Epistemological Bias Research Articles

¿Cómo se forman les docentes de economía en Argentina?

What is the training of economics teachers in Argentina? What situation is observed in the curriculum in the different jurisdictions? What epistemological bias predominates in study the plans? This work proposes to provide a snapshot of teacher training in economics at the Argentine non-university higher level, from an exploration and analysis of the study plans. A comparative analysis of the “field of specific training” of the different economics curricula in the districts that offer the degree and of the contents of the initial subjects of the discipline is presented. The orthodox epistemological bias that predominates in most of the study plans is shown there. This is observed both in what specifically refers to the names of the curricular units of each plan and the contents of the initial subjects, as well as the formation of the curricular mesh of the “field of specific training.” The methodology used was qualitative and consisted of the analysis of official documentation (regulations and jurisdictional curricular designs).

Between Probability and Possibility: Fostering Productive Research in a Dystopian Moment

Abstract Scholars endeavor to understand the world in order to make it better. To do that, they should pay attention not only to probability but also possibility. I argue that accepting, and centering, the uncertainty endemic to the human condition and human relations could lead to at least two productive shifts. First, it could encourage holding tensions between particularity and generalization, description and theorization, and complexity and simplicity rather than resolving them a priori. This would promote more genuine thinking about the issues we study. Second, it could encourage critical reasoning about both epistemological bias and the limits of utopian ideas, leading to more serious ethical and normative considerations. I encourage honest conversations about the ubiquity of uncertainty and braver efforts to hold tensions, use our judgement and think. Holding space for unpredictability and imperfection promises to both yield better arguments about probability and open up insights into what is possible. It will thus foster research that best meets the demands of our time.

Exploring views on praxis possibilities of multilingualism in university literacy pedagogies

Background: South African literacy-as-social-practice theoreticians, language-in-education experts, educational linguists, and language policies advocate multilingual pedagogies to acknowledge and cater to diverse multilingual learners’ literacy development. Universities purport multilingualism to provide for the multilingual norm, students’ literacy, and educational development, as scholarship shows that multilingualism benefits academia and literacy education. Yet, these universities remain locations for monolingual and epistemological biases. Concerns about such praxis pretensions in pluralistic literacy education and the failures in literacy-as-social-practice strategies have been raised. However, the perceptions of lecturers and students on their role in implementing desirable praxis in multilingual literacy education are under-researched.Objectives: This qualitative study explores lecturers’ and students’ perceptions and their impact on practising linguistic plurality in literacy for educational development schemes.Method: The research uses in-depth individual and focus-group interviews with four lecturers and four first-year undergraduate students at a selected linguistically diverse university. An interpretivist paradigm was applied consisting of participants’ subjective experiences as members of a higher education institution (HEI).Results: Findings reveal that lecturers have difficulty coping with multiple languages due to inadequate training and misconceptions about multilingualism, and monolingual pedagogy perceptions carried over from their institutions whose culture denies students’ linguistic plurality.Conclusion: The study demonstrates the importance of shifts in epistemological orientation and adequate training, focused on multilingualism, to develop versatile and agile lecturers equipped for multilingual universities.Contribution: This research contributes to understanding the complex implementation problems regarding multilingual literacy education and possible solutions. It postulates new ways of forging multilingual literacy practices to erase praxis morbidity.

Research on the Inheritance Education of Yellow River Culture from the Bio-cultural Perspective

The Yellow River, as mother river, its culture has taken the lead of the overall process of Chinese civilization. The Yellow River culture originated from the interaction between local people and the Yellow River for thousands of years, so its culture is based on place. However, influenced by traditional research in the field of biology, environmental education(EE) has not included any cultural content, and EE and cultural inheritance education have always been two unrelated contents. Biocultural diversity(BCD) is the product of biological and cultural co-evolution in social-ecological systems. It advocates for the integration of culture and nature in conservation practice. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to introduce the perspective of BCD and its new experience from the latest researches into the field of education. A broad bibliographic search in the databases was carried out by EDS(EBSCO DISCOVERY SERVICE) from De La Salle University Dasmariñas on-line Library. A review of relevant literature reveals the division between nature and culture in the field of conservation and education. Therefore, adopting a BCD perspective in inheritance education of Yellow River culture recommends beyond the epistemological bias of traditional EE, which views environmental education as a single content unrelated to culture, and advocates for interdisciplinary integration and the participation of different stakeholders, in order to achieve a broader public interest through comprehensive curriculum involvement. It has both theoretical evidence and a large amount of empirical research support, indicating that the perspective introduced into education is correct and feasible for YR culture education, and it is a diverse, open, and inclusive attitude towards various disciplines and stakeholders. The curriculum development from biocultural perspective will be a beneficial educational and research attempt, which may be beneficial in improving the current problem of fine division of disciplines and weak applicability of subject knowledge.

Knowledge From the Margins – The Epistemological Promise of Microhistorical Theorizing in Organization Studies

This paper proposes a feminist microhistorical approach to theorizing, which can complement the existing critiques remedying the epistemological bias of mainstream theories and conventional management history. Feminist microhistory prompts us to examine particular moments, people, things, or institutions in the past. It is a critical stance toward knowledge production. It aids us in finding and listening to marginal voices of the past, and thus helps in rewriting and re-conceptualizing organizational history or theories. Further, through feminist microhistory, this paper advocates situated theorizing that does not aim at causal explanations or universal knowledge claims but rather understanding the sporadic and multifaceted nature of social life and organizing in specific settings.

A Différant Kind of Preaching: Derrida and the Deconstruction of Contemporary Homiletics

Homiletics manifests as a technē that commends certain kinds of preaching over others. As such, homiletics structures debate unaware of the philosophical assumptions operative within it. This paper challenges the logocentrism of contemporary homiletical theories in light of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive analytic. I take as my privileged conversation partner Fred Craddock, the much-lauded king of the New Homiletic. I argue that in commending inductive over deductive logic, Craddock merely inverts the logical movement of preaching, thereby reinscribing logocentrism. Utilizing Derrida’s neologism différance, I press homiletics toward what I am labeling conductive preaching, which reframes homiletical theory beyond the epistemological biases that condition it.

Istoria and Eureka: Valuing Story and Discovery in Research and Publication in the Human Sciences

ABSTRACT Human stories lie at the heart of professional practice in the human, social services, though these are often discounted when it comes to researching such services and sharing practice through publication. This article identifies and addresses certain methodological and epistemological biases and consequent challenges in human science research, and discusses the importance of story (autoethnography) and discovery (heuristics) in research which can inform practice, meaningfully and ethically. It considers this by addressing both research and publication, illustrating both the challenges and the solutions from the authors’ own experiences. The article argues for reclaiming the subjective and the subjectivist dimension in human, social science, and, therefore, the experiential, in both research and publication; and addresses four problems with regard to publishing in the human sciences, namely: privilege, quality, anonymity in peer-review, and capital.

Critical Reflections on Current Status of Scholarship in Islamic Psychology – Challenges and Solutions

Islamic psychology, aimed at synthetising Islamic values with psychological theories, faces significant challenges despite its promise. This article presents a comprehensive review of the literature, revealing significant challenges that impede the development of an authentic Islamic psychology. The critical analysis, conducted through a qualitative review, is based on primary and secondary sources. The review critically challenges the issues of blind imitation, partialism, apologism, contradiction, epistemological biases and deconstructionism within contemporary Islamic psychology scholarship. The article emphasises their impact on knowledge creation and thought development in Islamic psychology. The key insights and recommendations resulting from the analysis of Islamic psychology scholarship include raising awareness of epistemological biases, critically evaluating assumptions, engaging directly with primary sources, embracing diverse perspectives, promoting collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches, and emphasising empirical validation. Implementing these recommendations can lead to a more authentic, inclusive and evidence-based approach to Islamic psychology. By addressing these challenges, the article suggests pathways toward the development of authentic Islamic psychology, fostering a more robust and integrated understanding that aligns with Islamic values.

Teacher Leadership Interrogates Teaching Policy: Comparing the Voices of Low-Income Schools with National Teacher Policies in Argentina

This article analyses how low-income schools and teacher education policies in Argentina describe the idealised “good” teacher. One of the crucial foundations of teacher leadership is related to teachers’ professional abilities. This study aims to problematise the fragile discursive constructions of what counts as effective and good teaching in both low-income schools' actors and teacher education policy documents. As previous research has confirmed teacher ability is contextual and a highly controversial topic. How low-income school actors describe, interpret and enact good teaching might differ from national teaching policy guidelines and standards. This study attempts to address the following research questions. First, what factors do low-income school actors and Argentinean educational policies highlight regarding teachers’ professional ability? Second, does a teacher’s professional ability refer to teacher leadership? Finally, what are the implications of the gap between the perspectives of low-income schools and the official teaching policy for knowledge production and educational policy? The findings provide a framework to understand the current limited status of teacher leadership in Argentina. Through the historical normalist genesis of the Argentinean educational system that fostered homogenisation as a crucial technology of schooling, and an epistemological bias that deemed the low-income perspective as unscientific the article shed light on the status of teacher leadership. Finally, the research suggests bridges to foster dialogues between teaching policies and low-income schools.

Pluralising China as Method: Decolonising cultural mediations in the global South

The changing global landscape of imperialism, colonialism, and globalisation has urged scholars to reflect on and reexamine the lingering Eurocentric epistemology in media and cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, area studies, and other disciplines. The epistemological biases which currently exist in these academic disciplines hinder the development of a bottom-up theorisation and a thorough understanding of social and cultural phenomena. Recently, scholars in and beyond the global South have become more attentive to the inadequacy of a Eurocentric model of theorisation, and the idiosyncrasies of local societies. The rise of China, and its intensified international political, economic, and cultural exchanges with other Asian, middle-Eastern, and African countries, also make it imperative to move beyond a Eurocentric view in understanding the complexity of social and cultural dynamics within China and across the global South. Responding to this double inadequacy of Eurocentrism in terms of knowledge production in and for Asia, we build on the insightful arguments made, but also address their respective conceptual limits, in the “Asia as Method” and “trans-Asia as Method” approaches. While acknowledging Mizoguchi’s (2016) conception of “China as Method” which emphasises the empowerment of sinology, we seek to further rethink and pluralise such an existing epistemological approach to the study of media and culture in China. This double special issue brings together both reflective essays and empirical articles to examine the nuanced cross-border/cross-national cultural interactions and the intersectional dynamics of class, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity and national/local identities. It aims to rebuild the subjectivity and redefine the agency of Asia in the post-colonial and post-imperialist world order, using what we term as a “decolonial cultural perspective”, to understand the idiosyncrasies of local societies within a seemingly homogeneous Asian country. We propose China as Method as a useful approach for all humanities and social sciences researchers to critically rethink Eurocentrism and to avoid an essentialist form of Sinocentrism in the Asian context.

Indigenous heritage as an educational resource in primary education

ABSTRACT This paper is the result of an inter-university educational innovation project developed between the University of La Laguna (Spain) and the Autonomous University of Baja California (Mexico). Students from both institutions, studying at the equivalent level to become future primary education teachers, analysed the way in which primary school textbooks approach the topic of heritage in the Canary Islands and in Mexico. Flipped classrooms and project-based learning were the main teaching methodologies, culminating in a final assignment: a written report by students. The results enable us to re-evaluate the knowledge transmitted through textbooks in the light of this history, and their facilitation in teaching and learning processes, with attention to their epistemological biases. Several topics were highlighted as core concerns in the use of textbooks for teaching heritage: the need to question the role of the textbook in the teaching process, and the importance of Indigenous heritage when teaching and holistic concept of heritage. In outlining the inter-university teaching project, the article also shows how the analysis of textbooks in both contexts, and their subsequent comparison, has made possible a reformulation of how students of education in the Canary Islands and Mexico are taught to teach history.

Examining Child-Led Tours and Child Standpoint Theory as a Methodological Approach to Mitigate Asymmetrical Adult-Child Power Dynamics in Ethnographic Research: A Child-Led Tour of Elfish Antics and Sensorial Knowledge

Child-led tours alongside intersectional feminist theory and child standpoint theory provide promising methodological insights regarding meaningful engagement and research approaches with young children that can inform intersectoral pediatric healthcare practice and policy. However, research has paid little attention to the dynamics between children and adults during research and promising methods and theories that may mitigate asymmetrical relationships of power. The authors describe lessons learned from a child-led tour through the lens of an intersectional feminist, child standpoint theoretical orientation regarding child assent, power, and control. The strength of a child-led tour coupled with a reflexive intersectional, child standpoint theoretical orientation is that it can make explicit adult epistemological biases and the tensions between children’s and adult’s interactions and collaborations. Further, this framing may make medicalized and taken-for-granted scientific assumptions of childhood and children explicit and allow for the reimaging of children’s agency, power, and capacity for knowledge generation in situ. Child-led tours coupled with an adult researcher’s commitment to anti-oppressive practice through methodological accountability and frameworks have the promise of eliciting rich, embodied, sensorial data in pursuit of knowledge mobilization for and with children. Child-led tours as an ethnographic, qualitative interview method are proposed to be child-friendly, enabling meaningful knowledge gathering concerning children’s perspectives, ideas, and experiences. More research on the potential for a child-led tour combined with an intersectional, child standpoint praxis is needed to prevent tokenistic methodological strategies that reproduce asymmetrical power relations and dynamics.

Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Quest for an Islamic Episteme: Humanism as a Case Study

Looking for an Islamic humanism in the Western sense of the word is utterly irrelevant to the spirit of Islam which poses man as a vicegerent of God, not as his structural opposite. The essence of all values in Islam issues from God and obedience to God frees man from superstitions and systems that limit his potential by endowing him as a moral agent with the freedom to choose between good and evil. Al-Faruqi & al-Faruqi (1986) show the epistemological biases of Western intellectual traditions which distinguish between two realms of knowing the world: the secular, rational mundane world and the fantastic, irrational religious world. This distinction is not problematic in Arabic Islamic religious tradition and is not the outcome of the separation of church and state.

Familiness and Entrepreneurial Orientation: An Epistemological Systematization of the Literature Review

Study objective: Family businesses gain notoriety in academic research because they have peculiarities found with the phenomenon of generations, and it is for these attributes that this work aims to analyze the epistemological bias, the results of a systematization that uses the unique characteristics of family businesses, called Familiness, as well as by another construct better known as entrepreneurial orientation. Methodology/approach: To reach this objective, an investigation of the national and international academic production was carried out through a systematization called Proknow-C, being possible to identify the main categorical groups of authors in the area, main journals, as well as to identify and analyze the main objectives and the contributions of the selected scientific articles. Relevance/originality: This study reinforces the unique characteristics of family businesses, in which this work aims to consolidate a methodological proposal with arguments linked to positivism or interpretivism in full epistemology. Main results: Among the results, it was possible to consolidate some research intentions inherent to the junction of such constructs, besides directing, which may be the best and most promising research fields for the application of these constructs and the most indicated methods, guided by the three epistemological positions, subjectivism, objectivism and constructivism.

Introduction to geomedia histories

The maturation of mobile, convergent, and place-contingent technologies has inspired researchers from different fields to re-imagine the relationship between geography and media. Recently, the linking of site-specific media and mediatized places culminated in the overarching concept that sits at the midpoint of this special issue: geomedia. While the majority of work within geomedia studies focuses on contemporary developments, thereby offering snapshots of geomediatization processes as these currently manifest themselves, this volume wants to address the nexus of geography and media from a decidedly historical perspective. Doing so, we hope to inspire a historical turn in geomedia studies as well as contribute to the ongoing discussion about how to define geomedia (studies) beyond (the study of) particular technologies or media genres. By boldly uprooting the geomedia concept from its contemporary, predominantly digital, framework, the contributions gathered here encourage us to map the trajectories of geomedia, to challenge “geomediatization realism,” to remedy epistemological biases, and to further articulate the postdigital.

Perinatal and children’s environmental epidemiology: what about birth integrity?

BACKGROUND AND AIM Birth integrity and violation of birth integrity are concepts that integrate theories of medicalization, risk, embodiment, and intersectionality into a multilevel framework. Violation of birth integrity is experienced widely across the globe and can coincide with environmental exposures and underly or modify many environmentally associated pregnancy, birth, infant, and children’s health outcomes. Measuring the phenomenon of violation of birth integrity, such as obstetric violence, is critically important for the studies of the exposome, given the focus on comprehensive exposure assessment during sensitive periods. METHODS The aims of this work are to introduce birth integrity into the field of environmental epidemiology, to posit violation of birth integrity as embedded within the broader environmental reproductive justice framework, assess pathways to which violation of birth integrity lead to adverse maternal, infant, and child health, and to put forth research agendas and methodologies to assess and incorporate determinants and measurements of birth integrity into environmental epidemiology. RESULTS Birth integrity is embedded within sociocultural norms, local material structures, physiologies, intersectional and transnational powers, among others. Violation of birth integrity can lead to adverse health through several pathways, including epigenetic remodelling, childbirth trauma, among others, potentially leading to factors such as adverse birth outcomes, barriers to breastfeeding, interruption of bonding and attachment, and other adverse maternal and child health. Birth integrity interacts with other determinants of maternal, infant, child environmentally associated health. CONCLUSIONS Violation of birth integrity must be considered as a maternal health indicator. Neglecting prenatal/antenatal, birth, and postpartum experiences, particularly those surrounding birth integrity and violation of birth integrity is part of a broader epistemological biases in environmental epidemiology. Multilevel interventions are needed to simultaneously address these injustices, particularly in the areas of preconception health, maternal health, infant and child health. KEYWORDS perinatal health, exposome, environmental reproductive justice, birth, children's health

BIAS: Epistemological Bias in the Physical and Social Sciences

Bias: Epistemological Bias in the Physical and Social Sciences is a multi-authored book by eleven authors and edited by Abdelwahab Elmessiri. It critiques the bias in methodology and terminology suffered by the research, especially among the Third World intellectuals in general, and the Arab-Islamic world in particular. The bias, according to the book, is about the abandoning of the indigenous paradigms and biases that arise from their own existential and historical situations as a result of encountering the Western framework and paradigm as not only a foreign source but also believed to be dominant even among the Arab writers and researchers. The danger of this phenomenon is so pervasive that it tends to distort the whole process and gives serious effect to the future of the affected culture and civilization.

Postkoloniální, dekoloniální a genderové paralely v možnostech reprezentace ženství a tzv. druhých

Intersectional perspectives in postcolonial theories and gender studies have long argued that femininity represented in museums and exhibitions is subjected to multiple forms of othering. 1) Acquired social modes of looking at artifacts, women and/or Others correlate with androcentric male gaze that passivizes the object being looked at. 2) Women’s social roles in binary androcentric system further render femininity and feminine activities as associated with passivity. Thus, reproduction, care, and socialization as women’s tasks are symbolically relegated to domestic, immanent sphere as a type of work that merely maintains the continuity of a society’s life. 3) In traditional patriarchal schemes, then, transcendental masculine activity is linked with political, economic, scientific, and decision-making realms that are socially constructed as more influential and significant factors in shaping history, thereby being viewed as more worthy of remembering and recording. 4) Representations of minorities in terms of their gender, racial, class, sexual and/or indigenous identities in institutions safeguarding knowledge and historical memory take place in a pre-defined and pre-mediated context shaped by Euro-centric, Judeo-Christian, orientalist epistemologies, which inherently relate knowledge to power and objectification. Tackling such a value system and epistemological bias posits a major challenge for today’s museums, institutions of memory and educational approaches. The following article follows suit in discussing the theoretical and practical potentials of decolonial methodologies which have been formulated from bellow by (formerly) othered, gendered, racialized and objectified positions. The text seeks to demonstrate some of the opportunities this standpoint offers in analyzing a case of (more or less) good practice in the American Museum of Natural History in its attempt to contrast historical narratives pertaining to early European settlements in what is now New York City. Further, elaborating on the tradition of quilting in the U.S., human zoos and exhibits of the Berlin Wall beyond Europe, the article argues for nuanced contextualization and intersectional methods in current musem work.

The paradigm of systemic complexity and the sustainability of Homeland Earth: an epistemological view of the Brazilian reality according to the ideas of Edgar Morin

The environmental issue has been built on numerous epistemological and paradigmatic biases, which now reflect the concern with the perpetuation of environmental autopoiesis, and now evidence the asymmetries revealed by the contradictions of stateless capitalism. Edgar Morin, in his various works, exposed the profound nature of the environmental system, based on a careful analysis centered on the principles of reparadigmatization. Starting from this context, the objective of this article was to understand the bases of sustainability by integrating the structuring concepts of eco-organization and environmental complexity, traced by the Moranian paradigm, and their relationship with Brazilian environmental policies. Based on the profound content analysis of the works of this epistemic protagonist, it can be inferred that the paradigm of systemic complexity is not only essential for rethinking the environmental issue in contemporary times, but it is also absolutely possible, as attested by case studies of rural peoples and communities in the State of Amazonas, located in the Brazilian Amazon, here presented. Nevertheless, this article concludes that in order to overcome the supposed dichotomy between economics and the environment and to carry out another ‘via’ on Homeland Earth, it will be necessary to build a network of solidarity and cooperation between the different actors/subjects/institutions.

"Wounds of Regret": Critical Reflections on Competence, "Professional Intuition," and Informed Consent in Research with Intellectually Disabled People

There is an increased interest in including people with intellectual disability labels in social science research. The ethical conundrums involved in doing so are far-reaching, and labelled people remain chronically excluded from knowledge production on the basis of medicalized conceptions of competence commonly espoused by research ethics boards (REB). Here, I critically reflect on my experience making strategic decisions about accessing a writing group made up of labelled adults for my doctoral research. I respond to Kate Holland's 2007 question: "whose interests are served by current ethics review standards and what do they exclude?" (p. 904) by juxtaposing current ethical standards of critical disability studies with my REB's concerns about three issues: prospective participants' competence; their cognitive abilities; and a lengthy recruitment timeline. My reflections on these issues speak to feelings of regret and resilience, and what it can mean to take lessons from engaging in institutional ethics in an unsatisfactory way. This account offers snapshots of decisions leading up to a research project, and the ways in which ethics review frameworks remain rooted in biomedical epistemological biases that serve outsider researchers and exclude labelled people from research about themselves.