From folk tales to movies, stories possess features which naturally suit them to contribute to the growth of virtue. In this article I show that the fictional exemplars help the learner to grasp the moral importance of internal states and resolves a tension between existing kinds of exemplars discussed by virtue ethicists. Stories also increase the information conveyed by virtue terms and aid the growth of prudence. Stories can provide virtuous exemplars, inform learners as to the nature of the virtues (...) and offer practice in developing situational judgement. As such they are a significant resource for virtue ethics and moral education. (shrink)

Two aspects of dynamic systems approaches that are pertinent to developmental models of reading are the emergence of a system with self-organizing characteristics, and its evolution over time to a stable state that is not easily modified or perturbed. The effects of dynamic stability may be seen in the differences obtained in the processing of print by beginner readers taught by different approaches to reading (phonics and text-centered), and more long-term effects on adults, consistent with these differences. However, there is (...) little direct evidence collected over time for the same participants. In this study, lexicalized (implicit) phonological processing, and explicit phonological and letter-sound skills are further examined in a precocious reader whose early development at 3 and 5 years has been extensively described (Cognition, 2000, 2004). At ages 10 and 14 years, comparisons were made with these earlier reports and skilled adult readers, using the same tasks for evidence of changes in reading processes. The results showed that along with an increase of reading accuracy and speed, her pattern of lexicalized phonological responses for reading did not change over time. Neither did her pattern of explicit phonological and letter-sound skills, aspects of which were inferior to her lexicalized phonological processing, and word reading. These results suggest dynamic stability of the word reading system. The early emergence of this system with minimal explicit skill development calls into question developmental reading theories that require such skills for learning to read. Currently, only the Knowledge Sources theory of reading acquisition can account for such findings. Consideration of these aspects of dynamic systems raise theoretical issues that could result in a paradigm shift with regard to best practice and intervention. (shrink)

"OLD TESTS ARE BEST FORGOTTEN!" Ay least that is what most students believe. "You finish your test, your teacher 'gives' you your grade and you'll never have to remember that stuff again!" It's too bad that students regard tests to narrowly. But aren't such attitudes cultivated by the popular treatment of tests as ends in themselves? For example, when is the last time you studied the traffic safety rules for your state? Probably it was thefirst time you studied them in (...) preparation for your driver's license exam. When you passed the test, did you seek out the correct answers to the ones you missed? Probably not; it would have seemed unnecessary, since you "passed." Ever wonder about the questions that surgeons or airplane pilots missed, but failed to inquire about afterwards? (shrink)

Objective: To evaluate one ethics rounds model by describing nurses’ and doctors’ experiences of the rounds. Methods: Philosopher-ethicist-led interprofessional team ethics rounds concerning dialysis patient care problems were applied at three Swedish hospitals. The philosophers were instructed to promote mutual understanding and stimulate ethical reflection, without giving any recommendations or solutions. Interviews with seven doctors and 11 nurses were conducted regarding their experiences from the rounds, which were then analysed using content analysis. Findings: The goal of the rounds was partly (...) fulfilled. Participants described both positive and negative experiences. Good rounds included stimulation to broadened thinking, a sense of connecting, strengthened confidence to act, insight into moral responsibility and emotional relief. Negative experiences were associated with a sense of unconcern and alienation, as well as frustration with the lack of solutions and a sense of resignation that change is not possible. The findings suggest that the ethics rounds above all met the need of a forum for crossing over professional boundaries. The philosophers seemed to play an important role in structuring and stimulating reasoned arguments. The nurses’ expectation that solutions to the ethical problems would be sought despite explicit instructions to the contrary was conspicuous. Conclusion: When assisting healthcare professionals to learn a way through ethical problems in patient care, a balance should be found between ethical analyses, conflict resolution and problem solving. A model based on the findings is presented. (shrink)

Considerable methodological difficulties abound in neuroimaging, and several philosophers of science have recently called into question the potential of neuroimaging studies to contribute to our knowledge of human cognition. These skeptical accounts suggest that functional hypotheses are underdetermined by neuroimaging data. I apply Mayo’s error-statistical account to clarify the evidential import of neuroimaging data and the kinds of inferences it can reliably support. Thus, we can answer the question “What can we reliably learn from neuroimaging?” and make sense of how (...) this knowledge can contribute to novel construals of cognition. (shrink)

More than 1.5 billion students experienced disruption to education as a result of COVID-19, representing the most substantial interruption to global education in modern history. Many educational institutions transitioned to emergency remote teaching (ERT) overnight, which has presented an array of distinct challenges for educators. Using virtual interviews and an experiential approach to thematic analysis, the study examined Scottish primary teachers’ (n = 10) lived experiences of adapting to ERT practice. Findings demonstrated three main themes; ‘Meeting Learners’ Needs,’ ‘Influencing Engagement’, (...) and ‘The Impact of ERT on Teachers’. Key findings suggested that differentiating learning, engaging, and communicating with learners is more difficult during ERT than face-to-face teaching. Parental engagement is vital, however, is influenced by several mitigating factors. Finally, ERT is likely to have substantial effects on the wellbeing of those involved. Implications of these findings are considered and discussed. (shrink)

Phenomenal knowledge is knowledge of what it is like to be in conscious states, such as seeing red or being in pain. According to the knowledge argument (Jackson 1982, 1986), phenomenal knowledge is knowledge that, i.e., knowledge of phenomenal facts. According to the ability hypothesis (Nemirow 1979; Lewis 1983), phenomenal knowledge is mere practical knowledge how, i.e., the mere possession of abilities. However, some phenomenal knowledge also seems to be knowledge why, i.e., knowledge of explanatory facts. For example, someone who (...) has just experienced pain for the first time learns not only that this is what pain is like, but also why people tend to avoid it. Some philosophers have claimed that experiencing pain gives knowledge why in a normative sense: it tells us why pain is bad and why inflicting it is wrong (Kahane 2010). But phenomenal knowledge seems to explain not (only) why people should avoid pain, but why they in fact tend to do so. In this paper, I will explicate and defend a precise version of this claim and use it as a basis for a new version of the knowledge argument, which I call the explanatory knowledge argument. According to the argument, some phenomenal knowledge (1) explains regularities in a distinctive, ultimate or regress-ending way, and (2) predict them without induction. No physical knowledge explains and predicts regularities in the same way. This implies the existence of distinctive, phenomenal explanatory facts, which cannot be identified with physical facts. I will show that this argument can be defended against the main objections to the original knowledge argument, the ability hypothesis and the phenomenal concept strategy, even if it turns out that the original cannot. In this way, the explanatory knowledge argument further strengthens the case against physicalism. (shrink)

This article addresses computational procedures that are no longer constrained by human modes of representation and considers how these procedures could be philosophically understood in terms of ‘algorithmic thought’. Research in deep learning is its case study. This artificial intelligence technique operates in computational ways that are often opaque. Such a black-box character demands rethinking the abstractive operations of deep learning. The article does so by entering debates about explainability in AI and assessing how technoscience and technoculture tackle (...) the possibility to ‘re-present’ the algorithmic procedures of feature extraction and feature learning to the human mind. The article thus mobilises the notion of incommensurability to address explainability as a communicational and representational issue, which challenges phenomenological and existential modes of comparison between human and algorithmic ‘thinking’ operations. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

Autonomy has been the central principle underpinning changes which have affected the practice of medicine in recent years. Medical education is undergoing changes as well, many of which are underpinned, at least implicitly, by increasing concern for autonomy. Some universities have embarked on graduate courses which utilize problem-based learning (PBL) techniques to teach all areas, including medical ethics. I argue that PBL is a desirable method for teaching and learning in medical ethics. It is desirable because the nature (...) of ethical enquiry is highly compatible with the learning processes which characterize PBL. But it is also desirable because it should help keep open the question of what autonomy really is, and how it should operate within the sphere of medical practice and medical education. (shrink)

Activity theory is an interdisciplinary approach to human sciences that originates in the cultural-historical psychology school, initiated by Vygotsky, Leont'ev, and Luria. It takes the object-oriented, artifact-mediated collective activity system as its unit of analysis, thus bridging the gulf between the individual subject and the societal structure. This volume is the first comprehensive presentation of contemporary work in activity theory, with 26 original chapters by authors from ten countries. In Part I of the book, central theoretical issues are discussed from (...) different points of view. Some topics addressed in this part are epistemology, methodology, and the relationship between biological and cultural factors. Part II is devoted to the acquisition and development of language - a theme that played a central role in the work of Vygotsky and Luria. This part includes a chapter that analyzes writing activity in Japanese classrooms, and an original case study of literacy skills of a man with cerebral palsy. Part III contains chapters on play, learning, and education, and part IV addresses the meaning of new technology and the development of work activities. The final part covers issues of therapy and addiction. (shrink)

Two studies examined the specificity of effects of explanation on learning by prompting 3- to 6-year-old children to explain a mechanical toy and comparing what they learned about the toy’s causal and non-causal properties to children who only observed the toy, both with and without accompanying verbalization. In Study 1, children were experimentally assigned to either explain or observe the mechanical toy. In Study 2, children were classified according to whether the content of their response to an undirected prompt (...) involved explanation. Dependent measures included whether children understood the toy’s functional-mechanical relationships, remembered perceptual features of the toy, effectively reconstructed the toy, and (for Study 2) generalized the function of the toy when constructing a new one. Results demonstrate that across age groups, explanation promotes causal learning and generalization, but does not improve (and in younger children, can even impair) memory for causally-irrelevant perceptual details. (shrink)

Youth is a historical construction and an answer to a specific challenge of individualisation in biography. And, as a historical and social construction, youth has to be learned. This article focuses on youth development from an action or activity theory perspective and as a learning process. It demonstrates how different youth problems and forms of youth differentiation follow forms of youth learning. Moreover, it shows how late modern development creates the demand for a new non-formal learning perspective (...) to secure the development of new forms of competence. Based on Danish research concerning peer learning as a non-formal learning context, some perspectives of peer-learning competence are discussed. (shrink)

My title is taken from the frontispiece to Ogilby's translation of Aesop ; since every Renaissance poet believed the statement to be true, let me start with my own example. John Denham's only play, The Sophy, published in August 1642, is a tale about the perils of jealousy. The good prince Mirza, after a miraculous victory over the Turks, returns in glory to his father's court, but leaves it shortly thereafter. In his absense, Haly, the evil courtier, follows a friend's (...) advice to " work on [the king's] fears, till fear hath made him cruel"1 and poisons the king's mind with jealousy against his son. Mirza returns only to be brutally blinded and killed, and the emperor soon dies stricken with remorse. Now it happens that Parliament justified all its actions in the months preceding the civil war on the grounds of the "fears and jealousies" that the king had inspired. Charles was incensed by the slogan and claimed angrily that he, if anyone, had the most cause for fears and jealousies.2 Denham obviously decided that here was the all-consuming topic around which a predominantly royalist drama could be written. He followed what I believe was the standard practice - the method that Fulke Greville said Sidney used and that Congreve repeated at the end of the century when he declared of The Double Dealer that "I design'd the Moral first, and to that Moral I invented the Fable."3 He found a plot in Thomas Herbert's Travels into Diverse Parts of Asia that recorded some terrible cruelties and catastrophes caused by jealousy, and he added the point that the emperor's mind had been wrought upon by his counselor. There is no evidence that the play was ever acted, but the most casual reader would have said to himself, "Yes, history reminds us that states destroy themselves through fears and jealousies, and we should abate our own before it is too late." · 1. Sir John Denham, The Poetical Works, ed. Theodore Howard Banks, 2d ed. , p.245. The references to fear and jealousy are so ubiquitous in the play that they need not be listed here.· 2. On March 1, 1642, in the angriest of his replies to Parliament so far, Charles exclaimed, "You speake of Jealousies and Feares: Lay your hands to your hearts, and aske your selves whether I may not likewise be disturbed with Feares and Jealousies: And if so, I assure you this Message hath nothing lessened them" . Although phrases like "distempers and jealousies" had been used earlier, Clarendon on two occasions is quite specific that "fears and jealousies" were "the new words which served to justify all indispositions and to excuse all disorders" in January 1642 . Taken with other evidence, Clarendon's remarks strongly suggest that The Sophy was written after Coopers Hill, and during seven months preceding its publication in August 1642.· 3. William Congreve, The Complete Plays, ed. Herbert Davis , p. 119. And compare John Donne in Sermons, ed. Evelyn M. Simpson are George R. Potter , 9:274: "All wayes of teaching are Rule and Example: and though ordinarily the Rule be first placed, yet the Rule it selfe is made of Examples...for, Example in matter of Doctrine, is as Assimiliation in matter of Nourishment; The Example makes that that is proposed for our learning and farther instruction, like something which we knew before, as Assimilation makes that meat, which we have received and digested, like those parts which are in our bodies before."John M. Wallace, author of Destiny His Choice: The Loyalism of Andrew Marvell and articles on Milton, Dryden Denham, Traherne, and Arnold, is professor of English at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

Tested the 2-process theory of detection, search, and attention presented by the current authors in a series of experiments. The studies demonstrate the qualitative difference between 2 modes of information processing: automatic detection and controlled search; trace the course of the learning of automatic detection, of categories, and of automatic-attention responses; and show the dependence of automatic detection on attending responses and demonstrate how such responses interrupt controlled processing and interfere with the focusing of attention. The learning of (...) categories is shown to improve controlled search performance. A general framework for human information processing is proposed. The framework emphasizes the roles of automatic and controlled processing. The theory is compared to and contrasted with extant models of search and attention. (shrink)

Although learning English as a Foreign Language is needed all over the world nowadays, it is still difficult for some Spanish students to learn it. Considering that teacher’s decisions on the use of methodologies is essential in class, we look at future teachers.In this study we focus on future teachers’ training as a key element to match theory and practice and bring to Foreign Language (FL) classes innovative approaches such as Project Based Learning (PBL). A recent experienced (2021-22) (...) in the Faculty of Education of Málaga has been analysed and important conclusions have been drawn from results obtained. (shrink)

Philosophical writing is challenging for students new to philosophy. Many philosophy classes are populated, for the most part, by students who have never taken philosophy before. While many institutions offer general writing support services, these services tend to be most beneficial for helping to identify problems with style and grammar. They are not equipped to help students with the particular challenges that come with writing philosophy for the first time. We implemented the “Home Base” Mentoring Program in two introductory level (...) philosophy courses to target the specific challenges that novice learners have when learning how to write philosophy. Through the program, students had access to writing mentors who were undergraduate senior philosophy majors. Based on surveys given to the students who have participated in this program, we found that the program boosted student confidence in writing and also worked to develop a welcoming, judgment-free, and encouraging environment in the philosophy department more generally. (shrink)

Critical care nurses are key providers in a high acuity environment. This qualitative research study explored ethical decision making in a critical care practice setting. Fifteen critical care nurses with varying experience and education levels were purposively sampled to assure the representativeness of the data. The theoretical concepts of experiential learning, perspective transformation, reflection-in-action and principle-based ethics were used as a framework for eliciting information from the participants. A new model of focused reflection in ethical decision making was developed. (...) Findings showed that having a role model or mentor to help guide the ethical decision-making process was critical for focused ethical discourse and the decision making. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence has renewed interest in building systems that learn and think like people. Many advances have come from using deep neural networks trained end-to-end in tasks such as object recognition, video games, and board games, achieving performance that equals or even beats that of humans in some respects. Despite their biological inspiration and performance achievements, these systems differ from human intelligence in crucial ways. We review progress in cognitive science suggesting that truly human-like learning and (...) thinking machines will have to reach beyond current engineering trends in both what they learn and how they learn it. Specifically, we argue that these machines should build causal models of the world that support explanation and understanding, rather than merely solving pattern recognition problems; ground learning in intuitive theories of physics and psychology to support and enrich the knowledge that is learned; and harness compositionality and learning-to-learn to rapidly acquire and generalize knowledge to new tasks and situations. We suggest concrete challenges and promising routes toward these goals that can combine the strengths of recent neural network advances with more structured cognitive models. (shrink)

Context: Radical constructivism (RC) is seen as a fruitful way to teach innovation, as Ernst von Glasersfeld’s concepts of knowing, learning, and teaching provide an epistemological framework fostering processes of generating an autonomous conceptual understanding. Problem: Classical educational approaches do not meet the requirements for teaching and learning innovation because they mostly aim at students’ competent performance, not at students’ understanding and developing their creative capabilities. Method: Analysis of theoretical principles from the constructivist framework and how they can (...) be used as a foundation for designing a course in the field of innovation. The empirical results are based on qualitative journal entries that were coded and categorized according to Charmaz’s grounded theory approach. Results: It is shown that there is a close relationship between learning and innovation processes. The proposed investigated course design based on RC incorporates the following concepts: the course setting is understood as a framework to guide understanding; students work in teams and are subjective constructors of their own knowledge; instructors take on the role of coaches, guiding students through an innovation process as co-creators. Such a framework facilitates dynamic processes of assimilation and accommodation, as well as perturbation through the “other,” which potentially lead to novel, and viable, conceptual structures crucial for sustainable innovation. Constructivist Content: The paper argues in favor of RC principles in the context of teaching and learning. The proposed course setting is oriented at von Glasersfeld’s understanding of knowing, learning, and teaching (vs. training. It outlines theoretical and practical aspects of these principles in the context of a course design for innovation. Furthermore, it shows the importance of von Glasersfeld’s concept of intersubjectivity for processes of accommodation and the generation of (novel) autonomous conceptual structures. The interplay between creating coherence, perturbation, and irritation through interacting with the “other” (in the form of co-students and instructors) is assumed to be vital for such processes, as it leads to the creation of not only novel but also viable conceptual structures, therefore re-establishing a relative equilibrium critical for sustainable innovation. (shrink)

The article analyzes the implementation of an online educational module and its impact on the organization of the classroom’s interaction order. The latter is institutionally constrained by the presence of a goal and the distribution of roles between teacher and students. The introduction of a digital learning platform adds a technological context to the institutional setting. The article considers technologies as possessing communicative affordances — opportunities for action made possible or delimited through their use. Technologies bring new interactive resources (...) to the process of ed­ucation and can affect the organization of the classroom’s interaction order. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we analyzed video recordings of the telemediated interaction of Russia-based students and teachers within a gamified online educational module. We investigate a case in which a student’s correct answer is nevertheless corrected by the teacher. We dem­onstrate that the teacher initiates the correction because they are guided by the ordering of the game elements within the interface. Based on a detailed analysis of the teacher’s mouse movement in relation to ongoing turns-at-talk, we show that this orientation is sustained by all participants. The work contributes to classroom interaction studies and affordance theory and develops the methodology of multimodal transcription for mediated contexts. The primary result of the study is an empirical demonstration that the relevance of technological affordances for interactants is situation­ally produced, and that this process is associated with the interweaving of the institutional and technical context of interaction. The conclusion discusses the relationship between affordances and institutional norms. (shrink)

Although storybooks are often used as pedagogical tools for conveying moral lessons to children, the ability to spontaneously extract "the moral" of a story develops relatively late. Instead, children tend to represent stories at a concrete level - one that highlights surface features and understates more abstract themes. Here we examine the role of explanation in 5- and 6-year-old children's developing ability to learn the moral of a story. Two experiments demonstrate that, relative to a control condition, prompts to explain (...) aspects of a story facilitate children's ability to override salient surface features, abstract the underlying moral, and generalize that moral to novel contexts. In some cases, generating an explanation is more effective than being explicitly told the moral of the story, as in a more traditional pedagogical exchange. These findings have implications for moral comprehension, the role of explanation in learning, and the development of abstract reasoning in early childhood. (shrink)

In this paper we continue an ongoing dialogue that has as its goal the critical appraisal of theoretical perspectives on culture and health, in an effort to move forward scholarship on culture and health. We draw upon a programme of scholarship to explicate theoretical tensions and challenges that are manifest in the discourses on culture and health and to explore the possibilities Bourdieu's theoretical perspective offers for reconciling them. That is, we hope to demonstrate the need to move beyond descriptions (...) ‘of’ culture to an understanding of cultures as dynamic, and to show ways cultural practices create contexts that have the potential to foster or impede health.In our early research, largely undertaken in Canada's multicultural context, we sought to make visible the ways in which culture shaped conceptions of health and influenced health practices of immigrant groups. In recent years this focus has expanded to include populations that reflect the cultural and social diversity of our region. From the outset we attempted to move towards a conception of culture as negotiated, unifying, transformative and dynamic. While this position continues to hold appeal we are continually reminded that, despite our leanings towards constructivism, there is salience to the notion of culture as having enduring elements. It is this tension between the view of culture as embodied and enduring and culture as constructed and dynamic that we seek to examine.We explore whether Bourdieu's theoretical perspective offers promise for reconciling these apparently competing views. Using exemplars from our research we share insights that Bourdieu's work has offered to our analyses, thereby enabling us to move towards a view of culture that holds in tension these apparently contradictory positions of culture as both essence (albeit unstable, negotiated) and constructed. (shrink)