Conceptual Challenges Research Articles

Undergraduate students’ models of single- and multi-electron atoms

ABSTRACT Quantum physics forms the basis for exciting new technologies, including quantum computers, quantum encryption, and quantum entanglement. The advancement of science and technology highlights the importance of mastering quantum physics and its applications, not only at the college level but also as early as high school. In this multiple case study, we investigated first- and second-year undergraduate college students’ models of single and multi-electron atoms after completing a modern mechanics course, which addressed basic QM topics. The students’ models were categorised into four primary categories: the discrete entity (particle) model, hybrid model, quantum-like model, and quantum model, and subcategories for atom structure and electron attribution and motion. Despite being introduced to quantum concepts in high school and first-year undergraduate calculus-based physics classes, many students constructed incomplete, inaccurate, or incoherent models. Seven of eight students’ atomic structure models and six of eight students’ electron attribution and motion models were classified as discrete entity and hybrid models. The findings of this study reveal students’ conceptual challenges in explaining the structure of single and multiple-electron atoms and shed light on the factors contributing to the persistent difficulties in their understanding of atomic structure in the realm of quantum mechanics.

How Can We Best Assess Spatial Skills? Practical and Conceptual Challenges.

Spatial thinking skills are associated with performance, persistence, and achievement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) school subjects. Because STEM knowledge and skills are integral to developing a well-trained workforce within and beyond STEM, spatial skills have become a major focus of cognitive, developmental, and educational research. However, these efforts are greatly hampered by the current lack of access to reliable, valid, and well-normed spatial tests. Although there are hundreds of spatial tests, they are often hard to access and use, and information about their psychometric properties is frequently lacking. Additional problems include (1) substantial disagreement about what different spatial tests measure-even two tests with similar names may measure very different constructs; (2) the inability to measure some STEM-relevant spatial skills by any existing tests; and (3) many tests only being available for specific age groups. The first part of this report delineates these problems, as documented in a series of structured and open-ended interviews and surveys with colleagues. The second part outlines a roadmap for addressing the problems. We present possibilities for developing shared testing systems that would allow researchers to test many participants through the internet. We discuss technological innovations, such as virtual reality, which could facilitate the testing of navigation and other spatial skills. Developing a bank of testing resources will empower researchers and educators to explore and support spatial thinking in their disciplines, as well as drive the development of a comprehensive and coherent theoretical understanding of spatial thinking.

Voice: A Useful Concept for Researching Backlash and Feminist Counter-Actions?

Voice is central to claims-making and contestations around gender equality. This article engages with a diverse set of literature, social and feminist movement theory, and gender and development scholarship, to foreground voice in the analysis of the discursive strategies of backlash actors and the counter‑actions by feminist coalitions. Drawing on rich discussions with feminist academic-activists based in the global South and the UK, the article unpacks the various conceptual and methodological challenges that emerge in researching feminist collective voice in countering backlash, particularly on matters such as intersectionality and building collective feminist voice; intra-movement backlash and fragmentation of voice; capturing subtler forms of expressions of agency; and the cyclical nature of backlash.

On person-community fit: Trait-, person-, and type-based approaches to measurement

Person-community fit is a timely and important concept in personality, social, and geographical psychology. The assessment of person-community fit poses statistical and conceptual challenges because there is inevitably greater variability among individuals than there is among communities. Leveraging data from the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment project involving 75,705 individuals across the US, we investigated the impact of fit on education, health, and well-being. We first assessed fit using variable-centered (response surface analysis) and person-centered (profile similarity) approaches. We then introduced a typological approach to person-community fit which is predicated on the idea that communities, like persons, are diverse, and can include multiple social and environmental niches. In this approach, persons are categorized into types, communities are described in terms of type-profiles, and fit is assessed as the proportion of people in the community sharing one's type. Using a rudimentary typology based on the five-factor model, this approach revealed striking differences between communities in their type profiles. For both the profile and type approaches, we found modest associations between person-community fit and outcomes, but these effects were due primarily to normativity (person-country fit) rather than to the distinguishing characteristics of communities. Taken together, our results highlight the benefits of using a multimethod approach for conceptualizing the personality of communities and assessing person-community fit.

Where are the values in evaluating palliative care? Learning from community-based palliative care provision.

The World Health Organization Astana Declaration of 2018 sees primary healthcare as key to universal health coverage and gives further support to the goal of building sustainable models of community palliative care. Yet evaluating the benefits of such models continues to pose methodological and conceptual challenges. To explore evaluation issues associated with a community-based palliative care approach in Kerala, India. An illuminative case study using a rapid evaluation methodology. Qualitative interviews, documentary analysis and observations of home care and community organising. We appraise a community palliative care programme in Kerala, India, using three linked 'canvases' of enquiry: (1) 'complex' multi-factorial community-based interventions and implications for evaluation; (2) 'axiological' orientations that foreground values in any evaluation process and (3) the status of evaluative evidence in postcolonial contexts. Three values underpinning the care process were significant: heterogeneity, voice and decentralisation. We identify 'objects of interest' related to first-, second- and third-order outcomes: (1) individuals and organisations; (2) unintended targets outside the core domain and (3) indirect, distal effects within and outside the domain. We show how evaluation of palliative care in complex community circumstances can be successfully accomplished when attending to the significance of community care values.

Therapeutic alliance in individual adult psychotherapy: a systematic review of conceptualizations and measures for face-to-face- and online-psychotherapy.

The therapeutic alliance (TA) is a robust and pantheoretical predictor of treatment outcome in Face-to-Face- (F2F-) and Online-psychotherapy (Online-PT). Many authors have proposed several conceptualizations of TA, which are oftentimes operationalized. The resulting diversity of conceptualizations and measures is presented in this review. We performed a three-parted literature search for self-report-instruments of TA in individual, voluntary F2F-PT with adults (1. utilization of past reviews, 2. systematic literature search yielding 5,205 articles, 3. reference lists). Analogously, we conducted a systematic literature search for instruments of TA in the Online-setting (yielding 200 articles). Additionally, we analyzed the content of the instruments qualitatively. A current overview of 48 instruments for measuring TA (46 for F2F-PT, 2 for Online-PT) including their conceptual backgrounds, characteristics and main content aspects is presented. Most instruments (n = 24) operationalize one or more theoretical conceptualizations of TA. Other instruments are adaptation/syntheses of existing measures (n = 14), based on literature searches (n = 3) or on an empirical survey (n = 3) and two instruments provide no conceptual background information. The content of the instruments mainly focused on the following aspects: 1. Self-disclosure and authenticity; 2. Agreement; 3. Active participation, motivation and compliance; 4. Trust and secure attachment; and 5. Considering needs/abilities/wishes of the patient. Additionally, a narrative review of various approaches to conceptualize TA is presented and linked to respective corresponding instruments. The broad variety of conceptualizations and measures of TA makes coherent research on TA difficult. There are conceptual challenges such as the role of attachment style in TA that remain to be clarified. The current conceptualizations and measures do not incorporate the practical experience and expertise of psychotherapists and patients sufficiently. A metatheoretical conceptualization and measure of TA based on an empirical survey of psychotherapists and patients could address these issues.

Between abjection and fetishization. Challenges of writing about emotional othering in Disability Studies

This paper traces the challenges of writing about an emotional othering of disabled people – between abjection and fetishization. These challenges can firstly be characterized as conceptual challenges. To date, theory-building in Disability Studies about emotional reactions to disability has mainly relied on disabled scholars’ ruminations on an emotional foundation for the discriminatory behaviour they experience. Further challenges arise within the ethical realm. When writing about an emotional othering, one risks reproducing the underlying violence. To navigate these challenges, I locate emotional reactions to disability in a social imaginary, which I further characterize as dis/ableist in the structural sense. After all, alleged reactions to disability reveal less about disabled people (as subjects or a collective) than about the respective socio-cultural context in which these reactions are acquired.

The Uniform Civil Code Debate in India: Conceptual Predicaments, Historical Legitimacy, and Challenges to Pluralism

The Uniform Civil Code Debate in India: Conceptual Predicaments, Historical Legitimacy, and Challenges to Pluralism

The Problematic Rationality of Private Property Rights

The “private” dimension of social life is problematic, posing conceptual, political, and ecological challenges. Some of these problems arise from the very nature of private property as it is enshrined in social life, which demands special privileges be granted to “private” matters on the grounds that these are private, because the predominant representation of the involved rights is that they reflect claims of the holders, rather than legitimate claims of society as a whole in allocating responsibilities, benefits, and duties. The claim to the rationality of allocations of property rights, this article argues, must be questioned in light of the kind of commonality that is revealed in a striking manner by environmental issues (although it is not restricted to environmental matters). This questioning makes sense in relation to an analysis of social interactions, beyond the problematic opposition between the private sphere and public life.

Important but elusive: informal education in the context of reflection on the quality of teaching in higher education

Despite conceptual challenges in defining informal education and learning, as well as methodological difficulties in identifying clear markers of its validity, the relevance of informal education and learning in the teaching-learning environment is emphasized in this paper. Informal education is presented here from an educational-organizational standpoint and assumed to play an essential role in the context of educational quality. The article provides an understanding of selected educational and organizational features of informal education as seen through the eyes of students from three universities in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Research results indicate the existence of a significant group of students who are unaware of the content of the university's mission and values, which may affect the university culture. A significant percentage of respondents at each university do not know where to look for support in conflicts and have not heard about equality and anti-discrimination procedures. The study's findings are part of the “Enhancing Quality Teaching of Humanities and Social Sciences in Higher Education for 21+” research project funded by the Erasmus+ KA220-HED Cooperation partnership in higher education.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR ADVANCING DYADIC HEALTH SCIENCE IN GERONTOLOGY

Abstract As dyadic health science enters a golden age, important conceptual, theoretical, and technical challenges remain. Based on a forum review published in The Gerontologist by a group of dyadic scholars, this presentation will provide an overarching framework for understanding the essential components of robust dyadic health research, and the wide array of approaches used within the field. Each component of the framework will be discussed in relation to supporting empirical examples. The presentation will close by identifying crucial challenges and considerations that coincide with important future directions for the field.

Conceptual concerns hindering the research of weak signals and wild cards ahead of planners

The practical search for weak signals and wild cards does not follow the explosion of scenario building in public policy designing and policymaking practices. Potential rural development planners face a number of conceptual challenges when they would engage in such research. The article takes stock of these theoretical points, which are hindering the rural development use. The detection, speed and impact of phenomena and preparation raise questions that have a decisive impact on the chosen research methodology. The article explores the need to increase the frequency of research and the follow-up activities of the foresights, as well as the subjective role of the researcher and interpreter, in the hope of inviting futures studies researchers for further research and discussion.

Fluency, prediction and motivation: how processing dynamics, expectations and epistemic goals shape aesthetic judgements.

What psychological mechanisms underlie aesthetic judgements? An influential account known as the Hedonic Marking of Fluency, later developed into a Processing Fluency Theory of Aesthetic Pleasure, posits that ease of processing elicits positive feelings and thus enhances stimulus evaluations. However, the theory faces empirical and conceptual challenges. In this paper, we extend it by integrating insights from predictive processing frameworks (PPF) and the epistemic motivation model (EMM). We propose four extensions. First, fluency of a stimulus depends on perceivers' expectations-their internal model of the world. Second, perceivers also form expectations about fluency itself and thus can experience surprising fluency. These expectations can come from the individual's history, their current task and their environment. Third, perceivers can value fluency but also disfluency, reflecting their non-directional epistemic goals. Fourth, perceivers also have directional epistemic goals, preferring specific conclusions or belief content. Consequently, affective reactions depend on whether the stimulus satisfies those goals. These directional epistemic goals may override concerns about fluency or change the value of fluency associated with specific content. We review supporting evidence and introduce novel predictions. By integrating insights from PPF and EMM, our framework can better capture established fluency effects and highlights their limitations and extensions. This article is part of the theme issue 'Art, aesthetics and predictive processing: theoretical and empirical perspectives'.

Translocalizing the space of old Nubia in digital narrative: Resemiotized chronotopes as markers of identity

Digitality is closely related to and expressed within analogicity, offering a sense of intersectional continuity between the online and offline realms. However, this poses a theoretical and conceptual challenge, particularly when addressing the heterogenous notion of contemporary diaspora as a phenomenon of online/offline and past/present co-constituency. To this end, this article advances a semio-chronotopic approach to reclaiming indigenous identities. It aims at decentring the concept of spatial dispersal by situating diaspora within a temporal continuum. The article investigates the Nubian Facebook* page Al Nuba Café in this concern. Deployment of the notion of resemiotization enables us to analyse narrative networks of Nubian diaspora as mediatized through digital space. It is found that Nubian online narrative shows a chronotopic condition of coeval alignment in which the two identity events before and after the displacement are kept conflated. The posts are found to blur the boundaries between the spatiotemporal there-and-then of the story and of the here-and-now of the storytelling world. The study concludes that Nubian digital tellings of diaspora are organized within a continuum of specific chronotopes that vacillate between past and present, spatial yearning and temporal nostalgia, statehood and diaspora, roots and routes, delineating an umbrella chronotope of the changing same. This semio-chronotopic conceptualisation of Nubian diaspora acknowledges the centrality of translocal temporality in its manifestation. Accordingly, the study argues that while space is considered the primary measure of diaspora in the analogue contexts, digital context emphasizes a rather the temporal dimension which dynamically participates in the reproduction of translocal diaspora experiences.

Migratory encounters, common idiom, and the king: The relationship between two Roma groups from Poland in transnational social space

Roma ethnicity presents scholars with plenty of conceptual and methodological challenges, which in the light of the increased mobility of that largest European minority after EU enlargements has additionally perplexed academics and policymakers alike. This article presents our fieldwork data derived from encounters and conversations with Roma individuals in Poland and England. Our approach to this issue is rooted in the emic perspective, examining how Roma people navigate and cope with their own heterogeneity. By focusing on the relationship between two Roma groups from Poland, namely Polska Roma and Bergitka (or Carpathian) Roma, we shed light on Roma’s practical approaches to their group identity. We explore what is at stake when boundaries are encountered, negotiated, and occasionally bridged, in particular when it comes to gender and conflict resolution strategies. In the article, we account for the two groups’ interconnections through the history of migrations and current modes of transnational living. We show how, interestingly, nationality or common country of origin may become the binding factor. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Bridging Validity Frameworks in Assessment: Beyond Traditional Approaches in Health Professions Education

Construct: High-stakes assessments measure several constructs, such as knowledge, competencies, and skills. In this case, validity evidence for test scores’ uses and interpretations is of utmost importance, because of the consequences for everyone involved in their development and implementation. Background: Educational assessment requires an appropriate understanding and use of validity frameworks; however, health professions educators still struggle with the conceptual challenges of validity, and frequently validity analyses have a narrow focus. Important obstacles are the plurality of validity frameworks and the difficulty of grounding these abstract concepts in practice. Approach: We reviewed the validity frameworks literature to identify the main elements of frequently used models (Messick and Kane’s) and proposed linking frameworks including Russell’s recent overarching proposal. Examples are provided with commonly used assessment instruments in health professions education. Findings: Several elements in these frameworks can be integrated into a common approach, matching and aligning Messick’s sources of validity with Kane’s four inference types. Conclusions: This proposal to contribute evidence for assessment inferences may provide guidance to understanding the use of validity evidence in applied settings. The evolving field of validity research provides opportunities for its integration and practical use in health professions education.

Understanding Cell Differentiation Through Single-Cell Approaches: Conceptual Challenges of the Systemic Approach.

The cells of a multicellular organism are derived from a single zygote and genetically almost identical. Yet, they are phenotypically very different. This difference is the result of a process commonly called cell differentiation. How the phenotypic diversity emerges during ontogenesis or regeneration is a central and intensely studied but still unresolved issue in biology. Cell biology is facing conceptual challenges that are frequently confused with methodological difficulties. How to define a cell type? What stability or change means in the context of cell differentiation and how to deal with the ubiquitous molecular variations seen in the living cells? What are the driving forces of the change? We propose to reframe the problem of cell differentiation in a systemic way by incorporating different theoretical approaches. The new conceptual framework is able to capture the insights made at different levels of cellular organization and considered previously as contradictory. It also provides a formal strategy for further experimental studies.

Value Network Configuration and Competitiveness of Emerging Agricultural Cooperatives in the Central Free State of South Africa

Introduction: While many emerging agricultural cooperative firms in the Central Free State of South Africa remain inclined to progress into mainstream markets, conditions of market exclusion continue to dampen their predisposition to exploit competitive opportunities. Since cooperatives determined to reach their full market potential must contemplate competitive positions in their value networks, the business strategy literature on cooperative firms foregrounds the theoretical assertion that the value network configuration significantly influences competitiveness. Purpose: This conceptual study challenges the assertion that emerging agricultural cooperative firms’ value network configuration significantly influences their competitiveness. Methodology: Drawing on the transaction cost economics theory and a review of literature, the study sought to address the core constructs that constitute the claims, establishing, rather, that sustained competitive performance has a direct influence on the competitiveness of emerging agricultural cooperative firms. Findings: The findings suggest sustained competitive performance as the principal determinant of competitiveness and a function of the cooperative firms’ ability to navigate through transaction interaction dynamics and configurational influences. Originality: The study links industry structure and competition intensity to configurational influences, manifesting in various drivers and indicators determining sustained competitive performance, a novel concept underexplored in cooperative entrepreneurial literature.

A ladder of sense of place: Case study of Crow Island Beach Park, Sri Lanka

There is a growing interest in the field of sense of place research due to its influence on community participation. However, this area faces primary limitations characterized by terminological and conceptual ambiguity and challenges related to empirical operationalization. This paper aims to explore the dynamics of sense of place among the members of Crow Island Beach Park Management Society (BPMS), Sri Lanka. This study adopts a case study research design and through purposive snowball sampling 16 individuals were selected for interviews. Several recurring themes emerged when analyzing the interview-derived data, forming a conceptual progression resembling a ladder. The findings of this study reveal distinct stages of progression from placelessness, connected, committed, commend the place is best and consecrate the place over personal aspirations. The themes contributed to the development of ‘a ladder of sense of place’. This novel conceptual framework broadens existing notions of sense of place and introduces new dimensions to measurement scales. It can serve as a valuable tool for urban designers, planners, landscape architects and policymakers, enabling them to conduct qualitative assessments of individuals' sense of place on a local level. Moreover, it facilitates community participation in place-making and environmental management.

UNDERSTANDING THE LONE WOLF PHENOMENON

This study explores the intricate dynamics of lone wolves within the context of terrorism, examining the conceptual challenges in their definition, distinctive behavioral patterns, and their impact on security perceptions in Europe. Through rigorous analysis, the research highlights transformations in contemporary terrorism. It underscores the critical importance of preventive strategies in addressing this emerging threat within the academic, technological, and international security environment.