Social Constructionist Framework Research Articles

Victim Narratives and Victim Selves: False Memory Syndrome and the Power of Accounts

Scholars of social problems and social movements typically assume incumbents for the victim categories that campaigns and movements define. However, in a social constructionist framework, victimization is an interactional, discursive process rather than simply an objective fact about some persons or groups. Victim category membership must be appropriated interpretively; it cannot be assumed. Further, category membership must have some positive identity implications to explain why putative victims find such appropriation necessary and meaningful. This article explores these positive implications. It is based on a study of published accounts of both parents accused of past sexual abuse by adult children and “retractors,” one-time accusers who now reject their abuse “memories” and have withdrawn the abuse allegations they previously made. I argue that attending to the identity functions and social consequences of personal accounts usefully expands research by opening up neglected dimensions of claims-making activity and exploration of the relationships among victim categories, category membership, and selfhood.

Pride, Prejudice, and a Dose of Shame: The Meaning of Public Assistance

Little is known about women’s retrospective views on the receipt of public assistance, including their relationships with their caseworkers. This article examines the findings of 20 in-depth interviews with women about their experiences with public assistance after they went from public assistance to a living-wage job. The respondents’ self-stories are interpreted using a social constructionist framework.

The Return of Subjectivity: From a Multiplicity of Selves to the Dialogical Self

Psychology has been increasingly recognizing the multiplicity of the self. However, this recognition raises the problem of explaining how a sense of self-identity is achieved within a multiplicity of selves. Two theoretical orientations playing a major role in the study of the plurality of the self: the social-cognitive perspective, in which self is studied as an information-processing device, and the social constructionist framework, in which self is understood as a matter of social and linguistic negotiation. Nevertheless, it is argued that these orientations are still trapped in several epistemological problems and the final result leaves no space for subjectivity. Dialogism and the dialogical view of the self are presented as possible solutions for those problems. Conceiving self as a result of the dialogicality, unity and multiplicity appear as two contrasting, but united poles of a dialogical and (inter)subjective self.

Drawing as a Unique Mental Development Tool for Young Children: Interpersonal and Intrapersonal Dialogues

Using examples from children drawing in a year one classroom, this article examines firstly, how drawing operates as a unique mental tool, and secondly, the role of drawing in the construction and development of knowledge. Young children utilize prior knowledge and experience to negotiate and construct meaning through their interactions with people and artifacts in the learning community. Using a Vygotskian, social constructionist framework, a detailed analysis of interpersonal drawing dialogues is extended to include children's intrapersonal dialogic engagement with their drawing. When these children were encouraged to revisit, revise and dialogue through and with their drawing, they were able to explore and represent increasingly complex ideas.

The ‘Community’ Center and the Social Construction of Citizenship

The purpose of this study was to investigate the variety of meanings that citizenship took on when associated with active citizen participation at a community center. Using a social constructionist framework, I aimed to understand how active participation shaped research participants' perceptions about citizenship. In particular, what did citizenship really mean to citizens who were involved in the process of community development? What role, if any, did the community center play in cultivating their sense of citizenship? Were specific forms of citizenship fostered? Three over-lapping themes were identified from the data: participation, responsibility, and community. Each is discussed in relation to citizenship and social capital theory. Based on the findings, I argue the community center served as a salient venue for citizen development because of its focus on process instead of product.

Claimsmakers in the Child Sexual Abuse "Wars": Who Are They and What Do They Want?

The research findings described in this article are based on in-depth interviews with 40 people who helped bring concerns about child sexual abuse to audiences in the Western world. The results of this study suggest that significant differences of opinion and perspective exist both within and between the two widely recognized camps of opinion that have developed around this issue. From respondents' descriptions of their own and others' viewpoints, a continuum model of eight positions on issues related to child sexual abuse was developed and is described in this article. Using a social constructionist framework, the author suggests that debates about child sexual abuse, although framed primarily as empirical issues, may reflect moral and political, as well as scientific, disagreements. Debates about issues related to child sexual abuse take place in larger social and political contexts that include concerns about the family, gender relations, sexuality and sexual behavior, the "science wars," and the role of government. Conflicting claims about practice issues related to child sexual abuse require that social work practitioners be taught to critically examine how the moral and political beliefs of researchers might influence the kinds of questions they ask and how they interpret and frame their research findings.

Teacher's and students' perspectives on on-line learning in a social constructivist learning environment

This article summarises the teaching and learning experiences of students in higher education with regard to the use of computer conferencing. The on-line unit was designed and implemented within a social constructivist framework, which promoted interaction, collaboration and experiential learning. Students who undertook this unit were practising science and mathematics teachers. They ranged in their experience of on-line learning from inexperienced users to seasoned, on-line learners. However, common among the participants is their novel exposure to being a part of a learning community where interaction and communication took precedence over individual learning. This article looks at the learning experiences from the perspectives of the facilitator and three on-line learners, based on the participants' personal stories specifically in terms of: (a) concerns associated with the implementation of the on-line learning; (b) the differences encountered when using technology for the first time to learn; (c) the difference in perspective, before and after the on-line learning experience; and (d) the differences in the learning experience in light of exposure to a new theoretical framework and a new mode of delivery. The conclusions from the stories suggest that the interaction and the social presence of others grew from the use of a social constructivist approach to teaching and learning, within the context of computer-mediated communication technologies. The role of the facilitator in this setting was to provide a context for social learning and to maintain a student-centred approach. Alternatively, the role of the students was to proactively engage in peer learning.

Weblogs as an emerging genre in higher education

WEBLOGS (or “blogs”) emerged in the past decade as an Internet applications genre, providing a platform for the development of critical, individual voices within the context of Internet resources. Weblogs consist of links to particular Web materials with specific commentary, generally presented in chronological format, harkening back to older, more traditional forms of expression such as diaries and travelogues. Weblog consumption has become increasingly popular in higher education contexts as individuals seek ways to locate Web content of quality and relevance to particular topics or themes. Many individuals have emphasized the autobiographical functions of weblog production, situating the hyperlinks provided in the context of personal reflections and revelations and working to construct narrative selves through “performative” uses of hyperlinking. The character of weblogs as a genre is in part related to collaborative efforts (including the sustained interaction among bloggers in discussion of the genre and critique of each other’s productions). Faculty who incorporate weblog development in teaching initiatives should be aware of privacy and voyeurism considerations as students reveal personal information; however, weblog construction can be useful in conveying new dimensions of identity construction and plagiarism issues in social constructivist frameworks.

Asian American Women And Racialized Femininities

Integrating race and gender in a social constructionist framework, the authors examine the way that second-generation Asian American young women describe doing gender across ethnic and mainstream settings, as well as their assumptions about the nature of Asian and white femininities. This analysis of interviews with 100 daughters of Korean and Vietnamese immigrants finds that respondents narratively construct Asian and Asian American cultural worlds as quintessentially and uniformly patriarchal and fully resistant to change. In contradistinction, mainstream white America is constructed as the prototype of gender equality. Hence, Asian American and white American women serve in these accounts as uniform categorical representations of the opposing forces of female oppression and egalitarianism. The authors consider how the relational construction of hegemonic and subordinated femininities, as revealed through controlling images that denigrate Asian forms of gender, contribute to internalized oppression and shape the doing of ethnicity.

Sexual Scripts: Origins, Influences and Changes

The rejection of explanations of sexuality rooted in biological naturalism and sociological functionalism was the first step in formulating the scripting perspective on sexual conduct. The complex relation between intrapsychic experience, interpersonal relationships and the intersubjective cultural surround was the focus of what was first conceived as a social learning approach to sexuality. This was later transformed into a social constructionist framework as the intellectual context of the social studies of sexuality changed under the influence of feminism, gay and lesbian studies, self-psychology, and new developments in social and sexual theory in England and on the Continent. The scripting perspective has remained remarkably robust and stable as an explanatory framework for sexual conduct which is responsive to a globally changing historical and cultural environment.

Critical reflections on communicating with children: Making the tactics of training and intervention in child protection explicit

AbstractIn this paper I explore current understandings about child abuse and child protection in order to contribute to the on-going development of critical frameworks for assessment, intervention and training. My aim is to critically advance current statutory approaches to child protection that locate children’s needs within their specific family and environmental context in order to promote child-centred, empowerment and partnership-based practices. Through describing some key elements of a training programme aimed at enhancing practitioners’ communication with children in need, I demonstrate how communication and understanding are enhanced through being specific. I illustrate the practical benefits of making the various behavioural, intellectual and emotional processes of assessment and intervention open and transparent. I argue that more sensitive approaches to assessment and intervention are enabled through addressing both explicit factors associated with the child and implicit factors associated with the worker. A social constructionist framework is drawn on to explicate the multiple factors that shape our understandings about child abuse, child welfare and communication in respect of these issues. The paper demonstrates the benefits of adopting a more socially complete and reflexive approach to understanding child abuse and the processes involved in child protection.

Constructing Gender Pedagogies: Desire and Resistance in the "Alternative" Classroom

Traditional approaches to teaching about gender examine the politics of oppression and marginalization of women, and less frequently question the profound implications of the construction of gender binaries itself. This essay examines emergent meanings in students' (focus group) conversation about the alternative curriculum of a course entitled “Gender, Culture and Communication”. Three questions or concerns are central to this study, and are informed by a Foucauldian as well as a social constructionist framework. From a Foucauldian standpoint we look at desire and resistance as the terms are both present and invisible in the students' self reflections and their reflections about the course, and how those conversations might invoke tensions between the institutional and the material, disciplinary and social boundaries. From a social constructionist standpoint, we look for the stories students tell about gender as they emerge in interaction-in the focus group discussion about the class. Our final question asks whether there can indeed be an alternative curriculum in a course, or within a discipline that holds gender relations as its core set of relationships. In other words, can we ever be outside of the relations described by gender discourse?

Action, talk, and text: learning and teaching through inquiry

This text is an account by teachers of the inquiries into practice they have undertaken in their own classrooms. The contributing teachers share a common social-constructivist framework. They focus their inquiries upon the dialogue through which knowledge is constructed in the classroom.

Losing the Plot? Middle Managers and Identity

There is now a large body of research attempting to `discover' the `answer' to the question `what is happening to middle management in contemporary organizations?', following unprecedented levels of delivering, downsizing and restructuring. Two contrasting views, positive and negative, on the state of middle management have been identified in the literature. Adopting a social constructionist framework, this paper argues that there is a need to move beyond current attempts to find the most `accurate' and `truthful' picture on the state of middle management, to adopt a theoretical framework that can accommodate both diversity and agency. Drawing from interviews with middle managers, the paper illustrates how middle managers construct their identities, what discourses they draw on in this construction process and what tensions are present in their attempts to secure economic and social legitimacy during organizational restructuring.

Wysiwyg

AbstractWorking in a social constructionist framework, the author describes practical theology as a multi-conversational discipline. In each conversation (with systematic and biblical theology, with other academic disciplines, and with the church and society) specific demands are placed on discourse, governed by specific criteria for truth claims. In these conversations, two levels of discourse are distinguished. First order discourse consists of ordinary religious language (and action), second order discourse is the academic discussion of this language. In both discourses social constructions can be found, analyzed and critiqued, but the referential and performative criteria differ. Finally it is claimed that the theological and normative dimension of practical theology is not something added to empirical investigations, but present in the material researched.

The Social and Emotional Needs of Gifted Children: Implications for Family Counseling

The authors examine the psychosocial dilemmas faced by gifted children and their families and provide family counseling strategies. Definitions and characteristics of giftedness are summarized. Life span and social constructionist frameworks are used for working with gifted clients.

Social constructivism in the classroom

In this article, Judith Watson uses examples from classroom practice to demonstrate how, within a framework of social constructivism, small changes in teachers' practice can promote effective teaching in pupils of all ages and levels of ability, across the curriculum.

A Disabling Education: The case of disabled learners in Malaysia

Currently there is a move by the government towards improving the state of education for disabled learners in Malaysia. It is believed that current policy and practice do not meet the needs and requirements of these learners, partly because of the different definitions of disability adopted by various government agencies that are empowered to assist them. Employing a social constructivist framework, these definitions are examined specifically in the way they have been developed into different practices. It is argued that some of the common practices in educating disabled learners are discriminatory and haphazardly planned. The material effects of these practices on the actual provisions of education for these learners are then observed and evaluated. It is suggested that the education system be improved by including disabled learners in mainstream education, so as to help instigate positive changes in the lives of these learners through the wider process of social inclusion.

Perceptions of Social Support Availability and Coping Behaviors Among Gay Men with HIV

Analyzing face-to-face, semistructured interviews, we discuss how perceptions of social support availability are formed among gay men coping with HIV. Experiences of receiving support increased perceived availability for specific types of support from specific individuals, but receiving support also gave these men a general sense that someone would be available for assistance. Other aspects of social relationships, such as closeness and role expectations, contributed to gay men's perceptions of support availability. The results suggest that when people with common problems cope together, collective knowledge of support availability may emerge from observations of others' support exchanges as well as from discussions of support experiences. Individuals or groups of individuals may actively create and modify their perceptions of support availability when they cope with anticipated problems. Thus, the study provided an opportunity to integrate concepts of coping and social support into the collective action and social constructionist frameworks.

Educational Psychology, Social Constructivism, and Educational Practice: A Case of Emergent Identity

Psychology has long been a field beset with identity crises of one sort or another. At midcentury, psychology openly struggled with self-definition-what is psychology?-and the role-whom or what does it serve?-it was to play in individual and societal issues. Educational psychology has suffered similar identity issues. This article examines briefly the history and futility of educational psychology's in-house fights over mission and contests for theoretical dominance, allegedly in the name of unity. This article suggests instead the desirability of collaboration among diverse participants and theoretical integration for the improvement of educational practices. This article illustrates this goal with discussion of current work within a social constructivist framework.