Ideological Tensions Research Articles

New Directions and Development Models for College Student Education based on Machine Learning Classification Algorithms

For the contemporary student teaching system, the information-based education management system has played a positive role in the rapid promotion of teaching. In order to get the teaching exploration data of modern information management from the data increment on the Internet, this paper updates the technology of data mining. This paper constructs a quantitative table for teacher positions and conducts ideological and political job evaluations in the database. This paper mainly focuses on the management and construction of ideological informatization based on the [Formula: see text]-means algorithm. By using the [Formula: see text]-means algorithm to analyze the daily behavior data of students, we can discover their behavior patterns and trends, providing decision support for student management. For example, by analyzing data such as students’ internet time, social activities, and library borrowing records, we can understand their interests, hobbies, and learning habits, providing a foundation for personalized education. Cluster analysis of students’ ideological and political performance using the [Formula: see text]-means algorithm can identify student groups with different ideological tendencies. This helps schools to carry out targeted ideological and political education work, and improve the pertinence and effectiveness of ideological and political education. Through quality tracking analysis of educational evaluation, it has carried out educational informatization tracking management using an information model. In the process of judging and analyzing different subjects, it utilized the hot topics of universities for a more comprehensive information intelligent tracking management.

Pre-9/11 Islamophobia: A Contrapuntal Reading of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man reproduces the same Orientalist mantra of the Muslim terrorist. Although he is much celebrated for writing thrilling terrorism and assassination novels long before the 9/11 event, many critics situated his Falling Man within the 9/11 neo-Orientalist framework. This study argues that the 9/11 occurrence (while acknowledging its significance) is not the only trigger behind DeLillo’s representation of Muslims in his novel. As such, the study underscores DeLillo’s ideological inclinations by examining his records and the contextual circumstances that transpired before 9/11. By rereading Falling Man, this study situates the investigation within three parameters: the Iranian Revolution, the Rushdie affair and the Clash of Civilisations thesis, thus appropriating the novel within its Islamophobic implicature. Edward Said’s theory of contrapuntal reading, which urges a nonconventional reading of a canonical text, is employed as the theoretical underpinning of this study.

We need to talk about AL: has academic literacies designed the pedagogy out of Learning Development?

Academic literacies (AL) research has made significant contributions to understandings of student writing and literacy across higher education and particularly learning development. However, researchers and practitioners both within and external to the AL movement have struggled to clarify the relationship between AL and pedagogy. English for Academic Purposes researchers have highlighted the lack of a workable AL pedagogy, whilst AL researchers maintain that the model represents a design space or heuristic for thinking about practice in context, rather than a source of pedagogic prescriptions. This theoretical discussion elaborates concerns with the structural coherence of the AL model, its broadly social constructivist underpinnings and evidence base, and the impact of its ideological orientation on the pedagogy we derive from it. Underpinning these critiques is a suspicion that the interpretation of social constructivist epistemology on which AL relies to pinpoint weaknesses in the models of literacy/writing which it subsumes cannot generate a practical pedagogy. We argue that these structural and ideological tensions in the AL model help to explain confusion over its interpretation and implementation. We speculate that this singular focus on social constructivist-derived theory, though well-intentioned, does more to reinforce a particular ideological commitment than to enhance student learning.

Medicaid's Political Development Since 1965: How a Fragmented and Unequal Program Has Expanded.

The Medicaid program has changed enormously over the past 60 years from a very restrictive program primarily attached to recipients on public assistance in 1965 to a much more expansive program allowing coverage for persons regardless of marital, parental or employment status. Incorporating the 'medically needy'-an ambiguous concept from the start-allowed states to include many different groups in Medicaid who are not traditionally thought of as poor. In addition, three structural features illuminate why the program has expanded and changed dramatically over time: federalism and intergovernmental financing, the dominance of the private sector, and fragmentation. Unequal treatment among Medicaid covered groups alongside partisan politics create a political discourse that often reveals Medicaid as a public subsidy for stigmatized groups, while hiding Medicaid's reach into the middle-class. This central political ideological tension collides with programmatic realities such that Medicaid strangely often suffers from a residual, retrenchment politics while at the same time benefiting from embeddedness making it extremely difficult to truly turn back the clock on Medicaid's expansion.

Psychoanalytic Criticism of Ifesinachi Nwadike’s How Morning Remembers The Night

In recent times, it appears Nigerian poets are influenced by changes in the country's social-political and economic landscape to such an extent that their artistic expressions are thought to have tilted towards psychological dimension. This observation transcends the social commitment and ideological inclinations often identified with the poets in the past. Therefore, this paper attempts a psychoanalytic criticism of Ifesinachi Nwadike’s poetry, How Morning Remembers the Night, focusing on the instances of psychosocial disorder as an association of socio-economically induced psychological conditions that find expression in the collection. Conceptualising this condition, the study adopts a descriptive research method premised on critical analysis in which attention is given to symptomatic elements like the persona’s recollected experiences, tone and cathartic disposition. Here, a synthesis of the theoretical paradigms of psychoanalysis proposed by Sigmund Freud and Erich Fromm is found rewarding in providing a framework for the conception of the poetry as the persona’s dream text. The study discovers that the psychosocial disorders identified in the collection symptomatically find expression in the poetic persona’s tone in form of emotional disturbances and that they are triggered by memories of societal failings. Consequently, the persona displays the identities of an aggrieved songbird and a griot whose memory is clouded by grief and anguish in reaction to societal foibles. The paper concludes that certain psychosocial disturbances that are noticeable among Nigerian citizens under the same unfavorable societal conditions have permeated Nwadike’s poetry.

“Telling China’s story well”? Tifa, translation, and discursive power in the Quotidiano del Popolo

ABSTRACT Examining China’s growing efforts to affirm its ‘discoursive power’ (话语权) in the Euro-Mediterranean region, this paper presents a case study of the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) communication of its ‘external publicity’ (对外宣传) via news translation. The study focuses on translation strategies of the Italian version (Quotidiano del Popolo) of the official Party newspaper 人民日报 to investigate the implications and effects of translation shifts involving tifa (提法, political formulations and fixed expressions). A qualitative textual analysis applied the Descriptive Translation three-stage methodology to a corpus of articles on the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Games, with reference to ‘constraint’ and ‘relation’ in translation. Understatement, omission, and indirect translation were identified as translation shifts in the corpus, suggesting ideological tensions behind most such shifts. While the first two modes help downplay China’s geo-political ambition, the last results in ineffective translation that can obstruct the intended political message, hindering the ability to ‘tell China’s story well’ (讲好中国故事). This study seeks to elucidate the complexity and political intricacies of ‘correctly’ receiving and replicating the Chinese political message in a foreign language other than English.

Atlas asunder? Neo-liberal think tanks and the radical right

Abstract How are neoliberal thought leaders reacting to the rise of radical conservatism? Looking at Atlas, a worldwide network comprising approximately 500 free market think tanks and campaign groups, this study examines how its affiliates prioritize threats. This is accomplished through a qualitative analysis of a sample of documents that Atlas partners published on their websites from 2017 to 2022. The findings range from expected to puzzling. First, there is a reliable adherence to core neo-liberal ideas such as globalization and marketization. Second, explicit evidence of ideological tension is scarce, as only a few think tanks openly signal alignment with illiberal and authoritarian positions. However, as a whole, the network appears consistently—and wilfully—apathetic towards the radical right. This indifference contrasts with the vigour and regularity with which the network confronts left-of-center ideas, parties and governments. Delving into this contrast and its political implications, the study highlights the twin concepts of strategic and selective ignorance and considers their analytical potential.

Uncovering the uncoverers: identity, performativity and representation in counter-disinformation discourse

ABSTRACT Treating counter-disinformation activities as a discursive practice producing knowledge in specific cultural and historical contexts, this article brings a vital cultural studies perspective to an incipient Critical Disinformation Studies agenda. At the same time, it cautions against inadvertently aligning that agenda with the ‘bad faith’, right-wing populist critique of counter-disinformation practices, acknowledging their genuine potential to enhance democratic culture. It proceeds by interrogating the communicative strategies informing the proliferating Western counter-disinformation initiatives which have mushroomed in response to what is widely perceived to be one of democracy’s most potent threats, and which border on a ‘moral panic’ serving to conceal key ideological tensions. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis methods, a close reading of mission statements and related materials from the websites of four leading counter-disinformation units demonstrates how these texts interweave three functions – identity construction, performativity, and representation – to generate the overarching ‘discursive formation’ or ‘articulation’ constituting counter-disinformation as modern liberal democracy’s core, but also exposing its fault lines. Specifically, it shows that a failure to reconcile competing accounts of truth (as scientific rationality and normative value) indexes deeper contradictions pitting the liberal emphasis on individual freedom and capitalist efficiency against the democratic prioritizing of popular power, dispassionate observation against civic participation, and the promotion of transparency against the creeping power of surveillance. It concludes that the absolutist epistemology – a vestige of disinformation’s Cold War conceptual origins – designed to cover over these paradoxes masks the complex roles played by truth and deception in politics, thereby hindering the emergence of alternative, oppositional forms of knowledge capable of embracing truth in its radical contingency and plurality and facilitating democratic renewal.

And to thine own self be true: ideological tensions of Orthodox Bible teachers in pluralistic schools

ABSTRACT This phenomenological study looks at the ideological dilemmas that religiously Orthodox Jewish Bible teachers face when teaching in a pluralistic environment, where the majority of students would identify with a non-religious or secular worldview, in its varied manifestations. The study used a theoretical framework of ideological dilemmas, combined with pedagogical hermeneutic orientations, to understand the lived experience of these teachers and to identify the specific tensions that they encounter in classroom interactions. Ten teachers of diverse Orthodox affiliations participated in semi structured interviews to uncover their lived experience of the pluralistic school milieu, their students’ beliefs. Their pedagogical decisions in interpretation of Biblical texts and their hermeneutical approaches, were used as a vehicle for understanding these experiences. Two areas of tension emerged: 1. remaining authentic to their own beliefs while being sensitive to those of their students, and 2. the tension between the value they placed on pluralism from a pedagogical standpoint, while resisting this worldview on a personal level.

A generational shift: how partisan alignment and the rise of social issues have produced a generation of Democrats

ABSTRACT American political elites are today more neatly divided on a wider range of issues than at any other point in the postwar era. How have these trends affected the political socialization of American youth? We argue that two distinctive aspects of US polarization, namely ideological alignment and the emergence of non-economic issues, have formed the foundation of a generational shift in favor of the Democratic party. We find that Millennials and Gen Z display levels of ideological alignment across economic, civil rights, and moral domains that are equal to or greater than previous generations. Their liberal positions on moral and civil rights issues are not only strongly predictive of vote choice, but also tend to offset any conservative positions on economic issues – in contrast to the way previous generations resolved such ideological tensions. As such, the push for a non-economic political agenda – a popular strategy in the last few decades, especially among Republicans – might well benefit the Democrats electorally as older generations are replaced.

‘A very unusual self’: Queering the Home in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and A Taste of Honey

This article re-examines the symbolic and aesthetic uses of the home in the British New Wave. Key works of scholarship on the cycle have tended to position the home as a site of stable return for the young protagonists, and as a privileged expression of the reproductive heterosexual maturities that the films are seen ultimately to endorse. This article argues that, far from such reliable bastions of normativity, these domestic spaces are depicted often as visually strange and ideologically unstable. There is, consequently, a distinctly domestic emergence of queer forms and figures to be found in the British New Wave, exceeding the critical attention to the queer in these films, which has hereto focused almost exclusively on the cycle’s lone denoted homosexual character. The article focuses first on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, in which I argue that signs of gender subversion, homosexuality and transness make the home a primary site of ideological tension for the aspiring patriarch. I then discuss the queer home-making of A Taste of Honey, in which imitation and subversion of ‘traditional’ domesticities present opportunities for resistance, critique and creativity. Ultimately, I argue that the queer lingers within these films as query, occasioning an un-making of the ‘normative’ family and an imaginative re-making of kinship that can be appropriated to a project of queer hope.

Working as facilitators and co-researchers: opportunities, tensions and complexities in educational participatory research

ABSTRACT In this paper, we transcend the boundaries of conventional academic writing and embrace the African philosophical concept of conversationalism to create an honest and decolonial space, albeit imperfect, in which we can talk about the messiness of participatory research. Engaging in a dialectical conversation with each other, we share our reflections on and respond to four lines of questioning related to: onto-epistemology; axiology; methodology; and temporality within participatory research. As we converse, we draw on lessons learnt from three different photovoice projects that involved working with marginalized youth or within marginalized neighborhoods and communities. As co-researchers and authors located across the Global South and North (two of us working in South Africa and the other two in the UK), we draw on our photovoice experiences to discuss the complexities and negotiations inherent in educational participatory projects. By doing so, we contribute to debates surrounding the unfulfilled promises of photovoice projects, whilst acknowledging the fluid spaces it creates for intercultural, more inclusive meaning-making. Our dialectic conversation shows that, despite being fraught with ideological tensions that are amplified by the fundamentally diverse and morally plural world we live and research in, photovoice projects can be worthwhile if we are critically reflexive before, during and long after the research is done.

‘Where did you learn to write Arabic?’: A Critical Analysis of Some Ḥadīths on the Origins and Spread of the Arabic Script

Abstract According to some ḥadīths, the art of writing Arabic in the pre-Islamic Hijaz was learned from the city of al-Ḥīra (the capital of the Lakhmid kingdom) in southern Iraq, whilst al-Ḥīra in turn learned writing from the city of al-Anbār in central Iraq. Based on a combined isnād-cum-matn analysis, form-critical analysis, and geographical analysis of these ḥadīths, the earliest iteration of this material can be dated back to the middle of the eighth century ce (i.e., the early second century ah) in Kufa, but no earlier. A further historical-critical analysis also exposes the broader cultural and ideological tendencies at play behind the creation and elaboration of this material, including salvation history, a ‘great man’ theory of history, and—above all—the creation and elaboration of an Iraq-focused Arabian folk history in eighth-century ce Iraq. This small set of reports thus exemplifies the rich potential of ḥadīth in general as both a tool and an object of historical analysis: by applying my combined approach to ḥadīth, we can trace the creation, transmission, and elaboration of the material; we can locate its geographical origins; and we can identify the broader context that ultimately produced it.

Promoting standardisation in modern China: British and American engineers’ organisations, local Chinese engineers, and their transnational networks, 1901–41

Abstract Standardisation is a product of the second wave of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America. This article examines how Western standardisation practices were introduced, transmitted, and promoted in China during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, it looks at the critical role played by British, American, and local Chinese engineers in the transmission process. The topics covered in the present article have seldom been considered, and this article tries to fill the gap in scholarship. It analyses the shifting patterns of various standardisation efforts that are closely related to the governance of both cities and the wider nation. Work examined includes that of the Engineering Society of China, led by British engineers, which initiated standardisation in the Shanghai International Settlement in the early twentieth century; that of the Association of Chinese and American Engineers, founded by engineers of China and the USA, which, after World War I, began to implement the standardisation of railway infrastructure, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Transportation of the Beijing government; and efforts in the 1930s under the Nanjing government to establish an ‘engineering’ or ‘technocratic’ state, which included the execution of national schemes for the development of industrial standardisation. From the period of World War I until the 1930s, the orientation and practices of American standardisation strategies dominated China; then, due to the worsening situation of the Chinese–Japanese War, ideological tendencies and national strategies for standardisation began to diverge.

Antecedent Ideological Profiles and Negative Socio-political Outcomes of LGBTQ+ Conspiracy Beliefs

IntroductionConspiracy theories and beliefs (CTBs) about LGBTQ+ people are often used as arguments in political debate in Italy and across Europe to hinder the passing of protective laws and negatively affect popular consensus regarding the promotion of anti-discrimination policies and the advancement of civil rights.MethodWe conducted two correlational studies in Italy starting the data collection at the end of 2022. In Study 1 (N = 589), we investigated which ideological profile was more associated with LGBTQ+ CTBs, between the two profiles identified by Duckitt et al.’s model (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(1), 75–93, 2002): path A) high vision of the world as a competitive jungle and consequent high social dominance orientation; path B) high vision of the world as dangerous and consequent high right-wing authoritarianism. In Study 2 (N = 1581), we have also included three potential outcomes associated with LGBTQ+ CTBs in the model.ResultsThrough a mediational path model, we found that path B was the strongest associated with LGBTQ+ CTBs. We found that LGBTQ+ CTBs mediated the relationships between the two ideological dispositions and (a) lower support to LGBTQ+ civil rights; (b) lower LGBTQ+ collective action intentions; and (c) higher adherence to economic myths about LGBTQ+ people.ConclusionsSocio-psychological research on LGBTQ+ CTBs may inform social policies that work to lessen the harm these beliefs do and advance a more welcoming and inclusive society.Policy ImplicationsSuch results offer several insights to change and improve the actual debate in political, scientific, and cultural domains, contributing to producing new policies which might increase the self-determination of all LGBTQ+ people.

U.S. Healthcare Provider Views and Practices Regarding Planned Birth Setting.

We conducted 19 in-depth, semistructured, qualitative interviews of eight obstetricians, eight midwives, and three pediatricians from across the United States. Interviews explored healthcare providers' interpretation of the current evidence and their personal and professional experiences with childbirth within the existing medical, ethical, and legal context in the United States. Themes emerged concerning risks and benefits, decision-making, and patient-provider power dynamics. Collectively, the narratives illuminated fundamental ideological tensions between in- and out-of-hospital providers arising from divergent assignment of value to described risks and benefits. The majority of physicians focused on U.S.-specific data demonstrating increased neonatal morbidity and mortality associated with delayed access to hospital-based interventions, thereby justifying hospital birth as the standard of care. By contrast, midwives emphasized data demonstrating fewer interventions and superior maternal and neonatal outcomes in high-income European countries, where out-of-hospital birth is more common for low-risk birthing people. A key gap in counseling was revealed, as no interviewees offered anticipatory counseling regarding birth setting options. Providers directly and indirectly illustrated the propensity for asymmetric power relations between birth providers and pregnant people, especially in hospital settings. The narratives highlight the common goal of optimizing maternal and neonatal outcomes despite tensions arising from divergent prioritization of specific maternal and neonatal risks. Our findings suggest opportunities to foster collaboration and optimize outcomes via mutual respect and improved integration of care.

From dissent to cohesion: Immigration policy shift and intra-party dynamics in the Danish Social Democratic Party

The high saliency of immigration presented social democratic parties with a strategic quandary on reconciling different values and expectations. Danish Social Democratic Party (S) stood out as it shifted to restrictive policies while achieving intra-party cohesion and avoiding major internal strifes. This article investigates the factors behind S’ immigration shift and intra-party cohesion, focusing on a timeframe between 2005 and 2019 by combining an analysis of S’ immigration policies with insights from 12 interviews with party elites. Comparing varying strategies, ideological inclinations, and support, I explore the intra-party actors’ perceptions, constraining and permissive influences of intra-party dynamics, development and reconstruction of new ideological frameworks and factional alignment. Findings highlight the importance of intra-party dynamics on shifting policies in immigration for social democratic parties, providing further insights on how the S party elite navigated the policy shift while ensuring intra-party cohesion from electoral, ideological and organisational perspectives.

Immigrant's death at the border: Do they influence White and Latinx Americans’ belief in the American dream?

AbstractIn this study, we test a clashing narrative approach to conflict, which argues that political conflict is based on opposing narratives that negate one another. We focus on the role of two master narratives central to political schism in the United States. The first is the American dream narrative, which posits that anyone who works hard can become successful in the United States. The opposing narrative, the systemic racism narrative, argues that the United States is a racist country where minorities are systemically held back. A survey study of 189 participants demonstrated that these two master narratives predict support for the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump or Joe Biden above and beyond more traditional ideological dispositions such as right‐wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. In a follow‐up experiment (n = 157), we examined how the Trump's administration policies of increased surveillance and policing of Latino immigrants crossing the border influenced White and Latinx participants’ agreement with the narrative of the American dream and the United States as a systemically racist country. Findings suggest that when confronted with news clips of immigrant death at the border, Latinx participants, compared to White participants, increased their endorsement of the American dream narrative. Conversely, White participants, increased their endorsement of the United States as a systemically racist country compared to Latinx participants. The results of this study help us understand support for the Republican party among Latinx voters.

Democracy and freedom in Robert A. Dahl: democratic principles and the minimum model of democracy

Robert A. Dahl is one of the most important American thinkers of the 20th century, having written about democracy and political science in a troubled era in the post-World War II era. The author brings in his writings definitions of the concept of modern democracy and institutes a new way of conceiving this form of government, which he describes as "polyarchy". The author is highly critical of theorists of idealistic societies and is quite sensible in his analyzes free of ideological tendencies. The present work aims to describe how Dahl thinks about democracy, describe his democratic conception of "polyarchy" and critically compare Dahl's thinking with some contemporary liberal ideas, in order to explore the understanding of the relations between liberalism and democracy.

Historical Perspectives on Education Reform in Argentina: Lessons from the 20th Century

Argentina’s education system has undergone significant transformations throughout the 20th century, influenced by political shifts, social movements, and economic challenges. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of Argentina’s education reform efforts, tracing its evolution from the early 20th century to the present day. It examines key milestones, including the impact of Peronism, military regimes, and democratization on education policies and practices. Despite progress in expanding access to education and promoting inclusivity, Argentina continues to grapple with socio-economic disparities, bureaucratic hurdles, and ideological tensions within its education system. Drawing on lessons learned and emerging trends, the paper offers insights for advancing equity, excellence, and innovation in Argentina’s education landscape.