Epistemological Basis Research Articles

The school is also samba: art teaching as an experience and construction of a decolonial learning process

This article discusses a teaching experience, in the teaching of Art, with students in the 9th year of Elementary School II, at the Escola Municipal Professor Waldson José Bastos Pinheiro, in the community of Vale Dourado, in the neighborhood of Nossa Senhora da Presentação, a school from the public network in Natal (RN). It analyzes Samba as an object of study from the perspective of decolonial learning, identifying how African dances influenced Brazilian culture and, in particular, the theme in question. It problematizes the political-social ills inherited from colonialist exploitation in Brazil and points to the legitimization of cultural manifestations of African origin as actions of resistance and construction of knowledge and learning. The theoretical basis with which we work is based on Freirean pedagogy (FREIRE, 1998); as well as, from the perspective of resuming the “triangular approach” (BARBOSA, 2010) as an epistemological basis. For reflections regarding the teaching of dance practice, Vieira (2007) and Marques (2003) are used. In the historical-social contextualization of the theme in an anthropological and sociological perspective of the Brazilian body, the African rhythm and diversity, the materiality of this rhythm and its relationships, the basis is sought in Sodré (1998).

An Indigenous view of social justice leadership in the Malaysian education system

Social justice leadership is a method of building greater inclusivity in a variety of fields, education being prominent among them. This article considers how social justice leadership can improve educational opportunities for Orang Asli (the original people; the Indigenous people of Peninsular Malaysia). It explores the concepts of social justice and social justice leadership, arguing that they are useful, but in focusing on the relationship between the individual and the collective, they do not always fully appreciate the epistemological bases of the concepts, thus missing their true import for Orang Asli people. Practical examples of how Orang Asli people suffer in educational settings are given, the emphasis being on underachievement and bullying. Finally, the strands are tied together with a discussion of how social justice leadership can be of benefit, the onus being on how social justice leaders need to be cognisant of Orang Asli culture and forms of knowledge before serious progress can be made.

After truth, after shame … after information politics? Rethinking the epistemologies of human rights in the digital-authoritarian conjuncture

ABSTRACT Since the contemporary, mainstream human rights movement rose to prominence in the late-1970s, both knowing about and doing human rights has been marked by a very particular mode of activism, information politics, which mobilises ‘brute' facts with the aim of shaming governments into reform. However, this article suggests that the global rise of the far-right has intertwined with reactionary forms of digital culture, engendering both the retreat of shame as an operative concept in global affairs and nourished a growing ‘post-truth' suspicion of facts. The article theorises this problem as a conjunctural shift that represents both a political and epistemological crisis for human rights. Following the lead of debates within Science and Technology Studies (STS) and media studies, I contend that the present conjuncture requires us to consider what comes after information politics by re-imagining its epistemological basis. The article brings together Donna Haraway's theoretical work on ‘Situated Knowledges', with Maurizio Lazzarato’s political epistemology to develop a more perspectival, combative approach to human rights knowledge-making. I argue this epistemic framework is able not only to navigate key problems posed by the digital-authoritarian present but also to address many issues with information politics identified by earlier critics.

The disciplinary matrix of applied arts and artistic cultures

AbstractApplied arts and artistic cultures are taught in vocational high schools, in France, with the aim of developing civic and social skills in students, which are cross‐cutting or generic. To achieve this, this design education revolves around the creation and conception of artefacts. This article explores epistemological issues relating to the role and nature of design education in vocational high schools. Following Kuhn, it proposes a disciplinary matrix of the subject, characterized by objects, knowledge (declarative and procedural) and a set of tasks. These different components make it possible to present a curricular analysis grid of design education in vocational high schools over the past 30 years. This reveals a curriculum development correlated to the evolution of design as an involved social practice. Additionally, the integration of Mitcham's technological manifestations framework enriches this analysis, offering a more comprehensive perspective on the role of technology in design education. This approach indeed clarifies what needs to be taught, fosters the evolution of teaching methods and incorporates new elements such as sustainable development, the environment, collaboration and information technologies. These adjustments reflect changes in professional practices and contribute to civic education in the context of sustainability and ethical challenges. This article makes a significant contribution to debates on the epistemological basis for design education, in France and beyond.

“Unreasonable” Bodies: Thinking Beyond Accommodation in Workplace Lactation Law and Policy

Purpose: This article investigates why workplace lactation law, guidance, and policy may fail to support women. It examines the epistemological and ethical bases of technical communication governing Virginia K???12 teachers and considers complex material conditions and opportunities for social justice intervention.Method: I employed a qualitative critical discourse analysis of three Virginia codes governing workplace lactation and one state human resources guidance document, examining their interaction with the Federal Labor Standards Act and 10 local school district policies. I drew on Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) social justice scholarship, disability studies, and apparent feminism scholarship to interpret my findings.Results: Documents governing workplace lactation are based on an ableist mindset that marginalizes women’s bodies. They prioritize an ethic of expediency, draw on medical knowledge while ignoring women’s knowledge and material conditions, and perpetuate systemic inequities.Conclusion: To promote social justice, technical communicators should continue questioning the epistemological and ethical bases of laws, policies, and guidance since documents informed by knowledge and ideologies that devalue the people they purport to protect will fail in implementation. Local policymakers need not wait for institutional changes but can look for opportunities to reimagine design approaches and intervene to create supportive, inclusive workplaces.

A preliminary epistemological ″human ecology″ framework for understanding the limits of bioethics.

This article tries to set up the epistemological bases of the science of ″human ecology″. This term has started to be used as a synonymous of morality, especially in the Catholic moral social doctrine that used for the first time to justify its marriage prospectives. We look at both terms together (human plus ecology) and we propose that human ecology should be a discipline that in the first time study human behavior and population (objective) using the postulates of the science of ecology (method) and then, once a conceptual framework for social sciences disciplines such as bioethics can be settle, could be used as a way to support or not moral postulates in the name of ecology. We conclude by defining which should be the methods of knowledge acquisition, the limits and the validity of what should be considered ″Human ecology″, that is to say, the ecology of the humans.

Myopia: Its Status and Environmental Correlations Among School Students in Fushun, China.

Our objective was to investigate the status and influence of myopia among primary school students in Fushun, Liaoning Province, China. We aimed to provide a theoretical and epistemological basis for implementing myopia prevention initiatives. We employed cluster sampling and surveyed 5216 primary school students from grades 1-6 across eight primary schools in Fushun City. Our participants included 2606 males and 2610 females whose average age was 9.25 (SD = 1.76) years. The rate of myopia among these primary school students was 29.54%, with statistically significant differences among students of different genders and grades. Logistic regression analysis further identified several possible protective factors, including appropriate reading distance, adequate home lighting, regular breaks between classes, conscientious eye exercises, and daily outdoor physical activity. Conversely, the associated risk factors were being female, being in a higher grade level, spending more than 4hours on homework, occasionally reading while lying down, and having one or both parents with myopia. Overall, our results indicated a high incidence of myopia, highlighting the need for scientifically controlled interventions to manage and mitigate the occurrence and progression of myopia in this population.

Echoes of research and training with biographical narratives: ways of knowing and understanding from lived experience

This article aims to present the formative results obtained through the research-action-training device “Biographical workshop: learning about life and profession” (BW), proposed and implemented as a university extension activity in a higher education institution in Northeastern Brazil. Inspired by the epistemological and methodological bases of biographically oriented approaches in Education, the device was built with the intention of promoting, through biographical narrative, a reflective exercise both individual and collective focused on the exploration and reconstitution of personal and professional trajectories of the participants. The analyses produced from the narratives in its scope allow us to understand the different elements that give body and meaning to the trajectory of the participants in the course of their academic and professional training. Moreover, it was possible to apprehend the formative process inscribed in the mobilization of the narrative records, oral and written, and its effects for the participants. We conclude that BW is a powerful research-action-training device in that it articulates and values both the subject and the professional who is formed through lived experiences, integrating the spheres of life for an implicated, reflective and conscious professional action.

Complexity theory for complexity reduction? Revisiting the ontological and epistemological basis of complexity science with Critical Realism

AbstractComplexity theory (CT) identifies our social system as a contingent and emergent product of non‐linear interactions between existing patterns and events. However, CT scholars carrying out various empirical applications have often adopted constructivist positions that disallow the separate existence of social systems and agency, thereby preventing effective analysis of their interactions. Instead, with the help of Critical Realism (CR), we offer a realist complexity approach that sees complexity in terms of the distinction between the domains of the Real, the Actual, and the Empirical, when existing studies of CT still work with a flat ontology that collapses the three domains into one (the Empirical domain). Our non‐conflationary CR‐CT approach thus argues that a satisfactory explanation of social complexity cannot be at the level of agential experience (the Empirical domain) or at the level of human and systematic events (the Actual domain) but needs to identify causal mechanisms (in the Real domain) of such events. It then combines this depth ontology (that distinguishes the three reality domains) with epistemological relativism (that underscores the contingent character of knowledge claims) to argue that though our knowledge and complexity reduction techniques are socially constructed, it hardly follows that the ontological dimension of reality (spreading across the three domains) is always affected by our complexity reduction efforts at the epistemological dimension in the Empirical domain.

An Awkward Signal: The ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ Imprint on the First Conference on Accounting, Governance and Sustainability

ABSTRACT This essay was prompted by an ‘atypical’ announcement, regarding an Accounting, Governance and Sustainability Conference co-organized by the American Accounting Association (AAA) and the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. I mobilise an epistemological base, drawing on Naomi Oreskes’ recent work, to question the logic and the appropriateness of associating Petroleum and Minerals’ interests with an academic conference on the topic of sustainability. My point is that significant epistemological consequences ensue when a ‘mere’ association of words arouses skepticism regarding the extent of conflict of interest surrounding an event being aimed at fostering knowledge production and dissemination processes on the theme of sustainability. One feature of my argument is that involving explicitly as co-organizer, in the frontstage, a university whose name carries the wording ‘Petroleum and Minerals’ constitutes an awkward signal, which is a disconcerting occurrence given the strong influence of ‘signaling theory’ in the eyes of many AAA members, who adhere to mainstream economic-based accounting research.

Theory in tourism

Tourism's relationship with theory is a vexed and complex issue. Previous research has examined the status of the academic study of tourism in disciplinary terms and the epistemological basis of knowledge production, yet very little examination of the conceptual structure of tourism has been undertaken. This conceptual article examines the presence of theory of tourism. It presents evidence, via the use of case study vignettes, of examples of theory/theorizing at the meta-, middle range and micro-levels. It articulates guidelines for theorising tourism and principles for developing a theoretical contribution to knowledge, critical to Annals of Tourism Research, whose mission is to advance knowledge of tourism phenomena at the conceptual level that can lead to progress in theory development.

Behind artificial intelligence: an analysis of the epistemological bases of machine learning

Resumo: O presente artigo visa a analisar, de forma crítica, os fundamentos epistemológicos da inteligência artificial (IA). Com base no exame de obras que explicam o funcionamento dessa tecnologia, compreende-se que a sua base epistemológica é composta pelo método indutivo e pela estatística apoiada em uma matematização da realidade. São esses elementos que permitem que as máquinas aprendam através do reconhecimento de padrões e possam fazer previsões e oferecer respostas. No entanto, esses fundamentos apresentam limitações e problemas, os quais foram discutidos por filósofos, ao longo da história. Neste artigo, será demonstrado como a indução e a matematização funcionam como base epistemológica da inteligência artificial e como algumas das limitações dessa tecnologia podem ser explicadas através das debilidades dos métodos que a sustentam.

From "The Outline of Feuerbach" to "Practice Theory"

The Outline of Feuerbach revolves around understanding the relationship between practice and the role of practice in social life. The central content of its discussion is practical issues. Marx introduced practice into the materialistic view of history and epistemology, and took it as the basis of epistemology, thoroughly criticized the intuitiveness and incompleteness of Feuerbach and all old materialism, which established the Marxist concept of practice. Mao Zedong's Theory of Practice is a positive innovation based on the Marxist practical point of view, centered on the dialectical unity of understanding and practice, puts forward the view of combining Marxism-Leninism with China's specific reality, and lays a philosophical foundation for the Communist Party of China's realistic ideological line.

The Significance of Philosophical Anthropology in Determining the Methodology of Modern Scientific Research

Purpose. This research involves revealing the methodological significance of the anthropological understanding of values for conducting modern scientific research. Theoretical basis. Philosophical anthropology acts as an epistemological basis for answers to ontological questions that are part of the structure of such problems in modern science as the construction of a scientific picture of the world, the ordering of data of natural attitude, and anthropocosmism. The ontological basis for the formation of the anthropological theory of values is the teaching of Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Rudolf Lotze, and Martin Heidegger. Originality. The creation of a scientific picture of the world, the research of natural attitude, and an anthropological approach to cosmology carried out from the viewing angle of the philosophy of values show the close mutual conditioning of these scientific issues. A successful determination of one’s value positions by a scientist-researcher is impossible without his/her agreeing with his/her picture of the world with the prevailing ideas about the world in their society. Such ideas are studied by anthropocosmism, which researches not so much the world in itself, but a view of this world from the standpoint of the existing state of society and the main intentions of its development. Conclusions. The value attitude of scientists at a certain stage of the development of scientific knowledge forms their picture of the world, which has the form of self-explanatory scientific provisions. The facts of modern physics must always, one way or another, receive their legitimation through the world of the human natural attitude. Even the unobservable characteristics of the microcosm are explained by appealing to knowledge about the observable characteristics of the world. The anthropocentric nature of cosmology is determined by the fact that in modern philosophy, the values of a person explain not only the way of one’s cognition but also the way of one’s inclusion in the world.

Terminological and Conceptual Proliferation in Education and Pedagogy

In this article, we realize the epistemological weakness of pedagogy, after reviewing the specialized bibliography in which there is a very wide spectrum of references with respect to its nature, from those that justify and proclaim its scientific character, to the positions that deny it. For a discipline to be recognized as scientific, it is necessary that the body of knowledge that constitutes it has been produced with the application of the scientific method, so that the hypotheses it supports have passed the test of falsity or some other test, such as verifiability or corroboration that allows it to be distinguished from what is not science. The central hypotheses of pedagogy have not passed these requirements, so it is not possible to defend their scientific character. On the other hand, the terminological and conceptual proliferation that we have found, highlights the weakness of its epistemological bases.

Psychogeography in Planning: A New Methodological Approach via Representations of ‘Body , ‘Urban Space and ‘Walking

Pattern of urban space penetrates the minds and bodies of citizens; this penetration results in a two-folded map: physical and psychogeographic maps. Mental representations enable (re)-reading the invisible components of physical organization through spatial practice. Re-mapping such an authentic spatial knowledge is a crucial but neglected field of enquiry within planning to grasp the gap between ‘what is conceived’ and ‘what is experienced’. ‘Psychogeography’ concentrates on how the environment influences individuals’ feelings and attitudes and therefore –at the intersection of geography and psychology– it presents an epistemological basis to examine such a gap and offers methodological inputs to cover the interrelation among top-down designs of urban space and bottom-up reproductions of ‘the soul’ of the city. Within this context, the main question of the study is “how the representations of walking experience can be used within planning with reference to the two-folded map assumption”. During this examination, theoretical and methodological readings on psychogeography led us to an epistemological baseline, as an initial step to construct a new spatial methodology of the ‘body’ and ‘walking experience’. The studyk is composed of three sub-sections. Firstly, the gap between ‘physical’ and ‘psychological’ maps is conceptualized. Secondly, the concept of psychogeography is defined as a source and method of spatial knowledge within its deficiencies and potentials. Lastly, the term, Dérive, implying ‘deviation’ and ‘resistance’, is discussed as a methodological path in grasping the gap between physical and psychological maps via the experience of body and conception of the designer.

Patricia Crone’s Critical Notes On The Chronological Discourse On The Al-Qur’an In Macca

This article will reveal the epistemological basis of Patricia Crone's view that Mecca is not a center for international trade and a place for the distribution of the Koran. This study is qualitative research that uses document data sources or what is also called library research. The results of the research by Patricia Crone indicate 3 different aspects in studying the originality of the chronology of the decline of the Al-Qur'an. First, in a skeptical manner, Crone suggests that the chronology of the revelation of the Koran is more appropriate to pin it down in Iraq rather than in Mecca. Second, his thoughts were obtained from non-Muslim sources which ultimately outlined contradictory thoughts which were inversely proportional to the Makkiyah and Madaniyah Qur'an surah groups. Third, the social situation when the Koran was revealed was not in a primitive society, as is generally described in the Traditionalist school of thought, but in a society that was more advanced, more philosophical and sophisticated. This research requires refinement and is expected to provide new insights in future research.

Postcolonial Apologies, Politics of Regret and Temporal Manichaeism

The article analyzes the forms of temporality and morality which operate in the request for postcolonial apologies in modern democracies, focusing on the Mexican case. There is already rich literature on the changing mnemonic and historiographical interpretations of the Conquest in Mexican history up to the present day. In this paper the Mexican case serves as factual support to discuss theoretically the modes of temporal consciousness that underlie postcolonial apologies and the moral relations to the past that these entail. We will examine the topic in light of the “ethical turn” proposals found in historical theory. We will critically address the assumptions regarding historicity behind the so-called “politics of regret,” questioning the ideological premises that frame the request for apologies and the decolonial theories that support them. Finally, we will approach the problem based on moral philosophy works that have studied collective apologies’ paradoxical nature. The questions to answer are: does retrospective recrimination of colonial processes make sense? Can we reclaim apologies from history? We conclude that the postcolonial apologies demanded by President López Obrador depend on a mythologized vision of the past, which reproduces a logic of temporal Manichaeism, with a scant epistemological basis to judge historically the event that it condemns.

Aesthetic knowing and ecology: cultivating perception and participation during the ecological crisis

This paper develops the concept of aesthetic knowing, its significance in perceiving and participating in ecologies writ large, and challenges that arise in engaging it during a time of ecological crises. I define aesthetic knowing as perception of the quality of relationship, and suggest it offers insight into how ecologies are intra- and/or inter-connected. Aesthetic knowing is the epistemological basis of a relational empiricism, a philosophical position which foregrounds the capacity to receive and respond to otherness, and I claim it offers an antidote to the isolating overreach of some theorising prevalent in environmental education (EE). My main purpose is to clarify the scope and nature of the relationship between aesthetic knowing and ecologies, so to offer methodological and theoretical context for educators and education researchers seeking to attend to healthy and threatened ecologies. Cultivating aesthetic knowing is necessary for responsive participation with/in any ecology, but can be emotionally difficult. As ecological destruction escalates, sustaining aesthetic knowing demands perception of, and participation with fear, while working with fear in turn requires aesthetic openness. I discuss approaches to cultivating aesthetic openness given this apparently wicked recursion.

A review of research on supply chain adaptability: Opening the black box

AbstractSupply chain adaptability is the least explored of the three revered Triple‐A qualities (agility and alignment being the other two) and in the greatest need of a deeper understanding in the unpredictably evolving contemporary business environment. This study critically reviews the literature and makes three contributions. First, it outlines the different ways supply chain adaptability has been understood and describes the epistemological basis of this knowledge. Second, it synthesizes the findings into a theoretical model linking supply chain adaptability to its antecedents and outcomes. Third, despite its origins in a practitioner‐focused journal, supply chain adaptability has largely been explored like a black box, with few insights into its workings or actionable recommendations for its creation. To this end, the study outlines an agenda for future research to deepen our understanding along the extant lines of inquiry and to broaden our investigation to cover new empirical foci to open the black box of supply chain adaptability.