334 research outputs found
Using assignment data to analyse a blended information literacy intervention: a quantitative approach
This research sought to determine whether a blended information literacy learning and teaching intervention could statistically significantly enhance undergraduatesâ information discernment compared to standard face-to-face delivery. A mixture of face-to-face and online activities, including online social media learning, was used. Three interventions were designed to develop the information literacies of first-year undergraduates studying Sport and Exercise at Staffordshire University and focused on one aspect of information literacy: the ability to evaluate source material effectively. An analysis was devised where written evaluations of found information for an assessment were converted into numerical scores and then measured statistically. This helped to evaluate the efficacy of the interventions and provided data for further analysis. An insight into how the information literacy pedagogical intervention and the cognitive processes involved in enabling participants to interact critically with information is provided. The intervention which incorporated social media learning proved to be the most successful learning and teaching approach. The data indicated that undergraduate studentsâ information literacy can be developed. However, additional long-term data is required to establish whether this intervention would have a lasting impact
Is the Good Polity Attainable? Measuring the Quality of Democracy
This article introduces a discussion on defining, measuring, and assessing the quality of democracy. Providing a short overview of the papers of the Symposium, it places them within a broader context of current academic debate on various methodological, theoretical, and policy outreach dimensions of the topic
NGO Legitimacy: Four Models
The aim of this paper is to examine NGOsâ legitimacy in the context of global politics. In order to yield a better understanding of NGOsâ legitimacy at the international level it is important to examine how their legitimacy claims are evaluated. This paper proposes dividing the literature into four models based on the theoretical and analytical approaches to their legitimacy claims: the market model, social change model, new institutionalism model and the critical model. The legitimacy criteria generated by the models are significantly different in their analytical scope of how one is to assess the role of NGOs operating as political actors contributing to democracy. The paper argues that the models present incomplete, and sometimes conflicting, views of NGOsâ legitimacy and that this poses a legitimacy dilemma for those assessing the political agency of NGOs in world politics. The paper concludes that only by approaching their legitimacy holistically can the democratic role of NGOs be explored and analysed in the context of world politics
Material matters for learning in virtual networks : A case study of a professional learning programme hosted in a Google+ online community
Date of Acceptance: 13/07/2015Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Fragments of equality in representative politics
Deploying a broadly interpretive approach, the article explores the extent to which, and the ways in which, equality is enacted in non-elective as well as elective representation. It argues that the fleeting and fragmentary equalities evident in non-elective representation are democratically significant, and that examining them can enhance understanding of the democratic promise and limits of different modes of representation
Symbolic meanings and e-learning in the workplace: The case of an intranet-based training tool
This article contributes to the debate on work-based e-learning, by unpacking the notion of âthe learning contextâ in a case where the mediating tool for training also supports everyday work. Usersâ engagement with the information and communication technology tool is shown to reflect dynamic interactions among the individual, peer group, organizational and institutional levels. Also influential are professionalsâ values and identity work, alongside their interpretations of espoused and emerging symbolic meanings. Discussion draws on pedagogically informed studies of e-learning and the wider organizational learning literature. More centrally, this article highlights the instrumentality of symbolic interactionism for e-learning research and explores some of the frameworkâs conceptual resources as applied to organizational analysis and e-learning design. </jats:p
Municipal service delivery: the role of transaction costs in the choice between alternative governance mechanisms
Service provision by local governments can be delivered using in-house bureaucracies, private firms, and partnerships with other governments or the not-for-profit sector. This production decision has been a major focus of discussion among scholars, practitioners and political agents for the last quarter of a century. The transaction costs framework is an important tool to analyse decisions regarding the production of local services. In this paper, the authors employ this framework to analyse service delivery in Portugal and find that service characteristics and the local political environment play a key role in local officialsâ choice among the three governance mechanisms to deliver public service
Understanding and Challenging Populist Negativity towards Politics: The Perspectives of British Citizens
This article adapts and develops the idea of a cynical or âstealthâ understanding of politics to
explore how citizensâ estrangement from formal politics is processed cognitively through a
populist lens. Earlier work has shown the widespread presence of stealth attitudes in the United
States and Finland. We show that stealth attitudes are also well established in Britain, demonstrate
their populist character and reveal that age, newspaper readership and concerns about governing
practices help predict their adoption by individuals. Yet our survey findings also reveal a larger
body of positive attitudes towards the practice of democracy suggesting that there is scope for
challenging populist cynicism. We explore these so-called âsunshineâ attitudes and connect them to
the reform options favoured by British citizens. If we are to challenge populist negativity towards
politics, we conclude that improving the operation of representative politics is more important
than offering citizens new forms of more deliberative participation
The Pinochet case : cosmopolitanism and intermestic human rights
This article explores the Pinochet case, widely heralded as a landmark, as a case of âintermesticâ human rights that raises difficult normative and empirical questions concerning cosmopolitan justice. The article is a contribution to the sociology of human rights from the perspective of methodological cosmopolitanism, developing conceptual tools and methods to study how cosmopolitanising state institutions and cultural norms are inter-related. The argument is made that in order to understand issues of cosmopolitan justice, sociologists must give more consideration to political culture
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