Disciplinary Traditions Research Articles

The role of culturally responsive social and emotional learning in supporting refugee inclusion and belonging: A thematic analysis of service provider perspectives.

Young refugees resettled to the U.S. from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region face significant acculturative stressors, including language barriers, unfamiliar norms and practices, new institutional environments, and discrimination. While schools may ease newcomer adjustment and inclusion, they also risk exacerbating acculturative stress and social exclusion. This study seeks to understand the opportunities and challenges that schoolwide social and emotional learning (SEL) efforts may present for supporting refugee incorporation, belonging, and wellbeing. We completed semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 40 educators and other service providers in Austin, Texas, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Detroit Metropolitan Area, Michigan as part of the SALaMA project. We conducted a thematic analysis with transcripts from these interviews guided by the framework of culturally responsive pedagogy. The findings revealed that students and providers struggled with acculturative stressors and structural barriers to meaningful engagement. Schoolwide SEL also provided several mechanisms through which schools could facilitate newcomer adjustment and belonging, which included promoting adult SEL competencies that center equity and inclusion, cultivating more meaningfully inclusive school climates, and engaging families through school liaisons from the newcomer community. We discuss the implications of these findings for systemwide efforts to deliver culturally responsive SEL, emphasize the importance of distinguishing between cultural and structural sources of inequality, and consider how these lessons extend across sectors and disciplinary traditions.

Perils, Potential and Perspectives of Bioarchaeological Analyses in the Study of Mediterranean Mobility

The resolution of bioarchaeological analyses has improved dramatically in recent years, and bioarchaeology is increasingly employed in areas of the world where preservation issues and disciplinary traditions had previously hindered its application. One such area is the Mediterranean region. Bioarchaeological analyses arguably are the most direct indicator of human behavior in the past, and as a result the full integration of bioarchaeology and archaeology into Mediterranean research shows much promise. However, several methodological, theoretical and practical challenges have emerged: (1) discrepancies between cultural and biological variability; (2) discrepancies in the dating of skeletal samples and of migration events in the two subdisciplines; (3) diverging interpretations of (collective) identities; and (4) the fostering of effective cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration. While the first two points are especially salient for Mediterranean research, the third and fourth are relevant for the archaeological discipline more generally. In this paper, we discuss each challenge in turn, focusing on the first millennium bc Greek diaspora in the Mediterranean. We believe that both disciplines would benefit from open discussion of these issues, which we hope might spur more collaborative efforts towards their resolution.

Starting with the archive: principles for prospective collaborative research

What are participants and researchers agreeing to when they consent to having data archived and what do they imagine the future life of their data to be? In this paper, we reflect on a project that deliberately started rather than ended with the archive. The Everyday Childhoods project invited children and their families to take part in the creation of an open access public archive documenting everyday childhoods using a range of multimedia data. Families and researchers were invited into the archive, encouraged to imagine different kinds of secondary use and to speak directly to future user of their data through short films and postcards. This paper raises questions concerning the place of the archive in different disciplinary traditions; the roles of researcher and archivist in safekeeping, gatekeeping and caring for data collections; and the place of qualitative longitudinal research as a site of innovation within a new data landscape.

History and Symbolic Anthropology: A Review and Critique of Four New Contributions to their Rapprochement

This paper examines the most recent attempt to incorporate an historical approach within anthropology. Following a well established disciplinary tradition, symbolic anthropology is only now, relatively late in its career, beginning to address historical problems and methods. This paper considers the efforts of Geertz, Wallace, Turner and Sahlins to give symbolic anthropology an historiographic competence and application. It is argued that three of them (Geertz, Wallace and Turner) fail in different ways to devise a notion of structure capable of successfully treating the facts of change and innovation. It is also argued that Sahlins enjoys greater success in this effort, but that his work must be supplemented with a concept of historical process. One such concept is proposed.

Prototyping systems design-informed behavioral public policy: Learning-by-doing for methodology development

The practice of public policy is increasingly recognized as benefitting from expertise from other diverse applied fields, including behavioral science’s insight into cognitive barriers to action, and human-centered systems design’s contributions to gaining user insight and engagement in the form of participatory design and co-creation, as well as newer experiments to increase the use of prototyping in public policy to surface and address critical issues before interventions are formally enacted, or even fully formulated. However, individual methodologies and practices taught within the disciplines of public policy, behavioral science, and human-centered systems design are not necessarily well integrated; not only do each reflect different disciplinary traditions of thought leadership and notions of what “good” looks like, but their very modes of inquiry—a combination of analytic induction and synthetic abduction that result in starkly different notions of evidence, data, and proof of efficacy—may cause tensions that are difficult for practitioners to fully recognize and articulate, let alone manage. At best, this can result in misaligned expectations on the part of individual collaborators; at worst, unhealthy skepticism or a sense of hierarchical one-upmanship can diminish or outright negate the vast, and genuinely exciting, potential of this collaborative work. Given that public policy, behavioral science, and human-centered systems design are equally oriented toward practice, rather than only theory generation, solving this tension promises to contribute significant value to both the future development of successful policy and the education of aspiring policymakers. However, this will continue to be a challenge if, as is often the case, these specializations are taught separately, in which a lack of cross-pollination affords students (and, for that matter, their respective faculty) limited insight into how other fields may conceive of and approach policy challenges. As a means to generatively develop a hybrid disciplinary approach, leaders from the behavioral public policy firm ideas42 along with systems and behavioral design faculty from the Institute of ID (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology are collaborating to simultaneously develop systems-level behavioral design solutions within the public policy arena of charitable giving, while also prototyping a hybrid process that leverages and evolves methodologies from these individual disciplines to inform a new methodological and pedagogical approach. Lessons from the research project are positioned to go beyond bringing new awareness and exposure to practitioners from adjacent disciplines, instead aspiring to systematize new boundary objects such as frameworks and other structures that can contribute to the increased ease of exchange of knowledge, skills, and approaches across and within multi-disciplinary teams and students. Fed by insights gleaned through an intentionally reflexive process over the course of the project, this paper will present findings and reflections to further the exploration and codification of this hybrid methodological approach.

Language in the technology subject at the Danish Higher Technical Examination Programme

Working with problem-based learning (PBL) in the technology subject differentiates The Higher Technical Examination Programme (HTX) from other secondary school programs in Denmark. Challenges include interpretation of different elements which vary from teacher to teacher as the teachers have very different professional backgrounds. This has consequences for students and indicates that a solid disciplinary tradition has yet to be developed. It could possibly be argued that teachers’ communications on the subject, are only abstractions and not concepts. To solve these problems, it seems pertinent to apply the conceptualising method (Nørreklit 1973), to create useful and precise concepts free from possible ambiguities as a contribution to a coordinated language. In conclusion, it has been possible to use Pragmatic Constructivism (PC) to unfold the language games of the technology subject and enable the teachers to discuss their subject with each other thereby creating change in the subject and organisation.

Indigenous and Trans-Systemic Knowledge Systems

This special issue addressing the theme of “Indigenous and Trans-Systemic Knowledge Systems” seeks to expand the existing methods, approaches, and conceptual understandings of Indigenous Knowledges to create new awareness, new explorations, and new inspirations across other knowledge systems. Typically, these have arisen and have been published through the western disciplinary traditions in interaction and engagement with diverse Indigenous Knowledge systems. Written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, and in collaborations, the contributions to this issue feature the research, study, or active exploration of applied methods or approaches from and with Indigenous Knowledge systems as scholarly inquiry, as well as practical communally-activated knowledge. These engagements between Eurocentric and Indigenous Knowledges have generated unique advancements dealing with dynamic systems that are constantly being animated and reformulated in various fields of life and experiences. While these varied applications abound, the essays in this issue explore the theme largely through scholarly research or applied pedagogies within conventional schools and universities. The engagement of these distinct knowledge systems has also generated reflective, immersive, and transactional explorations of how to foster well-being and recovery from colonialism in Indigenous community contexts.

La teoría y la práctica en la formación de profesores en la UNLP: un análisis sobre el plan de estudios

El artículo analiza la formación superior en el Profesorado de Educación Física, dependiente del Departamento de Educación Física de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (FaHCE). Este estudio centra su interés en la puesta en tensión de las tradiciones disciplinares de formación que le otorgan un lugar de privilegio a la enseñanza “práctica”. Este texto forma parte de un conjunto de publicaciones realizadas en el marco del proyecto Producción Científica y Formación de Educadores Corporales. Estudio sobre la Formación inicial de profesores en Educación Física en la UNLP / H95. El período contemplado es el año lectivo 2020 en situación de aislamiento social, preventivo y obligatorio (ASPO) dispuesto por el Gobierno Nacional. Contexto en el que en función de este decreto, la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) dicta la Resolución 667/20 del 15/3, ad referéndum del Consejo Superior, estableciendo en su artículo 1°, “(…) la no realización de instancias áulicas presenciales de enseñanza en todo el ámbito de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (…)” (Resolución 667/20). La investigación muestra cómo la ASPO pone en tensión la tradición disciplinar de la formación de profesores y profesoras de Educación Física que, marcada por la primacía de la “práctica”, tuvo que adecuarse a un desplazamiento teórico en la suspensión de la enseñanza presencial y la continuidad de las prácticas a partir del uso de herramientas para educación a distancia.

Breaking the frame: evolving practices of first-generation photo-elicitation researchers

This article examines first-generation social scientists’ uses and understandings of photo-elicitation practices as they evolved over time and experiences. Participants have extensive experience with photo-elicitation in their own visual research practices. The research included speaking with respected visual researchers Doug Harper, Eric Margolis, Gillian Rose, and Dona Schwartz. As participants in a larger research project, they each take up photo-elicitation over video conferencing in unique and varied ways expanding what photo-elicitation means and is capable of achieving as a visual research method. The wider research project used photo-elicitation over Skype as an approach to expand traditional face-to-face sessions producing trustworthy, in-depth data and indicated that photographic practices by social scientists evolve but also carry disciplinary traditions, expectations, and practices. This paper documents some historical developments of first-generation photo-elicitation researchers demonstrating that practices are not static but can transform and contribute to co-creating new meanings, are open to unexpected developments, and accommodating new approaches as they arise. Practices based on first-generation researchers continue to influence and evolve visual research practices.

Music and Sound in Virtual/Augmented Realities—Questions, Challenges and Approaches

The mid-to-late 2010s saw a renewed interest in virtual reality technologies with the release of a wide selection of consumer VR headsets and glasses, and the increased power of smartphones to provide augmented reality experiences. While research on sound and music in these technologies has started to gather pace, practice and research continue to grapple with significant creative and practical questions. In addition, such discussions have tended to be limited within disciplinary or professional silos. The roundtable presented here was an effort to begin conversations across a variety of fields of research and practice. We shared perspectives and exchanged views informed by different disciplinary traditions and experiences. We also sought to identify key questions and issues regarding music and sound in VR/AR. Three main themes are presented here: 1) Spaces and musical performances, 2) Realities and realism, and 3) Movement, orientation, and disorientation.

O Atlas Submerso: por uma história da Tradução como História da Não-Tradução

Indo aparentemente na contramão de uma tradição disciplinar que, aliás, só em tempos recentes parece ter chegado a atribuir a merecida relevância à história da tradução, opresente trabalho visa agora a reler essa história através da categoria de “não-tradução”, cujo balizamento conceitual tem demonstrado não só a óbvia inter-relação com o seu oposto (sendo, afinal, a tradução e a não-tradução as duas faces da mesma moeda), como também a legitimidade heurística de complementar uma abordagem histórica da tradução com essa espécie de perspectiva às avessas.

ASECS beyond Borders

ASECS beyond Borders Adam Schoene (bio) In contemplating one of the central questions of our "Scholarship across the Aisle" roundtable about what structures prevent us from engaging with those beyond our own national, linguistic, or disciplinary traditions, I began by thinking broadly about the varied composition of different academic divisions. The study of languages, literatures, and cultures is often divided into separate departments based on geographic regions, although they are also now increasingly merging. While cross-cultural collaboration may occur in departments that are home to multiple national or cultural groups—such as Departments of Modern Languages, Romance Studies, or Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, as well as in places where languages and literatures are separate—there is also frequently a desire from these different groups to maintain a degree of distinctiveness and specificity. This creates a challenge as to how best to create multiple spaces for those of different cultural traditions or disciplines to have occasions to express themselves as unique, as well as part of a broader community. Extending this challenge to the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS), I reflected upon the ways by which many are currently working to create such spaces and how we might do even more to overcome the related barriers, both of which I will briefly sketch in what follows. From its inception, ASECS has been characterized by its interdisciplinary spirit, yet it has also encountered moments of tension between languages and disciplines, times that call for patience, diplomacy, and creativity. The [End Page 37] establishment of regional and other affiliate societies is one significant way that ASECS members have responded to this challenge, setting up unique realms of focus and collaboration within the larger society. Important connections around specific areas of interest are often fostered within these smaller or regional subgroups, such as the Aphra Behn Society or the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, which are conducive to building ties that may be more difficult to construct in a larger or more distant setting. New affiliate societies such as the recently established Southeast Asian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies might also address underrepresented or less prominent areas of focus within ASECS, helping to further expand the interdisciplinary character of the society and to attract and build greater diversity. In his remarks during the Q&A of the "ASECS Past and Present" 2019 Presidential Session, Logan Connors offered another example of what a space that might nurture cultural diversity as well as cross-disciplinary borders could look like in the setting of an annual meeting: he suggested the idea of organizing linked double sessions around a theme where participants could consider an issue from one cultural perspective on one panel and from another cultural perspective on another panel, which would bring people together around this common theme in both separate and shared spaces. For example, a double session on the theme of "Actresses" or "Cities" might offer one Anglophone panel, while another panel could be focused on Africa, Asia, or continental Europe, but the fact that they are considered a double session and are centered around the same theme could entice scholars to attend both sessions. Constructing such sessions around themes with each part of the double session focusing on one region or linguistic tradition would offer people the space to pursue their own specialized interests and allow them to come together in a broader context. This need not apply to all panels, as some would, of course, still represent a variety of perspectives, as many already do. Extending beyond the context of the annual meeting, another potential method for bridging linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary divides both within and beyond ASECS is by designing conferences or working groups around texts or themes that serve to enact this interconnected form of movement and dialogue. One such point of entry is through travel narratives. The eighteenth century is particularly rich in the genre of travel writing. This area of exploration can open the door to discussion and collaboration across cultures and disciplines, allowing for consideration by specialists from each of the different backgrounds raised in the texts and by those interested in broader global issues. Travel narratives often use what is foreign...

The Theme Course

Theme courses are a common practice despite their limited presence in composition scholarship, which contributes to a fractured understanding of the theme course’s purpose and place in the discipline. This article offers an aggregate picture of theme (or topic) based courses based on disparate scholarly publications and affirmed by data collected through an online survey of writing instructors and program administrators. To trace the theme course within our disciplinary tradition and as a continuing practice, this article defines the theme course, distinguishing between writing as subject matter and theme content as a form of reinforcement. It furthermore historicizes the theme course’s limited life in scholarship, synthesizing key features of theme course practice, reinforced by survey responses. Ultimately, this article offers a framework for reflective practice that all theme course practitioners can use for developing, implementing, and evaluating their teaching methods. The underlying argument is that theme courses can support learning about writing, so long as theme selection and implementation work in purposeful support of the course’s learning about writing goals.

What are academic journals good for? An editorial outlook on the possibilities of contemporary political research

The appointment of a new editorial team for an academic journal is an occasion for reflecting not only about the goals of a specific publication, but also about the relevance and intricacies of editorial work within the contemporary scientific landscape. Additionally, the process provided food for thought on the openings and limits of a disciplinary tradition - in this case, political science - within an institution, a country, a region and the larger academic community. Keywords: editorial, academic journals, political science as a discipline, scientometrics, standards, scientific integrity, open access

Das „Foltersystem historischer Kritik“

Abstract The disciplinary tradition of musicology has been divided, from the outset, between historical and systematic aspects, prolonging the ancient conflict between the physical and sensorial aspects of music. In an ongoing process of diversification (synonymous with destabilisation in a minor discipline like musicology), history lost the central position claimed for it in the founding era. Yet this tradition is itself inconsistent given the permanent conflict between aspects connected to history and those connected to the fine arts. Ultimately, this article considers the productive impulse that might be provided by a new and fundamental rapprochement between musicology and history. This productivity and potential is discussed using several potential examples.

Diálogos entre sociologia e história: suas contribuições à edificação de uma sociologia da educação no Brasil

A sociologia da educação foi se constituindo no diálogo com outras sociologias e mesmo com outros campos do conhecimento. Diferentes perspectivas podem ajudar a situar este diálogo. Priorizamos aqui a relação, não raramente conflituosa, entre sociologia e história, inscrita no complexo quadro das lutas do campo científico e também do campo educacional. Para tanto, revisitamos alguns pensadores que têm indicado aproximações e distanciamentos entre essas duas tradições disciplinares, a saber: Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002), Jean-Claude Passeron (1930-), Antoine Prost (1933-) e Norbert Elias (1897-1990). Partimos da premissa de que a sociologia de Pierre Bourdieu é, desde o princípio, edificada como uma sociologia histórica. Nossa segunda premissa pauta-se num diálogo entre Jean-Claude Passeron, sociólogo, e Antoine Prost, historiador, cujo foco está nas tensões entre duas perspectivas epistemológicas: o ‘raciocínio sociológico’ e o ‘raciocínio histórico’. Nossa última premissa foi elaborada a partir de reflexões de Norbert Elias relativas à oposição entre generalização sociológica e diferenciação histórica. Nosso interesse por esses autores se deve às suas contribuições à edificação do campo educacional brasileiro, o que vem se efetivando graças à intensificação da pesquisa histórica e/ou sociológica.

Undone science, funding, and positionality in transportation research

ABSTRACT A robust body of research in transportation has brought to light valuable findings and supported the development of important tools. However, crucial questions of “undone” science remain – topics and methods that current research practices could partially overlook. This review essay argues that transportation research could benefit from more critical reflection on researchers’ positionalities, the field’s emphasis on some methods and topics rather than others, and the role of funding. The article first considers the questions of funding influence and researcher positionality in the broader social sciences literature and then the implications of funding and positionality in transportation research. In the United States, transportation funding generally emphasises engineering fields and applied solutions; historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups are a small share of researchers. Because of disciplinary traditions, funding, positionality, and other factors, transportation research paradigms may give relatively less attention to social issues, qualitative data, and local knowledge, while emphasising quantitative data, modelling, physical factors, and infrastructure building. The purpose of this paper is to start a dialogue, using the social science literatures, information about the transportation field, and examples of the importance of social and qualitative methods. Collective dialogue about researchers’ positionalities and demographics, different types of knowledge, and the field could uncover important areas and approaches for transportation research and practice.

Poetry in Translation: Traveling Pleonasm and Beyond

Style is the kernel of literariness. This study examines the translatability of pleonasm, a form of redundancy considered a standard rhetorical device in Arabic but usually avoided in Western languages. The study evaluates and compares English and French translations of a pleonastic Arabic verse line. An acceptable translation of this verse should provide an affective-stylistic equivalent that will capture and convey the same appeal as the source text with a similar degree of literariness, not just a direct linguistic equivalent. This research asserts that a translator usually works within their own translation aesthetics, developed within their cultural and disciplinary traditions of literary and translational aesthetics and their idiosyncratic ideas about or interpretation of the source text. Keywords: literary translation; redundancy; translating style; pre-Islamic poetry; translation quality assessment

Down and Out in Saigon: Stories of the Poor in a Colonial City. By Haydon Cherry (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019) 280 pp. $50.00

<i>Down and Out in Saigon: Stories of the Poor in a Colonial City</i>. By Haydon Cherry (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2019) 280 pp. $50.00

Critical thinking and the humanities: A case study of conceptualizations and teaching practices at the Section for Cinema Studies at Stockholm University

The raison d’être of the humanities is widely held to reside in its unique ability to generate critical thinking and critical thinkers. But what is “critical thinking?” Is it a generalized mode of reasoning or a form of political critique? How does it relate to discipline-specific practices of scholarly pursuit? How does it relate to discourses of “post-truth” and “alternative facts”? How is it best taught? This essay explores these issues via a case study of conceptualizations of critical thinking among cinema scholars at Stockholm University, whose views are interpreted against the backdrop of (a) debates about the value of the humanities; (b) higher education scholarship on critical thinking; and (c) the legacy of certain disciplinary traditions within cinema studies, especially the paradigms of “post-theory” and “political modernism.” The interviews attest to the persistence of critical thinking as a fundamental, yet highly elusive, concept to higher education in the arts and humanities.