Co-construction Of Meaning Research Articles

Training Communication Partners of Adults Who Rely on AAC: Co-Construction of Meaning

Abstract In this article, we summarize a presentation on the training of AAC communication partners at the SIG 12 Virtual Conference (2012). We describe the characteristics of effective communication partners. We also will discuss adult learning principles and learning mode preference as they relate to training of AAC communication partners.

Enjeux psychiques de l’entretien clinique de recherche en contexte interculturel

The interview is an intersubjective meeting in which the stakes are complex. This frequently used method in social and human sciences research brings to the foreground various mental processes. Despite its clear distinction from the therapeutic interview, due to its purpose and the origin of the request, the research interview generates for both the participant and the researcher unconscious phenomena and contributes to the epistemological reflection inherent to the clinical approach. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that the mental processes mobilized in the participants and in the researcher, who belong to the same culture of origin during the research interview, may be analyzed in four dimensions: intrapsychique, intersubjective, projective and group. So as to illustrate the various mental processes that are engaged, a research conducted in clinical intercultural psychology regarding the adaptive processes and the identity strategies of Korean mothers living in France or in Quebec is used. In order to offer maximum freedom of expression to the participants, the interviews were conducted in Korean, and then translated into French. The intrapsychic dimension is illustrated by an example from the interview with a 44-year-old Korean woman met in Paris. Following the Rogerian theory (1952, 1961), we understand that the participant comes to a coherent reorganization of her own conception throughout the interview, allowing her to speak and to think about her autobiography. From the interaction between two subjectivities, the thought and the discourse are involved in the co-construction of meaning. The understanding of the intersubjective dimension is supported by the theory of Winnicott (1971), developed for the transitional space. Like the mother-child relationship in the game device, the mental permeability available to the researcher is supposed to guarantee the development of the interviewee's confidence. The example of the interview conducted with another 39-year-old Korean woman living in Paris illustrates this intersubjective dimension. The analysis of the relationship between the researcher and his object of research will argue the projective dimension. In the quoted research, the researcher is facing a situation in which the participant's problems remind him of his own questionings. The work of analysis, with hindsight and in the after fact, on the position of the researcher and his subjective implication, is necessary to avoid the possible risk of subjectivation. The group dimension has several levels: institutional, national, international or even worldwide. Thus, the intercultural aspect is particularly highlighted in an attempt to present the complexity of the process. The idea of the interculturality awareness at several levels was highlighted in particular by taking the institutional transference/counter-transference movement into consideration. The transfer mezo level revealed itself as one of the analyzers of the group dimension, such as the motivation for accepting the participation in our investigation. In other words, it requires understanding both the relationship conducted by each individual with the institution, and that conducted by two subjects met within the institution. In the current world marked by globalization, "the geohistory of the clinical encounter" (Derivois, 2010) becomes an interesting tool to understand the complexity of the encounter issues arising from the clinical consultation.

IDEOLOGICAL CHALLENGES IN CLASSROOM DISCOURSE: A SOCIOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE OF ENGLISH LEARNING IN AN URBAN SCHOOL

Using a sociocritical approach to the study of language and literacy and discourse analysis, this article examines student initiated challenges in a sheltered English course with two types of English learners: native+, ESL students; and, recently, arriving ESL students. The analysis draws on 19 hours of video-recorded observations of teacher-student interaction in predominantly whole class literacy activities. Through an in depth analysis of the role of student challenge in ideological constructions, this article shows how native+ generation students insert themselves into the co-construction of meaning. The main argument set forth in this article is that despite engaging in sophisticated language practices such as “challenges,” native+ students still do poorly in their class and assessments are biased toward quieter students who are mostly more recent immigrant students. While the course is socially organized to be responsive to the voices of native+, Latina/o students, there is a need for critical awareness, or a sociocritical language ideology, that explicitly recognizes and repositions the literacy practices of native+ students in nondeficit ways.

Analysing university spoken interaction

In this article, we consider how corpus linguistics (CL) and conversation analysis (CA) can be used together to provide enhanced descriptions of spoken interaction in the context of small group teaching in higher education. From our analysis of the data, we show how the two approaches can be combined in an iterative process to account for features of spoken discourse at both micro (word) and macro (text) levels. Beginning with CL and focusing largely on words and combinations of words, we then use CA to highlight pertinent interactional features. Our methodology follows an iterative process: from CL to CA, back to CL and so on. This approach to analysis provides powerful insights into the ways in which interactants establish understandings in educational settings and, in particular, highlights the inter-dependency of words, utterances and text in the co-construction of meaning.

Accounts in the Classroom: Discourse and the Coconstruction of Meaning

Our general aim is to study the construction of meaning in the classroom through the analysis of classroom activities and discourse. We adopt a qualitative methodology to study educational practices. Our results describe how teachers create an account to narrate certain events, how teacher and students use what they consider to be the culturally valid sources of knowledge, and how students appropriate collective constructions of meanings. Our work contributes to the understanding and description of how meaning is coconstructed in educational activities.

‘Representing’ the pain of others

This article argues that visual images, particularly photographs, can provide an alternative visual language to communicate pain. It suggests that selected photographs of pain placed between clinician and patient can help trigger a more collaborative approach to dialogue within the consulting room. The participatory roles of artist and clinician as well as patient in the co-construction of meaning and narrative are acknowledged. Comparing images from two projects, Perceptions of Pain and face2face, the article uses Barthes' distinction between a 'denoted' and 'connoted' message to suggest the possibility of an underlying generic iconography for pain. By drawing on selected images and audio recordings from both projects, the article demonstrates how visual images re-invigorate verbal language and vice versa. It highlights how, in placing a photograph between two people, meaning is created within a social context as much as via the configuration of signs within the photographic surface. It is suggested that a resource of pain images, such as that created in both the projects described here, could be a valuable communication tool for use in NHS pain clinics.

(Meta)communication Strategies in Inclusive Classes for Deaf Students

How can an inclusive classroom for deaf students be successful? The use of metacommunication strategies by teachers and hearing peers seems promising. Schools that promote this approach tend to improve deaf students' psychosocial development and academic achievement. However, this is not a general rule. The present study identifies the elements of success, with the investigators basing their analysis on extensive observation of 4 bilingual classes conducted by regular education and specialized teachers. The study was conducted in 3 public elementary schools in Brasilia, Brazil. Data were collected through direct observation (156 hours) and video recording (34 hours). Results were qualitatively analyzed from a microgenetic perspective. The investigators devised 14 categories of social interaction, e.g., visual contact and responsivity, multimodal communication, co-construction of meanings, flexible use of space, and sign language instruction for hearing students.

Narrators defend their side of the story metaphorically at troubled narrative junctions

The study explores troubled Israeli telephone talk to explain the functions of figurative clusters (FCs) produced in callers’ stories. Espousing a theoretical framework comprising discourse-oriented institutional conversation analysis, narrative inquiry and discursive psychology, as well as a model of narrative positioning that probes narrators’ co-construction of meaning, we show that FCs were generated at certain junctions in the interaction when callers defended their side of the story. In their attempt to sound accountable, they resorted to FCs, remedial linguistic devices that enabled them to redefine their positioning in relation to others in the narrated world and present it to other interlocutors in the ongoing interaction. This finding provides further empirical evidence linking narrative and figurative construction of meaning in troubled talk

Narrators defend their side of the story metaphorically at troubled narrative junctions

The study explores troubled Israeli telephone talk to explain the functions of figurative clusters (FCs) produced in callers’ stories. Espousing a theoretical framework comprising discourse-oriented institutional conversation analysis, narrative inquiry and discursive psychology, as well as a model of narrative positioning that probes narrators’ co-construction of meaning, we show that FCs were generated at certain junctions in the interaction when callers defended their side of the story. In their attempt to sound accountable, they resorted to FCs, remedial linguistic devices that enabled them to redefine their positioning in relation to others in the narrated world and present it to other interlocutors in the ongoing interaction. This finding provides further empirical evidence linking narrative and figurative construction of meaning in troubled talk

Hierarchical and Nonhierarchical Models of Consciousness: Commentary on Paper by Hilary Hoge

Understanding consciousness as either hierarchical—as a single reality with various levels of depth—or nonhierarchical, as a self-organizing multiplicity of embodied states with an emergent intelligence greater than the sum of its information, makes a decisive difference in clinical practice. It leads to a fundamental difference between imagination and illusion. Imagination is understood as an efficacious aspect of reality, not as its opposite. To this perspective the dreamer did not create the dream but belongs to the dream. Images possess us more than we have them. The efficacy originates in the images. Using an example of a dream worked by Freud, which locates its meaning in a historical event, the author demonstrates the difference between historical interpretation and correspondence between dream image and historical fact, creating a meaningful reverberation. He shows how the body can be used as a receptacle of multiple sense memories corresponding to multiple embodied states, which when experienced simultaneously give rise to fresh consciousness. He concludes by showing the difference between a co-construction of meaning, which ascribes meaning, and the emergence of meaning from the multiplicity of embodied states enveloping analyst and patient.

Nurturing Dialogic Hermeneutics and the Deliberative Capacities of Communities in Focus Groups

Dialogue is a central feature of focus groups. It is also a primary component of philosophical hermeneutic theories of understanding. Using a focus group with parents on the topic of state standardized testing in New York State, the author explores the process of creating focus group settings that nurture their relational and hermeneutic qualities and actively engage participants in the coconstruction of meaning and understanding. Central to this discussion is the use of alternative elicitation strategies such as using poetic displays of previous focus group transcripts to engage the participants.

Using the Critical Didactic Incidents Method to Analyze the Content Taught

This article examines the critical didactic incidents (CDIs) method used by European researchers in didactics. Originally designed by Flanagan (1954) in psychology, the CDIs method is based on qualitative accounts and analysis of critical moments in the teaching process when content is brought into play. The article reviews the use of critical incidents in educational research and then focuses on the epistemological aspect of its recasting in didactics. Criteria and guidelines for using the method are described, as well as some tenets for interpretation. The description emphasizes the fact that the CDIs method is anchored in a concern for developing depth of understanding of a particular phenomenon: the dynamics of the implicit negotiations between teacher and students regarding content issues and the co-construction of meanings that undergirds classroom interactions.

An attachment-based treatment of maltreated children and young people

Repetitive, intrafamilial abuse and neglect leads to a complex array of deficiencies and symptoms that reflect both the traumatic effects of maltreatment on children as well as the effects of their failing to develop a coherent pattern of attachment behaviours toward their caregivers. This article will attempt to describe principles of a psychological treatment for maltreated children and young people who have been placed in foster care and adoptive homes. This treatment, based on attachment theory, provides dyadic interventions that aim to be transforming and integrative. The co-regulation of affect and the co-construction of meaning are central to the treatment process, just as they are central features in attachment security.

Foreword

Foreword

The Role of Dialogue in Activity Theory

Activity Theory as formulated by Leont'ev and expanded by Engeström has tended to emphasize activity systems in which the objects to which subjects' actions are directed are material in form. In such accounts, discourse-if considered at all-is treated as just one of the artifacts or practices that mediate the subject's object-directed actions. As several scholars have pointed out, however, this model does not provide a satisfactory account of the dialogue in which such semiotic artifacts as accounts, explanations, and theories are the objects created and in which the co-construction of meaning by two or more participants actually constitutes the action. This article is intended as a contribution to the ongoing collaborative attempt to provide a more satisfactory account of the role of dialogue in activity, taking as example the dialogue in which two students negotiated a decision about the object of the activity in which they were engaged.

At Death's Door: Therapists and Patients as Agents

This paper explores the interrelationship between patients' exercise of will to make advances in an analysis and their readiness to forgive their analysts for their human limitations. There is a thin line between idealization of the analyst, probably a necessary component of the process, and resentment of the analyst for his or her privileged position in the world and in the analytic situation itself. The patient's “progress” emerges as a kind of reparative gift, one that implicitly overcomes the patient's tendency to withhold such change out a sense of chronic, malignant envy. Particularly poignant in terms of its potential to elicit the patient's reparative concern is the situation in which the analyst is struggling with his or her mortality because of aging or life-threatening illness. In this essay two clinical vignettes are presented to illustrate some of the issues that this situation poses. One begins with an elderly patient appearing at the door of the analyst's (the author's) home the day of his return from the hospital after coronary bypass surgery. The other begins with an analyst who is terminally ill appearing at the door of a patient who is threatening suicide. The two stories are compared in terms of their implications for human agency, the exercise of will, and the coconstruction of meaning in the face of mortality in the analytic process.

Focus groups in feminist research

Abstract Despite a theoretical emphasis on understanding the person-in-context, individualistic research methods have dominated feminist psychology, and feminist research more generally. I suggest the need for more socially situated methods, and argue that group interviews, or focus groups, are of particular value in conducting, and developing, feminist research. The historical development of focus groups is briefly outlined and examples provided of their use in contemporary feminist research projects. I demonstrate that the particular benefits of focus groups include: addressing feminist ethical concerns about power and the imposition of meaning; generating high quality, interactive data; and offering the possibility of theoretical advances regarding the co-construction of meaning between people. The potential for future development of focus group theory and methodology in feminist research is argued, and illustrated, in particular, with reference to the dynamic negotiation of meaning in specific social contexts.

Automatist storyteller systems and the shifting sands of story

We present a novel approach to documentary storytelling that celebrates electronic narrative as a process in which the author(s), a networked presentation system, and the audience actively collaborate in the co-construction of meaning. A spreading-activation network is used to select relevant story elements from a multimedia database and dynamically conjoin them into an appealing, coherent narrative presentation. The flow of positive or negative “energies” through associative keyword links determines which story materials are presented as especially relevant “next steps” and which ones recede into the background, out of sight. The associative nature of this navigation serves to enhance meaning while preserving narrative continuity. This approach is well-suited for the telling of stories that—because of their complexity, breadth, or bulk—are best communicated through variable-presentation systems. Connected to the narrative engine through rich feedback loops and intuitively understandable interfaces, the audience becomes an active partner in the shaping and presentation of story.

Lay Representations of Democracy: A Study in Two Cultures

While the term 'democracy' has existed in political a and philosophical vocabularies since classical Athens, representations of democracy by laypeople are relatively more recent. Lay representations of democracy are likely to be formed, maintained and changed by both implicit and explicit processes. Some features of lay representations are deeply seated and transmitted across cultures; others are shaped by the already existing thinking schemata; and they also shape the existing thinking schemata by foregrounding particular latent issues, by bringing them into focused consciousness, and by introducing new contents. In the present study, lay representations of democracy were explored in two cultures, in Slovakia and in Scotland. It was found that the most important terms associated with 'democracy' were value terms such as 'individual freedom', 'justice' and 'individual rights'. The remaining clusters of terms expressed political processes and ideological vocabularies. It is argued in accordance with dialogical epistemology that the co-construction of meanings in study of lay representations of democracy must take into consideration different kinds of reflexive relations.

The dialogical self: meaning as movement

Vico versus Descartes the narrative construction of reality the decentralization of the self developments in modern novelistic literature the dialogical self - tension between dominance and exchange dynamics and synthesis of the self self and society - a reexamination of Mead psychology's three separations - division versus cross-fertilization the construction and co-construction of meaning - explorations into a psychology of valuation.