Situated Perspective Research Articles

Hitting the mark? A user perspective on the relevance and irrelevance of school performance indicators

Many educational systems implemented standardized tests to monitor educational quality and provide schools with performance feedback. However, one of the key characteristics that influence if and how users use such feedback is its perceived relevance. Adding to the current state of the art, this study brings in a situational perspective in the perceived relevance of performance indicators. By means of 19 in-depth interviews, this study provides insights into which feedback indicators are perceived as relevant or irrelevant and why they are. The results show that feedback relevance is not only determined by performance feedback as such, but also by the user that makes sense of it and the context in which users operate. Therefore, feedback designers face the challenge of integrating these different perspectives to facilitate actual feedback use and school improvement.

Social Studies Teacher Education and the Legacy of PCK: Exploring Situated Theories of Preservice Teacher Development

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has framed teacher education for decades, despite the difficulty of demonstrating that teacher preparation effectively develops PCK. Social studies educators have been especially wary of PCK, but their critiques have primarily challenged what knowledge is valued rather than its model of how teachers learn. This comparative case study reexamines PCK’s cognitivist assumptions by analyzing three preservice social studies teachers’ teaching and reflections from a situated perspective on role identity development. Despite unusual amounts of pedagogical experience and content knowledge, each novice had trouble facilitating whole class discussions. Their struggles did not emerge at the intersection of pedagogy and content, but within their role identity negotiations. These results suggest that a situated framework for identity development is a useful alternative to PCK in social studies teacher preparation and recommend deeper engagement with identity development through teacher education practice.

(Re)Presenting Endarkened Narrative Inquiry Through Vulnerable, Empowered, and Spirit-Driven Narratives

This article extends the previous conversations around Endarkened Narrative Inquiry (ENI) and wisdom whisper. Endarkened narrative inquiry is a culturally situated qualitative framework rooted in Black women’s onto-epistemologies and narrative inquiry. Wisdom whisper is a qualitative data collection method that attends to the various nuances of language, attitudes, and upbringing that exist in discourse, particularly from an intergenerational context. In this article, I expand that knowledge base, informed by existing literature, to present the creation of Vulnerable, Empowered, and Spirit-Driven Narratives (VES Narratives) as an approach to qualitative data analysis and (re)presentation from a culturally situated perspective. Specifically, I offer VES Narratives to reconcile O’Neal’s and other scholars’ critiques of using Western Bildungsroman as a coming-of-age technique for people of color, especially women of color.

Los humedales del sureste de Tamaulipas: Un prioritario sistema lacunario ignorado y amenazado

A perspective of the current situation and the deterioration of the complex lacunary system of the Tampico, Madero and Altamira Conurbed Zone, is provided, as well as the causes and effects this has had on local flora and fauna, with emphasis on aquatic birds and mangrove. Degradation and fragmentation are among the main causes of population expansion and rapid population growth, which led to the division and invasion of local gaps, several of them even being considered as “habitat islands”. This can be particularly damaging to the four mangrove species distributed in the region, due to their marginalization in isolated water bodies. Another cause is the contamination, exploitation and filling of wetlands by companies in the area, which has led to several gaps in high levels of heavy metals. This is particularly harmful for aquatic birds, which depend on these sites to carry out their biological cycle, which is why they can be forced to move to other sites or their health can be affected. All of the above highlights the urgency of declaring more protected natural areas in the area, as well as increasing regulations imposed on companies and recruiting trained people to carry out management plans suitable to the current situation.

Exploring Students’ Motivational Beliefs Across a Semester of Introductory Statistics

Motivation theorists have recently emphasized the importance of examining students’ motivational beliefs from a situated perspective. In the present study, we explored four individual students’ motivational beliefs at baseline and across twelve weeks of a semester of introductory statistics in an effort to contribute to this line of research. We also examined how these students compared to average motivation levels within the entire course (N = 145), as well as how these individuals compared to each other. Results indicated that individual students rarely resembled the course averages, suggesting a need for researchers to consider what information could be missed by only considering between-person differences. Additionally, increases and decreases in motivational beliefs may be attributable to performance feedback for some students, but not all. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Facilitating collaborative inquiry into practice around artifacts of mathematics teaching

AbstractAlthough there has been increasing attention to the importance of teacher agency in professional development, there has been little attention to what it takes to facilitate collaborative work that both centers teachers’ assets and expertise and leads to productive learning. This paper presents a framework for focused and responsive facilitation of productive discourse around instructional practice in teacher learning communities. Drawing on a situative perspective, we trace the development of six novice teacher leaders as they were mentored to lead online collaborative lesson design groups focused on analyzing artifacts of K-8 mathematics instruction in a large urban district in the US. Our framework articulates how leaders facilitated the discussions in ways that both built on teacher knowledge, experiences, and contributions while also focusing on professional learning goals. Our analysis also shows how rich learning opportunities were co-constructed and sustained by the mentors, teacher leaders, and participants in each group over time. Through narrative descriptions of one group, we show how the teacher participants began to take on some of the facilitation practices themselves as they apprenticed into the practices of the community. This approach to professional learning positions teachers’ experience and knowledge as important assets while supporting them to try out and reflect on new classroom practices.

Research on Innovation Paths in Public Management from the Perspective of Community Participation

In modern public management, community participation has become a crucial approach to enhancing governance effectiveness. This paper aims to explore innovative paths in public management from the perspective of community participation, combining domestic and international situations and issues to propose innovative concepts and practical strategies. Through literature analysis and case studies, the paper discusses the definition and connotation of community participation, theoretical basis, current status analysis, existing problems and challenges, and finally proposes innovation paths such as multi-stakeholder collaborative governance, application of information technology, policy and institutional guarantees, and community education and capacity building.

From surviving to thriving: How preferences shift in helping resource allocation.

The helper's allocation of helping resources to multiple recipients often involves a trade-off between equality and efficiency. This research examines how the condition of potential recipients ("survival" or "development") influences the preferences for helping resources allocation in terms of equality and efficiency. Through seven studies, including a field study (Study 6), we discovered that helpers show a higher preference for equality over efficiency when recipients are in a survival situation (i.e., below the survival line) as opposed to in development situation (i.e., above the survival line). This phenomenon is attributed to the different priorities of deontological and utilitarian perspectives in survival and development situations (Studies 3 and 4). Our findings offer insights into the existing research on helping decisions and enhance the understanding of the trade-off between efficiency and equality among helpers. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Study on the Communication History of "Good Governance in Media" Mechanism from the Perspective of Crisis Situations and its Reconstruction

The process of globalization and the development of digital information technology highlight the research focus of public crisis management communication. As an important medium of communication, media is a key element in the process of public crisis resolution, and it does not exist in isolation in various single media vacuum, but is an important part of media environment ecology. Media shape society, and society in turn affects and reconstructs media and its entire system. From the perspective of crisis situation, whether it is the information dissemination trend of the risk itself or the media governance strategy, it greatly affects the breeding and trend of public opinion risk. Based on this, the history of media studies of the "good media governance" mechanism and the two dimensions of good media governance are more significant. The co-construction of mechanisms and the co-governance of technological risks reveal the power embedding and reconstruction in the media governance field, reflecting the difficult questions of media communication on the process of modernity and the theoretical prospect of the construction of a digital human value community after undergoing crisis and rebirth.

Investigating the Complexity in Elementary Teachers’ Noticing of Children’s Mathematical Thinking in Written Work

ABSTRACT This study investigated upper elementary teachers’ framings of their students’ mathematical thinking in written across the three component skills of noticing. Drawing on a situated perspective, the research examines the influences of teachers’ culturalhistorical backgrounds, attitudes, dispositions, interactions with students, and other situated elements of teaching on noticing mathematical thinking. Interviews used a think-aloud method to capture real-time framing as teachers observed children’s thinking on the same problem, using written work from their own and unfamiliar classrooms. Analysis of transcripts involved iterative coding to identify frames and determine their prevalence across noticing skills (attending, interpreting, deciding). Results show teachers used multiple frames beyond focusing on the mathematical thinking present in the work, such as past performance, affective traits, and curricular expectations. The prevalence of these frames appeared primarily in the interpretation and deciding how to respond. Findings highlight the situated nature of noticing, as interpretations were impacted by teachers’ sociohistorical interactions and perceptions. Implications point to explicitly addressing teacher framing in professional development, as deficit views of children’s capabilities can limit productive noticing. Considering teachers’ lenses and co-constructing frameworks can promote growth towards equitable noticing practices that privilege children’s mathematical reasoning. Implications for research and practice are explored and discussed.

La ontogenia de la cognición cooperativa y las normas de equidad en dilemas distributivos

This paper explores a naturalistic and culturally situated perspective on the ontogeny of cooperative cognition and fairness norms in distributive dilemmas involving the allocation of resources. According to this approach, the process of decision-making in distributive dilemmas is grounded on general considerations about others’ well-being and the respect for everyone's interests and rights in conflictive interactions. The sense of fairness is also conceived as the outcome of social interactions and is modulated by contextual factors. However, I claim that the human sense of fairness in distributive dilemmas is certainly bounded by concrete principles that govern its expression and guide the establishment of reasonable, generalizable, and prescriptive solutions in cooperative situations. This logic is broadly confirmed by multiple pieces of evidence coming from evolutionary-informed and cross-cultural studies within behavioral sciences. Finally, I suggest that cooperative cognition and fairness norms in distributive dilemmas must be explored as scientifically relevant issues that are independent of ideological assumptions on the matter that usually end up in problematic interpretations of the empirical data.

Can digital transformation reduce the cost of debt capital? Empirical analysis based on the perspective of financial situation

ABSTRACT This article empirically tests the effects of digital transformation on the cost of corporate debt capital by taking Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen as research samples. The results show that enterprise digital transformation can effectively reduce the cost of debt capital. Further, using the financial situation as the threshold variable and applying the panel data threshold effect model, it is found that only the digital transformation of enterprises with good financial situations can reduce the cost of debt capital. In contrast, the digital transformation of enterprises with poor financial situations will increase the cost of debt capital instead.

Situative Black Girlhood Reading Motivations: Why and How Black Girls Read and Comprehend Text

This study aims to illustrate the complex relationships between reading motivation and reading comprehension for Black girl readers. There is an urgent need for research that explicitly centers on the reading motivations of Black girls through a humanizing, asset-oriented lens. Through a Situative Black Girlhood Reading Motivations lens, which integrates a situative perspective on motivation and the tenets of Black Girlhood Studies, this multi-year study focuses on a group of Black girl readers participating in a summer reading program. Qualitative data, including video observations, student work artifacts, and small-group artifact-elicited interviews, were analyzed through a generic inductive approach to answer the research question, “How are relationships between Black girls’ reading motivations and their reading comprehension evident in their reading engagement and enactments?” The findings demonstrate that the participants’ most salient reading motivations in this instructional context (meaning-oriented, collaborative, and liberatory reading motivations) (1) were a precursor to their comprehension, (2) worked in tandem with their comprehension, and (3) stemmed from their comprehension. These findings contribute to models of reading by illustrating the need for additional complexity when describing the relationship between reading motivation and comprehension.

Examining the nexus between situational factors and job performance through the mediating role of work engagement and self‐efficacy

The situational perspectives theory of job performance is a fundamental aspect of organizational and managerial psychology. Consequently, there is growing interest in conducting additional research to assess situational factors and job performance through the theoretical frameworks of social learning and social exchange theories, which are seldom applied in these domains. The data has been collected from 365 employees working in Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). It was found that supervisor support stimulates job performance. It is also deduced that self‐efficacy mediates the relationship while work engagement does not mediate the relationship between supervisor support and job performance. The situational perspectives theory of job performance provides a supportive framework for the development of PTCL employees. This work should be of interest in the area of situational factors and performance improvement. This study is one of the very few studies conducted to empirically assess the influence of situational factor on performance through the mediating role of work engagement and self‐efficacy.

Civilising the Scaffold: a renewed carceral space in videoconferencing trials

In this article, I analyse the implication of the spread of videoconferencing for prisoners under pre-trial detention as a technology embedded in a process of civilising punishment by bureaucratising criminal procedure. This is specifically examined through a series of letters from Italian prisoners ‘engaged in struggles', held in maximum security from 2006 to 2020. From a situated perspective, the letters describe videoconferencing as a way of disembodying and recoding the space-time of the prisoners, reducing them to a simulacrum: a series of images, sounds and glances caught by cameras and microphones. This technology ensures, through a both material and virtual geographical solution, efficiency, and security but at the cost of increasing the distance between the judge, society and the accused.

Towards transdisciplinary design research as a delicate dance

ABSTRACT This study explores how design research encompassing multiple disciplines is accomplished. Such work is highly challenging. Even if information systems (IS) research generally shows an interest in reflecting on its research practice and celebrates work involving multiple disciplines as an ideal and a necessity, sufficient attention has not been paid to the challenges of such an approach or their resolution. This study introduces a situated perspective on design research entailing multiple disciplines. “Doing design research” is approached as a complex and skilful interactional accomplishment in situ with extensive and ongoing identity and agency articulation and negotiation. The study demonstrates that “doing design research” and “being a design researcher” with multiple disciplines involve a delicate dance. The study renews our discourse on design research and enables serious reconsideration and development of IS research methods education. The research also has implications for digitally augmenting research.

Navigating Police Contact: How Situations Shape Police–Youth Relations

Abstract Researchers have increasingly emphasized the dynamics of social situations when investigating, for example, encounters between youth at risk and police officers. Based on numerous field observations of police–youth interactions, this article explores how police–youth relations change during different situations. Using a situational perspective as an interpretive lens, I unpack how the dynamics of police–youth relations are dependent upon: (1) the concrete physical space of the interactions, (2) the audiences present and (3) the emotions that are activated. Typically, street-based interactions with other youth as audiences develop in a different manner to interactions at the police station. More sensitivity to the characteristics of such social situations, I conclude, may prove useful to develop more efficient preventive interventions and policing strategies.

Intersectional perspectives of parents of transgender children in Aotearoa (New Zealand)

Introduction This article explores the intersectional perspectives of parents of transgender children in Aotearoa (New Zealand). The substantial body of research on parent experiences in this area has largely focused on parents who are white North American middle-class cisgender women. We seek to extend this research by taking an intersectional approach and examining the perspectives of a group of participants of different genders, sexual orientations, and cultural backgrounds. Methods We asked 20 participants in Aotearoa who self-identified as gender-affirming parents to draw their experience of parenting a transgender child and discuss this with us in interview. Results The research resulted in rich visual and verbal depictions of gender-affirming parenting, drawing from the intersectional perspectives of Māori, Pākehā, Pacific, Asian, queer, straight, female, male and non-binary parents. Using visual and verbal discourse analysis, we explore how the participants constructed their experience from their uniquely situated perspectives, both specific and multilayered. Conclusion We argue that the parents’ perspectives reveal both challenges and strengths, reflecting the burdens of intersectional oppression, while also fostering the parents’ capacity for engaging in discursive resistance to advance their children’s interests.

«Lay it into the open wounds». Art at war in Maria Kulikovska’s performative sculpture

The paper addresses the work of Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska, who resorts to military equipment as artistic materials and to destruction as an artistic method. In the first section, I contextualize Kulikovska’s performative sculpture within art history, claiming that it can be regarded as Destruction Art. In the second section, I turn to Catherine Malabou’s concept of “destructive plasticity” as a philosophical tool of an aesthetics of war, which offers a sound theoretical framework to further understand the implications of Kulikovska’s artistic activity. In the third section, I focus on the main material adopted by Kulikovska, ballistic soap, showing how the artist materially deconstructs inherited dichotomies that keep informing our understanding of wars. By considering the artistic practice of a feminist artist (M. Kulikovska) through the lens of feminist scholarship (K. Stiles, C. Malabou, J. Butler), the paper investigates the relations between war and the arts from a situated perspective.

Attentional engagement and strategic responses to discontinuous environmental change: Evidence from the US banking industry

While prior research has established a link between the attention an organization allocates to the external environment and its adaptations to environmental change, the nature of the cognitive processes that underlie this link remains underexamined. In this study, we explore how patterns of attentional engagement—that is, the extent to which attention allocation is focused and/or consistent over time—influence the organization’s formulation of strategic responses to discontinuous change. We advance a situated perspective on attentional engagement by suggesting how the type of learning and cognitive processes are situated in different attentional-engagement structures, and can, in turn, lead to heterogeneous strategic responses to the same discontinuous change. Specifically, we formulate a theoretical model elaborating how varied levels of attentional focus and attentional consistency affect whether organizations respond by breaking, reinforcing, hedging, or maintaining the status quo. Subsequently, we develop and test our arguments using a dataset covering US banking firms from 2002 to 2010—a period that includes the US housing crisis.