Epistemological Orientation Research Articles

Transparency in action or political fiction? The pre-inquiry phase of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry

AbstractThis article examines how public inquiries come into being through a detailed analysis of the pre-inquiry phase of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry. We focus on two key points of contestation—around the timing of the inquiry and its terms of reference—and suggest that what is at stake during the pre-stage of an inquiry is its ontological and epistemological orientation. Our analysis traces the emergence of two distinct positions during this phase: a grassroots position (conceiving of the inquiry as a response to the experience of collective grief) and an official position (conceiving of the inquiry as a means of learning lessons). Particular attention is given to the latter position and what it reveals about the rhetorical function of transparency in confirming a political commitment to institutional accountability, at the same time as working towards a particular conception of the inquiry as a practical task, expansive in remit, and future oriented.

Engaged scholarship: paradigmatic and pragmatic drivers

ABSTRACT Why do scholars engage with the public? Following a brief overview of engaged scholarship, this paper addresses this question, delineating two interconnected categories of drivers: paradigmatic and pragmatic. Paradigmatic drivers are rooted in deeply held worldviews that shape scholars’ interactions with the public, encompassing theoretical commitments, epistemological orientations, and ethical considerations. On the other hand, pragmatic drivers of engaged scholarship refer to a commitment to addressing urgent societal issues and effecting tangible changes. Guided by practical questions, engaged scholars are responsive to immediate concerns of injustice and unfreedom in society. Pragmatic drivers of engaged scholarship include moments of crisis and evidence of urgency, role expectations, and personal positionality. Under the two categories of drivers, the paper puts forward six propositions that encapsulate its central claims. The two categories of drivers do not exist in isolation; rather, they often interact and influence each other. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of engaged scholarship for policy and practice, emphasising the importance of collaborative relationships with communities of interest.

Explaining Asylum Law Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis

This article demonstrates how Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) can be applied to the study of case law, with an emphasis on the granular analysis of jurisprudence. This article’s empirical focus is a study of asylum decisions issued by the US Circuit Courts. Prior research, using statistical methods, has observed disparities in asylum case outcomes that are partly explained by sociopolitical factors such as the partisan affiliation, gender, and home-state politics of the judiciary. This article uses QCA to revisit these findings; incorporating an analysis of jurisprudential criteria alongside the sociopolitical factors that have been identified by prior studies. All of the Circuit Court decisions for the cases included in the QCA analysis were issued during the first year of the Trump presidency; a time at which asylum-seekers at the US–Mexico border were becoming a focal point both for immigration enforcement and a polarized national debate over immigration policy. Despite the charged political context for these decisions, the QCA findings show that the two most decisive factors for Circuit Court decision-making on these cases were their rulings on nexus and patterns of decision-making that were specific to each court. The closing discussion cautions the reader against generalizing these findings to all appellate-level asylum decisions out of consideration for the epistemological orientation of QCA. Hence, the findings from this study should not be taken as conclusive evidence that sociopolitical factors are of little causal value for research on the appellate courts. Nevertheless, the findings do indicate that more attention should be paid to the explanatory power of jurisprudence. The concluding discussion also highlights the potential that QCA holds for building out a logic-based theory of legal decision making that can account for jurisprudence in tandem with sociopolitical factors and localized cultures of decision-making that help to explain disparate applications of the law.

The making of the Chinese urban landscape: Exploring a framework for analysis

Despite sociopolitical changes, urban landscape heritage has traditionally been valued in Chinese society. However, in the past two to three decades, intensifying pressures for urban redevelopment have created major challenges to urban landscape management. While the management of urban landscape change has focused on landscape-based conservation techniques, urban landscape characterization and assessment, and urban landscape planning, its theoretical and practical foundations remain to be clarified. In connection with the epistemological orientations of landscape in both China and the outside world, this article proposes a new conceptual framework comprising a triad of structural-correlative, morphogenetic-generative, and integrated perspectives for the study and management of urban landscape heritage in China.

Taking Seriously Campus Debates Surrounding Invited Speakers: Open-Mindedness and the Ethics of Inquiry in Higher Education

Context: College campuses in the United States are currently engaged in public and ongoing negotiation of the value and limits of free speech in educational contexts. Responses to invited campus speakers from students, faculty, and campus leaders point to diverging perspectives on the roles and responsibilities of higher education institutions and their members as communities of inquiry. Considering these perspectives raises questions about the epistemic aims of colleges and universities. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate perspectives on the ethics of inquiry and on the value and demands of open-mindedness in higher education. Specifically, I examined one case of an invited campus speaker who sparked considerable debate—Charles Murray’s invited talk at Middlebury College in 2017. Research Design: This study employs the methods of empirically engaged philosophy, a philosophical approach to inquiry that engages with empirical evidence in considering educational aims and implications for institutional structures and policies. I apply conceptual tools stemming from the philosophical theories of knowledge and justice to a thematic content analysis of public statements made by faculty, administrators, and students in the Middlebury case. Conclusions or Recommendations: Through analysis of this campus speaker case, I observed two alternative perspectives on the ethics of inquiry—rational individualism and just collectivism. These two perspectives shared a number of common commitments, including the importance of cultivation of the mind as a primary aim in higher education; the value of open-mindedness, debate, and protest in the pursuit of truth; and the importance of justice, equality, and inclusion. They diverged in their epistemic orientations (individual vs. collective responsibility), their views on the proper bounds of open debate within an institution oriented toward truth-seeking, and what virtuous open-mindedness requires of individuals and collectives. This study contributes to a contemporary understanding of the unique ethical responsibilities of colleges and universities as inquiring organizations, whose members may hold divergent epistemological orientations. By investigating the relationship between open-mindedness, inquiry, and justice in contemporary public discourse in higher education, this study addresses a need for deeper engagement with the philosophical foundations of higher education.

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.

College Composition Graduate Instructors’ Development of Conceptual and Practical Tools for Responding to Student Writing

Recent scholarship has demonstrated the need for criticality toward writing assessments that privilege standard language ideologies and correctness-based approaches. However, teachers continue to experience discrepancies between their intentions and actions, struggling to address both content and form in facilitative, constructive commentary. This study uses the activity theory framework of pedagogical tools, composed of conceptual and practical tools, to analyze through interviews and commented-on papers how two college composition graduate instructors responded to student writing. This study finds that while one teacher held and enacted consistent and congruent pedagogical tools grounded in sociocultural theories of writing development, the other experienced entrenched conflict between competing beliefs about evaluative and process-oriented purposes for teaching writing. These contrastive experiences illustrate how instructors’ development of pedagogical tools is mediated by interactions between their epistemological orientations and language ideologies, reinforcing the need to surface tacit beliefs about Standardized English and academic writing. This study concludes with recommendations for productive intervention in novice composition teachers’ development of response practices.

Postdigital ethnography in applied linguistics: Beyond the online and offline in language learning

We live in a postdigital world where traversing digital and in-person domains for teaching and learning is normalized, raising important methodological and ethical considerations for ethnographic approaches in language education. We define postdigital as a condition where the virtual and physical mediate each other to form hybrid spaces that transcend the online/offline distinction. We begin the article with theoretical discussions on the epistemological orientations that inform postdigital inquiry. Then we situate our language education research, discussing the value of ethnography for understanding hybrid spaces and identifying the challenges and limitations of existing ethnographic methodologies in addressing postdigital conditions. Following this, we illustrate ways to follow the chosen unit of analysis in postidigital ethnography through three case studies, specifically focusing on pedagogical activities. We also reflect on pedagogical insights from postdigital ethnography, sensitive ethical concerns involved in postdigital research, as well as considerations for addressing those ethical issues. We conclude the paper with practical suggestions for researchers on conducting postdigital ethnographies.

Toward a Cognitive Criminological Future

Criminology and Criminal Justice are bifurcated on multiple dimensions: education, publication patterns, and epistemological orientation. These asynchronous efforts might plausibly be remedied through a three-pronged pursuit of improved science, adherence to trial and error in justice practice, and evidence-based practice. Unfortunately, these potential solutions face a triple threat of criminal justice being built on a monopolistic (single producer) and monopsonistic (single purchaser) foundation, limits on rationality (including biases in theory and practice), and fundamental limitations of tacit knowledge. Although these are likely to always be present, one option may be the development of an area with new possibilities for criminological research and criminal justice practices. In revisiting a scholarly exchange over agency, we consider how moving toward cognitive criminology could foster a more enriched understanding of human action. This may offer opportunities for both fields, including unifying the basic science of Criminology with the application of Criminal Justice.

Historical criminology and colonialism

Historical criminology, developing over the last few decades as a defined field of inquiry, has had a recent renaissance, resulting in the publication of leading texts, edited collections and scholarship, setting agendas for its methodologies and impact. We discuss the epistemological and methodological focus of this body of literature, which has been primarily centred on class-based historical criminal justice studies of Britain and the United States. We show that there has long been a parallel development of historical criminology and criminal justice research on colonialism, racial justice and state harm. Drawing upon anti-colonial and anti-criminological research, we challenge current approaches to historical criminology’s epistemological orientations to widen its vision for research, method, ethics and impact, and we highlight the risks of not doing so. This article makes a case for why research and theories of colonialism must be analytical pillars of ‘historical criminology’ and sets out possibilities for future approaches that can push historical criminology in productive directions. Most importantly, we stress the problems for future researchers of analyses that reproduce the structural harms already rampant in criminology.

IDENTITY AND INFINITY: ALTERNATE MODES OF SCRIBING THE SELF: A COMPARISON OF MARIO VARGAS LLOSA’S AUNT JULIA AND THE SCRIPTWRITER AND YANN MARTEL’S LIFE OF PI

An active engagement with the notion of the ‘self’ in modes of confrontation, contestation and conjuration has been an important tropological concern of fictional narratives, especially of an autobiographical intent and tone. Any coherent and significant concept of the ‘self’ entails a conglomeration of conscious and subconscious indices of subjectivities, intellectual sensibility, emotional drives and epistemological orientations, all of which are ideally conducive to artistic or material creativity. And, in life as well as in literature, it inevitably determines the ways and the extent to which the individual is capable of transcending the ‘personal’ to connect with the ‘other’ in varying degrees of empathetic identification. Literature is a terrain where one can encounter, on the one hand, protagonists who cross the confines of their self and feel one with the whole cosmos, and on the other, those who fail miserably in transcending the anxieties and fears of the personal, and recede into self-imposed reticence and insularity. The former is usually seen undertaking a self-chosen or imposed journey in which their inner psychic resources are unearthed and are ultimately traced to the vast eternity of cosmic energies. The latter is representative of the tragic consequences of the ruthless encroachment of normative social forces upon the personal space and the resultant subjugation of the individual self. There is also an in-between category of individuals who can strike a fine balance between their self and the social mores, through an ironic process of competitive negotiation. They consolidate their selves through the calibrated transgressions they perform upon the rules and rigours of social institutions and ethics, only to be re-inducted after a brief interregnum of ostracized animation.

Digital Networks of Democratic Mobilization: Examining Performative, Material, and Rooted Approaches

In a world increasingly and unevenly connected through fiber-optic cables, satellite waves, and smartphones, spatial approaches attentive to questions of power and scale are key to grounding analysis of digital networks and illuminating the possibilities and instabilities created through network linkages. This article examines digital networks of democratic mobilization through the analytical lenses of poststructuralist, new materialist, and feminist and decolonial approaches. By developing a heuristic of performative, material, and rooted approaches to network analysis, this article exposes the underlying theoretical presuppositions and analytical possibilities enabled by different ways of thinking with and through networks in geography. Performative approaches advance an understanding of networks as dynamic, dispersed assemblages, providing a theoretical lens that accounts for fluidity and multicausality. Material approaches call attention to the concrete backbones of digital infrastructures, highlighting the pathways and chokepoints that enable and constrain multiscalar flows of information. Rooted approaches foreground the spatial dimensions of social embeddedness, illuminating how digital networks emerge from and are constrained by longer struggles over territory and place making. Through empirical engagement with the networked mobilizations of the Arab Spring and the Milk Tea Alliance, we bring the insights of geographic scholarship to bear on emerging work on digital social networks and show how historically rooted spatial relations condition new vectors of risk and crisis. By tracing the ontological and epistemological orientations of particular strands of performative, new materialist, and rooted approaches, we recenter scale, territory, and place making, while emphasizing the political nature of network analysis across today’s digital landscapes.

"Facts" and "Ideas": Richard Jones, William Whewell, and the Entangled Histories of Science and Political Economy in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain.

This essay explores hitherto unnoticed conceptual transactions between reflections on scientific method and a rethinking of political-economic categories in early-nineteenth century Britain through the writings of William Whewell and Richard Jones. Closely examining personal correspondences between Whewell and Jones, their works, contemporary debates on political economy and the problem of scientific method, Jones's pedagogic practices, Karl Marx's engagements with Jones, and his receptions as a teacher of political economy in colonial governance and imperial education, I argue that Jones drew upon Whewell's philosophical considerations on the relation between "fact" and "idea," to reconstitute the epistemological orientation of political economy.

Investigating the interplay of epistemological and positional framing during collaborative uncertainty management

ABSTRACT Background Dealing with uncertainties is inherent in the engineering design process and often poses challenges for young learners. This necessitates providing learners with adequate support to navigate their uncertainties effectively. However, achieving this requires a deeper understanding of the factors influencing learners’ uncertainty management processes. Method In this paper, we analyze learners’ framing of uncertain situations in collaborative engineering design tasks. Using the case study method, we explore two framing dimensions—epistemological and positional—to understand their impact on collaborative uncertainty management processes. Specifically, we examine how learners’ framing dynamically shifts during uncertainty management activities by analyzing two contrasting cases from a sixth-grade classroom where groups tackled an engineering design problem, employing interaction analysis. Findings Learners’ epistemological and positional framings are intertwined, collectively influencing their own and their team members’ uncertainty management actions. Additionally, contextual factors such as mentor intervention, early success, affect induced by prolonged failure, and time constraints can prompt shifts in learners’ framing, both in productive and unproductive manners. Contribution The paper provides nuanced insights into how learners’ evolving epistemological orientations and positioning influence uncertainty management, offering practical insights into supporting learners’ uncertainty management processes in problem-solving contexts such as engineering design.

The epistemological orientation of Ottoman argumentation theory and its relation to kalām

Abstract Islamic (Ottoman) argumentation theories provide strong evidence that the argumentation theory advocated by Ottoman theorists was epistemologically oriented, and has strong parallels with the argumentation theory of kalām (dialectical theology); indeed Ottoman argumentation theory and kalām interacted intensively and influenced each other. This article traces some snapshots of this discourse. In doing so, key concepts of Islamic (Ottoman) argumentation theories are introduced.

Teaching-learning in clinical education based on epistemological orientations: A multi-method study.

Teaching-learning is the heart of medical education in the clinical setting. The objective of this research was to develop a conceptual model of effective clinical teaching in undergraduate medical education and conceptualize its operational framework based on the best fit approach. This research consisted of three sub-studies conducted using a multi-method approach. The first sub-study was conducted using a qualitative meta-synthesis approach. The second sub-study used Clarke's situational analysis approach as a postmodern version of grounded theory. Finally, the third sub-study was designed in two stages. First, it was conducted using the expert panel, in the second step, framework of synthesis based on best fit, and the framework of Ottenhoff- de Jonge et al., which formed the basis of this study. In the first sub-study, qualitative evidence on the factors of effective teaching-learning in clinical education was synthesized into five dimensions. Based on the second sub-study, the clinical teaching-learning situation in undergraduate medical education in Iran was represented in three maps, including situational, social worlds/arenas, and positional. Finally, in the third sub-study, based on model modification and development in the expert panel, the effective teaching-learning dimensions were developed into behavioral, social, pedagogical, technology, contextual, educational leadership, and financial dimensions. In the second step, based on the framework of Ottenhoff- de Jonge et al., a three-dimensional matrix was developed concerning epistemological orientations about teaching and learning. Moving from a single teaching-centered and learning-centered orientation to a teaching-learning-centered orientation is required for effective teaching-learning in clinical medical education.

Seeing animals like a state? Divergent forester subjectivities and the managing of human-wildlife conflicts in South India

How do foresters in India understand the foundational and proximate causes of negative interactions between humans and wildlife? In this article we identify five distinct epistemological orientations towards managing human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) and drivers of those conflicts among staff at differing levels of the Indian forest bureaucracy across three protected areas in the Western Ghats. Through an empirical analysis employing Q method, we analyze forester subjectivities in relation to how forests should be managed with HWC mitigation in mind. Our results suggest forester perspectives are informed by social class and rank, geography, and experience. Forester positionality and knowledge is also at times in conflict with hegemonic perspectives of forest departments and can lead to the development of tensions in how foresters think about human-wildlife relations and managing HWC. Our analysis brings together concepts of multiple environmentalities with Gramscian ideas of the incoherent individual to theorize the varying subjectivities of individual state actors in understanding, managing, and co-producing forms of HWC. In doing so, this article contributes to contemporary debates about the theorizing of subject-making in political ecology and geography through an empirical case from one of the most important megafaunal conservation landscapes in Asia.

“What Means This Carnage?”: Civil War Soldiers’ Bodies, Recuperative Projects, and the Army Medical Museum

This essay is about bodies in war and a bone collection. In 1862 during the American Civil War, the US War Department established the Army Medical Museum with the mandate to collect morbid anatomy from the battlefield. It was a dramatic response to the existential crisis posed by wounded and dead Union soldiers. Its creation engaged two differing mid-19thc. epistemological orientations devoted to the care of the human body: the emerging field of medical science and antebellum mourning rituals. Treating the museum as an object of material culture, I track its visual strategies to grapple with war’s carnage and national dissolution.

Native Ontological Framework Guides Causal Reasoning: Evidence from Wichi People

Abstract Causal cognition – how we perceive, represent and reason about causal events – are fundamental to the human mind, but it has rarely been approached in its cultural specificity. Here, we investigate this core concept among Wichi people, an indigenous group living in Chaco Forest. We focus on the Wichi, because their epistemological orientations and explanatory frameworks about ecosystem differ importantly from those documented among most Western majority-culture populations. We asked participants to reason about causes of events that involve the hunhat lheley (inhabitants of the earth: humans, non-human animals, plants and spiritual beings) and other entities of their ecosystem (e.g., lagoon). We find a native ontological framework that encompasses three interacting organizing principles. This new evidence highlights ways in which native categories guide causal reasoning. Our research challenge long-held assumptions that dichotomies – nature-culture or natural-supernatural – are universal features of the human mind.

Unpacking teachers’ orientations toward a knowledge generation approach: Do we need to go beyond epistemology?

This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a professional development program rooted in knowledge generation theory. Specifically, it sought to examine the changes in teachers' three orientations following the completion of the first-year workshop, and how these changes impacted their classroom implementation. This investigation takes the form of a multiple-case study of twelve K-5 teachers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and classroom observations. The findings suggest that achieving changes toward generative learning in teachers is not just about altering their epistemological orientations and procedural pedagogical practices, but also involves a shift towards ontological and axiological perspectives.