What is disputed on the web

ABSTRACT We present a method for automatically acquiring of a corpus of disputed claims from the web. We consider a factual claim to be disputed if a page on the web suggests both that the claim is false and also that other people say it is true. Our tool extracts disputed claims by searching the web for patterns such as "falsely claimed that X" and then using a statistical classifier to select text that appears to be making a disputed claim. We argue that such a corpus of disputed claims is useful for a wide range of applications related to information credibility on the web, and we report what our current corpus reveals about what is being disputed on the web

‘Pray for the fatherland!’ Discursive and digital strategies at play in nationalist political blogging.

Political blogs have come to constitute important channels for expressing nationalist and anti-immigration political views. The new forms that this rhetoric may take, comprising an intricate intermingling of verbal, digital, (audio-)visual, and communicative elements, present challenges for qualitative research. In this article we propose a way for analysing this new" nationalist political discourse from a qualitative social psychological perspective. The suggested approach combines analytical procedures form critical discursive and rhetorical psychology with social semiotic and rhetorical studies of images, completed with analytical tools and concepts from narrative psychology and research into online political communication. Using two empirical examples of nationalist and anti-immigration political blog-entries written during the 2015 refugee crisis," we show this approach enables the researcher to adequately study how such political messages are conveyed through the multitude of elements provided by the blogs. In so doing, our ultimate goal is to contribute to the analytical capacity of qualitative social psychological research into contemporary political communication and persuasion.Peer reviewe

Discipline and punish? Strategy discourse, senior manager subjectivity and contradictory power effects

Responding to calls for a more localized and dispersed conceptualization of power in the study of strategy discourse and its power effects, this paper examines how such effects undermine and contradict each other in a mundane, routine interaction: a research interview between a corporate elite actor and one of the authors. Using a Foucauldian inspired discursive psychology approach to provide a critical analysis of brief stretches of talk in a research interview, we expose the inherent instability and contingency of strategy discourse as it is used to construct accounts of corporate success, failure and senior manager subjectivity. Our core contribution is to show that resistance to strategy discourse is discernible not only through how lower level or other actors contest or undermine this discourse, but also by observing the efforts of corporate elites to manage temporary breakdowns (Sandberg and Tsoukas, 2011) which disrupt the background consensus which ordinarily provides strategy discourse with its “taken-for-granted” quality. Resistance, we argue, is not only an intentional and oppositional practice but inheres within the fine grain of strategy discourse itself, manifested as a “hindrance and stumbling block” (Foucault, 1978) in the highly occasioned and local level of mundane interaction

Management by Textbook: The Role of Textbooks in Developing Critical Thinking

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. Critical thinking is widely regarded as a crucial capability for competent management and also for any leadership role in society. In this article, we ask, “How do textbooks play a role in the weakness of many management graduates’ critical thinking skills?” Management teachers can find plentiful advice about best teaching practices, yet the critical skills gap remains. We argue that the nature and use of management textbooks intersect and interact with students’ epistemology to support a culture of surface learning, resulting in a failure to develop critical thinking skills. Textbooks reinforce underdeveloped student epistemology through limitations of content and position students as passive recipients of an authoritative version of oversimplified knowledge. In our survey of 30 successful management textbooks, we found the majority of popular management textbooks potentially inhibit, or only weakly support, the development of students’ capacity for critical thinking. The article concludes with suggestions for improving textbooks and textbook choice or considering alternatives

The role of industry technologies in is education: a South African case study

The issue of determining the most appropriate software tools for instructional purposes is not new. As the tools keep changing and evolving and considering the vast number of existing tools that are there, this process of selecting the best tools for students may become quite challenging and it is important that the dynamic be explored. This research targets studying factors that have impact on tool selection, implementation of tools in the curriculum, and impact of tool use on students. The study also uses Activity Theory as the theoretical framework in holistically exploring how these tools are implemented in an undergraduate Information Systems curriculum. The research adopts an interpretivist approach and follows an exploratory research design using qualitative methods to gather data and thematic analysis for data analysis. This case study is of a South African university, which was chosen using convenience sampling. Data was collected through interviews with 10 lecturers and 8 students at the Information Systems Department and analysis of course outlines. Key findings point to alignment with industry needs, affordability, availability of supplementary resources, and software functionality as some of the important criteria used by educators when selecting software products. The study also identifies primary and secondary contradictions as per the Activity Theory and these highlight the inconsistencies which exist in the department's use of technologies. It is important to note the lack of studies in this area, where existing research mainly focuses on tools used in specific courses in Information Systems, but none have looked at the Information Systems discipline as a whole. The study also highlights the different roles played by technology companies in facilitating the use of tools in courses, which to the researcher's knowledge, has never been done before. Thus, the research contributes to literature and fills the stated gaps in research and answers the research questions

That terrifying center : poetry, language, and embodied subjectivities.

That Terrifying Center is a creative and philosophical experiment in the transmission of corporeal experiences and socio-cultural knowledge through poetry. I am bringing together the seemingly disparate threads of my studies into one creative-theoretical project: a collection of original poems exploring the development of multiple subjectivities, the terror of self-examination, and the scrutiny of memory; it is also a collection of poems that bear witness, that simply tell stories. These are poems that talk about what it\u27s like to live in a body; they ask questions and translate answers related to becoming woman, demystifying fear, investigating genealogies of pain, and narrating family histories. As the title of the project suggests, That Terrifying Center\u27s creative synthesis is fearsome work and the discursive chapters of this project are also part of the experiment. My poems interrogate language and somatic realities, this is not just what the body says-or how it is read by outsiders- but how it interprets, interacts with space, location, and geography. I see the body as a repository of memory and possibility. Consciously, I want to cultivate a poetics of hybridity-experimentation with language and form, while keeping a narrative voice (or voices) telling the story, using absences, space, shifts in time, and memory to translate and even reproduce the sensations of being human. The creative dissertation consists of a critical introduction and two conceptual halves. The first half is a collection of original poetry, divided into the following sections: The Bottom line, Absurdity, Conjure Woman, and Sunterblooms Ik Tew. The second half of the project consists of four discursive chapters. Chapter one presents the cultural and creative framework(s) that prefigure my treatment of many-selvedness, and black women\u27s embodiment as they draw from M. NourbeSe Philip\u27s concepts s/place, dis place and bodymemory. This chapter also considers writing the body and the reconceptualization of creativity in the poetry and essays of Audre Lorde. Chapter two presents my work as an in-process, prismatic poetics (of parallels and intersection, of reflection) -of language and sounds, but also of space and embodied experimentation that uses poetry as an epistemological tool. Taking a cue from poet Barbara Henning\u27s statement that Mullen adopts a kind of verbal scat in her poetry, I consider how the vocal scat in jazz is a particularly resonant metaphor for considering improvisation, language, and the role of sound image in the discussion of poetic experimentation in work by Harryette Mullen and others. Chapter three retraces the process of locating the thematic, formal and conceptual centers of the poetry manuscript. This chapter also presents some of the challenges involved in writing critically about my own poetry. In particular, I explore my desire for a poetics of hybridity and the conflicting pull to write conventional criticism and to write creatively in the discursive parts of That Terrifying Center, while considering the genesis and overall design of the creative-theoretical project. Chapter four is a lyric essay that meditates on my personal interaction with these poems, speaking frankly about the ways in which grief, illness, and memory informed the earliest conceptions of this project, its shifts and its detours. In this final chapter, I reflect on the nature of my project: the poignancy of what it has meant to translate the language of my innermost selves, to plumb my own memories, to offer up the flesh and wonder of my own terrifying poems

Leveraging a Massive Open Online Course in the Local Church to Teach Hermeneutics

The increase in massive open online course (MOOC) offerings in theological higher education presents unique equipping opportunities for local churches, providing high-quality instruction from authoritative scholars. The purpose of this project is to facilitate participation in a MOOC to equip members of Calvary Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia, with basic hermeneutic principles in order to enrich personal Bible study and prepare for teaching the Bible. A pretest and posttest assess the effectiveness of the program to impart knowledge of hermeneutical concepts and skills. A concluding survey determines the extent to which participants plan to use learned hermeneutic methods and principles in personal Bible study and teaching preparation, in addition to assessing participants’ experiences with and perceptions of the educational technology. This project seeks to affirm the viability of using MOOCs for various equipping opportunities in local churches

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FRAMEWORK FOR THE USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM

Published ThesisThe aim of this study was to explore the development of a framework for the use of Information and Communication Technology in the classroom. It was clear from the study that teachers lack Information and Communication Technology (ICT) capability, and should therefore be trained and retrained. While they are expected to produce quality education, they are also expected to receive training which is a time-consuming exercise and often makes teachers want to give up on the implementation of ICT in the classroom. If teachers were to use ICT in the classroom, it would change the passive role of the learners in which they merely receive knowledge to a more active role where they construct their own knowledge. In addition, teachers would have the opportunity to connect with experts, and have access to global resources. Teachers should be motivated to use ICT to improve the quality of their teaching. This, together with proper ICT skills, would ensure the effective use of ICT. To ascertain the effective use of ICT by teachers, research was conducted in ten secondary schools in Bloemfontein. A random sample of 30 secondary school teachers was drawn from ten schools. A mixed methods approach was used to the collect data, i.e. qualitative (questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews). Questionnaires were administered to the participants and were then followed by unstructured interviews. The research participants were selected randomly from the study population in an unbiased manner to produce quantifiable, reliable data. Mix methods designs provide advantages when a researcher is exploring complex research questions. The findings of this study revealed that teachers have a positive attitude towards the use of ICT, and that it enables better teaching standards and educational outcomes. Teachers also have barriers that hinder them from using ICT in the classroom

Understanding modern Yoga pedagogy and curriculum: exploring sense-making by senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers

This study explored senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ sense-making in the context of her or his Modern Yoga teacher-training programs. Through senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ sense-making of her or his interpretations and applications of non-Western Yoga philosophies and traditions, meaning-making was generated. Sense-making here denotes the participants’ understandings, while meaning-making refers to the understandings that I generated as the researcher. The term Modern Yoga is used in this study to represent a Western understanding and application of non-Western Yoga philosophies and traditions that are referred to here as Premodern Yoga. The aim of this research was to construct a greater understanding and appreciation of senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ considerations when conceptualising, planning and implementing Yoga teacher-training. The research questions focused upon the senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers’ spiritual-ethical reflections and her or his pedagogical and curriculum priorities. This research contributes significantly to the body of scholarship related to the pedagogical and curriculum world of Yoga teacher-training and Yoga teaching. In this trans-philosophical, transnational and transcultural research project, I have sought to disrupt various dichotomous understandings. These binaries were considered under two broader umbrella binaries: East-West and Mind-Body. I drew upon the Sanskrit language to construct neologisms to provide me with a scaffold with which to disrupt the limitations and preferential treatment of either/or thinking of Western and non-Western philosophies and meaning-making, while revealing contextually rich, non-binaristic meaning-making. These neologisms represent an intended important contribution to theoretical and methodological knowledge. The conceptualising and methodological application of these research neologisms afford researchers an insight into re-appreciating traditional research nomenclature. In this study, face-to-face interviews were conducted in Australia and the United States of America with seven senior Western Yoga teacher-trainers during two dedicated excursions. With the intention of disrupting an East-West binary thinking, I constructed a contextually derived interpretation of narrative research that I have called the citta-kosha-narrative-restructuring model. This model draws upon the Eastern Yogic construct of kosha and a Western academic way of knowing via narrative research. The kosha model represents the integral, interconnected and interpermeating understanding of the human body. Consequently, this citta-kosha-narrative-re-structuring explored the interview transcripts through five lenses: body, energy, mind, intellectual discernment and spiritual consciousness. The citta-kosha-narrative-re-structuring model represents a further contribution to theoretical and methodological knowledge. Considering the axiological nature of Yoga and Yoga teaching, the study emphasised ethical considerations and decision-making. Specific compounded Sanskrit terms were used to construct more nuanced, contextually specific ethical deliberations for this study. The emphasis on axiology and ethical considerations and decision-making, and the construction of neologisms to reflect this emphasis, represent a contribution to theoretical and methodological knowledge. The conceptualising and operationalising of the six new terms for ethical deliberation demonstrate the possibility of reconsidering ethical considerations in research. The findings from this research provide new theoretical insights into the spiritual-ethical considerations of Western Modern Yoga teacher-trainers, highlighting that, although cultural context and nomenclature have shifted from those of Premodern Yoga teachers, the practice and instruction of Yoga still revolve around consciousness development and the union of perceived disconnections. This significant finding supports the argument that Modern Yoga, although it has been influenced by transnational, transcultural, trans-philosophical and syncretic forces, is still perceived and taught as a spiritual practice. Further, the study identified new theoretical and practice-based insights regarding the participants’ pedagogical and curricular priorities. The findings included the pedagogical importance of language considerations, oration and physical demonstration; the curriculum priorities of developing intention, facilitating reflexivity and creating an embodied, self-discerning Yoga practice; and the importance of incorporating other knowledge in Yoga teacher-training programs. These significant insights provide foundational understandings for future academic discourse in the field of Yoga pedagogy and curriculum design. In summary, this study has drawn upon Eastern philosophical and theoretical knowledge to interpret senior Western teacher-trainers’ understanding and application of an Eastern Spiritual tradition. Through a trans-philosophical lens, key insights surrounding the pedagogical and curricular priorities of Modern Yoga teacher-training have been established. The challenging of many previously unconsidered binary constructs has effectively rendered Modern Yoga’s pedagogical and curriculum considerations and concerns more academically responsive and theoretically informed. The construction and application of Sanskrit ethical neologisms function as both an ethical barometer for researcher trustworthiness and an analytical data lens, demonstrating the benefit of this trans-philosophical theoretical and methodological approach. The utilisation of the Eastern Yoga kosha model, transposed into an analytical narrative research model, highlights the theoretical and methodological effectiveness of merging Eastern and Western knowledge. The successful construction and application of the Sanskrit neologisms and the citta-kosha-narrative-restructuring framework reinforce the study’s efficacy and potential for innovation for future trans-philosophical research