At the age of a failing economic system and undeniable evidence of the effects humankind has had over the planet, it is necessary to look for alternatives to the way we live locally. This article explores the use of designing narratives and metanarratives to co-create imaginaries serving as the needed alternatives. This research starts by considering the historical factors to understand how industrialisation and the loss of traditional practices created a culture of disconnection from Nature in the Girona area, but also looks at why people start now reconnecting with it. The analysis is the foundation for speculative design practices to co-create a new local narrative of connection and regeneration. The project adopted the Integrative Worldviews Framework and used paradoxes to create possible future worldviews based on historical factors and literature. Citizens participated in conversational future-visioning workshops to develop and evaluate their local imagery of the previously created worldviews. This conversation-based exercise evidenced the potential of paradoxes in destructive futures to create imaginaries of regeneration. These imaginaries merge and form future stories. From the future narratives, the practice created cultural artefacts embodying a new culture of connection based on storytelling, traditional jobs, and a mythological understanding of Nature. Finally, as observed at the end of the project, these artefacts allow citizens to adopt them as their culture and expand their current worldview.
This article provides a description of the emergence of the Spanish ‘Occupy’ movement, Democracia real ya. The aim is to analyse the innovative discursive features of this movement and to connect this analysis to what we consider the innovative potential of the critical sciences. The movement is the result of a spontaneous uprising that appeared on the main squares of Madrid and Barcelona on 15 May 2011 and then spread to other Spanish cities. This date gave it its name: 15M. While the struggle for democracy in Spain is certainly not new, the 15M group shows a series of innovative features. These include the emphasis on peaceful struggle and the imaginary of a new democracy or worldview, transmitted through innovative placards and slogans designed by Spanish citizens. We consider these innovative not only due to their creativity, but also because of their use as a form of civil action. Our argument is that these placards both functioned as a sign of protest and, in combination with the demonstrations and the general dynamics of 15M, helped to reframe the population’s understanding of the crisis and rearticulate the identity of the citizens from victims to agents. In order to analyse the multimodal character of this struggle, we developed an interdisciplinary methodology, which combines socio-cognitive approaches that consider ideological proposals as socio-cognitive constructs (i.e. the notion of narrative or cognitive frame), and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in the analysis of discourses related to processes of social imagination and transformation. The socio-constructivist perspective is used to consider these discourses in relation to their actors, particular contexts and actions. The use of CDA, which included a careful rhetoric analysis, helped to analyse the process of deconstruction, transformation and reconstruction that 15M uses to maintain its struggle. The narrative analysis and the discursive theoretical concept of articulation helped to methodologically show aspects of the process of change alluded to above. This change was both in terms of cognition and in the modification of identity that turned a large part of the Spanish population from victims to indignados and to the neologism indignadanos, which is a composition of indignado and ciudadano (citizen).
This article examines the organisation of collaborative digital methods and data projects in the context of engaged research-led teaching in the humanities. Drawing on interviews, field notes, projects and practices from across eight research groups associated with the Public Data Lab (publicdatalab.org), it provides considerations for those interested in undertaking such projects, organised around four areas: composing (1) problems and questions; (2) collectives of inquiry; (3) learning devices and infrastructures; and (4) vernacular, boundary and experimental outputs.Informed by constructivist approaches to learning and pragmatist approaches to collective inquiry, these considerations aim to support teaching and learning through digital projects which surface and reflect on the questions, problems, formats, data, methods, materials and means through which they are produced.
MULTIFILE
The Dutch main water systems face pressing environmental, economic and societal challenges due to climatic changes and increased human pressure. There is a growing awareness that nature-based solutions (NBS) provide cost-effective solutions that simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help building resilience. In spite of being carefully designed and tested, many projects tend to fail along the way or never get implemented in the first place, wasting resources and undermining trust and confidence of practitioners in NBS. Why do so many projects lose momentum even after a proof of concept is delivered? Usually, failure can be attributed to a combination of eroding political will, societal opposition and economic uncertainties. While ecological and geological processes are often well understood, there is almost no understanding around societal and economic processes related to NBS. Therefore, there is an urgent need to carefully evaluate the societal, economic, and ecological impacts and to identify design principles fostering societal support and economic viability of NBS. We address these critical knowledge gaps in this research proposal, using the largest river restoration project of the Netherlands, the Border Meuse (Grensmaas), as a Living Lab. With a transdisciplinary consortium, stakeholders have a key role a recipient and provider of information, where the broader public is involved through citizen science. Our research is scientifically innovative by using mixed methods, combining novel qualitative methods (e.g. continuous participatory narrative inquiry) and quantitative methods (e.g. economic choice experiments to elicit tradeoffs and risk preferences, agent-based modeling). The ultimate aim is to create an integral learning environment (workbench) as a decision support tool for NBS. The workbench gathers data, prepares and verifies data sets, to help stakeholders (companies, government agencies, NGOs) to quantify impacts and visualize tradeoffs of decisions regarding NBS.
Naast kennis en vaardigheden draait professionaliteit om bewustwording van de persoonlijke waarden die professionele besluitvorming beïnvloeden. Inzicht in persoonlijke waarden is bepalend voor de kwaliteit van het professionele handelen. Praktijkgericht en biografisch onderzoekt leidt tot ondersteuning van dit bewustwordingsproces. Doel Het doel van dit onderzoek is om de persoonlijke drijfveren van studenten en beroepskrachten boven water te krijgen. We ontwikkelen daarvoor verschillende instrumenten die bijdragen om de dieperliggende motivaties te articuleren en bewust te maken. De focus is gericht op de morele bewustwording als onderdeel van de persoonlijke levensoriëntatie. We ontwikkelen bruikbare instrumenten om de normen en waarden van studenten en beroepskrachten in kaart te brengen en te analyseren. We ontwikkelen tools en werkvormen die studenten en beroepskrachten ondersteunen in hun zelfreflectie en hun normatieve professionalisering. Resultaten Resultaat is een narratief-biografisch onderzoeksinstrument dat aan elke studierichting aangepast kan worden. Het is een instrument dat gedurende de hele studie als voortgaande relfectie ingezet kan worden. Daarnaast heeft onderzoek in enkele analyse-instrumenten voorzien die bijdragen aan een verdiept inzicht in de onderliggende motivaties van studenten en beroepskrachten voor hun professioneel handelen. We onderscheiden zeven typologieën van studenten die studieloopbaanbegeleiders helpen effectief af te stemmen op de student om haar/zijn waarden en normen expliciet te maken. Voortgaand onderzoek en projecten leiden momenteel tot een variëteit aan didactische werkvormen, reflectietools die vaak onbewuste waardenoriëntatie bespreekbaar maken en in dialoog brengen. Theoretische onderbouwing is beschreven in het proefschrift Van der Zande, E. (2018). Life Orientation for Professionals. A Narrative Inquiry into Morality and Dialogical Competency in Professionalisation. Almere: Parthenon. Looptijd 20 november 2019 - 01 december 2023 Aanpak Dit project valt uiteen in diverse deelprojecten: - Leraar, waar sta je voor? - Didactische integratie van het narratief zelfportret in het leerteamleren
Naast kennis en vaardigheden draait professionaliteit om bewustwording van de persoonlijke waarden die professionele besluitvorming beïnvloeden. Inzicht in persoonlijke waarden is bepalend voor de kwaliteit van het professionele handelen. Praktijkgericht en biografisch onderzoekt leidt tot ondersteuning van dit bewustwordingsproces.
