4,758 research outputs found

    The Council of Europe’s Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture: Hope for democracy or an allusive Utopia?

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    Democracies around the world are increasingly polarized along political and cultural lines. To address these challenges, in 2016, the Council of Europe (CoE) produced a model of twenty competences for democratic culture. In 2018, this same model became the basis of the Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture (RFCDC). The RFCDC provides pedagogical instructions to help implement these competences. Together, I call this set of materials “the Framework”. This thesis begins with the premise that utopia has long played an important role in the way power is maintained or resisted in democratic education. It questions the assumption that democratic culture can be cultivated instrumentally through policy- based competences without imposing power on subjects and views this assumption to be utopian. It thus excavates the potential utopian ideals at play in the Framework using ‘hidden utopias’ as a conceptual lens and method, which draws inspiration from the theories of Michùl Foucault, Ernst Bloch and Ruth Levitas. It investigates how using ‘hidden utopias’ as a theoretical lens might facilitate a deeper understanding of the nature and purpose of the Framework, how implicit utopias might be at play, how this could be problematic and how these theories might shed light on the application of the Framework in pedagogical contexts. The contribution of this thesis is to make visible potential utopias at the heart of the Framework. It suggests that making implicit utopias visible in democratic education can help educators and learners engage with these discourses in critical and innovative ways and think beyond them

    Year of the Golden Jubilee: Culture Change in the Past, Present and Future

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    Part 1 of the IACCP Proceedings contains the abstracts and links to the recordings of the XXVI Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, 2022. (c) 2023, International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychologyhttps://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/iaccp_proceedings/1011/thumbnail.jp

    “When men lose their animals, women gain power”: Women and Change in East Pokot, Kenya

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    This thesis analyses the effects of increasing sedentarization among pastoral Pokot in East Pokot, Kenia, on society in general and women specifically and explores how the latter react to the new socio-economic circumstances, and again re-transform a heretofore patriarchal social order. Based on 14 months of fieldwork in the areas of Chemolingot and Kadingding and utilizing both quantitative and qualitative research as well as employing Sherry Ortner’s Theory of Practice, it posits three claims: First, I argue that the face of sedentarization in East Pokot is female. Women are drivers, shapers and beneficiaries of the transformative processes. They surge towards urban centers to explore new sources of income from cash economy and casual work. And they are the ones who leave behind pastoral life to escape from what they perceive as an curtailment of their socioeconomic self-determination. For them, settled life holds a promise of becoming their family’s breadwinners and gain possessions of their own. Second, this tendency generates friction. Men who, due to their social roles being fixed in terms of herders and warriors, have a harder time adjusting to the new reality, perceive female breadwinners and their for more equitable relationships as a threat to their status as heads of households. Here, a confrontational trope of “lazy men” and “disrespectful women” enters the picture. This trope is a critique of the cultural narrative of the gendered division of labor. Naturalized gendered tasks are becoming visible through female cash-income activities. These new practices open up the floor for debates on the workload of men and women. Underpinning this confrontation is Christian religion with its focus on monogamous marriage and its mission of empowering women to become educated and, thus, economically independent. Third, I suggest that the female face of sedentarization is Janus-faced. A woman’s opportunities depend on their education and economic resources as well as social and biographical conditions. In settings where wealth is quantified over livestock, women possess little power. Only when cash and immovable properties come into play can they catch up with men. However, there are also risks, such as pauperization and the dissolution of social networks – as well as the burden of earning the household income and fulfilling all reproductive tasks too. These differences become salient in the institution of marriage. Marriage is an arena of contestation between two ideals – i.e., polygamy, associated with pastoralism, versus monogamy, associated with post-pastoralism – and also between men and women who are bargaining about rights and obligations. Here, the chances of influencing married life hinge on breaking with expectations of what it means to be a Pokot woman and launch new practices

    Behavior quantification as the missing link between fields: Tools for digital psychiatry and their role in the future of neurobiology

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    The great behavioral heterogeneity observed between individuals with the same psychiatric disorder and even within one individual over time complicates both clinical practice and biomedical research. However, modern technologies are an exciting opportunity to improve behavioral characterization. Existing psychiatry methods that are qualitative or unscalable, such as patient surveys or clinical interviews, can now be collected at a greater capacity and analyzed to produce new quantitative measures. Furthermore, recent capabilities for continuous collection of passive sensor streams, such as phone GPS or smartwatch accelerometer, open avenues of novel questioning that were previously entirely unrealistic. Their temporally dense nature enables a cohesive study of real-time neural and behavioral signals. To develop comprehensive neurobiological models of psychiatric disease, it will be critical to first develop strong methods for behavioral quantification. There is huge potential in what can theoretically be captured by current technologies, but this in itself presents a large computational challenge -- one that will necessitate new data processing tools, new machine learning techniques, and ultimately a shift in how interdisciplinary work is conducted. In my thesis, I detail research projects that take different perspectives on digital psychiatry, subsequently tying ideas together with a concluding discussion on the future of the field. I also provide software infrastructure where relevant, with extensive documentation. Major contributions include scientific arguments and proof of concept results for daily free-form audio journals as an underappreciated psychiatry research datatype, as well as novel stability theorems and pilot empirical success for a proposed multi-area recurrent neural network architecture.Comment: PhD thesis cop

    Legitimizing sustainability talk in retail talk : The case of IKEA’s sustainability journey

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    By looking at the empirical case of IKEA’s sustainability journey (1992-2017), using qualitative methods such as interviews and document studies, this thesis shows how sustainability talk over time is made into a legitimate feature of retail talk. Something I argue is a far more difficult, complex and problematic endeavour for retailers to undertake than most previous research on the topic would have us believe.The purpose of this study is to reveal what some of these previously overlooked complexities and problematic aspects might be. It does so from a theoretical perspective focused on the performative qualities of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) communication, or CSR talk. Inspired by blind spots in such theorizing, I incorporate the processual concept of legitimation and ground its thinking in an empirical study of how sustainability talk is made into a legitimate feature of retail talk, throughout a retail organization. My approach is to complement and combine previous research on more sustainable retailing and CSR talk theorizing by providing a more nuanced understanding of the kind of work that goes into making retailing more sustainable, and for CSR talk to occur throughout an organization over time.The findings indicate three overarching complexities and problematic aspects of legitimizing sustainability talk in retail talk. The first is the challenging task of ensuring continuous talk about sustainability within retail organizations over time, something that requires the development of Corporate Sustainability Discourse (CSD), integrated forms of sustainability talk, as well as enabling and identifying business hooks. The second involves recognizing and dealing with how more sustainable retailing may also entail more political retailing, which brings back the moralizing nature of sustainability talk to CSR talk theorizing by providing new empirical insights into the topic. Lastly, the study also shows some of the internal mechanisms that force retailers to discursively repackage sustainability talk into something that entails selling more, not less. This reveals the near impossibility for retailers and their sustainability talk to escape a potentially unsustainable status quo paradigm of sustainable development. All three insights leaves us with food for thought concerning how more sustainable retailing can be understood and pursued

    Case study of a Tulsa, Oklahoma school name change from Confederate to Indigenous roots: Supporters' meaning-making

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    This qualitative case study focuses on renaming an elementary school in Tulsa, Oklahoma from a Confederate namesake (Robert E. Lee Elementary) to a name reflecting Indigenous roots of the Muskogee Creek Nation (Council Oak). The renaming took place during a national movement of removing Confederate symbols and names from public places. The school’s original naming occurred in 1918, and the renaming occurred after a multi-year school board and community process in 2018. Using a constructionist and interpretivist approach and a conceptual orientation to memory work, I focused on the meaning-making of community members who supported the name change about the original and new names. I interviewed 16 people individually and through focus groups, collected documents, and observed community events to examine how supportive members constructed meanings through a continual, dynamic, social, and relational local process. For supporters, the process involved phases of awareness and action over multiple years. The renaming also caused community tensions and disagreements. The case is one of few studies focused on school renaming processes. It reflects both national meanings of Confederate names as “remembering” problematic histories as well as local meanings unique to “remembering” and “forgetting” aspects of Tulsa and Oklahoma’s racialized histor

    Self-Regulated Learning for Chinese, Adult Language Learners: An Intervention Study in a Blended Learning Environment

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    Blended learning is a well-established learning design providing much needed accessibility to learning resources and improved pedagogy through technological means. The flipped classroom model is one approach that can help promote engagement through the prioritization of learner-led discussions and collaborative work in the classroom while extending access to language learning practice outside of class time (Bergman & Sams, 2012; Forsey et al., 2013; Johnson & Marsh, 2016). Implicit within the design, however, is the introduction of non-linear access to information which often requires learners to assume more responsibility for their learning process, deploying self-regulated learning strategies to achieve their objectives (Perez-Alvarez et al., 2018). My dissertation explores the increased need for self-regulated learning experienced by Chinese, adult English language learners for achieving success in a blended, flipped learning environment. As a design-based research study, my focus was on the overarching objective of the development of an intervention. This objective was addressed in three, iterative stages of research involving the analysis of the context, and the design, development, and subsequent evaluation of prototypes. This process led to the creation of some initial design principles that were used to guide the development of a digital app that was deployed to a small group of participants. During the implementation and evaluation of the app-based intervention, an additional research objective relating to achievement goal orientation was adopted to explore the types of goals that language learners with high persistence were likely to pursue. Multiple, qualitative data sources were used to address the research questions including document analysis, focus groups, interviews, and field observations. Findings that emerged from the study contributed to the refinement of design principles and provided insight for subsequent development of the intervention. Findings suggested that personalized instructor feedback fulfilled an important emotional function for learners in this context. Enabling a dialogical feedback process between participants and the instructor helped engage learners in more thoughtful self-assessment using external feedback including data visualizations. This process contributed to the development of trust in the source of the feedback, which was more likely to lead to a change in behaviour. Additional insights concerning achievement goals were derived from the interviews, suggesting benefits of multiple different achievement goal profiles could be found. These findings lend further support to the value of using qualitative methods for investigating learner goal-orientations. This study included a small group of learners who demonstrated high persistence. It was recommended that future research involve a larger sample of learners to explore variations in response to the intervention to improve the effectiveness of the design and implementation

    International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022

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    This conference proceedings gathers work and research presented at the International Academic Symposium of Social Science 2022 (IASSC2022) held on July 3, 2022, in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, Malaysia. The conference was jointly organized by the Faculty of Information Management of Universiti Teknologi MARA Kelantan Branch, Malaysia; University of Malaya, Malaysia; Universitas Pembangunan Nasional Veteran Jakarta, Indonesia; Universitas Ngudi Waluyo, Indonesia; Camarines Sur Polytechnic Colleges, Philippines; and UCSI University, Malaysia. Featuring experienced keynote speakers from Malaysia, Australia, and England, this proceeding provides an opportunity for researchers, postgraduate students, and industry practitioners to gain knowledge and understanding of advanced topics concerning digital transformations in the perspective of the social sciences and information systems, focusing on issues, challenges, impacts, and theoretical foundations. This conference proceedings will assist in shaping the future of the academy and industry by compiling state-of-the-art works and future trends in the digital transformation of the social sciences and the field of information systems. It is also considered an interactive platform that enables academicians, practitioners and students from various institutions and industries to collaborate

    A survey on artificial intelligence-based acoustic source identification

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    The concept of Acoustic Source Identification (ASI), which refers to the process of identifying noise sources has attracted increasing attention in recent years. The ASI technology can be used for surveillance, monitoring, and maintenance applications in a wide range of sectors, such as defence, manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture. Acoustic signature analysis and pattern recognition remain the core technologies for noise source identification. Manual identification of acoustic signatures, however, has become increasingly challenging as dataset sizes grow. As a result, the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques for identifying noise sources has become increasingly relevant and useful. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of AI-based acoustic source identification techniques. We analyze the strengths and weaknesses of AI-based ASI processes and associated methods proposed by researchers in the literature. Additionally, we did a detailed survey of ASI applications in machinery, underwater applications, environment/event source recognition, healthcare, and other fields. We also highlight relevant research directions

    The American Indian Agent, 1791-1861 Questioning the Literary and Cinematic Stereotype as well as Historical Narratives to find the real Indian Agent

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    The American Indian Agent is a known figure in the national drama. Originally defined by nineteenth century political opponents, settlers, frontier business interests, the American military, Indian policy reformers and even Indians, the Indian agent ranges from inept to cupidinous; cruel to inhuman. Western fiction writers, screenwriters and episodic television dramatists of the twentieth century took the agent’s tarnished reputation and created a stereotype stock character for Westerns emphasising all his malevolent attributes. The historical profession has largely perpetuated the cultural and literary perception of the Indian agent, until some historians began to identify individualized exceptions to agent perfidy. As examples of benevolent agents grew, the profession revised its analysis allowing that some agents assisted Indians while most remained obdurately delinquent.Most historical research on Indian agents has focused on the period from 1861–1888, the Civil War to the end of the Apache Wars. Large swaths of history remain lightly explored as the Indian agent existed from 1791–1908. This thesis examines the Indian agent in the early years of the Republic, from 1791–1861, interacting with Indians from New York to Puget Sound, from Georgia to New Mexico and the vast Great Plains in between. Crucially this thesis places the agent in the world of the Indian agency as well as the competing worlds of politics, business, religion, settlement, and government administration of which he was also a part.The results are surprising. Although there were a few criminals and several men overwhelmed by conditions, most agents of Jeffersonian, Jacksonian, and Antebellum America were honest, sincere public servants, many coming to favor the Indians and spending their own money, and in a few cases, their blood to aid Indian development and freedom.This conclusion runs counter to both popular and historical perceptions. It seems almost everyone has adopted the old Aristotelian idea of petitio principii or “begging the question”. The bad and inept Indian agent must be bad and inept. No longer. These are the real Indian agents of 1791–1861
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