Meaning-making and sense-making are generally assumed to be part of students’ personal vocational knowledge development, since they contribute to both students’ socialisation in a vocation and students’ personalisation of concepts, values and beliefs regarding that vocation. However, how students in vocational education acquire meaning and make sense of vocational knowledge is not explained. Furthermore, examples of what these processes entail in the context of vocational education are lacking. A multiple case study was performed to explore students’ meaning-making and sense-making in classroom interactions in Dutch senior secondary vocational education. Our results show that meaning-making is a process in which students interpret vocational knowledge by explicating and clarifying this knowledge. Sense-making is perceived to be a process in which students concretise vocational knowledge by testing and justifying this knowledge. A research model was developed to describe how students make meaning and sense of vocational knowledge in interaction with practitioners.
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In media audience research we tend to assume that media are engaged with when they are used, however ‘light’ such engagement might be. Once ‘passive media use’ was banned as a reference to media use, being a media audience member became synonymous with being a meaning producer. In audience research however I find that media are not always the object of meaning making in daily life and that media texts can be hardly meaningful. Thinking about media and engagement, there is a threefold challenge in relation to audience research. The coming into being of platform media and hence of new forms of media production on a micro level that come out of and are woven into practices of media use, suggests that we need to redraft the repertoire of terms used in audience research (and maybe start calling it something else). Material and immaterial media production, the unpaid labour on the part of otherwise audience members should for instance be taken into account. Then, secondly, there is the continuing challenge to further develop heuristically strong ways of linking media use and meaning making, and most of all to do justice, thirdly, to those moments and ways in which audiences truly engage with media texts without identifying them with those texts.
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Through video-materials of use-in-practice we present and discuss NOOT, an interactive tool that supports sense-making during creative sessions. The project investigates how ‘cognitive scaffolding’ may support such sense-making.
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Expectations are high for digital technologies to address sustainability related challenges. While research into such applications and the twin transformation is growing rapidly, insights in the actual daily practices of digital sustainability within organizations is lacking. This is problematic as the contributions of digital tools to sustainability goals gain shape in organizational practices. To bridge this gap, we develop a theoretical perspective on digital sustainability practices based on practice theory, with an emphasis on the concept of sociomateriality. We argue that connecting meanings related to sustainability with digital technologies is essential to establish beneficial practices. Next, we contend that the meaning of sustainability is contextspecific, which calls for a local meaning making process. Based on our theoretical exploration we develop an empirical research agenda.
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The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous situations, may give additional insights into the continuation of emotionally abusive coaching practices. The purpose of this study was to apply the seven properties of sense-making to explore how athletes and parents made sense of coaching practices in elite women’s gymnastics. We interviewed 14 elite women gymnasts and their parents to examine how they made sense of what occurred during practices. The results show how the sense-making of athletes and parents was an ongoing activity that resulted in a code of silence and a normalization of abusive coaching practices.
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Project objectives Radicalisation research leads to ethical and legal questions and issues. These issues need to be addressed in way that helps the project progress in ethically and legally acceptable manner. Description of Work The legal analysis in SAFIRE addressed questions such as which behavior associated with radicalisation is criminal behaviour. The ethical issues were addressed throughout the project in close cooperation between the ethicists and the researchers using a method called ethical parallel research. Results A legal analysis was made about criminal law and radicalisation. During the project lively discussions were held in the research team about ethical issues. An ethical justification for interventions in radicalisation processes has been written. With regard to research ethics: An indirect informed consent procedure for interviews with (former) radicals has been designed. Practical guidelines to prevent obtaining information that could lead to indirect identification of respondents were developed.
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This is the editorial paper for the virtual special issue “Using Q methodology in higher education: Opportunities and challenges”, consisting of nine original research studies from different international contexts. In addition to presenting novel findings, contributors were invited to discuss the following two questions at the center of the special issue call: In what sense has Q methodology served as a fitting approach to investigate subjectivity in higher education? What methodological opportunities and challenges arise with Q methodology in higher education settings? This editorial provides an overview and discussion of the various justifications mentioned for Q methodology. Furthermore, it collates the opportunities and challenges contributors discuss in relation to their studies using this almost 90-year-old methodological approach. The editorial paper concludes with recommendations for future Q methodological studies in higher education and beyond.
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When it comes to hard to solve problems, the significance of situational knowledge construction and network coordination must not be underrated. Professional deliberation is directed toward understanding, acting and analysis. We need smart and flexible ways to direct systems information from practice to network reflection, and to guide results from network consultation to practice. This article presents a case study proposal, as follow-up to a recent dissertation about online simulation gaming for youth care network exchange (Van Haaster, 2014).
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Teacher professional identity is conceptualized in this chapter as a complex configuration of personal and contextual factors. Professional identity is also seen as dynamic and subject to change. This coloring of the concept leads here to a specific elaboration of research with regard to (student) teachers’ identity formation. This research then focuses on (student) teachers working on issues arising from tensions between the personal and the contextual, the ways in which they position themselves toward relevant others, the impact of the micropolitical reality of the school on their functioning and well-being, and the role so-called “stories to live by” play in their work. The operationalization of the concept is illustrated by two studies in which the complexity and uniqueness of (the development of) professional identity have been investigated using narrative methods and techniques. This chapter also distinguishes between two different but related internal processes that are important in teacher education, namely professional learning internalizing knowledge and skills that are generally found to be relevant for the profession, i.e., teaching competence) and identity formation (a personal process of validating learning experiences in light of one’s “image-ofself-as-teacher,” that is, the teacher that one is and wants to become). It is argued that both processes can reinforce and enrich each other and, as such, will result in a more comprehensive and coherent framework for understanding teachers’ professional work and their development as teachers. An attempt is made to present both internal processes in an overarching model, referred to here as “framework of professional identity learning.” The chapter concludes with suggestions for (follow-up) research.
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