Epistemology Of Practice Research Articles

Exploring ‘what’ to learn in physical education

Purpose: The aim of this article is to show a need for explicating ‘what’ there is to learn in physical education (PE) with a particular focus on learning to move with the meaning potential seen as integral to moving. Further, the aim is to provide an example of exploring ‘bodily knowing’ from the perspective of practical epistemology as outlined by researchers such as Michael Polanyi, Allan Janik and Gilbert Ryle.Background: Learning has been a prominent issue within the PE research for quite some time. Overviews of research show that the object of learning, the ‘what-aspect’ within the didactic triangle, has been taken into account, though the obvious focus is the ‘how-aspect’, as in how learning occurs. In PE, the ‘what-aspect’, according to teachers as well as pupils, is vague, and the aim of the subject is expressed in terms of ‘fun-aspects’ rather than ‘what-aspects’. Taking a standpoint from research concerning aims, content and important knowledge in PE in Sweden, with reference to international research, this article will shed light upon physical activity as a taken-for-granted content, conceptualized either as an instrument for fulfilling the demands of the contemporary health-discourse or an instrument for performing well in sports. In doing this, the article will argue for the urgent need of explicating what capabilities students are supposed to develop in PE.Key concepts: The concept of knowledge in relation to PE will be discussed. Drawing on Janik's discussion of the epistemological structure of practical professional knowledge, emphasizing the importance of making the base of knowledge explicit, capability to move will be regarded as an object of learning, a possible ‘what-aspect’, in PE. To overcome the boundaries between practical and theoretical knowledge, Polanyi's concept knowing will be used. Conceiving knowings as embracing several aspects of knowledge as well as comprising both mental and physical processes, knowings in human movement will be elaborated.Conclusion: As our initial overview of research about ways of reasoning about knowledge and learning in PE suggested, there is an imminent need to systematically develop a language for learning in PE where what to learn, the specific knowings that PE is nurturing, is paramount, and where this ‘what’ is not reduced to superficial knowledge about health issues or physical skills. We believe that exploring the ‘knowing how’ aspect of learning will highlight potential ‘knowings’ in human movement. Following the concept ‘knowing’ as in line with Ryle's ‘knowing how’, not separating mental and physical skills, can serve as an analytical tool and a starting point for articulating examples of ‘knowings’ as objects of learning and thus providing opportunities to conceptualize human movement in terms of knowing and learning.

Distractions in the School Science Laboratory

In this article, I make a case for the potential educative worth of distractions for learning science in the school laboratory. Distractions are operationalized as experiences lying outside the main purpose of the laboratory activity, thereby diverting students’ attention from that purpose. Through a practical epistemology analysis, I examined in close detail the conversations of three groups of high school students trying to explain how a real galvanic cell works. The three groups experienced the same two distractions, (1) a nonworking light-emitting diode and (2) negative readings on a voltmeter. The analysis reveals how one of the groups, through a series of contingencies, successively made the two distractions continuous with the main purpose of the activity. In the remaining two groups, no such continuity was established. The results show that (a) experiences initially being distracting, perplexing, and confusing may indeed acquire significance for the students’ possibilities of coping with the main purpose of the activity but that (b) the outcome is highly contingent on the particular experiences drawn upon by the students to cope with the distractions. Consequently, I discuss ways in which teachers may turn distractions encountered in laboratory activities into educative experiences for more than a few lucky students.

Using pragmatism to develop didactics in Sweden

This paper reviews how pragmatism has been adopted as a systematic grounding for didactics in Sweden. The approach is action-oriented and emphasises the communicative activities that occur in educational settings. Four methodological components are described: (1) the empirical method of inquiry, the notions of (2) selective traditions and (3) organising purposes, and (4) practical epistemology analysis. Together, these tools can be employed for planning, assessing and analysing the choices teachers make regarding methods and the content of teaching. They have been purposely developed to support teaching and learning in terms of the interactions encountered by teachers in exercising their profession. The units of analysis concern activities and how they are conducive to the purposes of lessons.

Language, Experience and Professional Learning (What Walter Benjamin Can Teach Us)

This essay raises questions about how language educators might construct and further develop their epistemology of practice in and through the situations in which they work from day to day. The occasion for this paper is our work as guest editors of a special issue of L-1: Educational Studies in Language and Literature, when we invited L1 teachers to reflect on the role that language plays in their professional learning, whether it be in the form of conversations with peers, reflective writing, or by other means. We begin this essay by locating our reflections within our current policy context, namely the standards-based reforms that have come to dominate educational thinking around the world, offering a brief critique of the values and attitudes embedded within them. We then outline a philosophical framework as an alternative to the world-view reflected by such reforms, focusing specifically on the work of Walter Benjamin. In the final sections, we review our work as guest editors of the special issue of L-1, reflecting on what we have learned from the papers we have assembled for this issue, and locating our learning within the philosophical framework that we have drawn from Benjamin. We argue that it is timely for language educators to articulate the assumptions that inhere within their work, in contradistinction to the common sense embedded in standards. Thus we might begin to reconceptualise the relation between language, experience and professional learning in opposition to the hegemony of standards.

“I Thought This Course Was Going to Be Streamlined!”: The Limits of Normal and the Possibilities of Transgression

This article offers an analysis of the parallels between neo‐liberalism, epistemology, and pedagogy, specifically related to how neoliberal ideologies narrow the possibilities for considering transgressive sexualities. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) education encourages educators to consider queer lives and communities, and can do so in ways that leave intact or challenge dominant norms. Neoliberalism, an economic expression of liberalism, rests on ideologies that support privatization and a diminished notion of the public good. These ideologies can become intertwined with epistemological expectations in the classroom. Related to queer theory and pedagogy, neoliberalism can profoundly narrow the possibilities for queer subjecthood. Epistemological neoliberalism, or structures of knowing that endorse an often falsely rendered normality, can be active in the classroom. This article explores two comments students offered in courses on gender and communication to explore the ways in which neoliberal ideologies bear on epistemological and pedagogical practices in ways that profoundly narrow conceptions of the social and constitutions of the subject, particularly related to transgressive sexualities and queer lives.

Physiotherapy as bricolage: Theorizing expert practice

Theories about how knowledge is sought and applied in clinical practice are often referred to as practice epistemologies, and have not been extensively explored in the physiotherapy profession. Tacit assumptions about what counts as physiotherapy knowledge thus form the basis for many approaches to gaining and using information in practice. The purpose of this paper is to propose a physiotherapy practice epistemology, through the notion of the bricoleur, which takes an alternative approach to understanding how knowledge might best be viewed in relation to physiotherapy. The term bricoleur refers to a handyman or handywoman who uses all tools and types of knowledge available. The notion of physiotherapists as bricoleurs recognizes that all practice knowledge is situated within social, cultural, and historical contexts that shape our beliefs about what counts as physiotherapy knowledge. This recognition leads physiotherapists who act as bricoleurs to embrace multiple epistemologies, discovering new ways of knowing and clinical reasoning strategies to provide a more holistic approach to physiotherapy practice. The relationships between expertise in clinical reasoning and the epistemology of the bricoleur are then addressed, explicating the utility of multiple epistemologies in achieving excellent physiotherapy care. A bricoleur's epistemology is then applied to the concept of expertise in physiotherapy, de-stabilizing the notion that a single authoritative approach to the practice of physiotherapy ought to be idealized.

Reflection and Reflective Practice: Creating Knowledge through Experience

Reflection and reflective practice are popular concepts in the health professions that have yet to be rigorously addressed in audiology literature. In this article, a select summary of the theoretical bases of reflection and reflective practice are presented, highlighted with practical examples. The potential for reflection and reflective practice to benefit audiology education and practice is discussed. A nondichotomous approach to including a reflective epistemology of practice in audiology is recommended. Also highlighted are the centrality of experience to knowledge development and attention to reflection-in-action as a way of being professional practitioners. Also, critical reflection is identified as crucial to uncovering assumptions that underlie our practices and challenging oppressive discourses and systems, toward moving the profession forward in a spirit of optimized patient/client care. Although this article is conceptually focused and not a broad literature review, some early research in audiology related to this topic is reviewed briefly and practical approaches to fostering reflective practice also are considered. Reflection and reflective practice offer generative possibilities for the rigorous development of knowledge based in practice and experience, crucial to balancing other practice approaches such as evidence-based practice.

Health care decisions by Sukuma ‘peasant intellectuals’: a case of radical empiricism?

Health care decisions in Sukuma-speaking rural communities in Tanzania reproduce a practical epistemology that could be described as radically empiricist, rather than just pluralist; their point of reference is the deeper ‘relation’ between events, which collective traditions articulate and subjects may experience, but which escapes the atomistic perception privileged by biomedicine. This analysis relies on a diverse portfolio of ethnographic data, including the use and structure of medicinal recipes, the choices of mental health care according to experienced ‘effectiveness’, and lay discussions on the correct aetiology and treatment of reproductive disorder. Combining two dimensions for a given medical epistemology, the (empirical/ habitual) basis of its transmission and the (open/closed) relation with other epistemologies, four types are proposed: monism, dualism, pluralism, and radical empiricism. The concept of peasant intellectuals, it is argued, needs to be rethought in contexts of medicinal initiation.

Using eight trigrams (BaGua) approach with epistemological practice to vitalize problem-solving processes: A confirmatory analysis of R&D managers

Eight trigrams (BaGua) is a philosophy that has played an essential role in Chinese life. The purpose of the present study is to extend the theory to organizational problem-solving, so that individuals can engage in creative problem solving and justification to discover the most effective approaches. Questionnaires were returned by 259 research and development managers, and were analyzed using the SEM statistical method. The results indicate that the interaction among each trigram in the model of BaGua was significantly correlated. Most of the hypotheses were supported. The more an individual interacted with others, with data and with devices, the higher the problem sensitivity and evaluation performance. Despite the finding that the Tui trigram was not significantly related to the Ken trigram, all other trigram elements significantly affected each other. This finding is discussed in terms of the confirmatory situation and the conceptualization of epistemology in problem-solving.

Lightness and weight: (re)reading urban potentialities through photographs

Geographical fieldwork often involves using photography to document and illustrate theoretical and empirical concerns. Capturing images is deeply entwined in a complex web of associations, linking the epistemology of research practice with the perceived nature of evolving spatial processes. One example of this is the way urban geographers use images to document the transformation of urban landscapes. This is the outcome of not only material but also discursive forces that reshape the urban imaginary. The discourses of post‐industrial entrepreneurial urbanism that stimulated the development of Irish cities during the Celtic Tiger offer a clear case in point. However, when the set of relations and suppositions that underpin the way in which we formulate meaning through these landscape images shifts – such as the case with the current economic ‘crisis’– then the images themselves take on new resonances, identities and potentialities. Taking the Celtic Tiger crash as a starting point, this article explores one image taken during fieldwork researching urban change in Cork. Focusing on the way in which the image disrupts the linear (progress) vision of the city, the article examines how in the absence of a clear urban ‘idea’ we are left with an uncoordinated system of urban signs, but also perhaps a deterritorialised city of potentiality.

A living theory approach to teaching in higher education

Schön contends that Boyer’s vision for a new paradigm of scholarship, which includes research, teaching, application and integration, requires a new epistemology of practice that would take the form of action research. This article explores the validity of Schön’s assertion through the use of a living theory approach to teaching ‘active participation in learning’ to a group of second-year undergraduate students, influenced by an ontology of a participative reality and a pedagogy of whole-person learning. The level of engagement by the students, and their reflections on their experience of the module, support Schön’s claim; and demonstrate the significance of a living theory approach to action research in realising Boyer’s vision as a means of enhancing the quality of students’ learning in higher education.

Pedagogical craft and its science: Janus-faced in pre-service teacher education

Abstract The authors of this article propose that theory and practice, as the science and the craft of teaching, are reciprocal and interfacing. To manifest this construct in teacher preparation courses, they suggest the analogy of ‘bootstrapping’ as a way of thinking about the epistemologies of theory and practice in tandem. With this analogy in mind, they explore the use of a specific curriculum tool to bring theory and practice closer together. Survey and interview data in a study they conducted indicate that new teachers’ experience of their first year or two in the workplace is largely positive with regard to what they think they know and can do pedagogically, while revealing that they nevertheless perceive themselves as unprepared to cross the boundary into the workplace. The authors conclude that more can be done in teacher education programmes to amalgamate the epistemologies and the discourses of the science and the craft of pedagogy in non-clinical work.

Adapting the boundaries in primary physical education: an account of my learning, my educational influence and improved practice

In this paper I explore how I have come to theorise my work as a critical emancipatory practice as a lecturer in primary physical education (PE). I give an account of what I understand to be the epistemological foundations and practices of practitioner research and my potential educational influence in my own and other practitioner-researchers’ learning. I explain how I have generated my living educational theory of practice and discuss the changes in my learning from a propositional approach towards a dynamic epistemology of practice that is grounded in inclusional and dialogical ways of knowing. Within my paper I position myself as a professional educator and researcher, and share the exciting and transformational experiences of teaching and learning in evolving action research cycles of practice. I view my learning to date as an active act, working with the novice teachers I support to offer improvement and change in our future practice. I celebrate my reconceptualised view of education as a learner from within my practice and explain my move from knowledge transfer to knowledge co-creation. I make an original contribution to educational knowledge by explaining how I try to inspire others to research their practice and contribute to a new scholarship of educational enquiry.

Human Resource Management At The Crossroads

Getting work done through other people is management; heterogeneities and complexities are managerial issues. Studies in management in 20th and 21st centuries focused on principles of management and management practices. The management theory jungle continues to be dense and impenetrable. Pessimism rules the roast with organizations perceived as insensitive. There is a divide between theory and practice. Epistemology of management practice and management theory building needs to be understood. HRM processes have to be evaluated along with choice making. Theories have to be self fulfilling by changing conditions under which they work. A number of failure stories have been analyzed, impacting several role holders. Searching for evidence for the various failures have provided live instances of actual situations which have caused trauma to the role holders. Financial scandals along with issues of corporate governance have generated conflict. Reviewing practices one perceives repeat errors perpetuated by managers; they are engaged in handling symptoms rather than curative aspects. Grand exits follow. Managers do not consider it safe and seem to work under such constraints. How long will they wait.

The Relationships Between the Postmodern Agenda and the Bases of Teacher Education Policies in Brazil

This paper attempts to show the relationships between the Postmodern agenda and the bases of initial teacher education policies in Brazil. After describing the assumptions of the postmodern agenda, it describes the bases of initial teacher education policies and shows the main problems of the influence of the postmodern agenda on initial teacher education. The topic of this essay is relevant to the field of education policies, since initial teacher education can contribute either to the reproduction of a pragmatist/utilitarian education or to the construction of an education project according to the working class interests. With regard to the methodology, this research was based on the historical and dialectical materialism and used bibliographical and documentary sources. This study made it possible to conclude that since the 1990’s teacher education policies in Brazil have adapted to pragmatic, relativistic and subjectivist ideas, especially by praising the epistemology of practice, considering the concept of reflective teacher and the logic of competences. The postmodern agenda has many points in common with teacher education policies regarding the emphasis on local, ephemeral and short-sighted actions, whereupon social reality is seen as fragmented, multifarious, fluid and plural rather than as an integral unity. Within the context of teacher education, this can be clearly observed in the fragmentation of actions, projects, resources and educational entities, in contrast to a consistent and integrated proposal, which is what a policy of State and nation should be.

HIC Sunt Dracones (“Here be Dragons”): Global Cartography, Transnational Pedagogy, Religious Formation, and Learning

Religious learning within the currents of global cultural flows necessitates risky movements into terra incognita—be they unknown internal landscapes of the mind and heart in religious knowing, or external territories of culture, ideas, and the politics of identification. Drawing on insights gained from three seminary-sponsored “travel study seminars” to Western and American Samoa, Malaysia and Vietnam, and India, this article picks up on the challenge posed by “pedagogies of contextualization” (Foster et al. 2006). Using “context” as “method,” Foster's pedagogies of contextualization as an evaluative framework, and James Loder's “transformational logic” as a guiding hermeneutic for understanding human learning, the article maps out certain epistemological dispositions and pedagogical practices that seem generative for the work of global/transnational religious knowing and learning.

Practical epistemologies in physical education practice

With a point of departure in a transactional understanding of epistemology, the purpose of this paper is to explore practical epistemologies in physical education (PE) by investigating how knowledge is produced and reproduced in students' and teachers' actions in PE practices posted as clips on the user-generated video-sharing website YouTube. YouTube can be understood as a disordered public video archive of (in this case) ongoing PE practices created by both students and teachers. With a transactional understanding, knowing, and in consequence questions of epistemology, can be conceived of as something we do, something practical. In this paper, practical epistemologies in PE are investigated by exploring ends-in-view and habits-of-action in students' and teachers' actions in PE practice. The practical epistemologies identified in the study are as follows: (i) knowing by doing correct movements; (ii) knowing by trying; (iii) knowing by imitating; (iv) knowing by praising and cheering; (v) knowing by cooperating; (vi) knowing by creating; (vii) knowing by being changed into gym clothes; (viii) knowing by acting in a certain locality; and (ix) knowing by resisting. The categories represent different ways of how knowledge is produced and reproduced in PE practice, and describe the functions that different actions and actors have in how knowledge is produced and reproduced as well as in the direction this takes.

Becoming to know. Shifting the knowledge creation paradigm

PurposeThe paper seeks to provide a theoretical contribution to the current phase of the knowledge creation theory of knowledge management (KM) by addressing the need for a paradigm shift and having more ontological and epistemological discussions.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed “becoming to know” framework builds on the KM literature review and on the study of learning, knowing and becoming concepts from several perspectives. Both conceptual and empirical research papers contribute to the framework.FindingsThe paper presents the challenges of KM; it identifies five phases of the knowledge creation theory development through 1995‐2008; it summarizes the main criticism against the theory; and it proposes the “becoming epistemology” concept and the “becoming to know” framework. The main elements of this framework are: engaging, exploring, experiencing, emerging, enabling and evolving.Research implicationsStudy of the KM literature reveals several other challenges that are not addressed here and could provide opportunities for researchers. The paper calls for more discussions regarding the paradigm shift and for more attention to the participative research paradigm, as well as action and case study research in KM.Originality/valueDrawing on the participative paradigm, epistemology of practice, extended epistemology, transformative teleology, becoming ontology and on concepts of learning, knowing, and becoming, the proposed framework illustrates the dynamic, iterative, interactive interplay and evolution of ontological and epistemological knowledge creation spirals that is the essence of the knowledge creation theory.

Valuable Thinking, Variable Knowing

ABSTRACT Museum researchers often need to refresh the profession they practice by reconsidering their values, their assumptions, and the intent of the institutions they serve. Technical precision and analytic skill may reduce or hide the complexity of effect and response a museum needs to hear in order to understand meaning in the lives of users. How do we craft a new and lasting epistemology of practice with the thoughtful user at its center?

A Response to “The STS Challenge to Philosophy of Science in Taiwan”

Lamenting the absence of fruitful dialogue between philosophers of science and STS scholars in Taiwan, Ruey-Lin Chen argues that each field can and should help the other to improve. In particular, if I have understood Chen’s arguments correctly, philosophers of science could learn from STS to pay closer attention to the social aspects of scientific activity, to social understandings of what science is, and to the political or ethical implications of scientific practice in a modern technoscientific society like Taiwan. The field of STS, meanwhile, could benefit both reflexively and methodologically from the philosophy of science by paying more rigorous analytical attention to its own theoretical lineages, internal contradictions, and truth-claims; by attending more closely to the validity of the scientific arguments at the core of most STS case studies; and by developing its capacity as a discipline to proceed from the level of specific case study to generalization. Chen’s arguments for what STS has to gain from a dialogue with the philosophy of science are based on the proposition that STS is, fundamentally, a science, albeit a social science. Greater philosophical rigor, reflexive and interpretive, would thus contribute positively to its “normal development.” Certainly any scholarly field benefits from rigorous critical attention to its epistemological practices; it would be hard to disagree with Chen on that point. But do STS practitioners in fact construe the field asa“science,”andwhatmightthetraditionofAnglo-Saxonanalyticalphilosophythat Chen identifies as the forte of Taiwanese philosophy of science contribute to it? In my opinion one can make a strong case that STS (like “sociology of scientific knowledge” before it) is a project rather than a discipline or a science, and is recognized as such by its practitioners. It is a shared goal, namely, the unpacking and challenging of technocratic authority, that gives coherence to STS, rather than any aspirations to a unified theory, or any agreed bounding or framing of the object of analysis. The field of STS is essentially political, a spectrum of exercises in demystification ranging from the gendering of electric shavers to the transnational governance of nuclear power to claims about the separation of the social and the