Toward a Programmatic Pragmatism: A Response to Naoko Saito

Naoko Saito has made a good case for emphasising the 'tragic' dimension within Dewey's pragmatism. My response suggests ways in which Saito has not gone far enough. She does not adequately move beyond 'procedural pragmatism' to a 'programmatic pragmatism' which offers substantive articulations about the human good. In addition, her emphasis on 'Emersonian perfectionism' is misguided. Both the language of 'perfectionism' and the figure of Emerson are unsuitable for the project she intends. Speaking more concretely of a 'tragic–comic meliorism' allied to the novelist Hawthorne, it is suggested, provides a more fruitful path.     

Setting a Non-Agenda: Effects of a Perceived Lack of Problems in Recent News or Twitter

The mere perception that news has given certain problems more coverage can lead the audience to assume that those problems are more important. Given that the news media, at times, obsesses over relatively trivial matters, and given that the audience is increasingly able to filter media exposure, it is worth asking what happens when audience members perceive that recent media coverage has not emphasized any very important problems. In such cases, audience members might assume that any problems facing the nation must not be particularly important. We explicate this attitude of political complacency, test whether perceived media agendas lacking important problems can influence it, and explore whether complacency helps explain political disengagement. We also explore whether these effects generalize beyond news, to new media gatekeepers such as Twitter. Two experiments tested effects of a perceived absence of important problems in recent news or Twitter content. In the case of news, but not Twitter, this increased complacency in both studies. Study 2 added a no-exposure control and found that effects on complacency were driven by the cueing of nonproblem stories, not by the absence of problem story cues. Both studies validated complacency as a predictor of political disengagement.     

“I thought I’d have more trouble with white people!”: Exploring racial microaggressions between West African immigrants and African Americans

Racial tensions continue in 21st-century United States through the communication of racial microaggressions. We are interested in the communication of racial microaggressions directed towards West African immigrants by people with whom they expected to be allied, African Americans. Sixteen people who identified as West African immigrants were interviewed about communication struggles with African Americans in this qualitative, interpretive analysis. Owen’s thematic analysis was employed to analyze interview data. Results suggest the communicative impact of racial microaggressions on recipients is far-reaching and consequential. Narratives illustrate microaggressive communication occurs daily through invalidating, dismissive lines of questioning as well as targeted name calling and pejorative dialogue.     

Difficulty and self-efficacy: An exploratory study

Serious games are becoming increasingly popular due to their association with increased learning outcomes when compared to traditional self-regulated learning activities. However, the majority of research examining the outcomes of serious games has focused almost exclusively on learning outcomes. This has resulted in a lack of research examining why these types of games result in increased positive outcomes, such as engagement or performance. This study seeks to address this gap in existing research by examining the relationship between game difficulty and participants’ engagement, performance and self-efficacy in a Pacman style maze navigation game. This required the use of hidden difficulty variations which participants were randomly assigned. Participants engaged with the game over a 5-days practice period. Results from this study suggest that difficulty plays a considerable role in influencing participants’ self-efficacy for the task. Self-efficacy has been consistently linked to positive outcomes such as increased engagement and performance. This highlights the importance of difficulty as a game design factor as well as providing an insight into the manner in which serious games could be further refined in order to increase user’s self-efficacy and associated positive outcomes. Implications for future serious games and self-efficacy research are discussed.     

Observations on the temporal correlates of reading failure

The definitions of developmental dyslexia andtemporal processing are discussed and severalconstruals of what a temporal processingdeficit might entail are illustrated. Then,using a framework developed by Farmer & Klein(1995), the proposal that a temporal processingdeficit (in vision, audition, or both) might bethe root cause of some proportion of cases ofdevelopmental dyslexia is introduced andvarious research strategies for testing thisproposal are identified. The symposium paperswhich address this general question using arange of these strategies are then criticallyreviewed. It is noted that whereas reading isa recent artifact not yet subject to any directselection pressure, its normal performancerequires the use of, and connections between,the highly evolved modules for visual patternrecognition and language. Within vision andlanguage redundant coding, which permitsperformance in the face of injuries anddegraded input, also makes it difficult todetect subtle deficits (whether temporal, ornot) unless precise tests are used. Yet suchdeficits may degrade performance on tasks (suchas reading) which require the non-copiousconnections between vision and language. Theefficacy of this pathway, I suggest, ismeasured by performance on the rapidautomatized naming (RAN) test.     

Strategies Against Oppression: a case study of the background,upbringing and education of black managers in affirmative action programmes in South Africa

Black managers form the primary target and major context of affirmative action programmes in South Africa‐‐programmes which are inherently educational. As its title suggests, this article investigates the social background, upbringing and educational experience of black managers engaged in large business organizations in Johannesburg. In many respects, the stories of these managers represent a narrow profile of the broader injustices of the apartheid era. However, the managers have risen through the oppressive structures which dominated their youth by seizing opportunities to act as agents of change in their own affairs. In this they were supported by the value orientations of their homes and by the educative influences of the black consciousness movement and trade union activism. Their experience calls into question the strictures of social pathology theory, which holds that an endemic culture of poverty is passed on from one generation to the next.     

Language proficiency and lateral position in the classroom

This paper not only makes a contribution to the mosaic of scientific knowledge of the brain and nervous system, but suggests implications of practical value. Observant, experienced teachers know empirically that some youngsters learn best, and perhaps only, when seated front-center, right before the teacher’s desk. Such children need to have the eye contact, or to be in quick arm’s reach, or to have distractions screened out. Drs. Bakker and Van Rijnsoever give evidence here that, for many children, taking in and remembering the message is dependent on their physical placement to catch most effectively the stream of sound. This is important to consider in the popular open classroom. Although many children can adapt readily to less-than-perfect physical learning conditions, for some we must “re-invent the wall,” not to climb, but to provide a place to call “home.” The theoretical re-inforcement presented in this paper proves that such boundaries can also provide source and direction for sound as part of some children’s currently needed sensory security and enhance the efficiency of their auditory intake. Editor