Intentional Action Research Articles

In pursuit of impact: Toward a contextualized theory of professional agency of engineering education scholars

AbstractBackgroundEngineering education scholars (EES) seek to advance innovation, excellence, and access within education systems and the engineering profession. To advance such efforts, the intentional and strategic actions taken by scholars must be better understood.Purpose/HypothesisThis study aimed to advance the field's understanding of agency toward impact by (1) closely examining the experiences of early career EES pursuing impact in engineering education and (2) co‐constructing a contextualized theory of agency. We define agency as taking strategic actions or perspectives toward professional goals that matter to oneself and goals that relate to impacting engineering education.Design/MethodBuilding on previous work about faculty agency, we leveraged approaches from grounded theory and integrated multiple qualitative approaches to analyze our experiences as six early career EES over the course of a 4‐year longitudinal study.ResultsSeven key insights about the professional agency toward impact in engineering education of early career EES emerged from the analysis. The contextualized theory and resulting visual representation illustrate this agency as a cyclical process with three components: (1) the factors influencing one's agency, (2) the agentic process itself, and (3) the output of the agentic process.ConclusionsOur co‐constructed contextualized theory extends previous work by incorporating the temporal nature of agency, the generation and assessment of available moves, and the importance of feedback on future agentic practices. Our results have implications on how the engineering education community supports graduate students, early career scholars, and new members in their efforts to impact change.

Strategies for Scientific Journals to Advance Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Scholarship, Science, and Practice

Background: Internationally, colleagues from minoritized groups and backgrounds are typically underrepresented within scientific journals. The benefits and importance of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, to further enhance science, scholarship, and practice are increasingly evident. Historical systems, structures, beliefs, policies, processes, and practices often advantage some and disadvantage others (e.g., racial, ethnic, gender minorities), thus, it is important to be reflective and proactive in advancing diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI) in scientific journals. Aims: It is imperative that leaders of scientific journals engage in intentional, purposeful, and sustained actions to advocate for and advance DEI, scholarship, science, and practice. There are numerous strategies that may be implemented by journal leadership to contribute to advancing DEI. Methods: Herein, a succinct summary of several recommendations is provided, followed by a case study illustrating the implementation of actionable strategies and current outcomes associated with the School Psychology Review journal. Strategies discussed include: (a) establishing individual and collective commitments to advocating for and advancing DEI as the foundation of our scholarship; (b) diversifying the journal leadership; (c) diversifying the editorial advisory board; (d) preparing future diverse journal leadership through mentored editorial fellowship programs, especially focused on early research career individuals; (e) mentoring future colleagues by establishing a student editorial board with members from diverse backgrounds; (f) focusing on special topics relevant to diverse and minoritized children, youth, families, and school communities; (g) making available professional-development opportunities and resources; and (h) establishing a journal action plan focused on advancing DEI. Results: The outcomes delineated in the present case study illustrate that the journal engages and benefits from the contributions of many distinguished colleagues from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds. Moreover, the journal contents that have followed from these efforts further advance science, scholarship, and practice that supports disadvantaged children, youth, and families, including those from minoritized groups. Conclusions: Colleagues, organizations, and entities involved with scientific journals around the world are encouraged to advance and sustain DEI efforts in science, scholarship, and practice.

POSITIVE INTERVENTION AT EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION AS A PROMOTER OF THE SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Working in a positive atmosphere that contributes to positive thinking, personal happiness, progress, productivity, health, emotional and social literacy of аn individual and the entire collective, establishing quality relationships with the environment, is made possible by the implementation of positive psychology in the educational process. Positive interventions in educational institutions are intentional actions aimed at increasing the well-being of participants. Child development includes the ability to form positive relationships, self-esteem, effective and free expression of feelings and emotion regulation, as well as persistence and positive engagement in challenging tasks, and adoption of positive attitudes in a dynamic environment. The aim of the research is to examine whether outdoor activities, in a natural environment rich in various stimuli, contribute to the feeling of happiness and satisfaction of preschool children. For this purpose, an intervention was implemented in the environment of a kindergarten yard that included (1) the integration of musical education, art education, and ecology contents, (2) learning in a natural environment, (3) guest – lecturers, and (4) cooperation of children from different age groups within the joint daily project. A semi-structured interview and field notes were used in this qualitative research. The results show that during the intervention the children were satisfied, in a good mood, interested and motivated to work and participate, and open in communication with the guest lecturers, towards whom they also showed affection. Observed positive feelings expressed by the children were joy, elation, surprise, interest, and curiosity. During this expressive-artistic activity, children acquired and freely exchanged ideas with other children and participants, and better social interaction was observed. The procedures and environment used in the intervention had a stimulating effect on the children and thus caused positive emotions and contributed to subjective well-being. Further research can be focused on the involvement of children in similar interventions, activities of the children in various ambiances, as well as connecting the content of various areas through expressive-artistic engagements.

Pussy Hats, Politics, and Public Protest

Pussy Hats, Politics, and Public Protest

Mindshaping and Non-Gricean Approaches to Language Evolution

Orthodoxy has it that language evolution requires Gricean communicative intentions and therefore an understanding of nested metarepresentations. The problem with this orthodoxy is that it is hard to see how non-linguistic creatures could have such a sophisticated understanding of mentality. Some philosophers like Bar-On (The Journal of Philosophy 110 (6): 293-330, 2013a; Mind and Language 28 (3): 342-375, 2013b) have attempted to develop a non-Gricean account of language acquisition building on the information-rich and subtle communicative powers of expressive behaviours. This paper argues that this approach shares a number of instructive similarities with the literature on the cognitive conception of language. It shows how expressive accounts (and others) can learn from insights in that tradition and identifies a problem with the role of intentional actions in expressive accounts that can be solved by understanding expressive behaviours more as cognitive rather than communicative tools.

Purposiveness of Human Behavior. Integrating Behaviorist and Cognitivist Processes/Models

We try not just to reconcile but to “integrate” Cognitivism and Behaviorism by a theory of different forms of purposiveness in behavior and mind. This also implies a criticism of the Dual System theory and a claim on the strong interaction and integration of Sist1 (automatic) and Sist2 (deliberative), based on reasons, preferences, and decisions. We present a theory of different kinds of teleology. Mere “functions” of the behavior: finalism not represented in the mind of the agent, not “regulating” the behavior. Two kinds of teleological mental representations: true “Goals” in control-theory, cybernetic view, with “goal-driven” behavior (intentional action); vs. Expectations in Anticipatory Classifiers: a reactive but anticipatory device, explaining the “instrumental” (finalistic) nature of Skinner’s reinforcement learning. We present different kinds of Goals and goal processing and on this ground the theory of what “intentions” are. On such basis, we can discuss Kathy Wilkes’s hint about the necessarily linguistic formulation of “intentions”; with the hypothesis that her intuition is not correct for any kind on “intention” which may be represented in sensory-motor format, but correct for “volition” and our will-strength for socially influencing ourselves.

Kick-starting concept formation with intrinsically motivated learning: the grounding by competence acquisition hypothesis.

Although the spontaneous origins of concepts from interaction is often given for granted, how the process can start without a fully developed sensorimotor representation system has not been sufficiently explored. Here, we offer a new hypothesis for a mechanism supporting concept formation while learning to perceive and act intentionally. We specify an architecture in which multi-modal sensory patterns are mapped in the same lower-dimensional representation space. The motor repertoire is also represented in the same space via topological mapping. We posit that the acquisition of these mappings can be mutually constrained by maximizing the convergence between sensory and motor representations during online interaction. This learning signal reflects an intrinsic motivation of competence acquisition. We propose that topological alignment via competence acquisition eventually results in a sensorimotor representation system. To assess the consistency of this hypothesis, we develop a computational model and test it in an object manipulation task. Results show that such an intrinsically motivated learning process can create a cross-modal categorization system with semantic content, which supports perception and intentional action selection, which has the resources to re-enact its own multi-modal experiences, and, on this basis, to kick-start the formation of concepts grounded in the external environment. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Преднамеренное банкротство в системе обеспечения экономической безопасности страны

The article substantiates the need to consider intentional bankruptcy as a threat factor. An analysis of the threats enshrined in the legislation in terms of the impact of intentional bankruptcy on their formation, which, in turn, are divided into groups according to the degree of influence of intentional bankruptcy on them, has been carried out. The statistics given in the article show an increase in the prosecution of persons under Article 196 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
 An analysis of estimates of the size and nature of damage caused by intentional actions (inaction) that result in the inability of a legal entity or a citizen, including an individual entrepreneur, to fully satisfy the claims of creditors for monetary obligations and (or) fulfill the obligation to make mandatory payments, shows the destructiveness of this effects on the country’s economy.

Holistic Security and Safety for Factories of the Future.

The accelerating transition of traditional industrial processes towards fully automated and intelligent manufacturing is being witnessed in almost all segments. This major adoption of enhanced technology and digitization processes has been originally embraced by the Factories of the Future and Industry 4.0 initiatives. The overall aim is to create smarter, more sustainable, and more resilient future-oriented factories. Unsurprisingly, introducing new production paradigms based on technologies such as machine learning (ML), the Internet of Things (IoT), and robotics does not come at no cost as each newly incorporated technique poses various safety and security challenges. Similarly, the integration required between these techniques to establish a unified and fully interconnected environment contributes to additional threats and risks in the Factories of the Future. Accumulating and analyzing seemingly unrelated activities, occurring simultaneously in different parts of the factory, is essential to establish cyber situational awareness of the investigated environment. Our work contributes to these efforts, in essence by envisioning and implementing the SMS-DT, an integrated platform to simulate and monitor industrial conditions in a digital twin-based architecture. SMS-DT is represented in a three-tier architecture comprising the involved data and control flows: edge, platform, and enterprise tiers. The goal of our platform is to capture, analyze, and correlate a wide range of events being tracked by sensors and systems in various domains of the factory. For this aim, multiple components have been developed on the basis of artificial intelligence to simulate dominant aspects in industries, including network analysis, energy optimization, and worker behavior. A data lake was also used to store collected information, and a set of intelligent services was delivered on the basis of innovative analysis and learning approaches. Finally, the platform was tested in a textile industry environment and integrated with its ERP system. Two misuse cases were simulated to track the factory machines, systems, and people and to assess the role of SMS-DT correlation mechanisms in preventing intentional and unintentional actions. The results of these misuse case simulations showed how the SMS-DT platform can intervene in two domains in the first scenario and three in the second one, resulting in correlating the alerts and reporting them to security operators in the multi-domain intelligent correlation dashboard.

Alien technology, conjunction and ergodicity

AbstractIn a recent refreshing paper, Cowie (2022, The Philosophical Quarterly) analyses the hypothesis of artificial origin of the mysterious interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 ʻOumuamua, as well as the wider question of justification of the artefactual origin explanation for anomalous astronomical phenomena. This highly commendable philosophical project should be further developed in order to establish more general methodology for dealing with traces and manifestations of extraterrestrial intentional actors. In the present note, I demonstrate a couple of weaknesses of the standard account, mainly dealing with philosophy of technology, and suggest ways of improving upon it.

The Origins of Theory of Mind in Infant Social Cognition: Investigating Longitudinal Pathways from Intention Understanding and Joint Attention to Preschool Theory of Mind

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature has established longitudinal associations between key social cognitive capacities emerging in infancy and children’s subsequent theory of mind. However, existing work is limited by modest sample sizes, narrow infant measures, and theory of mind assessments with restricted variability and generalizability. The current study aimed to extend this literature by (a) recruiting a large sample of participants (n = 116; 53 boys; 63 girls; all U.S. residents; 88 White, 8 Hispanic or Latino, 2 Black or African American, 14 two or more races/ethnicities, 4 unknown; median family income: $74-122,000), (b) examining multiple measures of infant social cognition (intentional action understanding, responding to joint attention, initiating joint attention) at Time 1 (8–12 months), and (c) using an ecologically valid theory of mind assessment designed to capture individual differences in preschoolers’ mental state understanding (the Children’s Social Understanding Scale) at Time 2 (37–45 months). Measured variable path analysis revealed a significant longitudinal association between infants’ initiating joint attention and later theory of mind: infants who engaged in more attempts to initiate joint attention with experimenters through gaze alternation or gestures went on to show better parent-reported mental state understanding as preschoolers. Notably, the paths from infants’ responding to joint attention and intentional action understanding to later theory of mind did not emerge as significant. These findings bolster and clarify existing claims about how mental state reasoning is rooted in foundational social-cognitive capacities emerging in infancy.

Campus Managers’ Role in Innovation Implementation for Sustainability on Dutch University Campuses

Internationally, the ambition to achieve a sustainable built environment is becoming urgent. On the university campus, this vision, combined with unparalleled access to innovative technologies for sustainable development enables/urges universities to implement more innovative solutions more often. As a prime test location, the university campus is uniquely able to serve as a context for living labs, implementing and testing innovative technologies in a real-world environment. However, implementation of innovation on campus requires a clear vision, intentional action and transdisciplinary collaboration, while innovations themselves pose several challenges to the business-as-usual way of work. To explore the role of campus real estate managers in innovation implementation decisions on the university campus, a literature review and a qualitative study among campus managers of 13 Dutch universities were conducted. The research explored the innovation project types, risks, drivers and barriers and the real estate management responsibilities and decision criteria in innovation implementation projects. As one of the outputs of this research, a comprehensive categorization framework was developed. It clarifies campus managers’ decision-making dimensions for innovative sustainability project implementation on campus and highlights the sustainability objectives unique to universities. If implemented across universities, it could further strengthen the networked economy by identifying opportunities for cross-campus implementation of innovative projects for sustainability.

Eron, Sarah. Mind over Matter: Memory Fiction from Daniel Defoe to Jane Austen

Eron, Sarah. <i>Mind over Matter: Memory Fiction from Daniel Defoe to Jane Austen</i>

Analyzing social wrongs

Analyzing social wrongs

Integrating design thinking and anthropology as enablers in addressing responsible innovation

This work explores the integration of design thinking (DT) and anthropology as enablers in addressing responsible innovation in a real-world project. We used a problem and project-based learning (PPBL) approach with transdisciplinary research to explore such integration. We implemented design thinking as a reflective practice, process and mindset and postmodern anthropology as an approach and interpretative anthropology as an instrument. The objective is to integrate both when teaching strategic innovation as they help secure profitability while being responsible for the negative implications of innovation and its hidden un(der)costed flows. We designed a project-based learning approach embedded in a problem-based learning approach to expose students to the complexity of responsible innovation and distinguish its different elements through a sustained period. We documented a semester-long project where an interdisciplinary undergraduate group (non-designers) and community members partnered to face a societal challenge. Students submitted reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action assignments throughout the semester, and we triangulated them with participative observation and physical artefacts to document their learning experiences. We used thematic analysis addressing recurrent themes, topics and relationships towards the experiential learning approach and instructional methodologies that facilitated learning DT, anthropology and responsible innovation. Students perceived that anthropology and DT helped them visualize unforeseen consequences, make the normative within the technical explicit, acknowledge plural viewpoints and promote collective learning. Second, they recognized human perspective, participatory tools, intentional actions and functional outcomes as approaches to attend to those external factors that discourage responsible innovation. Third, they discerned that a PPBL approach using transdisciplinary research enabled them to have a greater understanding of the topic, deeper learning and increased motivation to learn. It also facilitated taming ill-defined problems while producing new understandings and feasible solution-oriented outcomes. This work discusses the need for theories and pedagogies to teach contemporary innovation in business education. First, we contributed to the former by embedding anthropology and DT to discuss responsible innovation as an essential element in devising strategic innovation. It emphasizes the need for academics and non-academic participants to reflect on their role and power in developing integrated knowledge for science and society. Second, we explore the practical implications of integrating a PPBL approach in business education pedagogy. It allows students to work in real-world settings and produce workable contributions to (and with) society. This project provides a detailed and descriptive analysis of a PPBL approach that aims to address responsible innovation in a public project while documenting students learning experiences. This work contributes to empirical research addressing pedagogies and advancing new theories in business education.

A Case of Amphetamine and Methamphetamine Intoxication in Cat.

Stimulants belonging to the amphetamine group nowadays pose an undeniable worldwide threat to the life and health of users. Intoxications of domestic animals also occur, which can either be accidental or related to intentional human action. This study presents the first ever reported case of a simultaneous amphetamine and methamphetamine intoxication of a cat, along with the results of toxicological studies. Blood, urine, vitreous humor and liver were collected during the cat's autopsy and analyzed by UHPLC─QqQ─MS/MS. The sample preparation technique was based on one-step precipitation of proteins with cold acetonitrile. The determined amphetamine concentrations in the collected biological materials were 93.4 ng/mL in blood, 496.6 ng/mL in urine, 589.2 ng/mL in the vitreous humor and 291.2 ng/g in liver, respectively. Methamphetamine concentrations were 45.5 ng/mL in blood, 263.1 ng/mL in urine, 351.2 ng/mL in vitreous humor, and 97.7 ng/g in liver. Other substances were also found in the biological material, i.e., diazepam, oxazepam and nordiazepam. Cases of intentional or accidental poisoning of pets with psychoactive substances are a serious problem, carrying the risk to the health and life of the animal. Therefore, it is important to increase awareness of the high risk of poisoning of domestic animals, as well as to learn about the incompletely understood mechanisms of pharmacokinetics of various drugs in animals, including cats.

Sustainable Transition to Studying Abroad Online during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecological Perspective

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, study abroad (SA) programs have undergone an urgent transfer to the online format. Although SA online has many merits toward sustainable international education in the post-COVID era, assuring the quality of these programs and sustaining students’ learning motivation have been key issues of concern. Moreover, there is still a lack of evidence derived from in-depth qualitative inquiries. To address these gaps, this study takes a close look at an individual’s story using a narrative approach to data analysis and employs an ecological perspective focusing on intentionality as the theoretical framework for exploring how the participant conquered the challenges when they transitioned to SA online. Successful plots identified include setting up the online learning environment, optimising the benefits of online learning, and sustaining students’ motivation to study. Several obstacles remained unsolved, such as the loss of interpersonal connection and empathy in online communication. This study concludes that the participant’s successful and unsuccessful encounters in enacting the affordances of online education were manifested by developed or undeveloped intentional actions as a result of individual-environment mutuality. Some implications are offered for constructing sustainable online SA environments that can diversify and innovate future international education experiences.

Juvenile prevention during the war: features of the implementation of powers

The article is devoted to deepening the study of the problems of the implementation of juvenile prevention powers during the war as the most acute period of socio-legal anomie, when all categories of the state's population are negatively affected by military actions. Authorized bodies should make maximum efforts to protect children from the consequences of war, because the social chaos provoked by war is the basis for them to commit certain illegal actions that they committed before, or were inclined to commit.&#x0D; It was found that minors fall into a marginal environment, an environment prone to deviant behavior, which is a big danger. The unstable psyche of the child will not always be able to distinguish care from violence, for example, sexual or psychological. It is important not only to prevent offenses by minors, but also to respect their rights and the opportunity to develop as safely as possible in society, to prevent an increase in the level of crime among minors during the war, and to account for those who came under the negative influence of persons with illegal behavior in the territories where hostilities are taking place.&#x0D; It is emphasized that during the period of socio-legal anomie, social and value orientations change even in mature adults, and in minors, in whom such orientations have not yet been fully formed, anti-value behavior aimed at disregarding the norms of law and social morality may be formed.&#x0D; It is noted that representatives of juvenile prevention agencies need to closely cooperate with volunteers, teachers, centers of residence of temporarily displaced persons to identify children prone to illegal behavior or those in need of special social and psychological adaptation. Social solidarity and interaction of all citizens is important.&#x0D; During the war, a widespread negative phenomenon in society is the illegal involvement of children in labor. These may not be intentional actions on the part of parents and relatives, who in an extreme situation cannot adequately assess such actions as harmful to the child's health, as well as intentional actions of third parties aimed at labor exploitation of children.

Reps and representations: a warm-up to a grammar of lifting

AbstractIn this paper, I outline a grammar of lifting (i.e., resistance training) and compare it to that of language. I approach lifting as a system of generating complex meaning–form correspondences from regularized elements and describe the levels of mental representations and relationships between them that are involved in full command of this system. To be able to do so, I adopt a goal-based conception of meaning, which allows us to talk about mappings from complex goals to complex surface outputs in systems of intentional action, signaling and non-signaling, interactive and non-interactive, in a unified way, and show how it applies in lifting. I then proceed to argue that the grammar of lifting is architecturally very similar to that of language. First, I show that both involve stable (idiomatized/lexicalized) pairings of regularized forms with regularized meanings. Second, I argue that in both lifting and language, meaning–form mapping is mediated by syntax, which, crucially, operates on non-linearized hierarchical structures of abstract objects that include both content morphemes and functional morphemes. I conclude, following and expanding on some insights from prior literature and offering further evidence for them, that neither of these architectural phenomena (idiomatized meaning–form pairings and abstract syntax) is specific to language, with both of them likely emerging in skilled action that does not necessarily involve social interaction, due to considerations of repeatability and reusability of elements in new contexts.

Study Abroad Participants’ Reflections on Relationship Development: The Role of Context, Curriculum, and Community Engagement

University students often share that studying abroad was a life-changing experience. We explored how one short-term, faculty-led study abroad, Tanzania Study Abroad Program (TSAP), contributed to the participants’ lives after their experience. Through a web-based survey, we collected responses from 82 former TSAP participants. We used corpus and thematic analysis to determine prominent themes of participants’ memories and perceptions of how TSAP impacted their lives. Respondents reflected on the people they interacted with throughout their study abroad experiences, both with those abroad and their peers. Furthermore, the program leaders’ intentional actions in the planning of the context, curriculum, and community engagement informed participants’ opportunities to develop relationships that were non-transactional in nature. Participants also reported that their cross-cultural relationships with Tanzanians positively influenced their subsequent interactions with people from diverse communities. Prioritizing relationships with host community members and peers on study abroad shows promise for supporting participants’ intercultural development.