Team Dynamics and Learning Opportunities in Social Science Research Teams

Although the contemporary research environment encourages knowledge generation through research collaboration rather than individualized projects, limited scholarly attention has been devoted to the practice of collaboration within research teams. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of team dynamics and learning opportunities within four social science research teams. The findings reveal similarities and differences in leadership style and interaction approaches that affected how research was undertaken and the possibilities for team members to learn from each other. The snapshots provide models for other research teams that extend situated learning theories and the existing research base about collaboration, research teams, and research leadership. Key words: research teams, research leadership, researcher development, situated learning Bien que le milieu actuel de la recherche encourage la génération des connaissances par la collaboration en recherche plutôt que par les projets individuels, les universitaires ont accordé peu d’attention à la pratique collaborative au sein des équipes de recherche. Cet article présente une analyse qualitative de la dynamique des équipes et des occasions d’apprentissage au sein de quatre équipes de recherche en sciences sociales. Les résultats révèlent des ressemblances et des différences dans le style de leadership et les démarches d’interaction qui ont eu une influence sur la façon dont la recherche a été entreprise et sur les possibilités pour les membres des équipes d’apprendre l’un de l’autre. Les aperçus offrent des modèles pour d’autres équipes de recherche et contribuent aux théories de l’apprentissage contextualisé et à la base de recherche portant sur la collaboration, les équipes de recherche et le leadership en recherche. Mots clés : équipes de recherche, leadership en recherche, développement des chercheurs, apprentissage contextualis

Research Practice in Research Assistantships: Introducing the Special Issue on Research Assistantships

The idea for this special issue came from our mutual interest in research education and the development of future researchers. Our shared program of research has led us to discover the potentials, complexities, and dilemmas associated with research assistantships where newcomers assist more experienced researchers to conduct research projects. We considered a wide range of proposals and papers addressing different aspects of research assistantships. The resulting collection includes self-studies and analyses of others, as well as policy reviews and recommendations. The pieces consider research assistantships involving bachelor's, master's, and doctoral students in four different countries (Canada, Denmark, South Africa, United States) and across a range of disciplines

Fulfilling an ethical obligation: An educative research assistantship

Scant research evidence is available about the day-to-day workings of research assistantships or the educational possibilities they provide for research assistants and their academic supervisors. This case study documents the equitable, educative, and ethical nature of one research assistantship at a Canadian university. Data sources include audio recordings and transcripts from 24 research meetings, along with field notes and textual documents gathered over 8 months as the research assistant and academic supervisor designed, conducted, and presented an interview-based study. Evidence shows the academic supervisor supported the research assistant as she learned research skills and developed confidence as a researcher. The case study provides a potential model of an equitable, educative, and ethical research assistantship for the consideration of other research assistants and academic supervisors. Il existe peu de données de recherche portant sur les activités quotidiennes qu’impliquent les assistanats à la recherche ou sur les possibilités éducatives qu’ils offrent aux assistants à la recherche et à leurs superviseurs académiques. Cette étude de cas évoque la nature équitable, éducative et éthique d’un assistanat à la recherche dans une université canadienne. Les sources de données comprennent des enregistrements et des transcriptions audio de 24 réunions de recherche, des notes d’observation sur le terrain et des textes recueillis au cours de 8 mois pendant lesquels l’assistante à la recherche et le superviseur académique ont conçu, entrepris et présenté une étude reposant sur les entrevues. Des données probantes indiquent que le superviseur a appuyé l’assistante à la recherche pendant qu’elle acquérait des compétences de recherche et prenait confiance en elle comme chercheuse. Cette étude de cas constitue un modèle potentiel d’assistanat à la recherche équitable, éducatif et éthique que pourraient examiner d’autres assistants à la recherche et superviseurs académiques

Effective framing strategies for service advertising: The impact of narrative, rhetorical tropes and argument on consumer response across different service categories

This thesis investigates the role of information framing strategies for services advertising. The framing strategy refers to the distinguishable pattern in the manifest advertisement (McQuarrie and Mick 1996) and represents the structural composition of the information presented (Tsai 2007). Focusing on services is an important line of enquiry which is in keeping with global economic developments and the evolution of services marketing as a distinct discipline within marketing. Despite the ever increasing importance of services for global economies, services advertising research remains underdeveloped compared to goods (Stafford et al. 2011). Information framing is important because how messages are presented to consumers has both direct effects on consumer responses, as well as mediated effects via the specific information processing styles triggered. This thesis is divided into three papers, each of which work towards improving our currently impoverished understanding of the effectiveness of different framing strategies for services. The first paper is a literature review, mwhich offers a comprehensive review of the traditional and contemporary literature informing our knowledge of the impact of framing strategies on consumer responses to advertising. The next paper employs a content analysis methodology to shed light on the different framing strategies viewed as alternatives by modern services and to offer an overall perspective on the most frequently used framing strategies in practice. This paper also examines trends in the muse of framing strategies across service types and identifies if any disparity exists between the mfindings of this study and optimal framing strategies as dictated by the theoretical background. The third and final paper in this thesis is a 3(framing strategy: argument v. metaphor v. narrative) x 2(mental intangibility: high v. low) x 2(customization: high v. low) between-subjects web-experiment (n = 663). This paper develops and empirically tests hypotheses related to the moderating impact of service characteristics on consumer response to framing strategies. This study raises interesting findings on the effectiveness of different framing strategies in enhancing comprehension and attitudes towards different types of services. Further, comparing the content analysis and experimental findings brings the disparity between how service practitioners are framing their advertisements versus effective framing strategies to light. This thesis therefore has important managerial implications

Team Dynamics and Learning Opportunities in Social Science Research Teams

Although the contemporary research environment encourages knowledge generation through research collaboration rather than individualized projects, limited scholarly attention has been devoted to the practice of collaboration within research teams. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of team dynamics and learning opportunities within four social science research teams. The findings reveal similarities and differences in leadership style and interaction approaches that affected how research was undertaken and the possibilities for team members to learn from each other. The snapshots provide models for other research teams that extend situated learning theories and the existing research base about collaboration, research teams, and research leadership

Fast Professors, Research Funding, and the Figured Worlds of Mid-Career Ontario Academics

Heightened pressures to publish prolifically and secure external funding stand in stark contrast to the slow scholarship movement. This article explores ways in which research funding expectations permeate the “figured worlds” of 16 mid-career academics in education, social work, sociology, and geography in seven universities in Ontario, Canada. Participants demonstrated a steady record of research accomplishment and a commitment to social justice in their work. The analysis identified three themes related to the competing pressures these academics described in their day-to-day lives: funding, challenges, and the fast professor. Participants spoke about their research funding achievements and struggles. In some cases, they explained how their positioning, including gender and race, might have affected their research production, compared to colleagues positioned differently. Their social justice research is funded, but some suspect at a lower level than colleagues studying conventional topics. Challenges might be located in the backstage (personal and home lives) or the frontstage (university or funding agency policies or embedded in the research itself). In aiming for the impossible standards of a continuously successful research record, these individuals worked “all the time.” Advocates claim that slow scholarship is not really about going slower but rather about maintaining quality and caring in one’s work; yet, participants’ accounts suggest they perceive few options other than to perform as “fast professors.” At mid-career, they question whether and how they can keep up this aspect of their figured worlds for 20 or more years.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; Office of the Associate Dean, Research, International & Innovation, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toront

Professors in Canada: Experiences of academic life—A special issue

This is an editorial introduction to a special issue of the journal, Brock Education. The article presents an overview of the current context for Canadian professors and the existing data about their work lives and practices. Short descriptions are provided for each of the six articles that comprise the special issue.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Graphing: Cognitive ability or practice

ABSTRACT: Traditional views conceive graphing as knowledge represented in students' minds. We show in our critique that such views lead to a common assessment problem of how to account for variations in performance across contexts and tasks, and a common attribution problem that locates difficulties in students' deficient cognitive apparatus. Grounded in recent research of scientists at work and everyday cognition, this article provides an alternative perspective that conceives of graphing as observable practices employed to achieve specific goals. This perspective highlights the nature of graphs as semiotic objects, rhetorical devices, and conscription devices. This shift in perspective dissolves problems with assessment and inappropriate attribution of student difficulties. The plausibility and fruitfulness of the new perspective is illustrated in three ways. First, we show that successes and failures of various graphing curricula become understandable in terms of the presence or absence of social dimensions of the practice. Second, we show how our perspective necessitates new assessment practices. Third, we show how our practice perspective on graphing led us to different learning environments and to new foci for conducting research in student-centered open-inquiry contexts

Planar Anchoring Strength And Pitch Measurements In Achiral And Chiral Chromonic Liquid Crystals Using 90-Degree Twist Cells

Chromonic liquid crystals are formed by molecules that spontaneously assemble into anisotropic structures in water. The ordering unit is therefore a molecular assembly instead of a molecule as in thermotropic liquid crystals. Although it has been known for a long time that certain dyes, drugs, and nucleic acids form chromonic liquid crystals, only recently has enough knowledge been gained on how to control their alignment so that studies of their fundamental liquid crystal properties can be performed. In this article, a simple method for producing planar alignment of the nematic phase in chromonic liquid crystals is described, and this in turn is used to create twisted nematic structures of both achiral and chiral chromonic liquid crystals. The optics of 90-degree twist cells allows the anchoring strength to be measured in achiral systems, which for this alignment technique is quite weak, about 3 x 10(-7) J/m2 for both disodium cromoglycate and Sunset Yellow FCF. The addition of a chiral amino acid to the system causes the chiral nematic phase to form, and similar optical measurements in 90-degree twist cells produce a measurement of the intrinsic pitch of the chiral nematic phase. From these measurements, the helical twisting power for L-alanine is found to be (1.1 +/- 0.4) x 10(-2) mu m(-1) wt%(-1) for 15 wt% disodium cromoglycate