Co-construction Of Meaning Research Articles

Using Management Inquiry to Co-Construct Other Memories About the Future

The focal point in this article is to explore how management inquiry in the context of reflexive dialogical action research can be used as a way for researchers and managers to jointly construct knowledge that partakes in developing organizational life from “within.” This article builds on the acknowledgment that people in organizations have memories of the future. And it is argued that the prospective memories managers have of how an organizational dilemma will unfold in the nearby future shape their actions and co-construction of meaning in the present. In the article, we exemplify and explore how researchers and managers by using “unadjusted responses” and “social poetics” as ways of gesturing and responding can engage in management inquiry and enhance the future managers remember to make room for more desirable future memories to emerge that expand managers’ possible space for action in the present.

“They Wanted to Study Us; They Didn’t Want to Help Us”: Socially Just and Participatory Research Methodologies for Demographically Changing Schools

Educators and leaders across Canada must re-conceptualize their pedagogies and leadership approaches and reflect on their own worldviews to enhance the transitions of new immigrant, international and refugee students into their schools. This paper reports on ongoing case study research in New Brunswick, Canada. The researchers are investigating the impact and implications of immigration and demographic changes on school and community stakeholders. The authors discuss the social justice and participatory methodological framework they are employing in the first school of five in their investigation and report the mid-case thematic findings related to the changing demographic conditions in the province. The findings have been consistently shared with school leaders and teachers through active participation, open communication and co-construction of meanings. The authors are hopeful that the key findings from this research will inform educators and policy-makers as they respond to the educational and social needs of their students and community members.

Embodied interpretation: Assessing the knowledge produced through a dance-based inquiry

INTRODUCTION: Although the field of social work has experienced an exponential increase in the use of arts-based methodology, the way in which knowledge shared through artful presentations is understood by audience members remains understudied. As arts-based inquiry often involves active co-construction of meanings between researchers, participants and audiences, it is crucial for social work researchers to scrutinise the process of meaning making by audience members. In this article, we explore how audience members make sense of research findings presented through improvisational dance and how the provision of information about the dance may influence viewer responses.METHODS: A personal experience with self-injury documented in a creative poem was represented through the performance of improvisational dance pieces and assessed by two groups of viewers, with and without knowledge of the topic of the dances. The viewers were prompted to interpret the dances by reflecting on the feelings, thoughts and perceptions they had while watching the performance. A thematic analysis was conducted to compare and contrast the responses of the two groupsFINDINGS: By comparing the interpretations of informed and uninformed viewers, we suggest that interpretation can be influenced by normative, socially constructed assumptions that hinder empathic and action-inspiring engagement.CONCLUSION: We conclude the article with a discussion of potential implications for social work research, practice and education.

“When did you decide to tell the truth?”

Whilst there has been much investigation of courtroom testimony and other linguistic aspects of legal process, there has been little consideration of the linguistic basis of war crimes tribunals such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which provides the data for this article. The testimony of witnesses in ICTY rape trials is investigated to discover how their examination by counsel may affect these alleged victims of a brutal war. The approach taken is textual as well as discoursal, focusing on the co-construction of meaning between counsel and witnesses — and its failures. The frequent meta discussions about the nature of truth in the testimony shows up some disjunction between the parties in their understanding of the process they are engaged in, leading to the conclusion that the witnesses may have been ‘revictimised’

Solo works of mixed music with live electronics: A qualitative enquiry in timbre and gesture from the performer’s perspective

The performance of mixed music with live electronics is challenging for performers. In this context, idiosyncratic sound processing and synthesis tools are developed specifically for each work, inclined to technological obsolescence, and thus creating transmission and preservation issues. Still, performers, especially in the case of solo works, develop an expertise over time and over multiple performances by multiple performers. From this perspective, the question of co-construction of meaning in relation to performance is especially relevant. We designed an experiment to study this process of co-construction of expertise and appropriation of live electronics from the perspective of instrumentalists. We commissioned four solo works (each one for a different instrument) and asked two instrumentalists (for each work) to play the piece during a concert. We used qualitative methods stemming from psychology of work to study the performance activity in relation to gesture and timbre from the point of view of instrumentalists. For each work, the instrumentalists were confronted with the traces of their own activity, that is to say, the video and audio recordings of their performance and, subsequently, with those of the other instrumentalist in his/her presence. The data was then compared to conceptual frameworks designed mainly in relation to instrumental music. This study provides us with a better understanding of the appropriation of live electronics by instrumentalists, the strategies for transmitting an expertise, and proposes theoretical and practical grounds for new frameworks for documenting and disseminating mixed music with live electronics.

Co-construction of meaning, creative processes and digital curation

Purpose– The preservation and curation of music with real-time or live electronics is challenging. The goal is not to preserve a recording of the performance but to keep the work alive by providing the means to re-perform them. The purpose of this paper is to present the theoretical and practical outcomes of the documentation, dissemination and preservation of compositions with real-time electronics (DiP-CoRE) project.Design/methodology/approach– The methodology combines methods stemming from work psychology and ergonomics with conceptual frameworks constructed according to grounded theory. Data were collected during a six months’ creative process. Subsequent interviews were conducted during confrontations with documents, including observational recordings, sketches and technical specifications.Findings– This paper demonstrates the relevance of the proposed documentation methodology for the preservation of contemporary music with live electronics, focussing on the notion of intelligibility. It brings into light the multiple perspective of the documentation of the activity in a multi-agent creative process, which encompasses what was done but also what could have been done.Research limitations/implications– The DiP-CoRE project bring to light connections between the notion of intelligibility, the thickness of the activity and boundary objects. The paper proposes further directions of research in order to embed the designed framework within digital repositories.Practical implications– The documentation methodology, designed and tested in this paper, proposes a framework for practitioners, building on video-stimulated recall as well as documents produced during the creative process. This framework requires less expertise (but a more important technical setup) than a traditional interview-based documentation framework. It thus provides opportunities for various size organizations to build methodical documentation processes and to further build on distributed expertise with computer-supported collaborative work.Originality/value– This paper proposes a new interdisciplinary documentation methodology relevant in the artistic domain, which brings together transmission with objects and by practice. It specifically defines the relation between this proposal and a high-level model for digital curation, namely, the mixed methods digital curation model. It further creates a link between documentation best practice and the ongoing research in the tracking of creative processes.

The Subjective Experiences of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder of Chinese Families in Hong Kong: Co-Construction of Meanings in Multiple Family Groups.

The subjective experiences of Chinese children in Hong Kong with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are underexplored. This article reports the results of a qualitative study that aims to understand the subjective experiences of children with ADHD in Hong Kong, taken from among a clinical sample of Chinese families with children struggling with ADHD who have participated in cross-disciplinary research of multiple family groups (MFG). The participating children revealed the subjective experiences of their struggle with the disorder in response to their parents' concern at a "press conference," one of the MFG activities, which underscored the importance of developing a new social work model to meet the multiple psychosocial service needs of these families. The article concludes with the discussion of the implications for the new model.

Picking up the threads. Languaging in a Swedish mainstream preschool

This paper examines the strategies monolingual teachers use to scaffold meaning and encourage and enhance verbal communication with emergent bilingual children in a Swedish mainstream preschool. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a preschool group in which seven of twelve children spoke Swedish as their second, additional language. The basic assumption in this paper is that knowledge is scaffolded in talk between teachers and children. Several scaffolding strategies are identified such as guessing, qualified guessing, interactive scaffolding and co-construction of meaning. The analysis shows that successful languaging assumes a high level of trust between the children and their teachers and that it is essential that the teachers can identify each child’s zone of proximal development. Some educational implications and dilemmas are identified on the basis of the results.

The use of questions within in-the-moment coaching in initial mathematics teacher education: enhancing participation, reflection, and co-construction in rehearsals of practice

ABSTRACTManaging mathematical discussion is known to be challenging for novice teachers. Coaching within student teacher rehearsals of teaching has been shown to develop mathematics teaching practice, but can be time consuming. To examine how coaching using questions could assist novice teachers to promote mathematical thinking and discussions within time-constrained programmes, videos of rehearsals, reflective debriefs, and student teacher surveys were collected across a range of courses over 4 years. Findings included that student teacher roles in rehearsals were enhanced through coaching with questions and co-construction was enabled. Coaching questions exposed effective practice, particularly in relation to orchestrating mathematical discussion, enabling student teachers to reflect, discuss, make decisions, and immediately trial teaching strategies. Questions appeared to lengthen rehearsals but improved their effectiveness through enhancing participation and enabling co-construction of meaning. Findings indicate that questions used in coaching of rehearsals inform and empower novice teachers, essential factors within initial teacher education for equitable and ambitious mathematics teaching.

“Elisa” Drowning in a River of Tears: Where Does Power Dwell?

“Elisa” is a treatment report I presented during the 2015 Toronto IARPP Conference, for its discussion in Plenary 3 “Issues of Power and Authority in Relational Psychoanalysis.” A woman in her 30s, Elisa seeks treatment during a severe anxiety crisis. A 3-year-long process on a once a week basis is described, focusing in aspects to favor discussion around the plenary subject. Special attention is given to the phenomenological description of the analyst’s subjective experience in the process of the co-construction of meaning. Questions about the curative factors involved in this treatment are raised.

“On the Way to Freedom”

The arrival of migrants from various parts of Africa in relatively large numbers to the central Mediterranean island of Malta was an unprecedented experience for the locals prior to the early 2000s. This article focuses on exploring the processes that unaccompanied minors go through to become asylum-seekers in Europe and to move on from there to further evolve their life projects. It also explores the role that ethnographers play in retelling their stories, so as to show how these transitions can be better understood. This is particularly because, in most cases, Malta serves as a transit country which they will eventually leave to settle elsewhere. The article shows how the active participation of ethnographers does not simply serve as an “add on” to the data acquired but rather contributes to a co-construction of meanings in an inter-cooperative way.

The development of second language critical thinking in a virtual language learning environment: A process-oriented mixed-method study

This article presents a process-oriented mixed-method study, focusing on the emergence of second language (L2) critical thinking (CT) skills in the collaborative discourse produced by a focal group of five college-level students of French working in a virtual language learning environment (the VLLE Cinet Second Life). Levels of CT ability were elicited through episodes of L2 negotiation and co-construction of meaning. The study also examines the perception by students of the impact of the VLLE on the emergence of their L2 CT skills. Motivated by the need advocated in recent CALL research for a shift in paradigm and in method to alleviate the limitations inherent to quantitative studies, the study was situated at the juncture of sociocultural theory and ecological perspective, and this article focuses on the theoretical rationale behind the selection of a mixed-method methodology.

Genograms or "housework".

Housework is a narrative and visual strategy that is similar to genograms in the co-construction of meaning and understanding between counsellor and client. This article seeks to describe what housework is and to compare it with genograms. It outlines the advantages and potential value of housework as a tool for engaging and supporting secondary students in counselling. It also illustrates how housework can be used by guidance counsellors and as well as within the wider counselling field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Zealand Journal of Counselling is the property of New Zealand Association of Counsellors and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Young Children’s Music Play Ideas: Two Case Studies of Syncretic Literacy Practice in Classroom and Home Settings

This critical enquiry into co-construction of meaning in music play uses applied literacy practices to explore children’s multimodal interactions. It shows evidence of cultural and social framing of their music making, their forms of organisation and ways of reinventing cultural knowledge during interaction. Using visual methodology and multimodal analysis, this study documents how children in diverse contexts intentionally transmit and redesign prior knowledge. Two case studies of diverse music activities, one in an early childhood rural setting and one in an inner-urban home setting, detail how two five-year-old children expanded communication with each other or with an adult using gestural, audio, spatial and visual modes as semiotic resources. These two multimodal experiences in music play are discussed to demonstrate how, in both situated events, young children demonstrated semiotic import of composing resources to transform prior knowledge in co-operative play. The activities illustrate how music play is a crucial element of everyday learning in early childhood settings. Teachers may promote learning by providing opportunities for children to co-construct and enact literacy in ways that transcend the curricular context. They expand literacy into larger worlds by recognising modes of gesture and spatial relations as students communicate life experiences through music play.

Methodological Reflection on the Co-Construction of Meaning within the South African Domestic Worker Sector: Challenging the Notion of “Voicelessness”

Globally the domestic worker sector is characterised by a sense of “voicelessness”. Given the centrality of participant engagement within the interpretivist paradigm, accessing those with firsthand knowledge of the phenomena under investigation proved challenging. This is attributed to the institutionalised nature of the sector and the initial outsider status of the researchers. This article presents a transparent account of the methodological considerations that guided the co-construction of meaning within this context. Two thousand leaflets were distributed. By describing the intended study, inviting participation and providing assurances of confidentiality an initial rapport was established. Purposive, respondent-driven self-sampling resulted in 20 female participants employed as domestic workers. The pilot study indicated the value of using metaphors while exploring tentative topics. An interview guide facilitated the exploration of key concepts during our engagement. In-depth interviews were transcribed and analysed through an inductive process of data reduction. Rich, dense descriptive verbatim accounts of participants’ lived realities confirmed data saturation. Emerging themes confirmed that the South African domestic worker sector is far from being voiceless if we are willing to listen. Making these voices heard constitutes a vital step in future efforts to empower this neglected sector of the labour market. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p726

An Exploration of Metacognition in Asynchronous Student-Led Discussions: A Qualitative Inquiry

Research is limited on how metacognition is facilitated and manifested in socially situated online learning environments such as online discussion forums. We approached metacognition as the phenomenon of interest partly through a methodological objective to evaluate the relevance of a metacognition construct and partly through a content objective to study student-led facilitation of discussions as a strategy in promoting metacognition. Results revealed that the metacognition construct was useful in helping us understand and organize the data and student-led online discussions can be an effective strategy for helping students develop dimensions of metacognition including knowledge, monitoring, and regulation. However, in order for students to use these skills effectively, instruction, motivation, and guidance are needed particularly related to regulation of metacognition and co-construction of meaning.

The Patient’s Lifeworld: Building meaningful clinical encounters between patients, physicians and interpreters

In this paper, our objectives are first to explore the different ways physicians and interpreters interact with patients' Lifeworld, and second, to describe and compare communication patterns in consultations with professional and those with family interpreters. We conducted analyses of transcriptions of 16 family practice consultations in Montreal in the presence of interpreters. Patterns of communication are delineated, grounded in Habermas' Communicative Action Theory and Mishler's operational concepts of Voice of Medicine and Voice of Lifeworld. Four communication patterns emerged: (1) strategically using Lifeworld data to achieve biomedical goals; (2) having an interest in the Lifeworld for itself; (3) integrating the Lifeworld with biomedicine; and (4) referring to another professional. Our results suggest physicians engage with patients' Lifeworld and may benefit from both types of interpreters' understanding of the patient's specific situations. A professional interpreter is likely to transmit the patient's Lifeworld utterances to the physician. A family member, on the other hand, may provide extra biomedical and Lifeworld information, but also prevent the patient's Lifeworld accounts from reaching the physician. Physicians' training should include advice on how to work with all types of interpreters and interpreters' training should include mediation competencies in order to enhance their ability to promote the processes of co-construction of meaning.

The Power of Writing in Knowledge Sharing and Collective Production of Meaning

The goal of this symposium is to start a discussion about the role of writing in organizational processes and to engage in careful conceptual and empirical work to help us investigate how writing supports the sharing and development of knowledge, and the co-construction of meaning and identity within and between communities. We therefore examine these issues at various levels of analysis, ranging in focus from a micro-level of words and phrases to the meso-level of practices and mechanisms to the macro-level of communities (internal and external, collocated and distributed). The presentations highlight different uses of the written word in organizations and communities – how creativity is created virtually over new media on an open innovation platform, how knowledge workers create professional identities through digital traces, how forensic analysts’ inscribe knowledge and identity in written reports, and how identity is created discursively within a community learning network. More than a trace: the power of written words in knowledge development Presenter: Anca Metiu; ESSEC Business School Presenter: Anne-Laure Fayard; New York U. From scientific ‘truth’ to legal ‘proof’: Writing reports in forensic science Presenter: Beth Bechky; New York U. The Generativity of Words: Linguistic framing and the opening and closing of discourse Presenter: Stanley Deetz; U. of Colorado Inscribed Work: Mobile Professionalism in and through Information Infrastructures Presenter: Ingrid Erickson; Rutgers U.

Une comparaison des apports des modèles de la construction de la carrière et de la construction de soi au life designing counseling

Recent developments in Western societies and transformations in work organizations have made the vocational issues that people face more frequent, complex, and puzzling. With the individualization of the life course, people now more than ever before need to reflect and deliberate as they design their lives. To assist individuals cope with difficult issues in life-designing, counselors have devised a new approach to counselling dialogues that differs from traditional information and guidance interventions. This article briefly presents the theoretical model for life designing counseling and then compares two distinct life-designing intervention approaches. Both of them share the epistemology of social constructivism and concentrate on the client and counselor's co-construction of meaning. Each approach provides a rigorous and systematic foundation for counselling interviews yet they differ in the ways they tackle meaning-making. The major difference is that the first approach presents a highly-structured form of life-designing interview that highlights the counselor's role in reconstructing a client's meanings, identity, and intentions. In contrast, the second approach presents a form of life-designing interview that highlights the client's role in self-construction of meaning, identities, and future prospects.

Controversial issues in adventure programming

Controversial Issues in Adventure Programming (Martin & Wagstaff, 2012) a Human Kinetics publication follows on from the previously published text Controversial Issues in Adventure Education: A Critical Examination (Martin & Wagstaff, 2012) a Human Kinetics text presents a new collection of controversial issues in relation to adventure programming with minimal overlap between the issues across both texts. The editors are both from North America and the text focuses on the climate of Adventure Programming in North America. Taking into consideration the current global climate and changes over time to adventure programming since the previous text was published, this text aims to fill the "need for a contemporary account" (Martin & Wagstaff, 2012, p. v) of enduring issues as well as engagement with contemporary and emerging issues. The issues presented are intended to address the "theoretical foundations of the discipline" (p. v) and provide an opportunity to "reassess the underlying assumptions on which the practice of adventure programming is based" (p. v). The intended purpose of this text is to support class discussions at the college and tertiary level whether online, on-campus or in the field. It aims to encourage students to critically explore a range of issues and to support their engagement in the co-construction of meaning in adventure programming. Presentation of Text The structure and presentation of the issues is similar to Wurdinger and Potter's (1999) text resulting in a sense of familiarity making it easy to pick up and use. The book is divided into two main sections: enduring issues, and contemporary and emerging issues. Each section comprises 10 issues. They are arranged in individual chapters which begin with a brief introduction, followed by the presentation of two opposing points of view (yes and no) from a range of authors. The Controversial Issues The text covers a broad range of enduring issues. These are risk, challenge by choice, transfer of learning, outdoor leadership certification, accreditation of programs, motorised pursuits, inclusion (in relation to disability and ethnicity), health and wellbeing as well as technology. The contemporary and emerging issues comprise of extreme sports, access to permits, wilderness first aid certification, to accompany or not to accompany, social justice, leave no trace, education policy reform, decision making models, online programming and forms of research. What is, and is not, considered contemporary and/or enduring in this text could be argued however given this, the text provides a range of issues often up for discussion in Adventure Programming and Outdoor Education. The issues of risk and online learning are discussed to give a flavour of the content. Controversial Issue 1: Do the benefits of adventure programming outweigh the risks? This chapter attends to the debate around the use of physical and emotional risk as an educational tool with the potential to create positive change in individuals and groups. Blenkinsop and Beeman present an argument for risk--The benefits of adventure programming outweigh the risks, and Brown presents an argument against--Freeing ourselves from narrow thinking about risk in adventure programming. Blenkinsop and Beeman provide a range of reasons for including risk in adventure programming. They outline benefits they consider unachievable without risk and provide a compelling and thought provoking argument around the process of "becoming" human (p. 8). In contrast, Brown indicates that there are other ways of achieving the same outcomes in adventure programming without risk and that there exists a need for a paradigm shift. I found the definition of risk he provides does not give recognition to the potential to gain from risk. In conclusion he states that there is a need for learning that is responsive to local conditions and cultural traditions" (p.14) which took me back to the points put forward by Blenkinsop and Beeman around "becoming" human. …