Disciplinary Traditions Research Articles

Emotions in engineering education: A configurative meta‐synthesis systematic review

AbstractBackgroundThe study of emotions in engineering education (EEE) has increased in recent years, but this emerging, multidisciplinary body of research is dispersed and not well consolidated. This paper reports on the first systematic review of EEE research and scholarship.PurposeThe review aimed to critically assess how researchers and scholars in engineering education have conceptualized emotions and how those conceptualizations have been used to frame and conduct EEE research and scholarship.Scope/MethodThe systematic review followed the procedures of a configurative meta‐synthesis, mapping emotion theories and concepts, research purposes and methods, and citation patterns in the EEE literature. The review proceeded through five stages: (i) scoping and database searching; (ii) abstract screening, full text sifting, and full text review; (iii) pearling; (iv) scoping review, and (v) in‐depth analysis for the meta‐synthesis review. Two hundred and thirteen publications were included in the final analysis.ResultsThe results show that the EEE literature has not extensively engaged with the wide range of conceptualizations of emotion available in the educational, psychological, and sociological literature. Further, the focus on emotion often seems to have been unintentional and of secondary importance in studies whose primary goals were to study other phenomena.ConclusionsMore research adopting intentional, theorized approaches to emotions will be crucial in further developing the field. To do justice to complex emotional phenomena in teaching and learning, future EEE research will also need to engage a broader range of conceptualizations of emotion and research methods, drawing on diverse disciplinary traditions.

The Anthropocentric Bias in Animal Cognition

In the classical philosophical tradition, animals had the special function of serving as “objects of comparison” concerning humans. In that sense, philosophy adopted a peculiar comparative perspective focused on the categoric difference that separates humans from other creatures: an exceptionalist perspective. The Humanities developed an anthropocentric canon for the study of animals and privileged the search for differences over similarities of these with humans. On the other hand, the great boost that animal studies received under the influence of Darwin's work promoted a different comparative perspective in the natural sciences. However, especially in comparative psychology, ingent efforts were devoted to avoid the errors that anthropomorphism would entail: attributing human properties to other creatures and privileging similarities over differences. It assumed that anthropomorphic bias entails a more fundamental type of error than anthropocentric bias. Now, this asymmetric diagnosis has beenunmasked with different arguments. In the context of both disciplinary traditions, it is timely to reexamine the most persistent and negative manifestations of anthropocentric bias as a comparative bias for the study of animal cognition. In this work I will identify the following: the homogenization of animals into a single general category; psychological speciesism and the “de-mentalization” of animals; the survival of a hierarchical conception of cognitive abilities; the selective application - only to animals - of Morgan's Canon or anthropodenial and its complement, the assumption of idealized mental capacities in the human case or anthropofabulation; asymmetrical or distorsive methodological strategies for the study of animals versus humans which affects the comparative interpretations; and different manifestations of semantic anthropocentrism.

Social-to-biological transitions research: review of progress and development

The present text builds on an earlier publication* which had the same aim: namely, to encourage clarity and coherence in the interdisciplinary area we called social-to-biological transitions. This burgeoning area of research involves a complex workforce with differing career levels and disciplinary traditions, reflecting which the present authors comment from different perspectives (one author from each of early career research, epidemiology, biology and public health) and invite debate. (* Blane, D., Kelly-Irving, M., d’Errico, A., Bartley, M. and Montgomery, S. (2013) Social-biological transitions: how does the social become biological?, Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 4(2): 136–46.)

On occupying the silent parenthetical: Thinking-feeling after the Ends/ings (Part 1/2)

ABSTRACT To speak of “the End” as a cataclysmic future event, as depicted in popular apocalyptic genres, oversimplifies the prolonged, multiplicitous character of the End Times as they unfold unevenly across different scales, speeds, populations, and intensities. As many rhetoricians and other critical scholars have noted, an interrelated series of Ends and Endings mark the contemporary conjuncture, disrupting disciplinary traditions and the prevailing epistemic terrain: the End of Speech, Debate, the University, Time, the Individual, Politics, The Greeks, Whiteness, the Canon, Capitalism, Colonialism, Patriarchy, Prisons, Discipline, Man—in short, and in the spirit of Frantz Fanon, The End of the World. In Part 1 of this two-part essay, I begin to speculate on what it might mean to think otherwise from these unfolding and overlapping Ends and Endings, call attention to the limits of criticism-as-usual, and raise a number of questions for rhetorical scholars committed to studying social change and enabling different possible futures and worlds. I consider the im/possibilities of realizing a transformative rhetorical studies rooted in pluriversality, the undercommonsense, experimental writing, and the “radical rhetorics” (Aswad) of communities born in struggle.

Provisoriets välsignelse och vetenskapernas drottning

In this article, Mårten Björk's distinction between two rooms of academic and spiritual practice is problematized from the perspective of a basic recognition of the importance of Björk's contribution. If there is a need to emphasize critical authority as fundamental for academic activities in the university, as Björk claims, the problem discussed in this article is that critical authority never comes in any clean och absolute form. Different disciplines may have slightly different understandings of the critical tasks and offer different perspectives on what is more or less fundamental in the production of knowledge. These are often competing in an academic context where the disciplinary traditions are clashing and the material resources are sparse. Hence the academy is at best agonistic in its critical endeavour. It is furthermore argued that theology is very well equipped to put forward perspectives that pinpoint this basic weakness in all practical context where production of knowledge is at hand, since theology has itself been deeply questioned in its ambitious project of grasping for the ultimate.

Politics in Organization Studies: Multi-disciplinary traditions and interstitial positions

This Perspectives article delves into the archives of Organization Studies covering the period 1986–2010 to advance and develop our thinking of politics and political thinking in organization studies. In our Benjamin-inflected reading, we look for the revolutionary energies that reside in what may at first appear as perhaps ‘outmoded’ articles in an intellectual environment where the obsolescence of ideas and concepts seems to increase at pace. The purpose of the excavation of our six chosen texts is to build a constellation of what we call ‘interstitial positions’ that reside within and outside the analytical contours of these texts. In this way we bring these texts into a critical condition in the hope that their constellation can act as a real force in the present and help illuminate our contemporary situation. We might then renew our sense of possibility and choice about the organizational worlds we inhabit and open future avenues for thinking politics informed by the distinctive disciplinary traditions of organization studies.

Empatiens mange ansikter: fenomenologisk og positivistisk empati

Understanding of the concept of empathy is often subject to change. The manifold conceptualisations, as well as the terminological ambiguities regarding the concept, are observed by studying interdisciplinary, overlapping and even contrasting perspectives of the phenomena across public discourse and academic literature. In this article we do not attempt to reduce the concept of empathy to a single entity, but rather strive to illuminate the many approaches to it. We identify a categorisation of the literature on empathy into two overarching approaches and propose two prototypical epistemological positions that might describe the definitional variations in understanding and applying it, namely a phenomenological or a positivist model underlying understandings of the concept. These two categories encompass wide subsets of traditions and perspectives which we summarise in a nomological network. Such a framing enables us to document the basis for the concept of empathy within a diversity of disciplinary traditions. Keywords: empathy, phenomenology, positivism, nomological network

Developing and evaluating Compassionate Workplace Programs to promote health and wellbeing around serious illness, dying and loss in the workplace (EU-CoWork): a transdisciplinary, cross-national research project

Background: Most employees will experience serious illness, caregiving, dying and loss (End-of-Life (EoL) experiences) at multiple points throughout their working lives. These experiences impact affected employees but also their colleagues in terms of health and wellbeing, and the workplace as a whole in terms of workplace safety, productivity and labour relations. The impact of EoL experiences on employees means that workplaces are called to play a more active role in providing support for EoL experiences. Aim: To describe how the EU-CoWork (2024–2028) project addresses its main aims to (1) create Compassionate Workplace cultures, practices and policies and improve health and wellbeing for employees dealing with EoL experiences in different national work contexts in Europe; (2) describe and evaluate the process of co-creation and implementation of Compassionate Workplace Programs (CWPs) and how these influence the programs’ outcomes. Design: EU-CoWork employs a facilitated and co-creative Developmental Evaluation approach to the development of 12 tailored CWPs across four European countries (Belgium, Austria, Sweden and Greece). Methods: To evaluate the outcomes and processes leading to these outcomes, a mixed-methods Realist Evaluation methodology is applied, formulating and testing Context-Mechanism-Outcomes configurations and combining longitudinal quantitative and qualitative data collections. Results: EU-CoWork will generate evidence to support an expanded model of occupational health and safety risk factors sensitive to the specific challenges related to employees’ EoL experiences. In doing so, several challenges will have to be navigated: involving employees with EoL experiences while avoiding overburdening them, avoiding tokenistic engagement, managing power differentials, balancing the need for scientific rigour with the flexibility required in co-creation, reconciling different epistemologies and disciplinary traditions and organisational resistance to change. Conclusion: There are potential long-lasting broader societal impacts through the stimulation of open discourse on EoL topics, the reconciliation of work and care, and changes in gendered work and care patterns.

Economic Security and the Politics of Trade and Investment Policy in Europe

Facing recent global disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, climate change, and the race for raw materials and technology needed for the green transition, economic interdependence—not least unilateral dependence—has increasingly come to be seen as a security threat. In response, the EU has put resilience and strategic autonomy at the centre of its trade and investment agenda. The EU was long resistant to this geoeconomic turn, that is, the use of economic tools for geopolitical purposes in normal times. Since 2017, however, the EU has placed greater emphasis on identifying and mitigating the security vulnerabilities that accrue from open markets. This geoeconomic turn has culminated in the June 2023 release of the European Commission’s Economic Security Strategy, which aims to maximise the benefits of economic openness while minimising the risks from economic interdependence. The aim of this thematic issue is to analyse the foundations of this new European focus on economic security and, more specifically, on the increased use of geoeconomic instruments. Coming at this objective from a variety of disciplinary traditions, methodologies, and substantive focus, our contributors tackle, among others, the following questions: Why has the EU abandoned its reluctance to use geoeconomics and finally made the switch towards economic security? How does the EU’s approach compare with other major global players? And, what are the long-term implications of the EU’s economic security strategy for European integration, its relationship with partners and allies, and the global economic order?

Trevor Pinch’s legacy for media studies

It is well known that throughout his long and brilliant career Trevor Pinch was a leading scholar in at least three research fields. In the sociology of scientific knowledge he was one of the most influential contributors, both alone and in collaboration with his mentor Harry Collins (see in particular Collins and Pinch, 1982; and Pinch 1985, 1986). He co-founded and developed the sociology of technology and the field of science and technology studies for which, in 2018, he was awarded the prestigious John Desmond Bernal Prize by the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S). Later in his career, he was a core player in the field of sound studies (see for example Pinch and Bijsterveld (eds), 2003, 2004, 2012), to which he was led by his work on the Moog synthesizer (Pinch and Trocco, 2002) and his passionate love for music. However, the work of Trevor Pinch, and in particular the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) approach that he developed with Wiebe Bijker (Pinch and Bijker, 1984), has also been influential for many other neighbouring research fields to which he contributed only indirectly or episodically. This is the case for organisational studies, for example, or for studies of innovation. It is also the case for media studies. In what follows, as a media scholar, I represent the intellectual debt of my field to the work of Trevor Pinch. To do so, I will first clarify the role played by SCOT in the disciplinary tradition of media studies, in particular in the 1990s and at the beginning of the new century. I will then move my focus to lesser-known works by Trevor Pinch on mediated communication, which he sporadically addressed as part of his broader research interests (related, for example, to the practice of selling). My attempt will be to retrace the tenets of Pinch’s own take on media as they emerge both from these too rare interventions and from the methodological reflection he has dedicated to the topic. In my final remarks, I will draw on the two preceding sections to highlight some other possible points of crosspollination between the current field of media studies and Trevor Pinch’s work, that remain to be explored in depth.

A bibliometric review of energy justice literature

IntroductionAcademic literature on energy justice sits at the intersection of a complex ecosystem of technologies, geographies, disciplinary traditions, terminologies, frameworks, theories, and methods. Its recent and rapid growth suggests it is of interest to a large number of stakeholders. However, these same features make aggregation and summarization a considerable undertaking.MethodsThis article uses advanced bibliometric analytics to synthesize this disparate and varied metadata to characterize trends in the treatment of energy justice in academic literature. The review covers 4,196 articles published between 1983 and 2023 with methods appropriate to the number and diversity of publications and associated subfields.ResultsWe document distinct uses of similar terminologies across subfields in literature, inequitable ratios of global research compared to absolute levels of energy poverty, and the large but under-recognized contribution of cooking to the energy justice literature.DiscussionIn summarizing this voluminous literature and analyzing thematic changes over time, we provide scaffolding for more detailed reviews to place themselves within the larger interconnected literature network.

Reframing search and recommendation as opportunities for communication for people with intellectual disability

ABSTRACT AI-driven commercial innovations and the digital disruptions they create, tend to accelerate faster than assistive technologies, and are rarely designed with inclusion and diversity in mind. We explore the joint value of research through design and co-design to give a voice to users with intellectual disability to set new directions for inclusive innovation. To do this, we present an account of, and a reflection on, the reframing that took place throughout a research program that has evolved over the last 8 years, presented through the lens of 3 case studies. These illustrate turning points in the frames of the research and its journey through the disciplinary traditions of Information Retrieval and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, we contribute knowledge on the value of research through design to identify new frames for inclusive intelligent systems. Second, we extend inclusive co-design approaches to employing working prototypes that can support participant’s voice about the design of the algorithms that underpin intelligent systems. We highlight how these working prototypes nurture the importance of participation and observation. Third, we contribute new frames for inclusive information retrieval, with new perspectives on intent, particularly in the context of image search.

Capacities for resilience: persisting, adapting and transforming through bricolage

ABSTRACT Resilience has become increasingly popular in sustainability research and practice as a way to describe change. Within this discourse, the notion of resilience as the capacity of people, practices and processes, to persist, adapt or transform is particularly salient. The ability to bounce back from shock (persistence) or to take adaptive measures to cope with change are most commonly attributed to resilience, but at the same time, there is a strong push for a transformation agenda from various social and environmental movements. How capacities for resilience are enacted and performed through social practices remains relatively underexplored and there is potential for more dialogue and learning across disciplinary traditions. In this article, we outline the ‘Resilience Capacities Framework’ as a way to a) explicitly address questions of agency in how resilience capacities are enacted and b) account for the dynamic interactions between pathways of persistence, adaptation and transformation. Our starting point is to conceptualise future pathways as co-evolved, whereby social and ecological relationships are shaped through processes of selection, variation and retention, enacted in everyday practices. Drawing on theories of bricolage and structuration, we elaborate on the role of actors as bricoleurs, consciously and non-consciously shaping socio-ecological relationships and pathways of change. Informed by cases of rural change from mountain areas, we explore the extent to which an approach focusing on agency and bricolage can illuminate how the enactment of resilience capacities shapes intersecting pathways of change.

Southern Perspectives on Border Criminology

In this special issue, we explore the limits of existing theories for understanding migration governance from a Southern perspective and what the potential for rethinking border controls and their study, such as alternative epistemological and methodological approaches, might engender. We invited contributions to imagine what a ‘Southern perspective’ on the field of border criminologies would look like. In other words, what does it entail to study and theorise border control from the South? We organised a panel at the European Society of Criminology in September 2021 and then invited further authors. We sought to engage multiple disciplinary traditions and diverse case studies that speak to the various disciplinary perspectives and geopolitical dimensions of bordering. Many of the authors in this special issue are early career researchers who, through engaging with postcolonial theory and decolonial approaches, are fostering novel perspectives within border criminologies. Collectively, the articles bring together the different geopolitical, sociocultural and economic ways in which borders in the Global South are imagined, constructed, negotiated and reconstructed. The articles offer a wide range of epistemological and methodological insights for border criminologies to engage with, shifting our understanding from Northern perspectives.

Current trends and future directions in the rural history of later medieval England (c. 1200–c. 1500)

AbstractThis article surveys a range of work on the later medieval English countryside published since 2000, and offers some predictions and suggestions about future research. It shows that the field of ‘rural history’ has rarely been closely defined, and indeed has tended to be treated as a broad church that can accommodate many different kinds of approach, themselves drawing on a variety of disciplinary traditions. The article identifies and discusses recent and current innovation and creativity in research within two such broad approaches, one mainly ‘economic’, the other ‘cultural’. It concludes by arguing for the gains that can be enjoyed through the combination of elements of the two approaches, and especially through a renewed emphasis on the illumination of the general through an intensive focus on the local.

Feedback format preferences of international post-graduate students in Australia: an exploratory mixed methods study

Scholarship on feedback format tends to demonstrate that students prefer video feedback; however, the characteristics of study participants are often absent. This study builds on the scholarship of feedback practice mediated by technology and feedback literacy in intercultural contexts. A mixed methods approach examined international postgraduate students’ experience of, preferences for and attitudes towards three feedback formats: text, audio and video. Eighty-four participants in an Australian university completed a survey, and twelve participated in semi-structured phone interviews. The participants were mainly women from India, aged between 25 and 34 years old and declared English as a second language. Participants scored their experience with video, audio and written feedback. Written feedback was ranked first, followed by video and audio feedback. Participants reported that written feedback allows students to easily locate areas that need improvement. The role of the disciplinary traditions and respondents’ educational background is discussed to make sense of the results.

Veterinary professional identity: Conceptual analysis and location in a practice theory framework.

Professional, social, and cultural issues and phenomena of veterinary practice are now established areas of commentary and interest in research, education, professional publications and even in the mainstream media. Despite the availability of theoretically informed literature in diverse relevant domains and disciplines including professional practice, workplace learning, and medical sociology and anthropology, commentary and research on veterinary practice issues and phenomena remains dominated by clinician-educators and clinician-policymakers. Reflecting the clinical disciplinary traditions, there is a resulting over-representation of individualistic, positivist perspectives and under-theorized research studies. In this paper we provide an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for veterinary practice and veterinary professional identity grounded in a practice theory perspective. We begin by arguing for the need for such a framework by scoping veterinary practice in its contemporary social context. We go on to provide a sociocultural framing of veterinary practice, underlining the mutual constitution of individuals and the social world through participation in practices and taking into consideration important concepts including knowledge, institutions, ethics, and embodiment. We assert the importance of professional identity as a core phenomenon of veterinary practice, constituted by making meaning of professional practice experiences, especially through narrative and dialogue. This practice theory framework for veterinary practice and veterinary professional identity development provides rich opportunities for understanding, researching, and enacting diverse activities and phenomena, especially learning, development and change within and beyond formal educational settings.

The anthropological and the consequential

The anthropological and the consequential

The "Greenberg Controversy" and the Interdisciplinary Study of Global Linguistic Relationships.

This paper examines the controversy that followed the 1987 publication of Joseph Greenberg's book, Language in the Americas, attending to the role of language and linguistic research within overlapping disciplinary traditions. With this text, Greenberg presented a macro-level tripartite classification that opposed then dominant fine-grained analyses recognizing anywhere from 150 to 200 distinct language families. His proposal was the subject of a landmark conference, examining strengths and weaknesses, the unpublished proceedings of which are presented here for the first time. For specialists in the anthropological and comparative-historical study of Indigenous American languages, Greenberg's intervention highlighted the tension between language, conceived as an abstract object of study, and languages, understood to be carriers of specific cultural knowledge. For physical anthropologists and archaeologists, his theory was initially fortuitous on programmatic, substantive, and methodological grounds. The essay will show how interdisciplinary appeals were figured by supporters as a virtue, and by critics as a vice. The essay further highlights ethical reasons for integrating historical narratives of science and the humanities.

Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora

Echoes of the Great Catastrophe: Re-sounding Anatolian Greekness in Diaspora