Now you see me, now you don't: A study of the relationship between internet anonymity and Finnish young people

Siirretty Doriast

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

The interpretive approach as a research tool : inside the REDCo project

This contribution shows how the author’s interpretive approach to religious education was used as a theoretical and pedagogical stimulus and an empirical research tool by researchers in the European Commission Framework 6 REDCo (Religion, Education, Dialogue, Conflict) Project. The origins and development of the interpretive approach, from its roots in the ethnographic study of children from religious backgrounds, are summarised, and an account is given about how its key concepts were used to frame a checklist of questions for REDCo researchers dealing with both empirical research methodology and pedagogy. Examples and case studies are presented illustrating how the approach was used by REDCo researchers as a methodological tool for empirical research, a pedagogical tool or stimulus to pedagogical clarification and a tool for meta-analysis and theory development

'Fighting For Respect': Youth, Violence and Citizenship in East London

PhDThis research explores the complex dynamics between young people's experiences of violence, victimisation and citizenship. The research itself is shaped by an understanding of the interrelations between theories and practices of childhood and youth, citizenship and violence and victimisation. Developing a fluid Link between these theoretical approaches has facilitated original ways of accessing and understanding young people's own experiences. Indeed, the research develops an holistic theoretical perspective that allows young people to explore structural, social and psychological complexities of their everyday experiences, through acknowledging the tensions between structural and inter-personaE violence. The research draws on both quantitative and qualitative methodological tools to engage with over 400 11-20 year olds in Tower Hamlets, east London. The findings show that many young people understand their experiences of violence and victimisation as being shaped by their reduced citizen status. This link however has a very different emphasis than current theoretical and political thinking, particularly within the policy arena. This view instead places blame on young people for their 'Lack' of citizenship and Links this 'Lack' of citizenship to increasing rates of violence and victimisation through punitive policies of control and conditional welfare. Young people's views guide the research, and through this process, the notion of respect emerged as an analytical toot. The Lens of respect offers an important and original way of understanding young people's experiences of violence, victimisation and citizenship. An appreciation of the importance of 'respect' enabled violence and victimisation to be understood as a symptom of a disrespected citizenship relationship with the state. Citizenship itself is a fluid dynamic between citizens and the state. Young people who experience their relationship with the state to be disrespectful can begin to seek out alternative routes to gain respect; one such way was identified as an engagement in violent behaviours

The great divide? Occupational limbo and permanent liminality amongst ‘teaching only’ staff in higher education

In this paper, we contribute new theoretical perspectives and empirical findings to the conceptualisation of occupational liminality, specifically in relation to so-called ‘teaching-only’ staff at UK universities. Here, we posit ‘occupational limbo’ as a state distinct from both transitional and permanent liminality; an important analytic distinction in better understanding occupational experiences. In its anthropological sense, liminality refers to a state of being betwixt and between; it is temporary and transitional. Permanent liminality refers to a state of being neither-this-nor-that, or both-this-and-that. We extend this framework in proposing a conceptualisation of occupational limbo as always-this-and-never-that. Based on interviews with 51 teaching-only staff at 20 research-intensive ‘Russell Group’ universities in the United Kingdom, findings revealed participants’ highly challenging occupational experiences. Interviewees reported feeling ‘locked-in’ to an uncomfortable state by a set of structural and social barriers often perceived as insurmountable. These staff felt negatively ‘marked’ (Allen-Collinson, 2009), subject to identity contestation as academics, and were found to engage in negative, often self-deprecatory identity talk that highlighted a felt inability to cross the līmen to the elevated status of ‘proper academics’ (Bamber et al., 2017). The findings and the new conceptual framework provide sociological insights with wider application to other occupational spheres

How to Ask for Technical Help? Evidence-based Guidelines for Writing Questions on Stack Overflow

Context: The success of Stack Overflow and other community-based question-and-answer (Q&A) sites depends mainly on the will of their members to answer others' questions. In fact, when formulating requests on Q&A sites, we are not simply seeking for information. Instead, we are also asking for other people's help and feedback. Understanding the dynamics of the participation in Q&A communities is essential to improve the value of crowdsourced knowledge. Objective: In this paper, we investigate how information seekers can increase the chance of eliciting a successful answer to their questions on Stack Overflow by focusing on the following actionable factors: affect, presentation quality, and time. Method: We develop a conceptual framework of factors potentially influencing the success of questions in Stack Overflow. We quantitatively analyze a set of over 87K questions from the official Stack Overflow dump to assess the impact of actionable factors on the success of technical requests. The information seeker reputation is included as a control factor. Furthermore, to understand the role played by affective states in the success of questions, we qualitatively analyze questions containing positive and negative emotions. Finally, a survey is conducted to understand how Stack Overflow users perceive the guideline suggestions for writing questions. Results: We found that regardless of user reputation, successful questions are short, contain code snippets, and do not abuse with uppercase characters. As regards affect, successful questions adopt a neutral emotional style. Conclusion: We provide evidence-based guidelines for writing effective questions on Stack Overflow that software engineers can follow to increase the chance of getting technical help. As for the role of affect, we empirically confirmed community guidelines that suggest avoiding rudeness in question writing.Comment: Preprint, to appear in Information and Software Technolog

Unmet goals of tracking: within-track heterogeneity of students' expectations for

Educational systems are often characterized by some form(s) of ability grouping, like tracking. Although substantial variation in the implementation of these practices exists, it is always the aim to improve teaching efficiency by creating homogeneous groups of students in terms of capabilities and performances as well as expected pathways. If students’ expected pathways (university, graduate school, or working) are in line with the goals of tracking, one might presume that these expectations are rather homogeneous within tracks and heterogeneous between tracks. In Flanders (the northern region of Belgium), the educational system consists of four tracks. Many students start out in the most prestigious, academic track. If they fail to gain the necessary credentials, they move to the less esteemed technical and vocational tracks. Therefore, the educational system has been called a 'cascade system'. We presume that this cascade system creates homogeneous expectations in the academic track, though heterogeneous expectations in the technical and vocational tracks. We use data from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY), gathered during the 2013-2014 school year from 2354 pupils of the tenth grade across 30 secondary schools in the city of Ghent, Flanders. Preliminary results suggest that the technical and vocational tracks show more heterogeneity in student’s expectations than the academic track. If tracking does not fulfill the desired goals in some tracks, tracking practices should be questioned as tracking occurs along social and ethnic lines, causing social inequality

Fields of experience: young people's constructions of embodied identities

This thesis is concerned with issues relating to young people, identity and physical culture, and attempts to highlight how the comelex structure of young people's social experiences can influence their constructions of self. It follows a number of calls by various researchers for a multi-dimensional approach to the study of youth lifestyles (e. g. Hendry et al, 1996), and one that, while acknowledging societal influences on young people's practices, does not deny their potential to act agentically (e. g. Christensen & James, 2000). As such, taking into account the concerns expressed over the increasing pressures facing young people in contemporary society, and the problematisation of various youth behaviours, it examines the extent to which young people shape and are shaped by their experiences in a number of interrelating social contexts. The research upon which this account is based focuses on a notion of identity that is ephemeral, reflexive, and embodied, and examines the experiences of young people in five intersecting social sites that were identified from the literature as important contexts for individuals' constructions of identities: family, peers, school, media, and physical culture. These social arenas are likened to Bourdieu's notion of fields, and are perceived to be structured spaces in which the development of an appropriate habitus and the possession of relevant capital can help to determine an individual's practice and position within them. Data were generated through a series of focus group discussions with four groups of five young people (ten boys and ten girls) from three schools in tile Midlands. The young people were selected from a larger sample that had been surveyed and clustered in relation to their motivation to physical activity, and each group comprised an individual from each cluster. The focus group sessions involved semi-structured conversations in addition to a program of activity-based research tasks, and culminated in the creation of individual identity posters. The taped conversations and material infonnation generated through the focus group sessions were then collated, and a grounded theory approach was employed in the thematic analysis of tile data. A number of analytic strategies such as coding, memos, and conceptual mapping were utilised within this process, and, in association with a consideration of tile conceptual tools of field, habitus, practice, and capital, contributed to the development of theory. Within tile thesis, the five main analysis chapters presented the key themes in relation to each field, and highlighted the identity i work that the participants engaged in within each of these social sites. The chapters. map out the structure and practices of each field, and examine their influences on the young people's attempts to construct understandings of self. The final chapter of the thesis then attempts to summarise the findings of these previous analysis chapters, and examine them in relation to the central research questions that guided and underpinned the study. As such, the repetition of core themes, such as the management and presentation of self, a desire for autonomy and respect, and a tension within a dialect of conforinity and resistance, were identified as significant aspects of young people's social practices. Additionally, the evident overlaps between the different contexts indicated the complex configuration of fields within the experiences of young people. In relation to this issue, the final chapter focuses in particular on how the fields configured for the young people in relation to the field of physical culture, as this was identified in the study as a primary site for the construction of embodied identities. Having presented these key findings, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications for those working with and for young people, and for the design and implementation of youth policies, particularly in relation to the area of physical activity