Disciplinary Groups Research Articles

Professional, scholar, or knowledge worker? Identity construction of Chinese management researchers amid the research-practice gap.

We move beyond discussing the desirability and feasibility of bridging the research-practice gap to introducing an identity perspective to explore how Chinese management researchers make sense of the research-practice gap and what kinds of career identities are constructed. We conducted a qualitative study among 34 Chinese management researchers working at or studying for a PhD at research-oriented business schools in China. The findings show that management researchers in typical Chinese higher education institutions prefer constructing a single identity (i.e., professional, scholar, or knowledge worker identity) rather than a hybrid identity such as "academic-practitioner" as studies of their Western counterparts suggest. Moreover, before seeking and emulating role models to construct their desired career identities, researchers in China studying management reflexively search for referent groups by identifying either with a narrow disciplinary group (US mainstream management researchers or traditional intellectuals) or a broad group of knowledge workers. Furthermore, this study delineates how researchers with varying career identity narratives adopt corresponding identity work strategies (i.e., redefinition, defense, and distance) suggesting that identity work strategies do not always lead to achieving or preserving positive identity.

On the Question of the Demand for Professional Postgraduate Studies in Russia: Analysis of Data on the Thesis Defenses in Technical Sciences

Modern Russian postgraduate school is institutionally oriented towards the reproduction of the personnel potential for science and higher education. Since the career trajectories of a significant part of PhD graduates go beyond the academic labor market, the scientific and pedagogical community is discussing the prospects for the development of the so-called professional postgraduate studies in Russia, which should provide targeted training of highly qualified personnel for knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy and the sphere of intellectual services. The discourse on professional postgraduate studies is focused on the possibility of adapting the effective practices of foreign universities, and, unfortunately, is currently not supported by quantitative data on the demand for such a format of postgraduate training in Russia. The purpose of this study is an empirical analysis of the demand for professional postgraduate studies in the field of technical sciences. Using data on PhD graduates who successfully defended dissertations in technical sciences in 2019 as an example, for the first time a quantitative assessment was made of the prevalence of practice-oriented dissertations, the authors of which are employees of organizations in the knowledge-intensive sectors of the economy. The empirical basis of the study was the publicly available data on the defense of dissertations for the degree of candidate of technical sciences in Russia in 2019 (N=1663). For a detailed analysis, dissertation materials were selected, which contained information about postgraduate studies and the place of employment of dissertators (N=715). As a result of the study, parameters were determined that characterize the degree of prevalence in Russia of practice-oriented dissertations on various disciplinary groups of technical sciences, including: the proportion of PhD graduates employed outside the academic sphere; the proportion of dissertations thematically related to the professional activities of their authors; prevalence of preparation of dissertations on the basis of enterprises of the real sector of the economy; differences in socio-demographic characteristics and publication activity of PhD graduates working on dissertations at universities and in science-intensive business organizations. On the basis of the analysis, a conclusion is made about the expediency of developing professional postgraduate programs in the field of engineering and technology aimed at staffing the innovation sphere, as well as legitimizing the special requirements for these programs and practice-oriented dissertations prepared during their implementation.

“Can I write this is ableist AF in a peer review?”: A corpus-driven analysis of Twitter engagement strategies across disciplinary groups

At a time when scholars are increasingly expected to participate in public knowledge dissemination, social media platforms like Twitter hold great promise for engaging both experts and non-experts. However, it remains unclear in what ways academic tweets are shaped by disciplinary concerns and how this might, in turn, impact audience engagement. Our paper reports an early-stage corpus-driven analysis of 4,000 English tweets from 40 scholars’ Twitter accounts across four disciplinary groups: Arts and Humanities (AH), Social Sciences (SS), Life Sciences (LS), and Physical Sciences (PS). Engagement rates (Tardy, 2023), multimodal elements, tweet types, and interaction markers were quantitatively calculated using corpus and computational methods and qualitatively analysed through close reading. Our findings revealed some disciplinary variation in the corpus: specifically, LS used more multimodal elements than SS on Twitter; SS used fewer interactional markers than LS and PS on Twitter. We further found that LS also has the highest number of threads and the longest threads, often to unfold their multimodal information. Despite being the least multimodal and interactive disciplinary group, SS has the highest engagement rate. Our analysis suggests that explicit evaluation and critique plays an important role in eliciting responses on Twitter, particularly with regard to current social or political issues —a finding that resonates with previous research on science communication and popularization (Orpin, 2019). The findings can be applied in science communication training to raise disciplinary awareness in shaping one’s social media presence.

Understanding news & views articles: Rhetorical structures across different disciplines

Article reviews play a pivotal role in fostering students’ critical evaluation and critical thinking skills. News & Views (N&V) articles published in Nature journals are one prominent example of article reviews and serve as excellent models for students to learn and refine their skills in writing article reviews. However, there is limited research on the rhetorical features of N&V articles, especially in terms of textual organization across different disciplines. To address this gap, three corpora were compiled for the present study, representing the disciplinary groups of natural sciences (NS), social sciences (SS), and technology and engineering (TE). Each corpus was comprised of 30 N&V texts from its respective disciplinary group. Using a self-developed coding framework building on previous research, we coded the move and step of each text in the corpora. The coding data were compared and analyzed to uncover the distinguishing textual features of the three disciplinary groups. The analysis revealed that the variations were predominantly at the step level. N&V articles of NS and SS shared most of the moves and steps, but N&Vs in TE exhibited unique stylistic characteristics. These findings hold significant implications for training and teaching article review writing, particularly in relation to disciplinary contexts.

Особенности речи и устного дискурса при детском аутизме: описание случая спонтанного билингвизма. Часть I: Клинико-анамнестическое исследование

<p style="text-align: justify;">Impaired communication and speech behavior is considered to be one of the key manifestations of childhood autism. At the same time speech disorders in children with autism have not been sufficiently studied. In a meta-analysis of the modern studies of autism, we present different theories explaining relations between the childhood autism and im­pairments in verbal communication; among others, we focus mainly on semantic-pragmatic and structural-functional levels of speech; spontaneous bilingualism is also discussed. The study describes in detail a case of childhood autism in a Lithuanian-speaking boy D., followed for 6 years. The uniqueness of the given case is that at the very early age D. started demonstrating a preference of English for his native language. Moreover, he learned English exclusively on the basis of media resources found on the Internet by his parents (at his request) and himself. The paper (Part 1) includes detailed information on how verbal communication is formed and data of assessments carried out by a multi­disciplinary group of experts as well as several post-testings by a psychologist and speech-language pathologist.</p>

A Corpus-Based Study of the Distributions of Adnominals Across Registers and Disciplines

ABSTRACT Adnominals are an important resource of noun modification in written registers, especially in academic writing. This study compares the frequencies of adjectival adnominals and nominal adnominals across two registers (Fiction and Academic writing) by calculating T-values and conducting Welch’s t-tests on the adnominal subtypes. It is found that the preference for nominal adnominals exists in both the two registers and the mean frequencies of adjectival adnominals, premodifying nouns and postmodifying nouns increase as the register moves from Fiction to Academic writing. We further investigate the frequencies of adnominals in the research article abstracts across three disciplinary groups by conducting Welch’s ANOVA test. No significant difference is revealed in T-values in the research article abstracts across disciplines. The difference of adjectival adnominals, nouns as postmodifiers and appositive nouns lacks practical applications, while the effects of disciplines on the frequency of premodifying nouns cannot be rejected. It is the mean frequencies of premodifying nouns that show the significant difference in the research article abstracts across disciplines. Premodifying nouns are more prevalent in hard science texts than in soft science texts.

On Net Zero Energy Building Design Methodology: A Case Study Examining Learning as Measured by Interdisciplinary Knowledge Acquisition

Net zero energy building design methodologies include integrative approaches and numerical tools to provide optimal performance and cost-effective results. Team integration, characterized by knowledge transfer between disciplines, has yet to be quantified for the design processes of these buildings. This article proposes a specific methodology for designing net zero energy buildings, tested through a case study design process conducted in an academic setting at Universidad Centroamericana in El Salvador, with the participation of students and faculty members. Through a survey, interdisciplinary knowledge transfer between team members was measured. We found that, without additional instruction, team participants outperformed a control group without project involvement by 16.4% (P < 0.002, t-test) in terms of interdisciplinary knowledge. This result implies that designers acquire new knowledge from other disciplines by interacting and solving design problems, although such acquisition is not uniform between disciplines. Remarkably, results show that the disciplinary groups that acquired the most knowledge about each other are Mechanical Engineering students and Architecture students. These results help us understand how to improve the design process, limit boundaries for disciplinary interactions, and determine which specific knowledge gaps to target per discipline in engineering and architecture education.

Mapping out the disciplinary variation of syntactic complexity in student academic writing

This study investigated disciplinary variation with respect to syntactic complexity in students' written academic texts from the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus. We measured syntactic complexity using the Tool for Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity and then conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the disciplinary differences across four disciplinary groups and 31 disciplines. The analyses identified statistically significant variation in length, subordination, coordination, phrasal sophistication, and overall sentence complexity among the disciplinary groups as well as disciplines, which was discussed from a form-function mapping perspective. This study also revealed the systematic variation and form-function mappings of syntactic complexity in discipline-specific academic writing in both disciplinary groups and disciplines. Pedagogically, these findings can be incorporated into the curriculum design and class instruction to cultivate students’ discipline-specific academic literacy.

Expert opinions on threats and impacts in the marine environment

We study expert opinions on global, marine threats and potential impacts to the environment and to society, using a survey dataset with more than 1500 respondents. The sample provides a panel of respondents across scientific disciplines, age groups, and institution types. We divide the respondents into two groups based on their main disciplinary background (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics [STEM] and social science and humanities [SSH]). We can thus analyze potential differences in the assessment of marine threats and impacts across disciplines. The two groups largely agree on which threats and impacts are the most important. Further, more or less the same issues are listed as both environmental and societal concerns. These issues include overfishing, climate change (global warming, ocean acidification), pollution (plastics), and habitat damage. We also find interesting differences across the two disciplinary groups, in particular regarding sea level rise, biodiversity loss, and invasive species. Similarities and differences between the disciplinary groups largely hold up when controlling for demographic variables such as age and institution type.

Challenges of Digital Building Data Usage with a Focus on the Digital Documentation of Heritage Buildings—Results from an Online Survey

The AEC industries as well as the heritage sector are facing a number of issues that relate to the management of building digital data. Two of the most prominent ones are the interoperability of data and data longevity. In order to better understand the extent of these issues for the general AEC industry and heritage buildings sectors, an online survey was designed to help quantify them and reveal the opinions of professionals and academics in the field. The online survey highlighted a clear latency in BIM adoption in the heritage sector as only 51% of the heritage participants use BIM in their projects compared to 63% of AEC participants. The reasons for this were further explored in the participants’ comments, as most of the reasons revolved around the issues of BIM data interoperability and longevity, considering the complex and interdisciplinary nature of heritage projects. The survey responses highlighted that data longevity is a crucial challenge for the heritage sector in particular as the need for future re-accessibility of digital data is clear in the results, showing that more than 82% of the heritage participants need to re-access their data in the future. The results also showed the prevalence of BIM interoperability issues and highlighted that the heritage sector is more prone to interoperability issues compared to the general AEC industry as 67% of heritage BIM participants and 50% of AEC BIM participant have faced some issues of BIM interoperability. In total, 72% of the standardised BIM participants agreed that standardised BIM formats could be a promising solution to mitigate the interoperability challenges, while only 57% thought that standardised BIM formats are reliable in their current status. Moreover, the online survey explored the variation in the needs of different disciplinary groups including rates of BIM adoption, use of standardised BIM formats, and needs for access to different heritage buildings data categories. Participants also presented their views on what would be an ideal medium for long-term storage of heritage buildings digital documentation data for future access, with some views being sceptical concerning BIM in its current status. This paper presents the findings of this extensive online survey.

The relationship between L2 motivation and transformative engagement in academic reading among EAP learners: Implications for reading self-regulation.

This study examined the relationship between L2 motivation and engagement in academic reading skill from the lenses of L2 motivational self-system and transformative experience. More specifically, following the transformative experience (TE) framework, we investigated the level of students’ engagement in academic reading skills inside and outside English classes. We also explored what motivational factors act as strong predictors of transformative experience and whether L2 motivation and engagement of students differ across different disciplines. Stratified purposive sampling was followed to recruit 419 undergraduate English for academic purposes (EAP) students studying in different majors. As such, we developed a questionnaire for measuring TE and utilized a pre-established questionnaire to operationalize L2 motivational self-system. We found that L2 motivation significantly covaried with students’ level of engagement in English academic reading skill. Furthermore, the results of multiple regression analysis revealed that L2 learning experience and ideal L2 self were strong predictors of transformative engagement; ought-to L2 self played a marginal role in the occurrence of TE. Discipline-wise, Life Sciences students were considerably more motivated than those in Arts and Humanities. However, no significant difference was observed in the extent of transformative engagement among students across disciplinary groups. Implications for EAP instructors, educational authorities, and material and curricula developers are discussed.

Accreditation of Higher Education Professional Preparation Programs in Visual Impairment

AbstractOver the years, accreditation of higher education personnel preparation programs in the United States has undergone much change (Brittingham, 2009). This phenomenon has been paralleled by a similar process within the disciplines relating to visual impairment. During the past 5 decades, higher education programs preparing practitioners in the field of visual impairment have relied upon the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired (AER) program approval process that was administered by the AER (Wiener & Siffermann, 2010). In an attempt to ensure the quality of personnel preparation programs, practitioners within the disciplinary groups of AER took responsibility for reviewing the content and administration of these programs. These included orientation and mobility, vision rehabilitation therapy, teachers of students with visual impairment, low vision therapy, and recently, assistive technology. In 2018, the AER membership approved an amendment to the AER bylaws that established the AER Accreditation Council (AERAC) and gave it legal and functioning authority as an independent accreditation body (AER, 2021a). The AER program approval process for higher education programs was revised and upgraded to become a full accreditation program under the auspices of the AERAC (AER, n.d.). This article describes the evolution of the accreditation program within the national context, documents the history of accreditation within the field of visual impairment, and explores the relationship between accreditation and certification.

Attitudes and opinions about ecopharmacovigilance from multi-disciplinary perspectives: a cross-sectional survey among academic researchers in China.

As a promising upstream strategy to reduce the environmental loads of pharmaceutical emerging contaminants (PECs) through source control, ecopharmacovigilance (EPV) is concerned with the set of activities to identify, evaluate, understand, and prevent against diverse PEC-related problems, and has been accepted as a multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder system. This cross-sectional observational survey aimed to assess the attitudes and opinions about EPV from multi-disciplinary perspectives among Chinese academic professors from four main EPV-related disciplines including pharmacy, management, clinical medicine, and environmental and ecological science based on a self-developed questionnaire. Forty-two usable survey instruments were acquired. Results showed that the responding Chinese academic researchers from different disciplines expressed consistently positive attitudes and strong intentions for EPV, in spite of several disparities existing among disciplinary groups showing that pharmacy and medical researchers felt more certain of the environmental adverse effects of PECs, and researchers in pharmacy and environmental and ecological science were more interested in EPV. A multi-disciplinary consensus was achieved in regard to the types of key stakeholders in EPV practices including the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the public, the drug safety authority, hospitals, and the environmental protection agency. The main roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder identity in EPV practices were summarized based on the expert opinions.

Documenting development of interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers by visualizing connections

AbstractIn 2015, a multidisciplinary group of academic researchers and extension personnel was awarded a US Department of Agriculture Coordinated Agricultural Project grant. The team’s goal was to understand human decision-making in the context of potential livestock disease outbreaks, investigating the impediments to increased adoption of biosecurity practices by producers from multiple perspectives. Counting publications and presentations was not deemed adequate evidence of growth of interdisciplinary collaboration. Instead, we took a developmental evaluation approach, collecting data to illuminate patterns of interconnectedness across disciplinary boundaries. These data, mapped annually on a baseline framework, reveal the team moving from disciplinary groups with disparate epistemologies and interests to a cohesive interdisciplinary team involved in many unexpected and emergent projects.

Palliative Care Clinical Trials: Building Capability and Capacity.

Clinical trials are a key component of expanding the evidence base in palliative care. A key strategic objective of the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC), a multisite cancer center alliance, was to increase palliative care clinical trial expertise. The palliative care services within the VCCC alliance presented substantial trial development opportunities with large number of patients and established relationships, but few trial-active centers. Objectives: To establish a multi-site "Building Capability in Palliative Care Clinical Trials" program as a service development, and to assess the strategies, activities, and the outcomes resulting from this program. Methods: A series of strategies and activities were developed linked to the key program objectives of increasing the number of clinical sites and skilled clinicians conducting clinical trials, increasing the number of trials available and patients participating, broadening research opportunities in palliative care, and establishing the program sustainability. Results: In the two years of implementation, the program resulted in the establishment and conduct of several Phase 4 postmarketing pharmacovigilance studies, nine Phase 2 and 3 trials across five palliative care services, and a Phase 1 clinical trial. During the program, 150 patients were recruited to clinical trials, and 258 prospective pharmacovigilance monitoring cases were recorded. Five investigator-initiated trials were developed by clinical trial fellows and achieved competitive (n = 3) or commercial (n = 2) funding. Clinicians reported that undertaking clinical trials had increased attention to the evidence base of care provision, and increased service research activity more broadly. Long-term sustainability remains a challenge, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusions: Clinical trials in palliative care services are feasible, acceptable, and result in increased attention to the evidence base of care. The strategies detailing the framework, activities, and outcomes have been collated to facilitate implementation of clinical trials in other sites and with other trial-naive disciplinary groups.

Writing within the disciplines: an exploratory study of writing in graduate pathway programs and the shifting role of the English for Academic Purposes curriculum

ABSTRACT This research explored the nature of writing assignments within disciplinary graduate courses taken by international students while they are in a graduate pathway program. This research also examined how writing tasks in these courses vary across disciplines and looked at how the pathway EAP curriculum supports graduate students’ writing needs. The analysis of 102 syllabi from 89 courses in 12 graduate pathway programs yielded a total of 14 categories of writing assignments. Findings demonstrated that exercises, reports, and course projects/research papers are commonly assigned tasks within physical science pathways such as engineering, whereas critiques and reflections were common in human science pathways such as education. More variations in writing assignments were found in the human science disciplinary group. The analysis of six pathway EAP curricula suggests that graduate pathway students gain vital academic skills that are imperative in academic settings regardless of discipline. However, specialized written tasks that are discipline-specific, in particular to physical sciences, were absent from the EAP curriculum. This study offers implications for the design and revision of pathway EAP.

The Effects of Disciplinary Composition on Virtual Learning Group Process Dynamics: Students’ Perspectives

This research was conducted as a collaborative project between the West University of Timișoara (Romania) and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Norway) to develop a transnational learning activity. The students learned in virtual collaborative study groups; developed project-based teams; shared experiences, skills, and professional competencies; and collaborated directly with their teachers, the researchers, and the labor force. Three virtual learning groups of undergraduate students (N = 131), presenting comparable course descriptors and disciplinary group compositions, participated in the study. This study aimed to determine the effects of disciplinary composition on virtual learning group process dynamics from the students’ perspectives. This study applied a quasi-experimental between-subjects study design: quantitative methods were used to validate a research instrument and to determine statistical differences in the group process dynamic between the three groups; a qualitative method was applied to identify an in-depth understanding of the students’ perception about the group learning experience. By analyzing the group dynamics in the three settings—mono-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, and cross-cultural—the research results show the advantages of each virtual learning composition in the group dynamic and learning outcomes in terms of group skill acquisitions. The conclusions can help teachers design virtual team compositions, a crucial stage in ensuring the achievement of desired learning outcomes.

Reflexiones respecto a modelos y procesos de gestión de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación

The paper presents an analysis of scientific articles related to the models for the management of Science, technology and innovation carried out in Latin America, which has an impact on the Science, Technology and Innovation processes and their results. Seven criteria were established and by means of a comparative table it was possible to assess the main contributions for socioeconomic development is the production of appropriate technologies for I + D and I + D + i. Regardless of identifying the main challenge consisting of achieving particular strategic tools for university management of science, technology and innovation for research centers and institutions, it is concluded that it is necessary to bet more on the prediction of results, effects and impacts both in the I + D projects as well as I + D + i, consolidating strategies according to the actors and the environment. Define in the short, medium and long term the multi and disciplinary groups with joint activities to validate the results of the systems or registry of science indicators.

Interdisciplinary Projects as an Expert-Network

We report an analysis of how an interdisciplinary project bringing together biologists, physicists and engineers worked in practice. The authorship team are the Principle Investigator who led the project, and a social scientist who studied the project as it was conducted by interviewing participants and observing practice. We argue it is accurate and productive to think of the interdisciplinary team as an Expert-Network, which means it was a managed set of relationships between disciplinary groups punctuated by specific junctions at which interdisciplinary exchange of materials, knowledge, and in limited cases, practices, occurred. We stress the role of trust in knowledge exchange, and document how hard sharing knowledge – and especially tacit knowledge - between disciplines can be. Key is the flexible management of the network, as the membership and required skill set change. Our analysis is embedded within, and contributes to, the Sociology of Experience and Expertise (SEE) framework. We close by suggesting advice for others seeking to manage a similar interdisciplinary Expert-Network.

Design and health: An interdisciplinary baseline experience of product design for health needs of the Chilean elderly.

Describing the results of a User-Centered Design workshop using Challenge Based Learning or CBL, where students from Chilean industrial design and health degrees, developed solutions to resolve health problems among the elderly. It was a pre-experimental study; 45 university students took part in a workshop: 39 from Industrial Design, 3 from Speech Therapy, 2 from Medical Technology and 1 from Medicine. In this workshop, the students, using CBL in disciplinary heterogeneous groups, faced a 3-week challenge to develop products to overcome a health problem for an elderly person. Once the product was presented, the professors and students assessed the conceptual proposals, using a semantic differential. The students also evaluated the workshop with a perception survey. Both the students and professors positively evaluated the usefulness and functionality of the conceptual proposals; although, the industrial design students were more critical about these aspects. The originality of proposals evaluated was the worst. Regarding the workshop, all students (100%) felt that instructions were clear as were the three moments of design, with problem definition stage best evaluated. The CBL is shown to be an educational tool that allows training professionals in product design and in developing health technology that is suitable for the users' needs. Regarding the process, heterogeneous make-up of the groups and clear external guide appear as essential for CBL to work well.