Epistemological Paradigm Research Articles

Aprender a pensar a la luz de la neurociencia y mi competencia docente

Neuroscience constitutes a new epistemological paradigm that makes it possible to analyze and explain intelligent human behavior. Modern neuroscientific theories seem to demonstrate that it is in the brain where the acting body is ordered. It controls the body, orders its results, stores information, influences emotionally, experiences and constructs itself with the exterior. All these functions have as reference the motor system and the control of the movement. Neuroscience knowledge must be considered in education. The activity carried out through the body is key in the neuronal configuration. Through the experiences that make up the experience, the brain is configured. After analyzing the competencies that teachers must have, we propose a work plan for their training, which has been tested for years. Throughout our experience, both with school-age students and in teacher training, we have been able to verify how small, sometimes accidental, experienced situations have taken on an important relevance, even generating substantial changes in the person. You learn what you live. The experience we present here has been carried out in the format of numerous courses for teacher training. We intend to develop teaching competences in such a way that, when the teacher is practicing his educational action, he has a relationship with his own way of thinking, with what he wants and with his own style of interacting.

Autopraxeography: a method to step back from vulnerability

PurposeStudies on vulnerability in the workplace, although relevant, are rare because it is difficult to access. This article aims to focus on the benefits of using autopraxeography to study and step back from vulnerability at work.Design/methodology/approachAutopraxeography uses researchers' experience to build knowledge.FindingsAutopraxeography provides a better understanding of vulnerability and the opportunity to step back from the difficulties experienced. Instead of ignoring experiences related to vulnerability, this method makes it possible to transform them into new avenues of knowledge. Moreover, it enables researchers to step back from experiences of vulnerability, thus making them feel more secure.Originality/valueThe main differences from other self-studies stem from the epistemological paradigm in which this method is anchored: pragmatic constructivism. The most important difference is the production of generic knowledge in three recursive steps: writing in a naïve way, developing the epistemic work and building generic knowledge.

Hacking the Techno-Transition: The Possibilities of Deep Energy Literacy

This article takes the E.L. Smith Solar Farm at the E.L. Smith Water treatment plant in Alberta – a province at the epicentre of Canada’s oil and gas industry – as a case study for what I call deep energy literacy. An energy transition away from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources is a necessary first response to climate change. Deep energy literacy is a proposition, a set of theoretical concepts, through which to disrupt, or “hack”, technophilic transitions by attending to intersectional feminist and decolonial politics and solidarities. Technocratic solutions for decarbonization that do not radically reorient existing social, economic, and political relationships are failed solutions even before implementation begins because they have not addressed the root cause of climate change: a bankrupt extractivist worldview. This worldview is the cause of not only climate change but multiple converging crises. Deep energy literacy is a proposition grounded in relationality that can help us identify problems more holistically and thereby come up with solutions that not only address necessary energy transition shifts, but that do so while simultaneously addressing a plethora of other concerns – including but not limited to Indigenous (re)conciliation – by creating more equitable and just societies and ecosystems. Seen through the lens of deep energy literacy, this analysis of the processes through which the E.L. Smith Solar Farm project was approved illustrates that when decisions about new energy infrastructure are based in entrenched economic, political, social, and epistemological paradigms, they fail to disrupt the status quo and therefore fail to adequately address the root causes of climate change. To achieve a just transition many experiments need to take place; many of these experimentations will be imperfect. In the case study considered in this paper, I suggest that while deep energy literacy conversations were begun, they were not integrated fulsomely enough. Nonetheless, there are positive lessons to be taken from the E.L. Smith Solar Farm and integrated into future decision-making processes.

Developing and Implementing the “Unknowing-Oriented Teaching Model” in teacher training programs ‐ the concept of ignorance-based instruction

Learning is a key fundamental of life. Professor Jeng-Yi Tzeng, Institute of Learning Sciences and Technologies, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, has been investigating the differences between knowledge-based and ignorance-based pedagogy. He believes it is important to recognise the importance of seeking non-knowledge (learning to be ignorant) alongside the pursuit of knowledge (learning to know). Most institutions follow a knowledge-based learning approach that prizes knowledge over non-knowledge but Tzeng believes different learning techniques could help students and teachers alike. He believes the learning journey should include a focus on ignorance, with exploration of the gaps that received knowledge doesn’t cover. Tzeng has studied different paradigms used in pedagogy such as the paradigm of ignorance, which poses ignorance as the focus for meaning and organises learning and the popular paradigm of epistemology, which builds on introducing new knowledge by building on existing knowledge. He has been developing and implementing the “unknowing-oriented teaching model” in the teacher training programmes run at the Centre for Teacher Education with heavy involvement from students, including encouraging students to ask good quality questions to be used in discussion in class. The response from students so far has been profoundly positive and the model has enabled them to develop more critical thinking skills. Having focused on the teaching side of things, Tzeng is now exploring ignorance-based learning.

Incommensurability: an obstacle to the integration of psychotherapy and spirituality. the desert fathers as an overcoming epistemological paradigm

In recent years, the body of literature that deals with trying different ways of integrating spirituality into psychotherapeutic practice has grown exponentially. Probably the interest in this topic has arisen with regard to the inclusion in the DSM-IV of the new category "Religious or Spiritual Problem" (Code V62.89). Until then, religious or spiritual issues had been viewed in the clinical practice as symptoms of some mental illnesses like, for example, the delusions with religious content typical of schizophrenics. But with the fourth edition of the aforementioned manual, there began to be an interest in the study of spirituality as it expresses a fundamental aspect of personality. In this vein, various models of integration of spirituality and psychotherapy have been formulated. Our intention is to study the problem of incommensurability as one of the epistemological and methodological problems that supposes a project of this type. We present the writings of the Desert Fathers as an explanatory model that guarantees an epistemologically legitimate integration of spiritual traditions with psychotherapeutic practice. And for that reason, we argue that their writings could constitute a way to overcome the relationship of mutual incommensurability that apparently exists between scientific rationality and spirituality.

How Organizations can Develop Solidarity in the Workplace? A Case Study

The concept of community of persons, which focuses on both persons and the whole, helps understand solidarity. The latter is based on the social nature of persons. Community of persons and solidarity seems to be able to move away from the individualist perspective or the individualism-collectivism dichotomy. Using autopraxeography in a pragmatic constructivism epistemological paradigm, this article aims to explore how organizations can develop solidarity in a workplace. The experience presented takes place in a bank. It shows that communities of persons with employees and customers are both ethical and financially efficient. These communities build a dialogue between persons and organizations. Nevertheless, it is impossible to force solidarity because it could generate derision that is contrary to the wished goal. Finally, while this model is based on solidarity, it focuses solely on internal solidarity.

Trauma and the Irish Experience: The Example of M. J. Hyland’s Carry Me Down

The article analyses the philosophical features of M. J. Hyland’s novel Carry Me Down (2006), spotlighting this text in the epistemological paradigm of post-postmodernism. The analysis considers some of the distinctive features of the Irish novel in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, such as anticolonial explications and the smashed type of identity of the characters. Carry Me Down reveals the post-postmodern tendency of searching for the truth and explaining the nature of human beings as a combination of the humanitarian and the biophysical. The novel’s protagonist has a special superpower of detecting lies in the discourses produced by other characters. His inability to accept lies physically may be linked to the post-postmodern tendency of rejecting the hybrid combination of truth and untruth, typical of some kinds of postmodernist writing. The analysis also explores the representation of trauma in Hyland’s novel.

Movimento Negro in Salvador de Bahia: an alliance between things

Walking through Salvador de Bahia’s streets one perceives the presence of symbols of the culture of struggle promoted by the Movimento Negro, which invites to encher o espaço (“fill the space”) with celebratory representations of Afro-descent, in response to local structural racism. An attempt was made to understand who or what the Movimento Negro was through fieldwork. The centrality of the material and sensitive dimension, as a space for struggle among economic and racial groups (Rancière 2004), has emerged. Both racism and the forms of resistance in response to it are visible and materially manifest in bodies, spaces, and objects. Movimento Negro is a hyperobject (Morton 2018). It’s a “multispecies assemblage” (Haraway 2015): caught in its sensual manifestations, it forces us to question the local system of meaning and the very epistemological paradigms on which Modernity is based (Gilroy 1993).

Toward a transdisciplinary educational method Draft-visualization: a didactic methodology

The predominance of an epistemological paradigm that remains linked to the linear, cumulative, and reductionist form of science highlights the delay with which transdisciplinarity spreads in the educational world.
 The debate on the need for a global education reform fails to materialize, which, despite its long-term existence, views the same operators/teachers as only partially aware of the need for change; however, they are never sufficiently involved to give force to this change. The system remains paralyzed due to a dead end for which students are paying.
 Therefore, this study proposes a teaching methodology (Draft-Visualization©®). If adopted as a collegiate tool, it is capable of allowing the students to independently work in a transdisciplinary sense regardless of the initial degree of involvement of teachers. Finally, the general operating scheme of a method is proposed (Vetas-Educando©®) as a result of direct experience, which is inspired by the theory of complexity and organized in the principles of transdisciplinarity. The study believes that each educational reality must be capable of conducting its work without renouncing the rigor of a method that enables it to verify and measure results. In this manner, a classic error of the school world is avoided, that is, its self-referentiality.

Resurrecting Urban Heritage with Contemporary Adaption: The Reconstruction of the Porcelain Tower in Nanjing (China)

This article explores how reconstruction design can be used in urban heritage as an adaptive approach to creating a continuous cultural dynamic for urban regeneration. The case that is studied is the rebuilding project of the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing, well-known to westerners as a splendour of the East. The research strategy stems from the epistemological paradigm of interpretivism and relies mainly on qualitative research methods. The ethic of refashioning a past legacy is discussed by reviewing the relevant theories and documents. It is argued that the rationale for rebuilding heritage should be judged on a case-by-case basis. From the perspective of urban cultural regeneration, rebuilding can be an appropriate solution to reviving heritage within the bounds of authenticity. Respecting the delicate balance between historical significance and contemporary sustainability, urban heritage can sometimes best be served by modern reconstruction. This paper, therefore, identifies the modern Porcelain Tower as an urban landmark that distinguishes Nanjing among Chinese cities and satisfies the cultural demand for sustainable local urban regeneration. Whilst the modern pagoda is not historically inaccurate, its reconstruction was determined without public engagement in a way that emphasises the government’s view of its history and value.

Social barriers affecting participation in chosen instrumental activities of daily living among community-dwelling persons with schizophrenia in Rwanda

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore social barriers affecting participation in chosen instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) among community-dwelling persons with schizophrenia in Rwanda.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative study used an embedded single case study design and constructivist epistemology paradigm. Purposive sampling and semistructured interviews of 10 persons with schizophrenia and their 10 caregivers were conducted. Data analysis was done thematically using an inductive analysis approach, following within-case and cross-case analysis.FindingsThe hindrances to participation and community negative attitudes were explored as the two themes. This study focuses on the community negative attitudes including family exclusion and stigmatization, which hinder the participation of persons with schizophrenia in their chosen IADLs.Practical implicationsThis study highlights the need for psychoeducation about mental illness for the caregivers of the persons with schizophrenia, community outreach activities for sensitizing about mental illness to address stigma toward persons with mental illness and strengthening the activities which promote the social interaction and sense of belonging of persons with mental illness.Originality/valuePersons with schizophrenia are facing maltreatment and stigma from the community members while participating in their chosen IADLs. Awareness raising of the support needs of persons living with schizophrenia will contribute to relevant stakeholders advocating for inclusion into families and communities.

Service research: past, present and future research agenda

PurposeThis study aims to explore past and present service research and to provide a future research agenda for service researchers by presenting a big picture of the intellectual connections and emerging topics in the discipline.Design/methodology/approachThis study is an empirical analysis of citations and cocitations on a sample of 5,837 articles published in leading service journals (from 1981 to December 2020). Network analysis was adopted to analyze the data. This study is exclusive in conducting the inquiry at the individual publication level, rather than using the normal aggregated author co-citation analysis approach.FindingsThe findings reveal that the main themes of service research centered on customer satisfaction, service quality, service-dominant logic, methodological foundations, market orientation and service encounter. Also clarified is the periphery domain that may become more important in the future (i.e. technology). The findings also present anchor points for conceptual framing and conceptual development – five main themes that are momentous to navigate theory discovery and justification in the knowledge domain.Research limitations/implicationsIt calls for a more academic effort to evaluate the service research by considering different epistemological paradigms, such as positivism, monologic and hermeneutic, to better understand the process and progress of the discipline.Practical implicationsThrough exploring the transformation of service research into a customer-centric model and technology-based service logic, this study offers possible implications for practitioners and further research areas for service researchers.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use a citation, cocitation and network analysis to examine service research published in leading service journals. This study provides a significant contribution to the theory by combining main conceptual areas and interests in the given discipline.

Grounding co-writing: An analysis of the theoretical basis of a new approach in mental health care.

This contribution aims to highlight the theoretical and epistemological premises of the co-writing experience, a practice where a clinician and a patient are mutually engaged in jointly or collaboratively writing a narrative related to the patient's experience. Unlike a typical set of therapeutic techniques, co-writing is based on sharing perspectives and meanings about the experience of crisis, recovery, and the therapeutic process. The paper identifies and briefly describes four non-clinical epistemological paradigms on which it is grounded: ethnography, values-based practice, narrative care, and phenomenology. Although they differ in several ways, at the same time, they seem to share some common features that the paper investigates and comments. For clinicians, nurses, researchers and Mental Health Service managers, attention to the users and to the improvement of their active roles represents not only a strategy for the empowerment of results, but also the access door to a different perspective which relies on a renewed conceptualization of the mental disease nature that may lead to overcoming the epistemic asymmetry between the 'expert' and the 'other' in favor of intersubjective dialogue.

Eight ways to get a grip on intercoder reliability using qualitative-based measures.

The use of quantitative intercoder reliability measures in the analysis of qualitative research data has often generated acrimonious debates among researchers who view quantitative and qualitative research methodologies as incompatible due to their unique ontological and epistemological traditions. While these measures are invaluable in many contexts, critics point out that the use of such measures in qualitative analysis represents an attempt to import standards derived for positivist research. Guided by extant research and our experience in qualitative research, we argue that it is possible to develop a qualitative-based measure of intercoder reliability that is compatible with the interpretivist epistemological paradigm of qualitative research. We present eight qualitative research process-based guidelines for evaluating and reporting intercoder reliability in qualitative research and anticipate that these recommendations will particularly guide beginning researchers in the coding and analysis processes of qualitative data analysis.

Enjeux éthiques d’une enquête sur des actes communicationnels anonymes autour d’une pratique de santé controversée

This article aims to return to the place of ethics as a situated practice in our research on knowledge legitimization logics related to practical know-how concerning the therapeutic use of cannabis. After defining the specificities of our research object, our conceptual framework and its epistemological particularities, we detail our methodological choices and the issues inherent to Information and Communication Sciences research in the field of online health on an illegal and controversial practice. We therefore question ethics on several levels. First about our relationship to the individuals who make up our field by detailing our exploratory approach. Then we explain our methodological approach in the reaching of the actors. Finally, we return to the ethical issues raised by the observation of expert situations that combine knowledge about health from realistic epistemological paradigms and the interpretative dimension of the analysis of experiential testimonies.

COVID-19 pandemic impact on micro and mini photovoltaic distributed generation in Brazil: selection and analysis of representative indicator

In the search for sustainability in the energy sector, photovoltaic solar energy (PV) has been highlighted as a solution to promote sustainable development. As PV technology expands, there is a need for studies to assess how the new market behaves in different scenarios with the consequent elaboration of different indicators. Following an interdisciplinary approach, and based on the epistemological paradigm of Design Science, the objective of this study was to analyse, preceded by selection and evaluation, indicators that reflect a possible impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Micro and Mini Photovoltaic Distributed Generation (MMDG) market in Brazil in 2020 and 2021. To do so, it was characterized through a systematic literature review - SLR, the state of the art about impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the photovoltaic market and photovoltaic systems indicators. Subsidized by RSL and supported by the core literature on the subject, the Photovoltaic Systems Monthly Installed Power Capacity indicator was selected. Then, the analysis of this was carried out, by means of feeding the indicator using a query in the open database of the brazilian National Electric Energy Agency - ANEEL. It was identified that with the initial general awareness, caused by the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the photovoltaic market suffered a reduction in the Monthly Installed Power Capacity, however, after this initial moment, the indicator recovered, suggesting a capacity for resilience and adaptation of this market, overcoming the difficulties and new challenges encountered, maintaining the pace of growth observed before the pandemic.

Nusantarazation Environmental Paradigm: Sustaining Biodiversity and Culture in Nusantara Malay Archipelago with Local Ecological Knowledge (LEK)

Since Nusantara Malay Archipelago is a maritime community, its indigenous knowledge and local wisdom is largely connected to sea life and water. Nevertheless, there are also mountains, valleys, forests and flatlands; hence, local knowledge is also connected to these landscapes and spaces. This article submits the environmental paradigm of Nusantarazation and its interconnectedness with local ecological knowledge (LEK) as well as reports on findings in the form of case exemplars in the field related to these constructs. The authors argue that Nusantarazation is an epistemological paradigm which is able to decolonize environment knowledge and provide an integrative framework for LEK, sustainable practices and technological know-how. The spatial scope covers mainly areas in Malaysia and Indonesia as these are part of Nusantara. Among the key findings are that LEK tend to be accompanied with seemingly unscientific or mythical narratives but are translated into practices that promote sustainability either in the land or waters. This article also capture various local constructs and beliefs that capture the underlying value systems which are integral to conservation and ecological balance. Nevertheless, the Nusantarazation environmental paradigm encounters challenges from colonial legacies of power modern practices and industrial complex that threaten to harm the environment and humanity.

Gorgias' Revising of Ancient Epistemology: on Non-Being by Gorgias and its Paraphrases

The philosophical nature of the two versions of paraphrasing the Gorgias’ treatise On Non-Being — the skeptical version by Sextus Empiricus and the peripatetic version by an anonymous author — are discussed. The paper gives a comparative analysis of the arguments upheld by the informants enunciating Gorgias’ thoughts, demonstrates the range of philosophical problems, which Gorgias considered, judging by the reports of his speech, and shows how both versions add to and clarify each other in terms of philosophical issues. The work provides insights as to how Gorgias modernizes and transforms the initial attitudes of Parmenides, shifting the reasoning plan: from how thought can be directed to an object and the qualities of this object to how thought can be directed to the non-existent. Accordingly, the problems of intentionality in the Gorgias’ teaching are considered as well as the privileged status of any of mental states, the nature of word or speech as an autonomous way to develop knowledge about external objects, the issue of meaning as a reference, and inter-subjectivity in cognition. A conclusion is reached that giving preference to one of the paraphrasing versions impoverishes our understanding of the Gorgias’ teaching considerably, while the joint analysis of both versions demonstrates the engagement of the sophistic issues raised by Gorgias, in the philosophical and, particularly, the epistemological paradigm of the ancient as well as modern philosophy.

The “evidential paradigm” in Persian Classics: princes from Sarandip and other clue interpreters

The rich history of Persian literature reception in the West includes such a major event as the translation of the Persian narrative into European languages. This has influenced the comprehension of a new epistemological paradigm in the humanities. The story under discussion is the first chapter of Amir Khusrav Dihlavi’s poem “Eight Paradises” (Hašt bihišt, 1299–1301), in which the Indian princess tells the Sassanian king Bahram Gur a tale of three princes from Sarandip (Sri Lanka, Ceylon). As the plot progresses, the princes restore the events of the past according to clues and signs and repeatedly demonstrate their firāsa or ability to guess based on the analysis of evidence. The stages of European reception of this story are well known. All this material is discussed in the methodologically famous work “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm” (1986) by Carlo Ginzburg, who connected the “evidential paradigm” with the Arabic firāsa, a “complex notion which, in general, designated the ability to pass, on the basis of clues, directly from the known to the unknown”; Ginzburg noted that the Sarandip princes were famous exactly for that ability. In this article, the Persian prose sources of the Three princes tale are under discussion, as well as some other sagacity stories from Persian didactic books (adab). Among the detective characters Abū ʻAlī ibn Sīnā gained particular popularity; in some stories, the great philosopher and author of the fundamental canon “The Medicine” acts as a doctor who recognizes a disease by symptoms and at the same time as a detective who restores the course of events from evidence and refutes unfair accusations before a judge.

Epistemological Implications of a ‘Convergent Parallel Mixed Methods’ Research Design

The philosophy of an educational research project is important to reflect upon and declare, but can often be left unexplained. In order to address this area of thought, this study discusses the implications of the epistemological paradigm of a ‘convergent parallel mixed methods’ research design. An actual research piece was chosen to assist in bringing focus to the study. How the epistemological paradigm impacts upon data collection and analysis techniques, and therefore the conclusions of the research, was examined. The design was then critiqued from a Biblical Christian perspective, including ideas for how it might be reformulated and used within a Biblical epistemological paradigm. A significant aspect of such a way of thinking is that educational research is more than increasing knowledge for knowledge sake, but also to grow personally and professionally in an understanding of God: who He is, of His creation, including humanity, and the interrelationships between each of these.