Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university professors and lecturers who teach the subject of RE: professors and lecturers who train and educate students to teach RE. Aim: The main aim of the project was to gain a better insight into the inherent complexity of the professionalism of academics, that is, their own positionality in the plurality of the Roman Catholic traditions they adhere to in relation to their capabilities and commitment to the current curriculum – the ‘old’ one – and the new curriculum to be developed, in the context of the Dutch plural society. Setting: Respondents in this research were university professors and lecturers of the Teacher Training Institute of Tilburg University, located at Utrecht, the Netherlands. Methods: For this investigation, we used a research instrument based on the dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method for organisations to gain insight into professionals’ own and their colleagues’ positionality regarding teaching RE. Results: Preliminary results show that the self confrontation method for organisations has shown itself to be a challenging instrument to invite academics involved in the process of data construction and data analysis. Conclusion: Based on these results, we recommend to include the research population in a validation process to increase the sustainability of the results and to maximise engagement in the implementation phase of the new curriculum.
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Positionality is the process of reflecting on and acknowledging your self-identifications, experiences, and potential privileges which influence your teaching, occupational therapy practice role and research. A reflexive approach acknowledges this positionality. This awareness feeds back into how knowledge is produced, acknowledging one’s own positioning in the field of research in occupational therapy and occupational science and how this field is bounded by, and at times reproducing, systems of power.Focusing on research, throughout Occupational Therapy education students receive education on research methodologies and evidence-based practice in which they learn the theory and skills which enable them to conduct small-scale research during their studies and prepare them for possible roles as a researcher in future. The process of learning critical reflexivity regarding one’s own positionality is a critical part of any research training.This workshop will provide three examples, from three Modules within the European Master of Occupational Therapy, on how positionality is used in pedagogical activities. Following the presentation of these examples, groups will be led in a discussion on the participants’ own experiences with positionality in research education, and what educators need to be able to engage in this critical reflexive exercise with students.
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How is an academic philosopher, humanities researcher, or scientist with an interest in philosophy able to imagine, understand and reproduce a philosophical theory that’s highly abstract in a way, because the theory is a priory by nature and doesn’t use a lot of examples that relate to daily life? For example, Helmuth Plessner’s Die Stufendes Organischen und der Mensch(1928)? Talking from my own experience as a trained academic philosopher with a master’s degree and a PhD in philosophy of anthropology and technology (Müller 2009), it takes a lot of analytical training and many years of study to build a huge‘internal mental mind map’–looking like a gigantic spider’s web or grid with interrelated philosophical and other scientific concepts–that serves as a road map to compare ideas, deepen the understanding of formerly read texts and gain new perspectives on philosophy as a discipline and life in general. Working in academia, this way of reading texts, understanding theories, producing papers and a dissertation, worked very well for me for quite some time. Until I startedtoteachphilosophy myself as a PhD student. In university, students are used to lectures accompanied by PowerPoints with lots of slides packed full of theories, definitions, andquotes, and sometimes a few images are added. I liked doing ‘traditional knowledge transfer education’ during my lectures but enjoyed the work groups even better as Ilearned a lot myself from the discussions with my students. Although being the‘master’ in front of a class of‘students’ has its beautiful sides (standing in a long tradition ofteaching regarded as a craft, where knowledge is passed over like a‘guild system’), I preferred the ’democratic ways of the work group’ joining efforts together in gaining a better understanding of philosophical theories and the way they relate to history and the cultures we live in–and our own lives. I always had the feeling that teaching philosophy could be done in a different way. This made me think. Could I invent a set-ting where the traditional ways of knowledge transfer would intertwine with the spicy‘agree to disagree’ discussions and moments of synergy?
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The premise for this paper is that tourism scholars researching in Israel and Palestine are, in effect, actors in the geopolitical landscape of the Holy Land. Political tourism is a significant factor in how the Israel–Palestine geopolitical conflict is represented. The current paper provides an analysis of how tourism academics address the situation. A research team of Israeli, Palestinian and a third country origins collaborated to produce a narrative synthesis by systematically reviewing 35 academic papers selected through defined criteria. This approach minimized bias and aimed for analytical robustness and validity. Two main conclusions are derived from the analysis. First, papers tend to focus on the social, touristic and religious aspects of tourism not on the core issues of the geopolitical conflict. Second, the works did not contribute to dialogue between parties but reinforced separateness thus reflecting the political conflict.
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AI tools increasingly shape how we discover, make and experience music. While these tools can have the potential to empower creativity, they may fundamentally redefine relationships between stakeholders, to the benefit of some and the detriment of others. In this position paper, we argue that these tools will fundamentally reshape our music culture, with profound effects (for better and for worse) on creators, consumers and the commercial enterprises that often connect them. By paying careful attention to emerging Music AI technologies and developments in other creative domains and understanding the implications, people working in this space could decrease the possible negative impacts on the practice, consumption and meaning of music. Given that many of these technologies are already available, there is some urgency in conducting analyses of these technologies now. It is important that people developing and working with these tools address these issues now to help guide their evolution to be equitable and empower creativity. We identify some potential risks and opportunities associated with existing and forthcoming AI tools for music, though more work is needed to identify concrete actions which leverage the opportunities while mitigating risks.
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While the importance of professional support following very preterm delivery (VP) is established, the parental experience of support still warrants deeper understanding. Evaluation of a Dutch one-year post-discharge responsive parenting intervention following VP suggested that parents with lower educational levels benefitted less from the program. This idiographic phenomenological study investigated the lived experiences of two mothers with differing educational backgrounds receiving professional support during hospitalization and post-discharge. In-depth interviews with the mothers were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. We formulate three impressions: (1) How the mothers made sense of their experiences resonated with the findings of research on class differences in parenting. (2) The mothers valued professionals who struck a personalized balance between supporting their maternal agency and attending to their vulnerability and needs for help and perspective. (3) The mothers experienced greater trust in professionals who could suspend pre- conceived assumptions and take their personal characteristics into consideration. Practice suggestions are extrapolated for social work professionals. The study has relevance to educational diversity and recommends an overarching sensitivity to positionality in professional work with parents.
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This article discusses Deep Mapping in Geography teaching and learning by drawing on a case study of a summer school organised during the COVID-19 pandemic. Deep Mapping was used to foster deep learning among the students and teach them about a distant place and people. The exercise tasked the students to work on the creation of layered maps representing the fieldwork site, the city of Vancouver, Canada. Critical student reflections about the Deep Mapping process are used to address some of the benefits and challenges. The Deep Mapping exercise stimulated the students to critically engage with the diverse summer school materials, move beyond a superficial view of the city, maps and mapping, and reflect on their positionality. The method is promising in light of making deep engagement with other places more accessible to those who might not have or be inclined to access such international educational experience and also offers another opportunity for blended learning. In conclusion, we argue that Deep Mapping offers a timely and highly engaging approach to learn about a place and people from another part of the world – be it on location or at a distance.
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This article explores how schools can function as a pedagogical in-between space, or a pedagogical inter-space, and how lecturers can act professionally within this space, of which they themselves are also a part. Met een samenvatting in het Nederlands: De school als een ‘pedagogische tussenruimte’.
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Short abstract:This paper brings a media theoretical perspective on mediatized wars. It argues that the affordances and use cultures of popular social media platforms turn wars into live media events, involving both people who are living under war and those joining in from a distance.Long abstract:This paper brings a media theoretical perspective on mediatized wars. It argues that the affordances and use cultures of popular social media platforms turn wars into live media events in which liveness – a sense of “being now here together” (Hammelburg, 2021) – involves both people who are living under war and those joining in from a distance.This involvement is of a very different kind than what we know from earlier wars that were mediated through radio and television; the logics of platformed media have permeated and transformed everyday life (Altheide, 2018; Deuze, 2012; Hepp, 2019). Many people living under war share their personal experiences and thoughts through TikTok and Instagram, involving followers worldwide as witnesses at a distance. Further, these war followers are not only involved as witnesses, very often they also add their own social media content to the “event-sphere” (Volkmer and Deffner, 2010) of the war, and by doing so they write themselves into it.Drawing from media theory on liveness and empirical material – photos and videos – from TikTok and Instagram concerning the wars in Ukraine and Russia, and Israel and Gaza, this paper shows how wars as live events are constructed. In its analyses of different modes of involvement in these live war event-spheres, it addresses the issue of positionality.
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There has been limited adoption of Immersive Journalism (IJ) by the audience; simultaneously, the audience’s perspective is rarely considered in the production and research of IJ. At this point, however, it is crucial to incorporate an audience perspective to identify potentially unintended effects of IJ and improve on the innovation of IJ. This study investigates the audience’s experience and evaluation of IJ by qualitatively analyzing their thoughts after viewing two IJ cases. Our results indicate that the audience may pick up on intended effects, such as a sense of presence and an intense emotional experience, but some also express unease towards these effects. Furthermore, the audience struggles to comprehend this study’s two immersive journalistic cases as part of the journalistic genre. These findings provide insight into the gap between the initial hype and the current reality of IJ and provide the basis for propositions for future IJ productions.
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