Process Of Co-construction Research Articles

Failure through Success: Co-construction Processes of Imaginaries (of Participation) and Group Development

Participation is an important but little understood concept in science and innovation. While participation promises the production of new knowledge, social justice, and economic growth, little research has been done on its contribution to innovation processes at the group level. The concept of imaginaries can provide a window into these processes. Adopting a micro-sociological perspective, we examined the interplay between imaginaries of participation and group development within a long-term ethnographic observation study of an initiative, Energy Avant-garde, as it pursued the development of a decentralized, self-contained, and entirely renewable energy system in one German region. We scaled down the macrolevel concept of imaginaries to the group level. We found that group imaginaries are a resource for bringing order to a group and that a group is a resource for creating, operationalizing, revising, and sustaining imaginaries. We describe a “failure-through-success” story: while imaginaries initially promoted group cohesion, creativity, and productivity, in later stages, these effects were impeded by group dynamics. We therefore distinguish between process imaginaries and outcome imaginaries and conclude that, inherently, participation must be managed and employed at the appropriate stages to make valuable contributions.

Coconstructing in Conversations Using a Communication Book

This study describes the multiple coconstruction process of aided utterances that occur when non-speaking people use a communication book in their everyday conversations. Previous studies have reported that coconstruction is present both in the progress of pointing-voicing pairs and in the negotiation of meanings. Adopting the concepts and the tools of multimodal conversation analysis, this study demonstrates how two non-speaking boys and their speech and language therapists utilized simultaneously six interactional resources that were interwoven in different multimodal practices during their coconstruction of aided utterances. The observations elicited by microanalysis provide an insight into the temporal, co-operative and progressive nature of conversations that are constructed with a communication book. The findings of this study are helpful for professionals in assessing and scaffolding aided communicators during their conversations with their significant communicative partners.

The Invention of Homophobia in Africa

In this paper, I assert that the criminalization of homosexuality in Africa is a result of a co-construction process which has its roots during the colonial period. I emphasize that during the pre-colonial period, although heterosexuality was the socially recognized and accepted sexual norm as elsewhere in the world, same-sex sexual practices occurred on the continent and were practiced by several communities. Subsequently, even though it is now established that laws criminalizing homosexuality in many countries have their roots in the colonial period, this assertion must be nuanced. First of all, colonizer's sexual policies were not the same throughout the continent, but also even where repressive laws were enforced, homosexuality existed and the colonizer remained silent. Finally, new legal framework are the result of both colonial encounter and contemporary African agency.

Self-narration and agency as interactive achievements: A sociocultural and interactionist analysis of migrant women's stories in a language learning setting

Migration is commonly seen as disrupting individuals’ sense of continuity and agency. In current research on adult identity development, (self-)narratives are regarded as a means of making sense of self. We combined an interactional methodology with a sociocultural and dialogical perspective to examine collective identity processes at work during self-narration by immigrant women in a learning language setting. Data were gathered throughout an intervention designed to encourage participants to put their personal experiences of migration into words. Verbal interactions were analysed to identify 1) narrative discursive units, 2) agentic relationships in and on the narratives, and 3) processes of narrative co-construction. Results showed that self-narratives arose from dynamic interactions in which participants displayed discursive skills in negotiating status and instructions, supported the cognitive and affective work of narrating in a foreign language, and constructed agency that challenged the poor immigrant woman image. We discuss the contributions of our study in terms of methodology and interventions.

‘Who are you to judge my writing?’: Student collaboration in the co-construction of assessment rubrics

ABSTRACTCollaborative models of involving students in the co-construction of assessment rubrics are rare. Inviting students to take part actively in the design of assessment rubrics is one method of filling this research gap, potentially garnering a shared understanding of assessment requirements. Rubrics traditionally are constructed by educators, based on set criteria, in order to streamline grading more cohesively and equitably. But research demonstrates that assessment rubric use is usually of more benefit to the educator in grading, than to the student in undertaking the assessment task – the educator understands requirements but often specific requirements are not clear to the student. Using a multiple case study research approach which incorporated a modified Delphi method to gather expert views on rubrics, the study outlined in this paper explores the outcomes of collaborating with creative writing students at the rubric design stage of the assessment process. This paper discusses the rubric co-construction process facilitated by a writing lecturer and a team of students from one university who took part in collaborating and developing a creative writing assessment rubric. The processes adopted to implement this co-construction process are reported, the products of which were distributed to a 250-student cohort and reflects on the value of this pedagogical innovation.

Communicating the outstanding universal value of World Heritage in China? The tour guides’ perspective

ABSTRACT This study explores how heritage value would be constructed against Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) in the Chinese World Heritage tourism context. It does so from the tour guides’ perspective based on a case study of Kaiping Diaolou and Villages, a World Cultural Heritage Site. Data were mainly collected via participant observations and semi-structured interviews. The findings show that while the identified OUV underlines the materiality of the heritage site with a Eurocentric view, the guides tend to go beyond the built heritage to emphasize the people and activities related to it, transmitting a sense of “Chineseness” and place. Such culturally specific heritage value construction is a co-constructive and dynamic process involving multiple stakeholders: The national state promotes nation-building via (world) heritage system, whereas local government, supported by local experts, underpins the World Heritage with locality, by which the heritage place is differentiated so as to make it attractive; trained with normative templates embedded in state heritage discourse, guides seem to have established a sense of heritage identity and place; for domestic tourists, the expression of “Chineseness” is culturally appropriate and acceptable, while their regional difference allows a comparison that highlights the locality of the heritage place.

Democracia ambiental y coproducción de recursos cognitivos locales para el manejo de la biodiversidad en reservas de biosfera

¿Cómo lograr que la biodiversidad un bien común de la humanidad se mantenga como un recurso colectivo propio de las comunidades humanas que dependen directamente de ella para su subsistencia? Este es el tema que aquí se analiza, el cual ha sido institucionalizado por la creación de reservas de biosfera en México y otras partes del mundo. Si bien, la preservación de la biodiversidad es de interés común, la creación de reservas implica para las poblaciones residentes una alteración de las modalidades de apropiación y acceso a recursos vitales para ellas. Este artículo aborda el caso de la Reserva de la Biosfera Montes Azules (REBIMA) y la Reserva de la Biosfera Lacantún (REBILA) en Chiapas. Es un aporte a la discusión por su importancia y un reto a la democracia ambiental, al exponer diversas racionalidades que interactúan en la REBIMA. Asimismo, discute la necesidad de crear consensos entre los actores involucrados que propicien procesos de co-construcción de recursos cognitivos locales para el uso y manejo de la biodiversidad a fin de resolver la pregunta arriba formulada.

Technological diffusion as a process of societal embedding: Lessons from historical automobile transitions for future electric mobility

Technological diffusion can be understood as a broader process of co-construction of technology and its environment. This article conceptualizes this co-construction as a process of societal embedding, in which new technologies find their place in wider societal domains, which include immediate user contexts, cultural meanings, policies, and infrastructures. This perspective helps address three under-developed dimensions in adoption models: (1) diffusion includes more actors than users/adopters, (2) user characteristics and environments are not known in advance, but are articulated during the technological diffusion process, and (3) societal embedding is full of choices and struggles that affect the directionality and thus shape of socio-technical systems. Societal embedding therefore calls importance to the “demand side” of sustainability transitions. Because electric vehicles have, so far, only achieved limited diffusion globally, we cannot use it to test and illustrate our framework. We therefore use a historical comparative research design, which utilizes the societal embedding framework with two case studies of automobile diffusion in the United States and the Netherlands between the 1880s and 1970s. We subsequently apply the resulting lessons and insights to the future development of electric vehicles, with examples from multiple countries. An important finding is that the successful diffusion of electric vehicles demands a more robust co-construction policy focus that includes tinkering with all aspects of the societal embedding process, and one involving a constellation of agents beyond policymakers and purchasers.

I. INTRODUCTION: THE CO-CONSTRUCTION OF MOTHER-CHILD ATTACHMENT RELATIONSHIPS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD.

Attachment relationships are formed, organized, and elaborated through interactions between an attachment figure and her/his child. The parent-child codetermination process that establishes their relationship in infancy extends and expands during the preschool years. A child's developing ability to use her/his mother as a secure base requires support, time, and practice during early childhood. Moreover, experiences with attachment figures provide information that children use to build internal representations of their relationship. Thus, the organization of attachment behavior is expected to be related to the structure of a child's attachment representations. Yet, questions about how the structure of those representations develop remain unanswered. In moving into the preschool years, we anticipate that building of mental representations of secure base support and use will be guided by parent-child co-construction processes. The child's improving language and advancing information processing skills increase the opportunities for verbally based interactions between caregiver and child. The mother-child co-construction process of secure base relationships includes now a verbal-representational component, but the nonverbal, behavioral building blocks remain in play as well.

II. MEASURES: SECURE BASE BEHAVIOR, CO-CONSTRUCTION, AND ATTACHMENT SCRIPTS.

In order to examine the interplay between behavioral and cognitive representations of attachment during early childhood, we compiled both behavior-based and more cognitive-based attachment measures for this age range. The behavior-based measures were observational Q-set methodologies already established in the literature. Measures of attachment representations for the children and mothers were narrative-based procedures, that is, established storytelling tasks for obtaining attachment narratives from children and adults. For assessing maternal co-construction processes, we developed two new co-construction tasks that required joint storytelling of attachment relevant storylines in one case, and joint conversations about emotion-laden situations in the other. All of these measures are based on the central secure base construct of attachment theory. Behavioral measures assess secure base use and support. Attachment narratives collected from both children and parents are scored for secure base script knowledge. Maternal co-construction is assessed in terms of cognitive processes that enhance and promote attachment script knowledge.

Implementing an Integrated Care System for Chronic Patients in Belgium: a Co-creation Process

Introduction: In October 2015, the Belgian Health Ministers launched a joint plan in favour of chronic patients entitled “Integrated Care for Better Health” [1]. Through this plan, they expressed their intention to move from a fragmented system to an integrated care system for patients with chronic diseases. They decided to implement this plan in a bottom-up way: they launched a call for multidisciplinary four-year pilot projects involving field actors in a co-creation process in order to initiate innovation at the local level. Methods: This qualitative and inductive research draws on several data collection methods: interviews N=21, focus groups N=7, direct observation 90.5 hours, documentary analysis operational documents and a literature review. The data, pertaining to two aspiring pilot projects, were collected during the “conceptualisation phase”, i.e. the application writing period. Results: According to the authorities ‘guidelines, pilot project consortia had to identify a pilot zone and include a variety of first-line and second-line care actors together with non-medical actors e.g. social and cultural actors working in this zone. They were asked to identify the needs of their population and the available/missing resources in their pilot zone. On the basis of this, they had to write a loco-regional action plan in which they outlined their common vision, their strategic and operational objectives and the actions they would implement to achieve these objectives. Discussions: During the conceptualisation phase, different actors, who would probably not have met otherwise, came to work together, overcoming the traditional fragmentation between first- and second-line of care. More than that, by including non-medical stakeholders, the pilot project consortia extended to the community. Multidisciplinarity, coconstruction, cooperation, coordination, targeting a community/defined population in a delimited territory, initiatives “driven by community health needs” [2], sharing goals and resources, all these elements characterising the pilot projects also characterise community health care [3]. Conclusions: Opting for implementation through the use of pilot projects has led local actors to engage in the development of what could become “community health microcosms” in the future. Pilot projects appear to be tools supporting the development of “community-based integrated care” [2]. Lessons learned: Building multidisciplinary projects entails that local actors reach an agreement on their common vision and goals, which is a challenging task. This implies dealing with controversies by meeting, understanding their respective roles, exchanging ideas, negotiating and overcoming their personal interests. Becoming a group, a community aware of its existence is a task in itself, which takes time. Besides, co-designing health care with local actors brings unpredictability to the process: the result of local actors’ reflections can be different from the authorities’ expectations. Limitations: Nineteen pilot projects submitted applications. For practical reasons of feasibility, this research focuses only on two pilot projects and, more specifically, on the application file co-construction process of these pilot projects. Suggestions for future research: The selected pilot projects will implement their loco-regional action plans during the execution phase starting in January 2018. Focusing on the concrete execution of their loco-regional action plans seems to be a logical continuation of this research.

Shared Resources: Engineering Students' Emerging Group Understanding of Thermodynamic Work

Background We have developed several interactive virtual laboratories (IVLs) based on a sequence of agent-based molecular simulations designed to target specific threshold concepts to help students learn thermodynamics. We previously analyzed learning in the IVLs from a cognitive perspective, seeking to repair students' misconceptions; however, that perspective provided limited information for iteratively improving the IVLs. Purpose In this study, we shift to a sociocultural perspective to identify student learning resources activated during their engagement in the Thermodynamic Work IVL. We seek to identify the productive social and environmental triggers through which students develop conceptual ideas using technology in a social setting. Method We conducted emergent lexical coding on a cohort of 187 students' textual responses as they completed the IVL in a studio setting. We then analyzed the discursive and technology interactions of four students from different groups using video recordings. Results Coding results show distributions of students' activated resources. Almost all of the students demonstrated productive ideas, and almost all also revealed opportunities to learn more. Through the detailed studies, we illustrate the moment-by-moment interactions of students with one another and with technology to describe how they activate and share resources. These interactions are conceptualized and illustrated through the construct of shared resources. We relate shared resources to processes of knowledge co-construction and knowledge transfer, and discuss implications for instructional practice and educational technology design. Conclusions The resources framework helps us recognize productive ideas in students' evolving understanding of thermodynamic work. Shared resources allows for elaboration of the interwoven cognitive and social aspects of learning.

Participatory communication on internal social media – a dream or reality?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore whether internal social media (ISM) introduces a new kind of participatory communication within organizations that is capable of influencing and moving the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on two exploratory studies: a multiple case study in ten Danish organizations, and a single case study in a Danish bank.FindingsThe paper finds that different types of communication on ISM develop in different types of organizations. Participatory communication capable of changing the organization only develops when coworkers perceive that they have a license to critique. The paper, therefore, proposes to distinguish between three different types of communication arenas created by ISM: a quiet arena, a knowledge-sharing arena and a participatory communication arena.Research limitations/implicationsThe research is exploratory and based on two Danish case studies and the perceptions of coworkers and social media coordinators. A deeper, summative analysis of ISM across more and various organizations in multiple countries has to confirm the findings.Originality/valueThe paper conceptualizes ISM as an interactive and dynamic communication arena, and proposes that the participatory communication on ISM is a co-constructed process among coworkers, middle managers and top managers.

Transforming identities and co-constructing careers of career counselors

Career construction theory (CCT) provides a compelling framework for making sense of the turbulent landscapes in which career transitions take place and a practical tool to facilitate individual adaptation to change. However, the career development and support needs of career counselors in the integration of this theory into their own career development, alongside their practice with clients, are overlooked. Here, the focus is on supporting the continuing professional development of career counselors for the enhancement of career counseling practice, through the provision of an open access online learning program about the changing world of work, with facilitation of dialogue and reflection. The adaptive responses of an international group of participants facing challenges of identity transformation in the workplace, which emerged as they worked through the online learning resource, are examined. Four hundred and two international participants registered, with 86 actively engaging in the online course, with content analysis of their online dialogue providing insight into the processes of psycho-social adaptation to the career-related challenges they faced. The learning design and course delivery were underpinned by a theory of professional identity transformation (PIT), with a commitment to supporting participants both individually and collectively to shape their evolving roles and identities in ways compatible with their life themes. In order to progress toward that goal, processes of co-construction, also central to career construction theory, emerged strongly from the content analysis of data.

Community of Inquiry

This article establishes a connection between research-based learning and the development of inclusive practices in teacher education with a special focus on pre-service teachers' ways of talking in philosophical dialogues with children. Adopting an interactionist point of view on learning as a co-constructive process and a processual understanding of inclusion and exclusion on the classroom level, the fundamental importance of conversational practices to learning is carved out and then exemplified using transcripts from a teacher education project. Building on this analysis, inclusive conversational practices are identified. Moreover, it is shown how joint reflection and peer feedback in teacher education courses lead to changes in pre-service teachers' conversational practices. These findings lead to reflections on how research-based learning in teacher education can contribute to inclusive education by looking at habitual ways of talking in class.

Highlighting the features of whole-class interactions in a participatory early childhood environment

ABSTRACTThe present study investigates the features of teacher-children interaction during whole-class activities within an early childhood community, in which children’s active participation is supported. The theoretical basis of the study is shaped by sociocultural approaches, which consider learning as a process of social co-construction of meanings, accomplished through children’s participation in meaningful and authentic interactions where their agency is deliberately fostered by adults. By implementing a three-level framework of analysis, two whole-class activities were analyzed. The research findings identified how the control of the activities was shared between the teacher and the children, how the children’s engagement was accomplished and what features it had as well as how their bodily movements contributed to the realization of meaning, sharing of thinking and extension of interaction. New insights on whole-class interaction are provided, which broaden our knowledge in the field of participatory pedagogy, while implications for future research are highlighted.

Naturalizing Social Class as a Moral Category on Swedish Mainstream Television

Abstract This paper presents an analysis of how social class is constructed as a moral category on Swedish mainstream television. Practices of categorisation by the media is an important area of study since these practices are part of a process of co-construction of social categories that are offered to media users as cognitive tools and frames for navigating the social landscape. Based on a content analysis of television in Sweden, we show that the medium of television categorises people appearing on television along the social divisions of class and constructs class as a moral category, with a lower moral value assigned to the working class in comparison to the middle and upper class.

More Than a Story: My Life Came Back to Life.

Social models of aphasia rehabilitation emphasize the importance of supporting identity renegotiation, which can be accomplished in part through personal narrative construction. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of persons who had engaged in a project to coconstruct personal narratives about life with aphasia. Qualitative interviews were conducted with 3 participants with aphasia who completed a 4-week personal narrative coconstruction project, which included preadministration and postadministration of the Communication Confidence Rating Scale for Aphasia (Cherney & Babbitt, 2011). Results were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Three themes were revealed: (a) More than a story: It changed my life validated the idea that the narrative coconstruction process supported a positive view of identity; (b) A positive experience captured the participants' enjoyment in coconstructing and sharing their story; (c) Hope engendered by the coconstruction experience empowered participants with new levels of confidence not only in their communication skills but also in themselves. This study provided insight into the experience of coconstructing personal narratives using a structured protocol. Participants experienced the project as a positive, meaningful opportunity to actively contemplate their life and look forward. The study has implications for clinicians considering support of identity renegotiation in aphasia rehabilitation.

Educação, Sociedade e Formação em Sistemas de Informação

A efetivação das pesquisas e desenvolvimentos em Sistemas de Informação (SI) depende e influencia os processos sociais que se desenrolam em seu ambiente de implantação e entornos. Argumentamos que o campo de SI precisa construir sua identidade com (e não para) a sociedade. Isto significa um processo de co-construção que requer refletir sobre a conjuntura social em todos os níveis, a começar pela concepção dos currículos e organização funcional dos cursos. Apresentamos o processo de construção do curso de SI da Universidade Federal Fluminense ressaltando o compromisso com a conjuntura social, contribuições alcançadas pela escolha pelo período noturno e dialógica com o mercado de trabalho. A efetivação das pesquisas e desenvolvimentos em Sistemas de Informação (SI) depende e influencia os processos sociais que se desenrolam em seu ambiente de implantação e entornos. Argumentamos que o campo de SI precisa construir sua identidade com (e não para) a sociedade. Isto significa um processo de co-construção que requer refletir sobre a conjuntura social em todos os níveis, a começar pela concepção dos currículos e organização funcional dos cursos. Apresentamos o processo de construção do curso de SI da Universidade Federal Fluminense ressaltando o compromisso com a conjuntura social, contribuições alcançadas pela escolha pelo período noturno e dialógica com o mercado de trabalho.

Quand le terrain est raconté

Dans cet article, je m’interroge sur le rôle de l’anthropologue dans le cadre d’une recherche « chez soi » (« a casa ») au travers d’exemples ethnographiques qui illustrent la façon dont mes interlocuteurs et moi avons construit de manière polyphonique les discours sur la mémoire ouvrière du quartier Bicocca à Milan – lieu où se trouve à la fois l’Université où je me suis formé et le terrain de mon enquête. Dans les pages qui suivent, je montre le rôle central du temps, et plus spécifiquement celui de l’appartenance à des générations sociales différentes dans la construction d’une altérité au sein d’une proximité spatiale. Dans un premier temps, je dresse un portrait de l’histoire récente du quartier, dans la mesure où les transformations dont il a été l’objet sont fondamentales pour comprendre sa mémoire sociale. Dans un deuxième temps, je décris les dispositifs de co-construction du passé de cette aire « post-industrielle » en montrant les limites, les difficultés de communication et de transmission de savoirs entre générations différentes.