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"You must be very intelligent...?": Gender and Science Subject Uptake
The reasons that fewer girls than boys choose to study physics have, with few national exceptions, been an on-going academic and policy concern. This paper considers how âcommon-senseâ ideas about subject choice are gendered and are based on notions of ânaturalâ interest and ânaturalâ abilities of boys and girls. It identifies instances of such reasoning in sociological theories, most recently Catherine Hakimâs preference theory. Drawing on ethnomethodology and Bourdieuâs framework for the analysis of modes of knowledge production, the paper argues that âcommon-senseâ reasoning produces and reproduces gendered understandings about âappropriateâ and ânaturalâ male and female interests and abilities. Secondary qualitative analysis from a study on science uptake demonstates how girls who express interest in physics have to justify such preferences
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The Development of Reasoning About Beliefs: Fact, Preference, and Ideology
The beliefs people hold about the social and physical world are central to self-definition and social interaction. The current research analyzes reasoning about three kinds of beliefs: those that concern matters of fact (e.g., dinosaurs are extinct), preference (e.g., green is the prettiest color), and ideology (e.g., there is only one God). The domain of ideology is of unique interest because it is hypothesized to contain elements of both facts and preferences. If adults' distinct reasoning about ideological beliefs is the result of prolonged experience with the physical and social world, children and adults should reveal distinct patterns of differentiating kinds of beliefs, and this difference should be particularly pronounced with respect to ideological beliefs. On the other hand, if adults' reasoning about beliefs is a basic component of social cognition, children and adults should demonstrate similar belief representations and patterns of belief differentiation. Two experiments demonstrate that 5â10 year old children and adults similarly judged religious beliefs to be intermediate between factual beliefs (where two disagreeing people cannot both be right) and preferences (where they can). From the age of 5 years and continuing into adulthood, individuals distinguished ideological beliefs from other types of mental states and demonstrated limited tolerance for belief-based disagreements.Psycholog
Team reasoning and intentional cooperation for mutual benefit
This paper proposes a concept of intentional cooperation for mutual benefit. This concept uses a form of team reasoning in which team members aim to achieve common interests, rather than maximising a common utility function, and in which team reasoners can coordinate their behaviour by following pre-existing practices. I argue that a market transaction can express intentions for mutually beneficial cooperation even if, extensionally, participation in the transaction promotes each partyâs self-interest
Discovering the Impact of Knowledge in Recommender Systems: A Comparative Study
Recommender systems engage user profiles and appropriate filtering techniques
to assist users in finding more relevant information over the large volume of
information. User profiles play an important role in the success of
recommendation process since they model and represent the actual user needs.
However, a comprehensive literature review of recommender systems has
demonstrated no concrete study on the role and impact of knowledge in user
profiling and filtering approache. In this paper, we review the most prominent
recommender systems in the literature and examine the impression of knowledge
extracted from different sources. We then come up with this finding that
semantic information from the user context has substantial impact on the
performance of knowledge based recommender systems. Finally, some new clues for
improvement the knowledge-based profiles have been proposed.Comment: 14 pages, 3 tables; International Journal of Computer Science &
Engineering Survey (IJCSES) Vol.2, No.3, August 201
Perceived influences on the career choices of children and youth: an exploratory study
Childrenâs understanding of factors influencing their career choices was examined. Seventy-two children, in grades kindergarten, 4, and 8, responded to questions about their perceptions of career influences. Responses were coded to capture the nature of the influences identified, including the global versus specific and linear versus interacting nature of these influences. Further, influences were coded as existing proximal versus distal to the child. Results indicate that older children identified more career influences that were either specific or categorical and interacted in dynamic ways. No evidence was found for older children offering influences that existed at a systems level of organization.Accepted manuscrip
Technology assessment between risk, uncertainty and ignorance
The use of most if not all technologies is accompanied by negative side effects, While we may profit from todayâs technologies, it is most often future generations who bear most risks. Risk analysis therefore becomes a delicate issue, because future risks often cannot be assigned a meaningful occurance probability. This paper argues that technology assessement most often deal with uncertainty and ignorance rather than risk when we include future generations into our ethical, political or juridal thinking. This has serious implications as probabilistic decision approaches are not applicable anymore. I contend that a virtue ethical approach in which dianoetic virtues play a central role may supplement a welfare based ethics in order to overcome the difficulties in dealing with uncertainty and ignorance in technology assessement
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