Reflexive Theory Research Articles

Resonance and reflexivity as pathways to eudaimonia in the Anthropocene?

The Anthropocene challenges our ways of relating to the world and our ideas of how to lead a good and ethical life under the threat of climate catastrophe. In this article, two theoretical propositions around how we relate to the world are explored in search for synergies to help outline pathways to a good life: Hartmut Rosa's resonance theory and Margaret S. Archer's reflexivity theory. Both focus on our encounters with the world and suggest ways in which we may formulate private and political concerns and strategies to guide the search for a good life and a good society. Resonance and reflexivity both demand a fundamental openness to the world and suggest how to formulate life strategies that does not ignore the knowledge of climate change but foster and use capacities to engage in collective action towards social change. By integrating resonance and meta-reflexivity, we can form a theoretical basis for an integrated approach to promote such collective action on macro, meso and micro levels.

Deep Reading as Resistance: Reading with ChatGPT and Battling SysEd through Reflexive Reading Pedagogy

ABSTRACT This paper serves as a theoretical reflection with a practical proposal. There are two core goals for my discussion: (1) to reflect on deep reading for the purposes of education and why it matters in the current context of the study of English; and (2) to support a nuanced approach to promoting deep reading in English by introducing the argument that deep reading may be a form of resistance to two major challenges in English classrooms. These challenges are Semler’s articulation of ‘SysEd’ and the emergence of AI in the form of large language models (LLMs). My reflections on reading are mediated by a conversation with ChatGPT about its reading practice and how English may distinguish the teaching of deep reading as a human skill. Finally, I draw on Margaret Archer’s theory of reflexivity to present a practical approach to facilitating deep reading as a form of resistance.

The processing and interpretation of sich in German as a second language by Japanese and Korean learners

Abstract This study investigates the processing and interpretation of the reflexive pronoun sich by Japanese and Korean learners of German as a second language. This is explored through the emergentist reflexivity approach, which hypothesizes that these learners will utilize their first language pragmatic strategies to bind sich, instead of syntactic binding found in German. Employing psycholinguistic methodology, a self-paced reading experiment is undertaken, utilizing antecedent judgements and introspective measures. The results show that instead of using the pertinent German syntax to bind sich, the learners continue to fall under the influence of their first language pragmatics. These results are discussed against the larger picture of reflexive theory, showing how German as a second language can advance our understanding of reflexivity.

Ask, and You Shall Receive: A Closer Look on Unsolved Consciousness Issue

Although there are numerous views about the concept of consciousness, no consensus exists regarding the meaning. However, with the aid of the latest neuroscientific developments, the misleading obstacles related to consciousness have been removed. Over the last few decades, neuroscientific efforts in determining the function of the brain and merging these findings with philosophical theories, have brought a more comprehensive perception of the notion of consciousness. In addition to metaphysical/ontological views of consciousness e.g., higher-order theories, reflexive theories, and representationalist theories, there are some brain directed topics in this matter which include but not are limited to neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), brain loop connectivity, and lateralization. This narrative review sheds light on cultural and historical aspects of consciousness in old and middle ages and introduces some of the prominent philosophical discussions related to mind and body. Also, it illustrates the correlation of brain function with states of consciousness with a focus on the roles of function and connectivity.

Navigating tensions between institutional and cultural quandaries: reflexive journey of Chinese female doctoral students

ABSTRACT This study examines the challenges of female doctoral students in China at the intersection of neoliberal education and Confucian gender roles. Employing qualitative interviews with 12 students, it explores how they navigate academic pressures and societal expectations. Leveraging Margaret Archer's reflexivity theory, key findings show that these students employ various reflexivity strategies to manage the tensions between their academic goals and societal roles. Fractured-meta reflexivity reveals how students reassess their academic paths in response to rigorous demands, autonomous-communicative reflexivity balances self-motivation with external support, and meta-autonomous reflexivity involves transcending societal constraints. The study emphasizes the need for reforms in doctoral program structures to better support female doctoral students, including more flexible academic timelines and improved support systems. It also advocates for policy changes to address gender biases and promote equity in academia.

Making sense of sense-making in child protection: insights from a study exploring social workers’ practice of personal reflexivity in a statutory setting

ABSTRACT This paper presents findings of a study exploring social workers’ sense-making and practice of personal reflexivity. Situated within one local authority in England data was collected through observation and semi-structured interviews with 15 (n = 15) social workers. Informed by the Archer’s theory of reflexivity, a deductive-inductive data analysis identified differing ‘modes’ of personal reflexivity contributed to practitioners’ sense-making. Six (n = 6) participants were identified as communicative reflexives, two (n = 2) as autonomous reflexives, four (n = 4) as meta-reflexives and two (n = 2) as fractured reflexives. One (n = 1) participant was identified as communicative-meta-reflexive outside of Archer’s theory. In sense-making communicative reflexive practitioners acted within prescribed policy and practice frameworks and required others’ validation of judgement before deciding on action. Autonomous reflexives formulated judgement and decided on action independently. Meta-reflexives challenged prescriptive policy and practices and acknowledged dominant language and discourse influenced their sense-making activity. The communicative-meta-reflexive practitioner practiced autonomous sense-making while critically appraising of their judgement and decision-making. Impeded in sense-making practitioners interpreted as fractured reflexives experienced coerced autonomous sense-making while accommodating feelings of stress and anxiety. Findings indicate critical application of Archer’s ideas contributes to empirical understanding of how social workers make sense, formulate judgement and decide on action dependent on modes of reflexivity.

From the Reflex Machine to the Changeable Brain

AbstractThe brain is exceedingly complex. Neuroscientists have used the tried and tested simplification methods of physics, such as mathematical idealization, in order to deal with neural complexity. This paper queries the appropriateness of certain physics-derived strategies within this biological science by presenting a historical case study (the reflex theory) in which scientists fell into the trap of over-simplifying the brain and nervous system. It then considers whether more recent computational and dynamical systems approaches in neuroscience are also at risk of abstracting away from critical features of neural functionality related to the inherent changeability of those systems.

Understanding the reasons why career changers pursue or pass on a STEM teaching career: a Best–Worst Scaling (BWS) approach

AbstractIntractable shortages of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers have prompted international policy efforts to recruit career changers to the profession. This research determines the significant influences on career changers’ decisions to pursue or pass on STEM teaching careers. Surveys completed by 91 career changers from Queensland, Australia, were analysed with Best–Worst Scaling (BWS) methods and Margaret Archer’s theories of reflexivity to establish the relative importance of factors influencing career changers’ deliberations on a STEM teaching career. The social impact of teaching was the most influential factor for career changers considering STEM teaching. Career changers who pursued the profession were also influenced by past teaching experiences and feelings towards STEM subjects. Conversely, career changers who decided against STEM teaching indicated their personal traits and life circumstances might not suit a teaching career. These findings offer implications for research and policy aimed at recruiting career changers into STEM teaching careers.

Meaning of work as a personal emergent power[?]: developing theory based on a critical realist study of Sri Lankan workers

ABSTRACT Research on the `meaning of work', especially concerning the Global South, is scarce. This paper aims to reduce this scarcity by applying critical realist meta-theory to the work and life history interviews of workers in Sri Lanka. A key discovery is that finding meaning in life through work is a personal emergent power and that, as such, it explains the way that individuals consciously manoeuvre their life-journeys towards a desired end - a modus vivendi - in a dialectic which involves both emergent structural change (morphogenesis) and agency. This paper also reveals that Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, based on interviews with Western individuals, cannot be transferred rigidly to the reflexivity of Global South individuals, and therefore more work on reflexivity within this context is required. This paper therefore makes a theoretical contribution to the existing meaning of work scholarship, and it extends existing understandings of the concepts of reflexivity and emergence.

PISA and teachers’ reflexivities. A mixed methods case study

ABSTRACT Neoliberal educational reforms include extensive use of standardized tests. We examine the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) initiated and developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Examining previous research on teachers’ reactions to neoliberal reforms altering their work context, we have identified three theoretical frameworks in use: labour process theory, derived from structural Marxism; post-structuralism, relying primarily on Foucault’s conceptualizations; and ‘new professionalism’, which has emerged from the theory of professions. A major weakness in these frameworks is their inability to account for different reactions to the same structural and cultural conditions. Therefore, we suggest utilizing Archer’s theories of reflexivity and reflexive modes to understand these reactions. Presenting one Norwegian lower secondary school teacher’s reflexive engagement with PISA in the Norwegian school context as an example, our mixed methods case study indicates autonomous reflexivity as the prevailing mode. Meta-reflexivity rates second in prevalence.

NAVIGATING MODERN LIVING THROUGH ADVANCEMENTS IN MOBILE SERVICES AND BIOELECTRONIC MEDICINE

Technology is tightly interwoven with our surroundings, becoming a crucial aspect of our existence. The iPhone, emblematic of technological progress, continually evolves, introducing enhancements in mobile apps, GPS, and cashless payment systems like Ola Cab and Uber. These advancements address challenges like locating reliable taxis swiftly. Bioelectronic medicine, a recent breakthrough, relies on electrical pulses instead of traditional drugs. Implanting small electronic devices generates digital doses, treating conditions like epilepsy and Parkinsons disease. This approach, synonymous with electroceuticals and neuromodulation, leverages the inflammatory reflex theory to map neural circuits. Despite its potential, challenges exist, including maintaining glycemic control and prosthetic eye usage.

Reflexive empathy as social relation: the case for contextualised professional learning

ABSTRACT This article conceptualises studies in professional learning through the novel lens of ‘reflexive empathy’. Reflexive empathy draws on Margaret Archer’s theory of reflexivity, and positions it as an enabler of empathy to support researchers’ approaches to providing contextualised, supportive professional learning for teachers who are involved in research studies. To argue this, we reflect on the results of a funded project, informed by Archerian reflexivity, which focused on improving writing in Australian primary schools. This article argues for the need to resist neoliberal approaches to professional learning by providing agentic, contextualised programs that value teachers’ individual emotional, social, and cognitive responses to their participation in research informed co-designed professional learning.

Application and Influence of Conditioned Reflex Theory in Interactive Device

This paper discusses the application and influence of conditioned reflex theory in interactive devices from the perspective of cognitive psychology. The focus of this paper is to analyze the role of conditioning theory in interactive devices and its impact on user behavior and experience. Through reviewing previous research, this paper found that conditioning theory can explain users' reactions to associations between stimuli and responses and have an impact on their behavior. At the beginning of this review, the concrete application of the existing reflection theory to the interactive device is introduced. Then this review takes into account the current situation of the rise of the Internet and discusses the application of conditioning in social network design and the influence of current conditioning theory on user behavior and decision making. By utilizing reflective behavior, interactive devices can help users make more informed decisions by providing immediate feedback and directing their attention. This application can be achieved by designing the interface, providing visual data, setting reminders and alerts, etc. Specific impacts include increased user self-awareness, greater transparency in decision-making, reduced decision-making bias, and more conscious choice. To further expand understanding in this field, future research could employ more diverse approaches, focus on specific groups, delve deeper into behavioral motivation and goal setting, and strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration with other disciplines. This review can provide meaningful guidance for the design and improvement of interactive devices to provide better user experience and meet user needs.

Reflexivity and children’s exploration of moral aesthetics in creative writing

ABSTRACT In this paper, we show how children’s creativity manifests in literary aesthetics and how they explore moral subjects as a result. Literary aesthetics involve a range of artistic elements or expressions within a textual work. Writers may use aesthetic properties to express individual appreciation or how people view the world, often in relation to moral values. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the relation between aesthetics and moral value in children’s writing. First, we situate our discussion within the context of reflexivity theory, which framed the larger study from which these data are drawn. Second, we apply appraisal theory within the lens of reflexivity to analyse children’s writing samples for their aesthetic representations of moral qualities. As a result of our study, we show how teachers may improve and complicate the way children practice literary aesthetics in their writing. We argue it is important for students to learn about aesthetics in writing as aesthetics are a key quality of literary expression and may educate readers on the perception and moral values of others.

Reflexivity’s Ontological Turn: From Cybernetics to Autopoiesis in “The Circular Ruins” and The People of Paper

While postmodern metafiction (or reflexive fiction) is commonly positioned outside the scope of the Ontological Turn due to metafiction’s association with postmodernism’s insistence on “world as text,” this article argues that metafiction’s proximity to scientific theories of reflexivity engenders a shift toward what the article calls body as text, a shift that is synchronous with reflexivity’s evolution from cybernetics to biological autopoiesis. To trace metafiction’s aesthetic evolution from world as text to body as text, the article examines Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Circular Ruins” (1940) alongside early-order cybernetic theories of reflexivity before examining Salvador Plascencia’s The People of Paper (2005) alongside later theories of biological autopoiesis. While both narratives demonstrate an interest in the world-building powers of the text, the article argues that Plascencia’s novel demonstrates reflexivity’s autopoietic ability to examine the interstitial relationship between material embodiment and nonhuman agencies. By moving away from Borgesian self-regulation toward self-assembly, The People of Paper gradually sheds the epistemological preoccupations of its world-as-text aesthetic in favor a more ontological body-as-text aesthetic, thereby opening up the possibility of interpreting Plascencia’s novel as an aestheticization not of the construction of reality but of the construction of the body itself. In marking a distinction between world-as-text metafiction and body-as-text metafiction, the latter emerges as a uniquely useful heuristic in the Ontological Turn for modeling molecular embodiment and nonhuman agency.

The Systematic Unity of the Theoretical and Axiotic in Salomon Maimon’s Late Philosophy

By a close reading of Salomon Maimon’s 1794 Essay on a New Logic or Theory of Thinking, this article shows, first, how Maimon radically criticized his previous metaphysical systems while painstakingly reestablishing Kantian transcendental philosophy on a theory of reflexive cognition. Second, it shows how he employed this theory to ground innovative accounts of both formal and transcendental logic, including a reformulation of Kant’s schematism. Third, it shows how he employed it to ground his axiotic philosophy. Specifically, he argued that his reflexive theory of cognition constituted the necessary condition for the theories of Kantian morality, natural rights, works of art, and finally for a metaphysics according to which God creates the world ex nihilo. Maimon’s achievement is impressive and unique. It is a theory of the systematic unity of theoretical and axiotic philosophy that rivals other Enlightenment systems and, if anything, anticipates later works of Hans Wagner and Werner Flach.

Unconsciousness-Raising: Considerations for Liberation Psychology, Subjectivity, and Reflexivity Theory

ABSTRACT Consciousness-raising denotes the process of using people’s experiences of oppression to inform their collective political activity. The role of psychology in the history of consciousness-raising has been double-edged. On the one hand, mainstream psychology has recuperated consciousness-raising, depoliticizing it so that it reflects little more than a therapeutic mode of self-help that adjusts subjects to – rather than challenges – oppressive social systems. On the other hand, those working within the liberation psychology paradigm have sought to harness consciousness-raising for the kinds of politically progressive purposes for which it was initially intended. Through what I call unconsciousness-raising, I consider how those working within the psychoanalytic tradition of liberation psychology can stretch the political capacities of the consciousness-raising process by using this process to recognize how the unconscious structures emancipatory political organizing. Unconsciousness-raising has the potential to shift the activist subject’s relationship to unconscious identifications in accordance with a democratically conceived political agenda, and to harness the emancipatory potential of desire to advance this agenda. I examine what the unconsciousness-raising process can mean for the collective constitution of political subjectivity, and how this process can trouble static conceptions of reflexivity theory. Following this, I offer an example of unconsciousness-raising from the community-engaged work with which I am involved. I conclude by reflecting on some future directions for unconsciousness-raising as a community-engaged and a thoroughly political psychological process.

Teaching creative writing in primary schools: a systematic review of the literature through the lens of reflexivity

Teaching writing is complex and research related to approaches that support students’ understanding and outcomes in written assessment is prolific. Written aspects including text structure, purpose, and language conventions appear to be explicit elements teachers know how to teach. However, more qualitative and nuanced elements of writing such as authorial voice and creativity have received less attention. We conducted a systematic literature review on creativity and creative aspects of writing in primary classrooms by exploring research between 2011 and 2020. The review yielded 172 articles with 25 satisfying established criteria. Using Archer’s critical realist theory of reflexivity we report on personal, structural, and cultural emergent properties that surround the practice of creative writing. Implications and recommendations for improved practice are shared for school leaders, teachers, preservice teachers, students, and policy makers.

The “Perpetually” Efficient Stock Market Nonsense: The Gaslighting Effects

Abstract One of the conventional and commonly accepted assumption in the financial world is the Efficient Market Hypothesis (Fama, 1970). However, the intellectual dominance of the efficient-market revolution has more been challenged by economists who stress psychological and behavioral elements of stock-price determination and by econometricians who argue that stock returns are, to a considerable extent, predictable (Malkiel, 2003). “Boom-bust” patterns are the empirical evidence of the efficient market nonsense. We suggest a theoretical linkage between the EMH and the Reflexivity Theory focusing mainly on the psychological profile. We suppose that, during stages of market exuberance/panic, the market pricing produces “gaslighting effects” and that mean-reverting behavior (i.e., contrarianism) is the result of participants’ awareness of psychological deviation from reality. We suspect that investors “benchmarking” plays a primary role on this latter aspect. Outside bubbles episodes, the market pricing is generally efficient and reflects the fundamental value evolution, without producing gaslighting effects. JEL classification numbers: G10, G11, G14. Keywords: Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), Reflexivity Theory, Gaslighting Effects.

In quest for a dialogic space: A microethnographic approach to classroom interaction about writing

This article offers insight into dialogic spaces in a professional development program, aiming to improve writing at Australian elementary schools. We apply an ethnomethodological case study through the lens of reflexivity theory to explore dialogic interaction in a year 3 writing lesson. We demonstrate how various contextual conditions are negotiated by teacher and students during the teaching of writing and how contextual conditions during a professional development program create opportunities for dialogic classroom interaction. Findings reveal that classroom interaction is guided by a series of structural conditions (including the writing task description, set expectations, and the constraint of time), cultural conditions (norms of classroom management, and the teacher's collaboration with the research team), and personal conditions (teaching strategies, student interest and ideas, and student writing skills). Furthermore, it shows how the participant teacher orchestrates various competing conditions through dialogic and monologic turns. Implications of the findings are discussed to improve teacher professional learning and students' learning experiences of writing.