Figured Worlds Research Articles

Figuring the World of Home-School Relationships

This article uses figured worlds to explore the limit-situations imposed by dominant narratives of home-school relationships. Through a semiotic analysis of a wall hanging in a preschool classroom, we explore what figured worlds are imagined as possible for home-school relationships. The dominant narratives implicit in these figured worlds ossify configurations of home and school that privilege ways of being and knowing that exclude, reject, or demonize the experiences of culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse families.

Teachers’ conceptualizations of multilingual learners’ so-called ‘academic’ language in oral-language assessments

We used a Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) methodology to consider how 16 teachers in an English as a Second Language (ESL) assessment course discussed ‘academic’ versus ‘social’ language while assessing a multilingual student’s oral language. Using a ­figured-worlds framework to explore teachers’ underlying beliefs about the ‘academic’/‘social’ language dichotomy, we aimed to explore: What figured worlds were present in teachers’ dichotomous descriptions of multilingual students’ ‘academic’ and ‘social’ language? Our findings reveal four inter-related figured worlds that teachers’ descriptions revealed about students’ oral language. First, teachers used words like formal, complex, and difficult to characterize so-called ‘academic’ language, while they described ‘social’ language as informal, simple, non-specific, etc. Second, teachers depicted multilingual students as struggling with or overwhelmed by ‘academic’ language but as having strong conversational skills and a relaxed and even jovial manner when using so-called ‘social’ language. Third, teachers depicted themselves as owners and controllers of ‘academic’ language and as charged with imparting ‘academic’ language on students. Finally, teachers associated English with ‘academic’ language and students’ home languages with ‘social’ language. These findings suggest that teachers’ figured worlds relate both to their views of language and to their identities and roles as teachers.

An "integration" of professional identity formation among rural physicians experiencing an interplay between their professional and personal identities.

The present understanding of professional identity formation is problematic since it underrepresents minority physicians and potentially excludes their professional identity formation experiences. Rural physicians are expected to have similar underrepresented aspects as minority physicians because of their specific sociocultural contexts and consequent private-professional intersection, which lead to ethical complexities. Therefore, to bridge this research gap, we interviewed 12 early- to mid-career Japanese physicians working in rural areas and explored their experiences. Through a narrative analysis guided by Figured Worlds theory, we analysed the data by focusing on the vocabulary, expressions, and metaphors participants used to describe their experiences. A central theme emerged concerning how the rural physicians configurated their personal versus professional participation in their local communities. Further, their identity narratives varied regarding how they constructed their identities, rural communities, and relationships as well as their identity formation ideals and strategies to achieve them. Informed by 'Big Questions' concerning worldview framework, we delineated four identity narratives as prototypes to describe how they participated in their communities. These identity narratives provide a preliminary understanding of how diverse identity formation is for rural physicians. In addition, our findings exposed the current professional identity formation framework as potentially biased towards single forms of participation in monolithic communities, overlooking complicated forms of participation in multiple communities. We argue that applying frameworks and concepts to capture these multiple forms of participation as well as revisiting the 'discourse of integration' are necessary steps to overcome the limitation of the current understanding of professional identity formation.

Affecting photos: Photographs as shared, affective ethnographic spaces

Scholars point to the ubiquity of visual images in media and popular culture as driving striking developments in visual research over the past decade. Yet, with this popularity, there is less attention paid to affective, non-representational dimensions of visual images and specifically to the ways that photos animate and inform ethnographic fieldwork. The felt, sensory qualities photographs hold play a role in not only what gets documented, but also what photos produce as shared, felt objects that circulate during fieldwork. This article redresses a gap in qualitative research literature on the affective, embodied co-experiencing of visual methods that happens during fieldwork by spotlighting a research study on family photographs. In the article, I begin by defining affect, then I profile extant non-representational, affect-driven visual methods and discuss how matter invites affect, and then I spotlight a larger research study I was involved in on visualising the modern Canadian family. In the article, I offer insights that emerged from photo-sharing interviews which produced what I call in the article, affective figured worlds. Built on Holland's concept of ‘figured worlds’ coupled with Ahmed's notion of ‘sticky objects’, the article explores the notion of affective figured worlds to attune researchers to more of the non-representational methods in play during visual research.

“I’m a bit out of place here.”—Preservice teachers’ positioning in the figured world of university mathematics

Preservice mathematics teachers are sometimes trained in programs so that they have both their own courses and joint courses with mathematics majors from the beginning of their studies. While this is thought to provide them with both deep mathematical knowledge and teaching-specific content right from the start, many of them report disaffection with and disengagement from mathematics during their very first semester. Current approaches often frame this from an individual’s perspective, investigating cognitive and affective individual differences among students. In contrast, we aim to understand this issue from a sociocultural perspective, examining underlying social processes. In this study, we thus explored preservice teachers’ experiences of the mathematics component of their training, using Holland and colleagues’ theory of figured worlds as a theoretical lens. Three group interviews with 14 preservice higher secondary teachers in a common mixed setting in Germany (one course specific to preservice teachers, one general mathematics course together with major students) were analyzed. Our findings displayed that the preservice teachers experienced two dichotomous figured worlds of mathematics and mathematics teaching. Our further analysis of their positioning between these worlds provided new insights to explain their disaffection, disengagement, and consequent learning behavior. We discuss practical implications, focusing on different teaching systems and interventions in teacher education.

Occupying liminal spaces: The figured worlds of student affairs senior leaders in the United States.

Student Affairs Senior Leaders (SASLs) in the United States lead offices responsible for academic advising, administrative documentation, scheduling, student health, financial aid, and transition to residency, yet they infrequently draw attention in the field's literature. We explore the role of SASLs and how they describe the social space of medical education. Using a constructivist approach informed by Figured Worlds theory, we conducted a sequential narrative and thematic analysis of the stories SASLs tell about their roles and experiences in the world of medical education. SASLs inhabit complex roles centred on advocating for medical students' academic, personal and social well-being. Their unique position within the medical school allows them to see the harm to vulnerable students made possible by misalignments inherent within medical education. Yet even with the challenges inherent in the environment, SASLs find reasons for hope. SASLs' identities are full of potential contradictions, but they have a unique view into the often-chaotic world of medical education.

Exploration of science teacher identity construction through various lived experiences

Identity is the construction of interpretations of life experiences in certain contexts, resulting in self-understanding. This research, with a single case study design, aims to explore the identity of science teachers in various contexts of Figured Worlds. The research participant is a science teacher named Yuni (pseudonym), who has a background in Physics Education. Data were collected through two semi-structured interviews. The results revealed how Yuni interpreted science-related life experiences in Figured Worlds to construct her identity. The researchers concluded that although, throughout Yuni's experience, she was not interested in becoming a teacher, she was able to become an outstanding teacher through her scientific papers.

Navigating between two figured worlds: A constructivist grounded theory study on residents' workplace experiences with health care management tasks.

Medical residents may be required to handle health care management (HCM) tasks alongside their clinical duties, despite not having received training to perform them. However, little research has been done on how medical residents acquire HCM skills at the workplace and how these experiences impact their learning. We completed a qualitative research study using the Constructivist Grounded Theory approach inform by the Figured World theory. To gather data, we held focus groups and conducted semi-structured interviews with 22 medical residents from various disciplines and learning levels at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. We utilised iterative data collection and analysis, constant comparison methods and theoretical sampling to construct our findings. We constructed two different worlds to represent how residents acquire HCM skills: the non-managing physician and the physician-as-manager. The former was characterised by a discourse that underplayed the role of the HCM tasks as part of residents' training, was full of negative interactions with the health care team and limited residents' agency. In the latter, residents collaborated and learned from health care team members, had supervisors who modelled how to incorporate HCM tasks into daily activities and expanded residents' agency. Residents developed their professional identity according to the world they were introduced into. Educational leaders must understand that the non-managing physician figured world gives residents a feeling of uprooting and discomfort when carrying out this type of tasks. To transform this world into the physician-as-manager, it is necessary to reconfigure some workplace hierarchies, consolidate interprofessional collaborations and change the discourse perpetuated by influential role models. Supervisors must also strengthen their knowledge of HCM and improve its integration into clinical practice. Any effort to train residents on HCM competencies could be lost if the workplace underscores their value in patient care.

‘I don't belong anywhere’: Identity and professional development in SAS doctors

Specialist, associate specialist and specialty (SAS) doctors constitute a marginalised professional group who can struggle to achieve the professional development they desire. Our primary objective was to understand, from a theoretically informed perspective, the ways in which the professional identity of SAS doctors influences their professional development opportunities, including through appraisal. Ten UK SAS doctors participated in in-depth, narrative interviews. Participants were drawn from six medical specialities, and ranged in experience (2.5–15 years) and country of primary medical qualification. Interview transcripts were analysed via critical discourse analysis using Figured Worlds theory. The position of SAS doctors within the Figured World was at times unstable, ambiguous and context dependent. They were often relative outsiders, not immediately trusted by colleagues. Some found their development needs eclipsed by the priorities of colleagues, typically consultants and postgraduate trainees. Appraisal was often not perceived to have successfully addressed these issues. This study enhances our understanding of the lived experience of SAS doctors, which is often in stark contrast to formal policy on the range of roles that they can fulfil. The struggles and successes of SAS doctors described here suggest that there is scope to improve the professional status and professional development opportunities for SAS doctors, including through appraisal.

“We need to step it up—We are basically the future”: Latinx young women co‐construct science storylines in high school chemistry

AbstractResearchers and practitioners in the United States increasingly promote phenomena‐based instruction in science that supports the development of a coherent storyline throughout the unit. Questions about who is constructing the science storyline and how still remain. Employing a qualitative ethnographic case study approach, we explore how three Latinx female students authentically contribute in their high school chemistry class and change the science storyline originally developed by the teacher. Data include over 950 min of video recordings, student artifacts, and interviews collected from a unit about reaction rate, which was contextualized by students' experiences with a local wildfire. The analysis points to three instructional moves that appear to play an important role in shifting the collective storyline: connecting to Latinx students' personal concerns, moving across multiple figured worlds, and recognizing students' epistemological contributions. Implications for supporting minoritized students are discussed.

Care‐experienced students in higher education: A case for re‐figuring higher education worlds to widen access and further social justice

AbstractWhile the higher education (HE) literature highlights how the sector is designed for a typified imagined student, the issues are particularly acute for care‐experienced students. The dominant HE discourse assumes that all students will be able or want to participate in ‘stereotypical’ aspects of student life and have stable networks to offer emotional, practical and financial support. Here, we deploy Holland et al.'s formative heuristic of figured worlds to interrogate how socially and culturally constructed realms and artefacts establish ‘givens’. People ‘figure’ who they are through navigating different realms which are conceptually and materially produced. We take particular inspiration from figured worlds’ focus on unequal power in social space; socially and institutionally endorsed understandings of how things ‘should’ be celebrate certain subjectivities and ways of ‘doing’ university while marginalising others. The paper discusses biographical‐narrative interviews and collaborative analysis with six students with experience of foster, residential and kinship care, all studying at a post‐1992 English university. Crucially, conversations highlighted participants’ exceptional maturity, educational passion and tenacity. Yet challenges remained. This paper focuses on four domains where our participants felt forced into peripheral subjectivities: student accommodation, wellbeing support, societies and curricula. Halls became hostile spaces through high rents, late‐night/loud drinking cultures and their transitory nature. Wellbeing services felt inimical when designed for quotidian anxiety and stress, neglecting more complex stories. Similarly, society membership fees, requisite team kits and ‘cliques’ materially and symbolically constricted participants. Finally, specific areas of curricula and pedagogical delivery posed problems, namely when traumatic and/or painful content (e.g. domestic violence and safeguarding) was not assumed to relate to anyone in the classroom. Despite these barriers, participants continued to navigate their HE journeys with skill and creativity. Although this paper's perspective is partial, we argue for theorising the holistic student experience through the lens of figured worlds. This reveals how norms and practices make dominant subject positions hard to access for care‐experienced students, contradicting and undermining their obvious value. In concluding, we discuss how locating problems as structural speaks back to deficit discourses, challenging us to reimagine and reconfigure HE through alternative discourses of worth. Attention is needed within and beyond the classroom; students’ lives are multifaceted and played out in multiple figured worlds.

Envisioning future roles: How women medical students navigate the figured world of medical school.

Women medical students experience tensions as they learn to become doctors. These tensions reflect the cultural world of medical school and clinical medicine, spaces that are highly gendered, racist and exclusionary. This study describes how women medical students are envisioning themselves as future doctors during their first 2 years of medical school while experiencing these tensions. Using Figured Worlds theory, this qualitative study focused on four participants from a larger longitudinal study. Each participant was interviewed four times over a 2-year period using narrative methodology and provided multiple written reflections during their first year of medical school. Analysis was performed using deductive methods reflecting Figured Worlds theory. Participants offered storied experiences about how they understood their place in the figured world, ways they enacted agency and how they responded to contradictions they encountered in medical school as they learned to become doctors. These three findings reflect concepts of Figured Worlds theory: positionality and discourse, power and agency, and improvisation. These findings also illuminate ways women medical students are navigating gendered and hierarchical structures of medical school to reimagine their roles in medicine. Participants' stories illuminate that woman medical students' lived experiences shaped their decision to enter medical school and continue to shape how they navigate their educational experience. These interactions have implications for their future roles as physicians and how medical schools respond to cultures of teaching and learning that may not recognise these students' positionality and potential agency in medical school and clinical medicine.

How to … use theory as method in HPE research.

Recognising that scholars in health professions education (HPE) are often unfamiliar with theory-informed research, we provide guidance on a robust method for using theory as a method to inform every aspect of research design from research question formation to data analysis and reporting. Using the Figured Worlds theory to illustrate the process, we mapped six concepts of particular importance to HPE: the figured world, agency, improvisation, discourse, positionality and power. Together the concepts were helpful analytic tools for our topic of interest. The concept of the figured world informed the construction of our program of research. Agency was useful in exploring the ways that subjects acted or did not act. We crafted interview questions to illustrate participants' unique improvisations. Discourse, or the world's artefacts both verbal and embodied, informed our understanding of the world's norms. Positionality allowed us to compare the agentic action of different participants. Finally, power offered an opportunity to recognise the intersection of the positional identities of participants and their stories of action or inaction. While theory-informed analytic tools offer an opportunity to construct nuanced understanding, generating new insights into study subjects and their worlds, caution is necessary as qualitative inquiry is an evolving process of give and take. Everything from the study's questions, methods and even theories might need to flex in response to the data. Ultimately, though initially intimidating, theories offer concrete methodological tools HPE scholars can rely on.

The figured world of medical education senior leaders: Making meaning and enacting agency.

The field of medical education is relatively new, and its boundaries are not firmly established. If we had a better understanding of the intricacies of the domain, we might be better equipped to navigate the ever-changing demands we must address. To that end, we explore medical education as a world wherein leaders harness agency, improvisation, discourse, positionality and power to act. Using the constructivist theory of figured worlds (FW), we conducted a narrative analysis of the stories medical education senior leaders tell about their roles and experiences in the world of medical education (n = 9). We identified four foundational premises about the world of medical education: (i) medical education stands at the intersection of three interrelated worlds of clinical medicine, hospital administration and university administration; (ii) medical education is shaped by and shapes the clinical learning environment at the local level; (iii) medical education experiences ubiquitous change which is a source of power; and (iv) medical education is energised by relationships between individuals. Focusing on the FW theory's notions of agency, improvisation, discourse, positionality and power enabled us to describe the world of medical education as a complex domain existing in a space of conflicting power hierarchies, identities and discourses. Using FW allowed us to see the powerful affordances offered to medical education due to its position between worlds amid unceasing change.

Dedicating, faking, and surviving: disclosing tensions in how three women university students negotiate collectively celebrated norms across European contexts

ABSTRACT Higher education biology (HEB), a discipline where women undergraduates are numerically overrepresented in most Western universities, has been given little attention in exploring norms of scientific practice from a student perspective. This study brings into focus how biology students negotiate identities in relation to figured worlds of HEB. Through thematic analysis of 27 timeline interviews from a Swedish, German, and British university as a collective case, we identified three hegemonic imaginaries across narratives: showing dedication through sacrifice, faking it to make it, and surviving as the fittest. Using a theoretical framework of feminist science critique, science identity, and figured worlds, we then offer a multiple case approach to how three women students negotiate the collective imaginaries identified, while simultaneously disavowing and challenging them. This conflict suggests they consider themselves successful despite the pressure to engage in ‘typical’ scientific practices they simultaneously contest. Consequently, this study demonstrates that celebrated imaginaries do not remain unproblematised by successful students, but create tensions in their identity work. This provokes discussions on how science imaginaries shape women’s participation in HEB and beyond. Visualising these tensions makes it furthermore possible to challenge and change hegemonic academic norms in HEB, moving towards more socially just and inclusive spaces.

An Agreed Figured World – Conceptualizing Good Physics Teachers in a Finnish University

ABSTRACT This study reports findings from an interview study with eleven teacher educators from a physics teacher training program in Finland. They represented the four training environments that students encounter during their education, i.e. the Department of Physics, the Department of Mathematics and Science Education, the Department of General Pedagogy, and the Training School. Drawing on Gee’s theory of figured worlds, our analysis shows that the educators across the four training environments largely maintain the same vision of what the attributes of a “good” physics teacher are. Although working in different settings, the eleven educators appear to be working in concert, each contributing to the development of an agreed professional physics teacher identity for their trainees. The ideal physics teacher was found to be envisioned in terms of a subject expert and a research-based educationalist, whilst at the same time being psychologically fully matured and willing to develop as both a person and a teacher. We identify a number of factors in the Finnish teacher training program that are suggested to contribute to the coherence found. Some of the factors we identify are specific to the Finnish situation, such as teacher status in society, whilst others could potentially be implemented elsewhere, such as dedicated training schools and direct teacher influence in the design of the curriculum.

The History of the Creation, Premiere, and Prohibition of Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony

The research subject of this article is Dmitri Shostakovich's “Thirteenth Symphony”—one of the most monumental symphonic canvases of the twentieth century, reflecting in its essence the chronicle of historical vicissitudes that took place in the Soviet Union. After a number of compromised compositions in the late 1940s and 1950s, forcibly written ("Songs about Forests," the Eleventh Symphony, numerous miniatures), the Thirteenth Symphony made a splash in musical and near-musical circles, as many perceived it from a polemic angle with the Stalinist regime. The reader's attention is focused on the fact that in it, the composer resorts to a veiled polemic with the current government, and the figurative world of the symphony is a direct reaction of Shostakovich not only to the events to which the opus is dedicated ("Babi Yar," the words of E. Yevtushenko) but also on the reality surrounding him. The semantic contexts of the work are examined through the prism of biographical data about the composer, as a result of which a wide documentary and historical apparatus are involved—the memoirs of Shostakovich's colleagues and contemporaries, his own statements addressed both to the symphony in question and to the broad historical and cultural context of the era. It is in the broad contextual approach that the scientific novelty of the article is seen. In addition, it presents analytical material that allows a deeper understanding of the essence of the work as a whole and the reasons why the symphony was banned at the time.

Bestiary of Pskov Chronicles Of XV–XVII Centuries: Images of People, Enemies, Wealth and Favorite Curses of Pskov Chroniclers

The article deals with the meanings and contexts of animal name mentions in the allegorical way in the text of Pskov chronicles and narratives. Allegorical mentions of domestic, wild, and exotic animals, as well as the use of epithets associated with animals are analyzed. The sources of literary borrowings referring to exotic and mythical animals such as asp, crocodile, camel, are investigated. The author concludes that chronicles and literary texts are not sufficiently informative to identify historical realities of everyday life associated with animals. At the same time, the sources provide rich ground for the study of expressive expressions in Pskov political rhetoric, historical and moral literature, and vividly characterize the worldview and figurative world of the inhabitants of the borderlands.

«Как они меня заставляли отказаться от Бога…»: казус советского верующего 1960-х годов

The article reconstructs the events of the late 1950s and early 1960s on the basis of archival materials and publications in the Soviet periodical press. They took place in the town of Ocher, Perm region. A small group of Evangelical Christian Baptists gathered in the town. At the end of 1959, a schism occurred within the community. Several women experienced a new religious conversion. They became followers of the Pentecostals. The schism proceeded against the backdrop of intense religious experiences. One of the believers described her experiences in letters and sent them to the Ocher District Committee, then to the Perm Regional Committee of the CPSU. As part of the anti-religious campaign, these letters were provided. Friendly courts were held. Feuilletons and accusations were published in the regional periodical press. The destinies of believers were to be decided by the local atheistic community. The purpose of the study is to identify the socio-cultural circumstances of the life of believers in the local community of the town of Ocher, and to see it through the prism of the small social and cultural technologies of Soviet life. The methodological basis of the study is a microhistorical approach focusing on the context and details of everyday life. The author shows the believer's ability to intertwine in his or her own mind and emotional experiences his or her religious experience and the figurative world of the Soviet everyday life. This ability is considered as an essential characteristic of Soviet religiosity, which had been formed by the middle of the 20th century. The biographical incident of Natalya Ershova, the vicissitudes of her fate allow us to notice the breaks in the social reality in which the 'ordinary' Soviet person lived. Due to this, one can identify and describe the character and specific subjectivity of the Soviet believer.

The History of the Creation, Premiere, and Prohibition of Dmitri Shostakovich's Thirteenth Symphony

The research subject of this article is Dmitri Shostakovich's “Thirteenth Symphony”—one of the most monumental symphonic canvases of the twentieth century, reflecting in its essence the chronicle of historical vicissitudes that took place in the Soviet Union. After a number of compromised compositions in the late 1940s and 1950s, forcibly written ("Songs about Forests," the Eleventh Symphony, numerous miniatures), the Thirteenth Symphony made a splash in musical and near-musical circles, as many perceived it from a polemic angle with the Stalinist regime. The reader's attention is focused on the fact that in it, the composer resorts to a veiled polemic with the current government, and the figurative world of the symphony is a direct reaction of Shostakovich not only to the events to which the opus is dedicated ("Babi Yar," the words of E. Yevtushenko) but also on the reality surrounding him. The semantic contexts of the work are examined through the prism of biographical data about the composer, as a result of which a wide documentary and historical apparatus are involved—the memoirs of Shostakovich's colleagues and contemporaries, his own statements addressed both to the symphony in question and to the broad historical and cultural context of the era. It is in the broad contextual approach that the scientific novelty of the article is seen. In addition, it presents analytical material that allows a deeper understanding of the essence of the work as a whole and the reasons why the symphony was banned at the time.