Poststructuralist Perspective Research Articles

Towards a critical consideration of the effects of coaching practice on athletic retirement: a poststructuralist perspective

ABSTRACT Dominant understandings of sports retirement have tied problematic outcomes to individual characteristics and the circumstances of an athlete’s exit from sport. In recent years, sociologists have problematised these readings, providing new ways of thinking about retirement transitions, experiences, and relationships. This area of research considers how an exposure to normalising arrangements of power might produce challenging responses to athletic retirement. Accordingly, scholars have drawn upon Foucauldian theory to reveal how the disciplinary logic of modern coaching can impact upon retirement experiences. However, there remains limited empirical research exploring the effects that the approaches, attitudes, and practices of coaching practitioners may have upon retirees’ post-athletic lives. Developing poststructuralist analyses of athletic retirement, this paper seeks to stimulate a further consideration of the retirement process within coaching research. Specifically, this ‘new horizons’ paper does so by advocating for a broader empirical exploration into the connection between sports coaching and sports retirement.

UNFOLDING THE VISUAL ABBREVIATIONS: A SEMIOTIC READING OF ACADEMY AWARD- WINNING FILM PARASITE DIRECTED BY BONG JOON-HO

The film has a strong relationship with language as both are means of communication. Film’s affinity to language is also because both carry ideas in the form of signs. When language uses graphic and phonemic signs for signification, films use visual signs. From a poststructuralist perspective, the signs in a visual narrative make multiple readings possible as in written and spoken language, and make film a visual art that gives its viewers an aesthetic experience. The transition of film from the silent era to the digital age as a result of the revolutionary developments in cinematographic techniques has increased the possibilities for multiple interpretations. This paper attempts a semiotic analysis of the Academy Award-winning film Parasite by applying the concepts of theorists like Christian Metz and Roland Barthes. The paper begins with the major arguments put forth by Christian Metz regarding the sign and its application in film and proceeds to explain the five codes in semiotics proposed by Roland Barthes. The paper concludes with the application of these concepts in analyzing the visual signifiers in the film Parasite to justify that semiotics have educated the audience in analyzing film to explore its connotative meanings.

Embracing diversity under isolation and cease-fire: a poststructuralist look at administrators’ policy on multilingualism

Although multilingualism in higher education context continues to garner increasing scholarly interest, research remains scarce on school administrators’ policies on multilingualism. To the best of our knowledge, this study constitutes one of the very few attempts to tackle this issue in higher education context and the first of its kind to pursue such endeavour in North Cyprus setting. This study seeks to investigate, through a post-structuralist perspective, the perceptions and policies of multilingualism by the director and assistant directors of an English preparatory school in a North Cyprus university which has flourished as a haven for international education. The study combines a multiplicity of data through semi-structured interviews and informal chats to provide a richer insight into the multifaceted case being investigated. The findings demonstrate that administrators regard multilingualism as a seal of internationalism and educational quality. They remain hesitant and even mostly sceptical, however, about whether translingual practice could offer any meaningful contribution to language learning processes. Although poststructuralist understanding considers truth and identity to be decentred and forever changing, and despite the scope of our study being limited to one particular institution only, our findings promise great potential for inspiring reflection and research in other universities in North Cyprus and elsewhere, which similarly aspire to international competition in higher education.

School physical education and disabled students: what about Paralympic sports?

ABSTRACT School physical education (PE) has been presented as a privilege for socially dominant groups recognized by their non-disabled bodies. This study aims to investigate the introduction of a 5-week Paralympic sports unit into the PE curriculum as an educational right for disabled students through its recognition as official knowledge representative of their physical abilities and educational right in PE classes. With a poststructuralist perspective, we reflect on dominant discourses on disability in the school PE field and highlight traditional practices and beliefs that pertain to disabled students. Accordingly, we conducted interviews and focus group discussions with one disabled student, his peers and their PE teacher, allowing for the exploration of values, beliefs and practices associated with disability before and after the Paralympic sports unit. Participants’ comments were subjected to interpretative thematic analysis. Paralympic sports enabled the disabled student to recognize and express their identity by critically questioning PE normative practices. Furthermore, Paralympic sports in the PE curriculum was presented as a strategy to raise non-disabled students’ disability awareness rather than as disabled students’ educational right. Paralympic sports constitutes a crucial aspect of the path towards inclusive education grounded in the values of equity and disability identity recognition.

What is the Problem of Gender Inequality Represented to be in Inter-National Development Policy in Burkina Faso?

This article contributes to critical policy analysis scholarship from a post-structuralism perspective. Employing the ‘What’s the problem represented to be’ (WPR) framework, a Foucault-influenced post-structural approach, we investigate what is the problem of Gender Inequality (GI) represented to be in development in Burkina Faso. Based on systematic analysis of selected (inter)national development policy documents and in-depth stakeholder interviews, our results show two main categories of problem representations: a) local culture/ informal structures that strengthen and are strengthened by patriarchy, and b) women’s weak agency that undermine their effective participation. These problem representations are framed from two different but overlapping standpoints: rights and development. Furthermore, the informal structures are presented as the source of the problem of GI while formal structures are portrayed as the solution. The underlying assumptions ignore the gendered impacts of history, colonial legacies, the interconnectedness and often-conflicting state policies and globalisation. Consequently, the problem of GI is depoliticised, rendered local, technical, and static. This deflects responsibility in solving the problem, limits local agency and the exploration of effective cultural and bottom-up policy responses. Alternatively, GI could be represented as a problem of structural unequal power relations – rather than a simplistic blame of local culture.

Meta Style: The Visual Maze of AIGC Art

This article aims to explore whether the visual style in AIGC art is constrained by certain factors that hinder the emergence of new styles and to analyze possible paths beyond this limitation. Methodologically, the article first deconstructs and subverts established visual rules in AIGC art from a post-structuralist perspective. Subsequently, it analyzes the limitations that AIGC art currently faces in innovation, namely, excessive reliance on imitating existing styles, from a perspective of technological philosophy. Finally, it proposes breakthroughs in style innovation for AIGC art through diversified training data, human-machine collaboration, and assimilating multicultural resources. The conclusion suggests that there is potential to surpass the 'visual maze' in AIGC art, but it requires progress in various aspects such as data, models, human-machine interaction to achieve this breakthrough. This will not only promote the development of AIGC art itself but also enrich the aesthetic experience of humanity.

„Święta misja profesora Abronsiusa”. Fantazmaty, abiektalność i transgresje w filmie Romana Polańskiego "Nieustraszeni pogromcy wampirów"

“The Sacred Mission of Professor Abronsius:” Phantasms, The Abject, and Transgression in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers is usually approached in film and cultural studies from a genological perspective: as a game with the convention and genres, a work that has the features of parody and pastiche, yet complies with the poetics of horror. When interpreting and analyzing the picture, it seems worthwhile to employ phantasmatic criticism drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of culture and consider the issue of the abject and transgressive nature of vampiric heroes. This leads to the exegesis of the film from a poststructuralist perspective with a focus on the existential and sexual aspects of vampirism, a topos analyzed by Maria Janion in terms of being a bloodsucker in the face of death, in the face of sex, and in the face of the tragic human condition. The ontic status of the beast seems to be particularly noteworthy if you consider its evolutionary aspect and the role that Polanski’s film played in this regard.

"I Sing the Body Electric": Embodied Presence in the Community of Inquiry Framework

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, more K-12 teachers in the United States were teaching online than ever before, particularly in rural and economically distressed communities (US Department of Education, 2011), and since March 2020, nearly every teacher has become, at least for a little while, a virtual teacher. The purpose of this study was to better understand the embodied experiences of women “sojourner” teachers—that is, teachers who move among online, face-to-face, and hybrid teaching spaces (Howell, 2020). Working from a feminist poststructuralist perspective, I gathered qualitative data from four sojourner teachers in the Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic United States. These data revealed participants’ complex relationships with their bodies while teaching online and how their bodies fit into their perceptions of what it means to be a good virtual teacher. I argue that the current domains of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework (Garrison et al., 2000) are limited and would benefit from the explicit inclusion of embodiment to facilitate discussion about the interplay of physical and intellectual labor and, potentially, the real effects embodied identities have on teachers’ experiences in virtual classrooms.

Language teachers’ identity development post COVID-19: a transformative learning perspective

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted the educational sector, leading to profound changes in teachers’ roles and identities. While these disruptions have been challenging, they also offer a unique opportunity for teachers to redefine and evolve their traditional roles and practices. This study, grounded in the poststructuralist perspective of teacher identity, investigates the impact of COVID-19 on the professional identities of seven EFL teachers at a Saudi university post-school reopening. Mezirow’s Transformative Learning framework was utilized to trace the transformations of teachers’ identities, with the pandemic serving as the catalyst for reflection and change. Teachers’ experiences were captured using narrative inquiry and Life Story Interviews, and analyzed via reflexive thematic analysis with an emphasis on professional agency as a conceptual lens. The analysis revealed three key dynamics that characterized the transformation in professional identity during these times: delegitimization, reconstruction, and empowerment. These insights contribute to the teacher education literature by offering a nuanced understanding of identity transformation and by proposing strategies to support teacher identity development in challenging contexts.

Erasure, expert/ise, and educational “choice”: A poststructuralist perspective of Kansas educational bills in 2023

This paper utilizes a conceptual framework uniting neoliberalism, neoconservatism, and poststructuralism to examine four education bills from the Kansas state legislature proposed in 2023. Utilizing critical discourse analysis to frame policy documents as forms of text and discourse, this paper unpacks language-in-use, structures of power, and hegemony to investigate the overarching educational policy d/Discourses and how these position teachers, teaching, and public education. The proposed Kansas bills highlight hegemonic d/Discourses of teacher erasure, skepticism of expertise, and value-free language masking value-laden policy outcomes to illustrate policymakers’ attempts to politically redefine Kansas educational conditions to reflect neoliberal and neoconservative orientations. This paper highlights the critical task for teacher educators and educational researchers to engage with practitioner-inclusive methodologies and policy analysis opportunities to position critical discourse analysis as a fruitful methodological vehicle through which to reclaim educational narratives.

Visualising state biographical narratives: A rhetorical analysis of Chinese and North Korean propaganda photographs

Biographical narratives generate a continuous sense of political community across the state’s past, present and future, and provide the state with ontological security. Building on growing International Relations scholarship that highlights the power of visuals in shaping global politics, our article proposes visual rhetorical analysis as a tool to interrogate how governments employ images to tell their biographical narratives. The rhetorical approach transcends the methodological divide in the current ‘visual turn’ literature between the cognitive psychological and poststructuralist perspectives. We illustrate the analytical value of the rhetorical approach through an empirical study of how the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea communicate their biographical narratives – the ‘rightful great power’ narrative and the ‘family state’ narrative, respectively – through propaganda imagery of their leaders. To this end, we develop a close semiotic reading of selected photographs of Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un in different narrative settings.

“What Do I Feel? Who Am I?”: Exploring Secondary School EFL Student Teachers’ Emotion Labor in Identity Construction from a Post-Structuralist Perspective

 This study examined the emotion labor of student teachers in Chinese secondary schools and explored how they negotiated and constructed their teacher identities, with Zembylas’ model of three levels of teacher emotions (intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intergroup levels) as the analytical framework. The primary data was collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews with three student teachers who served as interns for fifteen weeks. To ensure data triangulation, emotional diaries, student focus group interviews, classroom observations and relevant documents were also gathered as supplementary data. Findings revealed the inextricably interwoven relationship between teacher emotion labor and identity. Firstly, student teachers’ confusion about their identity emerged partly due to their student-teacher equal educational philosophy. Secondly, the prerequisite for natural expressions of emotions is the mutual trust among both parties. Lastly, self-reflections evoked by emotion labor could facilitate student teachers’ identity formation and transformation. The implications derived are significant for stakeholders in the field of teacher education.

Sexual education, childhood and teacher education

This research resulted from a bibliographic investigation and document analysis we conducted to compose a final course work defended in the Pedagogy Course of the Maranhão State University entitled Children Sexual Education: a theoretical approach from Cultural Studies in Education. Researchers in the field of sexual education have pointed to the relevance of discussing this theme in early childhood education because they understand that it is possible to trigger forms of problematization, crossed by issues of gender, sexuality, pedophilia, eroticization, etc. We based our theorization on the post-structuralist perspective and Cultural Studies in Education. The materials went through the following analytical process: floating reading as a "pre-analysis", followed by the "material exploration", which consisted in the transformation of the initial data and the categorization and production of the registration units for the "treatment of the obtained results". The bibliographic research and the document analysis theorized in this essay, made us understand the complexity of the discussions about sex education in early childhood education. We understand that the educational approach to sexuality must be beyond the biologicist and hygienist bias. Cultural Studies in Education broadens this understanding from the social and cultural processes that are built over time, where children are inscribed in the way of doing childhood and education. This research can be used as an indicator for the improvement of public policies for the training of teachers in early childhood education.

Productive and repressive power: The influence of gender norms on parents' decisions on children's consumption

AbstractThis study examines how parents exert productive and repressive power in influencing their children's gender socialization through consumption. We interviewed 20 parents responsible for educating 36 children to investigate their challenges when confronted with their children's consumption demands that deviate from gender‐appropriate norms. Under a queer feminist poststructuralist perspective, our results reveal the conflicts between parents and their children and between mothers and fathers when making consumption decisions that affect gender socialization. Our findings contribute to the consumer socialization literature by recognizing how gender norms influence parents' decisions about their children's consumption. We also shed light on the deployment of productive and repressive power tactics by parents in shaping their children's gender identity toward an “ideal” norm.

Remote physical education during the coronavirus pandemic. A discourse analysis of how students are positioned on Padlet webpages

During the coronavirus pandemic, physical education (PE) in schools was forced into remote forms of teaching and learning, leading to a surge in the use of digital technologies and online resources. In a larger project, we identified webpages created by PE teachers on the site Padlet.com as an important hub for the remote delivering of German-speaking PE during the pandemic. In this paper, we follow a poststructuralist perspective to investigate how students are positioned as subjects of pandemic PE through the discursive practices articulated on these webpages. Our discourse analysis of a sample of 14 webpages with a combined number of 755 posts reveals one largely uncontested discursive construction that positions students as (i) doing something during lockdown, (ii) using suggestions individually and self-responsibly, (iii) exercising, performing, fit, and (iv) predominantly able bodied, sporty, stereotypically gendered, and white. We critically discuss the narrow possibilities of becoming intelligible as an appropriate subject of pandemic PE afforded by these positionings in the context of foregoing scholarship. Concluding, we argue that even – or especially – when PE has been returning to its traditional co-present form, exploring how PE is socially constructed, how students are positioned, and which forms of subjectivity are privileged/marginalized in emerging PE-related online cultures is a crucial task for sport pedagogical research and practice.

Face and Identity in Intercultural Conflict Management

Face negotiation theory has been an influential theory of intercultural conflict management. However, as a theory of functional approach, it has limitations in analyzing dynamic conflict management process. Using repeated episodic interviews, this paper attempts to combine this theory with Spencer-Oatey’s (2007) face and identity model as well as post-structural perspectives of identity to analyze the dynamic and complicated conflict management process in two Chinese overseas students’ cases. The findings reveal that face and identity are critical to spell out the dynamics and complexity of the intercultural conflict management process and examining the motives and reasons for the choice of a particular facework strategy.

A critical examination of epistemological congruence between intersectionality and feminist poststructuralism: Towardan integrated framework for health research.

The theoretical perspectives of intersectionality and poststructuralism have contributed meaningfully to advancing issues of social injustice within the realm of women's health research. However, the question of whether the two approaches are epistemologically commensurate has been at the heart of a polarized debate within third- and fourth-wave feminist literature in recent years. In this paper, we draw on the extant literature to explore existing dilemmas within this debate and critically reflect on points of epistemological tension and congruence between the two perspectives. It will be demonstrated that intersectionality and poststructuralism, especially feminist poststructuralism, represent concordant theoretical perspectives and a synthesized theoretical framework for application in qualitative research into women's health will be proposed. We argue that an intersectional feminist poststructuralist framework contributes to a deepened analysis of women's disparate healthcare experiences, and the social mechanisms, power relations, and discourses that mediate these experiences, while offering avenues for advocacy and political praxis on a multitude of levels.

Education in Africa: a critical historiographic review

ABSTRACT Examining developments in the history of education in Africa as a whole raises far-reaching philosophical, anthropological and historical questions about what Africa is and whether such a history is even possible as such. The course of that history and its tributaries wend around social theories; its dominant issues, tensions and gaps represent ideological interventions that highlight competing narratives in attempts to theorise social progress along a set of converging historiographic projects through which the conflicts between positivist, Marxist and poststructuralist (and other critical theory) perspectives – and the Eurocentricity of their objects – become visible. Anticipating broadened inquiries that centre Africans in historical narratives concerning education in Africa, this review (a) critiques historians’ obsession with and dissensions on colonial education, (b) clarifies epistemic ruptures in the well-worn quest for ‘truth’ in history evident in that obsession, and (c) proposes some prospects for decolonial futures in the history of education in Africa.

Aspiring multilinguals or contented bilinguals? University students negotiating their multilingual and professional identities

Abstract An increasingly multilingual working life expects university graduates to possess multilingual competences, but at the same time many European students study fewer languages than before. As they learn about field-specific linguistic practices and contemplate their future, university students negotiate their identities as language learners and future professionals. Supporting them in acquiring a multilingual identity would be beneficial as it is a strengthening factor in language learning. Since they study towards a profession, it is likely that students examine language learning from the viewpoint of a working life. From these premises, Finnish social science students were interviewed as a part of a course that supported their readiness to work in multilingual environments. The purpose was to investigate how they negotiated their multilingual and professional identities and how these negotiations intersect. The data was examined from a poststructural perspective, analysing identity negotiations by means of positioning theory. The results show that the students constructed their linguistic identities primarily in relation to English competences, often positioning themselves as “contentedly bilingual”. The data also revealed an “aspiring multilingual” identity negotiation which, however, echoed societal ideologies on language learning rather than describing the students’ internalised beliefs. Students’ certainty of their future profession was often connected to a confidence in speaking English and a critical stance towards the need for multilingual competences. Multilingual identity negotiation was hence connected to prevailing discourses and professional aspirations. The study provides new perspectives on university students’ multilingual and professional identities and suggests pedagogical solutions that can support their development in Higher Education language teaching.

Who is the “Student”? A Critical Analysis of Neoliberal Education Reform Legislation

Neo-liberal reforms in education have been sweeping the globe, undermining education as a public good, and diminishing its contributions to democratic life. Using post-structural perspectives, this article provides a critical discourse analysis of a proposed legislative bill in the province of Manitoba, Canada, as it relates to the construction of the “student.” Using Foucault’s conceptualizations of governmentality and historical ontology of the subject, we interrogate the government’s proposed Bill 64 in order to reveal how policy works to constitute particular subjects. Our analysis reveals that Bill 64 constructs the student—through its relations to knowledge, others, and the self—as objectified and homogenous, and as being valued for economic contributions, thereby marginalizing other ways of being. By revealing the oppressive effects of neo-liberal discourses on students’ subjectivities, this article aims to inform educators, education researchers, and policy makers in the pursuit of more equitable educational policies and systems.