processes of translation. I end with some recommendations to rethink identity-based mediation in environmental conflicts, explore transversal forms of communication, agency, and dissent, and further processes of environmental peacebuilding at the border between Ecuador and Colombia

A study of the influence of sense of audience on the writing processes of eight adolescent boys

This innovative Case-Study/Participant-Observer research was undertaken\ud to explore the relationships between Sense of Audience and the\ud writing processes of adolescents. Further to that, its intention was\ud to develop and explore an approach to research of school writing that\ud would best unite the intentions of researchers with the perspective of\ud the classroom teacher.\ud The Study\ud Specifically, an 'Interventionist' approach was conceived and adopted\ud whereby the researcher served as a genuine classroom teacher for\ud 8 adolescent boys for one of their regular English courses over a period\ud of approximately q years. Through the routine use of personal\ud journals, and a system of dialogue-in-writing, he established himself\ud as the boys' principal audience for their writing. Further, through\ud frequent casual interaction and the development of a major group project,\ud the researcher was able to gain access to a wide range of the boys'\ud written language as well as an intimate understanding of and contact\ud with their school and home lives.\ud Main Conclusion\ud The study yielded several conclusions which may be summarized\ud as follows:\ud Sense of Audience influences a wide spectrum of the writing\ud processes of adolescents, particularly insomuch as it facilitates\ud the interrelationship of those features of the writing system that\ud teachers and researchers artificially separate, viz. surface\ud features, language functions, and content.\ud Principal Implications\ud Many of the efforts teachers direct to single features of their\ud students' writing problems may be more properly directed to the matter\ud of developing or enhancing an Enabling Sense of Audience within their\ud individual students.\ud Teacher-based research appears to reveal considerably more about\ud learning and writing than do decontextualized research procedures

Transformation Literacy

This open access book brings science and practice together and inspires a global movement towards co-creating regenerative civilizations that work for 100% of humanity and the Earth as a whole. With its conceptual foundation of the concept of transformation literacy it enhances the knowledge and capacity of decision-makers, change agents and institutional actors to steward transformations effectively across institutions, societal sectors and nations. Humanity is at crossroads. Resource depletion and exponential emissions that not only cause climate change, but endanger the health of people and planet, call for a decisive turnaround of human civilization. A new and transformative paradigm is emerging that advocates for regenerative civilizations, in which a narrative of systemic health as much as individual and collective vitality guide the interaction of socio-economic-ecological systems. Truly transformative change must go far beyond technical solutions, and instead envision what can be termed ‘a new operating system’ that helps humankind to live well within the planetary boundaries and partner with life’s evolutionary processes. This requires transformations at three different levels: · Mindsets that reconnect with a worldview in which human agency acknowledges its co-evolutionary pathways with each other and the Earth. · Political, social and economic systems that are regenerative and foster the care-taking for Earth life support systems. · Competencies to design and implement effective large-scale transformative change processes at multiple levels with multiple stakeholders. This book provides key ingredients for enhancing transformation literacy from various perspectives around the globe. It connects the emerging practice of stewarding transformative change across business, government institutions and civil society actors with the most promising scientific models and concepts that underpin human action to shape the future collectively in accordance with planetary needs.

The public understanding of climate change : A case study of Taiwanese youth

Global climate change is likely to be the most challenging environmental dilemma of the 21st century because its impacts on ecosystems and human society are transnational in scale and long term in scope. Due to its high scientific complexity and uncertainty and high political and economic sensitivity, mitigating the problem will require interdisciplinary cooperation and collective and sustained efforts on the part of all nations. Sufficient domestic support from both government and the lay public will not only be significant to the success of an international climate regime, but also crucial to the effectiveness of potential domestic climate policies. Such circumstances call for exploration of how the level of the public’s scientific understanding of climate change influences choices for climate protective actions and support for climate policies. Social scientists have the responsibility to explore how people perceive, understand, and respond to global climate change and to investigate the roles and interrelationships of various actors (e.g., scientists, citizens, and elected and appointed officials) in the policy-making process. Compared with numerous social scientific studies of global climate change in North America and Europe, substantially fewer investigations have focused on other regions of the world. Therefore, this doctoral research presents a case study of domestic climate policy formulation premised on the integration of science and citizens in an industrialized Asian society - Taiwan. This dissertation reports the views of Taiwanese youth with respect to global climate change based on data compiled from three empirical studies (i.e., integrated assessment focus groups, pre- and post-surveys, and a web-based survey). These studies in combination present three primary findings: 1) Most Taiwanese young adults tend to endorse pro-climate protection attitudes and behaviors; 2) These young adults display an extensive but limited scientific understanding pertaining to the problem; 3) A process of experimental participation with scientists enhanced individual scientific understanding and policy making. Further investigation revealed that these perceptions were grounded in a strong sense of ecological citizenship, which is likely influenced by the contemporary environmental movement in Taiwan since the 1980s. While this case study finds that scientific knowledge is less influential in determining individual behavioral intentions than public attitudes toward climate change, the continual enhancement of public ethical awareness about global climate change provides a helpful approach for policy makers seeking to obtain public support