Conceptual Tools Research Articles

Enhancing the Pedagogical Competence of ECE Teachers through the Creation of Comprehensive Game Tools

The ability of Early Childhood Education (ECE) teachers to create instructional materials constitutes one of their pedagogical competencies. This competence entails overseeing the development process, which consists of planning, executing, and evaluating the development process and its outcomes. This article aims to describe the procedure involved in the conception and development of comprehensive game tools (CGT) to enhance the pedagogical competence of ECE teachers. This community service instructs and equips teachers in developing CGTs, conducted in a blended method within six weeks. Specifics of offline materials consist of the following: 1) activity schedule, 2) understanding of the nature of CGTs, 3) product development, 4) revision of results, and 5) product evaluation. Online resources provide instruction on 1) developing and creating designs and 2) constructing comprehensive game tools. Thirty teachers from PAUD Katuk and Asyifa Islamic Kindergarten - South Jakarta were participants. The final product is comprised of 5 CGTs, and the teachers' ability to design and develop CGT is enhanced. Suggestion: CGT development should be conducted under intensive supervision.

Towards an ethical existence

This study investigates the theme of crossings in literature, whether it involves trespassing boundaries or limitations, or crossings that enable hybridizations. The concept of crossing is linked to its ethical potential in our geo-historical time, the Anthropocene, a period that calls for a reexamination of the foundations of ethics. To achieve this, well-known literary works such as Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões, Paradise Lost by John Milton, and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood are examined. The analysis is based on Jane Bennett's concept of enchantment. Additionally, authors who adhere to the Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) perspective, such as Graham Harman and Timothy Morton, will be brought into the discussion. The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the role literature and art (in general) play in a time when the rational foundation of ethics is being questioned. The Anthropocene is understood here as a new geological epoch that begs for a revisiting of certain concepts and dichotomies that shape modernity. Thus, there is an acknowledgment of the need to reconsider the foundation of ethics given the rupture provoked by the Anthropocene. This paper provides an examination of the complex interplay between literature, ethics, and the Anthropocene, emphasizing enchantment as a conceptual tool to unravel the ethical dimensions presented by the selected literary works. Furthermore, the works of Camões, Milton, and Atwood expose some of the implications of the enchantment/disenchantment dichotomy that characterizes modernity. The study, therefore, aims to contribute to how literature and art can help cultivate affects that aid in navigating contemporary ethical challenges in a world marked by significant climate transformations.

Tafsir Iqtisadi di Indonesia: Metodologi, Validitas dan Kontribusi

Abstract: This research aims to examine the works of Tafsir Iqtisadi/Tafsir on economic verses published in Indonesia from 2012 to 2023. Many of these works appeared when Sharia economics was developing, especially when PTKI opened a Sharia Economics Department in Indonesia. Have we employed the descriptive-analytical method, and historical philosophical approach, and based on the literature study, this article finds that Tafsir Iqtisadi in Indonesia is a tafsir product, which is a book and research in itself. The Tafsir Iqtisadi product is an interpretation of the Al-Quran with an economic approach. This approach is an acceptable style of interpretation and originates from the style of Tafsir Ilmi, Tafsir Ahkam and Tafsir Adabi Ijtima’i. Methodologically, the Tafsir Iqtisadi books combine tafsir bil ra'yi and tafsir bil ma'tsur. Meanwhile, the presentation of Tafsir Iqtisadi products consists of the presentation of tahlili, ijmali and maudhui. In terms of validity, Tafsir Iqtisadi can be said to be valid because it is in accordance with general interpretation methods, and also become a theological and conceptual foundation tool in developing Sharia Economics in Indonesia.

Cultural ergonomics in localization

Abstract Cultural ergonomics aims to integrate the dimension of culture into systems and products to make them safer, more useful, and more accessible to a wider range of multicultural users. This makes it an effective conceptual tool to create a localized product that is more inclusive. By using the example of security questions in drop-down menus replicated across North American English websites, this paper argues that overlooking ‘culture’ as a site of diverse experiences leads to a harder-to-navigate product for the multicultural user. By juxtaposing the reality of a multicultural context with the monoethnic, middle-class, and heteronormative cultural dimensions of security questions, the cloning of questions across websites can be seen as satisfying the needs of the dominant power rather than the subordinated peoples – both immigrant and non-heteronormative. Operationalizing cultural ergonomics in the translation workflow provides a means to recognize and address this power imbalance.

Analysis of Climate Risk in Panama’s Urban Areas

To mitigate the effects of climate change and increase the resilience of cities, climate risks in urban areas are crucial issues to be addressed. This study analyzes the risks, vulnerability, capacity, degree of exposure, and characteristics of the threats to Panama’s urban areas that result from climate change. Data from DesInventar—a conceptual and methodological tool developed for the construction of databases regarding losses, damages, or effects caused by emergencies or disasters—were analyzed. The main current impacts are floods, landslides, and extreme winds in that order. From 1933 to 2019, Panama recorded 1903 flood reports, 625 landslide reports, and numerous extreme wind events. The affected population totaled 527,394 people, with 101,738 homes impacted. The most affected provinces are Panama, Panama Oeste, and Chiriquí, based on the number of reports. It is expected that in the future, the current effects will increase, and the country’s energy and water security will be put at risk. Strategies to address climate change include enhancing early warning systems and investing in climate-resilient infrastructure. Key measures involve developing public policies for renewable energy and sustainable transportation, preserving ecosystems, and financial mechanisms to support a transition to a sustainable economy.

Infertility as Trauma: Understanding the Lived Experience of Involuntary Childlessness.

Infertility, to those who are affected by it, is much more than whether one manages (or not) to have a child: it can be a traumatizing experience. Based on a clinical case study that involved one-to-one psychotherapy sessions and semi-structured interviews with six involuntarily childless women living in Norway, this article develops the argument that there is a need to treat infertility as trauma, both conceptually and from the perspective of therapeutic practice. The analysis contributes to our understanding of trauma as a disruptive event that erodes a person's moral agency. It does so by outlining conceptual and therapeutic tools that illuminate what happens in the psyche as a result of the trauma: they help explaining why the moral agency of different individuals is damaged to different extents, and how therapy can repair it. In relation to the issue of involuntary childlessness, the analysis shows where infertility fits within one's traumabiography-a map of the way adverse experiences over the life-course have affected one's psyche and behavior-both as traumatizing in itself and connected to previous traumas. This understanding enables more effective therapeutic support and better care for many individuals whose long-term suffering would otherwise remain unacknowledged and untreated.

A human capital simulation model in innovation projects

The main aspects of three concepts––human capital, innovation projects, and simulation modeling––are considered, and a simulation model is proposed to describe the role of human capital in innovation projects. This high-level abstraction model is intended to study the role of the social component in the organizational structure of an innovation project in a general context (at the level of an economic sector, an enterprise, or part of an enterprise). It is treated primarily as a tool for tracking the dynamics of projects considering the state of human capital of the system. The model consists of two main components, namely, a basic simulation model in system dynamics terms and an agent-based component of the model describing human capital dynamics. The model is a conceptual tool that requires calibration and refinement when being implemented in a particular organization.

Research approaches in master-based teacher education preparing student teachers for professional work

Student teachers have been found to be critical toward the research approaches they learned from their master's-based teacher education programmes. Our aim is to discuss how certain research approaches learnt during a 5-year academic master's level teacher education, may bring student teachers close to practice and provide them with conceptual and practical tools for a thorough understanding of the practice of teaching. The argumentation is based on an elaboration of master's-based teacher education programs in Finland and Norway and the essential characteristics of teachers' work. We elaborate on student teachers' need to understand constative, critical and constructive research approaches. This includes critical approaches such as observations and interviews for understanding and interpretation, and constructive approaches such as action research and lesson studies. Finally, we argue that, through these approaches, student teachers make use of research knowledge in teachers' work with an inquiring orientation as well as develop and change their practice.

A speculative turn in science and philosophy of science

AbstractThis paper describes the main features and goals of the speculative work in modern sciences that has greatly accelerated since World War II due to the exponential increase in computing power and newly available theoretical and conceptual tools. It points to the long historical strand of speculative philosophical work in symbiosis with the sciences, suggests the reasons for its unexpected neglect in contemporary professional philosophy of science, why it should be a major approach, and why such pursuit is not inevitable. Finally, the paper outlines potential topics, fields, and tools for such collaborative work and argues it is likelier to be more fruitful today than at any point in the past hundred years.

Resistance Against and Beyond Financialisation from the Vantage Point of Social Reproduction

AbstractThis paper progresses research on resistance in the context of financialisation by drawing on various social reproduction legacies. I explore how social reproduction theory offers conceptual and methodological tools that can deepen research on de‐financialisation and resistance against predatory finance. Expanding upon relational approaches to social reproduction, this paper frames “the financialisation of social reproduction” as the dialectics between the reproduction of financialised capitalism and the regeneration of life. This supports a perspective on resistance through the identification and analysis of the interplay between the objective and subjective limits to the financial extraction from life. I examine how methodologies like “counter‐topographies” can demystify financialisation while supporting the cultivation of alternative geographies of finance. Through “financial counter‐topographies”, I explore how global reproductive entanglements contradictorily fragment working‐class interests across space while creating conditions to envision and cultivate de‐alienated financial landscapes. This approach seeks possibilities for collective action and international collaborations beyond financialisation.

Communicating inclusiveness through major sporting events: development and application of a framework

ABSTRACT Major sporting events (MSEs) have been used by governments to improve the image of cities and nations, and to attract tourists. In the wake of criticism of how global MSEs handle human-rights issues, governments are pressured to rethink how these events are organised and branded. Developing and employing an analytical framework based on inclusive place branding and pathways to progressive human-rights outcomes, this study explores how and to whom inclusiveness is communicated in five Olympic Games candidate files. A quantitative content analysis is performed using keywords related to inclusiveness and three characteristics of inclusiveness are analysed qualitatively: democratic representation, inclusive participation, and committed transformation. The findings show that three of the candidate files predominantly belong to the traditional place branding paradigm through their focus on external stakeholders, while two have adopted a more inclusive place branding strategy and put emphasis on internal stakeholders. The analytical framework introduced in this study can be useful for both researchers and practitioners – such as prospective hosts of MSEs and other events – as a conceptual tool to analyse and develop inclusiveness in major events.

The mall as heterotopia under Greece’s economic crisis: a sociospatial analysis in Thessaloniki

ABSTRACT This paper examines the socio-spatial constitution of the mall, as a basic consumption place, in the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crisis, employing a geographical approach to malls and a socio-spatial perspective on heterotopia, as a conceptual theoretical tool on the exercise of power and production of space. Introducing the concept of crisis-heterotopia, the case of the Mediterranean Cosmos shopping Centre in Thessaloniki, Greece, is employed, carrying out questionnaires and interviews with residents of Thessaloniki. The findings highlight the internal constitution of the mall as a crisis-heterotopia identified by the socio-spatial and cultural profiles and spatial representations of the consumers.

Academics’ experiences of university-wide top-down curriculum reform in Finland

ABSTRACT Current global drivers have challenged higher education and increased institution-wide top-down managed reforms, including curriculum reforms. As academics are vital in curriculum development, listening to their voices is essential for understanding actors’ experiences of curriculum change processes in top-down managed reforms. The present study examined spectrum and qualitative differences in academics’ experiences by analysing seven group interviews (n = 35). Using phenomenographic analysis, four different ways of experiencing the curriculum reform process were identified: (1) stilted adoption, (2) conciliation, (3) active development and (4) collaborative renewal. The categories differed according to six dimensions of variation. The study shows that top-down managed and supported curriculum change was rather well accepted by the academic staff, but several features in the function of the university administration aroused criticism and resistance among academics. By revealing the critical aspects of the curriculum development process, the study provides both a theory of curriculum development from the participants’ point of view and conceptual tools for the management and guidance of curriculum reform.

Geometric visualizations of single and entangled qubits

The Bloch Sphere visualization of the possible states of a single qubit serves as a useful pedagogical and conceptual tool, offering a one-to-one map between qubit states and points in a 3D space. However, understanding many important concepts of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement, requires developing intuitions about states with a minimum of two qubits, which map one-to-one to unvisualizable spaces of six dimensions and higher. In this paper, we circumvent this visualization issue by creating maps of subspaces of 1- and 2-qubit systems that quantitatively and qualitatively encode properties of these states in their geometries. For the 1-qubit case, the subspace approach allows one to visualize how mixed states relate to different choices of measurement in a basis-independent way and how to read off the entries in a density matrix representation of these states from lengths in a simple diagram. For the 2-qubit case, a toroidal map of 2-qubit states illuminates the non-trivial topology of the state space while allowing one to simultaneously read off, in distances and angles, the level of entanglement in the 2-qubit state and the mixed-state properties of its constituent qubits. By encoding states and their evolutions through quantum logic gates with little to no need of mathematical formalism, these maps may prove particularly useful for understanding fundamental concepts of quantum mechanics and quantum information at the introductory level.

Forever Becoming: Teaching “Transgender Studies Meets Art History” and Theorizing Trans Joy

Academics often comment that their teaching affects their research, but how this manifests is often implicit. In this essay, I explicitly explore the artistic, scholarly, and curatorial research instantiated by an undergraduate class titled “Transgender Studies meets Art History,” which I taught during the fall of 2022. Alongside personal anecdotes—both personal and connected to the class—and a critical reflection on my pedagogy, I discuss the artwork and public programming connected to a curatorial project, “Forever Becoming: Decolonization, Materiality, and Trans* Subjectivity, I organized at UrbanGlass, New York City in 2023. The first part of the article I examine how “trans” can be applied to thinking about syllabus construction and re-thinking canon formation for a class focused on transgender studies’ relationship to art history. In the second half, I theorize trans joy as a felt vibration between/across multiplicity and singularity, belonging and unbelonging, and world-making and world-unmaking. Overall, I consider trans as a lived experience and its utility as a conceptual tool. As a coda, I consider the precarity of teaching this course in the current political climate of the United States.

In Search of Living Law: How Should We Design for (Digital) Legal Interaction?

In his work on human-centric design, urban theorist Christopher Alexander elaborated design patterns as a way to conceptualise and practice urban design together with its users. Alexander aspired to design “living places”, physical spaces created by the social interactions that take place there. In this article, I use this lens to uncover the “living places” of law, and what might be the “living law” that legal design patterns could capture? I explore law as a product of design, and design as an activity, an activity that produces the many material manifestations of law. These manifestations may be digital or analog, such as case files on paper or interactive online forms, courthouse architecture or institutional webpages, courtroom furniture or dispute resolution platforms. Although often overlooked in legal scholarship, such material manifestations shape legal interaction, privileging certain forms and actors over others. They reflect values and ideologies as well as legal concepts and doctrines. By thinking about law through legal design patterns, living law becomes defined through interaction. I explore this connection between spatial and material arrangements and legal interaction they manifest and enable. This analysis makes it possible to compare law’s old material manifestations with its new places and things that rely on digital technologies. This shift of focus to legal interaction enables us to ask what legal interaction is, how it should be designed, and by whom, reconceptualising the dynamics of law, technology, and design. Ultimately, legal design patterns may provide us with conceptual and methodological tools for designing user-centric justice.

Explaining the emergence of land-use frontiers.

Land-use expansion is linked to major sustainability concerns including climate change, food security and biodiversity loss. This expansion is largely concentrated in so-called 'frontiers', defined here as places experiencing marked transformations owing to rapid resource exploitation. Understanding the mechanisms shaping these frontiers is crucial for sustainability. Previous work focused mainly on explaining how active frontiers advance, in particular, into tropical forests. Comparatively, our understanding of how frontiers emerge in territories considered marginal in terms of agricultural productivity and global market integration remains weak. We synthesize conceptual tools explaining resource and land-use frontiers, including theories of land rent and agglomeration economies, of frontiers as successive waves, spaces of territorialization, friction and opportunities, anticipation and expectation. We then propose a new theory of frontier emergence, which identifies exogenous pushes, legacies of past waves and actors' anticipations as key mechanisms by which frontiers emerge. Processes of differential rent creation and capture and the built-up of agglomeration economies then constitute key mechanisms sustaining active frontiers. Finally, we discuss five implications for the governance of frontiers for sustainability. Our theory focuses on agriculture and deforestation frontiers in the tropics but can be inspirational for other frontier processes including for extractive resources, such as minerals.

A Ranking Tool for "Category Killer" Microbial Biobanks.

Microbial biobanks preserve and provide microbial bioresources for research, training, and quality control purposes. They ensure the conservation of biodiversity, contribute to taxonomical research, and support scientific advancements. Microbial biobanks can cover a wide range of phylogenetic and metabolic diversity ("category killers") or focus on specific taxonomic, thematic, or disease areas. The strategic decisions about strain selection for certain applications or for the biobank culling necessitate a method to support prioritization and selection. Here, we propose an unbiased scoring approach based on objective parameters to assess, categorize, and assign priorities among samples in stock in a microbial biobank. We describe the concept of this ranking tool and its application to identify high-priority strains for whole genome sequencing with two main goals: (i) genomic characterization of quality control, reference, and type strains; (ii) genome mining for the discovery of natural products, bioactive and antimicrobial molecules, with focus on human diseases. The general concept of the tool can be useful to any biobank and for any ranking or culling needs.

Segmenting and Predicting Musical Phrase Structure Exploits Neural Gain Modulation and Phase Precession.

Music, like spoken language, is often characterized by hierarchically organized structure. Previous experiments have shown neural tracking of notes and beats, but little work touches on the more abstract question: how does the brain establish high-level musical structures in real time? We presented Bach chorales to participants (20 females and 9 males) undergoing electroencephalogram (EEG) recording to investigate how the brain tracks musical phrases. We removed the main temporal cues to phrasal structures, so that listeners could only rely on harmonic information to parse a continuous musical stream. Phrasal structures were disrupted by locally or globally reversing the harmonic progression, so that our observations on the original music could be controlled and compared. We first replicated the findings on neural tracking of musical notes and beats, substantiating the positive correlation between musical training and neural tracking. Critically, we discovered a neural signature in the frequency range ∼0.1 Hz (modulations of EEG power) that reliably tracks musical phrasal structure. Next, we developed an approach to quantify the phrasal phase precession of the EEG power, revealing that phrase tracking is indeed an operation of active segmentation involving predictive processes. We demonstrate that the brain establishes complex musical structures online over long timescales (>5 s) and actively segments continuous music streams in a manner comparable to language processing. These two neural signatures, phrase tracking and phrasal phase precession, provide new conceptual and technical tools to study the processes underpinning high-level structure building using noninvasive recording techniques.

New perspectives on curriculum and democracy: conceptual and empirical tools for democratic curriculum

New perspectives on curriculum and democracy: conceptual and empirical tools for democratic curriculum