Investigating Ruptures in Shared Understanding as Recursive Cycles of Mutual Adaptation During Implementation

Shared understanding between diverse technology stakeholders is a key driver of IT-Business alignment, also underpinning successful adaptive, IS development activities. Lack of shared understanding creates representational gaps, innovation blindness and different technology frames which create barriers to development and implementation of technology. Applying a socio-material perspective to Leonard-Barton’s model of mutual adaptation between technology and organization, as well as research on shared capabilities between IS and business stakeholders, we examine the process by which shared understanding emerges during the design, development and implementation of IT systems. We followed key multi-disciplinary stakeholder groups over a two-year period during the development and implementation of a health information system. We report on events during the project that we call ruptures – highly charged incidents which reveal a lack shared understanding between stakeholders. We argue that ruptures occur during the mutual adaptation of organizational and technological elements necessitated by the implementation process and are precipitated by the constitutive entanglement of social and technological elements. They reveal serious misalignments among stakeholders and in relation to the technology as its material properties become more concrete. We investigate the emergence of ruptures and the mechanisms by which they influence stakeholders, the implementation process and its outcomes

Framework for in-service teacher education for sustainability: some principles and strategies

No abstract available.publishe

Investigation 7. Instrumental genesis in technology mediated learning : From double stimulation to expansive knowledge practices

The purpose of the present paper is to examine the sociocultural foundations of technology-mediated collaborative learning. Toward that end, we discuss the role of artifacts in knowledge-creating inquiry, relying on the theoretical ideas of Carl Bereiter, Merlin Donald, Pierre Rabardel, Keith Sawyer, and L. S. Vygotsky. We argue that epistemic mediation triggers expanded inquiry and plays a crucial role in knowledge creation; such mediation involves using CSCL technologies to create epistemic artifacts for crystallizing cognitive processes, remediating subsequent activity, and building an evolving body of knowledge. Productive integration of CSCL technologies as instruments of learning and instruction is a developmental process: it requires iterative efforts across extended periods of time. Going through such a process of instrumental genesis requires transforming a cognitive-cultural operating system of activity, thus “reformatting” the brain and the mind. Because of the required profound personal and social transformations, one sees that innovative knowledge-building practices emerge, socially, through extended expansive learning cycles.Peer reviewe

Institutional work of quality in higher education : a study of cross-border joint programmes

The dissertation explores the dynamics of quality-related developments in transnational higher education. The aim is to develop an enhanced understanding of the relational and situated nature of higher education (HE) quality and its practices by examining how quality in cross-border collaborative arrangements, such as joint programmes (JPs), is constructed, enacted, and with what institutional outcomes. Through the focus on praxis (Jun, 1998), i.e. critical, conscious and socially purposive actions of individual and collective actors, I illuminate the role of agency in advancing and/or maintaining a particular approach to dealing with the issue of quality in HE. A theoretical framework for this study is drawn from the current strand of scholarship in Institutional Work (IW) (Lawrence et al., 2008, 2011). The IW perspective builds on the tenets of institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 2008b) and the sociology of practice (Bourdieu 1977; 1993; de Certeau 1994; Giddens 1984; Lave and Wenger 1991). Specifically, it shifts the attention from structures and the view of linear institutional change and maintenance, primarily driven by field-level institutional pressures to the recursive relationship of agency and institutions, and, in particular to the actors’ agency, their daily interactions and actions. Joint programme developments, the emergence of its quality discourse and practice are analyzed through the lenses of narrative discourse of inquiry into social experience. A multi-level (Jepperson and Meyer, 2011) study is carried out based on a combination of research methods and data sources. Synthesis of available literature and document analysis have been undertaken to trace major developments of JPs and their quality at a macro level. To study organizational and daily work setting, a single, real-time, qualitative case with embedded units (Stake, 1995) spread across five institutions in multiple countries has been conducted. Twenty- one semi-structured interviews with selected JP staff members were complemented with observational field notes and (inter)organizational documentary data about the JP and its quality-related activities. Combining the analysis of data drawn from multiple levels (Jepperson and Meyer, 2011) enabled the study of idiosyncratic professional activities embedded in the environment of institutional complexity. Attention has been paid to the interplay among actors’ intentions regarding JPs and their quality-driven activities, actions taken and expected outcomes. This research offers an empirical account on how IW is accomplished in transnational HE. JPs and their quality practice in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) are found to be a multi-actor, multi-layered, and multi-purpose phenomenon. Due to the multi-layered nature of the phenomenon, the praxis of JP quality is relational. It is an interaction of processes, events and activities taking place in policy (macro level), among and within HE institutions (meso level), and through daily work (micro level). The findings of this study indicate that activities taking place at those levels reinforce each other in the IW of co-creating and maintaining the institutionalized practice of JPs and their quality. The study finds that JPs and their quality practice is constructed by key higher education stakeholders and their intermediary organizations and enacted via inter-organizational arrangements of JP provider institutions and their everyday work. The IW involves a combination of policy work, establishment of networks and associations as well as development of normative frameworks which to a large extent are grounded in organizational ‘best practices’. Quality of JPs is conceptualized as ‘high’, having added value, whereas JP quality practice is tied to the concept of fitness-for-purpose and features a holistic and continuous process of quality assurance that includes assessment, evaluation and enhancement-driven activities. This dominant approach to quality promoted at a macro level is adopted in (inter)organizational and everyday work situations with some variations and specificities. The following key strategies were found to aid organizational adaptation of JP practice: ‘embracing differences’, ‘learning and support from peers’, and ‘developing a shared understanding’. The contributions of this study are the following. First, the study provides a thorough review of JP developments in the EHEA. Second, a ‘new’ lens of IW is applied to the ‘old’ issue of quality in HE in order to contribute to the ongoing debate of quality and its outcomes on teaching and learning in HE. Third, it contributes to the current scholarly debate on the role of agency in IW through the focus on praxis, situated organizing, and the constitutive nature of praxis and institutional logics. Fourth, a case study with units crossing national and organizational boundaries provided an opportunity to study the inter-organizational collaborative setting, which has not been a common research avenue in IW studies

Distributed development of large-scale distributed systems: the case of the particle physics grid

Developing a Grid within High Energy Physics for the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator is characterised as a highly collaborative, distributed and dynamic systems development effort. This research examines the way this distributed Grid is developed, deployed and provided as a service to the thousands of physicists analysing data from the Large Hadron Collider. The particle physics community has always been at the forefront of computing with a tradition of working in large distributed collaborations, therefore providing a "distinctive" case of distributed systems development practice. The focus of concern is the collaborative systems development practices employed by particle physicists in their attempt to develop a usable Grid. The research aims to offer lessons and practical recommendations to those involved in globally distributed systems development and to inform the information systems development literature. Global software development presents unaddressed challenges to organisations and it is argued that there is an urgent need for new systems development practices and strategies to be created that can facilitate and embrace the rapid changes of the environment and the complexities involved in such projects. The contribution of the study, therefore, is a framework of guidance towards engendering what the author defines as "Hybrid Experimental Agile Distributed Systems Development Communities" revealing a set of dynamic collaborative practices for those organisational contexts engaged in distributed systems development. The framework will allow them to reflect on their own practice and perhaps foster a similarly dynamic flexible community in order to manage their global software development effort. The research is in the form of an interpretative qualitative exploratory case study, which draws upon Activity Theory, and frames the Grid's distributed development activity as a complex overarching networked activity system influenced by the context, the community's tools, rules, norms, culture, history, past experiences, shared visions and collaborative way of working. Tensions and contradictions throughout the development of this Grid are explored and surfaced, with the research focusing on how these are resolved in order for the activity system to achieve stability. Such stability leads to the construction of new knowledge and learning and the formation of new systems development practices. In studying this, practices are considered as an emergent property linked to improvisation, bricolage and dynamic competences that unfold as large-scale projects evolve

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Animal-Assisted Interventions in Supervision: A Collective Case Study

Animal-assisted interventions (AAIs) have been discussed in recent conceptual literature as having potential for positive implications when applied in supervision (Chandler, 2017; Jackson, 2020; Owenby, 2017; Stewart et al., 2015). However, there was limited empirical foundation or guidance for the integration of two distinct specializations (AAIs and supervision). The purpose of this qualitative collective case study (Stake, 2006) was to explore and understand the experiences of supervisors who have been implementing AAIs within the context of supervision. Specifically, this study addressed the following overarching research question and two sub-questions were addressed: Q1 Why are supervisors integrating AAIs into supervision? Q1a What are the experiences of supervisors who have been integrating AAIs into supervision? Q1b How are supervisors integrating AAIs into clinical supervision? Three doctoral-level counseling professionals with extensive training and experience in AAIs participated, representing three cases of animal-assisted interventions in supervision (AAI-S). Participants had been practicing AAI-S between 7 and 10 years. Two cases existed within university-based, graduate-level AAI training programs and one case existed in the context of a private-practice. Five sources of data were collected for each participant (demographic questionnaire, professional documents [e.g., informed consent, supervisory disclosure statement], multiple interviews per participant [average of six hours per participant], which included a virtual tour of the AAI-S environment and introductions to animal partners). Data were analyzed using thematic analysis within and across cases (Braun & Clarke, 2009, 2021). Cross-case analysis suggested themes related to need for supportive context for implementation of AAI-S, professionals’ personal experiences associated with AAIs, common guiding frameworks for understanding the process of AAI-S, welfare and competency concerns, and the compelling rationale for AAI-S. The final report presented the findings as a holistic account of AAI-S. Based on the findings of this study, implications recommendations for counselor educators, supervisors, and professionals were provided as well as directions for future research

A Practitioner’s Guide to Applied Sustainability: Initial Explorations

For decades, coal has been king in central Appalachia. The people of this region have devoted their lives to providing energy to the nation, fueling the first and second industrial revolutions and providing nearly 40 percent of the energy used in the United States today. Known as one of the unhealthiest communities in the nation, the city of Williamson, located in southern West Virginia, is working to encourage healthy living by diversifying its energy portfolio, providing new economic opportunities for businesses, creating a strong workforce with competitive skill sets, growing local food systems to encourage healthy living, and increasing the quality of life for this community. Operating under the banner of “Sustainable Williamson” and utilizing the emerging concept of applied sustainability, this community is developing a “praxis of theory” approach with a specific focus upon the socio-economic effects of ideology. This thesis explores the theoretical intersections between ideology and new materialism in order to provide existing and emerging practitioners of applied sustainability with an initial framework for developing successful projects in central Appalachia and beyond

Both Into and Out of the Cage: New Media, Transgression, and the Remaking of American Literary Connection, 1975-1999

The dissertation addresses an absent history of late twentieth-century postmodern literature. Namely, I trace the shifts between 1980s postmodernism, described by Fredric Jameson as encapsulating a “wan[ed]”“affect,” and the emergence of 1990s post-postmodernism, marked by an exaggeration of affect. My dissertation posits that this reinvention of feeling was due to shifts in communication technologies and new media art during the 1970s and 1980s competing with, and eventually rendering obsolete, avant-garde literary techniques for “connection.” These latter strategies were encapsulated in the postmodern “encyclopedic” novel, a form miming the logic of new media, yet incapable of fully addressing new programmatic shifts, such as the installation-centered apparatuses of new media, the textual depth of digitalism, and posthuman data used for characterization. The strain of this pseudo-computational organization and ethic, however, leads to the pursuit of “feeling” on a more visceral basis. Pursuant with this visceral intention, I posit the genre of transgressive literature, usually misunderstood as employing simple-minded shock tactics, as a hinge point between postmodern and post-postmodern conceptions of “feeling.” Transgressive literature, I argue, offers systematic, new-media-like schemas to explore moments of emotional excess or visceral shock, allowing a further bridge to post-postmodernist writers like David Foster Wallace, who explore affect within complex, maximalist schemas. In essence, the study supplies a media analysis of American postmodernism’s demise and return long missing. Such a study is integral to any complete history of postmodernism or consideration of the experimental literature that follows it