Alternative Conceptualization Research Articles

State of the science: Quality improvement of medical curricula-How should we approach it?

Quality improvement (QI) of the medical curriculum is generally regarded as a continuous process of evaluating whether the specific curriculum meets relevant educational and professional standards, implementing new activities or other measures to address perceived deficiencies, and subsequently re-evaluating the quality of the curriculum. QI is of consequence to medical learners, educators, patients, carers, specific disciplines and specialties, regulators and funders. To address how we should approach QI of medical curricula, a narrative review was undertaken, drawing mainly on medical/health professions education literature, identified through searches of the MEDLINE, EMBASE, PUBMED and ERIC databases, and also on exemplar curricular frameworks and evaluation reports. Assumptions and practices in QI of medical curricula were explored critically. The review compares alternative conceptualisations of QI; asks questions about priorities and perspectives in what we choose to evaluate; reflects on standards used to guide QI; critically discusses methods, models and theoretical approaches to the generation of evaluation data; and considers ownership of, and engagement with QI of medical curricula. Recommendations for curriculum teams include that discourse is necessary to achieve transparency and a shared understanding of continuous QI in a particular curricular context. Continuous QI requires data collection methods aligned to specific evaluation questions/foci; multiple methods for data collection, from different stakeholders; and appropriate evaluation models and theory to provide a framework for QI. Embracing a quality culture approach may increase the sense of ownership experienced by stakeholders. Mechanisms include creating democratic-collegiate cultures for multiple stakeholders to collaborate in QI; engaging stakeholders in QI activities and (e.g. SoTL) projects that contribute to holistic continuous QI; and proactively embedding quality in the (co-)creation of curriculum components and resources.

Shared Histories in Multiethnic Societies: Literature as a Critical Corrective of Cultural Memory Studies

AbstractThe staging of history in literature is engaged in dynamic exchange with society’s memory discourses and in this context, literature is generally seen as playing a creative role as a formative medium in memory cultures. For some time, however, many feel that established concepts of Cultural Memory Studies need to be reconsidered for multiethnic societies. The assumption is that official memory cultures tend to exclude people with a migrant background from identity-forming discourses about the past. Using Germany as an example, this paper argues, first, that the question of memory in multiethnic societies needs to be reconsidered indeed, but in a different direction than has been assumed so far, and, second, that much-discussed concepts such as the post-migrant paradigm or multidirectional memory tend to circumvent the problems at hand rather than contribute to their solution. The paper therefore discusses the preconditions for a literary-theoretical engagement with this socio-political issue and the direction in which an alternative conceptualization would have to go – that is, not a new theory or method, but anovel perspectivethat should bethe basis for future theory building.Rather than confining the notion of a »shared history« to, either the common history of a country’s native population, or to the historysincemigration shared by minorities and receiving society, this paper proposes to focus on actual links between the histories of Germany as the receiving society and the histories of the new Germans’ countries of origin. Using literary texts and discussing a concrete example, it brings such shared histories to the fore and explores how theyopen up national memory discourses transnationally. The underlying vision is that these important components of multiethnic societies have the potential to show a way in which national and transnational memory landscapes as a whole could be transformed. In this sense, the metaphor of »Migration into Other Pasts« may be rephrased as migrationnot»into the past of others« but aterritorial move within one common shared history. The paper therefore shows that the prerequisites for a literary-theoretical examination of the question of memory culture in multiethnic societies and its literary representations must be sought in the offerings of literature itself. The literary example, Orkun Ertener’s novelLebt(Alive/Live! 2014), with its numerous entangled and interweaving shared histories shows particularly clearly how literature can function as a drive or even theory generator for concepts to be developed – instead of, conversely, imposing readymade concepts on both German multiethnic societies and its literary production.The novel perspective of this paper can be summarized in the inversion of the conventional point of departure: Instead of looking for a way to include people with a migrant background into the German memory culture, the first question to be asked should be how, in the age of the general recognition of concepts of entangled history, the idea could arise and persist for so long that migrants with Turkish roots, for instance, have no relation to German history. By focusing on the historical connectivities between Germans and new Germans, Orkun Ertener’s novelLebtchooses a different approach in this regard. It provides a transnational expansion of memory discourses on German, Greek, Jewish and Turkish/Ottoman history and thus opens up a new and long overdue memory space that is of central interest to multiethnic societies in Germany and beyond. As it seems, it takes writers who are more interested in entangled histories than in history as a resource for identity to get this right. Ertener undoubtedly belongs to this type of writers, as evidenced not least by the fact that he cites or refers to some of the most important historical studies for his context from Mark Mazower’sSalonica – City of Ghosts, a standard reference on the multiethnic and multicultural history of Thessaloniki, toTurkey, the Jews and the Holocaustby Corry Guttstadt who challenged the myth of a Jewish-friendly policy in Turkey. Ertener’s novelLebtis saturated with the interconnected histories of various ethnic groups and may therefore serve as ablueprintfor a vision of memory culture in a multiethnic society.In conclusion, the essay outlines that developing an alternative concept of memory and historical consciousness in multiethnic societies and their literary representations cannot be based on much-discussed concepts such as post-migration or multidirectional memory. Although a superficial glance suggests that they might be the obvious choice for the topic of this paper, a novel take on multiethnic memory landscapes must start from specific shared histories and their entanglements. The paper therefore proposes that a bottom-up development of theoretical-methodological work is necessary in the case of representations of memory in multiethnic societies. This approach must highlight how links between the histories of the receiving societies and the histories of the migrants’ countries of origin are, or could become, important components of an alternative memory culture in multiethnic landscapes – and that these links hold the potential for transforming national and transnational memory landscapes as a whole.

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Everything Stays the Same while Everything Changes

Who gets to live the good life? Master Narratives, identity, and well-being within a marginalizing society

The question of what constitutes “the good life” is incomplete without also addressing the question of who gets to live the good life. Implicit in many discussions of the good life, particularly in American and Western European contexts, is that it is equally available to all members of society, and attainable via malleable dispositions (e.g., changing attitudes, self-relevant beliefs). In this way, the good life is experienced through a highly agentic process of self-discovery and environmental mastery. What is generally lacking in this work is a serious reckoning of how structural factors constrain access to unbounded agency, particularly for those individuals who are marginalized in society due to race, gender, sexuality, and other factors. Moreover, “the good life” fundamentally indexes individuals’ well-being, and thus any claims to the good life will depend on how well-being is defined. Throughout psychology well-being is most commonly defined in terms of positive subjective states (e.g., hedonia, eudaimonia) that again remove any consideration of external criteria or demands. In this paper, we put the preceding together by outlining how a master narrative perspective—which examines the culturally shared stories that guide thoughts, beliefs, values, and behaviors—brings attention to the structural constraints on well-being among individuals in marginalized positions in society. We also propose an alternative conceptualization of the good life, which includes the importance of interpersonal connection between those who share the experience of marginalization.

Contextualizing Entrepreneurship. Linking Context to Research Strategies in a Process Perspective

In entrepreneurship, attention to context has been steadily on the surge. Nonetheless, most empirical research remains stuck in a view of context as “static, prior and external to the entrepreneurship being studied”. This paper develops an alternative conceptualization of context and its relationship to the entrepreneurial phenomenon; and presents three research strategies underexploited in entrepreneurship studies and coherent with this conceptualization. Specifically, we contrast what we regard as the dominant view of context in the field, context as a force field, to an alternative conceptualization that sees context as a process field. Furthermore, we discuss three research strategies, namely the extended case method, process tracing, and visual analysis, that enable contextualization by looking at phenomena of interest as embedded in a field of spatio-temporally situated processes. We conclude by outlining the epistemic gains that can be reaped through a processual approach to contextualization

Designing With or Against Institutions? Dilemmas of Participatory Design in Contested Cities

This article explores growing concerns behind the potential instrumentalization of participatory design within democratic institutions and city-making projects. Drawing on ethnographic data collected during a participatory urban redevelopment in Sydney, it analyzes the wider political, economic, and cultural dynamics shaping participatory design (PD) in contested urban spaces. As a result, the article reflects on the institutional frameworks that challenged the democratic claims of PD, analyzing three interdependent levels of institutional constraints: ideology, governance, and narratives. In doing so, the article interrogates the role of expert-led urban governance, of neoliberal ideologies, and the power/knowledge relations in the building of a consensus narrative. Finally, the article concludes by highlighting the contingency of the so-called constraints, exploring an alternative conceptualization of institutions as social relations. Following this approach, designers may challenge constraints and simultaneously work with, against, and beyond institutions.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, alternative model conceptualization of borderline personality disorder: A review of the evidence.

In the 10 years following the publishing of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), studies have accumulated testing the validity and utility of the alternative model for personality disorders (AMPD) in the context of borderline personality disorder (BPD). In this article, we review the studies that have tested how well the AMPD conceptualization of BPD captures the traditional (DSM-5, Section II) conceptualization of BPD. Although we note that studies that measure the full conceptualization of the AMPD-BPD are limited compared with studies focusing on a single aspect of the AMPD, studies reviewed suggest that the AMPD conceptualization of BPD largely overlaps with Section II, is associated with a similar range of external constructs, and can be measured with similar levels of interrater reliability. This evidence is promising in terms of the goal of the AMPD developers to not lose relevant and clinically meaningful information associated with traditional conceptualizations of BPD. However, further applied research is needed to understand how the AMPD may improve upon our existing categorical conceptualization of BPD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Effectiveness of a proposed teaching program in physics based on the integration of the inquiry model (4E×2) and thinking maps in modifying alternative conceptualizations of scientific concepts and developing the skills Of science inquiry and visual thinking For secondary school students.

Effectiveness of a proposed teaching program in physics based on the integration of the inquiry model (4E×2) and thinking maps in modifying alternative conceptualizations of scientific concepts and developing the skills Of science inquiry and visual thinking For secondary school students.

Making decisions under uncertainty: The Prudent Judgement Approach

AbstractThis article offers an alternative conceptualisation of prudence as encompassing four normative components: reflective reasoning, experience, long-term well-being, and moderation. Prudence involves a pattern of reflective reasoning informed by experience in the pursuit of long-term well-being through moderate judgements and actions. This conceptualisation allows distilling a set of prescriptions for guiding deliberation and choice under uncertainty, which I name the Prudent Judgement Approach. An analysis of John F. Kennedy's deliberations at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis uncovers evidence of prudent judgement and demonstrates the practical feasibility and value of this approach. Although the numerous cognitive and procedural sources of errors in decision-making under uncertainty are by now well understood, there are few prescriptive approaches for guiding the process of formulating judgements and making choices. This article shows how prudence can help improve the quality of deliberative processes and policy choices.

Activities and Values in School-Age Educare Mathematics

Based on an empirical study of policy enactment and mathematical enculturation in Swedish school-age educare, a conceptualization of mathematics as the assemblage of activities and values is proposed. Observations were analysed using policy enactment theory and the lens of mathematical activities. The result shows that making creations, describing relationships and addressing problems are mathematical activities evident in the practices of school-age educare. Values of plausibility, critical stance and connectedness are evident. This alternative conceptualization of mathematics offers possibilities for respecting a balance between education and care in practice. The result opens for alternative ways of thinking about mathematics as a complementing and compensating area that resists the tendency towards schoolification in educare.

Remaking Resilience: A Material Approach to the Production of Disaster Space

Resilience remains central to disaster preparedness and planning regimes in our changing world. It has been condemned as a meaningless buzzword, yet also recognized as a tool of neoliberalism with meaningful consequences. To address this central contradiction in this approach to environmental risk reduction—and to better understand inequality formation—I propose an alternative conceptualization of resilience that synthesizes materialist approaches in the sociologies of urbanity, disaster, and the environment. Among other benefits, it illustrates how resilience manifests through the production of space, emphasizing that resilience projects are meaningful political economic artifacts that should be judged by their consequences, and highlights the formative effect of resilience initiatives across stages of the disaster cycle. Foregrounding the relationships between resilience, political influence, and outcomes facilitates an analytical turn toward traceable effects on housing and other needs before an intervening disaster, supporting integration of critical approaches with public policy as more communities initiate resilience planning.

Doing Research of/from/at Home: Fieldwork Research Ethics in Latinx Contexts

Abstract This essay explores the idea, construction, and performance of campo/field. Specifically, it challenges narrow, colonial, Western, imperialistic approaches that imagined campo/field as a remote area, removed from civilization and inhabited by Indigenous others. Contrary to this, and inspired by decolonial and anti-oppressive research methodologies, this essay provides alternative conceptualizations and ways of beingdoingseeing the campo/field. In addition, it provides a brief overview of works conducted by and of Latinx communities, and how scholars have presented different ways of engaging, documenting, and imagining Latinx cultural contexts.

The role of financial literacy in households’ asset accumulation process: evidence from Ghana

This paper examines the impact of financial literacy training on household asset accumulation using data collected from a randomised controlled trial implemented in Ghana. Financial assets are measured using account holdings and savings while durable assets and their decomposed components are captured using their total values. After testing for baseline balance, impact is estimated using treatment effect models. We find that financial literacy training plays a significant role in accumulation of both financial and durable assets, but the impact is more evident in the accumulation of productive durable assets. Our overall findings on productive and non-productive assets are robust to alternative conceptualisations of what constitutes productive and non-productive assets. Our results also show that financial literacy training has an impact on the accumulation of both total and productive assets in female-beneficiary households, as well as enhancing account holdings for females, although this effect was larger for males. The analyses for different age cohorts also revealed that financial literacy training results in higher asset accumulation among younger household heads.

Implementation of mycorrhizal mechanisms into soil carbon model improves the prediction of long-term processes of plant litter decomposition

Abstract. Ecosystems have distinct soil carbon dynamics, including litter decomposition, depending on whether they are dominated by plants featuring ectomycorrhizae (EM) or arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM). However, current soil carbon models treat mycorrhizal impacts on the processes of soil carbon transformation as a black box. We re-formulated the soil carbon model Yasso15 and incorporated impacts of mycorrhizal vegetation on topsoil carbon pools of different recalcitrance. We examined alternative conceptualizations of mycorrhizal impacts on transformations of labile and stable carbon and quantitatively assessed the performance of the selected optimal model in terms of the long-term fate of plant litter 10 years following litter input. We found that mycorrhizal impacts on labile carbon pools are distinct from those on recalcitrant pools. Plant litter of the same chemical composition decomposes slower when exposed to EM-dominated ecosystems compared to AM-dominated ones, and across time, EM-dominated ecosystems accumulate more recalcitrant residues of non-decomposed litter. Overall, adding our mycorrhizal module into the Yasso model improved the accuracy of the temporal dynamics of carbon sequestration predictions. Our results suggest that mycorrhizal impacts on litter decomposition are underpinned by distinct decomposition pathways in AM- and EM-dominated ecosystems. A sensitivity analysis of litter decomposition to climate and mycorrhizal factors indicated that ignoring the mycorrhizal impact on decomposition leads to an overestimation of climate impacts on decomposition dynamics. Our new model provides a benchmark for quantitative modelling of microbial impacts on soil carbon dynamics. It helps to determine the relative importance of mycorrhizal associations and climate on litter decomposition rate and reduces the uncertainties in estimating soil carbon sequestration.

The environmental crisis and the film First Reformed: Paths to paralysis and change

ABSTRACT The natural world has always been integral to our existence; currently, we are compelled to reckon with our assumptions about this connection with mounting urgency. Individual reactions to the environment are influenced not only by the sociocultural surround, but also by one’s internal world, particularly whether one’s internal objects are felt to have been irreparably damaged or are potentially salvageable. Excessive guilt about destructive impulses can limit one’s ability to recognize individual responsibility for the current situation without catastrophizing the weight of one’s ecological footprint. Delusional solutions may be adopted, valorizing extreme forms of engagement. The film First Reformed illustrates what appear to be divergent approaches to the planet: ruthless exploitation by an industrialist versus an impassioned objection to destruction of the environment for economic gain. In this narrative, both are underpinned by a paranoid-schizoid mindset. We investigate the dynamics of this psychic state, which results in a constricted perception and an absence of constructive agency with respect to the environmental crisis. We present an alternative conceptualization of the natural world’s place within a person’s psychic equilibrium. We emphasize that a more integrated relationship with the environment can facilitate concerned, preservative action on behalf of the natural world and ourselves.

Building an alternative conceptualization of participation: from shared decision-making to acting and work

ABSTRACT The paper presents an alternative conceptualization of participation in order to offer legitimation and guidance for (new) scholars, policymakers and citizens, and to prepare them for the work that needs to be done to develop genuine participation practices that bring about positive change. Metaphors like the participation ladder not only explain and shape our communication but also shape the way we think and act. Metaphors can shape our perceptions and actions in ways we do not notice. So if we believe the critiques are correct and that participation encompasses much more than a hierarchical set of social relations that are devoid of context, we need an alternative lens that prepares us for the right expectations and unanticipated actions. Inspired by the work of the German philosopher Hannah Arendt, we shift away from a focus of participation ladders in decision-making to foreground acting and work instead, as this might help to overcome some of the current obstacles to designing genuine collaborative processes.

Exception beyond the sovereign state: Makhmour refugee camp between statism and autonomy

This paper explores the camp as a space of autonomy within the context of Makhmour refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan. It re-examines the relationship between the camp and autonomy by inverting the concept of exception. Drawing on the theoretical opening provided by Khaled Furani (2014), the paper develops a critical understanding of the exception that originates not in the sovereign decision of the state and its juridical apparatus, but in the capacity of political subjects to form autonomous collective life in struggle with, against and beyond the state. Moving the locus of the exception from the sovereign state to the governed allows for a novel conception of the camp as a constituent site for autonomy. The experience of Makhmour shows the emergence of what I will call the “anti-camp” within the spatiality of the refugee camp, providing theoretical and empirical insights into alternative conceptualisation of the camp. While the anti-camp is a political manifestation of will to autonomous world-making, it is a process marked by constant bricolage, negotiation and contestation with the statist form of time and space.

Supplemental Material for The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Alternative Model Conceptualization of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Review of the Evidence

Supplemental Material for The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Alternative Model Conceptualization of Borderline Personality Disorder: A Review of the Evidence

Institutional Strengthening in a Receding Movement: The Trajectory ofPiqueteroOrganizations between 2003 and 2015

This article contributes to the current debate on social movements and popular politics in Latin America by exploring the trajectory of organizations within the unemployed workers movement in Argentina, also known as thepiqueteros. Analysts agree that the recent history of this movement is characterized by a pronounced decline due to closing political opportunities. I suggest that a shift in the level of analysis toward organizational dynamics indicates a more complex scenario. While the influence of the movement as a political actor has declined, some piquetero organizations have in some aspects strengthened. I argue that this strengthening took place not despite the post-2003 context, but rather because of it. I advocate for an alternative conceptualization of piquetero groups, emphasizing their immersion in a particular political context and culture rather than their separation from it. I use interviews, participant observation, databases of contentious events, and a diverse literature to sustain my claims.

The Chinese Marxist Approach to Human Rights

The Western liberal view of human rights has been imposed by the West on the rest of the world as universal values applicable to all cultures and traditions. This paper argues that the Chinese Marxist approach provides an alternative conceptualization of human rights, which entails anti-hegemonic sovereignty, and prioritization of social and economic rights over others. It begins with distinction between false universal and genuine universal to illustrate that the West-promoted universal is false rather than genuine. Western liberal view of human rights is critiqued, followed by different perspectives on sovereignty and human rights. Anti-hegemonic sovereignty, this paper maintains, is a prerequisite for human rights improvements. The right to socio-economic well-being is a top priority for the Chinese government, as Chinese cultural traditions, Confucianism for example, value social and economic rights. The West-touted human rights discourse is intended to retain Western hegemony and seek global dominance. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has strived for human rights on behalf of the Chinese people through such projects as reform and opening-up, poverty alleviation, common prosperity, and Belt and Road Initiative, among other programs. This paper concludes that the Chinese Marxist approach goes beyond the debates over cultural relativism and Western-style “universalism”, and provides an alternative that features genuine universality and privileges the right to socio-economic well-being.