Disciplinary Lenses Research Articles

Building an Engaged Himalayan Sustainability Science

The Himalayan region is facing a new crisis under climate change, rapid economic transformation, and escalating geopolitical tensions. A large body of Himalayan sciences has endeavored to understand this challenge but has failed to engage meaningfully with the local people and policymakers. I argue for a new engaged Himalayan sustainability science that not only understands and interprets the emerging challenges but also strengthens societal capability.

Caring for refugees: Training the health workforce towards structural competence and responsibility

Abstract Background Providing high-quality health care to superdiverse populations of newly arrived refugees poses specific structural, organisational, communicative, ethical and medical challenges that medical students in Europe are often not systematically prepared for. We created a clinical elective, to enable future doctors to identify and address the needs of refugee-patients and deliver high quality care to this population. Objectives We provided medical, structural, administrative, communicative and socio-cultural knowledge and skills training through seminars (24 h) and field placements (2 days) in a reception centre clinic for refugees. The training aimed at stimulating a systematic professional, personal, scientific, and political reflection, to foster social accountability, and raise awareness for the special situation of vulnerable groups. The didactic concept built on multidisciplinary lectures, student centred teaching, and research-oriented learning. Mainly qualitative summative and formative evaluations were applied to improve the course and examine training outcomes. Results A total of 112 students completed the elective over four terms, 50 evaluated it, of which 80% considered it worthwhile. Self-reported competencies in caring for refugee patients were low at the beginning and increased after course completion. The most important learning outcomes were knowledge of the asylum-law, gaining a multi-perspective view through multiple disciplinary lenses as well as professional, ethical, interpersonal and political insights during practical experience and reflection. Conclusions A multidisciplinary course that combines theory, practice and reflection, can prepare students for the complex challenges medical professionals face in caring for refugees. This could help strengthen their professional role as advocates of health equity. Our innovative didactical approach, course and evaluation concept can inspire the creation and implementation of similar courses elsewhere. Key messages The health workforce needs training to identify, address and help compensate respective barriers to health care and foster equal opportunities to health for refugees. A multidisciplinary teaching concept, tailored to specific target groups can help make future doctors and nurses in Europe fit for their responsibility and work in plural and ever changing societies.

Overlapping Opportunities for Social-Emotional and Literacy Learning in Elementary-Grade Project-Based Instruction

Project-based learning (PBL) approaches seek to challenge the grammar of schooling by providing opportunities for students to (a) explore meaningful questions using multiple disciplinary lenses; (b...

Broadening our Sight by Expanding our Horizons: The Future of Intercultural Competence Research

Researchers have been studying the effectiveness of people working across borders for decades, through many different disciplinary lenses. In management research, knowledge about Intercultural Competence (ICC) has developed mainly by theorizing about and studying a narrow set of cross-boundary interactions: professionals working outside their home country. Increasingly, individuals work in new countries for reasons other than professional expatriation and they work across cultural boundaries even without working internationally. Simultaneously, individuals themselves are becoming increasingly multicultural. These conditions have arisen in tandem with the challenges and opportunities facing the world today, from technological advances and interconnectedness to social inequity and fragmentation. This symposium confronts our assumptions about the context of ICC research, linking it more closely to Diversity and Inclusion research and research on multicultural societies. It encourages us to expand our horizons both to enrich the field and increase our positive impact.

4453 Public Health Ethics: Utilizing open education methods to foster interprofessional learning and practices

4453 Public Health Ethics: Utilizing open education methods to foster interprofessional learning and practices

Jurilinguistics: Ways Forward Beyond Law, Translation, and Discourse

This is the guest editors’ introductory paper to the special issue “Situating jurilinguistics across cultures using translation and discourse approaches.” The introduction showcases the interdisciplinary vocation of jurilinguistics from its conception almost forty years ago. It is argued that jurilinguistics has achieved its current maturity by diversifying the disciplinary lenses of the originally contributing disciplines of legal translation and legal studies while keeping faithful to its original principles—facing practical problems with a rigorous outlook, venturing into any new domains that may prove enlightening, and combining professional and academic perspectives. The authors highlight how the series of conferences “Jurilinguistics: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Language and Law” have been instrumental in enhancing the scope of jurilinguistics. Finally, the articles gathered in this special issue are presented and their contributions in advancing the knowledge available for practitioners and scholars meeting at the interface between law and language are underscored.

Open Chests and Broken Hearts

Beyond the general idea of benefiting society and placating the divine, the polyvalent symbols and meanings of ancient religious sacrifices can be interpreted properly only after combining different disciplinary lenses. In this paper, we systematically scrutinize iconographic and ethnohistorical testimonies together with new skeletal and forensic evidence from across the Mesoamerican landscape in order to survey Mesoamerican heart sacrifices. Here we focus on three different heart-extraction procedures, two of which are characterized for the first time. Each reconstructed method (i.e., from below the chest cavity, between two left ribs, and through the sternal bone) provides novel cues regarding the array of ceremonial devices and native concepts of the human body as a cosmic model. Its partitioning and the liberation of vitalizing matter (namely, the heart and blood) fed specific sacred forces during divine cult and mythic reenactment. As for the Aztecs, we conclude that different trunk-opening procedures were practiced as part of ritual sequences that in each case enabled access to the Cosmic Sacred Mountain with its vivifying essences. In this context, native conceptions surrounding the distinctive heart-extraction techniques pose new proxies for analogous sacrificial practices in other parts of the world still awaiting systematic scrutiny.

A critical examination of school-based recess: what do the children think?

ABSTRACT Over the past decade, much attention has been paid to school-based recess and the implications of recess on child development. Large and influential groups such as the American Academy of Paediatrics (2012), the Centers for Disease Control (2017), and SHAPE America (2017) have cited recess as a crucial component to the school day, noting the potential cognitive, academic, social, emotional, and physical benefits. Although recess has been conceptualised as a means to achieve academic and health goals, children often do not share these same objectives, viewing recess as a place of fun and social interaction. Thus, a need exists to examine the potential incongruence between adult (i.e. public health researchers and practitioners) and child perspectives on recess and recess interventions. The purpose of this study was to explore and critically analyse what is known regarding children’s perspectives of school-based recess. A qualitative meta-study was conducted and 26 research manuscripts were identified and critically analysed through a systematic search and meta-study process. Specifically, meta-theory, meta-method, meta-analysis, and meta-synthesis analyses were conducted. Results of our review suggest that theory and disciplinary lenses have guided the nature of findings at environmental, institutional, social, and individual levels of recess experiences. Moreover, gender conformity, power hierarchies, and bullying, are social factors that influence access to resources, as well as engagement during recess. These findings point to a growing need to better understand the social dynamics that take place during breaktimes in schools.

Genesis of accountability and its impact on accounting

Purpose: This study examines the genesis of accountability: a global view. The concept of accountability has been viewed from various disciplinary lenses in order to develop an integrated understanding of the term. Special attention is devoted to principal—agent perspectives from political science and economics.
 Research methodology: An integrated framework is developed, based on four central observations. (1) Accountability is relational in nature and is constructed through inter- and intra-organizational relationships. (2) Accountability is complicated by the dual role of nonprofits as both principals and agents in their relationships with other actors. (3) Characteristics of accountability necessarily vary with the type of nonprofit organization being examined. (4) Accountability operates through external as well as internal processes, such that an emphasis on external oversight and control misses other dimensions of accountability essential to nonprofit organizations.
 Results: The study finds that the time has come for individuals, organizations, stakeholders, establishments, institutions and governments to focus on reporting on their programme results, such as inventory take result and product performance result.
 Limitation: Paucity of data and empirical works were the major restrictions to this study.
 Contribution: Thus, being clear about intentions, measuring and understanding results, and making adjustments where necessary, would help assure taxpayers/stakeholders that their money is being spent wisely. A focus on results would also help to ensure that limited public resources are being applied in a way that provides the most value to all concerned.
 Keywords: Accountability, Genesis, Performance, Responsibility, Types, Assessment, Global

Fair Value of Biological Assets: An Interdisciplinary Methodological Proposal

Abstract Given the complexity of measuring the fair value of agricultural biological assets, which generally do not have an active market and are dependent on climatic, environmental and biological factors, there is a need for an interdisciplinary view that considers inputs other than economic and accounting. In this sense, the present theoretical essay aims to propose an interdisciplinary methodology to measure the fair value of agricultural biological assets considering also the agronomic factors. As a method, a bibliographic research of an exploratory-descriptive nature was adopted. To support the interdisciplinary methodological proposal, a theoretical framework was developed using the disciplinary lenses of accounting, economics and agronomy, with a focus on agrometeorological modeling. In addition to the methodological proposition, an application was made in the sugarcane sector to demonstrate the behavior and range of the variables. The main contribution of this study is the proposition of an innovative measurement methodology, which considers the agronomic aspects in accounting measurement, which can result in an improvement in the quality of the information, mainly as regards reliability. JEL Code: O32, Q16, C18.

Collaborative tourism-making: an interdisciplinary review of co-creation and a future research agenda

ABSTRACTFor some time, tourism researchers have sought to examine and theorise types of collaborative exchange and the characteristics of relational work in tourism. Different ontological and epistemological framings, and associated language games have contributed to a fragmented body of knowledge. In this paper, we argue that the new term ‘co-creation’ is part of this language game, and efforts to date have not linked co-creation to the broader and deeper currents of theory building that have come before. We thus place co-creation within its wider context by, firstly, building a meta-narrative review of the literature that draws together a number of disparate disciplinary-inspired lines of thinking, and secondly, by identifying and extending key concepts of co-creation and its logics to tourism. We trace seven threads of scholarship that demonstrate the ideas and values associated with co-creation have diverse historical roots. Using a meta-narrative approach, we unpack the characteristics of co-creation from different disciplinary lenses, directing attention to issues beyond service-dominant logic approaches towards wider issues of participation, inclusion, power, responsibility, and value. In the process, we contribute to a new and fresh appreciation of value co-creation in tourism literature, along with a nine-point agenda that suggest directions for future research and practice.

Utilizing the focused conversation method in qualitative public health research: a team-based approach

BackgroundQualitative research studies are becoming increasingly necessary to understand the complex challenges in the healthcare setting. Successfully integrating interdisciplinary teams of investigators can be challenging, as investigators inherently view data through their disciplinary lens. Thus, new methods, such as focused conservation, are needed to facilitate qualitative data analysis by interdisciplinary teams. The purpose of this manuscript is to provide a clear description of how we implemented the focused conversation method to facilitate an organized data-driven discussion that responded to our study objectives and ensured participation of our interdisciplinary team. The focused conversation method has not, to our knowledge, been utilized for this purpose to date.MethodsTo better understand the experience of healthcare personnel (HCP) during preparations for the 2014–2015 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak, we interviewed HCP who participated in decision making about EVD preparations and training of workers in the use of enhanced personal protective equipment ensembles in the metropolitan Chicagoland area of Illinois to attain a priori research objectives. We identified a systematic method – the focused conversation method – that enabled our interdisciplinary team to interactively contribute to the framing, analysis and interpretation of the data that would enable us to focus on our research objectives.ResultsThe focused conversation developed to support our a priori research objective about the training of HCP in preparations included objective, reflective, interpretive and decisional questions. These questions grounded the conversation in the data, while leveraging discipline-specific lenses and professional experience in the analysis and interpretation. Insights from the conversation were reviewed later against interview transcripts to ensure validity. The conversation identified areas for future research directions and deficiencies in the interview instrument.ConclusionsThe focused conversation is an efficient, organized method for analysis of qualitative data by an interdisciplinary team.

Dowling, S.,Pontin, D. and Boyer, K. (eds). Social Experiences of Breastfeeding: Building bridges between research, policy and practice. Bristol: Policy Press. 2018. 280pp. £60.00 (hbk) ISBN: 978‐1447338499.

Dowling, S.,Pontin, D. and Boyer, K. (eds). Social Experiences of Breastfeeding: Building bridges between research, policy and practice. Bristol: Policy Press. 2018. 280pp. £60.00 (hbk) ISBN: 978‐1447338499.

How do teachers use comics to promote engagement, equity, and diversity in science classrooms?

Equitable learning opportunities are critical to the goals of science education. However, major curriculum standards are vague on how to achieve equity goals, and educators must often develop their own resources and strategies to achieve equity goals. This study examines how educators used a comic book series designed to interest youth in virology as a way to make science more broadly appealing to their diverse students. We begin with the notion of Pedagogical Design Capacity, which describes a dynamic relationship between teachers and their tools, and the ability for teachers to perceive and leverage affordances of artifacts as tools in their curriculum design. In a qualitative analysis of 18 interviews with educators, survey responses, instructional artifacts, and classroom observations, we describe the potential that educators saw in the comics, and the strategies they used to take advantage of that potential to promote equitable science teaching. Notably, we observed how the comics enabled educators to incorporate multiple literacies and disciplinary lenses into their lessons, expanding traditional views of science literacy. We documented the range of techniques by which they used comics and fictional narratives to support specific scientific practices, such as modeling. We also observed challenges that participants encountered in using comics, which included combatting their own and their students' attitudes and beliefs regarding the role of informal reading materials in science education. By investigating how resourceful science educators use comic books, this study helps to inform both researchers and educators on how innovative curriculum materials can broaden and diversify participation in science. Findings have implications for the design of similar curriculum materials, instructional approaches, as well as professional development to support equitable science teaching.

Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying: A Psycho-Social-Organizational Approach by Darla J. Twale

Reviewed by: Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying: A Psycho-Social-Organizational Approach by Darla J. Twale Kristin LaRiviere Darla J. Twale. Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying: A Psycho-Social-Organizational Approach. New York: Routledge, 2018. 248 pp. Paperback: $47.95. ISBN 978–1–138–74406–6 With an increasing focus on incivility in the American workplace, attention has turned to the issue of bullying. In her latest work, Understanding and Preventing Faculty-on-Faculty Bullying, Twale unravels bullying in the ivory tower from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Focusing on how "bullying is a voluntary deviant behavior that is deliberate and systematic and departs from standard workplace norms" (p. 8), Twale draws from psychological, sociological, and organizational lenses to develop a critical assessment of faculty interactions. Using examples that impact faculty at all levels and appointments, Twale demonstrates how daily interactions and institutional culture can create a hostile work environment. Divided into four sections, Twale's work systematically unpacks bullying in the academy, as well as provides research-based evidence on how institutions can reduce and resolve instances of faculty bullying. The volume starts with an overview of bullying in the workplace, then shifts to analyzing bullying in the academy from disciplinary lenses. Each perspective of bullying—psychological, sociological, and organizational—garners its own chapter. From each perspective, the antecedents and effects of faculty bullying are analyzed with a variety of disciplinary-based theories, models, and frameworks. Mirroring the previous section, the third section provides readers dense yet succinct chapters on how to "recover, resolve, and restore" a civil academic work environment from each lens. The volume concludes with recommendations for future research, along with academic and practical resources for addressing and mediating bullying in the workplace. This book serves as a useful guidebook to those in managerial roles in the academy and those looking for scholarship on cause and effect of bullying in academia. Charts about antecedents and effects of bullying and depictions of theory are extremely useful for those with minimal time for a comprehensive reading. The book's organization makes it extremely valuable for anyone dealing with or seeking to address faculty incivility. Throughout the book, three main themes emerge. First, the decreasing number of tenure-track faculty and increasing number of professional and adjunct faculty are creating an environment ripe for hostility. As departmental dynamics shift from traditional tenure-based hierarchies, both older and younger faculty have to re-negotiate their presence in the department, which may directly impact not only careers, but personal well-being as well. Senior faculty may feel threatened by junior faculty members joining departments. Non-tenured faculty may also bully new or adjunct faculty to gain a sense of power within the department. The increasing emphasis on research also creates bullying opportunities in the professoriate. Junior tenure-track faculty are especially vulnerable to being bullied, as they are trying to conduct research that will result in successful tenure review. "Tenure, autonomy, academic freedom, and a self-oriented profession contribute to an academic culture that can inculcate collegiality," acknowledges Twale, "as easily as it can inculcate competition, cynicism, blatant disregard, and disrespect" (p. 97). New faculty pursuing research agendas that do not align with departmental or institutional goals may receive harsh feedback, little support, and feel disconnected, which in turn affects personal motivation toward goals. Finally, insecurity about resources impacts civility in the academic profession. In the book, Twale uses the example of how a department that is downsizing can be ripe for bullying. "With the focus shifting to possible retrenchment, exigency, or declining enrollment, chairs/deans have less time [End Page E-13] to address incivility and bullying in their midst" (p. 95). Connecting with the chapter on social interactions, more faculty must "jockey for position" among peers to stand out and receive resources (p. 74). Anxiety about job security and performance can lead to faculty bullying behaviors, whether faculty play the role of recipient or perpetrator. Twale's work is especially strong in helping readers understand the importance of socialization to developing a culture of civility. From graduate students to junior faculty, current studies explore socialization in the context of career development (Gibbs & Griffin, 2013; Rhoades, Kiyama...

Introduction

Through a variety of disciplinary lenses, this innovative forum, coedited with Victoria Thompson, investigates a particular cultural space and time, namely the emergence of proto–roller coasters known as montagnes russes or “Russian mountains” in Paris in 1817. Peggy Davis, Sun-Young Park, and Christine Haynes depict the early years of the Restoration (1814/1815–1830) as a liminal moment in the emergence of modernity. Although this forum began as a panel at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies, the authors have extended and improved their pieces significantly. Taken together, they show that as foreigners flocked to Paris and the French adjusted to diminished circumstances in the aftermath of Napoleon’s second defeat, identities were in flux. This forum explores how and why the montagnes russes became such a cultural phenomenon and suggests their role in forging a new French identity in the wake of war and revolution.

Higher Education for Professional and Civic Values: A Critical Review and Analysis

Education for sustainable development (ESD) is generally thought to involve some degree of education for particular professional and civic values, attitudes and behaviours (leading to, as examples, being environmentally, socially and culturally responsible); although it is notable that the application of ESD in higher education is contested. This conceptual article analyses literature that describes how higher education addresses professional and civic values, mindfully or unintentionally, in an attempt to provide clarity to the arguments involved in this contestation. The article uses three disciplinary lenses (education, psychology and professional education) in the context of four educational paradigms (experiential learning; role modelling; assessment/evaluation; critical thinking) to explore the theoretical and practical bases of values-education. Our conceptual analysis confirms that values are: of great interest to higher education; a significant focus within experiential learning and in the context of role modelling; but challenging to define and even more so to assess or to evaluate the attainment of. Our three disciplinary lenses also lead us to conclude that encouraging students to develop a disposition to explore their world critically is a form of values-education; and that this may be the only truly legitimate form of values-education open to higher education.

Designing for Interdisciplinarity in Higher Education: Considerations for Instructional Designers

Embedding interdisciplinarity into a higher educational curriculum allows students to develop competence in synthesizing and applying knowledge and skills from across multiple disciplines to address problems and find solutions that would not be possible if only a single disciplinary lens is used. This review of the literature focused on reviewing the state of interdisciplinarity, benefits and challenges of introducing interdisciplinary curriculum into a higher education environment, as well as strategies and models that could be used in designing an interdisciplinary curriculum. It provides a platform for instructional and curriculum designers for integration of interdisciplinary approaches into a curriculum design.

Engaging new Antarctic learners and ambassadors through flexible learning, open education and immersive video lectures

AbstractIn April 2017, Victoria University of Wellington launched ICE101X—Antarctica: From Geology to Human History—on the global edX platform. This Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC, attracted 5735 learners from around the world, who engaged with content about Antarctic science, history, geology, and culture, primarily through video lectures filmed in Antarctica. Analysis of feedback from learners in three iterations of the course, offered between 2015 and 2017 and culminating in ICE101X, revealed that learners enjoyed the immersive Antarctic field lectures and learning through a diverse set of disciplinary lenses, had some preconceptions about Antarctica that were challenged by the course content, and completed the course with a new sense of interest in and protection of Antarctica.

A sociomaterial inquiry into the clinical teaching workplace

PurposeThis paper aims to trace the relational and material ways in which workplace teams come together (or fail to) in the provision of patient care.Design/methodology/approachSix interprofessional scholars brought their unique theoretical and disciplinary lenses to understand the contextualized experiences of the patient and the team. Adopting a critical narrative inquiry (CNR) approach, the experiences of 19 participants were documented as they interacted in the care of an elderly patient over a three-week period. Actor network theory constructs enabled the analysis of multiple artefacts implicated in the interactions to learn of their contribution to the enactment of her care.FindingsThe study gives empirical insights about ways in which knowledge circulates amongst the workplace and how systemic structures may impede effective and quality patient care. Various types of knowledge are held by different team members, and both individuals and materials (e.g. technologies) can influence the way those knowledges are shared (or not).Research limitations/implicationsFocusing on a rich data set surrounding one patient documented as theatre serves pedagogical purposes and serves as a shared “boundary-breaking” object to interrogate from multiple stakeholder perspectives. CNR provides for recursive, dynamic learning as readers critically consider experiences within their own contexts.Practical implicationsDespite research that documents competing political, systemic and economic goals, sedimented policies and practices persist in ways that undermine care goals.Social implicationsTackling the urgent issue of an aging population will require expanding collaboration (for planning, research and so on) to include a broader set of stakeholders, including operational, administrative and post-discharge organizations. Attention to social infrastructure as a means to assemble knowledges and improve relationships in the care process is critical.Originality/valueBuilding a boundary-breaking shared object to represent the data offers a unique opportunity for multiple stakeholder groups to enter into dialogue around barriers to workplace interaction and collaboration progress, linking problems to critical perspectives.