Bioethics: Reincarnation of Natural Philosophy in Modern Science

The theory of evolution of complex and comprising of human systems and algorithm for its constructing are the synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern (transdisciplinary) science. «Trans-disciplinary» in the context is interpreted as a completely new epistemological situation, which is fraught with the initiation of a civilizational crisis. Philosophy and ideology of technogenic civilization is based on the possibility of unambiguous demarcation of public value and descriptive scientific discourses (1), and the object and subject of the cognitive process (2). Both of these attributes are no longer valid. For mass, everyday consciousness and institutional philosophical tradition it is intuitively obvious that having the ability to control the evolutionary process, Homo sapiens came close to the borders of their own biological and cultural identity. The spontaneous coevolutionary process of interaction between the «subject» (rational living organisms) and the «object» (material world), is the teleological trend of the movement towards the complete rationalization of the World as It Is, its merger with the World of Due. The stratification of the global evolutionary process into selective and semantic (teleological) coevolutionary and therefore ontologically inseparable components follows. With the entry of anthropogenic civilization into the stage of the information society, firsty, the post-academic phase of the historical evolution of scientific rationality began, the attributes of which are the specific methodology of scientific knowledge, scientific ethos and ontology. Bioethics as a phenomenon of intellectual culture represents a natural philosophical core of modern post- academic (human-dimensional) science, in which the ethical neutrality of scientific theory principle is inapplicable, and elements of public-axiological and scientific-descriptive discourses are integrated into a single logic construction. As result, hermeneutics precedes epistemology not only methodologically, but also meaningfully, and natural philosophy is regaining the status of the backbone of the theory of evolution – in an explicit for

Reinventing discovery learning: a field-wide research program

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature. Whereas some educational designers believe that students should learn new concepts through explorative problem solving within dedicated environments that constrain key parameters of their search and then support their progressive appropriation of empowering disciplinary forms, others are critical of the ultimate efficacy of this discovery-based pedagogical philosophy, citing an inherent structural challenge of students constructing historically achieved conceptual structures from their ingenuous notions. This special issue presents six educational research projects that, while adhering to principles of discovery-based learning, are motivated by complementary philosophical stances and theoretical constructs. The editorial introduction frames the set of projects as collectively exemplifying the viability and breadth of discovery-based learning, even as these projects: (a) put to work a span of design heuristics, such as productive failure, surfacing implicit know-how, playing epistemic games, problem posing, or participatory simulation activities; (b) vary in their target content and skills, including building electric circuits, solving algebra problems, driving safely in traffic jams, and performing martial-arts maneuvers; and (c) employ different media, such as interactive computer-based modules for constructing models of scientific phenomena or mathematical problem situations, networked classroom collective “video games,” and intercorporeal master–student training practices. The authors of these papers consider the potential generativity of their design heuristics across domains and contexts

Symbiotic modeling: Linguistic Anthropology and the promise of chiasmus

Reflexive observations and observations of reflexivity: such agendas are by now standard practice in anthropology. Dynamic feedback loops between self and other, cause and effect, represented and representamen may no longer seem surprising; but, in spite of our enhanced awareness, little deliberate attention is devoted to modeling or grounding such phenomena. Attending to both linguistic and extra-linguistic modalities of chiasmus (the X figure), a group of anthropologists has recently embraced this challenge. Applied to contemporary problems in linguistic anthropology, chiasmus functions to highlight and enhance relationships of interdependence or symbiosis between contraries, including anthropology’s four fields, the nature of human being and facets of being human

Reinventing learning: a design-research odyssey

Design research is a broad, practice-based approach to investigating problems of education. This approach can catalyze the development of learning theory by fostering opportunities for transformational change in scholars’ interpretation of instructional interactions. Surveying a succession of design-research projects, I explain how challenges in understanding students’ behaviors promoted my own recapitulation of a historical evolution in educators’ conceptualizations of learning—Romantic, Progressivist, and Synthetic (Schön, Intuitive thinking? A metaphor underlying some ideas of educational reform (working paper 8). Division for Study and Research in Education, MIT, Cambridge, 1981)—and beyond to a proposed Systemic view. In reflection, I consider methodological adaptations to design-research practice that may enhance its contributions in accord with its objectives

Culture and E-Learning: Automatic Detection of a Users’ Culture from Survey Data

Knowledge about the culture of a user is especially important for the design of e-learning applications. In the experiment reported here, questionnaire data was used to build machine learning models to automatically predict the culture of a user. This work can be applied to automatic culture detection and subsequently to the adaptation of user interfaces in e-learning

Towards a constructional approach to discourse-level phenomena : the case of the Spanish interpersonal epistemic stance construction

This study contributes to a better understanding of how constructional models can be applied to discourse-level phenomena, and constitute a valuable complementation to previous grammaticalization accounts of pragmatic markers. The case study that is presented concerns the recent development of the interpersonal epistemic stance construction in Spanish. The central argument is that the expanding use of sabes as a pragmatic marker can best be fully understood by taking into account the composite network of related expressions which Spanish speakers have at their disposal when performing a particular speech act. The diachronic analysis is documented with spoken corpus examples collected in recent decades, and is mainly informed by frequency data measuring the productivity, as well as formal properties of the construction and its instances

Applying Theories in Language Programs

Selected Topics in Applied Linguistics: How to Choose a Theory. I offer a critical exploration of some of the conditions involved in Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA), as well as of the paradoxical approaches in the theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives of ISLA. The discussion proceeds with a very short overview of prevalent theories of ISLA generally. Then I add a contrastive look in more depth at only two “theories” and their possible applications in language programs. I emphasize some of the discussions in our profession concerning processing instruction, e.g. (VanPatten "Processing Instruction") or VanPatten ("Why Explicit Knowledge Cannot Become Implicit Knowledge" ), and the multiliteracies framework, e.g. (Paesani, Allen and Dupuy). I conclude with an invitation to a set of questions we might pose to any theory, framework, or approach as we consider its efficacy and applications for our own specific contexts

The pragmatics of specialized communication

El presente artículo pretende poner de manifiesto la importancia de la pragmática en relación con la comunicación especializada. La estructura, el contenido y la terminología de los textos especializados se ven afectados por factores como la propia situación comunicativa y el conocimiento, intenciones, expectativas y creencias previos del emisor del texto. La transmisión de tal significado es difícil incluso en una sola lengua. Cuando la transmisión se produce entre dos lenguas, como es el caso de cualquier acto de traducción, las dificultades se multiplican. Por esta razón, es fundamental que los traductores sean conscientes de cómo la pragmática, más que ningún otro componente del lenguaje, puede afectar de forma decisiva a su actividad profesional

Educational Research Abstracts

Editors\u27 Note: As noted in previous issues of the Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations, the purpose of this Educational Research Abstract section is to present current published research on issues relevant to math and science teaching at both the K-12 and college levels. Because educational research articles are published in so many different academic journals, it is a rare public school teacher or college professor who reads all the recent published reports on a particular instructional technique or curricular advancement. Indeed, the uniqueness of various pedagogical strategies has been tacitly acknowledged by the creation of individual journals dedicated to teaching in a specific discipline. Yet many of the insights gained in teaching certain physics concepts, biological principles, or computer science algorithms can have generalizability and value for those teaching in other fields or with different types of students. In this review, the focus is on action research. Abstracts are presented according to a question examined in the published articles. Hopefully, such a format will trigger your interest in how you might undertake an action research study in your own teaching situation. The abstracts presented here are not intended to be exhaustive, but rather a representative sampling of recent journal articles. Please feel free to identify other useful research articles on a particular theme or to suggest future teaching or learning themes to be examined. Please send your comments and ideas via e-mail to [email protected] or by regular mail to The College of William and Mary, P. O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA 23185-8795