Back Talk Research Articles

Hearing, listening, and learning: how bioeconomy triple helix clusters deal with uninvited societal input

Policymakers in the European Union embrace collaborations of businesses, governments, and academia to develop a sustainable and circular bioeconomy. These so-called Triple Helix clusters aim to stimulate innovation and learning. However, Triple Helix collaborators also face conflicting perspectives on the desirability and directionality of the bioeconomy transition, either within a cluster or with societal actors affected by a cluster’s innovations. While previous Triple Helix research focussed on how to broaden the cluster collaboration towards a more inclusive range of actors to handle such contestations, we study how cluster partners deal with uninvited input from societal actors that do not form part of a cluster. We conceptualize this input as societal back talk and distinguish organizational hearing, listening, and learning capabilities to explore how back talk contributes to innovation in three bioeconomy clusters in the Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland. Our qualitative case study analysis is based on interview transcripts, newspaper articles, and policy and planning documents. Results indicate that collaborating partners generally do not hear uninvited back talk that fundamentally challenges their tacit beliefs, because partners focus on informing the public about what they consider techno-economic benefits of their projects. As a consequence, collaborators become ‘insiders’, which hinders listening to divergent problem definitions and alternative solutions of ‘outsiders’. Learning from uninvited back talk is therefore restricted to minor adjustments. To avoid innovative solutions remaining unexplored as a result of this discursive lock-in, Triple Helix collaborators must engage in hearing and listening to critical societal actors by establishing a reflective, two-directional dialogue.

Back Talk — The Real Crisis in Higher Education

Back Talk — The Real Crisis in Higher Education

Back Talk — The Disintegrated Library System

Back Talk — The Disintegrated Library System

Insights from an ICT4D Initiative in Kenya’s Immunization Program: Designing for the Emergence of Sociomaterial Practices

ICT4D initiatives hold the potential to transform health service delivery in settings of poverty, yet, in practice, they face many of the same implementation complexities and coordination challenges as the global health and development programs that they aim to streamline or strengthen. Researchers and practitioners alike are now quick to observe that “context matters”, but such an observation does not amount to a coherent alternative vision of more appropriate ICT4D design and implementation. In this paper, we draw on the metaphor of imbrication to elucidate the iterative process by which ICTs become entangled with particular contexts of use. Our longitudinal ethnographic study examines the implementation and iterative redesign of an Internet of things (IoT) technology that collects real-time data and alerts health workers of disruptions in the cold storage of vaccines in Kenya. Extending recent work on imbrication, we show that technologies imbricate not only with the social context but also with local material infrastructure and that designers play a limited yet clearly consequential role in this process. To explain these findings, we highlight instances of material “back talk” and concomitant practice breakdown in which initial attempts to shape a situation yield puzzling or unappreciated consequences, which lead designers to accommodate material realities and, ultimately, pursue unanticipated courses of action. Drawing on these conceptual tools, we reveal six overlapping activities through which designers may guide the emergence of sociomaterial practices. We say that they design for the emergence of sociomaterial practices to underscore that designers cannot predict or control all contextual complexities, though they can adapt to them when they arise. Based on our insights about this process, we develop three contributions. First, we offer fresh perspective on the longstanding concern with local context in ICT4D research. Second, we suggest that our notion of designing for the emergence of sociomaterial practices is relevant for and adds to contextually aware design research frameworks such as action design research. Finally, we propose that ICT4D practitioners should attend to practice breakdowns and material back talk as they grapple with the complexities of the implementation bottleneck in global health and development.

Back Talk--Following Ulysses on (the) Amazon

Back Talk--Following Ulysses on (the) Amazon

Back Talk--Hello to Bangladesh & Farewell to Licensing?

Back Talk--Hello to Bangladesh & Farewell to Licensing?

Applying Anthropological Practice Through Global Engagement in the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center

You want what? Help locating the last authentic hillbillies for your reality TV show? Here's a book we recommend: Back Talk from Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes, by Billings, Norman, and Ledford [2000]-a phone response my coworker Shane and I have given repeatedly.

The marriage of place and value

Students say some amazing things. Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem. Each article includes the prompt used to initiate the discussion, a portion of dialogue, student work samples (when applicable), and teacher insights into the mathematical thinking of students. This article investigates a student's understanding of the base-ten number system and how she uses her conceptions of place value to learn about the base-two number system.

Abby and the number line

Students say some amazing things. Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem or prompt. Each article includes the prompt used to initiate the discussion, a portion of dialogue, student work samples (when applicable) and teacher insights into the mathematical thinking of the students. In this month's episode, a six-year-old rising first grader uses a computer simulation to understand addition and subtraction on the number line.

David's problem solving

Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem or prompt. Each article includes the prompt used to initiate the discussion, a portion of dialogue, samples of student work (when applicable), and teacher insights into the mathematical thinking of the students. This article describes how David used repeated addition to solve a multiplication problem. It reveals his processes of solving the problem mentally, of finding the repeated patterns in a problem context, and of representing the problem with a drawing.

How Many Dogs? How Many Chickens?

Students say some amazing things. Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem. Each article includes the prompt used to initiate the discussion, a portion of dialogue, student work samples (when applicable), and teacher insights into the mathematical thinking of students. This article describes the thought processes of two third-grade students who were given a problem involving finding the number of dogs and chickens on a farm when they know only the total number of legs. Their solution strategies include standard mathematical operations as well as pictorial representations.

A Revealing Interview

Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem. Each article includes the prompt used to initiate the discussion, a portion of dialogue, student work samples (when applicable), and teacher insights into the mathematical thinking of the students. A teacher relates her one-on-one interview with a fifth-grade student who is asked to solve a word problem using mental math.

Back Talk -- Today's Academic Library: Student Centered and Convenient

Back Talk -- Today's Academic Library: Student Centered and Convenient

Annaliese relates mathematics to language

Students say some amazing things. Back Talk highlights the learning of one or two students and their approach to solving a math problem or prompt. This article is a conversation between a student and teacher on the use of context to understand the relationship between the numbers and text that compose a word problem.

Don’t Give Me No Lip: The Cultural and Religious Roots of Leo Durocher’s Competitiveness

I come to play! I come to beat you! I come to kill you! Leo Durocher, Nice Guys Finish Last All stories of steroids and scandals aside, American cultural imagination retains its faith in the church of Narratives of religiosity pervade scholarship surrounding baseball. For example, sport's preference for tradition and ritual, faith sport and its teams inspire in fans, and green cathedrals of ballparks themselves. Baseball possesses its own cognoscenti, an intellectual elite who appraise game's more nuanced aspects. This tension between being an insider and an outsider within baseball recalls Ludwig Wittgenstein's argument that religious language resembles a kind of game. With both endeavors one learns by playing game (or practicing religion). Only later does intellectual affirmation provide new levels of deeper meaning. But what about dark side? Almost all religions possess some notion of evil; dualistic Other serves several purposes: temptation, damnation, and an instructive place in narrative lessons about what not to do. Joseph Price writes, Classically, dualistic, cosmic conflict pits forces of good against forces of evil, light against darkness, creation against chaos, or it presents Gnostic tension between flesh and spirit. (1) Baseball is no different; 1919 Black Sox, Pete Rose, and now perhaps Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire stand as instructive examples of harm baseball suffers when its practitioners sacrifice ultimate reward and salvation for short-term monetary gain and glory. Then there's Leo Durocher (1905-91), many times married and divorced manager of Dodgers and Giants who coined phrase nice guys finish last. Durocher's infamy in baseball enjoys many sources--and just as many scriptural accounts. Rumors swirled about his rookie-year pilfering of Babe Ruth's watch (untrue stories Ruth himself fueled out of dislike for Durocher). (2) In every city Durocher played (New York, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Brooklyn), he rang up eye-popping gambling debts and often bounced checks when paying them off or buying fancy clothing. When not playing shortstop with grace and speed (albeit with a weak .247 batting average), Durocher ran around with a shady group of gangsters, Hollywood grafters, and pool hustlers. More than once he ended a ball game fighting with fans. These troubles followed Durocher throughout his baseball career. In 1947 things grew so bad that Brooklyn Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) protested by withdrawing its numerous members from Dodgers' Knothole Gang. Frank Murphy, a US Supreme Court justice, and Westbrook Pegler, a widely-read columnist, also joined rush to squelch Durocher's style. Decades later, he was still at it, grinding away at his players and chasing women. What really set Durocher apart, though, was his mouth. He stands as one of greatest examples of a baseball bench jockey. His nickname the Lip came from Babe Ruth, frustrated with younger Durocher's inability to refrain from back talk. Baseball always held a role for verbal harassment of other team, but Durocher took role to unknown heights. Durocher yapped at everybody--off field as well as on it. Jonathan Eig writes, If Durocher spoke a sentence without curses, it was probably an accident, soon to be corrected. ... Nowhere did he stay out of trouble, and nowhere did he shut up. (3) As a player, Durocher spouted off to everyone, including game's greats like Ty Cobb. When Detroit's Bob Fatty Fothergill came to bat against Yankees, rookie Durocher brazenly called time from his shortstop position. Durocher ran in to umpire protesting that Detroit was batting out of order. When informed that Fothergill was indeed correct batter, Durocher responded flippantly that he had mistaken Fothergill's girth for two players. Infuriated, Fothergill promptly grounded out on next pitch. …

Call for Manuscripts: Write for a Department: Back Talk

Call for Manuscripts: Write for a Department: Back Talk

Back Talk -- "What a difference a day makes:" The WEB and Digital Publishing in Hong Kong

Back Talk -- "What a difference a day makes:" The WEB and Digital Publishing in Hong Kong

Call for Manuscripts: Back Talk: September 2010

What is everyone talking about? Whether in large or small groups, one to one, or during free exploration, “kids say the darndest things.”

Back Talk -- Censorship and Google

Back Talk -- Censorship and Google

Back Talk: Second graders' thinking about a photograph

* This problem is from the 2006 NCTM publication Mathematics Assessment Sampler Grades Pre-K-2, which supplies teachers of primary grades mathematics with examples of assessment tasks that reflect the various ways that assessments can be used before, during, and following mathematics instruction. Teachers can then consider the potential of these tasks to uncover their students' mathematical understanding for the purpose of planning further instruction. E-mail your insights into a student's mathematical thinking to tcm@nctm.org. Include back talk in the subject line. See detailed guidelines for submissions to all departments at www.nctm.org/tcmdepartments.