Parallel Monologues Research Articles

A turn of tide in the fight against corruption in Romania: the CJEU between systemic risk of impunity and fundamental rights

Abstract In the last decade, the interaction between the European Court of Justice and the Romanian Constitutional Court followed a sinusoidal pattern: after the direct dialogue initiated by a preliminary question on the freedom of movement for same-sex couples, parallel monologues on the relationship between the national Constitution and EU law have become the rule. This article examines the recent CJEU Case C-107/23 PPU ‘Lin’, which represents a turn of tide in the interaction between the CJEU and the Romanian Constitutional Court, but also a confirmation of the loss of interest of the CJEU in the topic of the fight against corruption in Romania.

Getting Students to Talk: A Practice-Based Study on the Design and Implementation of Problem-Solving Tasks in the EFL Classroom

This study addresses a pedagogical practice-based issue, that is, difficulties with eliciting student–student co-constructed oral interaction in the EFL classroom. The study was conducted with a bottom-up approach to pedagogical research through the close collaboration of teachers and researchers who were equal partners in the research team. It was observed that students often engage in parallel monologues or unauthentic question–response sequences when accomplishing oral activities; thus, the research team aimed to design tasks providing opportunities for meaningful, co-constructed talk. The research design involved an iteration of task design and classroom testing in three cycles, and the student–student interaction was analyzed using conversation analysis. Findings show that the divergent problem-based task designed in this process did elicit purposeful and collaborative oral interaction, as the students engaged in co-constructed talk by visibly attending to each other’s turns-at-talk and by formulating fitting turns that fostered the progressivity of the activity. The task also included artifacts (i.e., material objects), the manipulation of which played an important role in the emerging collaborative interaction. These findings suggest that the implementation of open-ended problem-based tasks can develop students’ interactional competence, while the use of artifacts can help students make their reasoning tangible and visually accessible.

The Relational Approach and Social Epistemology in Educational Leadership: A Rejoinder

Calls for a social epistemology in educational administration and leadership are not new. As a field of inquiry, parallel monologues have come to dominate scholarly outlets and forums. But, parallel monologues arguably violate the logic of academic work – argument and refutation – with significant implications for the rigor and robustness of knowledge claims. This Special Issue sought to provide a forum for sustained dialogue and debate on the problems and possibilities of the relational approach that I am advancing. As the concluding paper, and a rejoinder to the contributions, here I highlight the difficulties of generating dialogue and debate and how going beyond our own complicity is challenging, but arguably rewarding, academic work

Moving Forward Amidst the Swirls: Reframing The Relational Approach as a Step ‘Beyond’ Leadership

Embedding the relational approach as a research project is a viable alternative to normative conceptualisation and practice of leadership. However, as the shift from substantialist assumptions to relational theorising gathers momentum, the evolving nature of the argument so far suggests that more needs to be done to bolster its robustness. Rather than being a refutation, this commentary reengages with the relational approach in a way that attempts to locate it within the historical development of theorising in educational leadership as a specialised field. More specifically, it focuses a large part of its analysis on the strength of underpinning ontological theorising which, arguably, nullifies binaries without accounting for (assumptions about) them as it shifts its focus on relations. To ensure parallel monologues begin to engage and that auctors draw on an array of knowledges, the commentary reviews the relational approach and provides alternative avenues and resources to further its aims

Forgotten Slovakia Civic Initiative: Talking Openly about Extremism. Parallel Monologues or a Discussion on Values?

Forgotten Slovakia Civic Initiative: Talking Openly about Extremism. Parallel Monologues or a Discussion on Values?

The 2017 Maltese general election: parallel monologues

On 3 June 2017 Malta went to the polls and again returned to office the Labour Party (PL), led by Joseph Muscat. Galloping to a second term with a spectacular 55% of the vote, it now commanded an o...

A social epistemology for educational administration and leadership

ABSTRACTAs a field of knowledge production, educational administration and leadership scholars do a substantial amount of talking past one another. These parallel monologues are a major issue for the advancement of knowledge. Original contributions can only be made in relation to others. That is, the innovation or significance of scholarship is an act of (social) scientific distinction. This means purposely engaging with the other. In this paper, I argue that the knowledge frontiers of educational administration and leadership are highly fragmented and siloed. I do not, however, see diversity of scholarship as a fatal flaw nor do I argue for a form of knowledge centrism. Rather, my intervention is to propose a social epistemology for moving knowledge claims.

The Church: Towards a Common Vision

The 2013 convergence document, The Church: Towards a Common Vision (ctcv) incorporates several aspects of the response of the Napa Inter-Orthodox Consultation to The Nature and Mission of the Church (nmc) which, as its subtitle suggests, was A Stage on the Way to a Common Statement, namely The Church. Eastern and Oriental Orthodox responders (jointly!) point to the imprecise use of the term, ‘church’, the World Council of Churches (wcc)’s understanding of ‘the limits of the Church’, and to the ‘branch theory’ implicit in nmc, an ecclesiology toned down in ctcv. Bordeianu proposes a subjective recognition of the fullness of the church in one’s community as a possible way forward. Simultaneously, Orthodox representatives have grown into a common, ecumenical understanding of the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the church’s work for justice; attentiveness to the role of women in the church; and accepting new forms of teaching authority in an ecumenical context. The positions of various churches are no longer parallel monologues, but reflect earnest change and convergence.

Making the Improbable Probable: Communication across Models of Medical Practice

Cooperation and conversation in the public sphere may overcome historical and other barriers to rational argumentation. As an alternative to evidence-based medicine (EBM) and patient-centered care (PCC), the recent development of a modern version of person-centered medicine (PCM) signals an opportunity for a conversational pluralogue to replace parallel monologues between EBM and its critics, and the calls to EBM to debate its critics. This article draws upon elements of Habermas's theory of communicative action in order to suggest the kind of pluralogue that is required for stakeholders in modern medicine to benefit more from publicly conversing with each other than speaking alone or using debate to argue against each other. This reasoned perspective has lessons for all discourse when deep value-based and epistemological differences cannot be easily adjudicated.

Mechanisms for Transmission of Ulterior Transactions

Many transactional analysts assume that psychological-level (ulterior) transactions are transmitted by nonverbal communication. Using communication theory (Buda, 1988), six alternative mechanisms transmitted by verbal messages and actions are described. By recognizing these mechanisms, it is possible to bring ulterior transactions into full awareness and to prevent games. Strategies for dealing with ulterior transactions are suggested based on bringing covert messages into full awareness and transforming competitive transactions into cooperative transactions (i.e., two parallel monologues into a real dialogue).

Social Security Bonds and the Concept of Reciprocal Responsibility

AbstractThe current debate and parallel monologues about Social Security suffer from a failure to distinguish between money and bonds. Consequently, it is impossible to discuss intelligently the solvency or affordability of the Social Security system. In this article, we present a new graph that clarifies this crucial distinction. Bonds are evidence of loans to be repaid on a schedule. These loans can be strictly monetary, as in the private sector, or a mix of monetary and moral, as in the intergenerational reciprocity of obligations. To treat public sector bonds as strictly monetary is economic error as fundamental as denying the existence of public goods.

Soviet-American Bargaining Behavior in the Postwar Disarmament Negotiations

To begin an analysis of the meandering course of the postwar disarmament negotiations with a bargaining model is perhaps the height of optimism. Some would doubt the utility of such a model because they regard the negotiations primarily as parallel monologues in which the basic appeals are made to the galleries of world public opinion rather than across the table to the opposition. It further has been asserted that the