Social Construction Of Knowledge Research Articles

Making Sense of Collaborative Practices: Practice as a Social and Scientific Phenomenon

Workshop Description (objectives, methods, results, conclusions): The concept of “practice” has received little attention in healthcare literature. This is an important oversight as practitioners tend to equate the dominant scientific discourse with practice. This covers over the social nature of individual and team-based practices. Social theorists argue that human nature is ‘helplessly’ social and interdependent. This failure to recognize the social construction of knowledge and knowing influences our ability to engage in collaborative practice and provide whole person care. We cannot see where “hidden practices” (the practice equivalent to 'hidden curriculum') influence what we can see and what remains hidden, what we can say and what we must keep silent about, or which actions are encouraged and which are constrained. We will explore the paradox of the co-existence of rational science and social constructionist views of knowledge and knowing and propose that practices are complex, responsive, processes of relating that are informed by, and in turn, challenge and further inform science. Using a mix of presentation, personal reflection, and case studies in small groups, this 90 minute workshop we will explore the social nature of practice, the theory/practice (science/experience) paradox, and consider how this “two-eyed” understanding could facilitate the provision of whole person care.Specific Objectives: Participants will be able to:1. Define collaborative practice2. Elaborate and understand their own experience of collaborative practice3. Differentiate between social and scientific paradigms and explain the differences and implications4. Explain the concept and implications of the practices of particular communities and of first- and second-order breakdowns5. Understand the nature of collaboration and distinguish it from included and related concepts of communication, coordination, cooperation, and co-location6. Articulate personal definitions of and strategies for and identify personal commitments to collaborative practice related to whole person care.

Do student perceptions of teaching predict the development of representational competence and biological knowledge?

Dealing with representations is a crucial skill for students and such representational competence is essential for learning science. This study analysed the relationship between representational competence and content knowledge, student perceptions of teaching practices concerning the use of different representations, and their impact on students' outcome over a teaching unit. Participants were 931 students in 51 secondary school classes. Representational competence and content knowledge were interactively related. Representational aspects were only moderately included in teaching and students did not develop rich representational competence although content knowledge increased significantly. Multilevel regression showed that student perceptions of interpreting and constructing visual-graphical representations and active social construction of knowledge predicted students' outcome at class level, whereas the individually perceived amount of terms and use of symbolic representations influenced the students' achievement at individual level. Methodological and practical implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of representational competence in classrooms.

Medina on the Social Construction of Agency and Knowledge

Medina on the Social Construction of Agency and Knowledge

The role of interaction in online learning environments: students’ experiences and perspectives

This paper is situated in the research area of distance learning in virtual environments. This article analyses the views of Brazilian students on the interaction in an online course taught and tutored by pre-service teachers of Letras – Ingles from UEL in 2013. The data point to three perspectives: (i) interaction as a clarification tool for the content from the lessons and/or the required tasks in the course, (ii) interaction as a valuable tool for the social construction of knowledge, and (iii) interaction as a compulsory task. The analysis may contribute to further research in the online course research field. DOI: 10.28998/2317-9945.2014v1n53p235-262

Technology-mediated learning in physiotherapy education: The social construction of practice knowledge

Clinical practice is complex, requiring practitioners to interpret adiverse range of inter-related variables in order to make clinical decisions as part ofpatient management. This process is often intuitive and therefore hidden from studentsand less experienced clinicians, making the cognitive processes that inform clinicaldecision-making difficult to learn. In addition, educators still emphasise the learningof knowledge and skills through didactic teaching methods, such as lectures, in whichstudents are passive “recipients” of knowledge. Unless physiotherapy educators designactivities that aim to induct students into the professional culture and help them todevelop ways of thinking and being that go beyond knowledge and skills, our studentswill continue to struggle with clinical reasoning.In this position paper, we argue that the careful integration of technology as an adjunct to traditional lectures can be usedto facilitate discussion and interaction as a way of developing practice knowledge in students. This leads to higher cognitivefunctioning as it provides the means by which learners construct their own personally meaningful understanding of the worldthrough interaction with others. The promise of technology in physiotherapy education lies in its ability to create transformativelearning experiences through enhanced communication that is mediated by more experienced teachers or peers. If technology isused to enhance the learning environment by providing richer and more meaningful platforms for communication and discussion,it may have a role to play in the social construction of knowledge as part of contextualised learning spaces.

What Drives Students' Knowledge-Withholding Intention in Management Education?

Students' knowledge-withholding behavior is an obstacle to social knowledge construction in the context of management education. Although prior studies have explored the factors that influence knowledge-sharing intention, few studies have investigated the factors that affect the intention to withhold knowledge. This study aims to investigate the factors that affect students' knowledge-withholding intention in the context of undergraduate management education by integrating the concepts of the Big Five personality traits, social identity theory, and social exchange theory. Data collected from 365 undergraduate management students in Taiwanese universities were tested against the research model using the structural equation modeling approach. The results indicate that perceived social identity, expected rewards, and expected associations directly affect knowledge-withholding intention, and that extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience indirectly influence knowledge-withholdin...

Autorytet w nauce a proces wytwarzania wiedzy

The present text is an attempt to answer the question: what is the function of authority in the process of social construction of knowledge, including science knowledge. The theoretical frame of the discussion includes concepts of Mary Douglas who emphasize the importance of social conditions for the process of knowledge construction (relations between social bonds and kind of knowledge). This paper contains the hypothesis that multiplicity of paradigms associated with weakness of authority can be regarded as pro-development factor in the social science.

Crenças envolvendo o não aprender: um estudo evolutivo sobre a construção do conhecimento social

A construção do conhecimento social, sob o enfoque piagetiano, vem sendo alvo de pesquisas recentes no contexto brasileiro. Nessa perspectiva, o presente artigo traz dados parciais de um estudo evolutivo a respeito das ideias de crianças e adolescentes sobre a não aprendizagem. Apresentamos aqui os dados obtidos a partir do segundo instrumento metodológico utilizado na pesquisa: a análise de uma história envolvendo uma situação de não aprendizagem, aplicada em 80 escolares entre 6 e 16 anos. Os principais resultados indicam que a maioria dos sujeitos tende a responsabilizar somente os alunos pela não aprendizagem, justificando-a por meio de fatores como desinteresse, indisciplina, entre outros. As crenças dos sujeitos são analisadas também conforme os níveis de compreensão da realidade social e se apresentam, para a maioria deles, no nível mais elementar.

Grupos Focais como Recurso de Construção do Lúdico na Educação Ambiental: Relato de uma Experiência Abordando a Percepção De Riscos

O enfrentamento dos problemas socioambientais do mundo hodierno passa, necessariamente, por processos educativos, dentre os quais a educação ambiental. Dentre muitas ferramentas, os jogos se destacam por seu caráter lúdico que permite a abordagem e assimilação de conteúdos, mesmo os mais complexos, pelo seu caráter divertido. Entretanto, para a superação de modelos de construção de práticas educativas que agem de forma etnocêntrica, invasiva, "de cima para baixo", é preciso que se considere uma concepção educativa abrangente, que permita a construção do conhecimento "com o sujeito" e não "para o sujeito". Um dos caminhos para superação desse modelo está, portanto, atrelado a processos participativos que envolvam o usuário final do instrumental em sua dinâmica de construção, isto é, uma metodologia capaz de acolher o sujeito no processo de conhecimento. Dessa forma, este artigo apresenta os grupos focais como recurso de construção do lúdico na educação ambiental, investindo, nesse sentido, no relato de uma experiência de pesquisa em que o tema principal foi a percepção de riscos, sejam eles ambientais, tecnológicos ou sociais. Com o propósito de superar uma concepção de educação ambiental meramente instrumentalizadora, de caráter heteronômico e mecanicista, apresentamos uma contribuição para o debate sobre a utilização de metodologias participativas na pesquisa social, discutindo os grupos focais no processo de elaboração de um instrumento lúdico de construção coletiva e polissêmica, que resultou na construção de um jogo com dupla natureza de construção social do conhecimento, sendo a primeira o processo mesmo de elaboração do jogo, e a segunda, o caráter catalisador de debates capaz de permitir a construção social do conhecimento no encontro de múltiplas subjetividades na aplicação prática da dinâmica.

Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach to authentic learning

AbstractWhile technology has the potential to create opportunities for transformative learning in higher education, it is often used to merely reinforce didactic teaching that aims to control access to expert knowledge. Instead, educators should consider using technology to enhance communication and provide richer, more meaningful platforms for the social construction of knowledge. By using technology to engage in shared learning experiences that extend beyond the walls of the classroom, we can create opportunities to develop the patterns of thinking that students need to participate in complex, real world situations. We used authentic learning as a framework to guide the implementation of a case‐based, blended module in a South African physiotherapy department. Google Drive was used as a collaborative online authoring environment in which small groups of students used clinical cases to create their own content, guided by a team of facilitators. This paper describes an innovative approach to clinical education using authentic learning as a guiding framework, and Google Drive as an implementation platform. We believe that this approach led to the transformation of student learning practices, altered power relationships in the classroom and facilitated the development of critical attitudes towards knowledge and authority.

Uncertainty in the study of belief: the risks and benefits of methodological agnosticism

The study of religious and spiritual beliefs raises complex epistemological and methodological questions for interpretive social scientists concerning our ability to understand the everyday lifeworlds that belief-based communities inhabit. The primary focus of recent debates has been on the long-standing methodological insider/outsider dynamic, defined in terms of religious belief or affiliation, which intersects with other social categories such as gender or ethnicity. We contribute to this debate by considering a relatively neglected position, methodological agnosticism, which informs our study of religion and spirituality in the workplace. We argue that an agnostic position can be methodologically productive as a research strategy, but this must be counterbalanced by awareness of the fieldworker risks, which include emotional distress and identity threats. Agnosticism also encourages greater epistemological reflexivity as it implies ‘not knowing’ in relation to both metaphysics and social scientific knowledge construction. Through this, we highlight the productive nature of uncertainty in the study of belief as an epistemologically and methodologically constructive standpoint.

Changing academic teaching with Web 2.0 technologies

Academic teaching can change with the use of Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs and wikis, as these enable a different pedagogical approach through collaborative learning and the social construction of knowledge. Student expectations of their university learning experience have changed as they expect e-learning to be part of the learning experience. The Innovative eLearning with eResources (eRes) project aimed to provide a sustainable, scalable approach to changing academic practice. The approach built on academic’s experience of using quality e-resources in research and for their reading lists in teaching. The eRes project was successful as student learning was enhanced through collaborative learning using quality e-resources with Web 2.0 technologies. However, two keys issues were identified. The first issue is the lack of scalability of the approach due to the high level of support required from a team of pedagogical and technical specialists brokered through an individual. The second issue is academic professional development. Academics recognised their professional development requirements in relation to technology but they did not identify the need to change their pedagogical approach for collaborative learning with Web 2.0.

A Tool for Discourse Analysis and Visualization

In this paper the authors present a system that combines the cognitive and socio-cultural paradigms in the field of discourse analysis in order to analyze both texts written by only one author (for example narrations) and those written collaboratively (chat conversations, blogs, wikis, forums). The novelty of their approach is that the majority of the existing applications are oriented on analyzing only one of these two types, an adaptation being necessary for the analysis of the other type. Another advantage of the presented system is that since it is centered on a dialogistic polyphonic model considering topics as inter-animated voices, it could show the difference between coarse- and fine-grained coherence in discourse, therefore allowing the analysis of a text from two different viewpoints: a) its intrinsic structure and cohesion and b) how well this text fits in a stream of texts (whether it is or not cohesive with the texts before and after it). The dialogistic polyphonic model was used as a starting point for a method for analyzing collaboration and social construction of knowledge in groups and communities using textual interactions, and for several implemented systems for providing computerized support to the analysis method through visualizations and feedback generation.

European Union's Crisis and Qualitative Methods

The crisis now occurring in European Union has substantial implications for the continued prosperity and stability of Europe. Busch, Hermann, Hinrichs, and Schulten present three possible scenarios explaining how the EU crisis could resolve. First, EU could muddle through managing issues somehow on a day to day basis. Second, the Eurozone could collapse. Third, constitutional reform of the EU could occur allowing positive economic initiatives to resolve the recession conditions in the present crisis. The methodology used is a narrative technique involving the creation of slide shows about a television personality, Thore Scholermann. German television has recently featured Scholermann has host of a talent program, The Voice of Germany. A lifestyle news program, TAFF, has had Scholermann as a co-host. He has appeared on Ich Liebe Deutschland, a quiz program. He has competed on TV Total Diving, where personalities compete in sports. Perhaps Scholermann is most famous for his Christian Mann role in the soap opera Verbotene Leibe. Appearing on German television in these five type of programs has made Scholermann significant in educating Germans about the present EU crisis. Narrative slide show involves the researcher with a constructionism about present day Europe. The researcher is then able to upload the slide show in video format to YouTube and observe how the slide show interacts with society. Various qualitative methods techniques are involved including narrative, social action research, the narrative authority of a subaltern, the social construction of knowledge, and the deconstruction of knowledge. The results produced by qualitative analysis emphasizing data that indicates these slide show narratives have substantial global interest. The likely scenario presented explains the EU has problems resolving conflicts between regionalism and globalism. While the difficulties EU confronts are many, A politics of entschuldigen sie is suggested from the name Scholermann. The countries with the prosperous economies rise to an apology and continue helping weaker member states in EU. Gains from globalism become popularly realized to be greater when regional cooperation continues Analyzing Scholermann's television role leads to the conclusion that learning experience can allow EU to continue muddling through as regional and global gains occur.

Learning to Argue and Arguing to Learn: Argument‐Driven Inquiry as a Way to Help Undergraduate Chemistry Students Learn How to Construct Arguments and Engage in Argumentation During a Laboratory Course

AbstractThis study examines whether students enrolled in a general chemistry I laboratory course developed the ability to participate in scientific argumentation over the course of a semester. The laboratory activities that the students participated in during the course were designed using the Argument‐Driven Inquiry (ADI) an instructional model. This model gives a more central place to argumentation and the role of argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge. The development of the students' ability to construct a scientific argument and to participate in scientific argumentation was tracked over time using three different data sources. These data sources included a performance task, which was administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the course, video recording of the students participating in episodes of argumentation, and the lab reports the students wrote as part of each lab activity. As time was the independent variable in this study, a repeated measure ANOVA was used to evaluate changes in the ways students performed on each task over the course of the semester. The results of the analysis indicate that there was significant growth in the quality of the students' written arguments and nature of their oral argumentation. There also was a significant correlation between written and oral arguments. These results suggest that the use of an integrated instructional model that places emphasis on argument and argumentation can have a positive impact on the quality of the arguments students include in their investigation reports, the argumentation they engage in during lab activities, and their overall performance on tasks that require them to develop and support a valid conclusion with genuine evidence. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 561–596, 2013

The social and cultural construction of psychiatric knowledge: an analysis of NICE guidelines on depression and ADHD

The current paper presents an analysis of the NICE guidelines on depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) from the perspective of the philosophy of science, guided particularly by Foucault's notion of the symbiosis of knowledge and power. It examines how data that challenged the orthodox position on the validity and drug treatment of these conditions was managed in the process of guideline development. The depression guideline briefly considered the complexity and heterogeneity of depression, and numerous methodological problems with evaluating treatments, including antidepressants. However, the guideline recommendations made no reference to these issues and ignored evidence that questioned the analysis of antidepressant trials. The guideline on ADHD reviewed validity, but did not consider evidence from the critical literature, and overlooked inconsistencies in the data. The guideline identified that drug trials have shown no long-term benefit in ADHD, but still recommended treatment with stimulant drugs for children with severe symptoms and for all adults claiming consensus for this position. Both guidelines demonstrate how contradictory data are managed so as not to jeopardise the currently predominant view that ADHD and depression are valid and un-contentious medical conditions that should be treated with drugs. The subjective nature of guideline formation that is revealed illustrates Foucault's suggestion that the authority of medicine operates to promote a technological view of the nature of certain human problems, which in turn strengthens medical hegemony over these areas.

Transforming Literacy Research for the Indigenous San of Botswana: Adopting appropriate research methods

This paper seeks to advance reasons why appropriate research methods are important in conducting literacy research among the San peoples of Botswana, Southern Africa's first indigenous peoples. According to the Literacy Research Association, literacy research is “dedicated to promoting research that enriches the knowledge, understanding, and development of lifespan literacies in a multicultural and multilingual world.” In addition, the research should be “rigorous, methodologically diverse, and socially responsible” (Literacy Research Association, n.d.). The researchers developed an argument for the inclusion of the Southern African Philosophy of Botho (known as Ubuntu in South Africa) as a theoretical framework in San research. According to Chilisa and Preece (2005), Ubuntu/Botho preaches respect for human life, mutual help, generosity, cooperation, respect for elders and social harmony. In addition, Botho can be employed with other frameworks such as Social Construction of Knowledge and Afrocentricity. Currently, the San peoples feel that they do not have a say in their children's education and policies that affect their day-to-day lives. The adoption of relevant and appropriate research methodologies in the San people's research will result in San empowerment not only in literacy development, but in all spheres of life. An important recommendation of this study is that San peoples should be gatekeepers not only in their communities, but also in academia.

The role of manipulatives in enhancing pupils’ understanding on fraction concepts

Zoltan Dienes and Josef Perner's work (24) convinced many researchers that the use of various representations of a concept, or 'multiple embodiments,' were needed to support pupils' understanding. Piaget (4) suggested that young children do not have the mental maturity to grasp abstract mathematical concepts presented in words or symbols alone and they need many experiences with concrete materials and drawings for learning to occur. Bruner (1,2) suggested that children demonstrate their understandings in three stages of representation: enactive (the role of physical objects), iconic and symbolic. Skemp's theories (22) supported the belief that pupils' early experiences and interactions with physical objects formed the basis for later learning at the abstract level. Based on theories of cognition and the social construction of knowledge (23), more recent research by Cobb (3) discusses cultural tools like hundreds boards, showing the complicated relationship between manipulatives and sociocultural perspectives. Current research in mathematics education views pupils as active participants who construct knowledge by reorganizing their current ways of knowing and extracting coherence and meaning from their experiences (8), (9), (17), (19). The impact of theories and research connecting pupils' actions on physical objects with mathematical learning has had an important influence on the emergence and use of manipulative in primary school classrooms. This paper reports on a study which examined how much manipulatives have been used in the teaching of fractions for Year 5 pupils in Brunei Darussalam. The purpose was to determine whether using manipulatives to teach fractions could promote active learning and enhance the achievement among those pupils. This small scale study used both qualitative and quantitative data obtained from the pre and post tests, interviews and classroom observation to determine the effectiveness of using manipulatives as implemented in the teacher- designed intervention lessons. The paper concludes with some recomendations on how different types of manipulatives can be used in their effective ways to promote pupils' understanding of fraction concepts.

Historicizing in critical policy analysis: the production of cultural histories and microhistories

The practice of critical policy analysis often emphasizes the importance of historicizing the present. However, there is very little guidance for critical policy analysts on the methodical production of histories. In this paper, I meet this need by arguing for the use of methodologies embedded in the production of both cultural histories and microhistories. I show how the historical narratives that are produced by critical policy analysts must be able to reveal patterns of long-term social interactions and domination, while simultaneously showing how people on a smaller temporal scale still disrupt and bend these social structures to their needs. Most importantly, I argue that using such methodologies allows critical policy analysts to practice a form of historicizing that explicitly adheres to an epistemological stance that emphasizes the social construction of knowledge through power relationships.

Archives of identity

Questions of nature and culture, identity and biology, and certainly the nature of establishing ‘fact’ cut through multiple disciplines in ways that few other themes could. The duality of science and society could not be more clearly articulated than in The Genealogical Science: The Search for Jewish Origins and the Politics of Epistemology. Indeed, Nadia Abu El-Haj brilliantly describes the intellectual interplay between anthropology, epistemology, popular memes of society and political order, political commitments, ideologies, and how these factors influence cultural imaginations specifically through genetic anthropology. Situating her work at the intersection of history of science, philosophy of science, sociology, and anthropology, Abu El-Haj offers specific, precise, and well-grounded arguments about how the meanings of biological difference have changed over time—and, specifically, about the explanatory role that history and the historical sciences can offer to these multi-striated themes as she works to unpack the complexity of: (1) Jewish origins and the subsequent questions: (2) ‘‘Who are the Jews?’’ and (3) ‘‘Who determines this?’’ Structurally, The Genealogical Science is broken in six chapters with each chapter tackling a specific component of Abu El-Haj’s broader intellectual project. There is, however, a particular undercurrent to all of the chapters, focusing on the social construction of knowledge and the question of ‘‘Jewishness’’ or ‘‘Jewish origins.’’ This undercurrent centers around several types of social knowing. Abu El-Haj describes one type of ‘‘social knowing’’ that is relatively more common within history of science and anthropology literature—the collective identity or collective history of origins. The second type of ‘‘social knowing’’ is certainly interestingly unique to the questions and themes of the book’s broader project. This type of knowing centers around the social epistemology and politics of genetic ancestry testing and what it means ‘‘to be Jewish’’ and how one might define that