Dialogical Approach Research Articles

Gender identity from a dialogical and semiotic cultural perspective

Contrary to common sense and the heteronormative thought that “man is born a man” and “woman is born a woman”, the construction of a gender/sexual identity can be seen as an intensely dynamic process involving the internalization and externalization of collective and individual meanings, enclosing a crucial importance for the development of subjects. The present article addresses the issue from a dialogical and Semiotic Cultural Psychology approaches, in their relationship with other theoretical discussions concerning the subject of gender/sexual identity processes. Numerous are the debates about gender/sexual identities in present-day sociocultural contexts, but the topic requires a systemic, all-inclusive analysis of sociocultural structures, practices, and the dynamics between micro, meso and macro cultural levels, in interaction with the active role of subjectivity. We then propose a new construct within the framework of a Dialogical Self Theoretical approach designated as Irradiating Self Positioning, to better explain the power of gender/sexual dimensions within the Dialogical Self. Knowledge so constructed may contribute to making sense of developmental issues concerning the subject, and this may support the full acceptance of sexual and gender diversities in our societies.

Enhancing effective healthcare communication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Considerations for research, teaching, policy, and practice

ObjectiveIn this article we present a conceptual framework for enhancing effective healthcare communication in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. MethodsThrough an iterative, deliberative dialogue approach, we, as experts from a variety of health professions and academic disciplines, worked together to identify core values and considerations for healthcare communication across numerous health professions and disciplines and within research, teaching, policy, and practice contexts. ResultsThe framework developed includes five core values at its centre: equitable, inclusive, evidence-based, collaborative, reflective. Around this are concentric circles showing key elements of collaborators, modality, context, and purpose. Each of these is explored. ConclusionThis work may support benchmarking for healthcare providers, researchers, policymakers, and educators across a breadth of professions to help improve communication in clinical practice. The framework will also help to identify areas across disciplines that are shared and potentially idiosyncratic for various professions to promote interprofessional recognition, education, and collaboration. InnovationThis framework is designed to start conversations, to form the foundation of a dialogue about the priorities and key considerations for developing teaching curricula, professional development, and research programs related to healthcare communication, providing a set of values specifically for the unique contexts of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. It can also be used to guide interdisciplinary healthcare professionals in advancing research, teaching, policy, and practice related to healthcare communication.

Asking Questions about Scientific Articles—Identifying Large N Studies with LLMs

The exponential growth of scientific publications increases the effort required to identify relevant articles. Moreover, the scale of studies is a frequent barrier to research as the majority of studies are low or medium-scaled and do not generalize well while lacking statistical power. As such, we introduce an automated method that supports the identification of large-scale studies in terms of population. First, we introduce a training corpus of 1229 manually annotated paragraphs extracted from 20 articles with different structures and considered populations. Our method considers prompting a FLAN-T5 language model with targeted questions and paragraphs from the previous corpus so that the model returns the number of participants from the study. We adopt a dialogic extensible approach in which the model is asked a sequence of questions that are gradual in terms of focus. Second, we use a validation corpus with 200 articles labeled for having N larger than 1000 to assess the performance of our language model. Our model, without any preliminary filtering with heuristics, achieves an F1 score of 0.52, surpassing previous analyses performed that obtained an F1 score of 0.51. Moreover, we achieved an F1 score of 0.69 when combined with previous extraction heuristics, thus arguing for the robustness and extensibility of our approach. Finally, we apply our model to a newly introduced dataset of ERIC publications to observe trends across the years in the Education domain. A spike was observed in 2019, followed by a decrease in 2020 and, afterward, a positive trend; nevertheless, the overall percentage is lower than 3%, suggesting a major problem in terms of scale and the need for a change in perspective.

A dialogic speech act approach to ridiculing references in the French presidential debate of 2022

Abstract The article proposes a dialogic approach to ridiculing in the French presidential debate of 2022, illustrating the ridiculing act as representative of the core dynamics of political debates. The analysis enabled the configuration of a prototype of the ridiculing act within a dialogic sequence of action and reaction, which shows that ridiculing most frequently occurs as an immediate reaction or reactive chain to actions initiated in the free discussion sections of the dialogue. The selected dialogic sequences are shaped by some particularities of ridiculing as a macro speech act of negative humour and the genre of the presidential debate, such as the interplay of the different layers of meaning, as well as the fixed rules of turn-taking, the front-staged nature of the talk and the participation framework.

The Relationship between Agri-Food Production and Macro-Economic Dynamics: A Study on Soybeans in Brazilian South and Chinese Mainland

This research article aims to establish a relationship between regional conditions of agri-food production and their correlations with macroeconomic structures. To this end, soybeans production in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and its trade with Chinese Mainland are observed. The analysis draws on the Food Regimes approach in dialogue with institutionalist theory, especially considering the construction of agricultural production habits and models. The argument takes secondary quantitative data on soybeans production and trade, triangulating them with information gathered from international platforms—primarily FAOSTAT and Trase Platform—and with qualitative data collected during field research—using landscape analysis and interviews conducted with soybean cooperatives (in the Brazilian case). Findings on the formation of the soybean market between Rio Grande do Sul and Chinese Mainland reveal historically constituted elements that shaped trade flows as they are configured contemporarily. A correlation between the Third Food Regime and effects on agricultural practice in the Brazilian region was also observed.

A multimodal dialog approach to mental state characterization in clinically depressed, anxious, and suicidal populations.

The rise of depression, anxiety, and suicide rates has led to increased demand for telemedicine-based mental health screening and remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions to alleviate the burden on, and enhance the efficiency of, mental health practitioners. Multimodal dialog systems (MDS) that conduct on-demand, structured interviews offer a scalable and cost-effective solution to address this need. This study evaluates the feasibility of a cloud based MDS agent, Tina, for mental state characterization in participants with depression, anxiety, and suicide risk. Sixty-eight participants were recruited through an online health registry and completed 73 sessions, with 15 (20.6%), 21 (28.8%), and 26 (35.6%) sessions screening positive for depression, anxiety, and suicide risk, respectively using conventional screening instruments. Participants then interacted with Tina as they completed a structured interview designed to elicit calibrated, open-ended responses regarding the participants' feelings and emotional state. Simultaneously, the platform streamed their speech and video recordings in real-time to a HIPAA-compliant cloud server, to compute speech, language, and facial movement-based biomarkers. After their sessions, participants completed user experience surveys. Machine learning models were developed using extracted features and evaluated with the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). For both depression and suicide risk, affected individuals tended to have a higher percent pause time, while those positive for anxiety showed reduced lip movement relative to healthy controls. In terms of single-modality classification models, speech features performed best for depression (AUC = 0.64; 95% CI = 0.51-0.78), facial features for anxiety (AUC = 0.57; 95% CI = 0.43-0.71), and text features for suicide risk (AUC = 0.65; 95% CI = 0.52-0.78). Best overall performance was achieved by decision fusion of all models in identifying suicide risk (AUC = 0.76; 95% CI = 0.65-0.87). Participants reported the experience comfortable and shared their feelings. MDS is a feasible, useful, effective, and interpretable solution for RPM in real-world clinical depression, anxiety, and suicidal populations. Facial information is more informative for anxiety classification, while speech and language are more discriminative of depression and suicidality markers. In general, combining speech, language, and facial information improved model performance on all classification tasks.

Enhancing linkage to HIV care in the “Universal Test and Treat” era: Barriers and enablers to HIV care among adults in a high HIV burdened district in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Ending AIDS by 2030 would depend on how successful health systems are in linking people living with HIV (PLHIV) into care. The World Health Organization recommended the ‘Universal Test and Treat’ (UTT) strategy – initiating all individuals testing positive on antiretroviral therapy (ART) irrespective of their CD4 count and clinical staging. This study aimed to explore the enablers and barriers to linkage to HIV care among adults with a new HIV diagnosis in a high-HIV prevalent rural district in South Africa. A qualitative study was undertaken to explore patients’ perceptions of enablers and barriers of linkage-to-care, using a life-story narration and dialogue approach. In-depth interviews were conducted with 38 HIV-positive participants sampled from a cohort of 1194 HIV-positive patients recruited from December 2017 to June 2018. Participants were selected based on whether they had been linked to care or not within 3 months of positive HIV diagnosis. Interviews were thematically analysed using a general inductive approach. Of the 38 participants, 22 (58%) linked to care within three months of HIV-positive diagnosis. Factors that facilitated or inhibited linkage-to-care were found at individual, family, community, as well as health systems levels. Enablers included a positive HIV testing experience, and assistance from the fieldwork team. Support from family, and friends, as well as prior community-based education about HIV and ART were also noted. Individual factors such as acceptance of HIV status, previous exposure to PLHIV, and fear of HIV progressing, were identified. Barriers to linkage included, denial of HIV status, dislike of taking pills, and preference for alternative medicine. Negative experiences with counselling and health systems inefficiency were also noted as barriers. Perceived stigma and socio-economic factors, such as lack of food or money to visit the clinic were other barriers. Community-based and health system-level interventions would need to focus on clinic readiness in providing patients with necessary and effective health services such as proper and adequate counselling. This could increase the number of patients who link to care. Finally, interventions to improve linkage-to-care should consider a holistic approach, including training healthcare providers, community outreach and the provision of psychological, social, and financial support.

“It is not Working for Them but with Them”: Adult Educators Roles With Community Groups in Transforming Communities

This paper reflects on Freire’s discourse on liberating education and adult educators’ educational roles with community groups in transforming communities. Mineral-rich communities in Ghana are in danger of losing water bodies, rich arable lands, and forest vegetation cover through “galamsey,” which refers to the gathering of rich mineral resources illegally for sale. Yet the fourth Industrial Revolution Age positions adult educators strategically in making learning the needed skill among community groups to improve communities. This qualitative study adopted a convenience sampling procedure to select and interview eight graduate students in a higher education institution (HEI) in Ghana. Data were analyzed using thematic and narrative approaches. The results indicate that adult educators’ educational roles are empowering, yet they should employ more dialogical, story-telling, and conversational approaches; and must listen to community members’ views on community development programs. The study concludes that adult educators drive community development programs via inclusiveness and networks to make communities sustainable.

The Dialogical Self and Transgender Identity: How Filipino Transgender Men Navigate Tensions between I-Positions

Transgender people live in constant navigation of the gender binary to honor their gender identity and protect themselves against marginalization. Using Hermans’ Dialogical Self Theory (DST), we explore the agentic process of negotiation within the self and how transgender men negotiate the field of tension between the internal I-position of being a man and society’s imposed external I-position of being forced to be a woman. Using a multi-case study approach, in-depth interviews with five Filipino self-identifying transgender men were conducted. The negotiations between I-positions were analyzed following Aveling and colleagues’ Analysis of Multivoicedness. Key patterns of negotiating tension among transgender men were resisting the gender binary characterized by an identity crisis; performing femininity as protection against rejection, discrimination, and danger; and the claiming (and reclaiming) of the authentic self with transgender and queer communities. Implications of DST, a dialogical approach to agency, and the need to create gender-affirming dialogical spaces are discussed.

Christian values as the common good, not the good of Christianity?

This article seeks to explain the pro-immigrant attitudes among Church of Norway (CoN) leaders. These are shown in two Norwegian Leadership Surveys (NLS) – 2000 and 2015 – to constitute the Norwegian elite group with the most positive attitudes on immigration. Similar tendencies are also found in other studies. As the term used in NLS is «get access» it is not EEA citizens, but rather immigration of asylum seekers that leaders are asked about. The article applies a hegemony-critical theory and four conceptual frameworks, the latter either developed from Christian tradition or from the context of civil society actors. Rather than being concerned about maintaining hegemony or privileges for CoN, the leaders emphasise an inclusive approach, seeking to promote the common good for all living in Norway. This implies no support by CoN leaders to politicians seeking to utilise terms like «Christian values» for defending a restrictive asylum policy and no concern over the presence and growth of other religions in Norway. The article provides new insight of how a dialogical approach to other religions is also reflected in justifications for a inclusive asylum policy, expressed by a church that used to be a part of the state apparatus that promoted homogenity and actively prevented ethnic diversity.

Self-positions and narratives facilitating or hindering posttraumatic growth: A qualitative analysis with migrant women of Nigerian descent survivors of trafficking.

The literature on sex trafficking has given a great deal of space to the effects on mental health, while little has been devoted to the stories of survivors. This study aims to explore the first-hand stories of immigrant women of Nigerian descent trafficking survivors, describing a qualitative analysis of psychotherapy sessions with them. Within the theoretical framework of Dialogical Self Theory, we explored and invited into dialogue the I-positions generated when individuals have traumatic experiences such as sex trafficking. Analyzing the themes emerging from 5 psychotherapy pathways developed taking a narrative and dialogical approach, we explored the narratives that facilitated posttraumatic growth (PTG) and those that hindered it. Five women survivors of sex trafficking were followed in a narrative psychotherapy journey. A thematic analysis was conducted on the transcripts of the therapeutic pathways, highlighting the positions of the self identified in the narratives and the main content of the women's stories. We identified 2 main themes in the narratives facilitating PTG, and 3 in the narratives acting as barriers thereto. When addressing traumatic experiences, taking into account the polyphony of the individuals narrating them, and identifying which of their narratives can facilitate or hinder their PTG can be a useful resource in therapeutic and social work with survivors of trafficking. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Convergence of Constitutional Interpretation to the Test of Laws Through a Constitutional Dialogue Approach

The Constitutional Court's presence yields positive impacts on constitutional law, yet isn't devoid of controversies, including Judge misconduct, transgression of 'nemo judex idoneus in propria causa' principle, and potential super body transformation. This paper aims to comprehend and analyze constitutional interpretation dominance in assessing laws against the 1945 Constitution through a constitutional dialogue approach. This normative writing employs legal, historical, and conceptual methods. Findings underscore: 1) Demonstrating respect for state institutions, notably the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia. 2) Establishing a more democratic system to test the 1945 Constitution's compatibility in the Constitutional Court. 3) Breaking the monopoly of Constitutional Court-centric constitutional interpretation. 4) Reviving 'nemo judex idoneus in propria causa' principle is pivotal due to extensive testing of Constitutional Court Law, addressing concerns about verdict impartiality.

Convergence of Constitutional Interpretation to the Test of Laws Through a Constitutional Dialogue Approach

The Constitutional Court's presence yields positive impacts on constitutional law, yet isn't devoid of controversies, including Judge misconduct, transgression of 'nemo judex idoneus in propria causa' principle, and potential super body transformation. This paper aims to comprehend and analyze constitutional interpretation dominance in assessing laws against the 1945 Constitution through a constitutional dialogue approach. This normative writing employs legal, historical, and conceptual methods. Findings underscore: 1) Demonstrating respect for state institutions, notably the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia. 2) Establishing a more democratic system to test the 1945 Constitution's compatibility in the Constitutional Court. 3) Breaking the monopoly of Constitutional Court-centric constitutional interpretation. 4) Reviving 'nemo judex idoneus in propria causa' principle is pivotal due to extensive testing of Constitutional Court Law, addressing concerns about verdict impartiality.

The nexus between peace and mental well-being: contributions for public happiness

PurposeThis underscores individual and social implications for how mental disorders and mental well-being are constructed, conceived of and treated. Further, this paper aims to examine positive psychology’s role in supporting the advancement of a broader systemic and contextual approach to mental health. With that aim, this paper connects data on mental health and well-being with peace studies to describe the systems of value and social ecologies underpinning mental disorders, using public happiness/Felicitas Publica as a possible framework to enhance public mental health while intervening at the local level (Bruni and Zamagni, 2007; Marujo and Neto, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2021; Marujo et al., 2019).Design/methodology/approachTheoretical foundations and data on positive peace and mental well-being are described with the intention to propose a systemic, contextual, relational, communitarian, economic and sociopolitical perspective of well-being that goes beyond individual bodies and/or brains and, instead, views mental disorder and mental health as social currency (Beck, 2020).FindingsThe interventions using dialogic, conversational and community approaches are a possible path to promote peace, mental health and public happiness.Research limitations/implicationsExamining the interplay between the fields of positive psychology, mental health and cultures of peace, this work contributes to the broadening of research and subsequent intervention topics through transdisciplinary approaches while reinforcing the role of systemic and social determinants and complementing the prevalent medical model and intraindividual perspective of mental health and well-being.Practical implicationsAdopting positive psychology to address mental health through public happiness concepts and interventions opens opportunities to respond to the ebb and flow of social challenges and life-giving opportunities. Therefore, the paper intends to articulate actor-related, relational, structural and cultural dimensions while moving away from discrete technocratic and individual models and pays attention to the way their implementations are aligned with both individual and social needs.Social implicationsThe work offers an inclusive, equalitarian, politically sensitive approach to positive mental health and positive psychology, bringing forward a structural transformation and human rights-based approach perspective while rethinking the type of social and political solutions to mental health issues.Originality/valueCreating a critically constructive debate vis-à-vis the fluidity and complexity of the social world, the paper examines mental health and positive psychology simultaneously from a “hardware” (institutions, infrastructures, services, systems, etc.) and a “software” (i.e. individuals and community/societal relations).

Language dimensions of social cohesion: the significance of linguistic inequalities in the context of refugee settlement

ABSTRACT Despite the commonly acknowledged role of language in the successful settlement of refugees, a more thorough understanding is required of how linguistic inequalities may impact on settlement, social inclusion and social cohesion. This article presents findings from a qualitative study on refugee settlement in New Zealand, a country with a strategic focus on improving social cohesion outcomes. The article takes a Bakhtinian dialogical approach and, informed by an ethical perspective of answerability, it conceptualises social cohesion as situated in the interactions that occur between the ‘speaking subject’ and the ‘other’. Viewing social cohesion as intersubjective and enacted in various (linguistic) encounters yet shaped by, and shaping, broader contexts, it argues that social cohesion is significantly impacted by a range of linguistic inequalities, especially in the case of resettled refugees. As dialogical interactions require language and a shared understanding between participants, limited resources in the dominant linguistic code combined with a lack of linguistic and communicative accommodation from the interlocutor impact on the subject’s ability to author themselves and to affect the outcomes of the interaction. This, in turn, has significant implications for settlement outcomes.

Let’s Talk: Starting Conversations with Parents and Teachers on their Beliefs in Education

Over the past decade, schools around the world have had to develop educational strategies to respond to pressing health, environmental, social, economic, and political emergencies and situations. A critical concern for education leaders is how to develop educational strategies that are responsive to and inclusive of families and communities. This article presents a methodology for facilitating conversations between families and schools that leads to recommendations for improving family, school, and community engagement. This methodology starts with surveying teachers’ and families’ beliefs on teaching and learning. Survey data on beliefs in seven countries are analyzed. Beliefs are then used to launch conversations between teachers, parents/caregivers, and community representatives, using a dialogical approach. A case study of this conversation process carried out in Colombia is presented. The parent/caregiver and teacher conversations not only led to new school and regional strategies, but helped teams confront power dynamics, a vital step in transforming education systems.

Accounting for Indigenous cultural connections to land: insights from two Indigenous groups of Australia

PurposeThis paper aims to present the findings of a government-initiated project that sought to explore the possibility of incorporating cultural connections to land within the federal national accounting system using the United Nations Systems of Environmental-Economic Accounting (UN-SEEA) framework as a basis.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a critical dialogic approach and responding to the calls for critical accountants to engage with stakeholders, the authors worked with two Indigenous groups of Australia to develop a system of accounts that incorporates their cultural connections to “Country”. The two groups were clans from the Mungguy Country in the Kakadu region of Northern Territory and the Ewamian Aboriginal Corporation of Northern Queensland. Conducting two-day workshops on separate occasions with both groups, the authors attempted to meld the Indigenous worldviews with the worldviews embodied within national accounting systems and the UN-SEEA framework.FindingsThe models developed highlight significant differences between the ontological foundations of Indigenous and Western-worldviews and the authors reflect on the tensions created between these competing worldviews. The authors also offer pragmatic solutions that could be implemented by the Indigenous Traditional Owners and the government in terms of developing such an accounting system that incorporates connections to Country.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to providing a contemporary case study of engagement with Indigenous peoples in the co-development of a system of accounting for and by Indigenous peoples; it also contributes to the ongoing debate on bridging the divide between critique and praxis; and finally, the paper delves into an area that is largely unexplored within accounting research which is national accounting.

Out-of-home interventions for adolescents who were treated according to the Open Dialogue model for mental health care

BackgroundThe Open Dialogue approach (OD) emphasizes community-based psychiatric treatment for adolescents, but its success in achieving this is poorly documented. ObjectiveTo analyse out-of-home intervention usage in a national sample of adolescent psychiatric patients and determine if OD is linked to increased time until out-of-home intervention. Participants and settingThe register-based cohort study included all adolescents aged 13–20 who received psychiatric treatment in Finland between 2003 and 2008. The research group (n = 780) included adolescents whose treatment was initiated in the Western Lapland catchment area, where OD covered the entire psychiatric service. The comparison group (n = 44,088) included the rest of Finland. National register data encompassed the period from treatment onset until the end of the 10-year follow-up or death. The primary outcomes of interest were the times to the first and second out-of-home intervention, including foster care, supportive housing, and hospitalization. The secondary outcomes included the clinical/demographic characteristics of adolescents treated out-of-home. MethodsThe hypothesis was tested via an inverse probability of treatment–weighted Cox hazard model, plus within- and between-group comparisons to analyse the secondary outcome. ResultsOD was associated with increased time to the first (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR]: 0.61, 95%CI: 0.52–0.72) and second (aHR: 0.75, 95%CI: 0.58–0.96) out-of-home interventions. In both service types, there was a subgroup of adolescents with repeated out-of-home interventions, who also demonstrated poorer long-term outcomes. ConclusionOD-based psychiatric services for adolescents are associated with fewer out-of-home interventions. The clinical significance of the findings warrants further research.

ECHOING VOICES OF COMMUNITY EDUCATION EVENTS: A POETIC SELF-STUDY

This paper is a poetic self-study based on a community education project in which the author was involved and in which poetry was a process of social transformation. There is a poetic process of weaving between writings produced during the project, occurred years ago, and writings created for this self-study. Its main purpose is to reflect on this poetic process, questioning how it can continue to illuminate our understandings, develop dialogue and transcend contradictions and ambivalences. A few meaningful events are selected where poetry played a relevant part and where poetic writing, combinins sounds and silence to create a singular musicality, is assumed as a way of deepening and transforming understanding and practice. It is a poetic organisation of rhizomatic relations that facilitates the flow of reflexivity and evocation of the movements experienced during the project and identified as important. They are in accordance with the principles of the project, where dialogical and critical approaches are emphasised. In the final sections the author discuss her positionalities and conflicts as researcher, educator and poet assumed along the process, and conclude by reflecting on some of the main contributions of this paper to the poetic self-study field and poetic inquiry.

Envisioning better opportunities for young-system-survivors: A critical dialogical study among occupational therapists promoting inclusive practices in Germany

ABSTRACT Despite current inclusion discourses in Germany, specific groups of children and adolescents with mental health problems are identified by healthcare services as “too difficult to manage”, creating varied exclusion processes. In this study, the term young-system-survivors is used for destigmatization purposes. While occupational science discourses suggest that social inclusion should be addressed at the level of social structures, institutions, and norms, local social policies limit German healthcare practitioners from engaging with young-system-survivors to address both complex social and health issues. Using a critical dialogical approach, this study explored how occupational therapists envision inclusive practices promoting young-system-survivors participation in Germany. The data were collected through individual dialogical interviews and two focus groups with eight German occupational therapists and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings are presented as one overarching theme: The struggle of young-system-survivors to have real opportunities, composed of three subthemes a) Affirming a client-centred stance and continuity, b) Creating possibilities by addressing context-specific demands, and c) Reflecting and enacting advocacy. The findings illustrate how the participants reflect on their fundamental humanistic stance and their occupational perspective to demand a more socially responsive practice. Inspired by scholars developing the epistemologies of the south, this study draws on the concept of Social Occupational Therapy to widen the prospect of establishing multidimensional aspects of social inclusion and calls for collaborative practices to foster the visibility and consideration of young-system-survivors.