Implicit Focus Research Articles

Revival of the bhadra man in Rituparno Ghosh’s Unishe April and Dahan

Rituparno Ghosh’s cinematization of Unishe April (1994) and Dahan (1997) is a systemic triad interrogative feminist narrative of a case of sexual and non-sexual violence, the gendered spatial politics of Calcutta and the performativity of Bengali masculinity. The present study delves into the nuanced portrayal of the bhadralok masculinities in the cinematic texts of Rituparno Ghosh’s Unishe April (1994) and Dahan (1997). This research paper aims to articulate the relationship of Bengali bhadralok masculinity and the scattered hegemonies of socio-cultural structures of domination and patriarchal systems operating on multiple levels in the Bengali context. The bhadralok politics of the yesteryears was built on a collusion with the colonial system and espoused a broad spectrum of ideologies, including nationalism, liberalism, and humanism. Scholarly writings on Rituparno Ghosh have documented gender politics with an implicit focus on the feminine and queer subjectivity. The arguments of the present paper depart from the idea that masculinity is a genderless and a reified construct. Through a specific focus on masculinity and the masculine ideology’s nexus with gender social structuring, the present paper questions the invisibilization of masculine power, privilege, and performance. The bhadralok masculinity, though seemingly progressive and egalitarian, the embodiment preserves the patriarchal status quo of unequal gender relationships. Through an interrogation of the intersections of the changing bhadralok masculinities and its complex nexus with the changing social and cultural institutions across time and space, the study asserts that the cultured and sophisticated bhadralok gendered order is a failed political reconfiguration of masculinity.

Whose language counts?

Abstract This position paper makes a critical intervention in one of the mostly salient sociolinguistic debates of the recent years, that of the integration of multilingual speakers in language ideological research. Although many scholars now recognize the need for decentering the ideal(ized) ‘monolingual native speakers’, they remain the default norm in language ideological research. Indeed, despite our efforts to dismantle our own language ideologies as linguists, the implicit focus on native speakers and monolinguals proceeds to the erasure or invisibilization (Irvine & Gal 2000) of multilinguals. Drawing on research on gender-inclusive language as well as my own empirical study on L2 speakers of German, I show why integrating a higher variety of language users is necessary—not only on ethical grounds, but also on theoretical ones. Altogether, this paper presents the challenges language ideological research still faces despite ongoing efforts to tackle multilingualism and offers possible solutions for language ideological research to become truly inclusive.

Schuld als Thema antisemitismuskritischer Bildung. Überlegungen zum Curriculum

Abstract Referring to Judith Coffey’s und Vivien Laumann’s monograph »Gojnormativität« the article adapts its embodied main thesis: Talking about »guilt« in German context should be separated from highlighting »antisemitism« in religious education. Analyzing four aspects of guilt - its implicit focus on offenders, its often homogenous idea of »being German«, its idea of powerlessness and of a right to forgiveness - the article turns on discussing cognitive theories having their source in social psychology intergroup theories, that aim at reducing discrimination. Taking the results of both aspects - guilt and (anti-)discrimination - the article concludes with developing ideas for curricula in religious education.

In pursuit of social emotional learning in a Swedish pre-service teacher education programme: A qualitative study of intended curriculum

This study aimed to investigate the intended curriculum of a K-3 pre-service teacher education programme at a large university in Sweden and its focus on social emotional learning. Regulatory documents and semi-structured interviews with course leaders were examined through abductive content analysis. An implicit focus on pre-service teachers' social learning was identified. Further research is needed to examine a) how successful social learning can be without an explicit focus on the development of emotional skills; and b) what pre-service teachers' own social emotional learning means when it comes to their readiness and ability to support pupils’ social emotional development.

Rising in the ranks!: learning math or playing games?

This qualitative case study examines the learning that occurred when a small group of middle grade youths embarked upon a personal excursion during a game-based math walk. Math walks are an informal learning activity where learners and facilitators explore mathematical concepts embedded in everyday spaces. The MathExplorer app is a location-based mobile game designed to enhance and gamify math walks. In our broader research, we investigated a group of 18 middle grade learners who used MathExplorer to engage in math walks at a local nature preserve. While most youths in this study used the game as planned by the researchers, one group deviated from the plan and devised new ways of playing the game and participating in the math walks. We see this deviation, or personal excursion, as a source of insight for research on game-based math walks. To understand the learning that took place during this personal excursion, we draw upon sociocultural and self-directed theories of learning. Using methods of interaction analysis and embodied action conversation framework, we analyzed the small groups’ discussion, movement, and game-use to understand: (1) the point at which the students departed from the planned use of MathExplorer; and (2) the learning that took place after this departure. The findings include how the youth explicitly incorporate mathematics into game play through an activity-as-planned, and how the youth embark on a personal excursion relating to game mechanics and gamification, with an implicit focus on mathematics. We discuss the importance of personal excursions for designing informal mathematics learning experiences.

Next generation application of DPSIR for sustainable policy implementation

As our societies and natural systems are becoming ever more interconnected, it is critical that sustainable management can adapt to new knowledge from both the ecological and the social domains, and act on it in a timely and effective manner. This need is amplifying in the Anthropocene as we are approaching the limit for humanity's safe operating space, leading to irreversible change to ecosystem function. This urgently requires increased attention and concern regarding the information feedbacks between the silos of science, policy and society. A web of policies is in place to protect the health of people and the planet, but to ensure that they are effective we need frameworks to make sense of real-world complexities and interlinkages between multiple factors. The Drivers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Response (DPSIR) framework was created for this purpose, however, its' implicit focus on 1) analytical and 2) procedural aspects must be made explicit, to enable coordination across silos and studies. Continued creation of new DPSIR derivatives may limit its impact, while more explicit coordination between these two aspects can improve the effectiveness of DPSIR while retaining its flexibility. We thus propose five elements to support sustainable policy development and implementation using DPSIR: 1) iteration; 2) risk, uncertainty and analytical bias; 3) flexible integration; 4) use of quantitative methods, and; 5) clear and standard definitions for DPSIR. We illustrate these elements in four cases: Three highlight missing feedbacks when DPSIR elements are not made explicit and a fourth case – on per-and-polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) – showing a potential roadmap to successful policy implementation using DPSIR.

Reaching the Rest: Embedding Sustainability in Undergraduate Student Learning

ABSTRACT There exists a substantial literature on sustainability pedagogy. Much of it addresses individual courses, sustainability programs, or the learning competencies that are encouraged. The implicit focus is on students who have chosen to specialize on sustainability topics by obtaining a degree in programs such as , sustainability management, environmental science or studies. More recently, there has been emerging literature calling for embedding sustainability into entire university curricula as sustainability becomes a more prominent issue for higher education institutions. Four key themes have emerged in this literature that are relevant to the goal of developing sustainability pedagogy relevant to all students: (i) the organizational framework for the content of sustainability pedagogy, (ii) the conceptualisation and teaching of inter-transdisciplinarity, (iii) the relative merits of compulsory or voluntary sustainability programming, and (iv) the role of course inventories. In this paper, we examine the University of Toronto’s introduction of a new model of sustainability learning and evaluate it against the themes and recommendations found in the literature. This model aims to establish university-wide sustainability learning trajectories, called Sustainability Pathways whose novelty is in its offer to reach many more students than other approaches. The key themes emerging from the literature will serve as a basis for program evaluation. It is found that the Pathways program does embody some of these themes but that further development would be desirable. The program and the course inventories at its foundation will go through periodic evaluation to assess progress on program goals and objectives.

Mobile times and temporalities: Histories of geomediation of time

The mobile ontology of locative media and ubiquity of location-aware technologies have led to an explicit focus on “where” and an implicit focus on “when” in geomedia studies. While welcoming this focus, we argue that this spatial bias has led the temporal dimensions of geomedia to be overlooked. Despite the growing interest that draws academic attention to mediation of time and temporal dimensions of media and data practices, there is still limited discussion on time and temporality of geomedia. We aim to fill this gap and open a debate about the temporality of geomedia based on seven oral history interviews that we conducted with mobile media scholars who pioneered in research in mobile phones from late 1990s onwards. These historical accounts include the narratives of how mobile phones were used for time-keeping, synchronizing, presencing, and coordinating everyday life. Hence, this article grounds mediation of time in the histories of geomedia.

Practising collaboration in model implementation in physical education

ABSTRACT Background: Over the last two decades, teachers’ use of models has been frequently highlighted as a possible future for physical education. Literature has also shown that collaborations between teachers and researchers can be effective in supporting teachers not only to successfully implement but also sustain their long-term use of models Despite this evidence, the practice of collaboration itself has so far, at best, been an implicit focus for investigation and the ways in which collaborations are practised seem to vary. Purpose: In this paper, we argue that there is a need to move beyond stating that collaborations work and understand more about the different ways collaborations between teachers and researchers might be practised. We do so by presenting three empirical illustrations which represent different collaborative practices and discuss the consequences these have for teachers’ implementation of models. Methods: The empirical illustrations draw on data from teacher interviews, recorded workshops and the first author’s reflective research diary collected over a two-year collaborative project. Through a cyclical and iterative process of analysing the data we identified three ways in which the practice of collaboration was practised: ‘the researcher knows best’, ‘basing learning on the needs of the teachers’ and ‘the end of the beginning’. To further our understanding and discuss the consequences of these practices, we used practice architectures , models-as-specification versus models-as-prescriptionand fidelity to procedure versus fidelity to goals as theoretical concepts. Illustrations: The ‘researcher knows best’ illustration represents a collaboration in which the researcher believes they know best about what the teachers should learn and what they would benefit from most. Hence, the researcher provided knowledge about how and why pedagogical models could be implemented, without consulting the teachers. The second illustration, ‘basing the learning on the needs of the teachers’ investigates how the researcher tried to learn from their on-going experiences and adjust the way they approached the collaboration with the teachers, to increase the level of teacher autonomy. The third illustration, ‘the end of the beginning’ shows a collaboration in which the researcher deliberately took a more peripheral role. This allowed the teachers to decide both on what they needed to learn and how this could be achieved. Conclusions: Although our theoretical concepts allowed us to problematize different aspects of all these practices, it is not our ambition to say that there is a right or wrong way of working together to enable teachers to implement models. Indeed, we suggest that to collaborate is something that needs to be continuously practised by both teachers and researchers to respond to the different needs at different times in the process of collaboration. In conclusion, we suggest that planning for collaborations that; (1) allow models to be considered as specifications for practices and (2) allow fidelity to be considered in relation to the overall purpose of the model, could serve as two guiding principles for future collaborations.

A systemized literature synthesis of encounters with cultural differences in engineering international service-learning literature

Abstract – International service-learning (ISL) has been attributed to fostering multicultural education outcomes by impacting the understanding of diversity and cultural competence in students. Within engineering education, international service-learning courses are often designed with an emphasis on engineering technical skills development. Despite the expected encounters with cultural differences, learning outcomes addressing these interactions are often an implicit focus. When not addressed, unintended consequences of these encounters can lead to increased prejudice, stereotypes, and other negative behaviors towards outgroup community members in service-learning partnerships. This manuscript presents a systemized literature synthesis of 20 papers from the engineering ISL literature in order to provide researchers and practitioners with a foundational understanding of how cultural differences have been examined or acknowledged in existing ISL work. The literature synthesis revealed the need for 1) further empirical research on encounters with cultural differences in engineering, 2) more qualitative studies exploring student experiences encountering cultural differences, and 3) a theoretical agenda that examines encounters with cultural differences within the context of engineering research and practice. The outcomes of this synthesis provide insights on research and practice that can be used to inform future work for centering encounters with cultural differences in ISL experiences in engineering.

The Interplay between Heritage Learners’ Prior Knowledge and Instruction on a Linguistically Complex Structure

Abstract Current HL pedagogy recommends focus on form approaches (Beaudrie, Ducar, & Potowski, 2014; Kisselev, Dubinina, & Polinsky, 2020) but within this broad category there are many techniques. To date only a few studies have compared HL learning gains on explicit and implicit focus on form instruction, and these have found explicit instruction to be more beneficial. The present study isolated the role of rule presentation on learning gains by comparing Spanish HL learners in a Processing Instruction condition (n = 26) who received rule presentation and explicit information about the target structure (indicative and subjunctive in adverbial clauses of time) prior to structured input, to HL learners in a Structured Input condition (n = 16) who received only structured input. Pretest/posttest/delayed posttest comparisons revealed that both PI and SI resulted in lasting learning gains, as well as a complex interplay between learners’ initial knowledge of the structure and the type of instruction, such that learners with little or no initial knowledge benefited from rule presentation, whereas learners with greater initial knowledge did not. Furthermore, data from think-alouds and retrospective interviews shows that all learners did not process the instruction similarly, and pedagogical implications are discussed.

The Busy Periphery: Urban Systems of the Balkan and Danube Provinces (2nd–3rd c. AD) By Damjan Donev (Archaeopress Roman Archaeology 61). Oxford: Archaeopress 2019. Pp. viii + 379. $54. ISBN 9781789693492 (paper).

<i>The Busy Periphery: Urban Systems of the Balkan and Danube Provinces (2nd–3rd c. AD)</i> By Damjan Donev (Archaeopress Roman Archaeology 61). Oxford: Archaeopress 2019. Pp. viii + 379. $54. ISBN 9781789693492 (paper).

A historical overview of legislated alcohol policy in the Northern Territory of Australia: 1979\u20132021

BackgroundThe Northern Territory (NT) has the highest levels of alcohol consumption and harms in Australia. Since the creation of the NT Liquor Act 1978, which came into effect in 1979, numerous legislated alcohol policies have been introduced to attempt to address these harms. We present a narrative historical overview of alcohol policies implemented in the NT from 1979 to 2021.MethodsUsing scoping review methodology, databases were searched from 1979 to 2021. Of 506 articles screened, 34 met inclusion criteria. Reference lists of all included articles were searched, resulting in the inclusion of another 41 articles and reports, totalling 75 final documents. Policies were organised using Babor and colleagues (2010) established framework: 1. pricing/ taxation; 2. regulating physical availability; 3. modifying drinking environments; 4. drink-driving countermeasures; 5. restrictions on marketing; 6. education/persuasion; 7. treatment/early intervention.ResultsTwo pricing/taxation policies have been implemented, Living With Alcohol (LWA) and Minimum Unit Price, both demonstrating evidence of positive effects on health and consumption outcomes. Eight policies approaches have focused on regulating physical availability, implemented at both individual and local area levels. Several of these policies have varied by location and been amended over time. There is some evidence demonstrating reduction in harms attributable to Liquor Supply Plans, localised restrictions, and General Restricted Areas, although these have been site specific. Of the three policies which targeted modifying the drinking environment; one was evaluated, finding a relocation of social harms, rather than a reduction. The literature outlines a range of controversies, particularly regarding policies in domain 2–3, including racial discrimination and a lack of policy stability. No policies relating to restricting marketing or education/persuasion programs were found. The only drink-driving legislated policy was considered to have contributed to the success of the LWA program. Three policies relating to treatment were described; two were not evaluated and evidence showed no ongoing benefits of Alcohol Mandatory Treatment.DiscussionThe NT has implemented a large number of alcohol policies, several of which have evidence of positive effects. However, these policies have often existed in a context of clear politicisation of alcohol policy, frequently with an implicit focus on Aboriginal people’s consumption.

On glasses half full or half empty: understanding framing effects in terms of default implicatures

The variations in how subjects respond to positively or negatively framed descriptions of the same issue have received attention from social science research, where, nevertheless, a naïve understanding of speech interpretation has undermined the different explanations offered. The present paper explores the semantic-pragmatic side of framing effects and provides a unifying explanation of this phenomenon in terms of a combined effect of pragmatic presuppositions and default implicatures. The paper contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of representations and cognitive processes involved in the framing bias by showing how well-entrenched linguistic practices associated to frame choice, and conducive to an implicit focus, result in default implicatures on the addressee’s side.

Effects of Implicit and Explicit Focus on Form on L2 Acquisition of the English Passive: An Analysis of Intra-Learner Variation

This study investigated intra-learner variation in the effects of implicit and explicit focus on form (FonF) on second language (L2) acquisition of the English passive, an interface construction. The study employed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design, with five treatment sessions between the pretest and posttests. Implicit FonF was operationalized as textual enhancement (TE), and explicit FonF as consciousness-raising (C-R). Five different outcome measures were utilized to examine the respective treatment effects on the form, meaning, and function of the passive. Data were collected with four Korean high school students, two engaging in TE and the other two in C-R, whose developmental routes through the experiment were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of the analysis showed that implicit and explicit FonF led to differential variation within each learner, not only across the outcome measures but also over time, yet were suggestive of a potential benefits to each for the different domains encompassed in the passive. These results are further discussed in relation to the learners’ proficiency levels and the types of errors they produced.

Law Lost, Compliance Found: A Frontline Understanding of the Non-linear Nature of Business and Employee Responses to Law

This paper seeks to understand the transmission and reception of legal rules as a component of the regulatory compliance process. It adopts a frontline approach (Almond and Gray 2017) to regulatory compliance that traces the grassroot functioning of compliance processes from regulator, to compliance managers to individual employees. Through a multilevel and multi-sited ethnography of worker safety protection in Chinese construction industry, this paper shows that in the cases studied there is a fundamental disconnect in the transmission and reception of law from regulator to organization and within the regulated organization. Yet at the same time, the paper finds that employees did comply with the law, and that thus compliance can exist without a full transmission and reception of legal rules into and within the regulated organization. By expanding the frontline approach to study regulation and compliance to look at the grassroots operation across three different frontlines, this study has been able to assess the legal assumptions inherent in existing regulatory compliance research. Not only does it find that compliance in these cases was not a top-down process and that we need to look at the grassroots operation inside organizations, it also shows that law does not always play a central role in regulatory compliance and that we need to reassess the implicit focus on law in regulatory compliance scholarship.

Making Space

Making Space

Gifts and Contracts: A Comparison with Quebec Civil Law

By contrast to the common law that governs the other Canadian provinces and territories, Quebec’s distinctive civilian private law understands the concept of “gift” not as a separate legal category, but as a particular kind of contract by which one party, the donor, conveys property gratuitously to another, the donee. In this paper, the author proposes an alternative and arguably more complete way of understanding this classificatory divergence than the implicit focus on consideration found in existing comparative accounts of gift law. He argues that this divergence can be accounted for, and perhaps even justified, by drawing on the relationship that each set of legal systems presents between two potentially distinct classes of agreement – the first corresponding to agreements that generate future obligations, and the second to agreements that immediately transfer property rights. Whereas Quebec civil law in particular does not truly distinguish between the two as a matter of practice or theory, he suggests that the concept of contract at common law can be understood to correspond to the first class of agreement, as one that serves to generate some kind of future obligation. Meanwhile, it is the correspondence of the common law gift to the second type of agreement that he further suggests provides us with the most compelling explanation, or at least the most complete doctrinal explanation, for its exclusion from contract as the common law understands the term.

The Temporal Character of Sexual Consent among College Students

The presence or absence of sexual consent distinguishes between sexual contact that is sexual assault and sex that is not assault. While temporality is an implicit focus in studies of sexual consent, it has received relatively little attention as an object of analysis. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research conducted as part of a mixed methods study on sexual health and sexual assault among college students, this article examines the role of time in sexual consent. Specifically, we attend to how socially- and discursively-patterned experiences of time influence college students' capacity to grant or withhold consent. We identify three important temporalities. “Calendar time” refers to how events throughout the year influence the expectation of sexual contact and the negotiation of sexual consent. “Relationship time” refers to how the temporal dimensions of a sexual relationship impact how consent is navigated. Finally, “sexual time” pushes us to think of sex itself as a temporal process that locates consent at different points in time: before, during, and after a single sexual encounter. We conclude by outlining how time-based approaches to sexual consent may contribute to more effective sexual violence prevention initiatives.

Attentional focusing in running: Implicit focus manipulations reflect the effects for explicit instructions

Numerous studies exhibit detrimental effects of an internal focus of attention compared to an external focus in terms of running economy. The instructions to manipulate attentional focus are primarily explicit. This study compares explicit verbal (top-down) and natural implicit (bottom-up) focus manipulations, assuming that they present different ways of information processing. Forty trained runners completed a 36-min-run focusing internally (running movement) and externally (video). Both foci were explicitly manipulated through instructions and implicitly by creating situations where participants unconsciously adopted the required focus. Between each manipulated condition participants ran 5 min without any instruction. Oxygen consumption was assessed via spiroergometry. Results revealed a main effect of focus (lower VO2 values for both external conditions) with F(1,39) = 7.40, p = .01 and η 2 p = .16, but no main effect of instruction type and no interaction effect. This finding strengthens the detrimental effect of an internal focus compared to an external focus regardless of the instruction type.