Modes Of Thinking Research Articles

A New Research Agenda for Social Inequalities in Mortality: Challenges and Open Questions

AbstractResearch on mortality inequalities has proliferated in demography in recent decades, documenting disparities between nations and within them across multiple social dimensions. Yet, this literature remains largely descriptive and atheoretical. In this paper, I identify three open questions in need of theoretical development. First, I identify a general shift from gender (and race) based mortality inequalities to class‐based inequalities across low‐mortality countries. I argue that this shift may be better understood by focusing on the structural determinants of population health, in addition to explanations grounded in individual behavior and risk factors. Second, a growing body of literature has called for moving beyond group differences in life expectancy and adopting the concept of lifespan inequality. However, the drivers of lifespan inequality are not well understood. I argue that a comprehensive framework is needed for clarifying the interplay of nature, nurture, and chance in shaping variability in individual lifespans. Third, I draw attention to the causal role that mortality inequalities may play in driving social change. I argue that differential exposure to death in one's network of social relations may give rise to different modes of thinking, feeling, and acting, and in turn lead to group differences in preferences, actions, and outcomes.

Primary health care strengthening through the lens of healthcare system thinking

Despite the strides made in healthcare, many countries still struggle to meet citizen healthcare needs, leading to global and regional health inequalities. The complex interactions between healthcare systems and disciplines present challenges for primary care providers and family physicians. Primary care providers must be equipped with tools and resources to effectively fulfil their duties, such as clinical governance, leadership and capacity building. This article focusses on various thinking approaches that primary care providers can employ, namely systems thinking, complexity science thinking and learning health systems thinking. We appreciate that individual styles and preferences, organisational culture and systemic realities influence multiple modes of thinking and decision-making. A range of modes of thinking and mental models will assist with tackling challenges and opportunities in the primary healthcare system. We hope this brief overview encourages readers to experiment with different ways of thinking to help facilitate innovative solutions.

Embodied Critical Learning through Performance Teaching

A critical mode of being is not only written into the Swedish law of university education as a learning outcome for all students, but also vital for Media and Communication students approach to their studies and their future lives as media producers. Taking on this challenge, I created an experiment 15 years ago, which I term performance teaching. It was a way to force students out of their uncritical absorption of course-content only focusing on exams, into a critical mode of thinking and doing. At first this performance teaching entailed lecturing in totally different lifestyle outfits every day, with the aid of colleagues and the city theatre. The following 13 years, however, only the first day of term was used for the performance and the experiment turned into a permanent teaching method, tied in with theories of critique of sources and media critique. This is the case that will theoretically discuss in this article. I will argue for didactically designing learning processes that tackles the issues embodied critical thinking and doing. My main argument is that by acknowledging that we, as lecturers and students, are physical beings and that learning should take place through one’s entire body, learning processes can be didactically designed to better learning processes. The aim of the article is showing how performance teaching can create a positive base for critical learning, thinking, and doing media, and theoretically analysing and discussing this. Theoretically, the concepts I use are mainly based on bell hooks’ works on feminist critical pedagogy. I also lean on Bourdieu’s (2001) concept hexis and habitus, and Larsson and Fagrell’s (2010) The Conception of Performed Body. I’m furthermore inspired by Selander and Kress’ (2010) book on didactic design and Toke Gissel’s (2016) work on Media Didactics, which ties my research to my subject Media and Communication studies. Methodologically the case study is based on student questionnaires and interviews. The result shows that students yearn the familiar, they want what they believe a university education and a “proper university lecturer” should be. When taken out of their pre-understandings of this and when the course didactics are consciously designed to foster criticality, they start to think and do critically. The performance lecture is but a small starting point in achieving this, but its effects seem to last students’ entire bachelor program (and possibly beyond). The article does not argue for a performance lecture as such, as it could be a hard act hard to follow, but that university lectures should aim for what bell hooks terms practical wisdom. Furthermore, we need to bring embodied learning into the classroom, and we must acknowledge that fostering critical thinking and critical doing is key to any university education.

A Strategic Study on the Integration of Design Thinking and User Needs in Enterprise Innovation

In the process of enterprise innovation, closely integrating design thinking with user needs is a key strategy, aiming to drive the innovation practice of enterprises through people-oriented design methods. By deeply understanding users' needs, emotions and behaviors to promote the development of products and services, it helps enterprises avoid the traditional function-oriented thinking mode, makes innovation decisions close to the actual needs, and improves market adaptability. This paper summarizes the value of design thinking in enterprise innovation, promotes brand enhancement by integrating user needs, and provides feasible guidelines for enterprises in digital transformation.

The Persistence of Mathematics: integrating mathematical problem solving into the first-year engineering curriculum

Mathematics is more than a set of tools. It is a mode of thinking and a powerful and integral way to approach engineering. Over the course of this year, the authors of this paper, with help from our colleagues, were able to integrate multiple courses from the first-year curriculum. We were able to give novel exercises, assessments, and course material that showed the usefulness of mathematics as a way of thought. In this paper, we give the main examples of what we had done throughout the year, connecting calculus and linear algebra with programming, statics, design, and engineering orientation. These are interspersed with the lessons learned in creating these interventions.

Features of the Development of an Engineer’s Thinking in the Course of Training at a University (Using the Example of Studying the Discipline “Engineering Graphics”)

The article examines the process of developing an engineer’s thinking during the study of engineering graphics at a university. Relevance. The working conditions of a modern engineer require professional training. One of the disciplines of engineering training is descriptive geometry and engineering graphics, which develops the thinking of an engineer. The purpose of the study is the process of developing an engineer’s thinking during the study of descriptive geometry and engineering graphics. The research used theoretical methods of analysis, synthesis of module structure, synthesis and generalizations, knowledge control, practical methods of performing graphic tasks, methods of mathematical statistics for evaluating educational achievements, analysis of literary sources and educational literature, experiment. The provisions reached at the beginning of the study determine the theoretical significance and novelty. Thinking has forms and types of thinking. The engineer’s level of thinking is based on knowledge, combining theoretical and practical experience of life activity, which determines his thinking logic. The basis for the development of thinking is mental formations. In this process, it should be important to form the knowledge and quality of the engineer’s knowledge during training. The qualities of a student’s knowledge are revealed as a result of the assimilation and application of knowledge by a person in various types of activities. Engineering graphics develops thinking by means of forming knowledge, skills, and abilities, as a basis for conclusions corresponding to the theoretical level of the student’s specialty training. Descriptive geometry and engineering graphics allows you to develop mental processes: perception, representation, imagination, memory, speech, etc.; qualities of knowledge: com-pleteness, depth, efficiency, flexibility, awareness; develop thinking: implies the development of qualities of thinking, modes of thinking, forms of thinking, levels of thinking. The practical significance is characterized by the conclusions of the study. Descriptive geometry and engineering graphics is an important discipline in the successful training of a future specialist, since as a result of its study, students acquire knowledge of the basics of design documentation, the ability to perform various types of design activities and read drawings, the skills of design documentation when studying other disciplines of the field of training, the competence of an engineer able to read and issue design documents for manufactured products. Descriptive geometry and engineering graphics develop thinking by means of formation of knowledge, skills, and abilities as the basis for conclusions corresponding to the theoretical level of the student’s specialty training. Descriptive geometry and engineering graphics allows you to develop mental processes: perception (in the process of studying theoretical material and practical performance of tasks on engineering graphics), representation (a set of knowledge about the types of projection: central, orthogonal, axonometric) based on the type of task to perform, imagination (to construct figures or details in a drawing, it is advisable to imagine and construct lines of connection in order to correctly construct projections), memory (knowledge of the requirements of the Unified System for Design Documentation allows you to see the depicted types of design documentation, drawings of parts, etc.), speech (characterized by terms specific to a particular specialty or discipline), etc.

Destroying Vision, Destroying Hearing: Sergei Kuriokhin and Arkady Dragomoshchenko

The article explores the unique friendship and creative synergy between two towering figures of late Soviet underground culture, the avant-garde jazz musician Sergei Kuriokhin and the poet Arkady Dragomoshchenko. Both outsiders in Leningrad, they shaped its literary and musical landscapes without aligning with any movements. Dragomoshchenko, a seminal poet, defied categorization, while Kuriokhin, a polymath, challenged conventions across music, performance, and politics. Their collaboration epitomized innovation, blending Dragomoshchenko’s cerebral poetry with Kuriokhin’s avant-garde music. Despite linguistic barriers, their connection transcended verbal communication, rooted in shared modes of nonlinear thinking and creative experimentation. Kuriokhin’s revolutionary Pop Mekhanika, a chaotic fusion of genres and sensory experiences, mirrored Dragomoshchenko’s relentless poetic evolution. Their friendship catalyzed pivotal encounters, such as with the American poet Lyn Hejinian, expanding their artistic horizons. Dragomoshchenko’s poetic vision, centred on perception’s fleeting nature and the boundaries of possibility, echoed Kuriokhin’s multisensory assaults on audience expectations. Through their unconventional artistry, Kuriokhin and Dragomoshchenko navigated the shifting cultural landscape of late Soviet society, embodying a spirit of defiance and exploration. Their enduring influence transcends their untimely deaths, leaving an indelible mark on Russian avant-garde culture.

The Evolvement of Emperor and the Relationship Between Heaven and Man in Pre-Qin Dynasty

The characters of a nation are often the surface reflection of its culture. Through studying these characters, we can deeply understand the thinking mode, cultural emotion and deep aesthetic implication behind them. In Chinese culture, the concept of heaven and man has always been one of the main focuses in academic research and debate, which has a profound impact on the evolution of subsequent culture. Therefore, primarily based on the background of pre-Qin to the Shang dynasty, this paper discusses the relationship between heaven and man. Through analyzing the different forms of di (emperor) in oracle bone inscriptions, this paper reveals the change of the concept of heaven and man and its influence on the relationship between heaven and man in later generations. By doing so, the paper seeks to deepen the understanding of the evolution of the concept of Heaven and man in Chinese traditional concept more comprehensively.

Engaging children in what-if thinking through read-aloud conversations in early childhood education for sustainability

ABSTRACT This study presents the research that Pramling Samuelsson’s keynote at the 32nd annual EECERA conference in Brighton 2024 drew upon. The study addresses an important but understudied feature of early childhood education and care for sustainability (ECECfS), namely engaging children in prospective or what-if thinking. Our reasoning is founded on Vygotskian theorizing on the inherent and dynamic relationship between imagination and real-life experiences, and on distinctions from Play-Responsive Early Childhood Education and Care (PRECEC) between culturally conventional knowing (as is), transformation into play (as if), and changing a premise and thinking about the potential and/or actual consequences of this change (what if). How the latter mode of thinking comes into play and is responded to in read-aloud conversations are analyzed. It is argued that engaging in what-if thinking, implying imagining other possibilities, and thinking about what it would or could entail – and in extension how to work towards realizing that alternative – constitutes a critical addition to empirically grounded theorization of ECEC for sustainability.

The Fundamental Differences between Chinese and American Modes of Thinking and of Discourse

The Fundamental Differences between Chinese and American Modes of Thinking and of Discourse

In Search of a Truly Indian Catholic Theology in Nehruvian India

The Modi dispensation provides a unique vantage for assessing the role, program, and self-understanding of the emergence of a local, indigenous style of theology within Roman Catholicism in India during the Nehruvian era. The style has often been linked to the internal history of Catholicism in the aftermath of Vatican II. In this article, the emphasis is rather located in the Indian context, and more specifically in the Nehruvian India. A special role in this relationship between Indian theologians and Nehruvian India was played by the category of difference that allows an appropriation of Western modes of thinking and yet marks a distance from them. I offer some consideration of the complex implications of this approach in theology.

Color as a Vital Force: A Posthumanist Approach to the Color Narrative in John Hawkes’ Second Skin

This paper examines the color in Hawkes’ Second Skin as a subjectivity of zoe that possesses vitality and interacts dynamically with its environment and other entities through the lenses of posthumanism, especially a famous Neterland posthumanities theorist Braidotti’s zoe theory. Color is not a lifeless tool used by authors to embellish the text but an active force that interacts with the characters, predicting or influencing their actions. It guides readers in understanding the plot and themes while fostering an anti-anthropocentric worldview that challenges traditional distinctions between life and non-life. Thus, color in Second Skin embodies Rosi Braidotti’s concept of zoe. This new thinking mode expands human understanding of non-human things and facilitates the construction of non-anthropocentric standpoints.

Reconsidering Divergent and Convergent Thinking in Creativity – a Neurophysiological Index for the Convergence-Divergence Continuum

ABSTRACT Creative problem-solving has been described as an iterative process of divergent and convergent modes of thinking. With this opinion paper, we illustrate how some tasks, commonly used for the neuroscientific investigation of creativity might provide a condensed representation of divergent and convergent thinking, respectively. We have identified the following reasons for this: The specific presentation of stimuli and response alternatives within these tasks (“immediate problem space accessibility”), the restricted time on task for participants in well-established creativity tasks, as well as the challenges to identify specific temporal dynamics of divergent-convergent cycles using standard EEG procedures. Based on two recent studies, we propose that upper alpha band (10–12 hz) modulations in particular may serve a) as a neuro-physiological index to disentangle divergent-convergent cycles within these creativity tasks and b) as a data-driven marker for the task demands related to immediate problem space accessibility. Finally, we argue for a view on divergent and convergent thinking that is less of a dichotomy and more of a continuum.

Author, Narrative and the Impact of Internet Literature Upon Print Literature in China

Abstract Internet literature gains tremendous popularity in China with the coming of the digital era. In response to the emergence of the large body of Internet literature, this article examines the Internet literary tendencies observable in China by systematically analysing four issues concerning Internet literature. Based on retrospecting of the history of Chinese Internet Literature (CIL), the study first describes the uniqueness of CIL during its evolution. Then, this study categorizes CIL from three perspectives, namely, the author groups, the genre of the text, and the fiction narrative style. In the third part, this study explores the positive impact of CIL in terms of its interactivity, how it changes the creators’ mode of thinking, how it expands literary genres, the convergence and fusion of print literary genres in CIL, and the shifts in dissemination. The negative impact of Chinese internet literature is also discussed including how vulgar and shallow works impact the depth of print literature, how figurative language limit the readers’ imagination, and how CIL challenges the traditional publishing market. In the end, the far-reaching changes and possible future trends of CIL are discussed.

Digitally Driven Urban Governance: Framework and Evaluation in China

With the rapid development of digital technology, the role of digitalisation in urban governance continues to emerge. Building a theoretical analysis framework and evaluation system of digitally driven urban governance has important theoretical and practical significance for stimulating the efficiency of digital technology tools and improving the energy level of urban digital governance. This paper aims to explore the mechanism of urban governance enabled by digital technology, innovatively change the previous thinking mode that only attaches importance to facility construction and e-government platforms, adopt ecological thinking, and comprehensively consider the role of “soft elements” such as strategic support, industrial support, the security environment, talent support, and the market environment. Then, the extreme value variance method and the coefficient of variation method are used to calculate the overall capacity and secondary index scores of each city, and the standard deviation of secondary index scores is used to represent the sub-environmental balance of the cross-sectional data of China’s provinces. In order to further explore which indicators restrict the improvement of China’s urban digital governance capacity, this study also constructs an obstacle degree model. The results show the following: (1) The overall capability of China’s digitally driven urban governance is low, with a total score of 27.25, indicating that China’s digitally driven urban governance is in its infancy. (2) There is a significant development imbalance among Chinese provinces, with Beijing ranking first with a score of 81.16, and Tibet, Qinghai, Xinjiang, Heilongjiang, and Ningxia scoring less than 13.30 points, ranking as the bottom 5 among the 31 provinces. (3) The shortcomings of talent support, industrial support, and the security environment restrict the improvement of the entire digital ecological governance ability.

Rewriting Patriarchy: A Feminist Reading of Grace Paley's “A Conversation with My Father”

This paper undertakes a feminist reading of Grace Paley’s “A Conversation with My Father”, positioning her work within the discourse of feminist theory as articulated by Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Engaging with the notion of “feminine writing” and the patriarchal underpinnings of language, this analysis reveals how Paley’s narrative techniques challenge fixed literary conventions and resist the rigidity of traditional storytelling. Through a fragmented and open-ended narrative structure, Paley subtly critiques her father’s demand for a typological and linear story, a preference that reflects the normative expectations of patriarchal literature. By foregrounding the body and privileging multiplicity, Paley echoes Cixous’ and Irigaray’s call for a new mode of representation, one that transcends the limits imposed by phallogocentric discourse. This paper explores how “A Conversation with My Father” serves as both an artistic and theoretical counterpoint to the masculine literary canon, advocating for a narrative form that embodies the fluidity, change, and diversity intrinsic to the feminine experience. In doing so, Paley’s work affirms the necessity of alternative voices in literature, voices that challenge the essentialist representations perpetuated by patriarchal modes of thinking.

The Pedagogical Power of Paper

AbstractIn this research, I explore the potential of a material‐led, embodied pedagogical approach to cultivate diverse modes of thinking, knowing and becoming within a pre‐GCSE curriculum. Drawing from my experiences as both an artist and educator, I acknowledge the transformative power inherent in recognising the agency of all forms of matter, whether human or non‐human. Through the implementation of a project titled ‘To Play,’ which utilises paper as a primary pedagogical tool, I engaged Year 9 Art and Design students. Qualitative data collected over a six‐week period underpins the analysis, with a particular emphasis on understanding students' experiences with material‐led processes. The findings highlight the potential of material‐led pedagogies to empower students and challenge anthropocentric perspectives, offering valuable insights for enhancing pre‐GCSE art education and harnessing the educational potential of materials. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse in art education by emphasising the importance of embodied, experiential learning approaches that prioritise creativity, exploration and critical engagement with the world around us.

Fang Dongmei's View on the Universality of "Consistency" in Chinese Philosophy

In Chinese philosophy, although the ultimate pursuit of human beings by Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism is different, as Fang Dongmei said, "Confucianism lies in promoting the sage's atmosphere, Taoism is intoxicated with poetry and art, while Buddhism seeks the spiritual illumination of human spirit with painstaking wisdom", but the starting point of all three is to show that the universe and life are a coherent whole by-pass. Confucianism tends to regard human affairs and heaven as a whole, Taoism tends to regard human beings and nature as a whole, Buddhism tends to regard human beings and the universe as a whole, and Neo-Confucianism tends to regard Confucianism as the basis. Tuning, taking into account the other two, linking man and nature is another form. The consistency and complementarity of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism affect the existence of Chinese philosophy and the thinking mode of Chinese people.

From men's violence to an ethic of care: Ecofeminist contributions to green criminology

Green criminology has made important contributions to criminological inquiry by highlighting the destructive impact of humans on the more-than-human world. However, it often adopts a gender-neutral lens that overlooks the disproportionate role of men and masculinities in perpetrating green harms. This paper places green criminology into critical dialogue with ecofeminism, arguing that harms against the environment and nonhuman animals are inextricably gendered and should be understood as interconnected forms of men's violence. Ecofeminist insights reveal that violence against the more-than-human world is rooted in hierarchical dualisms, whereby humans are placed separate from and above nature, and the masculine is defined as superior to the feminine. This hierarchical logic enables men to view others in detached, instrumental ways and serves to legitimise acts of men's violence. But just as ecofeminism provides green criminologists with a productive framework for understanding men's violence against the environment and nonhuman animals, it also provides a means of moving beyond this violence. It does this by advocating for an ethic of care that unravels hierarchical modes of thinking and promotes more harmonious relationships between humans and the more-than-human world. By building caring, egalitarian relationships with other living beings (and with their own emotional selves), it is harder for men to act in violent, dominating ways towards others, providing the foundation for more sustainable, interdependent ways of being.

Answering, Fast and Slow: Strategy enhancement of visual understanding guided by causality

In his classic book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Daniel, 2017), Kahneman points out that human thinking can be categorized into two main modes of thinking: a system that displays intuition and emotion (i.e., System 1), and a system that is more planned and relies more on logic, defined as System 2. This idea explains both rational and irrational motivations. In this paper, we revisit visual comprehension tasks based on this idea. At the theoretical level, we focus on the relationship between intuitive thinking, prior knowledge, and environmental information, and build a causal graph between the three. Further, inspired by the constructed causal graph, an intuitive optimization strategy with clear interpretability is proposed. In the validation session, we provide conclusions consistent with the theoretical analyses through extensive experiments on public datasets based on a visual quizzing task. Excitingly, our scheme demonstrates strong competitiveness in terms of generalizability without adding new technologies.