Contribution: This paper reports engineering students' practical epistemic cognition by studying their interactional work in situ. Studying "epistemologies in action'' the study breaks away from mainstream approaches that describe this in terms of beliefs or of stage theories. Background: In epistemology, knowledge is traditionally seen as "justified true belief'', neglecting knowledge related to action. Interest has increased in studying the epistemologies people use in situated action, and their development of epistemic fluency. How appropriate such approaches are in engineering and design (...) education need further investigation. Research Questions: 1) How do students in the context of a design project use epistemic tools in their interactional work? and 2) What are the implications of the findings in terms of how students' cognitive and epistemological development could be conceptualized? Methodology: A collaborative group of six students were video recorded on the 14th day of a fifth-semester design project, as they were preparing for a formal critique session. The entire, almost 6 h, session was recorded by four video cameras mounted in the design studio, with an additional fifth body-mounted camera. The video data collected was analyzed using video ethnographic, conversation analysis, and embodied interaction analysis methods. Findings: The results show that the students use a wealth of bodily material resources as an integral and seamless part of their interactions as epistemic tools, in their joint production of understanding and imagining. The analysis also suggests that students' epistemological and cognitive development, individually and as a group, should be understood in terms of developing "epistemic fluency.''. (shrink)

Reflecting on the political nature of literature and its relation to modern democracy, the essay begins by problematizing any notion of commitment in literature. However, irresponsibility found in literature, far from undermining the political process, is what animates the political field seen as an endless contestability of our social practice. The way our notion of modern democracy informs our understanding of literary practice is explored through a selection of Derrida’s writings where democracy emerges as the possibility of imagining alternatives to (...) the world and “of thinking life otherwise,” as Derrida says, which is to say that democracy cannot be thought without the possibility of literature. Democracy implies not political stability but a continuous call for unrest that prevents its atrophy, and literature, in its unconditional right to call everything to account, is its rearguard work as it were, keeping democracy forever open, for better or for worse. (shrink)

Taking a point of departure in multidisciplinary research related to ethnicity, gender and functional dis/ability, this paper presents a conceptual framework where center staging languaging and identity-positionings are central. Building upon empirically framed results from ethnographical projects across timespaces, it discusses how languaging opens possibilities for discussing learning and identity-positionings that take place in and via the deployment of one or more language varieties and modalities. This is conceptually made possible by going beyond dominating, dichotomizing positions related to language, language (...) learning methods, and the organization of language learning. The study argues that scholars inherit and live with dichotomizing positions within scholarship that in turn create specific framings for children and adults in institutions for learning. The paper discusses the case of research and the organization of language issues related to bilingualism and diversity education as specific instances of a dominating dichotomy. It illustrates how going beyond this dichotomy makes visible languaging and identity-positionings that open new ways of understanding participation and inclusion. Such a position builds upon critical humanistic thinking where sociocultural and decolonial framings are central. Going beyond the mainstream allows for new ways of conceptualizing research in the areas of language and identity where social practices are center staged. To make visible languaging thus implies that issues related to identity are focused in terms of performative processes. (shrink)

Contrary to the neo-liberal thesis that entrepreneuring is an open and accessible endeavour where personal effort alone determines reward and status, it has been demonstrated that there is a persistent, but occluded, gender bias within the entrepreneurial discourse. Accordingly, women are positioned as lacking and incomplete men; however, despite calls to employ feminist theory as an analytical frame to demonstrate the reproduction of such subordination, there is scant evidence this has emerged. Within this article, we respond to this call by (...) demonstrating how post structural feminist analysis reveals the gendered assumptions informing entrepreneurship theory that embed prevailing hetero-normative assumptions. These assumptions limit the epistemological scope of contemporary research which positions women as failed or reluctant entrepreneurial subjects; as such, in the absence of feminist theorizing these analyses remain descriptive rather than explanatory. Accordingly, the current entrepreneurial research agenda is in danger of reaching an epistemological dead end in the absence of a reflexive critical perspective to inform the idea of who can be and what might be an entrepreneur. Finally, we draw upon these arguments to reflect upon current approaches to theorizing within the broader field of entrepreneurial enquiry. (shrink)