Repertoire Of Practices Research Articles

EFL Adolescents' Use of English in the Era of New Digital Media: An Empirical Investigation

ABSTRACTThe study reported here sets out to investigate to what extent Generation Z EFL speakers employ English in their linguistic practices on digital media platforms and how these compare to the patterns of English use on other social occasions. To that end, 630 adolescents (aged 14 to 18) from five grammar schools were targeted in the Austrian province of Vorarlberg. Results of a 27‐item survey pinpoint young individuals’ habitual reliance on English for (i) socializing on Facebook, Twitter, and similar platforms; (ii) consuming content on YouTube and TikTok; and (iii) watching series on various streaming platforms. Simultaneously, English is also revealed as an important linguistic variant underpinning their daily communicative practices, notably interactions with peers. The multiple linear regression analysis pinpoints statistically significant associations between learners’ habits of digital media use and their in‐group conversational practices. This is interpreted as a sign indicating the emergence of ESL‐like qualities in a traditional EFL setting. It is argued that consuming and engaging with digital media products through English may be affecting the psycholinguistic modus operandus of a noticeable cohort of young EFL speakers, who become increasingly bilingual as a result of those practices. Consequently, it is this adjusted psycholinguistic state (from predominantly monolingual to increasingly bilingual) that motivates the addition of English to the sociolinguistic repertoire of conversational practices.

Making climate finance: toward everyday, historically informed, and reparative understandings

The centering of climate finance around a narrow set of institutions, sites, instruments, practices, and technologies is an achievement made possible by the domination of finance capital and policy elites. In this intervention, we shift the spotlight away from such elite projects and practices in favor of a wider understanding of urban climate finance—one that includes a more diverse set of sites, activities and participants. A wider and more inclusive conceptualization of urban climate finance requires accounting for the historical and ongoing role of finance in the production of climate vulnerability. Reconceptualized in this way, urban climate finance expands to include everyday financial life in cities around the world. Everyday climate finance is thus generated in places where the risks and uncertainties of climate change are currently unrecognized by policy elites as such, yet are being managed through improvised repertoires of financial practices. Additionally, (re)considering past financial practices as climate finance (e.g. historical residential redlining that produces climate vulnerability today), provides a rationale for demanding that past and present financial actors account for today’s climate injustices, and contribute to future reparative and abolitionist climate action.

“On Mars, we will speak Arabic”: Negotiating identity in upper secondary physics in Denmark

AbstractSeeking to make upper secondary school physics more relevant and engaging, an online collaborative learning curriculum was designed. Each of the curriculum's lessons was structured as a goal‐based scenario about human scientists on Mars. Video and audio data from the curriculum's implementation in Denmark was collected. This study utilized the theoretical lenses intersectionality, repertoires of practice, and epistemic agency. The use of comics as an analytical tool provided a novel and accessible way to depict the complex dynamics within the physics classroom. It allowed for a multimodal representation of the data and enabled a nuanced examination of the students' interactions. Findings suggest that interactions were shaped by the students' identities and these dynamics shaped their repertoires of practice. Moreover, the interactions had a profound impact on students' epistemic agency in physics. Collaborative learning with a goal‐based scenario can include and empower diverse gender, racial, and language identities. It can also, however, work to disempower and exclude when the hegemonically white and masculine culture of physics is left unproblematized. This leads to the conclusion that if reform‐based science education is untethered from a critical stance on socioscientific issues, students and teachers may reproduce social problems as much as they also may challenge them.

Doing the right thing

The study explores the legal consciousness of young people in the context of COVID-19 pandemic, concerning the management of personal relationships vis-à-vis the legal regulation enacted by the Italian government. We aim to account for the forms of legality that have granted to sustain, criticize, engage, and resist the law, and to understand the mechanisms that contributed to shaping specific experiences of legality. We refer to a theoretical framework based on legal consciousness, the Neo-Bourdieusian approach to moral judgment and Douglas’s theory of risks. Based on the analysis of 70 narratives, our findings show different ways of experiencing the law by young people. Different recurring narratives can be identified: individual translation, trust in procedure, fatalistic claims, and cooperative criticism. These narratives are not fixed attributes of individuals but recurring repertoires of perceptions and practices that emerge from specific interaction contexts where pre-reflective dispositions and conscious deliberation intersect.

Social values of an added literacy: the case of Latgalian

ABSTRACT Reading and writing in Latgalian constitute an added literacy within a multilingual repertoire of skills and practices where Standard Latvian dominates. In this situation, the social and symbolic values of literacy and orthography are more important than their practical value in everyday life. This paper discusses the historical development and the current importance of the Latgalian written language from such a perspective. We draw on a case study on language attitudes conducted in 2019 as well as our observations of literacy practices and the public discourse around them during the past 20 years. For the case study, 47 semi-structured interviews were conducted with active members of the speech community. All respondents had a decidedly positive attitude towards the Latgalian written language and its use in public domains. Debates concern spelling standards and correctness, indicating the importance of visuality especially for lesser-used languages. Script ideologies form part of the community’s overall set of beliefs and constitute an important factor of varied Latgalian identities and lifestyles. The focus on standards may however have a negative effect on attitudes and practices. We claim that social aspects of writing, centring around identity, interlinguality, iconicity, and authority, must be considered in planning Latgalian literacy education.

Linking perceived job insecurity and work passion: The mediating role of mindful self‐care in academic staff

AbstractSelf‐care is proactive action that involves a repertoire of practices aimed at developing, maintaining and improving physical health and mental well‐being. Although there is a growing number of studies on mindfulness in a variety of academic fields, there is a dearth of studies that look at academics' mindful self‐care in relation to job insecurity and work passion in the higher education institutions. This study aims to examine how job insecurity is related to academic staff's work passion in Ethiopia. It also looks at the role of mindful self‐care in lessening the impact of job insecurity. A cross‐sectional study was carried out, and snowball sampling was used to collect data from a total of 251 academics, ranging in age from 23 to 66 years, who voluntarily consented to participate in the self‐report survey. Job insecurity was inversely related to passion for work and mindful self‐care. Mindful self‐care was a mediator in the link between job insecurity and passion for work. The study encourages workplace mental health professionals to consider the role of mindful self‐care in their psychological intervention programs aimed at minimizing job insecurity and increasing passion for work.

Local Cure, Global Chant: Performing Theravadic Awakening in the Footsteps of the Ledi Sayadaw

Abstract This article takes as its starting point a repertoire of protective texts and practices articulated as ritual therapeutics in the early twentieth century by the well-known Burmese scholar-monk, the Ledi Sayadaw. Through an exploration of meditation-practice, meditation-teaching, and meditation-performance contexts in postcolonial Burma and India, I demonstrate the ways in which such texts and practices were adapted and refigured within the teaching models of two important twentieth-century Vipassanā meditation masters, Sayagyi U Ba Khin and S. N. Goenka. I argue that these protective texts and practices are constitutive aspects of the meditation modalities developed by these two teachers. I conclude with an exploration of the history of the Black American theologian and student of U Ba Khin, Leon E. Wright. In reflecting on Wright’s case, I consider the ways in which modern scholarly practices within Buddhist (modernism) studies continue to participate in the erasure of historically marginalized worlds and persons.

A human-centered perspective on individual risks for digital innovation management: an integrative conceptual review

PurposeFollowing the imperative for human-centric digital innovation brought by the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the article aims to integrate the dispersed and multi-disciplinary literature on individual risks for workers to define, explain and predict individual risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies.Design/methodology/approachThe paper follows the question, “What is the current knowledge and evidence base concerning risks related to Industry 4.0 technologies, and how can this inform digital innovation management in the manufacturing sector through the lens of the Industry 5.0 paradigm?” and uses the method of systematic literature review to identify and discuss potential risks for individuals associated with digital innovation. N = 51 contributions met the inclusion criteria.FindingsThe literature review indicates dominant trends and significant gaps in understanding risks from a human-centric perspective. The paper identifies individual risks, their interplay with different technologies and their antecedents at the social, organizational and individual levels. Despite this, the paper shows how the literature concentrates in studying risks on only a limited number of categories and/or concepts. Moreover, there is a lack of consensus in the theoretical and conceptual frameworks. The paper concludes by illustrating an initial understanding of digital innovation via a human-centered perspective on psychological risks.Practical implicationsFindings yield practical implications. In investing in the adoption, generation or recombination of new digital technologies in organizations, the paper recommends managers ensure to prevent risks at the individual level. Accordingly, the study’s findings can be used as a common starting point for extending the repertoire of managerial practices and interventions and realizing human-centric innovation.Originality/valueFollowing the paradigm of Industry 5.0, the paper offers a holistic view of risks that incorporates the central role of the worker as crucial to the success of digital innovation. This human-centric perspective serves to inform the managerial field about important factors in risk management that can result in more effective targeted interventions in risk mitigation approaches. Lastly, it can serve to reinterpret digital innovation management and propose future avenues of research on risk.

Vocational Teachers’ Craft Knowledge and Working-life Experiences in Building and Construction: a Narrative Study of Embodied and Tacit Learning

Vocational teachers in building and construction in upper secondary school deal with complex situations of an organisational, vocational, and social kind. Recent research has shown that the teacher is the single most important factor for students’ learning in school. Teacher-student relationships and the teacher’s repertoire of teaching practices can be more important for the student’s learning than class size, the classroom environment, and the student’s socio-economic background. Beyond passing the journeyman’s test, we know little about the craft knowledge and working life experiences vocational teachers in the building and construction trades have acquired over many years in the construction industry, and thus, what knowledge and experiences they bring into the vocational teacher role. Learning in working life often takes place as an integrated part of work, and it is difficult to observe how learning happens. Craft knowledge is often tacit and personal. In this narrative, phenomenologically inspired study, learning is investigated as a bodily, internal process that simultaneously depends on the interaction with the material and social environment. Through narrative interviews with eleven vocational teachers in plumbing and carpentry, this study explores the teachers’ backgrounds as vocational students and apprentices, and their extensive experience as craftsmen on different construction sites. The analysis shows that the building site drives craft-related actions and situations that generate a strong craft identity, professional working life experiences, and personal growth. Craftsmen at the construction site work under constant pressure in a social, physically, and mentally demanding work environment and consecutively solve problems. As professional craftsmen in the complex working environment, the teachers also acquired social and organisational expertise, which they intuitively transferred to their role as vocational teachers.

Choreographing a good death: Carers' experiences and practices of enacting assisted dying.

The proliferation of assisted dying legislative reforms globally is a significant change in the social and medico-legal landscape of end-of-life care. Understanding the impacts of these legislative reforms on family members who care for a dying person is vital, yet under-theorised in research. In this article, drawing on semi-structured interviews with 42 carers for a person who has sought assisted dying in Australia, and extending ideas of ontological choreography we explore the new and complex choreographies enacted by carers in their endeavour to arrange a 'good death' for the dying person. We find that desires to fulfil the dying person's wishes are often accompanied by normative pressures, affective tensions and complexities in bereavement. Enacting assisted dying requires carers to perform a repertoire of highly-staged practices. Yet, institutional obstacles and normative cultural scripts of dying can constrain carer assisted dying practices. Understanding the nuances of carers' experiences and how they navigate this new end-of-life landscape, we argue, provides critical insights about how assisted dying legislation is producing new cultural touchpoints for caring at the end of life. Moreover, we show how emerging cultural scripts of assisted dying are impacting in the lives of these carers.

Political polarization and intimate distance: Negotiating family conflicts during a high-risk protest movement

Political polarization not only threatens democracy, but also disrupts family lives, causing clashes between family members with discordant political orientations. This article examines how individuals negotiate family conflicts during political divides, by focusing on the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. Based on data drawn from interviews conducted with 37 self-identified protest participants, I develop the concept of intimate distance in order to capture the way in which the participants negotiated political disagreements with their immediate family. Individuals make peace with their families during a high-risk movement, not merely by restoring closeness, but also by adjusting the intimate distance with their family members in three interconnected aspects: everyday family life, cognitive and emotional aspects. Individuals employ a repertoire of practices, together with emotion work and boundary work, to alleviate confrontations, rebuild consensus, and contain political risks. This study contributes to a more nuanced conceptualization of intimacy and family conflict resolution, and unravels the impact of family interactions on the intensification or alleviation of ideological and affective polarization in relation to the interpersonal and societal level.

The growth of social work in palliative and end-of-life care in the United States: how did we get here?

A historical look back at the 'beginnings' of palliative social work in the United States provides a lens through which to view current areas of focus and future trends in hospice and palliative care with the objective of emphasizing the need for equitable practice approaches. The background and formative efforts to establish palliative social work in the United States as a specialty field of practice were scaffolded by the Project on Death in America, Open Society Institute's Social Work Leadership Development Award Program, and two Social Work Leadership Summits on End-of-Life and Palliative Care, which help to explain how we got here. In the development of the social work role in providing palliative and end-of-life care for individuals who are seriously ill and their families, several important functions unfolded naturally as part of our practice repertoire as professionals. Practitioners, researchers, advocates, policy developers, and more have advanced the field and strengthened palliative social work, especially as the profession addresses inequities and promotes quality of life. Social workers' administrative reports, academic literature, professional standards and educational programs, assessment tools, and evidence-informed practice interventions contribute to illuminating the roles that social workers have on interdisciplinary palliative care teams, while emphasizing the importance of leadership development. Social workers in palliative and end-of-life care are on a firm ground from which to move forward into the ever-evolving future of providing essential quality care at such a critical time in life.

From fragmentation to coherence: student experience of assessment for learning

Student experience of Assessment for Learning (AfL) pedagogies ideally provides multiple entry points for students to take past learning forward into future learning. In practice, points of disconnection may confound the accessibility of AfL’s repertoire of practices. This paper investigates the AfL experiences of students with likely language and attentional difficulties and their peers in three Australian secondary schools. Ninety-two students shared their insights in interviews and focus groups, with data analysed abductively through a conceptual frame of six dimensions. Common practical effects for students included recognition and value of a range of teacher practices. Students with language and attentional difficulties indicated more uneven recall of processes, especially when teacher practice of AfL was fragmented and classroom routines prioritised summative assessment. Fragmentation in turn compromised the emotional and evaluative dimensions of experience that catalyse continuity in learning. Critical insights from students about how they searched for and secured cohesive experiences points to how AfL offers agentic possibilities for learning beyond the immediate activities of the classroom.

Displays of Statehood

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of primary sources and interviews with members of representative offices, this article shows how five post-Soviet de facto states—Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (“DPR”), and Luhansk People’s Republic (“LPR”)—engage in activities of international representation by borrowing from diverse repertoires of diplomatic practices, generating hybrid practices of their own. On the one hand, they are attentive to looking like bona fide states and to displaying material and symbolic attributes of statehood through mimicking state-led diplomacy. On the other, they resort to creativity and innovation to partially compensate for the constraints intrinsic to their ambivalent status and complete their repertoire with practices similar to those of transnational advocacy networks, especially regarding information politics and public diplomacy. Overall, the article aims to contribute to the field of contested statehood, as well as to the study of the international engagement of non-state actors in situations of liminality in the international system.

Professional learning communities under test-based accountability: evidence from an Israeli intervention programme

ABSTRACT Test-based accountability (TBA) draws on a managerialist ideology that emphasises standards, constant measurement, and external motivation for improvement. It stands in sharp contrast to the idea of professional learning communities (PLCs) that aim to mobilise teachers’ internal motivation and willingness to cooperate with peers to facilitate a joint, self-reflective inquiry process of pedagogical improvement. The Israeli education system has adopted TBA policies. To determine how this affects a professional learning programme focused on reflective inquiry, we analysed staff discussions recorded in 180 PLC meetings in 17 schools. The study suggests that TBA not only narrows the curriculum and the repertoire of pedagogical practices used by teachers but also constrains the ability of teacher professional learning to counterbalance these negative consequences.

A Family Medicine response to the COVID-19 lockdown: University of Pretoria perspective

Background The COVID-19 pandemic caused great social, political and economic disruption, and imposed unprecedented changes in work, lifestyle, service delivery and social interactions in South Africa and worldwide. Healthcare providers, working in often already overstretched healthcare systems, found themselves at the forefront of global and national efforts to contain the havoc of morbidity and mortality wreaked by SARS-CoV2. This chapter describes efforts by the University of Pretoria’s Department of Family Medicine (UPDFM) to deliver on its mandate of teaching, learning, and research in the face of the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic during the March-September 2020 nationwide hard lockdown. Methods A perspective review was undertaken, drawing on reports, meeting minutes, email correspondences and electronic personal communications analysed to describe the activities undertaken by the UPDFM during the study period. Results Nationally, some of the adaptive responses triggered by the COVID-19 lockdown drew from the pre-existing UPDFM repertoire of community-oriented, learner- and patient-centred practices of service delivery. Key among these practices were data collection and management using validated tools; virtual communication and meetings; health promotion and disease prevention through training nurses, community health workers and patients on newly developed Covid-19 prevention strategies; clinical intervention, including screening and diagnosis, treatment and care coordination using telemedicine and full service delivery in homeless shelters; patient referral/mobility by staff using sponsored rental cars and using an application to call an ambulance, and treatment continuation through home delivery of medication. Conclusions COVID-19 restrictions presented the UPDFM with a unique opportunity to draw from its experience and create rapid, impactful interventions. Most lessons learnt by the UPDFM during the crisis proved invaluable for use beyond the acute phase of the pandemic, thereby transforming the health system for better pandemic preparedness.

Early literacy going digital: Interweaving formal and informal literacy learning through digital media

The proliferation and strong presence of new media in young children’s' lives have oriented early childhood research and practice towards the concept of digital literacy, now being an important part of ECE policy and practice worldwide. Children join formal education with a rich repertoire of multimedia, multimodal and digital practices, shaped outside schools, at their home and broader social milieu. Related literature acknowledges a strong relationship between digital media and children’s literacy development. However, little is known about the actual experiences when this relationship is forged. During the interplay with digital and non-digital media and resources, it is interesting to illustrate the connections in literacy gained through different contexts. The DIGILIT Kids project aimed at exploring the literacy practices of preschool children in digital environments. To this end, our research team conducted qualitative research, interviewing parents, preschool educators and children, while, in parallel, observing children's media use with different digital devices, during their school time and collecting their written and electronic works, before and during the research process. The research context was a public kindergarten classroom in Thessaloniki, Greece, with 20 children. Our findings are summarized in this paper through three children’s cases, presented as profiles, representing, to a satisfactory degree, recurrent themes from our whole dataset. The three profiles depict different levels of digital and traditional literacy manifested through children’s practices. Our discussion highlights aspects of the complex relationship of digital media and literacy, as well as the need to bridge the gap between formal and informal ways of literacy learning.

URM: Underrepresented or Underrecognized? A Case Study of Black Pediatric Critical Care Physicians.

This study explored Black physicians' experience via an antideficit lens to gain new ideas for advancing minoritized physicians in academic medicine more broadly. Increasingly, systemic racism in academic medicine is intentionally acknowledged and named. However, many solutions to tackle racism and the overall paucity of Black physicians use a deficit framing, painting Black physicians and trainees as lacking preparation, interest, or experience and qualifications. Such solutions aim to help Black people assimilate into the "White Space" of academic medicine, rather than focusing on Black people's strengths. This qualitative study included 15 Black physicians and trainees in pediatric critical care medicine (PCCM) from across the country who participated in semistructured interviews. Through an antideficit lens, the researchers examined the social, cultural, and structural contexts influencing the participants' individual experiences. They analyzed the data combining thematic and narrative qualitative analysis approaches, including restorying. The data help promote understanding of the landscape and context in which Black PCCM physicians become successful. Achievement took on different forms for the participants. Participants described enablers of achievement that supported them through their individual journeys spanning 3 general domains-intrinsic, interpersonal, and systemic. Three additional enablers were tied specifically to participants' Black identities-harnessing Blackness as a superpower, leaning in to lead, and successfully navigating the "unwritten rules." By using an antideficit framework, this study delineates and centers participants' ingenuity in cultivating repertoires of practice that enabled them to succeed, despite challenges rooted in systemic racism. Going forward, rather than focus solely on what is missing, academic medicine should try to shift systems and regularly recognize and value the knowledge, expertise, and merit Black that physicians bring. Perhaps an appropriate framing is not that Black physicians are underrepresented in medicine; maybe instead, it is that they are underrecognized.

Towards a repertoire of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) practices in the extractive industries

The objective of this article is to contribute to a repertoire of exemplary corporate social responsibility practices in the extractive industries. It seeks to enrich knowledge on how to carry on extractive operations while ensuring positive contributions to local communities and to society, and reducing harmful disturbances, notably to the environment. Results are based on a case study of 4 companies known for their corporate social responsibility: two mining companies and two forestry companies based in Quebec (Canada). The article offers two contributions. First, it lays the foundation for a repertoire of corporate social responsibility practices that companies might want to consider implementing. Secondly, it identifies two meta-practices: stakeholder engagement, and innovation. The results show in a concrete manner how companies engage with their stakeholders and how they innovate to implement CSR. In the cases studied, the companies all adopted a collaborative approach for developing projects and in implementing corporate social responsibility. Collaboration was also essential to innovation. Although most often associated with technology, the observed innovations were also organizational and institutional in nature.

Second language listening pedagogy

Abstract This study explored how teachers undertook listening instruction with learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) through investigating teachers’ authentic classroom practices. Eight experienced EFL teachers working in Iranian private language schools participated in the study. Each teacher was observed six to nine times and each complete teaching session of each of the participants was audio-recorded. Findings revealed that teachers had knowledge of an extensive repertoire of listening techniques, and their teaching was composed of strategies at pre-, during-, and post-listening stages. Teachers also mostly drew on metacognitive and comprehension-based practices. While teachers employed a number of metacognitive classroom practices, there was a lack of teaching and explicitly discussing these strategies. Findings provide some pedagogical implications for novice teachers with regard to expanding their repertoires of practice and employing various classroom activities. The findings might also help inform teacher educators and curriculum developers regarding classroom realities and the extent to which research findings can inform teaching methods and classroom practices.