Need For Critical Awareness Research Articles

Reporting or marketing? The discourse on technology in educational landscape reports

Educational landscape reports have historically contributed to advocating for changes that would benefit learners, including recommendations for digital technologies and their use. The COVID-19 pandemic has considerably affected education, pushing institutions to quickly adapt to the emergency through the use of technology. This scenario has impacted the discourse on educational technologies and their implementation. Seeking to better understand this discourse and its potential impact on education, drawing from a range of scholarly literature—including discourse analysis, critical discourse studies, and studies on educational technology and change—this study focuses on how technology has been presented in a major yearly publication in 2020, 2021, and 2022. This study adds to the literature by presenting findings that show that technology corporations can play a crucial role in shaping educational technology discourses in landscape reports, including how technology should be adopted and the very future of higher education. Additionally, it reinforces the need for critical awareness of how different publications may push corporate agendas disguised as impartial expert guidance.

Mediatised human rights education: the (challenging) role of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation

The purpose of this article is to analyse and discuss Selma and the Quest for the Perfect Faith, a TV series made by The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and promoted for use in schools, and the accompanying teaching material about freedom of religion made by Save the Children. We discuss the series and material critically from a human rights and a human rights education perspective, and evaluate their suitability for use in religious education. The article is informed by mediatisation theory and argues that freedom of religion is primarily operationalised in accordance with journalistic criteria for presenting religion, and that it does not sufficiently balance the rights of children and the liberty of parents. This is inconsistent with sound human rights education and highlights the need for critical awareness when operationalising educational material produced and distributed by media actors for use in the classroom.

A Bourdieusian analysis exploring the meaning of sport for young women from refugee backgrounds in an Australian state high school

ABSTRACT For young people from refugee backgrounds, schools are often a critical part of their resettlement experience. Currently, there is a lack of research about the role of sport within the Australian school environment in helping these young people address resettlement challenges. Research on community sport suggests that sport can be a significant and effective platform for introducing young people from refugee backgrounds to Australian society during the resettlement process. School sport may play a similar role. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork over a 12 month period, this paper explores the meaning of sport for young women from refugee backgrounds who were students (in years 7–12) at a publicly-funded state high school in Brisbane. A Bourdieusian theoretical framework was used to guide the need for critical awareness of the workings of power in the school environment. The findings show how sport creates tensions of habitus as students must balance their desire to participate in sport against competing sets of values and dispositions toward sport. The gendered nature of sport further complicated this tension in the way it structured different opportunities for participation in sport between young women and men. Our findings suggest the need for a more deliberate reflexive consciousness to inform the practices of educators and policymakers to ensure sport is both inclusive and culturally safe.

Framing of issues across actors: exploring competing discourses in digital arenas

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to show how the strategic selection of discursive and interactive strategies generates specific framings of an issue to advocate opposite positions, embodying a struggle of power between parties with their own agendas.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on literature within framing, digital issue arenas and critical discourse, this study analyses qualitative hypermodal data retrieved from two websites: Protect Mauna Kea, and Maunakea and Thirty Meter Telescope. These two websites frame the internationally renowned telescope’s construction on Mauna Kea Mountain in Hawaii from alternative perspectives.FindingsOn each website, frame articulation attempts to connect the event to specific concerns, values and beliefs in order to construct alternative versions of reality which can possibly fit with those of supporters. Simultaneously, this is reinforced by frame amplification concretized in selected discursive and interactive strategies that highlight or downplay the issue from particular perspectives.Originality/valueThe study offers a deep insight into the complexity and dynamic nature of framing, in particular into how framing can vary and compete across actors. It also responds to “the need for critical awareness of discourse in contemporary society” (Fairclough, 2010, p. 554) by revealing how the power positions of “challengers and powerholders” (Steinberg, 1998, p. 846) are discursively reproduced and reinforced through distinctive discursive and interactive strategies. Finally, this study adopts a critical approach to hypermodal discourse.

A Case Study of Infusing Technology into Pre-service Secondary Science Teacher Learning: Conceptions and Attitudes While Navigating Changing Digital Landscapes

The impact of technology on student learning, achievement, motivation, and engagement is well documented; however, little research exists on how educators navigate their changing roles within a technologically enabled classroom. Authors explored how effective and appropriate use of classroom technology based on pre-service teachers’ needs and connected to STSE and STEM curriculum can be modeled. This research focused on the preparation of pre-service teachers ( n =48) for Grade 6–12 Science teaching in Canada at a small undergraduate university and included how their course professor infused more knowledge of , in , and for practice within the science classroom. Results indicate a need for critical awareness of the processes of learning in 21st century classrooms, an understanding of how technology can enhance students’ achievement, and a value of invested time and effort into the process. Discussion surrounding challenges and tensions, and suggestions to support emerging pedagogical stances of 21st century educators are provided.

An On-Line Course in Critical Mental Health Promotion: Teaching and Learning at Multiple Spheres of Influence

Background: Supportive environments contribute to the mental health of individuals, local and global communities. Ways of thinking “critically” about what we know and ways of accomplishing mental health promotion work have a more contested history however. A critical perspective demands subjective awareness, and an openness to view the world from multiple perspectives. As such, a collaborative, international, and fully on-line course was developed between post-secondary educational institutions in Norway and Canada. This course intends to meet a need for critical awareness and understanding of the connection of diverse perspectives and environments to mental health promotion practices in the field. Purpose: Our study, of the development and implementation of an innovative critical mental health promotion course, was oriented around the following key questions: How is capacity for critical mental health promotion awareness developed through an on-line international learning environment? And how can supportive learning environments reshape mental health support across international borders? Our goal was to explore the work of students and faculty with the tensions that dominate current mental health promotion. This course began from the diverse locations, experiences and approaches of our students as important sites of critical exploration. Through the virtual world of electronic learning activities, students entered this diversity of worlds, and debated over the shape of health and mental health as notions themselves, as well as over the approaches that best produce support. Most importantly, students debated over the distribution of power, justice, and social and economic advantage held within mental health and various approaches to promoting mental health. Method: The overall approach was based on action research using collaborative enquiry of the case study of our pilot course offering. The enquiry was conducted over 3 years of course development and pilot course delivery. Results: Ultimately, through our reflection and study of the critical learning approaches in action, we were able to explore what supportive environments for mental health are and what particular approaches “do” locally and globally. Further we were able to reorient mental health promotion work through network building in ways that may potentially change nursing practice. Conclusions: The results and lessons learned, from development to implementation of an on-line collaborative international mental health promotion course, expanded the capacities of nursing programs, educational institutions, faculty and students, and expanded what can be known about supportive environments for mental health.

IDEOLOGICAL CHALLENGES IN CLASSROOM DISCOURSE: A SOCIOCRITICAL PERSPECTIVE OF ENGLISH LEARNING IN AN URBAN SCHOOL

Using a sociocritical approach to the study of language and literacy and discourse analysis, this article examines student initiated challenges in a sheltered English course with two types of English learners: native+, ESL students; and, recently, arriving ESL students. The analysis draws on 19 hours of video-recorded observations of teacher-student interaction in predominantly whole class literacy activities. Through an in depth analysis of the role of student challenge in ideological constructions, this article shows how native+ generation students insert themselves into the co-construction of meaning. The main argument set forth in this article is that despite engaging in sophisticated language practices such as “challenges,” native+ students still do poorly in their class and assessments are biased toward quieter students who are mostly more recent immigrant students. While the course is socially organized to be responsive to the voices of native+, Latina/o students, there is a need for critical awareness, or a sociocritical language ideology, that explicitly recognizes and repositions the literacy practices of native+ students in nondeficit ways.

Clinical encounters between nurses and First Nations women in a Western Canadian hospital

Based on findings from an ethnographic study, this paper explores the sociopolitical context of nurses’ encounters with First Nations women in a Western Canadian hospital. Data were collected using in-depth interviews and participant observation of clinical encounters involving nurses and First Nations women who were in-patients in the hospital. Four themes in the data are discussed: relating across presumed “cultural differences”; constructing the Other; assumptions influencing clinical practice; and responding to routine patient requests. The findings illustrate how discourses and assumptions about Aboriginal people, culture, and presumed differences can become interwoven into routine clinical encounters. These results highlight the importance of analyzing health-care encounters in light of the wider sociopolitical and historical forces that give rise to racialization, culturalism and Othering, and underscore the need for critical awareness of these issues among nurses and other heath-care providers.

Exploring the dialectics of route-based tourism: the Camino de Santiago

In its specific concern with route-based itineraries, this paper examines the complex tensions and conflicts that ensue from the marketing of cultural artefacts as tourism commodities. The paper analyses the characteristics and trends of the contemporary utilization of the medieval pilgrimage routes to the Galician shrine of Santiago de Compostela and distinguishes between the differing tourist sub-markets and their contrasting motivations in consuming this heritage complex. This discussion is linked with an assessment of the more subtle modifications of religious meaning by tourism activity, which pose particular problems in formulating strategies to promote this form of cultural itinerary. In proposing a synthetic model that combines the conflicting motivations and demands of pilgrims and tourists, the paper points to the need for critical awareness among those whose brief and interest lie in sustaining the integrity of route-based cultural tourism.

Aum Shinrikyō. Can Religious Studies Cope?

Aum Shinrikyō looks set to becoming a textbook case for considering the relationship between a descriptivisst approach to the study of religion and the need for critical awareness and evaluation. Using materials from the field in late 1995, Aum Shinrikyō is characterized and set in perspective, for example in its misleadingly claimed relationship to Buddhism. The impact of the Aum shock on the current religious situation in japan is assessed. In addition an evaluaatory stance is adopted on vaious issues which arise, thereby illustrating how the Religious Studies specialist may proceed in a socially responsible manner without compromising the hard-won independence and integrity of the discipline.

Islam, History, and the Modem Nation: Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary Moroccan Francophone Literature

and the Modern Nation: Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary Francophone Moroccan Literature Islam, History, Scott Homier critical problems associated with which characterize much of the debate in post-colonial literary theory. The components under discussion have been culture and ethnicity, politics and nationalism, differen- tiation and assimilation, forces of resistance and hegemony. A particularly grave obstacle has been the inability of post-colonial scholarship to resolve the problem of the particular and the univer- sal in such a way as to update the exploration of difference as a pro- active and non-coercive force of resistance against post-indepen- dence structures of repression. The preservation of exclusionary barriers based on ethnic or cultural particularities does not offer an effective check on the abuses of post-independence systems of power which are left in the wake of foreign domination. In the Arab world, Islam has both galvanized forces for the liberation of millions from colonial rule, but it has also sanctified numerous subsequent forms of repression, against political dissenters and There remain a number of the discussions of identity women, in particularly. Therefore, it is crucial that critical scholar- ship respond to the essential contingency, variation and change within the terms of cultural or ethnic difference. The Maghreb offers a challenging example of the need for critical awareness of the particular social and cultural transforma- tions in post-independence countries. In order to frame the discus- sion of post-colonialism in the context of the Maghreb, I will briefly discuss the positions of Frantz Fanon and Abdelkebir Khatibi, two thinkers whose work has been particularly influential. Frantz Fanon described the case of Algerian resistance to French imperial domination. To fabricate an Algerian identity undergoing mate- rial and social changes in order to fulfill itself by transcending its historically determined abjection certainly reveals much about the discourses of Marxism, psychoanalysis and racialism. One won- ders however whether Fanon's Les damnes de la terre helps at all to understand what has troubled Algeria since the liberationist doc-