Lived experiences of being-in-the-forest as experiential sharing with the more-than-human world

Abstract

This article considers human embodied relationships with the more-than-human world, in the Swedish forest context, and through a phenomenological approach. The research focuses on lived experiences of being-in-the-forest, starting in the author’s experiences, using walk-and-talk conversations as inquiry process with study participants. Analysis reveals that (a) childhood experiences seem to play a crucial role in adult experiences of forests; (b) place-identity and sense of belonging are significant elements in how the participants define themselves; (c) being-in-the-forest is connected to an active, exploring and moving body and that the connection with the more-than-human world of the case study forest is deeply anchored as part of the human body. This relationship appears to be shaped through a process of constructing and reconstructing memories, practice and selfhood, and can, it seems, last a lifetime. In the long term, such relationships could have a positive impact on human connections to the more-than-human world.     

Personal epistemologies and older workers

This paper evaluates the need and prospects for older workers to develop and deploy effective and critical personal epistemologies in order to maintain workplace competence, successfully negotiate work transitions and secure ontological security in their working life. Furthermore, it addresses different ways of reflecting by workers, which types of reflection are appreciated by workplace managers and how these relate to the work situation and other contextual factors. A personal epistemology is an approach to and a practice of learning directed by individuals, often for purposes that are important for them. This seems particularly salient for older workers as both the institutional and brute facts (Searle 1995 Searle, J. R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality, London: Penguin.  [Google Scholar]) that comprise workplace affordances and maturation factors, respectively, may not be supportive of their attempts to maintain competence in their working lives. Instead, as both individual agents and parts of collective actions, the exercise of personal epistemologies premised on critical reflection stands as a means for older workers to understand and respond to the changing requirements of work life. These propositions are introduced and elaborated using a study of older workers’ capacities to be critically reflective of their practice and enact workplace change.     

Personal epistemologies, work and learning

This paper elaborates the role and development of personal epistemologies when learning through and for work. It does this by drawing on explanatory propositions from psychology, sociology and philosophical accounts. The aim here is to go beyond conceptions of epistemological beliefs and to position personal epistemologies as being active, intentional, derived in personally particular ways through the unique set of socially derived experiences that comprise individuals’ life histories or ontogenies. In this way, they are held to be comprehensive and encompassing as a conception to explain individuals’ learning and as constructed through social experiences, albeit in person-specific ways. Given their active and constructive character, these epistemologies are placed centre stage in the dual processes of learning and remaking culturally derived practices, such as with paid work. These propositions are discussed and elaborated through a consideration of engagement and learning in forms of work that provide, respectively, relatively weak and rich forms of direct social guidance, and which require the enactment in different ways of individuals’ personal epistemologies in the conduct of and learning through paid work.     

Educational multilateralism in a changing world order: Unesco and the limits of the possible

This paper provides a critical re-valuation of Unesco's work in education over the last five decades, updating this story to include the most recent decade of crisis and reform within the organization and within the United Nations more broadly. Drawing on interviews within Unesco, a wide range of Unesco documentation and secondary sources, the paper addresses two main questions. First, what can Unesco's 52 years of experience in the field of education tell us about the possibilities and limits of multilateral cooperation in education? Second, how (and how successfully) has Unesco adapted to changes in world order over the last two decades?     

Educational technology and the world wide web in the pacific islands

TechTrends - The United States and Japan are at the forefront of technological innovation, telecommunications and information management in the Pacific. This new era of “information”...     

Educational technology and the world wide web in the pacific islands

Conclusion The United States and Japan are at the forefront of technological innovation, telecommunications and information management in the Pacific. This new era of “information” and “communication” raises disturbing questions: Whose information will be disseminated and heard? Can diversity be respected in a world driven by CNN World News and MTV world music? We do not have answers to these questions, but those of us who disseminate innovation and technology into the Pacific must engage in these dialogues with indigenous peoples. Pacific Island cultures must be taken into account as educators and others move toward international dialogue about educational technology, learning and “voice.” We hope this essay stimulates further thought and discussion in this area, as well as an impetus for developing partnerships between Pacific Island communities and institutions of higher education. Her research interests include learning and teaching with multimedia and web-based materials. His research interests include technologies for self-determination and voice.     

Physics students' epistemologies and views about knowing and learning

Classrooms are complex environments in which curriculum, students, and teachers interact. In recent years a number of studies have investigated the effect of teachers' epistemologies on the classroom environment, yet little is known about students' epistemologies and how these interact with those of teachers. The purpose of this study was to document students' epistemologies and their concurrent views about knowing and learning. Using a written essay, short-answer responses to statements, a preferred classroom environment inventory, and interviews, students' views on scientific knowledge and their own knowing and learning were collected from 42 students in three sections of an introductory physics course. Our rather broad, qualitative inquiry provides a dynamic view of students' understanding of knowing and learning in high school physics. Our analyses reveal a spectrum of epistemological commitments commensurable with positions from objectivism to relativism, most of them with experientialist coloring. Even within individuals, these commitments could be at once commensurable and incommensurable with the same epistemological position. We also find rather significant inter- and intra-individual differences with respect to the consequences of a specific epistemological stance to learning, the learning strategies employed, and the learning environment preferred. Students' views on knowing and learning in physics are presented in the form of an emergent theory. The findings are discussed in terms of their application to classroom environments.     

Touching epistemologies: meanings of average and variation in nursing practice

We present a study of the meanings of average and variation displayed by paediatric nurses. We trace how these meanings shape, and are shaped by, nurses' interpretations of trends in patient and population data. We suggest a theoretical framework for making sense of the data which compares and contrasts nurses' epistemology with that of official mathematics. Finally, we outline some provisional didactical implications.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Disciplinary epistemologies,generic attributes and undergraduate academic writing in nursing and midwifery

Generic attributes such as ‘holding a critical stance’, ‘using evidence to support claims’, and ‘projecting an impersonal voice’ are central to disciplinary academic writing in higher education. These attributes, also referred to as ‘skills’, have for a long time been conceptualised as transferable in that once learnt students are able to use them in a variety of contexts and for a range of needs. Over the past few years, however, the conceptualisation of these attributes as transferable has come under close scrutiny as they have been identified to be highly context-sensitive rather than context-flexible as they were once thought to be. Drawing on data from a 2-year study on undergraduate academic writing in nursing and midwifery at a university in the UK, this paper critically examines the role of disciplinary epistemologies in the conceptualisation of these attributes in the two disciplines, and demonstrates how these beliefs help to shape academic writing at undergraduate level, thus contributing to debates on generic skills and attributes and specificity in disciplinary discourses. The paper concludes by highlighting the importance for writers to examine how knowledge is displayed, constructed and communicated in their disciplines, and the significance of analysing the relationship between disciplinary epistemologies, generic attributes and academic writing as a way of gaining access to and producing central discourses in their professional community.     

Educational Research: the State of Sweden and the Australian 2.2 world

Current tendencies in educational research in Sweden are presented and compared to Australia. We here refer to; organization of research, research allocation, publication patterns, and assessments of research qualities. Different trajectories of educational research were identified, where Australian research was organized as a field of study, while Swedish research had a disciplinary organization, which now is eroding into a situation more close to the Australian one. In other aspects the Australian and Swedish trajectories seem to harmonize, except for the fact that RAEs in Sweden are initiated and run by the universities themselves. There are also some differences in how research qualities are assessed and the outcomes of these assessments. Given these findings different strategies to deal with the current situation are discussed.     

Educational management in transitionalized world of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning in Thammasat University

Education reforms in transitionalized world arose first against neo-classical education or ＂humanistic education＂ which resembled classical education in many respects, with the most concern being in both majority and minority of students. Besides, they resembled in that their effects force the instructors teach for the tests, to make the curriculums change to standard, to push the students to become the academic entrepreneurs, etc. Necessarily, the academic of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning in Thammasat University has been adjusted. Then, this quantitative in research approach focuses on educational management guidelines. The open-ended questionnaire and structural interview are main instruments. Percentage, mean, mode, standard deviation, F-test and Pearson-correlation were used for analyzing the data. The research finding reveals that the mainstream and the alternative aspects in the educational management guidelines concern with external factors such as the entrepreneurs＇ satisfaction, the standardization and the students＇ voices. The entrepreneurs＇ satisfaction relates to the general qualifications, identifications and abilities of the graduates under the trend of selecting between government universities and private universities in rate of 3：1. The standardization means new curriculum structure： 25% of general basic courses, 10%-I 5% of elective courses and 60%-65% of architectural program courses. The students＇ voice indicates the reduction on central control and standardized testing.     

Educational research on the third world or with the third world: A view from the south

Traditional forms of collaborative research between specialists in industrialised countries and researchers in the Third World have usually had a very limited impact. Three types of undesirable approaches can be identified in that respect: ‘the turn-key approach’; the ‘laboratory approach’, and the ‘ivory tower approach’. After defining each of these approaches, this article tries to identify the main obstacles to meaningful and useful cooperation between researchers in rich and poor countries, and to propose ways to overcome these obstacles.     

For a revival of feminist consciousness-raising: horizontal transformation of epistemologies and transgression of neoliberal TimeSpace

ABSTRACT

This paper looks back on the methodology and experience of feminist consciousness-raising (CR) in the 1970s, in relation to the current re-emergence of feminism. It constructs an argument that a new wave of CR is desirable so as to construct new forms of feminist pedagogy and activism. The paper will argue that contemporary feminism in the UK and USA would benefit from this kind of methodology, through which a standpoint is constructed. The core of the paper is an analysis of how CR works as an affective and social process. Drawing on academic studies and participant accounts, the paper reconstructs the mechanisms through which participants’ subjectivities and narratives are expressed and transformed. It suggests that these mechanisms express different non-homogeneous temporalities. The paper invites feminist pedagogy to get back to the base level of experience and unfold new theories and strategies to address the current context.