Social Constructionist Framework Research Articles

Frame envy in energy policy ideology: A social constructivist framework for wicked energy problems

This article deals with the nexus between energy policymaking and ideology. The article builds and expands upon a theoretical social constructivist analytical strategy, or framework, put forth for the purposes of conducting energy policy analysis. It then addresses criticism that this strategy constitutes “postmodern mush” that has no place in energy analysis before concluding with a review of why social constructivism has a significant role to play in building consensus and enhancing understanding between competing energy policy perspectives. The main contribution made by this paper stems from application of this ontological construct to the analysis of policies targeting wicked energy problems. The study cuts to the core about how energy problems are defined, interpreted, communicated, planned for, and potentially implemented via policy. Put another way, our study offers a timely critique or a call for reconceptualizing the process and practice of energy policy itself.

Cooperation is What India Makes of It – A Normative Inquiry into the Origins and Development of Regional Cooperation in South Asia and the Indian Ocean

ABSTRACTSuccessful multilateral economic, political or security cooperation as best exemplified by organizations such as the EU or ASEAN invites the question why comparable organizations have never been established in South Asia and the Indian Ocean Rim, two geo-strategically important world regions. This article foregoes political-realist arguments and offers an alternative explanation for the failure of regional multilateralism in those two regions by using the social-constructivist framework of norm localization. This framework, based upon third-generation norm diffusion, provides a new analytical toolbox for analysing the general puzzle why one region may accept a particular norm while rejecting another. Arguing the case for the existence of a special South Asian regional variation of multilateralism which is termed ‘Panchsheel-multilateralism’, the article examines the process of the localization of the global norm regional multilateralism and analyses how this norm became institutionalized in the form of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA). The main argument of the article is that the global norm of regional multilateralism has been localized into a principally Indian influenced model of multilateralism, based on the latter’s cognitive prior. Consequently, there has virtually never been room for any genuine multilateral cooperation, while tangible cooperative results are found in the bilateral domain only.

PARTNERING SCIENCE AND ART: PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS’ EXPERIENCES FOR USE IN PRE-COLLEGIATE CLASSROOMS

Research on teaching through discipline integration is currently emphasized as a gap in educational literature, and this study bridges discipline silos between the arts and sciences by indicating how science and art compliment content learning. A study of secondary education pre-service teachers (3 years, n = 52) participating in a science/art integration unit the semester before their last college experience, explores how integrated sessions capture both scientific and artistic discipline concepts. A mixed methods research approach measured changes in confidence of science and art knowledge, skills, and experiences of the participants. Quantitative and qualitative data support increased awareness and confidence in pre-service teachers’ perceptions of how science and art can be incorporated into pre-collegiate classrooms, recognition of discipline similarities, and significant common themes when teaching both disciplines together. The researchers utilized a social constructivist framework with the qualitative data. Conclusions and implications include: 1) instructors can provide examples and modeling of interdisciplinary learning, which inspire pre-service teachers to explore new integrated disciplines in their own future classrooms, and 2) instructors can influence perspectives of pre-service teachers by offering integrated units, which produces open-mindedness of future teachers to use various teaching strategies. Keywords: science, art, pre-service teachers, pre-collegiate students, STEM education, STEM classrooms.

Women’s genital body work: Health, hygiene and beauty practices in the production of idealized female genitalia

Women’s genitalia are constructed as a bodily site requiring ongoing surveillance, maintenance and modification to conform to social norms. Women engage in a range of genital health, hygiene and beauty practices, including the use of commercial and homemade vaginal douches, washes, wipes, sprays and pubic hair removal, to modify their bodies. Using a social constructionist framework, we draw on interviews with 49 Canadian women to examine the construction of idealized (Western) genitalia as hairless, odourless and free of discharge, and “natural” female genitalia as problematic through the mobilization of normative femininity and (hetero)sexuality discourses. Theorizing women’s genital health, hygiene and beauty practices as a form of body work, we examine how women’s genital body work is constructed as a necessary and thus normative practice of femininity undertaken in the pursuit of idealized genitalia. A minority perspective that drew on alternative discourses to construct female genitalia as acceptable irrespective of genital body work is examined. Throughout our analysis, we examine the ways in which women negotiate issues of agency and choice in relation to their genital body work. Implications for women’s health in the context of the vaginal microbiome are explored.

Examining the long-term impact of participating in a professional development community of music teacher educators in the USA: An anchor through turbulent transitions

Peer mentoring and participating in professional development communities (PDCs) have been documented as supporting individuals through the transition into the teacher educator profession. However, Gallagher, Griffin, Parker, Kitchen, and Figg (2011) suggested future researchers examine the lasting impact of participating in PDCs. The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the long-term impact of participating in a PDC of music teacher educators. We, as four participant-researchers and one participant, were five early-career women music teacher educators in tenure-track positions at different institutions, reflecting back on our PDC and collaborative research experiences. We used a social constructivist framework to examine how we made sense of our experiences. Data included individual interviews, paired interviews, reflective journals, and a Facebook group. Findings included: (a) feeling empowered through a sense of community and support; (b) coming to new understandings of ourselves as music teacher educators; (c) experiencing benefits and challenges of our collaborative research process; and (d) still learning/becoming. The sense of community and support, benefits from collaborating on research, and opportunities to “play” with our developing identities had lasting professional and personal implications, which helped us successfully navigate the transitions and provided an anchor during the turbulent process of becoming music teacher educators.

Group Identity and Groupness: Student Experiences at University

One of the key transformations South African universities have undergone in the past two decades is the increase of racial and ethnic diversity of their student bodies and academic staff. In this study, we seek to contribute to a better understanding of these transformation processes by presenting students’ narratives of how they experience the interracial integration of student residences. We first address the potential groupist and essential underpinnings of ethno-racial identifications by situating our categories of analysis in a social-constructivist framework, underlining the situational and processual character of identifying and establishing “groupness,” while simultaneously considering the obdurate quality habitualized ways of identifying may generate. We then present an overview of our sensitizing themes as they are discussed in the literature on race and ethnicity with a focus on South Africa and student experiences. Thirdly, the article introduces the reader to the institutional context of the case study, namely, the campus of the University of the Free State and its student residences. Based on focus group discussions and thematic analyses, we present our findings in the form of the cultural themes that are central to the students’ narrations of their experiences. These themes include the salience of racial and ethnic identifications, tolerant distance, confusion, fairness, neutrality, ethnolinguistic recognition, regional public arenas, rural-urban divides, as well as socio-economic divides.

Factors shaping parent–adolescent communication about sexuality in urban China

Within a rapidly changing cultural and socio-economic context, young people in China are increasingly engaging in romantic experiences and sexual behaviours with consequences such as unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Across a range of contexts, parental communication about sexuality has been recognised as protective in terms of increasing the likelihood of sexual abstinence and safer sexual practice. This study focuses on the factors shaping parent–adolescent communication about sexuality. Thirty-eight young people and twenty-seven parents, recruited from two high schools in a Northern-Eastern city of China, were interviewed. Thematic analysis of their interview responses was conducted using a social constructionist framework. Four main themes were identified: timing; discomfort and uncertainty; assumptions; and the parent–adolescent relationship. Findings suggest that communication between parents and children is influenced by individual as well as interpersonal factors and factors relating to the broader Chinese sociocultural context. To facilitate communication, both parents and young people need support from health and other professionals, while parents need more help and support in overcoming historical, social and cultural barriers to open communication about sex.

Trying to Include but Supporting Exclusion Instead? Constructing the Roma in Slovak Educational Policies

Based on a social constructivist theoretical framework, this research study examines how the design of proinclusive educational policies and the general public construct the Roma students and parents in Slovakia. For this purpose, data from two selected educational policies and five focus groups conducted in five regions in Slovakia were analyzed. The findings demonstrate that the Roma are constructed negatively as irresponsible dependents and deviants not valuing education and incapable of making wise decisions about their lives. These findings can be considered relevant for policy formulation processes because proinclusive policies may sabotage their own goals if negative social constructions of a certain societal group are embedded in them.

INTERETHNIC AND INTERCONFESSIONAL RELATIONS IN KRASNODAR REGION: INTERACTION OF PUBLIC ASSOCIATIONS

In this article the trends in the development of the interaction of public associations in the sphere of interethnic and interconfessional relations in the Krasnodar Region in the first half of 2017 are disclosed. The paper was carried out within the framework of social constructivism with reference to ethnicity researched political science. Attention is paid to such factors of the orientation of interethnic and interconfessional relations as the impact of the economic crisis, changes in the ethnic-demographic structure, migration processes, composition and correlation of forces of social subjects of ethnic-politics in the region. Attention is paid to the role of the Kuban Cossack Army in interethnic and interconfessional relations, in carrying out state and municipal service. Trends in the development of interethnic and interconfessional relations in the Krasnodar Region are determined. The recommendations to state authorities, public associations and the media in the implementation of ethnic-politics in the Krasnodar Region are argued. So, in the scientific paper is fixed the urgency of creation of the regional expert-analytical center that would receive state orders for monitoring the balance of identities, interethnic and interreligious relations, manifestations of risks and threats of conflicts on a permanent basis.

The Internal Morality of Conscience

This essay challenges the relevance of the primary analogy in Ronit Stahl and Ezekiel Emanuel’s article “Physicians, Not Conscripts: Conscientious Objection in Health Care.” The author then proposes an alternative, classi­cally inspired model of conscience based on the work of E. Christian Brugger, Edmund Pellegrino, and Alasdair MacIntyre. This teleological model enables a more robust analysis of conscience claims than does Stahl and Emanuel’s social-constructivist framework.

Narrative discourse in the construction of Mapuche ethnic identity in context of displacement

This article examines the ways in which narrative discourse contributes to the construction of Mapuche ethnic identities within a context of displacement and investigates how such identities are negotiated in interactional contexts of communication. The larger study comprised 12 focus groups and 36 in-depth semi-structured interviews with members of Mapuche families living in four comunas (neighborhoods) of Santiago, Chile. For this article, the analysis is based on 12 interviews and six focus groups directed by a native speaker Mapuche woman interviewer and complemented by participant observations of everyday life and ceremonial events in the comunas. From a social constructivist framework, we focus on narrative genres and topics based on their emergence in interaction. Our method is through De Fina and Georgakopoulou’s ‘Social Interactional’ approach, which recognizes the discursive sedimented processes that produce, for example, recognizable genres and themes typical of a group or community. We demonstrate that storytelling has a crucial role in the connections of Mapuche to their southern roots through narrative references to family centered on traditional practices recreated in an urban context.

F01-B Hospice Professionals’ Experiences with Suicide and Hastened Death in Washington State

Objectives 1. Identify terms used to describe assisted suicide in Washington state home hospice services. 2. Evaluate impact of culture and location on interpretation of experiences of patients’ suicide and hastened death in hospice care. 3. Provide recommendations for professionals to address concerns about suicide and hastened death in home hospice care where assisted suicide legislation has been enacted. Methods A qualitative study using semi-structured interviews has been undertaken in a US state where physicians are legally able to prescribe a lethal dose of medications for mentally competent patients who request them. Professionals were interviewed about their experiences with patients who died by suicide, interpretations of suicide and hastened death and how this influences work with home hospice patients. A thematic analysis using a social constructionist framework influenced by Foucault’s theory of knowledge and power is used to analyse the data. Results Twenty-one hospice professionals (4 physicians, 7 nurses, 7 social workers, 3 chaplains) participated in the study. Initial analysis has identified blurry boundaries, challenges and barriers with access to options to relieve pain and symptoms. Interpretation of suicide and hastened death is affected by culture, faith, and perception of organizational policy. Experiences with patients who died by suicide vary depending on location and access to services. Conclusions Interpretations of suicide and language of the law impacts professionals’ experiences with patients expressing desire for hastened death.

An exploration of how health care professionals understand experiences of deafness

Findings from recent deaf education intervention programmes with health care professionals emphasise the importance of sociocultural dimensions of medicine, pointing to the need to further investigate health professionals’ current understandings of deafness. Situated within a social constructionist and critical realist framework, we investigated health professionals’ understandings of deafness and experiences of providing health services in Australia to d/Deaf people. Through an inductive thematic analysis of 18 individual interviews with medical or allied health professionals, we identified an overarching theme we labelled hearingness as privileged, whereby professionals accounted for the quality of the health services available to d/Deaf people in Australia. The professionals recognised the services as not good enough and, through relating their efforts to do the best they can, and describing how the situation could always be better, it was evident that the professionals were negotiating a larger health system that disadvantages the needs of d/Deaf people for the needs of people with hearingness. We discuss the implications of working within a system that privileges hearingness.

Men and Menstruation: A Qualitative Exploration of Beliefs, Attitudes and Experiences

Our article presents the findings from a study exploring men’s attitudes towards and perceptions of menstruation. Using a social constructionist framework, we analyzed 48 Australian men’s written accounts in response to an anonymous online questionnaire which explored messages they received about menstruation growing up as well as their current attitudes towards, and experiences with, menstruation. Respondents were 18–69 years-old; most were Caucasian and in an intimate relationship, and they varied considerably in terms of educational attainment. Thematic analysis yielded four themes: (a) managing the stigma of menstruation, (b) talking menstruation today—open and closed communication, (c) menstruation is part of relationships, and (d) menstruation and social commentary. These findings shed light on how boys learn about menstruation and how men’s role in menstruation is constructed, emphasizing the educational, relational, and socio-political contexts in which these attitudes are created. Researchers, health care providers, and educators could use our findings to create more effective reproductive health education programs. Improving communication between parents and children may encourage a more balanced view towards menstruation, working towards reducing the stigma commonly experienced by girls and women.

L1 and L2 adolescents’ perspectives on writing within and across academic disciplines

To investigate a diverse sample of adolescent writers’ experiences with disciplinary writing, this study compared 66 adolescents’ perceptions of writing through an analysis of interviews as part of a national study. Grounded in a social constructivist framework that stresses the role of agency in the development of writing competence, the study aims to examine factors – including language background and prior writing experiences – that are associated with adolescents’ perceptions of their writing development. The study asked: How do L1 and L2 adolescents’ perceptions of writing development compare? To what extent, if at all, is agency implicated in patterns of variation? Results of the comparative analysis suggest that varying affordances and constraints, and combinations of these, relate to adolescents’ expressed agency toward writing. Affordances include opportunities to select personally relevant subjects and to develop writing through feedback and revision processes; constraints include the use of highly structured writing scaffolds, formulas, and tightly constrained topics. Implications for differentiated scaffolding of writing instruction that might affectively and cognitively engage diverse adolescent learners are discussed.

Characterizing Teaching Assistants’ Knowledge and Beliefs Following Professional Development Activities within an Inquiry-Based General Chemistry Context

The purpose of this investigation was to explore changes in undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants’ (TAs’) content knowledge and beliefs about teaching within the context of an inquiry-based laboratory course. TAs received professional development (PD), which was informed by the TA training literature base and was designed for TAs implementing a guided inquiry approach to general chemistry laboratory instruction. TAs engaged in ∼20 h of presemester PD and ∼30 h of weekly follow-up PD during the semester. The study utilized a multiple-methods approach within a social constructivist framework to assess changes in the TAs. Participants included eight graduate TAs and five undergraduate TAs. Data collection included TA pre-PD, post-PD, and semester-end surveys and two interviews of a subset of participants. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive and nonparametric statistics, and the qualitative data were analyzed using systematic data analysis. The results indicate that TAs’ content kno...

The women who serve: a qualitative study of abortion doulas

Objectives: Abortion doulas are nonclinical volunteers who reduce women's isolation by providing emotional and physical support during an abortion. Thousands of people benefit from abortion doula care annually, yet no research on abortion doulas exists. We explore the range of shared characteristics and perspectives of abortion doulas, including their motivations, challenges and rewards of training and work and perceptions of the health care team and abortion care. Methods: We conducted in-depth, qualitative interviews with 28 abortion doulas. A national recruitment scheme included snowball sampling from regional abortion doula networks and referral from providers. The study design employed a social constructionist framework informed by feminist and social justice paradigms. Interview guides incorporated the feedback of practicing doulas. Qualitative data analysis was performed using grounded theory. Results: Abortion doulas reported meaning and satisfaction from supporting the reproductive rights of women in their role. Doulas' insight into the diversity of ways abortion is experienced by women — including relief, sadness, pain, shame and ambivalence — and aids their ability to provide personalized care during an abortion. Their observation of the power imbalance in the provider–patient relationship is an unexpected finding that highlights areas for improved patient-centered communication and care as part of abortion services. Conclusions: Abortion doulas' perspectives provide valuable insight into the provision of abortion from a novel vantage point. Abortion doulas view their role as validating the abortion experience for women and view themselves as reproductive rights activists. They play an important role in the abortion experience, and their continued work should be supported by the abortion provider community.

State-Level HIV Criminalization Laws: Social Construction of Target Populations?

ABSTRACTApplying Schneider and Ingram’s social constructionist framework that places people living with HIV (PLWH) in the intersection of both minimal power and negative social construction, this study investigates whether HIV criminalization laws are more likely to be present in states that have a relatively larger percentage of socially marginalized populations. A database was assembled of state-level variables related to HIV criminalization laws and indicators of social marginalization. Analyses show that states with HIV criminalization laws have relatively larger African American populations. Future research is needed to further clarify the racial component of HIV criminalization.

'Drinking with respect': Drinking constructions of men who live in a Cape Winelands farm community in South Africa.

This article aims to provide a community-specific understanding of a subgroup of South African men who exhibit particularly high rates of hazardous alcohol consumption. Adopting a social constructionist framework, we interviewed 13 Cape Winelands men who lived on farms to explore their drinking constructions. We present three themes that shed light on problematic drinking in this group: (1) the notion of weekend binge-drinking as 'respectable' drinking, (2) drinking as shared activity that fulfils various psycho-social needs and (3) a sense of powerlessness to affect their own or their children's alcohol consumption. These findings are viewed against a specific socio-historical backdrop.

The personal struggles of ‘national’ educators working in ‘international’ schools: an intercultural perspective

ABSTRACTThis paper looks at how personal struggles associated with the overseas setting caused changes in the intercultural perspective of 30 Anglophone educators working in international schools. Situated within a social constructivist framework, interview methods were utilised to build a collective narrative shared by educators. Findings reveal that although prolonged exposure to new cultural norms elicited changes in intercultural perspective, these changes were not related to traditional notions of cultural immersion but – rather paradoxically – to educators' inability to integrate into the host cultures. Obstacles educators faced while abroad included a lack of language proficiency, living in countries that were sometimes antithetical to Western ideals and discriminatory practices based on national and/or race affiliation.