Article

Persons in Structures of Social Practice

April 2009
Theory & Psychology 19(2):193-212

Authors:

In this article I argue for grounding psychological theories of persons in relation to structures of social practice. I introduce crucial features of such a theory of persons which is based on critical psychology and invite contributions to its further development. The theory emphasizes that persons are participants involved in personal trajectories in relation to structural arrangements of social practice. It is intended to lead to a richer and worldlier psychology. It also leads to a different understanding of professional psychological practices and of their users. To illuminate this, I present key insights from a study of clients attending therapy. Client changes do not occur only in therapeutic sessions but also in and across the contexts in which these clients live their lives in structures of social practice. In this respect, though, the structural arrangement of secluded sessions with intimate expert strangers significantly affects the mode of working of therapy in the social practice of its clients.

The role of reflection in learner identity construction. A sociocultural and dialogical approach / El papel de la reflexión en el proceso de construcción de la identidad de aprendiz. Una aproximación sociocultural y dialógica

Article

Oct 2024

The purpose of this article is to present a theoretical-conceptual proposal that enables us to articulate two psychological processes that play an essential role in different educational settings yet are seldom explicitly addressed together: identity construction and reflection processes. Specifically, we will analyse the way reflection is a prime tool for reconstructing learner identity. In the first part, we conceptualize reflection processes from a sociocultural and dialogical approach. In the second part, we explain our theoretical approach to identity construction processes, define the concept of learner identity and highlight the role played by reflection in identity construction. To conclude, we will suggest several guidelines for promoting student reflection on their own learning processes and on themselves as learners with the goal of facilitating their development of an enabling learner identity that allows them to continue learning in different settings and times in their lives.

Understanding Young People’s Experiences – An Integrative Literature Review

Chapter

Full-text available

Jan 2024

Huda Kamel Ahmed

A developed conceptual model to understanding experiences of young people with ethnic heritage is explored in this chapter. Through a synthesis of some of the traditional approaches to identity and personality, the author argues for the move towards a more comprehensive, extensive, and evolving approach to understanding lived experiences: the conduct of everyday life. Coupled to that is an understanding of the continuity of experiences using the concept of Personhood in Practice to articulate young people’s learning and development in the context of lived experiences. Bringing together such approaches, the chapter presents an integrative review showing the development of a conceptual model. It gives an example of how such model was used in my PhD research to draw findings to understand the experiences of an under-researched and overlooked community: the British Yemenis.

La construcción de trayectorias personales de aprendizaje: conexiones entre experiencias de aprendizaje en múltiples contextos

Thesis

Full-text available

Jun 2022

Antonio Membrive

La finalidad de esta investigación es contribuir al desarrollo de una formulación teórica, epistemológica y metodológica alrededor de la noción de trayectoria personal de aprendizaje, y contrastarla mediante un estudio empírico. En la sociedad contemporánea, se han consolidado muchos más contextos, actores y recursos que ofrecen oportunidades para aprender. Esta nueva ecología del aprendizaje plantea nuevos desafíos al sistema educativo que, de no abordarse adecuadamente, contribuirían al ya incipiente desdibujamiento del sentido de la educación escolar y a una mayor inequidad educativa. Así, se pone de manifiesto la urgencia y la relevancia de ampliar el foco de los aprendizajes escolares a los aprendizajes que tienen lugar en un ecosistema más amplio de contextos. En este marco, explorar las trayectorias personales de aprendizaje de jóvenes nos puede dar pistas sobre cómo las personas conectan sus experiencias de aprendizaje a través de múltiples contextos de actividad, desde una mirada al proceso de re-co-construcción discursiva del propio aprendizaje entre contextos. Concretamente, en este estudio nos hemos propuesto identificar y caracterizar las experiencias subjetivas de aprendizaje que refieren a diferentes contextos de actividad y las conexiones que se establecen entre estas. Para ello, hemos llevado a cabo un estudio empírico de casos múltiple, desde una perspectiva cualitativa, fenomenológica e interpretativa. Hemos seleccionado 20 participantes (10 jóvenes adolescentes y 10 jóvenes adultos/as) a los que hemos realizado entrevistas en profundidad semiestructuradas sobre sus trayectorias de aprendizaje. En 14 de los casos, hemos realizado una segunda entrevista en un segundo momento de recogida de datos. Hemos analizado las 34 entrevistas mediante un proceso de análisis temático. Los resultados subrayan la relevancia de indagar en el aprendizaje entre contextos poniendo el énfasis en el proceso subjetivo y discursivo que permite resignificar las vivencias de participar y aprender en múltiples contextos. Se destaca, entre otros aspectos, la necesidad de atender a nuevos contextos, actores, artefactos y formas de aprendizaje; la relación de las emociones, el interés y la funcionalidad con las conexiones de continuidad y el sentido del aprendizaje; y el papel fundamental que juegan los significados sobre el aprendizaje y sobre uno/a mismo/a para construir las trayectorias personales de aprendizaje y proyectarse hacia el futuro.

Teachers’ Beliefs About How to Support Students’ Transfer of Learning

Chapter

Apr 2021

Jaime Diamond

Transfer refers to the influence of one’s prior learning on their engagement in novel situations. Students who productively transfer their mathematics learning are enabled to successfully participate in upper-level STEM courses, enter and persist in STEM fields, and participate as national and global citizens. It was therefore identified as a critical issue in education over a century ago. Unfortunately, little has been done to illuminate the ways in which teachers—the people who create the learning environments and enact the activities that foster students’ transfer of learning—believe transfer should be instructionally supported. The purpose of this study was thus to shed light on teachers’ beliefs about what it means to “teach for transfer.”

Collaborating alone? Teachers’ and pedagogues’ unequal cross-professional collaboration and what it means for their professional learning in Danish schools

Article

Jul 2020

Kari Kragh Blume Dahl

Cross-professional collaboration in schools is a prerequisite for professional teaching practice and thus for professional development in many post-industrialized societies, yet little is known about how teachers with different professional backgrounds make meaning of and internalize cross-professional collaboration and how inequities in legitimacy and power in cross-professional collaboration affect professional learning. This article examines cross-professional collaboration and the professional learning it initiates between teachers and pedagogues (Danish term for childcare professionals) in Danish schools. Drawing on situated learning theory, critical psychology and Pierre Bourdieu, it explores teachers’ and pedagogues’ professional learning in conflictual cross-professional collaborations. The findings of the study document that cross-professional collaborations are spaces for negotiating and drawing professional boundaries and for producing hierarchies of different forms of professional capital, thereby re/producing dominant understandings of what constitutes teaching professionalism for teachers and pedagogues. The article concludes that cross-professional collaboratory practices may position and draw boundaries between the different professional groups, thus limiting productive learning.

Examining cohort models in the education doctorate

Article

Full-text available

Jul 2020

This article presents a thematic analysis on cohort-based teaching and learning from four, education doctorate degree (EdD) programs. Recommendations are then presented to other scholars engaging in research on cohort-based, graduate degree programs. Yin’s (2018) embedded, multiple case study approach guided the design of this study. Data collection consisted of three- to four-day site visits to each program and included the following data sources: program documents (e.g., handbooks, syllabi, third-party evaluations), class observations, and semi-structured interviews with students, faculty, and program directors. This study describes how collaboration and collective learning were key components in each program’s coursework and milestone expectations, arguing that such an emphasis contributed to opportunities for collaboration and collective learning experiences. Research has documented a number of outcomes associated with cohort-based programs in terms of group dynamics. The authors examine this quality further by showing how specific structures and practices within each program’s cohort model not only supported peer collaboration, but overall student learning.

Breaking Stereotypes: How Undergraduates' Life Experiences of Scientists Shape their Scopes of Possibility

Article

Dec 2024

Informed by the Cultural Learning Pathways framework, 31 semi-structured interviews were conducted with undergraduates who completed six Scientist Spotlight assignments. Results indicate these curricular interventions can shape undergraduates science identity by enhancing current and imagined Scopes of Possibility for themselves and others.

OMSORG OG RISIKOVURDERINGER I DAGINSTITUTIONEN – NÅR FORÆLDRES OMSORG OG LIVSFØRELSE TOLKES SOM UVILJE TIL SAMARBEJDE

Article

Oct 2023

På baggrund af et praksisforskningsprojekt i tre vuggestuer undersøger vi i denne artikel, hvordan politiske dagsordner omtidlig indsats påvirker forældresamarbejdet i forbindelse med børns opstart i vuggestuen. Pædagogers vurderinger af forældresomsorg synes at basere sig på forståelser af børn som sårbare og børn som nogle, der har behov for målrettet stimulering af voksne for at kunne udvikle sig hensigtsmæssigt. Det medfører, at forældre ikke alene vurderes i henhold til deres funktion som primære omsorgspersoner, men også som ”risikomanagere” i deres børns liv. På denne baggrund analyserer artiklen, hvordan pædagogerne i mødet med nogle forældre flytter fokus fra små børns deltagelse i vuggestuens hverdagsliv til at vurdere forældrenes omsorgshandlinger. Det betyder, at forældre som deltagere i et ligeværdigt samarbejde vanskeliggøres, og etablering af en sammenhængende omsorgspraksis, forstået som en omsorgskæde (Andenæs, 2011) for barnet på tværs af hjem og daginstitution, får svære betingelser.

Transgressing theory/practice divides through collaboration.: Building research communities with professionals

Article

Jan 2023

This article contributes to discussions of transmethodology by drawing on experiences from conducting practice research aimed at the development of theory and practice through research collaboration. We analyze efforts to build research communities where researchers and professionals work together to perform analyses and develop knowledge. A collective research project exploring children’s possibilities for participation in school is used as a case for exploring how a research problem develops through such collabora-tion. This research project was designed to explore school life from the perspectives of children, parents, teachers, school leaders, and psychologists, and to analyze conflicts situated in everyday practices while considering political struggles concerning the school as a historical institution. The article emphasizes the often intangible and overlooked processes involved in research collaboration and details how we worked to build a re-search community comprising researchers and professionals that enabled collective mul-ti-perspective analyses. Building on a dialectical approach, we conceptualize conflicts as part of historical processes and as an immanent potentiality that arises from people’s engagement in common but contradictory matters. Hence, the different perspectives of those involved in children’s school life can be seen as linked through common matters, while also being differentiated by their allotted tasks in relation to children’s school life. This approach continuously challenged the researchers to analyze everyday conflicts grounded in the different perspectives of those involved, the different forms of reasoning, understandings, and standpoints, as well as how the different perspectives are connected through the participants’ engagement in a common matter – providing good schools for children. The article concludes by arguing that the discussed approach to theory devel-opment can be linked to a situated concept of generalization.

Subject Disciplines and the Construction of Teachers’ Identities

Chapter

Mar 2023

Ian Thompson

Kousholt, D., & Højholt, C. (2022). Transgressing theory/practice divides through collaboration. : Building research communities with professionals. Outlines. Critical Practice Studies, 22, 379–418. Retrieved from https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/134899

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2023

This article contributes to discussions of transmethodology by drawing on experiences from conducting practice research aimed at the development of theory and practice through research collaboration. We analyze efforts to build research communities where researchers and professionals work together to perform analyses and develop knowledge. A collective research project exploring children’s possibilities for participation in school is used as a case for exploring how a research problem develops through such collaboration. This research project was designed to explore school life from the perspectives of children, parents, teachers, school leaders, and psychologists, and to analyze conflicts situated in everyday practices while considering political struggles concerning the school as a historical institution. The article emphasizes the often intangible and overlooked processes involved in research collaboration and details how we worked to build a research community comprising researchers and professionals that enabled collective multi-perspective analyses. Building on a dialectical approach, we conceptualize conflicts as part of historical processes and as an immanent potentiality that arises from people’s engagement in common but contradictory matters. Hence, the different perspectives of the participants in the field can be seen as linked through common matters, while also being differentiated by their allotted tasks in relation to children’s school life. This approach continuously challenged the researchers to analyze everyday conflicts grounded in the different perspectives of those involved, the different forms of reasoning, understandings, and standpoints, as well as how the different perspectives are connected through the participants’ engagement in a common matter – providing good schools for children. The article concludes by arguing that the discussed approach to theory development can be linked to a situated concept of generalization

Personal Construct Psychology and Repertory Grids: Acknowledging and Exploring Perspectives

Preprint

Full-text available

Sep 2022

Personal construct psychology (PCP) is concerned with elucidating the nature and implications of the anticipatory sense-making (or 'construing') of individual clients. This highly personal focus on individual experiencing makes it, by definition, particularly well-suited to acknowledging and exploring issues of diversity and uniqueness. It can be contrasted with more familiar approaches rooted in questionable assumptions of objectivity, yet in many respects is compatible with emerging developments in cognitive and complexity science. The application of PCP in work with clients is essentially a collaborative venture, in which a growing experience of intersubjectivity-of making sense "with"-can itself encourage exploration and development in new directions. We can also, for example, explore the wider, deeply personal, context of an offence, the origins of unresolved concerns or the hidden implications which might trip up attempts at facilitating change. The most widely used assessment technique within PCP is the repertory grid. Repertory grids allow an understanding of how individuals construe aspects of their world and enable insight into the operation of their systems of meaning. The chapter provides an overview of their construction, analysis and applications, leading to concluding comments on the value of PCP and its methods in forensic clinical practice.

Subject Disciplines and the Construction of Teachers’ Identities

Chapter

Jan 2023

Ian Thompson

This chapter addresses the question of teacher identity by focusing on the role that teachers’ identification with their subject disciplines plays in the formation of teachers’ identities. The chapter takes the starting point that teachers share a common pedagogical and moral imperative to teach children and young people about the subject that they have invested a considerable amount of time to learn themselves. All teachers, whether subject specialists or not, need to learn to acquire an ability to both understand the concepts that matter in a particular subject and the rules of evidence that are accepted within that discipline. It is the contention in this chapter that this conceptual understanding of what it means to teach a particular discipline in particular contexts that is central to the sociocultural identities of teachers. Although the chapter is concerned with the multiple subjects in schools and the identities of teachers of these subjects, it draws on examples from beginning teachers of English in particular as a subject as way of drawing attention to the contested nature of subject disciplines, school subjects, and subject teacher identity.

Career guiance in communities

Book

Full-text available

Aug 2022

Rie Thomsen

Addressing Ethical Dilemmas in Research with Young Children and Families. Situated Ethics in Collaborative Research

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2021

In this article, we discuss the situated ethics of researching the everyday lives of children and families. Research conducted in close collaboration with research participants in everyday contexts presents the researcher with multiple ethical dilemmas involving doubts, uncertainties, and often also discomfort, conflicting emotions, and contradictory possibilities for action. However, the literature on ethics often focuses primarily on standardized procedures, such as for obtaining informed consent, preventing harm, and ensuring anonymity. Although such procedures provide an important foundation for reflections on ethics, they only address some of the ethical concerns in research. Furthermore, they often fall short in terms of guiding the researcher to make decisions when encountering ethical challenges in concrete situations at various stages of the research process: from entering to leaving research sites. We suggest formulating specific ethical commitments that are grounded in a given research project’s methodological approach and concrete conditions. Furthermore, we analyze the interconnections between ethical commitments, theoretical stances, and research ambitions, and how these interconnections may guide reflection and decisions on how to handle ethical dilemmas throughout the research process. We draw on examples from our research on the everyday lives of children and parents, using social practice theory and collaborative research as jumping-off points.

Linking social practice theories to the perceptions of green consumption: An overview

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2025

Over the past few decades, green consumption has become a vital component of sustainable development. This paper reviews the perceptions and practices of green consumption through the viewpoint of social practice theories, with an emphasis on gender dynamics. In addition, several factors influencing green consumption behaviour explored. Social practice theories provide a comprehensive framework for understanding how daily routines, societal norms, and infrastructural contexts shape sustainable consumption behaviours. Findings of this literature review highlights that women's higher inclination towards green consumption is driven by social roles and environmental concerns, while men's engagement is influenced by traditional roles and material conditions. By reviewing green consumption behaviour through the lens of social practice, the article reveals how collective behaviours and societal structures, rather than individual choices alone, drive sustainability efforts. The findings underscore the significance of policy interventions within the context of socio-technological development, emphasizing the need to address structural factors and promote sustainable practices through the adoption of nudge approach, circular economy principles, technological advancements and fostering environmental consciousness. Finally, this review paper suggests that future research is required to explore the gender differences in detail to understand their varying inclination toward green practices, which would help inform policy development for sustainability. Furthermore, it recommends conducting a longitudinal study to assess the impact of social practice-based sustainable consumption on climate resilience in climate-vulnerable regions.

Cultivating Cultures of Care within Communities of Children in Schools – Exploring the Interdependence of Children’s Collective and Individual Development

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2025

Thomas Gylling-Andersen

With many school systems worldwide facing several crises, such as inequality and a lack of well-being among schoolchildren, understanding how to care for, and support care among, these children must be a vital commitment for researchers and school professionals. Hence, this article introduces the notion of cultures of care within communities of children, emphasising care as a collective-transformative practice where children develop cultural tools to transform or navigate within the shared conditions of life with which they struggle. Drawing on cultural-historical and critical branches of psychology, a qualitative case analysis explores how an intervention framework (developed by this article’s author and a schoolteacher) seemed to support the development of a culture of care within a community of children at a Danish municipal primary school. Analyses of observational fieldnotes and interview excerpts suggest how the participating children engaged in negotiating, developing and expanding their shared repertoire of caring cultural tools with the purpose of creating a future in the community where the collective struggles of the present are less challenging. Focusing on the developmental implications, both for the community and for a boy in a marginalised position, the analysis sheds light on the interdependence of collective and individual development, as the children simultaneously care for the development of themselves and their community. Finally, it is discussed how pedagogical initiatives in schools that aim to care for children in marginalised positions as well as for the entire community must acknowledge the activist nature of schoolchildren and the collective nature of their agency.

Epistemic injustice and the “Nature of Science”

Article

Sep 2024

Scientists and science educators have argued that learners (students, preservice teachers, and inservice teachers) should understand knowledge construction in science, in addition to figuring out disciplinary core ideas. Given this goal, some science education scholars created a construct called the “Nature of Science” (NOS), which aims to simplify the complex work of scientific knowledge production for learners. Since the 1980s, the NOS construct has shaped national and international science education reforms with the goal of creating a more scientifically literate populace. In this article, we name and question assumptions built into the NOS construct using the philosophical perspective of epistemic injustice. Using specific lenses of contributory injustice and testimonial injustice , we analyzed the 97 most‐cited peer‐reviewed NOS journal articles to examine which scholars are selected to create the NOS construct. We also examined how researchers using NOS position learners in relation to the construct. We found that White men are primarily named by NOS scholars to inform the construct. We also found that NOS research often positions learners from a deficit perspective compared to the construct. We conclude by discussing the potential injustices perpetuated by the NOS construct, and offer a vision for a more complete story of science in sites of learning.

Keskustelu oppilaan tuen järjestämisen mahdollisuuksista ja ehdoista. Subjektitieteellinen näkökulma yksilökohtaisen opiskeluhuollon toteutumisesta

Article

Jan 2023

Avengers assemble: Avenger philanthropy as the new gift opportunity for nonprofit organizations

Article

Full-text available

May 2024
PSYCHOL MARKET

Sarah-Louise Mitchell

This conceptual paper extends theories of gift giving behavior through identifying and defining the emerging phenomenon of Avenger Philanthropy. This manifests when people make individual monetary donations to nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to achieve a collective sense of moral grandstanding, usually underpinned by humor. For the first time, the paper makes sense of this phenomenon theoretically through drawing on a wide range of literature including gift giving, game theory and consumer psychology, and as a result, identifies seven distinctive hallmarks. The paper maps the importance of public expression of personal values, amplified through social media, together with risks for the NPO that benefits from the donations. Emotion underpins the giving behavior, both moral outrage and humor. This investigation contributes to the gift giving literature by identifying, mapping and anchoring current actions that potentially have far reaching consequences for future research and for nonprofit practice.

Undervisning som social praksis

Article

Nov 2019

Tilde Mardahl-Hansen

Når der opstår vanskeligheder i skolen, kan der være en tendens til at forklare disse vanskeligheder med enkeltpersoners personlige indstilling eller manglende forudsætninger for at deltage og bidrage på passende måder. Alternativt forklares vanskeligheder med relationelle problemer knyttet eksempelvis til manglende positive tilknytninger, manglende indlevelse, forståelsesmæssige vanskeligheder, sproglige barrierer eller manglende kendskab de involverede imellem. Skolen som et særligt sted, og undervisning som en særlig aktivitet i skolen, har det så at sige med at stå i baggrunden i forståelser af vanskeligheder i skolen. Artiklen diskuterer, hvordan begreber fra social praksisteori og kritisk psykologi kan bidrage til at tale om og udforske vanskeligheder i skolen på måder, der bidrager til at overskride individualiserede problemforståelser og koble vanskeligheder i undervisningssituationer til betingelser for samarbejde om undervisning som en særlig samfundsmæssig og historisk praksis.

Erhvervsskolelæreres håndtering af sameksisterende krav om øget fastholdelse og et højt fagligt niveau i erhvervsuddannelserne

Article

Jan 2016

I de seneste år har mange OECD-landes, her- under Danmarks, politiske mål været at sikre at endnu flere unge får en ungdomsuddannelse. Dette politiske mål er langt fra entydigt, for på den ene side ønskes en øget gennemførel- sesprocent og på den anden side, samtidig, en forbedring af den uddannelsesmæssige kvalitet. Artiklens formål er at belyse, hvordan lærere på erhvervsuddannelserne håndterer disse sameksisterende uddannelsespolitiske krav. Et empirisk studie baseret på et etårigt feltarbejde på en dansk teknisk skole viser, at de politiske krav om fastholdelse af eleverne og et højt erhvervsrettet kvalifikationsniveau kan føre til, at lærerne udvikler forskellige pæ- dagogiske strategier, så som en aktiv ‘omsorgs- tilgang’, en passiv ‘vente til det her forløb er ovre’ tilgang, en aktiv ‘selektionstilgang’ samt en passiv ‘vent og se, om de selv falder fra’ tilgang. De forskellige pædagogiske strategier er udviklet gennem social forhandling ledere, elever og lærerne imellem − og medfører flere pædagogiske dilemmaer.

Intervention, evidensbaseret forskning og hverdagsliv

Article

Jan 2014

Ole Dreier

Resumé: Intervention er et nøglebegreb i psy- kologiens teknologi, og det spiller en afgø- rende rolle i den evidensbaserede forskning. Men begrebet er næsten ikke blevet analyseret. I artiklen foretages først en kritisk analyse af opfattelsen af intervention i den amerikanske psykologforenings rapport om retningslin- jer for evidensbaseret forskning og praksis, som spiller en meget stor rolle i udbredelsen af evidensbaseret forskning. I denne analyse fremhæves det også, at opfattelserne af psykologiske praktikeres ekspertise og praksis- udøvelse samt af klienters praksis er yderst mangelfulde i den evidensbaserede forsknings syn på praksis. Mens det primært er meningen, at psykologiske interventioner skal virke i folks dagligliv, har man for eksempel næsten ikke beskæftiget sig med og dårligt greb om, hvordan interventioner gør det. Sådan som evi- densbaseret forskning nu opfattes, er den oveni købet en hindring for at overvinde den mangel. For at forbedre vort empiriske grundlag for at rekonceptualisere intervention er der behov for studier af psykologers interventionspraksisser i forhold til folks løbende dagligliv. På baggrund af studier af, hvordan psykoterapeutisk praksis intervenerer i klienters dagligliv viser jeg, hvordan interventioner virker i klienters dagligliv, og peger på konsekvenser heraf for at rekonceptualisere psykologisk intervention.

Personen og hendes daglige livsførelse

Article

Apr 2023

Dreier Ole

Denne artikel falder i fire dele. I første del ana- lyseres grundproblemer i personlighedspsyko- logien. Det påpeges, at centrale teoretiske til- gange og empiriske forskningsresultater i vore dages personlighedspsykologi har vist, at vi må udvide fundamentet for teorier om personer til at betragte samspillet mellem person, situation og aktivitet som grundlæggende i forståelsen af personligheden og dens egenskaber. Desuden påpeges, at begrænsninger ved de eksisterende teorier og empiriske undersøgelser giver tungt- vejende grunde til at udvide deres fokus på bestemte kendetegn ved situationer til at om- fatte en række andre kendetegn ved situationer og at tage højde for deres forbindelser med settings og med andre situationer i personers daglige aktivitetsforløb. I anden del præsente- res derfor en teori om personer, der begribes som deltagere i sociale praksisser, som er ar- rangeret i en samfundsmæssig praksisstruktur. Hvad det indebærer for forståelsen af personer, karakteriseres nærmere, og centrale begreber i denne teori præsenteres. I tredje del rede- gøres for et empirisk forskningsprojekt, som har haft afgørende betydning for at udvikle denne teori, samt for de udfordringer med at kunne analysere dets empiriske materialer, som drev denne teoriudvikling frem. I fjerde del argumenteres for, at disse udfordringer til- lige gør det nødvendigt at udvide teorien om personer med et begreb om personers daglige livsførelse i sociale praksisstrukturer, hvoref- ter denne udvidelse karakteriseres nærmere. Artiklen afsluttes med nogle bemærkninger om den fremlagte teoris karakter og om nogle af dens implikationer for fremtidig forskning om personer.

Taking a Situative Approach to Research in Educational Psychology

Chapter

Sep 2023

Susan Nolen

Students’ interests for personalized learning: an analysis guide

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

The lack of alignment between, on the one hand, what schools seek to teach and, on the other, the students’ interests and learning objectives is leading to increasing numbers of students who are unable to derive meaning from school activities. Personalized learning strategies represent one of the most powerful ways to help students attribute meaning and personal value to their learning. This paper has two interrelated objectives. The first is to present a guide to the analysis of educational practices that work with and from students’ interests. This tool makes it possible to identify the potential of practices to reinforce and promote the meaning and personal value that students attach to their school learning. The guide is structured around three large blocks (personalization strategies, conceptions of interests, and design and development of practices), which describe the dimensions, subdimensions, questions, and levels for the analysis. The second objective is to illustrate use of the guide by analyzing two practices designed and implemented in primary school classrooms, characterized by a focus on students’ learning interests. The paper concludes by highlighting the main contributions of the guide presented, identifying some limitations, and pointing to future lines of research.

Advancing the conceptualization of learning trajectories: A review of learning across contexts

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

In contemporary society, school is only one of the contexts in which people learn throughout their lives. Therefore, in recent years studies and conceptual proposals that seek to understand how children and young people learn in different activity contexts have proliferated. In this article we present a systematic review of the recent literature on learning across contexts, and specifically on learning trajectories. The objective is to narrow down and define the notion of learning trajectory by reviewing the existing proposals on the term itself and on other similar concepts, and placing it within the framework of other relevant theoretical and practical constructs. We reviewed 59 articles and book chapters, both theoretical and empirical, in which the concept of learning across contexts is discussed. The results show that personal learning trajectories are conceptualized as a multidimensional and dynamic concept that makes it possible to analyse learning across contexts on two planes: the connections between contexts and activities that occur due to a person's participation in different learning contexts; and the subjective perspective of continuity between the learning experiences that a person reconstructs discursively with other people or with artefacts.

Attention to Equity and Coherence Across State Systems During Educational Reform Efforts

Conference Paper

Jan 2019

Deb Morrison

The Role of Learning Theory in Child-Computer Interaction - A Semi-Systematic Literature Review

Conference Paper

Full-text available

Jun 2022

Praksisteoretiske undersøgelser af professionelle og organisatoriske læreprocesser: en ’tool-kit’-tilgang

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Practice theoretical investigations of professional and organizational learning: a 'tool-kit' approach. The article outlines an analytical framework that can accommodate the dynamics between organizational practices, work and educational practices, as well as individuals' learning processes in practice, and thus opens up for renewed empirical studies of organizational and professional learning processes. It unfolds three practice theoretical vantage points on organisational and professional learning processes and offers an eclectic and inclusive analytical approach to investigating these as social practices. On a background of empirical material produced through an ethnographic study of a management development program in the Danish public sector, the possibilities and limitations of three different practice-theoretical approaches are considered. The interplay between them shows potential to add nuance to studies of professional and organizational learning processes. Firstly, learning processes are examined as professional identity formation through participation in the community of practice around the development program. Next, Schatzki's practice-theoretical approach is used to focus on management as situated practice. This gives rise to reflections on the relationship between education and practice and offers a particularly favourable analytical view of organizational stability and change. Furthermore, a third approach that focuses on individuals' learning paths in professional and organizational practices is considered. Here Ole Dreier's concept of person is discussed as a further development of practice theories.

Chinese Self, Australian Other: Chinese as a Foreign Language Teacher Identity Construction in Australian Contexts

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2021

Research in the field of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) education has been increasing in the past decades. However, the number of studies on CFL teacher identity is limited. To bridge the gap, this study employed a qualitative method to explore Chinese CFL teachers’ identity formation and reformation in Australian contexts. A Chinese-Australian language program was studied to examine the challenges, struggles and developments of Chinese CFL teachers who came to Australia to pursue professional growth. Five Master’s theses and three interview participants were included to paint a picture of how Chinese CFL teachers interact internally and externally with a new environment. Guided by Mead’s theory of self and other, we found that Chinese CFL teachers’ identity formation and reformation in Australian classrooms are deeply influenced by their self-identification and their integration with others in the community. Cultural connectedness is a key for organizational attitudes in the relationship of self and other. Chinese CFL teachers were found lacking the wholeness of self in Australian contexts, which led to obstacles in teacher identity construction. Insufficient communication between self and other resulted in their positioning crisis.

John Dewey’s Critical Anticipations of Personality Psychology

Article

Full-text available

May 2021

Brad Piekkola

A brief introduction to the developmental history of personality psychology is given. Two trends, the clinical, holistic approach and the experimental, elemental approach, lay the foundation for issues that would confront the field into the present. While the accepted mandate has been the study of the whole person, the experimental paradigm has been hegemonic. Emphasis has been placed on knowledge of individual differences across variety of abstract constructs. The person and the situation, two central concepts, have been decreed independent, alternative, competing factors in accounting for individual conduct. John Dewey’s psychology, based on organicism and person environment mutualism, is presented as challenging basic assumptions and theories of personality psychology. For Dewey, personality is a product of individuals being incorporated into the sociocultural milieu that is their life context, and from which they cannot be disengaged. Kritische Psychologie is discussed as sympathetic to some of Dewey’s propositions.

Learning to Teach in England and the United States: The Evolution of Policy and Practice

Book

Nov 2017

Principios, aplicaciones y retos del aprendizaje conectado

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2020

Por aprendizaje conectado se entiende aquella actividad, práctica o experiencia que vincula los intereses de los aprendices con oportunidades académicas, profesionales y cívicas, a través del apoyo y promoción ofrecida por otros y otras. El propósito fundamental de este artículo consiste en situar dicha aproximación, a la vez teórica y aplicada. Para ello, se describe su origen, los principios o ideas fuerza que subyacen a dicha teoría, así como las condiciones sociales y materiales necesarias para implementar prácticas educativas conectadas desde la perspectiva de la equidad relacional. Se describen algunos ejemplos de aprendizaje conectado para, finalmente, señalar lo que consideramos son algunas de las limitaciones de dicho enfoque, así como retos para su desarrollo e implementación.

People and practices in organizational learning

Article

Full-text available

Aug 2020

Anders Buch

This article discusses the role of practices and people's participation in practices in conceptual accounts of organizing, learning, and organizational learning. Specifically, the discussion takes its point of departure in Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's account of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in practices, and Theodore Schatzki's practice theory account of organizing and organizations. Both accounts center on the role of practices as people come to know, and as changes occur in social activity and organizational settings. However, the two accounts are based on different ontologies. Borrowing the terminology of John Dewey and Arthur Bentley, Lave and Wenger instantiate a substantivist, and ultimately individualist, ontology, whereas Schatzki's event ontology is relational. It is argued that both ontologies have merits of their own, but the article seeks to integrate the two approaches by utilizing Ole Dreier's notion of the life trajectories of persons across social practices. In this perspective, organizational learning shows when people's life trajectories are affected by the bundles of social practices they engage with, and when the bundles of social practices are transformed by the way people enact the practices.

Bereavement and support in the conduct of everyday life: Insights from dual experiences of loss and drug use

Article

Apr 2025
Nordisk Alkohol Nark

Aims: Individuals with a history of heavy drug use are especially vulnerable to losing loved ones to drug-related deaths, and drug use and complicated grief reactions are closely linked. However, limited knowledge exists on supporting them through bereavement. The present study, which was conducted in Norway, aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of how individuals dealing with heavy drug use and bereavement can be supported through professional support services. The bereaved person's reflections on help experiences are seen as grounded in their conduct of everyday life. Methods: We conducted qualitative interviews with individuals who have experienced bereavement in the context of heavy drug use. Using reflexive thematic analysis, we examined their stories and reflections on what was helpful and unhelpful, aiming to identify key themes, providing an understanding of how individuals dealing with heavy drug use and bereavement can be supported. Results: Five themes were identified. The first theme, ‘Support Complexity’, addresses the uncertainty about strengthening the help provided for processing losses. The other themes – “The Ripple Effect of Trust and Distrust”, “Offering Supportive Communication”, “Fostering Tailored Support” and “Promoting Support Through Companionship” – point to the key dimensions of the support that can help strengthen responses to drug-related bereavement. Conclusions: The study underlies how diverse expectations, norms and positions in the help provision setting influence the nature of support, as well as the access to, acceptance of and adaption to support initiatives. Furthermore, we discuss how the support context can provide multifaceted and contextualised bereavement support tailored to the various needs of the bereaved. The study also underscores the need for provider training focused on the intersections of bereavement and drug use.

Academic citizenship beyond the service role: views of academics in England and the Philippines

Article

Dec 2024
STUD HIGH EDUC

Pedagogical boundary work: when the welfare state becomes entangled with family affairs

Article

Sep 2024

Hierarchies of Professionalism in Interprofessional Partnerships for Inclusion: Mapping the Role and Professional Identities of Early Years Educators 1

Chapter

Jun 2024

‘Doubly situated teacher professionalism’: School culture, personal narrations and becoming a teacher in Danish schools

Article

May 2024
INT J EDUC DEV

Kari Kragh Blume Dahl

In the footstep of the old patient from hospital to home: A qualitative field observation study

Article

Apr 2024
SCAND J CARING SCI

Background Older people often have multiple health conditions and therefore extended care needs. The transition from the hospital back to their home requires careful planning. The fragmented healthcare system and rapid discharge from the hospital can result in limited involvement of the older patient in the discharge planning process. We aimed to explore how older hospitalised patients experienced the transition from hospital to home and how possibilities and constraints in interactions with relevant parties in the transition affected their everyday lives. Method An ethnographic participant observation study including interviews was conducted with 10 older hospitalised patients. The theoretical perspective in the study is critical psychology and data were analysed using the condition‐, meaning‐ and reasoning analysis. Results Three themes were identified: (1) Lost in transition – the person's ability to act is limited, (2) In transition – the relatives become important, (3) At home – the home transforms into a workplace. Conclusion Lack of involvement becomes a condition for older patients as some struggle to create meaning in their transition, affecting their everyday lives. The patients experienced their relatives as important as they ensured that the HCPs got to know their values and wishes. This knowledge is important for HCPs working closely with older people both at the hospital and at home ensuring active involvement of the older person with respect and acknowledgement of the older person's wishes, needs, resources and vulnerability.

Grandmother Cedar as Educator: Teacher Learning Through Native Knowledges and Sovereignty Curriculum

Article

Dec 2023

As Indigenous-led education mandates proliferate globally, understanding how educators teach Indigenous perspectives and sovereignty remains urgent. Learning and integrating such knowledge proves difficult for non-Native teachers, given their lengthy participation in settler colonial schooling and society. What does learning to implement Native sovereignty curriculum entail? Codesigned with eight Native education leaders, this qualitative study examines five non-Native K–12 teachers’ learning processes with Washington’s Since Time Immemorial curriculum across three schools, using interviews, observations, and other data. Findings indicate six themes of learning supporting meaningful implementation, one potential catalyst for overall growth, and two distinct learning trajectories that suggest outward, rather than inbound, directionality. Implications for teacher education and educational leadership clarify needed steps for teacher learning and curriculum implementation.

Nuha: A study of the conduct of everyday life of a British Yemeni young person

Article

Oct 2023
CULT PSYCHOL

Huda Kamel Ahmed

There is a lack of research that focuses on the lived experiences of British Yemeni young people in the UK as they pertain to their learning and development. This paper aims to bridge the gap by exploring the case of Nuha, an 18-year-old British Yemeni young woman, as she navigates the conduct of her everyday life. The paper presents a developed conceptual model and associated methodological approach for exploring Nuha. It does so by first reviewing what might be viewed as dominant approaches to the study of ethnic young people’s experiences that advocate a social identity theory. A critique of such thinking is developed that takes issue with much of this writing that has the potential for an essentialised abstracted approach. The paper instead advocates the use of a subjectively focused, practice orientated and yet culturally sensitive approach to exploring human behaviour in the context of the conduct of everyday life. Based on an analytical matrix that is developed from such thinking, I examine Nuha’s life experiences using Dreier’s theory of a person. In doing so, I recognise the additional importance of personhood in practice that provide a reference point for exploring more deeply the learning and development of Nuha. The research is generated through a case study narrative that is analysed dialectically through theory, recognising how theory is simultaneously driven by the data. The paper concludes with arguments made about the centrality of an extended and developed sense of the conduct of everyday life to get at the nuanced evolving sense of being and doing for British Yemeni young people.

Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation for Primary Myelofibrosis: A 20-year Experience in a Single Center

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2023

Background: Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a well-established approach for patients diagnosed with primary myelofibrosis and remains the only potentially curative treatment. Aims: To present the overall outcome of patients with myelofibrosis treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Study design: A retrospective cross-sectional study. Methods: This study is a retrospective analysis of 26 consecutive patients with primary myelofibrosis who underwent transplantation at our center between January 2002 and January 2022. Disease and transplant variables contributing to outcomes were analyzed. Results: The median age at the time of transplantation was 52.5 (range, 32-63) years and the median time from diagnosis to allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation was 25 (range, 3.1-156.8) months. Myeloablative conditioning and reduced-intensity conditioning regimens were used in 8 (30.8%) and 18 (69.2%) transplantations, respectively. Neutrophil and platelet engraftment was achieved in 23 patients at a median follow-up of 21.2 months (range, 12 days to 234.8 months). Primary graft failure occurred in 1 of 23 patients (4.3%). Neutrophil and platelet engraftment occurred at a median of 16 (range, 12-39) days and 20 (range, 11-78) days, respectively. Acute graft-versus-host disease was seen in 11 of 22 patients engrafted allografts, of which 7 (31.8%) were grade 3-4 acute graft-versus-host disease. Eight patients (36.4%) developed chronic graft-versus-host disease, and three cases were extensive. Four patients (19%) relapsed after a median of 5.5 months, and three patients received donor lymphocyte infusion. The 3-year overall survival rate of the entire study population was 46.2%. The median overall survival was not reached in the myeloablative conditioning group; however, it was 11.9 months in the reduced-intensity conditioning group (p =0.3). According to the donor graft source, the median overall survival was 0.73 months in mismatched unrelated graft recipients, 12 months in matched sibling donors, and not reached in matched unrelated graft recipients (p = 0.03). The 3-year progression-free survival rate of patients who survived > 100 days was 74.7%. The effect of JAK-2 status, graft source, conditioning regimen or dynamic international prognostic scoring system on progression-free survival was not statistically significant. Conclusion: Given the poor prognosis of non-transplant recipients and the lack of non-transplant curative approaches, our results support the consideration of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for eligible patients with primary myelofibrosis.

The Unease About the Mathematics-Society Relation as Learning Potential

Chapter

Jan 2023

Johanna Ruge

In this contribution, I present an inquiry that was prompted by an empirical observation that emerged in interviews with student-teachers: Speaking about their beliefs about mathematics and its teaching and learning was disrupted by expressions of unease about popular myths related to their future profession and the current status of the relation between mathematics and society. Based on a theoretical position of the subject-scientific approach, that also vague feelings – such as unease – entail the potential to gain further insights into the object at stake, I analysed its potential for learning. Since the unease is related to beliefs, I take a closer look at, and formulate a critique of, current trends in belief research and their practical implications. Instead of repeatedly designing more teaching interventions for students to align with certain beliefs along the way, I propose to understand the unease as a starting point for an intentional and collaborative learning process of mathematics education scholars and students.KeywordsMathematics teacher educationSubject-scientific approachCritique of belief-researchReciprocal learningShared struggleMathematics-society relation

Identity Formation in Beginning English Teachers

Chapter

Sep 2022

Ian Thompson

Developing the pedagogy necessary to teach a disciplinary subject to a variety of young people, alongside the ability to use formative and summative assessment to help their students to progress, are complex developmental processes for beginning teachers. Yet just as language and thought have potential developmental functions, so context has a formative role in identity formation. Beginning English teachers face at least two contexts that impact on their social situations of development: their position as learners, within the academic environment of a university; and within the specific professional contexts of their placement schools. These social situations intersect in a complex and dialectical interplay between theory and practice. The focus on the complexity of identity development in this chapter develops a view of teaching and learning as a process through which beginning teachers as learners take on what is valued in a culture and, in turn, develop the agency that allows them to begin to contribute to that culture. The chapter will use the example of beginning teachers’ learning to teach English within a school and university partnership.

Family Culture as Context for Learning through Inquiry

Article

Apr 2021

Danielle Teodora Keifert

Prior research shows that participation within communities of practice shapes children’s development of repertoires of practice—ways of engaging in activities within a cultural community. Families are a privileged community for learning because of the extensive time spent together, the intimate nature of family relations, and the importance of this time for learning before children enter schools. It is therefore important to explore how culture shapes children’s learning in the family context. I seek to understand what the concept of family culture explicates about young children’s learning through inquiry and how children participate in shaping family culture. Drawing on Nasir, Rosebery, Warren, and Lee’s definition of culture, I explore how family culture serves as substrate—resources for interaction—that can be built, reified, and transformed in interaction. Using the analytical lens of Domain of Value (DoV)—constellations of valued purposes and practices associated with collections of phenomena—I present a case study of two families and how an understanding of a family DoV contextualizes moments of learning through inquiry. This analysis supports understanding how the contextual horizon traced through interactional histories sheds light on practices children draw upon when inquiring about their world with others. Through this analysis I explore how family culture serves as context for learning and how children shape that culture. By explicating the role of family culture on children’s learning, this work contributes to understanding cultural variability. This work also pushes against monolithic representations of cultural communities and narratives of any singular “normal” developmental pathway. Finally, this work demonstrates the competence and brilliance of young children as they co-construct inquiry about their world, shape their family culture, and then connect to these cultural resources in new contexts.

Tenets of Ethnographic Accounts of Cross-Setting Learning in Relation to Interpretive Accounts of Transfer

Chapter

Apr 2021

Kara Jackson

Ethnographic accounts of learning across settings (e.g., home, school, community) have revealed both the possibilities for forging interests and understandings across settings, as well as the complexities entailed in doing so. In this chapter, I consider key tenets of such studies in relation to interpretive accounts of transfer. Although distinct in purpose in some ways, both bodies of scholarship theorize how it is that people generate meaning that is consequential for future action in events that are, or are intended to be, linked. Key tenets include: (a) people’s participation varies in relation to context; (b) people and settings change over time, and in relation to one another; (c) learning is not complete in any one event; and (d) power relations matter in understanding what pursuits are possible, when, by whom, and with whom.

Becoming Somebody in Teacher Education: Person, Profession and Organization in a Global Southern Context

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2021

Kari Kragh Blume Dahl

Urban Education: Challenges and Possibilities

Chapter

Sep 2020

Urban education needs a set of conceptual tools that go beyond the simple description of particular urban phenomena, give due acknowledgement to macro-level forces, and also explore local variations in urban contexts that have the potential to expose local possibilities for action. This chapter articulates a newly synthesised discursive conceptual argument about what urban education might mean and how such an argument should become a central way of understanding some of the similar and yet distinct dynamics of education in urban contexts. In essence the broad argument developed in this chapter details a theory of the urban that appreciates the global dynamics of urban processes but does so through a historically and locally understood and articulated sense of place. Then such thinking is embedded in our critique of much of the urban education research literature and is exemplified through an exploration of our thinking with regard to a recent empirical study of young people’s educational aspirations in two urban contexts in Wales, a constituent country of the UK. Building on our exemplified theory of urban education developed in this chapter, we then explore in brief and schematic ways how such thinking might contribute to the challenges and possibilities of education in Central Asia documented in this book. We do so by focusing on educational pathways to labour market transitions in the city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, as a particular case in point. In summary, the chapter argues for the importance of foundational urban theorising, appropriately contextualised, as a way of understanding the social, economic, and cultural foundations upon which young people and urban schooling operate.

Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2010

Mitchell Dean

Experience and Truthtelling

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2002

Mariana Valverde

This is a Foucault-inspired, postmodern study of ethical subjectivity. Technologies of life, personal truths and relations between truth telling and intoxication are highlighted in drug autobiographies and in materials from a study of Alcoholics Anonymous. Here other notions of the self are at play than the concept of the unified, autonomous, authentic self. These materials also offer an understanding of addiction as a dysfunction or disorganisation of temporality in everyday life.

Practice Research and Learning Resources

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2000

Line LERCHE Mørck

In this article I describe Practice Research (PR) as a collective, contextualized project. First I will introduce 'PR as practice' by presenting the construction of 'Learning Resources in the community of Wild Learning' constructed among others by 'Wild Learning' and my self. Then I will discuss 'Practice research in theory and methodology' comprising three main features: First the relation between theory and practice is characterized as a joint venture. Second I stress that doing PR means not only having a joint venture with the professionals in a specific practice - it also means to analyze the specific practice from 'the outside', e.g. by relating it to how it is part of different participants' everyday life. I call this feature decentered analysis. The third important feature of PR is critical analysis; analyzing practice as both action contexts and discourse. Finally I present some critical reflections on the ideals, problems and dilemmas when working with PR.

On the Constitution of ‘Self’ and ‘Mind’ The Dialectic of the System and the Person

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2004

Rachel Joffe Falmagne

This article introduces a perspective in which questions at a psychological grain of analysis are integrated with a broad societal frame of interpretation, drawing on interdisciplinary feminist writings that provide alternative ways to theorize the social. It is argued that understanding the constitution of subjectivity, ‘self’ and thought requires a societal-level model of the social with both discursive and material constituents as well as local discursive processes that are deployed within, and configured through, that broader system. It is further argued that the ontological notion of a ‘person’ (in a specific, non-modern sense of ‘person’ and in a specific sense of ‘ontological’) is a conceptually necessary part of the theoretical language, as the anchor for processes of social constitution and as the substrate of agency, where agency is theorized as a multilevel process. One central claim developed in this article is that it is through the dialectic among these societal-level, local, and personal constituents that subjectivity, ‘self’ and thought are constituted, a ‘self’ that is assumed to be situated, hybrid, complex, tension-filled and unstable, yet substantial.

AC 2007-693: USING THE ENGINEERING DESIGN PROCESS TO RE-ENVISION MULTIDISCIPLINARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES FOR ENGINEERING STUDENTS

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2007

Abstract Accredited engineering programs need to show that their students learn how to effectively “function on multi-disciplinary teams.” This skill is important not only for accreditation but also to employers and to educators themselves, who understand the changing world of engineering work. In the summer of 2005, the College of Engineering at Montana State University embarked,on a study of multi-disciplinary engineering education within the college. This study followed the engineering design process. After an information-gathering stage, an ad-hoc cross-disciplinary team of faculty developed and refined multi-disciplinary

The Dialogical Self: Beyond Individualism and Rationalism

Article

Full-text available

Jan 1992

There is growing awareness among psychologists that the individualistic and rationalistic character of contemporary psychological theories of the self reflect an ethnocentric Western view of personhood. In opposition to this view, it is argued from a constructionist perspective that the self can be conceived of as dialogical, a view that transcends individualism and rationalism. A comparison of 3 contructionist forerunners (G. Vico [1966], H. Vaihinger [1935], and G. A. Kelly [1955]) suggests that to transcend individualism and rationalism, the embodied nature of the self must be taken into consideration. Moving through space and time, the self can imaginatively occupy a number of positions that permit mutual dialogical relations. The classic Jamesian distinction between the I and the Me is translated in a narrative framework. The implications for 3 areas of psychological research (attribution theory, moral development, and the individual differences paradigm) are briefly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Inventing Our Selves

Article

Full-text available

Jul 1996

Nikolas Rose

1. Introduction 2. How should one do the history of 'the self'? 3. A critical history of psychology 4. Psychology as a 'social' science 5. Expertise and the 'techne' of psychology 6. Psychology as an 'individualizing' technology 7. Social psychology as a science of democracy 8. Governing enterprising individuals 9. Assembling ourselves 10. Notes 11. Bibliography.

Between Constructionism and Neuroscience The Societal Co-constitution of Embodied Subjectivity

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2004

John Cromby

This is Restricted Access. This article was published in the journal, Theory and Psychology [© Sage] and is available at: http://tap.sagepub.com/. Social constructionist psychology has no adequate notion of embodied subjectivity, a situation causing conceptual errors, raising methodological issues, and serving to entrench within constructionism the dualisms that structure mainstream psychology. The outline of a solution to this problem is offered, drawing on contemporary work in neuroscience. A framework from Harr´e of three ‘grammars’ of causality and influence (P, or persons; O or organisms; and M or molecules) is described and used to structure the integration of Shotter’s notion of subjectivity with two brain systems. Damasio’s ‘somatic marker’ hypothesis enables the feelingful, sensuous aspects of ‘joint action’, whilst Gazzaniga’s ‘interpreter’ enables their discursive aspects. The benefits of theorizing embodied subjectivity in this way are illustrated by a study of the phenomenon of ‘depression’, and it is concluded that such an integration makes constructionism more coherent, credible and critical.

10. Psychotherapy in Clients' Trajectories across Contexts

Chapter

Dec 2001

Ole Dreier

Mind as Body Moving in Space: Bringing the Body Back into Self-Psychology

Chapter

Jan 1998

Harry Kempen

Re-searching psychotherapeutic practice

Chapter

Jun 1993

Ole Dreier

Understanding Practice brings together the many different perspectives that have been applied to examining social context. From Ole Dreier's work on the therapeutic relationship, to Hugh Mehan's work on learning by disabled students, to Charles and Janet Keller's work on blacksmithing, the chapters form a diverse and fascinating look at situated learning. A distinctive feature of the book is the wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches to the problem of understanding cognition in everyday settings.

Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault

Book

Jan 1988

Michel Foucault

Overview, future trends and issues

Article

Jan 1994

Experience and truthtelling: Intoxicated autobiography and ethical subjectivity

Article

Jan 2002

Mariana Valverde

Personal Trajectories of Participation across Contexts of Social Practice

Article

Nov 1999

Ole Dreier

In discussion about basic theoretical approaches in a non-Cartesian psychology several candidates for a key concept were proposed, such as action, activity, relation, dialogue and discourse. None of these concepts, however, sufficiently grounds psychological theories of individual psychology in social practice. To accomplish this we need to conceptualize subjects as participants in structures of ongoing social practice. In this paper I argue why and address issues of subjectivity as encountered by persons in their participation in complex structures of social practice. I introduce the concept of personal conduct of life and life-trajectory as elaborations of my theory. And I discuss this theoretical approach and show what is at stake in developing it by comparing it to similar approaches in the current literature on the person, self, and identity.

Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood

Article

May 1998

Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social

Book

Sep 1996

Theodore R Schatzki

This book addresses key topics in social theory such as the basic structures of social life, the character of human activity, and the nature of individuality. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein, the author develops an account of social existence that argues that social practices are the fundamental phenomenon in social life. This approach offers insight into the social formation of individuals, surpassing and critiquing the existing practice theories of Bourdieu, Giddens, Lyotard and Oakeshott. In bringing Wittgenstein's work to bear on issues of social theory the book shows the relevance of his work to a body of thought to which it has never been applied. The book will be of particular interest to philosophers of the social sciences, a wide range of social theorists in political science and sociology, as well as some literary theorists.

The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood

Article

Jan 1998

Rom Harré

Mind as Body Moving in Space: Bringing the Body Back into Self-Psychology

Article

Nov 1996

Harry J. G. Kempen

Critics of psychology's view on personality and self as western and ethnocentric and those with a growing interest in what is called the cultural self both tend to advocate social constructionism as the better paradigm. In social constructionism, however, the production of cultures and concomitant selves seems to start from an empty human biology. For a corrective to this Cartesian `thinking above the body', I return to Vico's `wholly corporeal imagination' as the starting-point of social constructions. If the human body is universal and if a selfing process is an evolutionary exigency, we may expect to find self-universals or tasks to be undertaken by anybody in any culture. Some five self-universals, each with its multiple options, are sketched. These universal self-variables can be regarded as a common genotypical matrix from which culturally specific, phenotypical selves are derived. A parallel is sought in the hypothesis of linguistic core notions. If the body is the source of universal self-features and if cultures put restrictions on the feature combinations, we can ask ourselves-countering cultural relativism-whether cultures and selves could be judged from what they do to human bodies.

Analogues of Power: Reading Psychotherapy through the Sovereignty –Discipline–Government Complex

Article

Oct 2003

Derek William Hook

This paper draws on Foucault’s multifaceted understanding of modern power, the sovereignty–discipline–government complex, as a means of re-conceptualizing, and finding critical analogues for, what is perhaps psychology’s most characteristic formof applied practice: psychotherapy. One of the chief assets of this model is that it enables one to think the dynamic interchange between capillary and modern state forms of power. An explication of this particular interchange is one of the primary focuses of this paper. A brief characterization of technologized disciplinarity is offered as a first tentative model for psychotherapeutic practice. Whereas the idea of a disciplinary technology provides a means of thinking the instrumentation of psychotherapeutic power, Foucault’s notion of the pastorate is seen as a means of thinking its rationality. The notion of technologies of subjectivity enables a way of conceiving of psychotherapy’s functionality as an interchange between a structural apparatus of influence and a micro-politics of self. The confluence of these notions allows one to speak meaningfully of a ‘governmental psychotherapy’, a complex mode of power that operates perhaps both more widely and more privately than one may at first have suspected.

Personality, Modernity, and the Storied Self: A Contemporary Framework for Studying Persons

Article

Oct 1996

Dan Mcadams

As the scientific study of the individual person, personality psychology historically has struggled to provide the kind of broad conceptual framework capable of orienting theory and research around human individuality in cultural context. This article presents a new integrative framework for studying persons that brings together recent advances in the field of personality with the emerging social science emphasis on the narrative study of lives, while situating personality inquiry within the cultural context of contemporary modernity and the unique problems of the modem self The framework builds on a clear distinction between the ''I'' and the ''Me'' features of personality in the modem world and the delineation of three relatively independent levels on which modern persons may be described. In personality, the I may be viewed as the process of ''selfing,'' of narrating experience to create a modern self whereas the Me may be viewed as the self that the I constructs. Personality traits, like those included within the Big Five taxonomy, reside at Level I of personality description and provide a general, comparative, and nonconditional dispositional signature for the person. Level II subsumes tasks, goals, projects, tactics, defenses, values, and other developmental, motivational, and/or strategic concerns that contextualize a person's life in time, place, and role. Speaking directly to the modern problem of reflexively creating a unified and purposeful configuration of the Me, life stories reside at the third level of personality, as internalized integrative narrations of the personal past, present, and future. It is mainly through the psychosocial construction of life stories that modern adults create identity in the Me. Life stories may be examined in terms of their structure and content, function, development, individual differences, and relation to mental health and psychosocial adaptation.

Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity

Article

Jan 1995

Morwenna Griffiths

What does the politics of the self mean for a politics of liberation? Morwenna Griffiths argues that mainstream philosophy, particularly the anglo-analytic tradition, needs to tackle the issues of the self, identity, autonomy and self creation. Although identity has been a central concern of feminist thought it has in the main been excluded from philosophical analysis. Feminisms and the Self is both a critique and a construction of feminist philosophy. After the powerful challenges that postmodernism and poststructuralism posed to liberation movements like feminism, Griffiths book is an original and timely contribution to current debate surrounding the notion of identity and subjectivity.

Modernity and Self-Identity: Self And Society in the Late Modern Age

Article

Jan 1991
APPL NURS RES

Anthony Giddens

The American Diabetes Association currently recommends that all youth with type 1 diabetes over the age of 7 years follow a plan of intensive management. The purpose of this study was to describe stressors and self-care challenges reported by adolescents with type 1 diabetes who were undergoing initiation of intensive management. Subjects described initiation of intensive management as complicating the dilemmas they faced. The importance of individualized and nonjudgmental care from parents and health care providers was stressed. This study supports development of health care relationships and environments that are teen focused not merely disease-centered and embrace exploring options with the teen that will enhance positive outcomes.

Client perspectives and uses of psychotherapy

Article

Aug 1998

Ole Dreier

The present paper argues for the importance of studying user perspectives on ongoing psychotherapy. Four approaches to such studies are discussed. It is stressed that studies of user perspectives may allow us to develop a broader and more robust understanding of clients as the primary agents of their own change processes, and that if the studies focus on clients' everyday lives during the course of psychotherapy, they allow us a better understanding of how clients include their psychotherapy, give it a particular significance, fight over it, and transform it as a part of their changing everyday practice in other places than the session. the rationale and design of such a study is presented. It is a study of a small number of family therapies with the present author as a co-therapist. Some preliminary findings from this study are presented.

How clients make therapy work: The process of active self-healing.

Article

Jan 1999

In this book, the authors challenge the medical model of the psychotherapist as healer who merely applies the proper nostrum to make the client well. They see the therapist as a coach, collaborator, and teacher who frees up the client's innate tendency to heal. The self-healing tendency of the client usually overrides differences in technique or theoretical approach, which is why research continually finds different approaches to therapy work about equally well. If the client is the driver of change, how can therapists help? Often, by simply providing an empathic workspace that allows the client's capacity for generative thinking to thrive. The authors share tips for dealing with client resistance, passivity, and maladaptive behavior. This book will be of interest to those who care about the nature of therapeutic change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Using a cross-contextual qualitative diary design to explore client experiences of psychotherapy

Article

Dec 2007

Thomas Mackrill

Qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy has largely been based on interviews carried out with clients and therapists. However, other approaches to qualitative data collection are possible. The present paper uses a diary design to explore the connection between what goes on in therapy sessions, and client activities and experiences in other contexts. Clients and counsellors kept diaries about significant aspects of therapy sessions, while clients also kept diaries about new and different experiences in other contexts in their lives. Ethical and practical issues involved in the use of diaries are discussed, and the methods that were employed to analyse diary-based data are described. The types of findings that the study generated are presented, along with discussion of their implications for research into client experiences of therapy.

Psychology, Society and Subjectivity

Article

Jan 1994

Charles W. Tolman

Learning from the voiceless

Article

Jan 2004

Lotte Huniche

This article is concerned with understanding what is at stake in the everyday lives of family members facing Huntington's Disease (HD). The methodological and analytical point of departure is German critical psychology, particularly the category of conduct of everyday life (Holzkamp, 1995; Dreier, 1999). Specifically, I address questions of accessing and understanding the conduct of everyday life of persons facing HD who are not visibly active with respect to this circumstance. The question of access is not merely about getting in touch with persons who are not known to the research, professional and HD communities, but also about the consequences of establishing contact with persons who have not made an entry into any of these public areanas themselves. The question of understanding is about developing an analysis from a first-person perspective on the personal conduct of everyday life that is not visibly active. The development of such an understanding has broader implications, not just for further research and health care practices, but importantly also for the prevailing moral and ethical demands made on persons living at risk of hereditary diseases.

The social practice of psychotherapy: Theory-structure-critique

O Dreier

Participation, intercontextuality, and personal trajectories

O Dreier

Narratives and the cultural construction of illness and healing

O Dreier

Wittgenstein in practice: From the way of theory to a social poetics

J Shotter

Ein Erfahrungsbericht [The function of supervision in therapeutic work: An experiential account

O Dreier

Learning in personal trajectories of participation

O Dreier

Child development in trajectories of social practice

C Højholt

Die Bedeutung institutioneller Bedingungen psychologischer Praxis am Beispiel der Therapie [The significance of institutional conditions of psychological practice in the field of therapy

O Dreier
M Kleinmanns
M Konitzer-Feddersen
H P Michels
A Raitola

The woman who used her walking stick as a telephone: The use of utilities in praxis

H Forchhammer

Michel Foucault: Ethics, subjectivity and truth. The essential works of Michel Foucault

M Foucault

Jan 2002

Schatzki, T.R.

Persons in Structures of Social Practice

Abstract

No full-text available

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