Capacity For Critical Reflection Research Articles

‘Taking knowledge on a journey’: Creating conditions for epistemic justice

When stakeholders in participatory action research [PAR] projects live in poverty, practices sometimes fail to recognize and draw on their capacity for critical reflection. This constitutes epistemic (knowledge-based) injustice. It is problematic for approaches rooted in covenantal ethics and beliefs that PAR should empower participants as ‘actors of knowledge.’ This paper reflects on a research project carried out by All Together in Dignity Fourth World [ATD]. To ensure co-production of knowledge, ATD made unconventional decisions about methodology, allocating resources, and interacting with academics. In many ways, these choices created conditions for epistemic justice. However ATD faced important challenges around North-South power dynamics, engagement with academia, and the comprehensibility of deeply personal conclusions reached by project participants. More positively, a dogged effort to invent conditions for epistemic justice transformed ATD’s governance, the ways some institutions address poverty, and the way participants addressed inter-generational traumas.

Who has to act?A qualitative exploration of emerging adults'critical consciousness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and violence against people of Color during 2020 brought troubling racial inequities to the forefront of American discourse. In line with the Critical Consciousness (CC) and Social Justice Youth Development (SJYD) frameworks, emerging adults may have developed their capacity for critical reflection, motivation, and action against systemic inequities. We drew from interviews with 27 emerging adults (ages 18-23) across the US, and used thematic analysis to explore differences in their reflections, motivations to act, and actions based on their racial/ethnic identification. We found nuanced variability in their critical reflections based on self, social, or global awareness and experiences of marginalization. White and Asian emerging adults used vague language or expressed feeling their reflections were insufficient. Black and Latinx emerging adults emphasized the importance of education and raising awareness. Although all emerging adults took action based on a sense of duty, few engaged in critical action; decisions to take in-person action varied based on whether they viewed racism or COVID-19 as a greater threat. Findings demonstrate that emerging adults'experiences of racialization may have related to their CC development. We share implications for community psychologists conducting antiracist research addressing White fragility and dismantling racial hierarchy.

Technomoral Resilience as a Goal of Moral Education

In today’s highly dynamic societies, moral norms and values are subject to change. Moral change is partly driven by technological developments. For instance, the introduction of robots in elderly care practices requires caregivers to share moral responsibility with a robot (see van Wynsberghe 2013). Since we do not know what elements of morality will change and how they will change (see van der Burg 2003), moral education should aim at fostering what has been called “moral resilience” (Swierstra 2013). We seek to fill two gaps in the existing literature: (i) research on moral education has not paid enough attention to the development of moral resilience; (ii) the very limited literature on moral resilience does not conceptualise moral resilience in relation to new technological developments. We argue that philosophical accounts of moral education need to do justice to the importance of moral resilience, and that a specific form of moral resilience should be conceptualised as “technomoral resilience” to underline the added value of cultivating moral resilience in relation to technomoral change. We illustrate the role of technomoral resilience in practice by looking at the context of elderly care. To make the first step towards an account of how technomoral resilience can be fostered in moral education, we propose that moral education shall focus on a triangle of capacities: (1) moral imagination, (2) a capacity for critical reflection, and (3) a capacity for maintaining one’s moral agency in the face of disturbances.

Critical Reflection and the Limits of Parental Authority

ABSTRACTIn modern pluralist societies, the meaning and value of individual autonomy is highly contested. Typically, some religious groups deny the ideal of leading a self‐directed life and regard strict obedience to God's commands as the primary goal of child education. This article pursues the question of whether a liberal state may legitimately interfere with parental authority in order to protect the development of a child's inner capacity for autonomy. It is argued that the ability to critically re‐evaluate one's life plan is valuable for the offspring of secular and pious parents alike. Therefore, restrictions on parental rights can be justified within a liberal theoretical framework that is neutral between autonomous and heteronomous conceptions of the good. However, religious parents need not be prepared to call their most important tenets into question; they may foster their children's capacity for critical reflection in other ways. Since the vast majority of religious families meet this requirement, state interventions are rarely warranted.

Transformative learning and community resilience to cyclones and storm surges: The case of coastal communities in Bangladesh

While it has been widely recognized that building community resilience to climate induced shocks requires learning processes at multiple societal levels, there has been limited research on the specific types of learning required at individual level to influence change and transformation at the community level. To determine how transformative learning and risk-mitigation actions shape community resilience to climate-induced disasters, we carried out a mixed-method empirical investigation on the southern coast of Bangladesh. We found that the relationship between transformative learning and resilience-building is complex, involving multiple social cultural-structural factors (e.g., beliefs, values, power structures), practical considerations (e.g., impact on livelihood, evacuation and relocation logistics), and cognitive factors. From our observations, we draw four general conclusions: i) local culture can constrain people's framing of risk and capacity for critical reflection, resulting in a deliberate denial and amnesia of past traumatic experiences; ii) learning alone cannot enhance resilience unless it is translated into action; iii) dependence on experiential learning can lead to the assumption that the severity of past disasters will not be surpassed, generating a false sense of security; and iv) the cultivation of forward-thinking attitudes coupled with innovative strategies, such as social networking, can successfully enhance resilience to climate-related disasters. Future policymaking aimed at building community resilience to climate shocks should therefore take into account cultural and individual cognitive barriers to transformative learning and attempt to remove structural barriers to translating learning into practical action.

Professional identities in progress – developing personal artistic trajectories

We have seen drastic changes in the music profession during the last 20 years, and consequently an increase of new professional opportunities, roles and identities. We can see elements of a collective identity in classically trained musicians who from childhood have been introduced to centuries old, institutionalized traditions around the performers’ role and the work-concept. Respect for the composer and his work can lead to a fear of failure and a perfectionist value system that permeates the classical music. We have to question whether music education has become a ready-made prototype of certain trajectories, with a predictable outcome represented by more or less generic types of musicians who interchangeably are able play the same, limited canonized repertoire, in more or less the same way. Where is the resistance and obstacles, the detours and the unique and fearless individual choices? It is a paradox that within the traditional master-student model, the student is told how to think, play and relate to established truths, while a sustainable musical career is based upon questioning the very same things. A fundamental principle of an independent musical career is to develop a capacity for critical reflection and a healthy opposition towards uncontested truths. However, the unison demands for modernization of institutions and their role cannot be solved with a quick fix, we must look at who we are and who we have been to look at who we can become. Central here is the question of how the music students perceive their own identity and role. To make the leap from a traditional instrumentalist role to an artist /curator role requires commitment in an entirely different way. In this article, I will examine question of identity - how identity may be constituted through musical and educational experiences. The article will discuss why identity work is a key area in the development of a sustainable music career and it will investigate how we can approach this and suggest some possible ways in this work. We shall see how identity work can be about unfolding possible future selves (Marcus & Nurius, 1986), develop and evolve one’s own personal journey and narrative. Central is how identity develops linguistically by seeing other possibilities: "identity is formed out of the discourses - in the broadest sense - that are available to us ..." (Ruud, 2013). The question is: How can higher music education (HME) facilitate students in their identity work in the process of constructing their professional identities? I draw on my own experience as a classically educated musician in the discussion.

Videoclips musicales en YouTube como herramienta para el aprendizaje. Ejemplo práctico en la enseñanza universitaria

Se presenta una actividad docente en un entorno universitario mediante el análisis de conceptos de la Geografía Económica a través del visionado de videoclips musicales integrados en la plataforma YouTube. El alumnado (N=33) trabaja de manera grupal y colaborativamente, en sesiones presenciales y sesiones tutorizadas, seleccionando un grupo musical y una canción y analizando en profundidad la letra y las imágenes presentes en el vídeo, con el objeto de observar e intentar resolver problemáticas cotidianas. Son los propios estudiantes quienes califican la práctica. A través de un breve cuestionario los alumnos destacan la realización de un trabajo participativo, ameno, divertido y novedoso. Se observa una alta motivación de los estudiantes y la capacidad de reflexión y de debate sobre cuestiones geográficas y económicas actuales. Se sugiere un mayor seguimiento por parte del profesorado y, por tanto, una mayor dedicación de horas si se desea implementar en cursos venideros. This article shows a teaching exercise implemented at the university level through the analysis of different concepts related to Economic Geography, by the viewing of music video clips through the YouTube platform. The students (N=33) work collaboratively in teams, choosing a music band and a song and analyzing in depth its lyrics and pictures, in order to observe and try to solve everyday problems. The students themselves qualify the exercise. The evaluation is done through a brief questionnaire which highlights a participatory approach and an entertaining, dynamic and original work. A high motivation and students’ capacity for critical reflection on current geographical and economic issues are observed. It is suggested a higher follow-up of the activity and, therefore, a greater dedication of hours to be implemented in future classes.

Promoting Autonomy in Public Education: A Narrow Civic Approach

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this article is to examine the aim and scope of autonomy-promoting education in liberal democracies. I consider two approaches: noncivic and civic. Noncivic approaches imply that public education should promote autonomy for the sake of students’ well-being so that they can flourish. Advocates of noncivic approaches claim that public education should instill a capacity for critical reflection upon issues concerning the good life. In contrast, civic approaches imply that public education should promote autonomy to create future citizens of liberal democracies. Proponents of the civic approaches believe that public education should promote critical reflection on political ideas and issues. I will propose and defend a version of the civic approach. The main arguments for my position pertain to considerations of neutrality and trust. I argue that state neutrality generates trust from parents and students, and that such trust is conducive to the promotion of autonomy in public education.

Rising wealth and income inequality in Australia and New Zealand: A radical social work critique and response

INTRODUCTION: Wealth and income inequality is increasing in most societies, including Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, with detrimental social impacts. However, despite professional marginality, the renewal of radical social work critiques with their emphasis on structural issues highlight, the need for alternative practice responses.METHOD: We employed a critical and synthetic review of the literature to examine major trends in wealth and income inequality (both globally, and in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand) and the social work responses to increasing economic inequality.CONCLUSIONS: Resurgent wealth and income inequality has reached new crisis points in both countries but individualising analyses and programmes render most social work responses complicit with neoliberal governance. These responses do little to reduce inequality. Alternatives promoting economic equality can be found in radical social work approaches.IMPLICATIONS: At a minimum, effective radical responses to economic inequality must advocate critical social analyses in social work education and practice, including fostering practitioners' capacity for critical reflection, policy practice and political activism.

The Autonomous Life: A Pure Social View

In this paper I propose and develop a social account of global autonomy. On this view, a person is autonomous simply to the extent to which it is difficult for others to subject her to their wills. I argue that many properties commonly thought necessary for autonomy are in fact properties that tend to increase an agent's immunity to such interpersonal subjection, and that the proposed account is therefore capable of providing theoretical unity to many of the otherwise heterogeneous requirements of autonomy familiar from recent discussions. Specifically, I discuss three such requirements: (i) possession of legally protected status, (ii) a sense of one's own self-worth, and (iii) a capacity for critical reflection. I argue that the proposed account is not only theoretically satisfying but also yields a rich and attractive conception of autonomy.

Engineering Performance: Lev Kuleshov, Soviet Reflexology, and Labor Efficiency Studies

Engineering Performance: Lev Kuleshov, Soviet Reflexology, and Labor Efficiency Studies Ana Olenina (bio) The film actor performs not in front of an audience but in front of an apparatus. The film director occupies exactly the same position as the examiner in an aptitude test. . . . To accomplish it [this test] is to preserve one’s humanity in the face of the apparatus. . . . For the majority of city dwellers, throughout the workday in offices and factories, have to relinquish their humanity in the face of the apparatus. In the evening these same masses fill the cinemas, to witness the film actor taking revenge on their behalf not only by asserting his humanity (or what appears to them as such) against the apparatus, but by placing that apparatus in service of his triumph. —Walter Benjamin, December 1935–February 1936 [End Page 297] In his discussion of “the apparatus,” Walter Benjamin draws a parallel between the actor and the filmgoer as subjects of modernity, each coming to terms with emerging technologies. By highlighting their respective “performances”—their interaction with complex machinery at their work sites—Benjamin contemplates the vicissitudes of the socioeconomic regime, which seeks to reduce personhood to function, to turn man into a cog in a vast mechanism of industrial production and consumption. Alarmed by these tendencies, Benjamin insists on a tactic for regaining one’s individual creativity and capacity for critical reflection, one’s humanity. Like Theodor Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer, Benjamin considers the movie theater to be the milieu where one can develop awareness of the modern condition. Since the 1990s, one of the most productive trends in film scholarship has been driven by the idea of recuperating the Benjaminian spectator. The works of Tom Gunning, Thomas Elsaesser, Giuliana Bruno, and other scholars have refuted an earlier universalized model of the film viewer who passively digests the codes of the dominant culture and realigns her or his desires with its calls. The prisoners of Plato’s cave have been supplanted by modern-day flâneurs, who are free to zoom in and out of the film spectacle much in the same way that they navigate the metropolitan environment. The experience of cinema in this model is far from passive submission; rather, it is an interpretative act geared toward articulating one’s place within the fabric of “vernacular modernism.”1 Media archaeologists working in the vein of Friedrich Kittler’s and Jonathan Crary’s tradition have also proposed more sophisticated ways of assessing the spectator’s interaction with “the apparatus” on a physical level.2 If we are to place cinema in the context of other modern technologies that regulate the users’ attention spans and emotional investments, we must also reflect on the ways in which human sensorium adjusts and defends itself against overstimulation. Thus, the efforts of recent scholarship have resulted in a more complex, historically grounded vision of the spectator’s experience—a view that acknowledges the subject’s integration in a technology-driven commercial world but at the same time resists the idea of her or his complete subjugation. Yet what about the first element of Benjamin’s statement: the actor? Although much has been written about diverse schools of acting, individual performers, and star systems developed by various film industries, there are as of yet no sustained efforts to historicize the experience of early film acting, its material history and discursive configurations. This essay aims to initiate a novel path of inquiry that takes inspiration from recent scholarship on the [End Page 298] spectator but shifts attention to the site of production. My focus is local—the acting workshop of the Soviet director Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s—but I hope to raise questions that would be crucial to investigate in other international milieus as well. Kuleshov’s ideas about expressive movement have emerged at the juncture of neurophysiology, reflexology, studies of labor efficiency, and experimental endeavors of the Russian avant-garde encountering mass media. In this context, Benjamin’s notion of the “aptitude test” for the actor is not just an empty metaphor. Consequently, the issue of the actor’s humanity acquires a concrete significance in Kuleshov’s case, and my discussion highlights multiple dimensions of...

New cultures of critical reflection in Qatar

We speak about the need for critical reflection on practice, but what do we do when we do it; and how do we explain how and why we should do it? This paper explores these issues, and itself acts as the site for an exploration and explanation of what it means to be critically reflective. Drawing on recent research in Qatar, I give an account of how practitioners’ capacity for critical reflection is contributing to a new knowledge base for the country (and possibly beyond), grounded in inter-relational epistemologies, that has potentially far-reaching consequences for improving the quality of learning and teaching in schools and colleges; and how my involvement in the research has improved the quality of my own practice. A main theme throughout is the need to engage with questions – ‘How do I understand my practice? How do I make judgements about its justifiability? How do I demonstrate moral accountability through interrogating the values that inspire what I do?’ – and with the need to make public the emergent understandings that engagement with these questions demands.

Doing Good and Feeling Good: The Experiences of Older Volunteers in a University Research Registry

This paper reports the findings from a study that explored the experiential knowledge of older volunteers who participated in university research projects. Findings suggest that most participants were very positive about their experiences, and they appreciated the opportunity to contribute to research into ageing issues. In terms of areas of improvement, many highlighted the need for researchers to provide feedback on research outcomes and to consider access and transport issues. The capacity for critical reflection amongst participants suggests the potential for the development of more responsive research as well as for cultivating partnerships with older people in future research activities.

Developing clinical effectiveness in psychotherapy training: Action research

AbstractThis study is an evaluation of a new approach to clinical training in Transactional Analysis using the methodology of action research. The evaluation focuses on the second year of training and placement‐based clinical practice at the Metanoia Institute, UK. The design of the training year was research‐based and used the concept of an ‘internship’ year. The design aimed to close the gaps between clinical practice, supervision and formal training; facilitate translation of theory into practice; and integrate findings from the ‘common factors’ research into effectiveness of psychotherapy. Training and supervision methods were linked and focused on emerging issues in clinical practice and the development of students’ capacity for critical reflection and a research attitude to practice. The evaluation was a naturalistic study which used quantitative and qualitative methodology within the action research framework to reflect on the impact of the training on the participants, the organisation and the clinical practice. The quantitative outcomes show that the project developed the effectiveness of students’ clinical practice and reflexivity. Qualitative analysis gives insight into the experiences of the participants and the emotional impact of the research process.

The Atomistic Self versus the Holistic Self in Structural Relation to the Other

I argue that meaning or significanceper se, along with the capacity to be conscious thereof, and the values, motives and aspirations, etc. central to the constitution of our intrinsic personal identities, arise, as indeed do our extrinsic social identities, and our very self-consciousness as such, from socio-cultural structures and relations to others. However, so far from our identities and behavior therefore being determined, I argue that the capacity for critical reflection and evaluation emerge from these same structural relations, the more complex and quintessentially human aspects of our behavior being explained not in terms of responses to stimuli but as choices reflecting our evaluation of meaningful or significant alternatives. Finally I provide theoretical grounds for accepting the existence of other subjects and give a holistic, as opposed to a dialectical, account of the way individuals may challenge and change the very socio-cultural ways of relating to and interacting with others so central to constituting their capacities and identities.