Imagination Of Researchers Research Articles

The Research Imagination Amid Dilemmas of Engaging Young People in Critical Participatory Work

The article is based on qualitative research conducted in the UK and the USA by three critical social field researchers drawn to work with young people in participative ways. The work was grounded in the researchers' commitments to researching to make a difference in the lives of young people. By promoting participant engagement that might affect personal understanding and policy change. The authors discuss their use of and dilemmas of practice using critical research strategies across three separate research projects. The young people in each study face a range of deprivations and life difficulties. The methods draw from perspectives that counter the resurgent logic of positivism that are increasingly favored in contemporary academic research by funding authorities and that reflect the prevailing governing mentalities that thwart critical emancipatory research in this era of post-neoliberalism.

La politique, c'est l'expérimentation

Experimentation, which initially concerned only the experimental sciences field, is a term now used to describe a great many forms of socio-political practice, for example among governments, activists or artists. This extension of the term’s usage illustrates the influence of imagination in experimental research on contemporary conceptions of politics. It is supporting changes in the patterns of political speech and action that need to be better characterised, as they are occurring at the point where scientific and technical reason meets the transformation of the public sphere.

Familial Mediterranean fever and related periodic fever syndromes/autoinflammatory diseases

The spectrum of periodic fever syndromes (PFS)/autoinflammation diseases is continuously expanding. This review provides an overview of the primary research and an update on the main clinical developments in these disorders published in the past 12-18 months. IL-1β is pivotal to the pathogenesis of most of the PFS. In familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) MEFV mutations lead to gain of pyrin function, resulting in inappropriate IL-1β release that is dependent on ASC but not the NLRP3 inflammasome. Anti-IL-1 therapy is effective in tumour necrosis factor receptor-associated periodic syndrome (TRAPS), whilst both spontaneous and pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) induced IL-1β release have been demonstrated in NLRP12-associated periodic syndrome (NAPS12). Somatic NLRP3/CIAS1 mosaicism is a significant cause of cryopyrin-associated periodic syndromes (CAPS). Close connections have also been established between metabolic and inflammatory pathways. In TRAPS increased reactive oxygen species (ROS) of mitochondrial origin leads to production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, whilst NLRP3 inflammasome activation in type 2 diabetes (T2D) is induced by oligomers of islet amyloid polypeptides (IAPP). Caspase 1 activation and IL-1β release is central to the pathogenesis of many autoinflammatory syndromes. This is supported by the effectiveness of anti-IL-1 biologics in treatment of these disorders.

Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination

Doing a literature review: releasing the social science research imagination, by Christopher Hart, London, Sage, 2002, 230 pp., £20.99 (paperback), ISBN: 0-7619-5975-0 Doing a Literature Review: Re...

Development of a multi-dimensional measure of resilience in adolescents: the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire

BackgroundThe concept of resilience has captured the imagination of researchers and policy makers over the past two decades. However, despite the ever growing body of resilience research, there is a paucity of relevant, comprehensive measurement tools. In this article, the development of a theoretically based, comprehensive multi-dimensional measure of resilience in adolescents is described.MethodsExtensive literature review and focus groups with young people living with chronic illness informed the conceptual development of scales and items. Two sequential rounds of factor and scale analyses were undertaken to revise the conceptually developed scales using data collected from young people living with a chronic illness and a general population sample.ResultsThe revised Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire comprises 93 items and 12 scales measuring resilience factors in the domains of self, family, peer, school and community. All scales have acceptable alpha coefficients. Revised scales closely reflect conceptually developed scales.ConclusionsIt is proposed that, with further psychometric testing, this new measure of resilience will provide researchers and clinicians with a comprehensive and developmentally appropriate instrument to measure a young person's capacity to achieve positive outcomes despite life stressors.

Islanders: the Pacific in the age of empire

This compelling book explores the lived experience of empire in the Pacific, the last region to be contacted and colonized by Europeans following the great voyages of Captain Cook. Unlike conventional accounts that emphasize confrontation and the destruction of indigenous cultures, reveals that there was gain as well as loss, survival as well as suffering, and invention as well as exploitation. Empowered by imaginative research in obscure archives and collections, Thomas rediscovers a rich and surprising history of encounters, not only between Islanders and Europeans, but among Islanders, brought together in new ways by explorers, missionaries and colonists. He tells the story of the making of empire, not through an impersonal survey, but through vivid stories of the lives of men and women - some visionary, some vicious, and some just eccentric - and through sensuous evocation of seascapes and landscapes of the Pacific. A fascinating re-creation of an Oceanic world, offers a new paradigm, not only for histories of the Pacific, but for understandings of cultural contact everywhere.

Company Births, Deaths and Marriages: Flaws in Age Fields in Business Microdata

In identifying gazelles (generally defined in the literature as young, fast growing businesses) researchers traditionally rely on commercially available databases not designed for scholarly work, to identify a pool of suitable study participants. This paper discusses systemic biases in the most commonly-deployed databased used in gazelle studies, the Dun and Bradstreet database, with a focus on the Australian market.

Chipping away at the surface of the endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) mystery

Ever since Asahara et al published their seminal report describing “putative progenitor endothelial cells“ in 1997 [1], the idea of circulating cells that can replenish dysfunctional endothelium and promote angiogenesis has captured the imagination of cardiovascular researchers. In the following years, these cells were widely referred to as “endothelial progenitor cells” or “EPCs” and the adjective “putative” that the authors had astutely used in the initial report was dropped. Numerous in vitro and in vivo studies were subsequently conducted to elucidate the role of these cells in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease and to investigate their therapeutic potential. This resulted in roughly 1000 publications using the expression “endothelial progenitor cells” within a decade of the initial 1997 publication, and by now this number has grown to over 2500. Most studies have found that the number of circulating EPCs is reduced in patients with known cardiovascular risk factors or established cardiovascular disease. This has lead to the notion that circulating EPCs may be required to maintain a healthy vasculature.

A Flat Earth Society? Imagining Academic Freedom

This paper starts from the standpoint that academic freedom is a necessary precondition to sociological imagination that challenges and defies the status quo. In the introduction, we consider the legacy of sociology as praxis – intended not merely to understand, but to change the world. We then move on to conceptualise academic freedom as requiring formal, infrastructural and psychic freedoms. We then chart the genealogy of universities from academically free, but socially exclusive, institutions to their present state, using the history of higher education in the UK as a case study to consider the prospects for universities and academics within them to contribute to a vibrant and sustainable defiant sociological research imagination and the consequences of their failure to do so. We finish with a manifesto for the reinvigorating of a defiant sociological imagination building on the radical traditions we have referred to above.

Looking for the archaeological signature in Australian Megafaunal extinctions

The decline and disappearance of a range of giant marsupials, reptiles and birds from the Australian landscape during the last Glacial cycle continues to capture the imagination of both researchers and the general public. The events hinted at in the Australian fossil sequences appear to be mirrored on other continents through similar time periods, though the exact cause or sequence of extinctions remains largely unresolved. In recent years debate over megafaunal extinctions in Australia has been dominated by reports that humans were the primary drivers, leading some to assert that it is no longer a question of whether humans drove these extinctions, only how. Following the review of Wroe and Field, new reports have been published that claim support for a human-driven extinction (HDE). On closer scrutiny however, the key sites and samples lack firm contextual data and/or clear provenance. These studies fail to prove a key tenet of the HDE – that all, or even most now-extinct species were present at the time of human colonization of the continent. As compared with the easy assertion 5 years ago that this had been established, there are now more faunal species (c. 69% of total known to have become extinct) that cannot be placed within 50–100 ka of human arrival. There are still only two sites that demonstrate a coexistence of humans with some species of megafauna – Nombe Rockshelter in the PNG highlands and Cuddie Springs in the semi-arid southeast of Australia. If there is so little empirical evidence for coexistence or association of megafauna with humans, then support for an HDE through overhunting and ecosystem disruption is seriously compromised. Furthermore, the popularly cited “extinction window”, proposed as c. 51–39 ka when the HDE is argued to occur, is still only a theoretical construct. There is no clear evidence indicating that this period was particularly significant in terms of faunal loss. At present, the great majority of ‘Pleistocene’ sites remain poorly dated and the understanding of faunal turnover through this epoch is almost non-existent. Small datasets, poorly constructed hypotheses and assertive rhetoric are the prominent features of current discussions on a human role in megafaunal extinctions. Importantly, it is yet to be established whether the extinctions are an archaeological problem. The sparse fossil record known from Australia hampers a clear resolution as to how and when the megafauna disappeared, a situation likely to continue into the near future.

Recognition of the Nature of Science by Preservice Science Teachers on the Basis of the Atomic Model

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice secondary science teachers' understanding of the nature of science, by using nature of science (NOS) questionnaire on the basis of atomic model, and compare this to pre-studies. 'Understanding of nature of scientific model,' 'Tentativeness of scientific knowledge,' 'Subjectivity in science,' 'Use of inference and imagination,' 'Myths of the scientific method,' and 'Comparison between science and art.' were examined. Preservice teachers showed great comprehension of the tentativeness of scientific knowledge (the orbital model) and the subjectivity in science (the different interpretation about the experiment of particle scattering), but displayed the lowest comprehension of the scientific method. For understanding of nature of scientific model (the atomic model) and the comparison between science (Bohr's atomic model) and art (Picasso's work), preservice teachers brought out a combination of ontological and constructivist perspective and showed the contradictory thought about imagination in science research. In the result of comparison to pre-studies using the NOS instruments contains general terms, represented high levels of agreement about the tentativeness of scientific knowledge by using concrete examples of 'atomic model'. When concrete scientists such as Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr were presented, respondents revealed more informed views about the scientists' research method.

Endothelial Progenitor Cells: Hope Beyond Controversy

The capacity to induce new blood vessel formation or to repair damaged vessels is an attractive idea that has, for a long time, captured the attention and imagination of researchers. Beside the identification of the pro-angiogenic growth factors and their counterpart inhibitors, the discovery of endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) in adults and their putative vascular-promoting and/or vascular-healing properties, has generated some of the biggest fascination and debate in the broad field of vascular biology. The simple concept of a population of undifferentiated cells being able to generate new endothelial cells and the corresponding blood vessels in adults is both intriguing and, as seen in the last 10 years, controversial. Academic rivalry or pure scientific dispute has accompanied the research on EPC for some time. The major issues put forward by opposing groups of scientists regarding the identity and the role of EPCs as well as the optimal isolation and detection techniques are discussed in this review. The clinical relevance of EPCs and their potential applications in cancer treatments are also highlighted.

Moving ideas and mobile researchers: Australia in the global context

This paper draws from the ARC Discovery project calledMoving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities — Australia in the Global Context (2006–2009). This project explored the ways that ideas travel and how knowledge transforms through travel. One aspect of the study was the critical examination of various research policies around the world that are associated with moving ideas and moving researchers. These are often coupled with notions of “brain drain-gain/mobility” and diaspora. A second focus was on the mobility biographies of globally mobile intellectuals with various links to Australia and on the implications of their mobility for their ideas, politics and national and trans-national identifications. It is our view that the actual experiences and insights of such people have the potential to enhance researcher (academic) mobility policies. A third concern has been to address the question of what it means to globalise the research imagination. In addressing this question we have drawn on leading researchers from around the globe who undertake research on globalisation itself. The paper to follow draws from selected publications associated with this project. The book from the project, to be completed in 2010, is titledMoving Ideas and Mobile Intellectuals. It should be noted at the outset that our focus in the project and in this discussion paper is on researchers in the social sciences and humanities including but not exclusively educational researchers. We begin by asking what it means to globalise research and how is this related to the nation-state’?

Imagination in Chemistry Image and Reality Kekulé, Kopp, and the Scientific Imagination by Alan J. Rocke University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010. 401 pp. $45, £29. ISBN 9780226723327. Synthesis.

Through a consideration of the efforts of 19th-century chemists to understand the unseen world of molecules and atoms, Rocke explores the role of the visual imagination in scientific research.

Why ‘What Works’ Still Won’t Work: From Evidence-Based Education to Value-Based Education

The idea that professional practices such as education should be based upon or at least be informed by evidence continues to capture the imagination of many politicians, policy makers, practitioners and researchers. There is growing evidence of the influence of this line of thought. At the same time there is a growing body of work that has raised fundamental questions about the feasibility of the idea of evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. In this paper I make a further contribution to this discussion through an analysis of a number of assumptions that inform the discussion. I focus on the epistemological, ontological and praxeological dimensions of the discussion and in each domain identify a deficit. In the epistemological domain there is a knowledge deficit, in the ontological domain an effectiveness or efficacy deficit and in the practice domain an application deficit. Taken together these deficits not only raise some important questions about the very idea of evidence-based practice but also highlight the role of normativity, power and values. Against this background I outline the case for the idea of value-based education as an alternative for evidence-based education. As I am generally concerned about the expectations policy makers hold about what evidence can and should achieve in professional practices such as education, my contribution is primarily meant to provide educators and other professionals with arguments that can help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices.

International Migration and Development in Asia: Exploring Knowledge Frameworks

AbstractThere is revived interest and debate on the relation between international migration and development, with Asia emerging as one important locus for such deliberations. A number of institutions, journals, people and organizations have emerged as key players in these discussions but so far there have been few attempts to investigate the information gathered from the perspective of “knowledge production”. This paper’s objective, therefore, is to outline some of the ways in which knowledge about migration and development is being produced in Asia. We focus on selected aspects of knowledge production to identify the lenses through which much of the work is currently generated and the research imagination resulting from existing approaches.

Defining educational research: A perspective of/on presidential addresses and the australian association for research in education

This paper is concerned with the definition of the field of educational research and the changing and developing role of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) in representing and constituting this field. The evidence for the argument is derived from AARE Presidential Addresses across its 40-year history. The paper documents the enhanced complexity and diversity of the field over these 40 years, including the emergence of a global educational policy field, theoretical and methodological developments in the social sciences and new research accountabilities such as the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) measure. Specifically, the paper suggests that the evidence-based movement in public management and education policy, and the introduction of the ERA, potentially limit and redefine the field of educational research, reducing the usefulness and relevance of educational research to policy makers and practitioners. This arises from a failure to recognise thatEducation is both a field of research and a field of policy and practice. Located against both developments, the paper argues for a principled eclecticism framed by a reassessment of quality, which can be applied to the huge variety of methodologies, theories, epistemologies and topics legitimately utilised and addressed within the field of educational research. At the same time, the paper argues the need to globalise the educational research imagination and deparochialise educational research. This call is located within a broader argument suggesting the need for a new social imaginary (in a post-neoliberal context of the global financial crisis) to frame educational policy and practice and the contribution that educational theory and research might make to its constitution. In relation to this, the paper considers the difficulties that political representations of such a new imaginary might entail for the President and the Association, given the variety of its membership and huge diversity of its research interests.

Overcoming Barriers to Improved Research on the Social Determinants of Health

This paper examines the recommendations of the World Health Organization's Commission on the Social Determinants of Health regarding the need for improved research on determinants of health inequity and discusses the following barriers to implementation of those recommendations: the power of the biomedical imagination in health and medical research; emphasis on vertical health programming; ideological biases outweighing evidence in policy decisions; and academic reward systems, including the inherent conservatism of peer review. The paper concludes with suggestions for changing research funding and assessment systems to overcome these barriers.

‘After‐queer’ tendencies in queer research

Our aim in this introduction is neither to enunciate an ‘after‐queer’ vision nor to denounce queer theory. In thinking through an ‘after‐queer’, we identify and seek to account for particular habits of thought that are often associated with queer research in education and queer research about young people. We trace certain traditions that frame queer research and consider the proper subjects, aims, and locations of such research projects. We contend that these habits of thought require further interrogation because they are intrinsic to researchers’ visions of their own research and to the constitution of fields of research in the broader research imagination. Queer research in education is often conducted in schools and its focus is often young people and their teachers, taking abjection and amelioration as points of departure. In this special issue, we hope to provoke different sorts of imaginings about the accomplishments, problematics, and futures of queer research.

‘After‐queer’: subjunctive pedagogies

This article offers a reading of the 2006 film The History Boys, which depicts eight male working‐class grammar school students preparing for exams to enter Oxford and Cambridge and two teachers who prepare them. I read the film’s subjunctive mood, which gestures to possibility and an ‘otherwise’, as connected to an analytic of ‘after‐queer’ that complicates linear understandings of youth, sexuality, development, and education. I elaborate three intertwined themes: the boys’ multiple relations to school knowledge; the blurring of categories of youth and adult through circulations of sexuality; and the dislocation of desire from predictable categories of identity. I connect the unpredictability and creativity of identities and desires to the need to open the research imagination to a subjunctive methodology that dwells in complicated temporalities, uncertain knowledges, and disorder that underlies seeming orders.