Imagining Spanish and Latin American Poets in their Neoliberal and Post-Dictatorial Contexts

Review of: Reseña de John Burns, Contemporary Hispanic Poets: Cultural Production in the Global Digital Age (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2015)

Enhancing the Quality of Teaching and Learning in Disadvantaged Contexts: Re-imagining the Teacher’s Role

Until recently, focus in South African schools has been on changing curricula, and in particular introducing learnercentred approaches as well as training practising teachers through in-service programmes. However, concern is now shifting to the ineffectiveness of the training programmes in equipping teachers to teach effectively, particularly in disadvantaged contexts. These contexts will continue to exist hence the need to empower teachers to effectively navigate contextual constraints and improve the quality of education. This paper explores the extent to which teachers working in deprived contexts seek to improve the quality of learning and teaching by re-imagining their roles. The unit of analysis is a group of ten teachers of English First Additional Language a year after they completed an in-service course, Subject Didactics English, run by the University of South Africa. Findings reveal that for numerous reasons, teachers are too overwhelmed by contextual challenges to seek creative ways to overcome disadvantage.Keywords: English First Additional Language, Re-imagining, Teacher’s Role, Quality of Learning and Teaching, Disadvantaged Contexts, Agenc

Shanghai, London and Paris through the looking glass

Imagining the future of cities is often an exercise that is based upon the imagining of future transport infrastructure. The article explores this connection historically by drawing parallels between London, Paris and Shanghai since c.1851. It focuses on the role that symbols and mythmaking play in the process of envisioning future transport and future cities. It raises questions about the continuities between contexts that are distant across space and over time and the extent to which such continuities might provide some insights into the many connections between cities, transport and mobilities

Anticipating user eXperience with a desired product: The AUX framework

Positive user experience (UX) has become a key factor in designing interactive products. It acts as a differentiator which can determine a product’s success on the mature market. However, current UX frameworks and methods do not fully support the early stages of product design and development. During these phases, assessment of UX is challenging as no actual user-product interaction can be tested. This qualitative study investigated anticipated user experience (AUX) to address this problem. Using the co-discovery method, participants were asked to imagine a desired product, anticipate experiences with it, and discuss their views with another participant. Fourteen sub-categories emerged from the data, and relationships among them were defined through co-occurrence analysis. These data formed the basis of the AUX framework which consists of two networks which elucidate 1) how users imagine a desired product and 2) how they anticipate positive experiences with that product. Through this AUX framework, important factors in the process of imagining future products and experiences were learnt, including the way in which these factors interrelate. Focusing on and exploring each component of the two networks in the framework will allow designers to obtain a deeper understanding of the required pragmatic and hedonic qualities of product, intended uses of product, user characteristics, potential contexts of experience, and anticipated emotions embedded within the experience. This understanding, in turn, will help designers to better foresee users’ underlying needs and to focus on the most important aspects of their positive experience. Therefore, the use of the AUX framework in the early stages of product development will contribute to the design for pleasurable UX

MEDICALISATION IN NEOLIBERAL CONTEXTS: IMAGINING OTHER FUTURES IN SCHOOLS

This article advances an alternative to traditional approaches to the medicalization of childhood in the school setting. Considering that processes of medicalization must be understood in relation to other forces and dynamics set in motion with which they interact and mutually affect each other, this article advances the idea that the use of diagnoses and psychotechnologies for purposes of classification and segregation are, to a large extent, linked to their implementation by an educational model ruled by principles of competition and accountability. To explore other potential unfoldings of medicalisation, I analyse a case where medicalisation processes enter the arena but concerning other dynamics and forces. Este artigo propõe uma visão alternativa às críticas tradicionais a respeito da medicalização da infância e a como esta ocorre nas instituições escolares. Considerando que os processos de medicalização devem ser entendidos em relação a outras forças e dinâmicas com as quais interagem e se co-afetam, propõe-se que os efeitos classificatórios e de segregação que se desprendem do uso de diagnósticos e psicotecnologias se relaciona, em grande parte, à adoção destas categorias e tecnologias por um modelo educacional regido por lógicas de competência e responsabilização. Para explorar outros devires possíveis da medicalização, se analisa um caso no qual esta é posta em jogo em relação a outras dinâmicas.Este artículo propone una visión alternativa a las críticas tradicionales respecto a la medicalización de la infancia y a como esta ocurre en las instituciones escolares. Considerando que los procesos de medicalización deben ser entendidos en relación a otras fuerzas y dinámicas con las cuales interctuan y se co-afecta, se propone que los efectos clasificatorios y de segregación que se desprenden del uso de diagnósticos y psicotecnologías se relaciona, en gran parte, a la adopción de estas categorías y tecnologías por un modelo educacional regido por lógicas de competencia y responsabilización. Para explorar otros devenires posibles de la medicalización, se analiza un caso en donde esta es puestas en juego en relación a otras dinámicas

Imaginative Vividness

How are we to understand the phenomenology of imagining? Attempts to answer this question often invoke descriptors concerning the “vivacity” or “vividness” of our imaginative states. Not only are particular imaginings often phenomenologically compared and contrasted with other imaginings on grounds of how vivid they are, but such imaginings are also often compared and contrasted with perceptions and memories on similar grounds. Yet however natural it may be to use “vividness” and cognate terms in discussions of imagination, it does not take much reflection to see that these terms are ill understood. In this paper, I review both some relevant empirical literature as well as the philosophical literature attempt to get a handle on what it could mean, in an imaginative context, to talk of vividness. As I suggest, this notion ultimately proves to be so problematic as to be philosophically untenable

‘Of course we must be equal, but …’: imagining gendered futures in two rural Southern African secondary schools

Based on focus group discussions held with students at rural secondary schools in Lesotho and Zimbabwe, this paper argues that secondary schools provide important spaces for the (re)construction of gendered identities among rural girls in southern Africa. Central to processes of identity formation in rural secondary schools are normative discourses centring on notions of ‘culture’ and ‘equal rights’. These discourses are (re)produced in secondary schools and are appropriated by students in making sense of their lives. Both are ambiguously related to dominant gender ideologies and are mobilised by students in ways which do not simply conform to an accommodation/resistance dichotomy. Also highlighted is the complex articulation of identity production and materiality. Identities are constructed in the context of the school in relation to expected material performance in contexts removed in time and space. The ‘culture’ and ‘equal rights’ discourses are understood and negotiated in relation to expectations of future lives beyond the spatial and temporal boundaries of the school: lives imagined in relation to particular (generally urban) geographical contexts

Perspective Taking Building Positive Interpersonal Connections and Trustworthiness One Interaction at a Time

There is growing interest in the role of perspective taking in organizations. Perspective taking has been linked to enhanced interpersonal understanding and the strengthening of social bonds. In this chapter, I integrate research from sociology, communications, and psychology to provide insight into why, when, and how perspective taking facilitates the relational resources of positive connections and trustworthy actions. I introduce the importance of a three-dimensional view of perspective taking for building relational resources and present data validating this conceptualization. I conclude with directions for future research

Preservice Teachers Respond to And Tango Makes Three: Deconstructing Disciplinary Power and the Heteronormative in Teacher Education

This study employs Foucauldian concepts to analyse macro and micro contexts of publicly spoken and silent discourses describing ‘homosexuality,’ ‘education’ and ‘teacher’ in order to identify teacher subject positions available to preservice teachers. The macro context is analysed by tracing heteronormative discourses found in newspaper stories involving teachers and public schools that address conflicting views of homosexuality. The macro context analysis indicates two binary teacher subject positions: martyred (unemployed) teacher/silent (employed) teacher and sophisticated teacher/unsophisticated teacher. The micro context analysis is of preservice teachers\u27 responses to And Tango Makes Three, a picture book by Richardson and Parnell. This analysis demonstrates how preservice teachers take up and negotiate teacher subject positions found in the macro analysis. Combined, the analyses allow the researchers to consider how preservice teachers\u27 performances of teacher subjectivity open up possibilities for re-imagining new teacher subject positions and what this might mean for the practice of teacher educators