Conceptual Inquiry Research Articles

Exploring practitioner inquiry among health and physical education teachers: insights from teachers’ perspectives

ABSTRACT Introduction: Existing research suggests that practitioner inquiry (PI) can positively influence teachers’ professional learning. Within the context of Health and Physical Education (HPE), however, we know little about the influence of PI on HPE teachers and their students, and HPE colleagues. Aim: This study responds to the research question: in what ways do HPE teachers believe that PI influences their teaching practices, their students and their HPE colleagues? Context and participants: This study presents a case study of a year-long, government-funded teacher professional learning programme called Teaching Excellence Program (TEP) offered by the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. The TEP is intended to advance teacher professional knowledge in a range of ways, including through individual and collaborative PIs. This paper examines the outcomes that ensued from the teachers’ individual and collaborative PIs. The study involved seven Australian HPE teachers with varying levels of experience (6–30 years). We employed an exploratory, multi-method case study approach, and data consisted of interview transcript, participant-designed cartoons, and artefacts (e.g. framing a problem of practice and action planning documentation). Findings: Within the broader context of the TEP, PI was identified as particularly engaging for the participating HPE teachers. The HPE teachers believed that engaging in PI: (a) enhanced their own teaching practices; (b) therefore improved students’ engagement; and in some cases (c) influenced HPE colleagues’ teaching practice. Implications: This study underscores the potential influence that PI can have on HPE teachers when scaffolded and sustained support is available and accessed. Furthermore, this study highlights the significance of adopting the concept of inquiry as stance, emphasizing the role of teachers as researchers. Positioned as teacher-researchers, they generate localized knowledge, reimagine and theorize their own and potentially others’ practice, and critically engage with the theories and research of others.

Meditative inquiry for educators: Understanding the significance of spirituality, contextual and cultural awareness, and organic change

This conversational paper explores the concept and practice of meditative inquiry in the context of teacher education. Meditative inquiry is a holistic approach to teaching, learning, researching, creating, and living. Due to its strength and versatility, meditative inquiry has been taken up in a variety of educational settings (Kumar, 2022). By employing dialogical meditative inquiry (Kumar & Downey, 2018), which aims to delve deeper than a typical interview, the authors engage in a dialogue that probes into the significance of meditative inquiry for educators. Leaning into the authors’ experiences with secondary social studies and teacher education, this paper: 1) discusses philosophical and pedagogical aspects of mediative inquiry by examining the differences and similarities between critical reflection and meditative inquiry; 2) explores the significance of a spiritual perspective for social studies education; and 3) offer pointers on how teachers can adopt meditative inquiry in the context of classroom teaching.

Storying Monocrop Infrastructure: A Conversation on Governance, Scale, and Failure

Plantations have recently become the focus of renewed empirical and conceptual inquiry across the social sciences, arts, and humanities. Scholarship in this interdisciplinary space calls on us to reckon with industrial monocultures’ enduring role in shaping contemporary structural inequalities, dominant technoscientific regimes, uneven divisions of labor, environmental violence, and struggles for justice, recognition, and repair. This Engagement piece contributes to these emerging currents by bringing into dialogue two scholars conducting research on monocrop systems in Latin America (Kregg Hetherington as interviewee) and Southeast Asia (Sophie Chao as interviewer). Anchored in Hetherington’s concept of “agribiopolitics,” the interview approaches monocrops through the two interrelated themes of governance and failure. Governance brings us to consider the forms of control, management, monitoring, and accountability that undergird agribiopolitical regimes, the institutions, practices, and mechanisms that make them possible, and the structures of exclusion, oppression, and violence on which they often depend. Failure brings us to attend to the limits or tipping points of governance as system and process—it’s rough edges, its unexpected failings, its uneven distribution, and how failure can be both productive and an opportunity for flight. In reflecting on ways of storying monocrops otherwise, we invite theoretical and methodological dialogue around the form and effects of anthropocenic infrastructures more broadly across the fields of science and technology studies, anthropology, critical race studies, political ecology, agrarian studies, and the environmental humanities. This interview is a revised and expanded version of an Author- Meets-Critic conversation that took place at the Society for Social Studies of Science, (4S) meeting in Cholula, Mexico, where Hetherington’s monograph, The Government of Beans, received the 2022 Rachel Carson Award.

Inquiry as a Compass: Revising a Social Studies Education Program Around Questions, Tasks, and Sources

In response to national and state trends promoting inquiry-based social studies over the last decade, social studies teacher educators at the University of Kentucky revamped their pre-service program to create alignment around the key inquiry concepts of questions, tasks, and sources. Part of the program revision involved the creation of a new observation instrument to assess students during their field experiences. Drawing from four years of data from the instrument, the authors discuss what the observational data reveals about the strengths and weaknesses of their students’ inquiry practices as well as what the data suggests about program coherence between university coursework and field experiences.

Why Naturalism? Translating Homo Natura Back into Nietzsche’s Text

ABSTRACT This article questions a common reading of Section 230 of Beyond Good and Evil as containing a canonical statement of Nietzsche’s naturalism. The section cannot be read simply as the programmatic statement of an investigative task, and is relatively vague as to its nature. Nietzsche’s aim is aporetic. He presents the naturalist task as involving mental self-cruelty and a struggle with unconscious vanity, suggesting that thinkers have found no way to justify why they choose this task, unless they invoke self-descriptions which are false and belong to a metaphysical conception of truth and inquiry that naturalism must resist. In the Genealogy, Nietzsche revisits this theme and announces his task as that of calling into question these justifications of naturalist inquiry.

Ghosts of African Education: Mass Hysteria and Embodied Resistance within Postcolonial Senegalese Schools and Atlantic Migrations

This article works toward conceptualizing frictions between colonial education and non-Western traditions of African education in the modern African state. Signaling manifestations of educational friction or disequilibrium, we apply the concept of haunting to uncover ways the legacy of colonial education is reproduced through Western modernity as a form of disembodied educational practice, conflicting with the ghostly presence of collective African educational traditions. More specifically, we offer a conceptual inquiry into the phenomena of Jinne Maimouna, what has been called a mysterious “mass hysteria” within Senegalese schools. In doing so, we work toward a rethinking of education in relation with the transatlantic Black Radical Tradition and links to haunted forms of Atlantic migrations by Senegalese youth. The article gestures toward the power within the deeply rooted knowledge systems and practices emanating from Africa that return in the present and future. We suggest that practices of deciphering and rethinking the embodiment of traditions of African education might offer methods that break from colonizing episteme toward longer temporal educational liberation.

RE: Conceptual competence in psychiatric training: building a culture of conceptual inquiry

RE: Conceptual competence in psychiatric training: building a culture of conceptual inquiry

Conceptual engineering, cognitive deficiency, and the foundations of conceptual inquiry

ABSTRACT As usually understood, ‘conceptual engineering’ is a form of conceptual inquiry aimed at diagnosing problems with extant concepts and finding better concepts to replace them. This can seem like an appropriate response to a skeptical concern that our concepts are cognitively deficient: unsuitable for use in serious inquiry. We argue, however, that conceptual engineering, so understood, cannot reasonably be motivated in this way. The basic problem is that on the first hand, since conceptual engineering is itself a form of inquiry, it cannot succeed by using the problematic concept itself in inquiry (since it is unsuitable for use in inquiry); but, on the other hand, methods for carrying out inquiry directed at concepts without using those concepts are constrained in such a way as to make conceptual engineering very unlikely to succeed. The upshot is that conceptual engineering has no reasonable chance of addressing the skeptical concern about cognitive deficiency. This is an important and previously unarticulated result, about what conceptual engineering can and cannot reasonably be expected to do.

The Master of Business Administration (MBA) Advantage for Police Chiefs: A Case for Studying Business for Law Enforcement Leadership

Historically, two advanced degrees — the Master of Criminal Justice (MCJ) and the Master of Public Administration (MPA) — have been considered the preferred choices for those seeking the highest ranks of law enforcement leadership. However, in recent years, characterized by rapid social change, technological progress, and growing public attention, the role of the police chief has evolved into a multifaceted leadership position that goes far beyond the traditional responsibilities of law enforcement. It covers a broader set of duties related to leadership and management communications in police units, organizational effectiveness, strategic management, administration, and control, effective financial resources and budgeting management, communications and accountability in local communities, and ethical decision-making to overcome the multifaceted challenges of modern police activity. The article argues that the degree of Master of Business Administration (MBA), known for its adaptability and versatility, can become a powerful alternative to MCJ and MPA today, as it provides police leaders with a more universal educational base, a comprehensive set of business skills and specialized knowledge, becomes more extensive, practical and an actual form of education of capable and adaptive police management personnel, allows to best prepare them for dynamic changes and transformation of job roles. The article critically examines to what extent and when solving which tasks the heads of police departments need knowledge and skills according to the traditional attributes of an MBA: in the field of financial management, strategic planning, leadership, and human resources management, effective and crisis communication, negotiation, interaction with the public, business ethics. The specifics of the application of the main attributes of those theories that are traditionally studied within the MBA program for the role of heads of police departments are analyzed: the theory of servant leadership, the theory of situational leadership, the theory of managerial economics, PESTEL analysis, and the theory of human relations. As a conceptual inquiry, this article lays the groundwork for continued research in this area to explore the MBA and its content courses as a useful tool for developing the skills and abilities of law enforcement leaders.

Conceptual competence in psychiatric training: building a culture of conceptual inquiry.

Building a culture of conceptual inquiry in psychiatric training requires the development of conceptual competence: the ability to identify and examine assumptions that constitute the philosophical foundations of clinical care and scientific investigation in psychiatry. In this article, we argue for the importance of such competence and illustrate approaches to instilling it through examples drawn from our collective experiences as psychiatric educators.

Exploring the intersections of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in psychology and astrology: a conceptual inquiry for human well-being

Psychology and astrology are two disciplines that, at first glance, may seem unrelated. However, upon closer examination, there are intriguing intersections between the two that merit exploration. This conceptual note delves into the relationship between psychology and astrology, examining how insights from both fields can contribute to human well-being. By synthesizing psychological principles with astrological frameworks, individuals may gain deeper self-awareness, cultivate resilience, and navigate life's challenges with greater understanding and purpose

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND INNOVATION PRACTICES: A CONCEPTUAL INQUIRY

Discourse on artificial intelligence runs noticeably along with the developments of computing technology. At the same time, the business environment become more uncertain, ambiguous, and competitive, which requires organizations to innovate for their sustainability continuously. This paper aims to broaden innovation management knowledge, particularly in applying artificial intelligence. The behavioural Theory of the Firm is a framework for writing this conceptual inquiry. To do so, artificial intelligence can assist organizations in processing information companies need to create incremental and radical innovations. Specifically, artificial intelligence is useful in overcoming barriers to innovation (during information processing and search processes) and generating and developing ideas and solutions. Furthermore, adopting artificial intelligence in innovation management is determined by the level of organizational capability in information processing, which consists of three levels: exploitation, expansion, and exploration. Then, economic, technological and social forces are argued as factors that can push organizations to adopt artificial intelligence. The challenges faced in the adoption process can come from technical aspects of technology, individual aspects, and interaction between technology and humans. The final part of this manuscript describes the future research agenda that can be carried out related to artificial intelligence and innovation management.

The Many Uses of Censorship: Cultural Regulation on Tamasha in Maharashtra

Abstract: This paper is a historical and conceptual inquiry into the nature of performance censorship and resistance, particularly in the context of subaltern “folk” forms, and its relationship to the archive. All censorial gestures also serve as archival ones, insofar as legislating censorship necessitates the generation of a collated record of objectionable material. However, this paper argues that in certain cases—like that of tamasha , a popular performance form in Maharashtra—this kind of archival windfall is not simply an accidental consequence, but is fundamental to the way censorship is imagined and posited: as an actively preservatory, rather than prohibitive, force. Assembling accounts from government reports, censor files, magazine articles, memoirs, and oral histories, I trace how this archival discourse around censorship was articulated and enforced, and examine its impact, on modern tamasha historiography, in particular, and on institutionalized cultural regulation in the region at large. I argue that the re-framing of censorship as “preservative” imposed severe limitations on the possibilities for resistance, and consequently paved the way for the enduring appropriation of tamasha along caste and class lines.

Exploring the Interplay between Conceptualizing and Realizing Inquiry—The Case of One Mathematics Teacher’s Trajectory

Inquiry, an approach that departs from traditional mathematics teaching, empowers students through active participation and increased accountability in exploration, argumentation, evaluation, and communication of mathematical ideas. There is broad research consensus on the benefits of inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning mathematics, including their potential to support equitable mathematics classrooms. While research has separately explored teachers’ conceptions of inquiry and their efforts to enact the practice, little is known about the interplay between mathematics teachers’ conceptions and enactment, and how it could be harnessed in professional development. In this study, we follow Alex, an experienced upper secondary mathematics teacher unfamiliar with inquiry, as he participates in a one-semester professional development course that draws on inquiry in multiple ways. His trajectory towards learning to teach through inquiry is revealed through patterns and shifts in his reflections and classroom actions. Our findings reveal significant developments in Alex’s conception of inquiry and in how he realizes it in his classroom, identifying three paths that illuminate his inquiry trajectory: the teacher’s role in inquiry interactions, a growing idea of inquiry, and orchestrating whole-class situations. In the interplay between enacting and reflecting, he moves from distributing authority separately between himself and ‘the students’ (as one unit) to fostering shared authority, a key aspect of empowerment, between himself and his students (as multiple voices) in both groupwork and whole-class episodes.

Desnobberizing good eating and drinking: (Re)defining gastronomy and culinary arts

What does “good eating” mean in the world of gastronomy and culinary arts? In this article, the authors subjected gastronomy’s longstanding definition “the art and science of good eating” to critique. While widely accepted, the standing definition often carries an elitist undertone that reflects Eurocentric ideals. In this conceptual inquiry, the authors examined the problematic connotations of “good eating” and propose the idea of desnobberization, a gastronomic lens that encourages one to rethink what constitutes as “good” in the context of good eating that ultimately advocates for a more inclusive and relativist way of appreciating and thinking about food. Good eating, in short, should lie in the heart of the taster. The authors also offer an original definition for gastronomy and culinary arts.

Third and fourth grade students’ conceptions of the nature of scientific inquiry

ABSTRACT Understanding the nature of scientific inquiry is considered a critical component of scientific literacy [Michaels, S., Shouse, A. W., & Schweingruber, H. A. (2008). Ready, set, science!: Putting research to work in K-8 classrooms. National Academies Press]. What do elementary students already know about scientific inquiry? Using the VASI-E (Lederman, Lederman, Bartos, Bartels, Antink Meyer, and Schwartz) we surveyed 135 third and fourth grade students for their conceptions of scientific inquiry, also interviewing 33% of these students to ensure valid and reliable interpretation of the data. Questions focused on students’ conceptions of inquiry in terms of recognising that investigations begin with a question, whether scientists use multiple methods to answer their questions, whether scientists’ procedures are guided by the questions they ask, whether conclusions should be consistent with data, and whether explanations come from data as well as prior knowledge. Overall findings indicate that the third and fourth grade students had generally good ideas of aspects of scientific inquiry as measured by the VASI-E. In essence, third and fourth grade students not only can use scientific inquiry to explore scientific ideas, but also conceptualise the kind of knowledge that is developed through scientific inquiry and comprises scientific inquiry.

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Domination, social norms, and the idea of an emancipatory interest

Leading for Justice, Leading for Learning: Conceptualizing Urban School Leadership for Antiracist Mathematics Teaching and Learning

Urban school leaders can support mathematics instruction that acknowledges and sustains students’ racialized and cultured ways of knowing and being. Yet, leadership for racial justice is often discussed separately from instructional improvement. In this conceptual inquiry, we investigate how leadership can integrate antiracist practices into teaching and learning. We synthesize justice-focused leadership and antiracist mathematics literatures to present a framework of interconnected leadership practices and elaborate on this vision through an example drawn from our collaboration with practitioners. This manuscript and framework provide precise descriptions of leadership actions to support practitioners and researchers seeking to support antiracist, ambitious mathematics instruction.

Rejecting Choices: The Problematic Origins of Researcher-Defined Paradigms within Qualitative Research

Paradigms are often presented as a way of distinguishing various qualitative and experimental research approaches. But carefully tracing their adoption through the work of Egon Guba, we can see that the model of researcher-defined paradigms used within qualitative research also arose from the replacement of a more open conception of naturalistic inquiry (N/I); the anthropomorphizing of ideal research types; the inclusion of the subject matter in the characterization of different types of researchers; that it is the inclusion of the subject matter in Guba’s conception of a naturalistic inquirer that necessitates his appeal to philosophy (i.e., ontology and epistemology) as the basis for selecting methodology; and that by doing so Guba violates his own concerns about researchers choosing their methodology before considering their subject matter, something that he referred to as the law of the hammer. The adoption of researcher-defined paradigms also rejects the position that the appropriateness of a methodological approach, including N/I and qualitative approaches, is primarily determined by the subject matter and researcher’s objectives, something Patton has referred to as the paradigm of choices. This review of the origins of researcher-defined paradigms problematizes and defamiliarizes this core concept within some models of qualitative research. Given that Guba’s model and its appeal to philosophy as the basis for selecting methodology still underlies a fundamental division within conceptions of qualitative inquiry, reconsidering its development and potential alternatives will allow current researchers to better appreciate the model of qualitative research they choose to work under.

Professional Learning Communities in Physical Education: Preparing Teachers to Thrive

This article explores how physical education teacher education (PETE) programs can prepare physical education professionals for PLC engagement. A requisite competency domain for PLC engagement can be described as “co-assessment literacy” or “closing the loop” of a results cycle (utilizing assessment data to monitor student learning and improve teaching practice). Using a little-known process assessment called a Programmed Practice Sheet (PPS) can be an efficient way for a physical education PLC team to close the loop. The article concludes by describing how a PETE program utilized PLC structures, principles, and language in guiding undergraduate students in the process of research inquiry. Research inquiry concepts and the PLC results process for closing the loop are explored and compared.