Identity Retrieval and Development in the Conflict of Paradigmatic Dichotomy

Identifying what matters: Science education, science communication, and democracy

Theory and research concerning organizational identity (“who we are as an organization”) is a burgeoning domain within organization study. A great deal of conceptual and empirical work has been accomplished within the last three decades—especially concerning the phenomenon of organizational identity change. More recently, work has been devoted to studying the processes and content associated with identity formation. Given the amount of scholarly work done to date, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the perspectives, controversies and outcomes of this body of work. Because organizational identity change has received the preponderance of attention, we first review that extensive literature. We consider the conceptual and empirical work concerning the three putative “pillars” of identity (i.e. that which is ostensibly central, enduring, and distinctive). We devote particular attention to the most controversial of these pillars—the debate pitting a view that sees identity as stable over time (a position we term as the “enduring identity proposition”) and a contrasting stance that sees identity as more changeable (the “dynamic identity proposition”). Following our review of the identity change literature, we next take up a review of the notably smaller compendium of work on identity formation. We consider the conceptual and empirical work devoted to studying the external influences on, as well as the internal resources used, to fashion a nascent identity. Finally, we discuss in more depth the controversies associated with the pillars of identity, assess the four prevalent views on organizational identity (the social construction, social actor, institutionalist, and population ecologist views), assimilate the research on both identity formation and change, and consider the prospects for future work on both phenomena.

The theory of the social construction of reality and the theory of the social construction of mass media are still partially discussed. Several previous pieces of research have not yet correlated, elaborated, or synthesized from the theoretical aspect. Even though much has been said about the social construction of reality, media consumers are heavily influenced by media "made" constructions. The research aims to synthesize the Bergerian theory of social reality construction (Berger and Luckmann) with the Bunginan theory of social reality construction (Burhan Bungin). The method used is a literature study. The results showed that the synthesis of the social construction theory of reality and the social construction of mass media reality produced a thesis understanding of an objective and subjective reality which was sufficiently understood through the social construction theory of mass media reality. This is considering the individual phenomenon which, in all durations of daily life, cannot be separated from the role of social media interaction. They externalize, objectify as well as internalize reality based on mass media references. In the hierarchy, the social construction theory of reality can be placed as a grand theory by considering genealogical aspects, while the social construction theory of mass media reality can be placed as a middle-rank theory. This is of course related to the more universal focus on social construction of reality.

The theory of the social construction of reality and the theory of the social construction of mass media are still partially discussed. Several previous pieces of research have not yet correlated, elaborated, or synthesized from the theoretical aspect. Even though much has been said about the social construction of reality, media consumers are heavily influenced by media "made" constructions. The research aims to synthesize the Bergerian theory of social reality construction (Berger and Luckmann) with the Bunginan theory of social reality construction (Burhan Bungin). The method used is a literature study. The results showed that the synthesis of the social construction theory of reality and the social construction of mass media reality produced a thesis understanding of an objective and subjective reality which was sufficiently understood through the social construction theory of mass media reality. This is considering the individual phenomenon which, in all durations of daily life, cannot be separated from the role of social media interaction. They externalize, objectify as well as internalize reality based on mass media references. In the hierarchy, the social construction theory of reality can be placed as a grand theory by considering genealogical aspects, while the social construction theory of mass media reality can be placed as a middle-rank theory. This is of course related to the more universal focus on social construction of reality.This research aims to analyze an effective business communication model in the context of culinary entrepreneurship post the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Depok City. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the culinary sector, with social restrictions and changes in consumer behavior. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how culinary MSMEs can adapt and succeed in facing these challenges.This study employs a qualitative approach, utilizing in-depth interviews with culinary MSME owners in Depok City. The data collected are analyzed using thematic analysis to identify emerging patterns and findings. The research findings indicate that an effective business communication model for culinary MSMEs post the COVID-19 pandemic involves several key elements. Firstly, MSMEs need to have a clear and targeted communication strategy, including identifying the appropriate target market and developing relevant messages. Secondly, the utilization of digital and online media is crucial in promoting products and reaching potential consumers. MSMEs need to leverage social media, websites, and online booking platforms to enhance product visibility and accessibility. Furthermore, collaboration with relevant stakeholders is also an essential factor in a successful business communication model. MSMEs can establish partnerships with local suppliers, culinary communities, and government institutions to expand their reach and gain necessary support.This research provides valuable insights for culinary MSMEs in Depok City and similar sectors in developing effective business communication models post the COVID-19 pandemic. By adopting these approaches, MSMEs can enhance their chances of success in facing challenges and capitalizing on emerging opportunities amidst changing consumer behavior and intensifying competition in the post-pandemic era.

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a systematic review of empirical literature examining doctoral students’ identity development as scholars in the education sciences. We frame our analysis through a constructivist sociocultural perspective to organize our findings and discuss implications for multiple actors and components that constitute the system of doctoral education, with doctoral students as the central actors of the system. Background: Despite increasing interest in the professional identity development of postsecondary students via their experiences in educational programs, relatively little is known about how doctoral students develop their identity as professionals who engage in scholarship. We focus specifically on the experiences of education sciences doctoral students, given their unique experiences (e.g., typically older in age, more professional experiences prior to starting doctoral program) and the potential of education sciences doctoral programs contributing to the diversification of academia and future generations of students and scholars. Methodology: Our systematic literature search process entailed reviewing the titles, abstracts, and methods sections of the first 1,000 records yielded via a Google Scholar search. This process, combined with backwards and forwards citation snowballing, yielded a total of 62 articles, which were read in their entirety. These 62 articles were further reduced to 36 final articles, which were coded according to an inductively created codebook. Based on themes derived from our coding process, we organized our findings according to a framework that illuminates individual identity development in relation to a larger activity system. Contribution: This systematic review presents the current body of scholarship regarding the identity development of education sciences doctoral students via a constructivist sociocultural framework. We contribute to the study of doctoral education and education research more broadly by focusing on an area that has received relatively little attention. A focus on the identity development of doctoral students pursuing the education sciences is warranted given the field’s promise for preparing a diverse group of future educators and education scholars. Furthermore, this analysis broadens the conversation regarding scholarship on this topic as we present doctoral student identity development as occurring at the intersection of student, faculty, program, disciplinary, institutional, and larger sociocultural contexts, rather than as individualized and local endeavors. Findings: Looking across our reviewed articles, identity as scholar emerged as recognition by self and others of possessing and exhibiting adequate levels of competence, confidence, autonomy, and agency with respect to scholarly activities, products, and communities. Students often experience tensions on their journey towards becoming and being scholars, in contending with multiple identities (e.g., student, professional) and due to the perceived mismatch between students’ idealized notion of scholar and what is attainable for them. Tensions may serve as catalysts for development of identity as scholar for students, especially when student agency is supported via formal and less ubiquitous subsidiary experiences of students’ doctoral programs. Recommendations for Practitioners: We recommend that actors within the broader system of doctoral student identity development (e.g., doctoral students, faculty, organizational/institutional leaders) explicitly acknowledge students’ identity development and intentionally incorporate opportunities for reflection and growth as part of the doctoral curriculum, rather than assume that identity development occurs “naturally.” In this paper, we provide specific recommendations for different stakeholders. Recommendation for Researchers: Our literature review focused on studies that examined the identity development of doctoral students in the education sciences. We recommend further discipline-specific research and synthesis of such research to uncover similarities and differences across various disciplines and contexts. Impact on Society: Doctoral students have the potential to become and lead future generations of educators and scholars. Taking a sociocultural and system-level approach regarding the successful identity development of doctoral students is necessary to better support and cultivate a diverse group of future scholars who are well-equipped to lead innovations and solve problems both within and outside academia. Future Research: Possible areas of future research include focusing on the experiences of students who leave their programs prior to completion (and thus not developing their identity as scholars), investigating specific knowledge, skills, and attitudes associated with activities that studies have claimed contribute to identity development, and examining phenomena or traits that are seen as more biologically determined and less modifiable (e.g., attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, dyslexia, and mental health differences) in relation to doctoral students’ identity development. Finally, we recommend that future research should look into the underlying norms and nuances of ontological, epistemological, and methodological roots of programs and disciplines as part of the “story” of developing identity as scholar. Norms, and related philosophical underpinnings of typical doctoral education (and the tasks these translate into) were not explored in the reviewed literature.

Readiness to change: A longitudinal study of changes in adult identity

The construction of identities is of relevance for the teaching of democracy and social sciences (Santisteban y Pagés, 2007). With their imprint on action and anchoring in the future, identities are dynamic, narrative, historical, social, plural and permanent constructions, through which the world is interpreted and subjectivities are organized (Hall, 1996). From an interpretative and critical perspective, this paper aims to explore and analyze what the secondary curriculum of Social Sciences in Argentina, Catalonia and South Africa say about identities, and then, based on testimonies about the practice, establish some possible guidelines for potential proposals and curricular innovations on the subject. Through a mainly qualitative methodology (Eisner, 1990), the curriculums are approached through a document analysis (Rapley, 2014); the testimonies -corresponding to questionnaires and interviews made to some members of the professoriate of the three sites - are analyzed by emphasizing the perspectives on the practice by investigating and interpreting their meaning (Flick, 2015). Although in all three curriculums identities are assumed as social, historical and temporal constructions (Grossberg, 1996), in each case it occurs in a different way and with its own characteristics. A majority of teachers conceive identities as traits or characteristics of people and a minority thinks of them as constructions. Among the possible contributions for potential curricular innovations are emphasized in the identities as social constructions and in their relevance in the teaching of the social sciences. Keywords Identities; curriculum; social sciences; teaching; professorate

Current research aims to investigate the relationship between national and ethnic identities and the factors affecting their formation in Yasouj city of predominantly Lur.The research was carried out using a quantitative-survey method, and the research tool is questionnaire.National identity was measured in terms of geographical, political, historical, religious, linguistic, and cultural dimensions, and ethnic identity was assessed with indicators such as more focus on city, language, courtesy, and local habits.The research data were collected out of a sample of 383 people aged between 20 and 40 years old residing in Yasouj, which were selected by a regular random method.The results from the bivariate analysis indicated that there is a significant relationship between demographic variables including religious adherence, social interaction, social confidence, social-economic base, and the use of collective tools, and national and ethnic identity.The relationship between national and ethnic identity is direct and significant, indicating the importance of rapid social changes in identity formation and possibility of co-existence of different identities in the contemporary society.The multivariate analysis showed that the variables namely adherence to religious values, social confidence, ethnic identity, domestic and foreign audio-visual mass media totally explained 50% of changes in national identity.In addition, the variables namely religious adherence values, education, written mass media, age, and social confidence have explained 19.6% of changes in ethnic identity.

Stressful life events and identity development in early and mid-adolescence

The concept of social construction—i.e., the premise that something is created through social interactions, rather than being God‐given, natural, or otherwise inevitable—is foundational to gender studies and to the sociology of gender subfield. Through most of the twentieth century, when feminist scholars said that “gender is socially constructed,” they were disputing the idea that women's subordination was inevitable. Instead, they maintained that it was produced through childhood socialization and enforced by social institutions, laws, and through social interactions. Toward the end of the twentieth century, some scholars extended social construction arguments to our understanding of men and women as “opposite sexes” or the idea that there are two and only two sexes. Moderate constructionists limited their claims to ideas about, or categories concerning, sex. Radical constructionists denied that there was any pre‐discursive reality to sex. For some scholars, activists, and activist‐scholars, “assigning” any infant to the category of male or female at birth was not only arbitrary. It constituted an act of violence that enforced a harmful sex binary and denied people the right to self‐determination. Recently, some activists have taken up the assertion that sex “assignment” is socially constructed while also maintaining that gender identity (whether one knows oneself to be male, female, or nonbinary) is innate—thus repudiating earlier theories of gender identity as a blank slate. This paper traces this intellectual history and discusses how these distinct—and conflicting—understandings of what it means for gender to be socially constructed inform contemporary debates.

Guest Editorial: Science education in the developing world: Issues and considerations

In this article I argue that scientific knowledge in schools is a social construct in which curriculum proposals are just a point of departure that are transformed by the social interaction which takes place within the classroom. The participants of the educational process, teachers and students, reconstruct and elaborate new meanings for the proposed knowledge through a negotiation mediated by discourse. Thus, I consider that discourse plays an important role in scientific knowledge construction within classroom interaction. Empirical data of different science classes on topics such as chlorophyll, machines, solar system dynamics, and flotation phenomenon are shown. These themes are basic subject matters in the Mexican elementary school curriculum. These data are presented as ethnographic entries and are used as the basis for qualitative analysis. In this analysis we find that, when presenting experiments and exercises in science classes, teachers often make didactic transpositions which transform exercises that the textbook proposes as problem-solving into demonstrations and, in other cases, transform demonstrations into problem-solving exercises. Another more interesting result of this analysis is the emergence of a new transformation in the character of experimental activities which takes place as a result of students' interventions. In the interactive dynamics within the classroom, and especially with students' questions and interventions, the experimental activities suffer significant changes in relation to their orientation and to the constructed knowledge meaning. For example, we can find that the exercises set up by teachers as demonstrations are frequently transformed into problems as a result of children's interventions. These results show students as active participants in the construction of scholastic knowledge. They contribute with their own ideas instead of acting as passive receptacles of knowledge. Social interaction enhances scientific knowledge and transforms it into a social construction process that is alive instead of appearing as a set of ankylosing truths transmitted to students from textbooks and by the teacher. This kind of ethnographic research helps to set up bridges between didactic proposals and classroom work by contributing the necessary information to learn about the characteristics of knowledge constructed in the classroom and the conditions that influence the construction of this knowledge and students' scientific formation. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

A social construction, or social construct, is an important methodological tool used when investigating social phenomena. It is a general term referring to the idea that social phenomena are best understood as products of social interaction. The concept is also related to phenomenological theories of knowledge such as social constructionism, social constructivism, and the social construction of reality. Reference to phenomena as social constructs or constructions is commonplace in many (sub)disciplines across the social sciences.

The cultural production and reproduction of discriminatory gender practices in education and in society has been a global and local concern, thus attracting attention in current debates. Therefore, knowledge theorization aims at questioning and interrogating the socio-historical and patriarchal gender practices in the 21st century. A global transformation of gender may be one of the vital paths to empowering woman and the marginalized in education. In this study, gender equity, which is a process of attaining equality, is obstructed by socio-cultural relations of power, linked to discrimination, domination and entrenched stereotyping in society and is particularly now a focus too in science and science education. Science has been considered a male domain; a liberal feminist analysis views the space of women in science and science education as emanating from a long history of oppression of females in a patriarchal society. Therefore, orientations related to patriarchy, sexuality and culture currently dictate classroom engagements in science education, which impacts on student’s intellectual and career progress. However, an exposure to the impact of gender stereotype and inequality in science education is a possibility towards the intellectual, political, and economic transformation of females. This study explores six Nigerian science educators’ reproduction and subversion of gender stereotyping in physical and life sciences classes and is located within the critical interpretive paradigm. The research methodology comprised qualitative methods using questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, reflective journals, and collective reflections. A qualitative case study research design was used for the study. Then, I used purposive and convenience sampling techniques to select six experienced science educators with heightened gender awareness in a college situated in North Central Nigeria where the study was conducted. The narrative method employed captures the selection and experiences of science educators and allowed for a nuanced understanding of educators’ views about gender stereotype reproduction and subversion. The data were analyzed for themes using gender lens of Critical Theory (CT), Critical Feminist Reproduction Theory (CFRT) and Critical Consciousness Theory (CCT) regarding cultural production and reproduction and gender transformation. The findings reveal that the construct ‘gender’ is indeed social construction, repeated acts linked to identity construction of male and female science educators. In this study, educators in physical and life sciences classes are shown to implicitly and/or explicitly reproduce gender stereotypes, but sometimes to subvert discrimination, consciously and unconsciously. Furthermore, educators, especially the male pre-service teachers, collude to stereotype female pre-service teachers. Also, female pre-service teachers are equally complicit in their own oppression. It appears the science educators, male and female pre-service teachers are not explicitly aware of their complicit gender stereotyping roles in science education during teaching and learning engagements. It was observed that female pre-service teachers are often overtly deterred from participating in the science education space. The unconscious and conscious actions of stereotyping by educators towards their female pre-service teachers are likely to reinforce multiple oppressions in their charges that will impact their future teaching and gendered roles in class. A pedagogic transformative gender model of enabling a contradictory, transformative and political college space for science educators and pre-service teachers to negotiate power differentials for a new social gender order is then proposed for collective action.

The cultural production and reproduction of discriminatory gender practices in education and in society has been a global and local concern, thus attracting attention in current debates. Therefore, knowledge theorization aims at questioning and interrogating the socio-historical and patriarchal gender practices in the 21st century. A global transformation of gender may be one of the vital paths to empowering woman and the marginalized in education. In this study, gender equity, which is a process of attaining equality, is obstructed by socio-cultural relations of power, linked to discrimination, domination and entrenched stereotyping in society and is particularly now a focus too in science and science education. Science has been considered a male domain; a liberal feminist analysis views the space of women in science and science education as emanating from a long history of oppression of females in a patriarchal society. Therefore, orientations related to patriarchy, sexuality and culture currently dictate classroom engagements in science education, which impacts on student’s intellectual and career progress. However, an exposure to the impact of gender stereotype and inequality in science education is a possibility towards the intellectual, political, and economic transformation of females. This study explores six Nigerian science educators’ reproduction and subversion of gender stereotyping in physical and life sciences classes and is located within the critical interpretive paradigm. The research methodology comprised qualitative methods using questionnaire, interviews, classroom observations, reflective journals, and collective reflections. A qualitative case study research design was used for the study. Then, I used purposive and convenience sampling techniques to select six experienced science educators with heightened gender awareness in a college situated in North Central Nigeria where the study was conducted. The narrative method employed captures the selection and experiences of science educators and allowed for a nuanced understanding of educators’ views about gender stereotype reproduction and subversion. The data were analyzed for themes using gender lens of Critical Theory (CT), Critical Feminist Reproduction Theory (CFRT) and Critical Consciousness Theory (CCT) regarding cultural production and reproduction and gender transformation. The findings reveal that the construct ‘gender’ is indeed social construction, repeated acts linked to identity construction of male and female science educators. In this study, educators in physical and life sciences classes are shown to implicitly and/or explicitly reproduce gender stereotypes, but sometimes to subvert discrimination, consciously and unconsciously. Furthermore, educators, especially the male pre-service teachers, collude to stereotype female pre-service teachers. Also, female pre-service teachers are equally complicit in their own oppression. It appears the science educators, male and female pre-service teachers are not explicitly aware of their complicit gender stereotyping roles in science education during teaching and learning engagements. It was observed that female pre-service teachers are often overtly deterred from participating in the science education space. The unconscious and conscious actions of stereotyping by educators towards their female pre-service teachers are likely to reinforce multiple oppressions in their charges that will impact their future teaching and gendered roles in class. A pedagogic transformative gender model of enabling a contradictory, transformative and political college space for science educators and pre-service teachers to negotiate power differentials for a new social gender order is then proposed for collective action.