Critical Stance Research Articles

La formación docente: una oportunidad para la transformación desde la investigación científica

The essay aims to analyze the contributions of scientific research in teacher training and its impact on the transformation of education. At the University and in training centers, the curriculum that guides teachers has the task of not only updating the contents under cutting-edge demands, but it also has the fundamental task of adapting to the contextual realities of their work scenarios. In higher education, scientific research is the resource that guarantees the transformation of education professionals, their own students, and their communities. Examples of this are the Political Constitution of 1991, Law 115 of 1994 and Decree 1330 of 2019 (Colombia), which explain the importance and management of providing teachers with professional or continuous training in accordance with scientific processes. From this perspective, new contributions are made to the topic, taking teacher training to the construction of democratic scenarios, to the transformation of territories, systems, educational practices, curricular action, experience, and to society from a critical stance that transcends the discussion of knowledge.

Interculturalidad y bilingüismo: entre el normativismo funcional y las posturas emergentes en el diseño curricular oficial de formación docente en educación intercultural bilingüe en el Perú

The purpose of this article is to review the educational approaches to interculturalism and bilingualism in the intercultural bilingual education (IBE) syllabus of the National Basic Curriculum Design (DCBN) for initial teacher education (ITE). The Peruvian State, faced with the cultural and linguistic diversity expressed in 55 native peoples who communicate in 48 languages, applies IBE policies to the students from these peoples with teachers who have a higher education. Through documentary analysis, the information was organized to describe, analyze and interpret using categorization and codification by means of the deductive-inductive criterion. The results highlight the effort of the official document to incorporate interculturalism and bilingualism approaches, including the contributions of current trends. The relevance of normative-functional interculturalism is a proposal of the ITE only for indigenous people, since this curricular design, due to its national scope, has limitations to interculturalize teacher training from a more critical stance. When dealing with native languages in IBE and Spanish, it strives for technical-curricular goals of oral and written skills, neglecting the rescue and recovery of the oral, written or textualities of indigenous peoples, ignoring their social and dynamic use.

Foreign views on the culture of Soviet Kazakhstan: an analysis of historiography

The research conducted by American scholars focused on themes such as nationality, language, religion, politics, modernization, and cultural change. These scholars sought to understand the implementation of Sovietnational policies in a multi-ethnic society like Kazakhstan and the delicate balance between Soviet identityand ethnic identities within the union. Language reform and its impact on cultural and linguistic diversitywere also explored, along with the interaction between Islam and the secular ideology of the Soviet state. Theeffects of Soviet modernization programs on Kazakhstani society, including the disruption of traditional prac-tices and ways of life, were investigated. Moreover, the study examined how Soviet policies influenced cul-tural institutions, literary practices, and artistic expression, highlighting the tensions between conformity toSoviet norms and the preservation of a distinctive Kazakh cultural identity. The article acknowledges that thebroader global dynamics of the Cold War era influenced the interpretive frameworks and assumptions ofthese scholars. As part of an intellectual tradition shaped by Western liberal values, American scholars oftentook a critical stance toward the Soviet system. Their research emphasized the failures, problems, and resistance generated by Soviet policies, including state modernization, national policies, and language reforms.The article concludes that despite valuable contributions from scholars such as Wheeler, Allworth, and Con-nolly, a comprehensive examination of Kazakh culture during the Soviet period through the lens of foreignhistoriography remains lacking. It highlights the need for further research to deepen our understanding of themultifaceted aspects of Sovietera Kazakh culture, shedding light on the complexities and contradictions inherent in the Soviet project.

Training as imagined? A critical realist analysis of Scotland’s internal medicine simulation programme

BackgroundEvaluating the impact of simulation-based education (SBE) has prioritised demonstrating a causal link to improved patient outcomes. Recent calls herald a move away from looking for causation to understanding ‘what else happened’. Inspired by Shorrock’s varieties of human work from patient safety literature, this study draws on the concept of work-as-done versus work-as-imagined. Applying this to SBE recognises that some training impacts will be unexpected, and the realities of training will never be quite as imagined. This study takes a critical realist stance to explore the experience and consequences, intended and unintended, of the internal medicine training (IMT) simulation programme in Scotland, to better understand ‘training-as-done’.MethodsCritical realism accepts that there is a reality to uncover but acknowledges that our knowledge of reality is inevitably our construction and cannot be truly objective. The IMT simulation programme involves three courses over a 3-year period: a 3-day boot camp, a skills day and a 2-day registrar-ready course. Following ethical approval, interviews were conducted with trainees who had completed all courses, as well as faculty and stakeholders both immersed in and distant from course delivery. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using critical realist analysis, influenced by Shorrock’s proxies for work-as-done.ResultsBetween July and December 2023, 24 interviews were conducted with ten trainees, eight faculty members and six stakeholders. Data described proxies for training-as-done within three broad categories: design, experience and impact. Proxies for training design included training-as-prescribed, training-as-desired and training-as-prioritised which compete to produce training-as-standardised. Experience included training-as-anticipated with pre-simulation anxiety and training-as-unintended with the valued opportunity for social comparison as well as a sense of identity and social cohesion. The impact reached beyond the individual trainee with faculty development and inspiration for other training ventures.ConclusionOur findings highlight unintended consequences of SBE such as social comparison and feeling ‘valued as a trainee, valued as a person’. It sheds light on the fear of simulation, reinforcing the importance of psychological safety. A critical realist approach illuminated the ‘bigger picture’, revealing insights and underlying mechanisms that allow this study to present a new framework for conceptualising training evaluation.

Israeli Nonsense: humor, globalization and vegetables during the early nineties

Abstract Offering an inaugural analysis of Israeli Nonsense, this article explores humor, globalization, and Israeli identity since the early 1990s. Israeli Nonsense, a particular form of humor, emerged during Israel’s rapid shift towards neoliberal privatization and globalization. Influenced by the growing popularity of standup comedy and the rise of new commercial television channels, it became a distinctive humor style in an era marked by optimism and “normalization.” It quickly formed nostalgic classics, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary Israeli humor. Through interviews, newspaper excerpts, and sketch analysis, we identify five key attributes of Israeli Nonsense: (1) improvisation, (2) linguistic humor, (3) physical humor, (4) nostalgia, and (5) non-politicization. By challenging existing interpretations of 1990s Israeli culture and nonsense as “elitist” with anti-national and non-ideological tendencies, we highlight the popular manifestations of Israeli Nonsense to demonstrate that this distinct humor did not adopt a consciously critical and cynical stance towards society and culture but embodied an optimistic and empathetic attitude toward local identity in the age of globalization.

Practices of recognition and misrecognition in encounters between social workers and parents struggling with poverty

This study explores recognition and misrecognition practices in encounters between parents in poverty and social workers trying to help them. The goal of the analysis is to understand how such practices can lead the actors involved to feel either included and valued or misrecognized and excluded, and which factors influence these possibilities. The research was carried out by administering qualitative interviews to 40 parents struggling with poverty and 27 social workers in eight Italian regions. The analysis identified four forms of recognition and misrecognition: negative recognition, invisibility, conditional recognition and mutual recognition. The first three ‘ethnocentric’ forms exclude reciprocity by denying recognition or generating instrumental forms of recognition, negatively affecting the helping relationship. Practices of mutual recognition are instead made collectively in interactions in which professionals not only express care for the other but also assume and treat the person as an autonomous individual who can take up a critical stance towards recognition practices and norms in the helping relationship. Recognition practices also emerge as a powerful tool for social workers to fight the vicious circles of misrecognition of parents in poverty; however, these relations need to be nurtured and made possible, through meso- and macro-level interventions as well.

Disordering Dance: Foundations of an emerging neuroqueer choreography

The neurodivergent embodied psyche challenges dance to extend beyond neuronormative conventions. Considerations with how to securely hold divergent modes of thinking, feeling, learning, being and behaving within both the choreographic process and moment of performance are essential. As a choreographer with dyslexia, dyspraxia and ADHD (with autistic traits) – alongside significant experience of exclusion and trauma from normative dance environments – this inquiry forms the basis of my practice and now the discussion of this article, as I articulate core foundations of my doctoral research and emergent neuroqueer choreographic aesthetic. Instead of focusing on how to support the neurodivergent bodymind in systems of exclusive dance practice, such an aesthetic seeks to radically resist neuronormative performance and creatively embrace neurodivergent embodiments and consciousnesses. This article adopts a critical stance of disordering to challenge taken-for-granted neuronormative assumptions and traditions of mainstream western dance culture. Concepts of neurodiversity are elucidated and practices of neuroqueering are introduced, whilst my own positionality of ‘neurodivergent outsider’ exposes neuronormative tensions within dominant western dance culture. Discussion unfolds that situates neurodivergent modes of mindbodily being through a choreographic lens, embodying neurodivergent-centred practices that support non-neuronormative wellbeing, identity and embodiment for both artist and audience in the present moment of dance performance.

The Role of Typological Feature Prediction in NLP and Linguistics

Abstract Computational typology has gained traction in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) in recent years, as evidenced by the increasing number of papers on the topic and the establishment of a Special Interest Group on the topic (SIGTYP), including the organization of successful workshops and shared tasks. A considerable amount of work in this sub-field is concerned with prediction of typological features, for example, for databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) or Grambank. Prediction is argued to be useful either because (1) it allows for obtaining feature values for relatively undocumented languages, alleviating the sparseness in WALS, in turn argued to be useful for both NLP and linguistics; and (2) it allows us to probe models to see whether or not these typological features are encapsulated in, for example, language representations. In this article, we present a critical stance concerning prediction of typological features, investigating to what extent this line of research is aligned with purported needs—both from the perspective of NLP practitioners, and perhaps more importantly, from the perspective of linguists specialized in typology and language documentation. We provide evidence that this line of research in its current state suffers from a lack of interdisciplinary alignment. Based on an extensive survey of the linguistic typology community, we present concrete recommendations for future research in order to improve this alignment between linguists and NLP researchers, beyond the scope of typological feature prediction.

Politicizing Children's Play: A Community Photovoice Process to Transform a School Playground.

Contextual elements at school playgrounds compromise the right to play.An occupation-based social transformation project to foster occupational justice in play at a school playground was conducted. To better understand barriers to and facilitators of children's participation in occupations at the school playground to co-create actions that enable play. Design:A participatory methodology-Photovoice-was used. The research consisted of four phases: involving the community in the research design, community-led data generation and analysis, discussion of findings to increase the community's awareness, and a community agenda for changing the playground. Public primary school playground in northwest Spain. All children (n = 450, ages 3-12 yr), families (n = 12), and teachers (n = 15) participated. A thematic analysis of visual, textual, and oral material was conducted, including member checking. Results: The study revealed several barriers toplay, including the short recess duration, poorfloor (surface) conditions, jail-like atmosphere, andviolence. However, participants identified an ad hoclending games systemandplayground muralsadvocating for children's rights as facilitators. These findings have direct implications for improving the play environment. Conflicting priorities between children's and adults' desires and needs for the playground were unveiled, displaying the relevance of invisible contexts (i.e., social or institutional contexts) in shaping play opportunities. A critical occupational stance combined with a participatory and playful methodology generated space to unveil these conflicting priorities, reconcile agendas, raise awareness, and propose collective actions to transform the playground. Plain-Language Summary: Playing is fundamental to children's development and inclusion. This study focused on making school playgrounds better places for kids to play. Researchers found that things such as short playtimes, bad playground conditions, and violence made it tough for kids to enjoy playing, but they also discovered some good things, such as a system for borrowing games and colorfulmurals promoting children' rights. These findings show that changing the playground's physical and social environment can make a big difference for kids. By listening to kids and working together, adults and children can create playgrounds where all kids can play meaningfully and safely. Occupational therapists can promote such processes.

Dialogues between Past and Present? Modern Art, Contemporary Art Practice, and Ancient Egypt in the Museum

Whenever twentieth-century modern art or new contemporary artworks are included amongst displays of ancient Egypt, press statements often assert that such juxtapositions are ‘surprising’, ‘innovative’, and ‘fresh’, celebrating the external perspective they bring to such collections. But contemporary art’s relationship with museums and other disciplines needs to be understood in a longer-term perspective. Pairings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artistic works with objects of antiquity is an activity that has been undertaken for more than a century in what has been a relatively long period of mutually reinforcing influences between modern/contemporary art, museum display, the art market, and Egyptian heritage. Together, they have decontextualised ancient Egyptian culture and shaped the language and perspectives of scholars, curators, and artists. In this paper, rather than considering how artists have been inspired by ancient Egypt, I will give a few examples of how more recent art practices from the late nineteenth century onwards have impacted the language and discourse of Egyptology and its museum representation. Then, using more recent artist engagements with the British Museum, I argue for greater interdisciplinary dialogues between artists and Egyptologists, as both take more critical stances towards research that recontextualises the power and agency of collections, representation, and knowledge production.

Redesigning the survey course: A focus on music, historically excluded identities, and the canon

AbstractSo‐called survey courses have been a persistent but contested genre in world languages, especially in regard to “the canon,” an unstable concept that has historically determined the textual choices of such surveys. This article presents a case study for redesigning the survey course genre in line with theory to diversify, decolonize, and decanonize the curriculum. It discusses a number of steps concerning the theoretical background, textual improvements, approaches to assignments, classroom atmosphere, and general pedagogy. It reflects on questions of positionality, institutional support, and workload. Focusing on music and short texts, the survey course described here questions the common practices and core values of German studies, music history, and musicology, and takes a critical stance toward privilege and power. In this context, the course counters tokenization, juxtaposes non‐canonical and canonical works, and focuses on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility work, as well as universal instructional design principles and social justice education. Thus, the survey becomes a new genre—one that still offers students the breadth of cultural production but relies on a particular set of prerequisites determined by factors such as the space, time, and accessibility of a course, as well as the identity markers of instructor and students.

Critical human rights research

What constitutes human rights research? This article provides an overarching understanding of what human rights research is, or could be, by applying the philosophical research paradigm of critical theory to the field. It argues that human rights research should adopt a critical stance, steering clear of both “activist” and “value-neutral” approaches, as these might impede progress in figuring out the best ways of safeguarding human rights. In contrast, the critical approach preserves the vital role of human rights as a critical corrective to prevailing practices. As such, critical human rights research is explicitly normative, emancipatory, and interdisciplinary. Besides outlining a specific mandate for human rights research, the article illustrates how existing research in this domain can be situated and comprehended within the framework of critical theory.

The Internet of Musical Stuff

A recent initiative within ubimus research contemplates the development of an internet of musical stuff (IoMuSt) as a concept that interacts with and expands the pre-existing rubric of the internet of musical things (IoMusT). Opposed to the ontological fixedness of things, stuff is pliable, fairly amorphous, changeable depending on usage, context-reliant, either persistent or volatile. It encompasses adaptable and flexible temporalities, featuring non-allotable, non-monetisable and non-reifiable resources. Furthermore, IoMuSt highlights the distinction between object and subject, blurring this crisp separation. The IoMuSt rubric is sustained by aesthetic pliability, fostering an expansion of creative practices and a critical stance towards utilitarian human-computer interaction perspectives. The authors discuss key dimensions of aesthetic pliability as related to flexible infrastructures, open sources and methods, enhanced collaboration and a low ecological footprint. The properties of aesthetic pliability are explored within the realm of two case studies.

Working on the future of group analysis – scientific exploration of efficacy, concepts, and neurobiological connections

This article addresses the imbalance in research focus, highlighting a pronounced emphasis on research in the American context compared to the field of group analysis, which is underscored by the identification of two literature reviews. The discussion delves into Lorentzen’s research contributions and the introduction of Focus Group Analytic Psychotherapy. Diverse perspectives on research are presented, with Nitsun and Lorentzen advocating for its importance, while Dalal takes a critical stance. The text investigates discrepancies within key concepts of group analysis, specifically the social unconscious, with Nitsun critiquing an undue emphasis on its significance and questioning its practical relevance in group settings. The relationship between group analysis and neuroscience is explored, shedding light on the reinterpretation of certain concepts through a neuroscientific lens, notably examining the framework of the neurobiology of intergroup relations. Ultimately, the article emphasizes the necessity of believing in and validating the advantages of collective thinking.

Refugee women in the media – prevalence, representation and framing in international media coverage

ABSTRACT Are refugee women invisible in the media? Extant media portrayals often make use of stereotypical representations, in that women are represented as vulnerable and passive victims. Within the theoretical frameworks of agenda setting and framing, vulnerability and agency, digital emotion contagion and distant suffering, this study investigates media coverage on refugee women by four popular international news outlets on the basis of their YouTube presence from 2011 to 2021. We applied automated data gathering to extract relevant videos which were manually coded and analyzed. In addition, we applied an automated topic modeling and sentiment analysis. The results are ambiguous but in general reflect existing findings: refugee women are marginalized in media coverage, and their portrayal is often stereotypical presenting them as vulnerable victims. The results highlight the need to sensitize journalists for a non-stereotypical reporting and the broader public for a more critical stance towards media coverage of refugee women.

Interrogating Neoliberalist Approach to Global Climate Governance

While global climate governance has been identified across a wide range of international political events, it has been deeply rooted in the liberal international order which encounters various political challenges. This work employs the ecological modernization approach as a way to observe how the neoliberal elements of the global climate governance have been interrogated by different and emerging critical discourses. This work identifies that the populism, green movements and (radical) left-wing concepts have been emerging to challenge the existing global climate governance by holding critical stances on the key elements of the ecological modernization approach.

From other lands and languages to wake you up: Taiguara, music as a battlefield

This work addresses the surveillance of ideologies and customs by the State apparatus during the Military Dictatorship in Brazil, especially concerning music. The case of Taiguara stands out, as a composer who, by repeatedly trying to personally defend his songs, ended up gaining a reputation of nonconformity in the face of censorship. This eventually worsened as the military regime began to restrict not only songs about customs, but also about content considered subversive. Thus, there is a nexus of causality between the musician’s career, and in parallel, the escalation of repression beginning with the Coup of 1964. Surveillance was evident even during the televised music festivals of the 1960s, where the musician had a constant presence. This eventually led to Taiguara’s two periods of exile, the first in England and the second in Tanzania. The album Imyra, Tayra, Ipy (1976) was the culmination of this persecution, because even though it had passed the filter of censorship, it was hastily recalled as soon as it was distributed. In addition to discussing the exile and censorship faced by Taiguara, we analyze the composer’s musical solutions and lyrics in this context. His critical stance and defense of agendas that today would be classified as progressive made him stand out as an artist in search of freedom of expression.

Towards Sustainable Practices of Diversity and Inclusion of SOGIESC in Japanese Language Education & Japanese Studies

ABSTRACT Research into Japanese language education and the intersections of gender and sexuality has demonstrated the importance of critiquing heteronormative biases in teaching materials and resources. We propose that collaborative approaches which decentre regimental heteronormative understandings of the Japanese language and which facilitate inclusivity and affirmation of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) are crucial to sustainable practices in Japanese language education at all levels. Adopting a critical reflexive stance, we first trace the community advocacy which has resulted in changes to representations of sexual identities in Japanese dictionaries. We next critically examine Japanese language education materials which are used across a diversity of locales before offering some practical ways in which small changes can be made to ensure greater inclusion and affirmation of SOGIESC in local learning environments. Further, we discuss the importance of developing metalinguistic awareness in relation to gendered speech styles and language ideologies. We argue that collaboration and co-construction are fundamental to sustainable practices which learn from histories of advocacy and research, are responsive to shifts in Japanese society and culture, and adaptable to a diversity of learning environments.

Activity Theory Study of China’s Rural Book House Project

This study explores why China’s rural information projects tend to be inefficient by identifying the dynamic mechanisms driving the construction and development of China’s Rural Book House Project (RBHP). A qualitative survey was used to collect data from 35 participants in the RBHP and to analyze the data through the lens of activity theory. Two dynamic mechanisms were found, namely power coordination and benefit protection, with the former characterized by compulsion, self-interest, and inefficient punitive measures and the latter by the participants’ differing objectives when pursuing benefits. The interaction of these mechanisms drove the RBHP forward. The findings of the study suggest the development process of the RBHP and other similar projects need to be reanalyzed from an integrative, dynamic and connected perspective. By way of concluding, insights concerning the measures the Chinese government could take to resolve the issues confronted in rural information service development as well as the need for information professionals to take a critical stance toward their community practice are offered.

Possibilities and limits of political humour in a hybrid regime

This article focuses on the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP), which can be defined as a joke party. MKKP uses humour to criticise the corruption flourishing around the governing party Fidesz as well as its simplified and racist form of political communication. However, MKKP’s critical stance extends to Hungarian politicians and the political system in general. This visual ethnographic research focuses on the activities that MKKP organised during national days in Hungary between 2017 and 2022, which included a space launch, a peace march and an alternative national day celebration on 20 August. The events can be defined as parody performances. The field material is complemented by a semi-structured interview with the party activists. MKKP’s humour is critical and revealing in nature, aiming to expose the powerholders’ agenda. However, instead of ridiculing, MKKP’s humour is primarily corrective and supportive. As such, it has the potential to alleviate polarisation. In MKKP’s activism, creativity and cynicism exist in close proximity to one another. Humour also functions as a powerful antidote against simplified populist truths that rely on fearmongering and enemy images. In a hybrid regime, absurd humour can be used to reveal the inherent absurdities of the political reality. MKKP has occasionally succeeded in entering the state-controlled public sphere. During recent years, the party has started to address societal matters more seriously, without abandoning its roots as a humour party.