Disciplinary Identity Research Articles

Proof and proving in school and university mathematics education research: a systematic review

This systematic review aims to provide a complementary to existing synopses of the state-of-the-art of mathematics education research on proof and proving in both school and university mathematics. As an organizing framework, we used Cohen et al.’s triadic conceptualization of instruction, which draws attention not only to the main actors of the didactical process (i.e., the Teacher and Students) and the Content around which the actors’ work is organized (herein, content related to proof and proving), but also to the relationships among the actors and the content. Out of the 103 papers we reviewed, almost half fell in the Student-Content category, which is consistent with the existence of a substantial number of frameworks, methods, and research findings related to students’ engagement with proof and proving. About a quarter of the papers fell in the Student–Teacher-Content category, which reflects an emphasis on viewing instructional practice in proof and proving in a holistic, systemic way. Only few papers fell in the categories that did not include Content in them, namely, the categories of Student, Teacher, and Student–Teacher; this suggests mathematics education research on proof and proving has a strong disciplinary identity, which potentially differentiates it from other mathematics education research strands. About a fifth of the papers were oriented towards ‘breaking ground’ through making an explicit theoretical and/or methodological contribution (Student–Teacher-Content and Content were the main categories where such contributions appeared), whilst the majority of the papers were focused on ‘building ground’ through elaborating or employing existing methodological and/or theoretical approaches.

Facilitating students as partners: co-researching with undergraduates in Asian university contexts

ABSTRACT Students as partners (SaP) has become an impactful practice in higher education as it enables students to take ownership of their learning and exercise agency. However, the implementation of SaP, particularly in Asia, has encountered many challenges, including concerns about a large power distance between students and teachers. Despite the emerging interests in exploring SaP in several Asian regions, there have been few studies about students’ experiences of partnership throughout a project life cycle. This study explores students’ experiences of SaP in three projects spanning two research-intensive universities in Hong Kong based on the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and positioning theory. Data were collected from exit interviews with student partners, their reflective writings, and their responses to open-ended questions in a post-project survey. Our main contribution is the discovery of multiple contradictions between the project designs and students’ enactment of partnership. Specifically, students’ hesitation in assuming a partner’s role was related to their disciplinary identity, the inquiry methods of the projects, and the pre-determined project specifications. In contrast, the cultural factors, which are largely framed as barriers in the literature, only affected the partnership development at the beginning of the project. Our study implies that future SaP projects need to ensure the alignment between project designs and a partner’s role to facilitate equal and sustainable contributions from students and staff members.

Characterizing faculty motivation to implement three-dimensional learning

The National Research Council’s Framework for K-12 Science Education and the subsequent Next Generation Science Standards have provided a widespread common language for science education reform over the last decade. These efforts have naturally been targeted at the K-12 levels, but we have argued that the three dimensions outlined in these documents—scientific practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts (together termed three-dimensional learning)—are also a productive route for reform in college-level science courses. However, how and why college-level faculty might be motivated to incorporate three-dimensional learning into their courses is not well understood. Here, we report a mixed-methods study of participants in an interdisciplinary professional development program designed to support faculty in developing assessments and instruction aligned with three-dimensional learning. One cohort of faculty (N = 8) was interviewed, and four cohorts of faculty (N = 33) were surveyed. Using expectancy-value theory as an organizational framework, we identified themes of perceived values and costs that participants discussed in implementing three-dimensional learning. Based on a cluster analysis of all survey participants’ motivational profiles, we propose that these themes apply to the broader population of participants in this program. We recommend specific interventions to improve faculty motivation for implementing three-dimensional learning: emphasizing the utility value of three-dimensional learning in effecting positive learning gains for students; drawing connections between the dimensions of three-dimensional learning and faculty’s disciplinary identities; highlighting scientific practices as a key leverage point for faculty ability beliefs; minimizing cognitive dissonance for faculty in understanding the similarities and differences between the three dimensions; focusing on assessment writing as a keystone professional development activity; and aligning local evaluation practices and promotion policies with the 3DL framework.

Circular economy: A new research field?

AbstractAction to pursue the circular economy (CE) transition is burgeoning in the government and the private sector. Does this action signal that CE is a distinct field of research with a unique disciplinary identity? This article argues that CE has reached field status, through its own epistemic communities characterized by increasingly shared methodological perspectives and normative ideals, and through institutionalized knowledge development through research journals and authority structures. The recent growth of CE research points toward more contextualized and nuanced operationalizations of the concept, evidence that the field is approaching a threshold state of maturity. Drawing on observations from academic literature and discussions with researchers and experts, we trace the process by which CE has arrived at the status of a field. The article concludes with reflections on research directions.

Developmental trajectories during doctoral study: identifying heterogeneity in psychosocial factor’s development

ABSTRACT Despite their importance to the research enterprise, doctoral students are an underexamined population in higher education. Several studies have emphasized the importance of psychosocial characteristics in academic success and scholarly identity formation. However, few studies have explored their developmental trajectories across a range of disciplines to give an overall perspective of the scholarly identity formation process and its nuances. We argue that doctoral education is a socialization process that, if successful, helps doctoral students to develop a disciplinary identity. We propose that this identity development process is mediated by how students internalize their socialization experiences. Therefore, we integrate concepts from self-determination and identity development theory into socialization theory. Using a three-year longitudinal sample at a single institution (n = 1264), we identify doctoral students’ developmental trajectories in perceptions of competence, autonomy, relatedness, knowledge, and recognition. We identify six different developmental groups according to baseline levels and developmental trajectories during the first two years of doctoral studies. Further, we find that sex, family income background, and anticipatory socialization experiences are associated with membership in these groups. Lastly, we observe that these trajectories are associated with socialization outcomes. Findings highlight a non-monolithic socialization process that calls for a systematic approach to measure these psychosocial characteristics over time. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Construction and enactment of interdisciplinarity: A grounded theory case study in Liberal Arts and Sciences education

This article explores how interdisciplinarity is constructed and enacted in a Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) educational environment, when self-tailored personal academic development is intertwined with collaborative group work involving various disciplinary input. A case study taking a grounded theory approach analyzed how interdisciplinarity emerged from collaborative groupwork dynamics in which students' academic identities manifest and interact. Academic identity in LAS contexts is complex: Individuals' disciplinary identities intersect with a generic program-bound identity shared by all students. Disciplinary identity was not only unique for each student, but also showed diverse configurations among the LAS population, as revealed in three disciplinary profiles: disciplinary specialists, topic experts, and identity explorers. Interdisciplinarity, accordingly, has different meanings and entails different journeys of academic growth. The interplay between and among the intersectional academic identities constitutes different groupwork dynamics and leads to different learning experiences. Comparing three patterns of groupwork experience—non-disciplinary, monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary—the article argues for two key concepts crucial for experiencing interdisciplinarity: disciplinary enablement and disciplinary transaction. To make sense of interdisciplinarity in LAS contexts, the article further looks into tensions perceived by students regarding specific groupwork as well as long-term academic development. The tensions reflect two dimensions of knowledge and knowledge work that both LAS students and LAS education in general need to reconcile, namely, specification and specialization versus generalization and integration.

From “Carrier” to “Creator”: The re-construction of national identity in more inclusive terms

ABSTRACT Background The sociocultural turn redefined learning in terms of shifting identities. In recent years, learning scientists have explored the connections between learning and various types of identities, including disciplinary identity, gender, race, and more. In this article we focus on national identity, to understand how it is constructed and how it might be made more inclusive through learning. Methods Drawing on sociolinguistics and discourse analysis methods, we present a telling case study aimed at elucidating previously obscure theoretical relations by providing a rich and detailed account of a single student whose national identity shifted over the course of a school year. Findings Our analysis shows how Joshua, a 9th grade secular Jewish-Israeli student, constructed his national identity. Joshua’s identity developed across three stages, which were marked by a shift from an essentialist disposition to a constructionist one and by an increasing sense of belonging. Contribution We highlight a connection between learners’ views on the continuum between essentialism and constructionism and their degree of belongingness. Our findings suggest that a constructionist approach to identity can translate into a greater sense of belonging and help ameliorate some cases of social marginalization.

A Reflection on Post-Graduate Supervision Practice: Towards a Deeper Understanding of Effective Student Engagement

There can be no debate about the central role of postgraduate studies in the enterprise of the research university. Reflecting on the past and the future of higher education, it is clear that the economic foundations of nations are built on their ability to create new knowledge through research and, in turn, transform the same into innovations and resultant societal impact. In this regard, postgraduate supervision is integral to the foundation of national knowledge creation. The PhD degree is regarded as the capstone entry point for researchers to formally enter the scientific enterprise and the world of academia. However, research shows that many academics undertake the role of postgraduate supervision without any formal training or orientation to the task at hand. This paper reviews the literature in relation to the challenges in higher education with respect to postgraduate supervision. Using a personal reflective lens, the paper highlights the relevance of understanding the locus of disciplinary identity during supervision; the need to embrace plurality in terms of modes of supervision; the importance of knowing the boundaries of power, and how to evade the creation of supervisor dominant relationships; and lastly, that simple pragmatic tools can aid and address what is often perceived by the student to be a terrain of extreme complexity.

Exploring the boundaries in an interdisciplinary context through the Family Resemblance Approach: The Dialogue Between Physics and Mathematics

Among the relevant aspects of the family resemblance approach (FRA), our study focuses on the potential of the approach to elaborate on disciplinary identities in an interdisciplinary context, specifically regarding the interplay between physics and mathematics. We present and discuss how the FRA wheel can be used and intertwined with the framework of boundary objects and boundary crossing mechanisms (Akkerman & Bakker, Review of Educational Research, 81, 132–169, 2011), which is well-known in STEM education for dealing with interdisciplinarity. The role of the FRA discussed in the article is dual: both practical and theoretical. It is practical in that we show how its use, in combination with the Akkerman and Bakker framework, appears effective in fostering productive discussions among prospective teachers on disciplinary identities and interdisciplinarity in historical cases. It is theoretical in that the combination of the two frameworks provides the vocabulary to characterise the ‘ambiguous nature’ of interdisciplinarity: like boundaries, interdisciplinarity both separates disciplines, making their identities emerge, and connects them, fostering mechanisms of crossing and transgressing the boundaries. This empirical study reveals how the theoretical elaboration took advantage of the prospective teachers’ contributions. We initially presented the FRA to characterise disciplinary identities, but the prospective teachers highlighted its potential to characterise also the boundary zone and the dialogue between physics and mathematics. The data analysis showed that the combinination of the two frameworks shaped a complex learning space where there was room for very different epistemic demands of the prospective teachers: from those who feel better within the identity cores of the disciplines, to those who like to inhabit the boundary zone and others who like to re-shape boundary spaces and move dynamically across them.

Endorsement of gender stereotypes affects high school students’ science identity

We investigated how the endorsement of gender stereotypes affects disciplinary identity across three different science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) areas: physics, biology, and chemistry, and whether such relationship is mediated by self-concept constructs, such as self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Building on the ambivalent sexism theory and masculine ideology paradigm, we focused on gender stereotypes based on hostile and benevolent sexism and on male role norms. A sample of 1406 Italian high school students (girls=742) was involved in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. Results show that the adherence to male role norms and the rejection of hostile sexism have a significant effect on the development of a disciplinary identity in the three targeted STEM domains. However, such an effect is fully mediated by self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Moreover, the identity in the three addressed STEM domains is differently affected by the endorsement of stereotypes, with physics and biology being more largely affected than chemistry. More importantly, the endorsement of hostile sexism stereotypes significantly decreases the perceived self-efficacy, while higher levels of perceived academic control are predicted by higher levels of endorsement of male role norms, for both girls and boys. Our findings suggest that to reduce the perception of femininity as incongruent with STEM identification, it would be necessary to deconstruct the masculine view of self-efficacy and academic control.Received 15 September 2022Accepted 12 January 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.010120Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasDiversity & inclusionEpistemology, attitudes, & beliefsProfessional TopicsK-12 studentsPhysics Education Research

Cutting knots ‘together–apart’: threads of Western and Southern European history of education research

ABSTRACT This article presents a state of the art of the history of education in Western and Southern Europe by ‘cutting together–apart’ (Barad) ‘knotting-s’ (Ingold), in terms of both discipline formation and historiography across and beyond countries in these regions. It (dis)entangles national and regional particularities in terms of approaches, themes and constraints, and contributions to thriving international networks in the history of education. It sketches local trends and developments of the last 30 years and situates these within their differently evolving national and/or language-based disciplinary and institutional landscapes. Its snapshots of the history of education across the Benelux, Germany and Germanophone regions, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy and France highlight the contribution and interaction of national/linguistic intellectual traditions, institutional nodes of activity, (inter)disciplinary identities, methods and approaches, and vibrant scholarly communities.

“It Was Really All About Books:” Speech-like Techno-Masculinity in the Rhetoric of Dot-Com Era Web Design Books

The future of Human-computer interaction (HCI) communication requires researchers to develop a strong understanding of the factors that influence design practitioners. As a step towards building that understanding, based on interviews conducted with veteran web designers, we analyze a corpus of popular web design books published during and shortly after the dot-com boom. Using a combination of ethnographic methods and discourse analysis, we identify the rhetorical strategies in these books and why they were successful in shaping our participants’ ideas about web design. We find that the books exhibit a particular style of technical writing defined by a speech-like techno-masculinity . Despite their short shelf-lives, the books and their writing style contributed to the disciplinary identity of web design which exists today. Studying the history of best practice books is an important opportunity to reflect on the genre of best practices in design, and how we should frame them in the future.

Resistance from the margin: An autoethnographic account of academic ableism

AbstractAbleism—which refers to a socially‐sanctioned preference for normative bodies and minds, and which presumes one's abilities—is prevalent in any social system, including academia. However, despite an evolving disciplinary identity that seeks to improve work systems by addressing critical social issues, human resource development (HRD) as a field has done little to understand or advocate for the experiences of academics with disabilities. To challenge directly prevailing ableist assumptions and practices in academia, the present autoethnographic study was undertaken to reflect upon and detail my own experience of becoming an academic with a disability, specifically in the field of HRD. The story presented in this article presents evidence of unique challenges and opportunities facing an academic with a disability and seeks to stimulate meaningful dialogue around how to create a welcoming and inclusive academic culture for all. This article also advances autoethnography as a viable research methodology that allows for the authentic voices of members from marginalized communities and mobilizes change.

Uncovering the structures of privacy research using bibliometric network analysis and topic modelling

PurposeThis paper aims that privacy research is divided in distinct communities and rarely considered as a singular field, harming its disciplinary identity. The authors collected 119.810 publications and over 3 million references to perform a bibliometric domain analysis as a quantitative approach to uncover the structures within the privacy research field.Design/methodology/approachThe bibliometric domain analysis consists of a combined directed network and topic model of published privacy research. The network contains 83,159 publications and 462,633 internal references. A Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic model from the same dataset offers an additional lens on structure by classifying each publication on 36 topics with the network data. The combined outcomes of these methods are used to investigate the structural position and topical make-up of the privacy research communities.FindingsThe authors identified the research communities as well as categorised their structural positioning. Four communities form the core of privacy research: individual privacy and law, cloud computing, location data and privacy-preserving data publishing. The latter is a macro-community of data mining, anonymity metrics and differential privacy. Surrounding the core are applied communities. Further removed are communities with little influence, most notably the medical communities that make up 14.4% of the network. The topic model shows system design as a potentially latent community. Noteworthy is the absence of a centralised body of knowledge on organisational privacy management.Originality/valueThis is the first in-depth, quantitative mapping study of all privacy research.

The Disciplinary Identity of International Criminal Law: Balancing Between Positivism and Multidisciplinarity

This essay discusses how the character and nature of international criminal law influence the way it is studied. By providing a historical review of its intellectual origins, it shows why international criminal law’s disciplinary identity remains under the influence of positivistic principles. In going beyond international criminal law, this essay also critically discusses why some hold a multidisciplinary analysis of international law in contempt and exposes the challenges of placing legal scholarship in distinct categories by labelling legal academics as positivists, doctrinalists, practice-oriented, policy-driven, or as multidisciplinarians. This piece will describe how international criminal law is being studied, how scholarship developed, and whether the value of the research lies in its relevance for the practice before international criminal courts. In discussing the pitfalls of pure doctrinal or multidisciplinary research, it weaves together theoretical considerations beyond the traditional positivistic paradigm with a plea to study international criminal law under different sensibilities and disciplinary protocols.

Where is ‘the political’ in the journal Political Communication? On the hegemonic articulation of a disciplinary identity

ABSTRACT Critical scholars have long critiqued the circumscribed theoretical boundaries of political communication research in its dominant disciplinary identity. This identity is usually attributed to the hegemonic authority of a functionalist paradigm of political communication anchored in the use of positivist epistemologies and quantitative methods. This article revisits these old debates from a post-foundational discourse theoretical perspective, drawing on arguments about the ontological implications of ‘the political’ to examine political communication’s hegemonic disciplinary form. The primarily theoretical argument is supported by an elementary empirical method that examines how the signifiers ‘ontology’ and ‘the political,’ and theorists associated with that vocabulary, are cited in a 24-year archive of articles from the journal Political Communication which we frame as a proxy for the dominant disciplinary identity. We argue that the relative invisibility of an otherwise influential political ontology literature in the journal supports our argument about the lack of theoretical pluralism in political communication research and suggests the enduring authority of a dominant disciplinary habitus that, even when it recognizes paradigmatic differences, sees methodological virtue as the guarantee of scholarly rigour. We end by reflecting on the politics of how different (inter)disciplinary identities are articulated in communication studies.

Lessons Learned from the Development of Turkish IR: A View from Greece

The essay addresses an outsider's perception of the characteristics and dynamics of the IR field/discipline in Turkey. How may this country serve as a role model or, at the very least, as a source of inspiration, reflection, or evaluation of the field's development in other local/national settings? In this respect, Greece is chosen as a case study. Βy addressing and assessing Turkish self-reflection and the search for disciplinary identity within Turkish IR scholarship, what can be learned, on behalf of Greek IR scholarship, regarding both Greece's and Turkey's social scientific development regarding foreign affairs/policy? A major theme discovered is the acknowledgement of the limitations of the dependency/ vulnerability-centered explanations for the development of IR.

Public policy education in Asia: convergence and divergence

ABSTRACT Asia’s global rise highlights a host of policy opportunities and challenges. Historically, the region’s developmentalist governments were single-minded of purpose, aiming principally for rapid economic growth. As growth stabilized and economies matured, a variety of other concerns – environmental, social, and political, among others – began to warrant policy intervention. Public administrators in Asia now operate in a setting of increasing complexity amidst an array of conflicting policy mandates. Accordingly, policy education and training are as crucial to Asia’s continued rise as they were in the early stages of emergence decades ago. This article and the special issue it introduces address several key elements characterizing the rise of policy education in Asia, including how policy educational practices have converged and diverged, how they have responded to situational mandates, and how they are now asserting a unique disciplinary identity.

Influence of the implementation of strengths-based nursing and healthcare on early childhood nurses’ competencies: a mixed-method study

BackgroundThe scope of practice for nurses caring for families has evolved to meet the challenges presented by societal changes and increasing needs. In 2015, early childhood nurses from a Swiss region decided to implement a new model of care to guide their practice. The aim of this study was to explore the changes to early childhood nurses’ practices following the implementation of the strengths-based nursing and healthcare (SBNH) approach to care.MethodsThis study of early childhood nurses’ (N = 61) practices used a pre-post intervention design and a mixed-method approach. Nurses’ competencies and changes in practice were measured using the Nurse Competence Scale (NCS). The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Kruskal Wallis tests and logistic regression. Thematic analysis was used to derive themes from the qualitative data.ResultsAfter the intervention, frequency of competency use increased in all domains of the NCS except the “teaching-coaching” domain; perceived levels of competencies also increased in all areas except “helping role” and “diagnostic functions”. Age and length of employment at the current post hindered improvement in the “teaching-coaching” competency. Interviews revealed themes related to the implementation process: “adaptability”, “implementation process”, “ambivalence” and “engagement to change”. Other themes were related to practice changes: “developing a disciplinary identity”, “path with families” and “strengths”.ConclusionThis study showed that the use of perceived competencies changed over time after the introduction of SBNH into practice. Nurses questioned and adapted their routines based on SBNH. Nurse’s vision of care also changed; they felt that their care was congruent with their values. For families, this approach allowed a change of vision with a resource-centred approach. Implementation of models of care such as the SBNH in the early childhood context is innovative, as little research in the literature addresses the early childhood community home-visiting context is still modest. This research underlines the added value of this approach on early childhood nurses’ competencies.

The ‘question of possibilities’ as a leitmotif for re‐imagining law for the ‘Anthropocene’

AbstractThe Anthropocene thesis, albeit not an unproblematic starting point, foregrounds the inadequacy of tacitly reproduced assumptions, theoretical dispositions, and conceptual repertoires which have supported a critical mass of legal thinking and praxis. Acknowledging the disruptive effects of the ‘Anthropocene’ for law, my aim in this article is to make explicit that re‐imagining law for the Anthropocene requires letting go of dominant ways of thinking and doing law, while enabling more adequate conceptions and modes of engagement to take hold. I suggest that the process of re‐imagining law for the Anthropocene requires navigating a space of continuity and break that demands the legal discipline to confront questions about disciplinary identity and responsibility. Reflecting on what the process of re‐imagining law might entail and how it could unfold, I propose the ‘question of possibilities’ as a leitmotif and ask: What could law become? In so doing, I map out concrete strategies and commitments which might inspire and encourage engagement with this question. These include: a practice of radical self‐reflection, the cultivation of a generative outlook, the acknowledgement of legal multiplicity, and a persistent commitment to meaningful change.