Critical Disposition Research Articles

Integrating Academic Language into Content Methodology: Supporting Math and Science Teacher Candidates to Meet Students’ Language Needs

This article describes how a teacher-education program (TEP), whose mission is to improve schooling for linguistically diverse students, develops its’ teacher candidate’s critical dispositions and pedagogy related to academic-language (AL) development and how candidate performance on PACT can help TEPs better assess and improve how AL development can be embedded in content methodology courses. We discuss (a) how TEP worked to embed AL into the program course of study, (b) how teacher education faculty support AL in their content methodology courses, (c) the ways in which teacher candidates demonstrate knowledge of AL in two exemplary PACT Teaching Events, and (d) how TEP used data analysis of PACT for program improvement.

Towards a 'Fourth Humanism'? Reflections on the Role of Humanism in Humanities Education

The title of this contribution is a paraphrase of the Third Humanism which was a philosophical educational programme propagated in the last century, especially by the German-American scholar Werner Jaeger. It implied an orientation towards ancient Greek educational ideals. It has justly been heavily criticised. Yet, in reflecting about the significance of present-day humanities, the past influence of ancient (Greek) thought should be kept in mind, albeit with a critical disposition. In view of the current epochal changes, namely in the global distribution of economic and political power, in the global cultural climate, and in many educational systems, reflections about a novel Fourth Humanism might give valuable conceptual guidelines.

A Healthy Dose of Race? White Students’ and Teachers’ Unintentional Brushes with Whiteness

This paper reports on efforts by three Australian academics to develop students’ sociocultural awareness (in particular, their racial literacy) during a time of mounting pressure on teacher educators to narrow and standardise their approaches. The field of health education provides a vehicle for research; however, it is not the paper’s central foci. Of key concern is the development of a critical disposition in students – a disposition geared toward teaching for social equity. Learning of this nature transcends topic domains, and therefore allows for collaboration between academics in different parts of teacher education. Specifically, the paper focuses upon ‘whiteness’ and applies a whiteness lens (a form of critical discourse analysis) to portions of the research data to explore how discourses of race circumscribe the efforts of white students and teachers, often resulting in unintentional ‘brushes’ with whiteness (or reproductions of white race privilege). A collaborative approach that develops racial literacy through direct engagement with racial representations is considered as a way forward.

Current status and correlation study of critical thinking and self-learning ability of primary hospital clinical nurses

Objective To understand the current status of primary hospital clinical nurses ’ critical thinking ability and self-learning ability and to explore the relationship between them , so as to provide theoretical basis and reference for continuing medical education .Methods Totals of 345 clinical nurses in three county hospitals were surveyed by general information questionnaire , Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory-Chinese Version （ CTDI-CV ） and nurse self-learning ability rating scale .Results The total score of clinical nurses ’ critical thinking ability was （276.08 ±34.31）, and the self-learning ability score was （121.40 ±18.42）. Based on the above results , Except that cognitive maturity had no significant correlation with task analysis , self-monitoring and regulation , critical thinking ability was positively related to self -learning ability and other dimensions （P 〈0.05）.Conclusions The critical thinking and self-learning ability of clinical nurses in primary hospital need to be improved .Because of their mutual positive impact , nursing managers should take a variety of measures to develop and improve these abilities . Key words: Clinical nurse; Critical thinking ability; Self-learning ability; Correlation; Primary hospital

Reconceptualising critical digital literacy

While it has proved a useful concept during the past 20 years, the notion of ‘critical digital literacy’ requires rethinking in light of the fast-changing nature of young people's digital practices. This paper contrasts long-established notions of ‘critical digital literacy’ (based primarily around the critical consumption of digital forms) with the recent turn towards ‘digital design literacy’ (based around the production of digital forms). In doing so, three challenges emerge for the continued relevance of critical digital literacy: (1) the challenge of critiquing the ideological concerns with the digital without alienating the individual's personal affective response; (2) connecting collective concerns to do with social and educational inequalities to individual practices; and (3) cultivating a critical disposition in a context in which technical proficiency is prioritised. The paper then concludes by suggesting a model of ‘critical digital design’, offering a framework that might bridge the divide between critical literacy models and the more recent design-based literacy models.

Argumentative and trustworthy scholars: the construction of academic staff at research-intensive universities

Research-intensive universities, such as the Russell Group in the UK, the Ivy League Colleges in the USA and the Sandstone Universities in Australia, enjoy particular status in the higher education landscape. They are, however, also often associated with social elitism and selectivity, and this has led to critique as higher education systems seek to widen access. This article looks at how academic staff are discursively constructed in five such institutions in South Africa through an analysis of documentation submitted as part of a national review. Three interrelated discourses are identified: a discourse of ‘staff as scholars’ whereby research is privileged over teaching, a discourse of ‘academic argumentation’ whereby a critical disposition is valued and is called upon by academics to resist development initiatives and a discourse of ‘trust’ whereby it is assumed that academics share a value system and should thus be trusted to undertake quality teaching without interference.

Making the familiar strange and the strange familiar: a project for teaching critical reading and writing

This article focuses on teaching critical literacy in the context of Singapore. It begins with a conceptualization of critical literacy as a stance oriented to questioning and challenging the often taken-for-granted meanings and assumptions found in ‘everyday’ texts. It then discusses how this stance can be cultivated in students through a critical reading and writing project aimed at encouraging students to question the underlying motivations of seemingly unremarkable texts (‘making the familiar strange’) and produce alternative texts that challenge and destabilize the normative structures of society (‘making the strange familiar’). The article concludes with a brief discussion of the issues and challenges faced by teachers in developing a critical disposition in students that will help them negotiate the information-saturated and text-mediated world of the twenty-first century.

Emergency department use of galectin-3.

Emergency medicine represents a unique practice environment where diagnostic accuracy, treatment, and critical disposition decisions must occur in a time-sensitive environment intolerant of both errors and inefficiency. These pressures can make an accurate heart failure diagnosis challenging, as it must be predominately based on clinical findings. Although accuracy is improved by natriuretic peptide testing, at some point in the clinical course a disposition is required regardless of diagnostic certainty. Disposition options range widely from expensive and highly specialized intensive care unit admissions to low-tech/low-cost observation management or even discharge directly to home. In this vein, success is predicated on matching patient needs to available resources while minimizing the untimely discharge that results in a return visit to the emergency room. Thus, the role of the emergency physician is to predict the future based on limited objective data. Biomarkers may aid in this task, and the newly available galectin-3 assay may be of particular utility. Elevated galectin-3, reflective of myocardial fibrosis and inflammation, is associated with increased risk of short-term death and the necessity for 30-day rehospitalization. The availability of accurate risk stratification tools for predicting the probability of rehospitalization or death could guide in the matching of resource-intensive heart failure disease management efforts to the higher risk cohort, while simultaneously identifying lower risk candidates for successful observation unit or outpatient management. This article reviews the potential utility of galectin-3 measurement for use in emergency department decision making.

Cultivating critical practices in physical geography

Fundamental changes in the meaning and practice of environmental science are affecting – and are affected by – the theoretical, technological, pedagogical and institutional projects of physical geography. These changes have given rise to a range of ‘integrative’ (or integration‐directed) disciplinary narratives which articulate a role for physical geographers within an engaged project of societal relevance and transformation. In this context, we welcome the rise of a notional ‘Critical Physical Geography’ and here we seek to expand the conversation to support thinking about what it might mean to be criticalwithinphysical geography. Moving beyond definitions of interdisciplinary collaboration, we propose that being critical from within physical geography begins with cultivating a critical disposition towards the situated partiality of our scientific practices. This prompts consideration of the ways in which our environmental objects could be assembled differently, reflecting different personal histories and values, and from different epistemic locations and management framings and through different investment narratives. A critical disposition prompts reflection upon the situated constraints and opportunities presented by our institutional locations. Recognition and articulation of critical perspectives may provoke endeavours to more consciously reassemble our scientific and institutional projects into more effective interventions to secure a more powerful and meaningful role for physical geographers across their diverse engagements.

Could Transformative Learning be Appreciated in Europe?

This article attempts to examine the views of European adult educators toward transformative learning (TL) theory. First, I explore the relevant attitudes of my colleagues in Greece, which appear to be quite positive. Then, through a literature review, I assume that the scholars in other European countries have a limited interest and a quite critical disposition regarding TL. I develop interpretative hypotheses, by correlating these findings to the way in which TL theory has been formulated and has evolved, particularly after 2010, when it seems to have entered a critical standpoint. Finally, I put forward a series of suggestions and refer to new trends that could contribute to the development of a renewed and expanded TL theoretical framework.

Female friendship and gender transformation

This article explores the ways in which friendships between women may promote gender transformation. The study is based on 25 in-depth interviews with young women in Geneva disposed to gender transformation but not necessarily considering themselves to be ‘feminist’. The findings, based on a dispositional and contextual analysis, show that female friendships provide women with a place where they find respite from men, become aware of gender relations, take action to further their emancipation and receive support for changes made. Furthermore, this research shows the way in which women are shaped by their friendships (being supported or influenced by them), but also how they shape them actively to model their emerging critical dispositions (selecting them, making use of them or moving away from them). It therefore indicates how women are active in modelling their dispositions within the dynamics of gender relations and other social forces.

Critical Pedagogy’s Problem with Changing Teachers’ Dispositions Towards Critical Teaching

Increasing teachers’ dispositions towards critical teaching is a fundamental goal for critical pedagogy. Because critical educational change cannot occur without teachers’ “buy-in,” developing teachers’ inclination to implement critical teaching into their classrooms is a prerequisite for any successful critical pedagogy focused on change in K-12 schools. However, critical educators too often approach K-12 teachers’ dispositions in ways that are at best unproductive and at worst harmful to critical change efforts. Some critical pedagogy exists that approaches teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in “teacher friendly” ways, but most critical pedagogy suffers from the problem of totality and speaks merely to educators who already hold critical dispositions. In response to this problem, this paper identifies and examines three areas in which critical education scholars can work to better connect with a crucial, yet essentially unaddressed constituency: teachers in neighborhood schools. These three areas are critical pedagogy’s audience, teachers’ professional knowledge, and teachers’ beliefs about what constitutes ‘real schools’ and ‘real teachers.’ The paper ends by suggesting approaches to teachers’ dispositions that do not sacrifice the possible to the ideal, that value practical and eclectic change efforts, and that appreciate teachers’ already existing knowledge and beliefs as a foundational medium for developing critical education.

The Bread Revolutions of 2011: Teaching Political Economies of the Middle East

Whether it was bread-wielding Tunisians, marching Suez workers, or Yemeni protestors chanting against corruption, the 2011 Arab uprisings put political economy issues front and center. Indeed, a critical thread throughout the region's uprisings has been the simple question: “where has the money gone?” And though the field of political economy is multifaceted, the basic refrain “follow the money” unites most of it. Having students engage and debate political economy issues helps counteract much of the popular media's fixation on violence, terrorism, and sectarianism that too often exclusively frames how Americans understand the Middle East. Political economy gets at some of the most important (but certainly not all) factors and dynamics that define social and political life in the Middle East. A political economy approach also reinforces the critical disposition and tools of inquiry to instill in university undergraduates. In particular, the approach stresses to students that the realms of the economy and the political are hardly distinct, and therefore a more complete explanation for the events of 2011, and after, require grasping that interaction (Lindblom 1982; Polanyi 2001).

Perceived Questionability and the Phenomenology of Critical Disposition

Over the past quarter century, critical thinking (CT) theory has centered on the distinction between critical thinking aptitude and disposition. The 1990 Delphi Report presented a consensus opinion of forty-six experts that firmly established this distinction, offering detailed descriptions of the skills defining the critical thinking process, as well as an exhaustive list of the attitudes and values characterizing the ideal critical thinker. Implicit in this distinction was the acknowledgment that skill and disposition can exist independently of each other — that there could, and likely do, exist skilled critical thinkers who lack the personal motivation to utilize those skills, as well as those who habitually attempt to engage critically without generating much cognitive power. As noted by the report’s author, many on the Delphi panel even worried that “a person might be skilled at CT but not fair-minded, and perhaps even unethical, in the use of those skills.” Thus, the panel’s consensus statement emphasized the need for pedagogy to attend not only to the development of CT aptitude, but to nurture what Harvey Siegel has termed the “critical spirit.”

The Perception of Questionability: Epistemic Warrant, Given Experience, or Conceptual Rationality?

Daniel Fisherman’s “Perceived Questionability and the Phenomenology of Critical Disposition” claims to identify a necessary condition of the critical thinking disposition — that of the perception of questionability. The perception of questionability is variously described as a pre-reflective judgment, skilled intuitive judgment or a “given of experience” that presents affordances for the agent to engage in the critical thinking (CT) process.

Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital and its implications for the science curriculum

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that Bourdieu's notion of cultural capital has significant value for identifying the “worth” of a science education. His notion of “embodied,” “objectified,” and “institutionalized” cultural capital is used as a theoretical lens to identify both the intrinsic value of scientific knowledge and its extrinsic value for future employment. This analysis suggests that science education misses three opportunities to establish its value to its students and the wider public. First, science education commonly has a poor understanding of the nature of embodied capital that it offers, failing to communicate the cultural achievement that science represents. Second, it fails to see itself as a means of developing the critical dispositions of mind, which are the hallmark of a scientist but also useful to all citizens. Third, given the policy emphasis on educating the next generation of scientists, it fails to exploit the one major element of cultural capital that science education is currently seen to offer by scientists, the public, and its students—that is the value that science qualifications have for future employment. Bourdieu's concept that the primary function of education is to sustain the culture and privilege of the dominant groups in society offers a lens that helps to identify how and why these apparent contradictions exist. Drawing on Bourdieu's ideas, we develop a perspective to critique current practice and identify the possible contributions science education might make to remediating social injustice.

Understanding the Critical Disposition Pathways of Statins to Assess Drug–Drug Interaction Risk During Drug Development: It's Not Just About OATP1B1

The use of statins is widespread across disease areas because many patients have comorbidities. Given that these drugs have become common as comedications, it is essential to have an understanding of the potential risks of drug-drug interactions (DDIs) between statins and candidate drugs in development. Although the hepatic uptake transporter organic anion-transporting polypeptide 1B1 (OATP1B1) is known to play a substantial role in statin-related DDI risk, other transporters and metabolizing enzymes can also be involved. Consequently, a holistic approach to risk assessment is required, tailored to each statin. Using evidence from pharmacogenetics, DDIs, and literature on absorption, distribution, metabolism, and elimination (ADME) in humans, this review identifies pathways that contribute the most to, and are therefore the most critical to, the disposition of each statin. It also provides an understanding of the expected theoretical maximum increase in systemic exposure if the disposition of a statin is inhibited. Finally, on a statin-by-statin basis, we propose in vitro inhibition studies that should be routinely conducted during drug development so as to better assess DDI risk.

Die verfolgende Unschuld: Zur Geschichte des autoritären Charakters in der Darstellung von Karl Kraus by Irina Djassemy (review)

Reviewed by: Die verfolgende Unschuld: Zur Geschichte des autoritären Charakters in der Darstellung von Karl Kraus by Irina Djassemy Ari Linden Irina Djassemy, Die verfolgende Unschuld: Zur Geschichte des autoritären Charakters in der Darstellung von Karl Kraus. Literaturgeschichte in Studien und Quellen, Vol. 17. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2011. 264 pp. The late Irina Djassemy’s most recent book picks up where her earlier study, Kulturkritik Bei Karl Kraus und Theodor W. Adorno, left off. Die Verfolgende Unschuld offers, however, a more concentrated analysis of the various ways that the authoritarian character finds its literary analog in the oeuvre of the Viennese satirist Karl Kraus. Djassemy’s essential thesis is that Kraus’s satirical representations during the first third of the twentieth century—of judges, businessmen, journalists, war profiteers, generals, bureaucrats, and so on—anticipate not only the political devolvement of Germany and Austria into fascism but also the theories of authoritarianism elucidated by figures such as Adorno after the Second World War. Djassemy furthermore concludes that insofar as Kraus’s literary method alludes to the positive exclusively via the representation of the negative, “hat die Kraussche Satire teil an jener negativen Dialektik, die von Adorno in der Philosophie entwickelt wurde” (27). Beginning with “Der unmündige Bürger (1899–1914): Autoritärer Charakter und Habsburgmonarchie,” Djassemy parses the early phase of Die Fackel, when Kraus directed his satirical glance at Austria’s infamous Sittlichkeitsgesetze, revealing the extent to which moral hypocrisy was the guiding force behind the Habsburg legal system with regard to the private lives of its citizens. Djassemy also addresses the contentious question of Kraus’s relationship to anti-Semitism. Without excusing Kraus’s frequent employment of anti-Semitic tropes, the author is careful to show how Kraus’s remarks, on the whole, are to be categorically distinguished from the much cruder anti-Semitism emerging from right-wing circles, which Kraus rightfully exposed [End Page 140] and ridiculed for the irrationally motivated bigotry that it was. Djassemy tendentiously concludes that the critical disposition vis-à-vis one’s Eigengruppe (referring to the fact that Kraus was born a Jew) is to be viewed as one of the distinguishing features of the “Nicht-Autoritären” (102). For a more extensive treatment of Kraus’s relationship to German-speaking Jewry, see Paul Reitter’s The Anti-Journalist: Karl Kraus and Jewish Self-Fashioning in Fin-de-Siècle Europe (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008). In the chapter that gives the volume its title, “Die verfolgende Unschuld (1914–1918): Die letzten Tage der Menschheit und der Erste Weltkrieg,” Djassemy analyzes the way Kraus’s dramatic satire of the First World War mimetically depicts almost each and every character it ventriloquizes as either drunk on the power he or she exercises (as in the journalist, the war profiteer, or the general) or as forcibly but almost unconsciously subjected to forces and wills over which he or she has no control (the soldier, the patriot). Djassemy convincingly argues that virtually every scene of negativity in the drama is to be read as an example of Kraus’s keen sensitivity to the pain and suffering engendered by the war, whose propaganda machine (fueled by the press), he believed, anaesthetized both its participants and its observers. But it is Djassemy’s reading of Kraus’s quasi-fictional, opportunistic industrialist Wahnschaffe that shows how Kraus most effectively combined his Sprachkunst with his penetrating critique of ideology in order to present one of the most devastating images of the entire business of war. Chapter 3, “Kasmader und die Demokratie (1919–1932): Widersprüchliche Tendenzen in der Ersten Republik,” argues that Kraus’s satires during the First Republic primarily aimed at disclosing the glaring discrepancy between the ostensibly distinct power relations underpinning Austria’s former monarchy and its current attempt at democracy. Invoking the theories of Adorno and Horkheimer, Djassemy shows how Kraus’s 1928 polemic against the notorious chief of police Johann Schober produced a harrowing image of the “potenziell faschistischen Charakter” (201), which would, just a few years later, balloon into the full-fledged, self-declared fascist. Djassemy’s most original contribution to Kraus scholarship can be found, however, in her last chapter...

The Languorous Critic

Insofar as criticism is an art of love, its prevailing mood is languor: a paradox of enthusiasm and enervation, ravishment and reflectiveness, eloquence and speechlessness, savoring and sadness. How might we define this languorous mood as a critical disposition? What could it help us to see? What is a languorous critical style? How has it been celebrated and maligned? This essay looks closely at languor as an intellectual mood in the work of Roland Barthes, the critic who is its greatest theorist, and Walter Pater, the critic who is its greatest stylist.

Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (review)

Reviewed by: Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History John W. Marshall (bio) Timothy D. Barnes. Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History. Mohr Siebeck. xx, 438. €29.00 Barnes is concerned to delineate the contours of an early Christian hagiography that has a core of ‘authentic historical material.’ The corollary to this claim is a narrative of the development of a ‘fictitious hagiography’ after the great persecution of 303–313 C.E. This is to some degree a contrarian pair of claims, but Barnes undertakes it with a measure of skill and erudition that makes his case worth reading whether one is ultimately convinced or not. Regarding the ‘authentic historical material,’ Barnes’s methodological commitment is to excavate such materials through a rigorous engagement of, rather than flight from, the standards of Roman history with his particular skills in prosopography and chronology. Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History – proceeding from lectures at the University of Jena in 2008 – is more than a linear argument that authentic martyr texts preceded fictitious hagiography. To the reader’s profit and delight, Barnes’s attention and focus vary from the large-scale overview of five centuries down to specific arguments about particular texts, persons, and historical events. At the large scale, Barnes is at his most provocative but at the small scale at his most valuable. The book is packed with well-argued nuggets of research. Barnes’s argument on the date of Ignatius of Antioch should force a reckoning in a large body of scholarship on the first quarter of the second century. His treatment of a riot in Carthage instigated by Christians deserves a solid place in the scholarly imagination of Christianity’s growth. As later chapters of the book make plain, the endeavour of Christian hagiography became less and less connected to authentic historical materials of martyrdom as state persecution itself receded into the past (it is worth noting that Barnes never falls into an easy narrative of ubiquitous persecution; he maintains a healthy and informed scepticism throughout). Jerome’s life of Paul and Sulpicius’s life of Martin of Tours are the parade examples of the fictitious historiography of the fourth century and beyond. According to Barnes, there was a significant degree of self-consciousness about these fictions. The difficulty that the argument faces is not the fictionality of later hagiography but the claim of the widespread relevance of court records [End Page 673] to early accounts. This leads to (or perhaps proceeds from) treating the book of Acts with little critical disposition, to treating 1 Peter as orthonymous rather than pseudonymous, and to a preponderance of out-of-date scholarship on early Christianity even though Barnes’s dialogue partners in classics and late antique Christianity are very up to date. Moreover, the entire corpus of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles is virtually ignored. These difficulties make the value of the earlier chapters uneven and the larger argument less comprehensive. They do not, however, remove the very substantial value of the work, and the insight that fictionalized history took became, at least to some degree, a self-conscious stance among later authors. The skills and insights that Barnes brings from classics will benefit anyone interested in early Christian narrative. John W. Marshall University College, University of Toronto Copyright © 2012 University of Toronto Press Incorporated