Changing practices, changing values?: a Bernsteinian analysis of knowledge production and knowledge exchange in two UK universities
- Little, Brenda, Abbas, Andrea, Singh, Mala
- Authors: Little, Brenda , Abbas, Andrea , Singh, Mala
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66934 , vital:29002 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7369-0_8
- Description: publisher version , Bernstein’s concept of classification and framing links notions of knowledge, democracy and social justice, providing a perspective from which to address critical questions of what knowledge is produced, who has access to it, and how knowledge is distributed. Bernstein’s conceptual framework is used to inform an analysis of national policies steering knowledge production and knowledge transfer in the UK, and the changing practices and values associated with knowledge production and knowledge transfer in two UK institutional case study universities. The analysis reveals how reputational and financial consequences of the formal assessment of research quality interacts with the institutional and disciplinary contexts of research units to differently shape what knowledge is valued and produced, and with whom it is shared. Five discursive areas, each involving a complex set of classifications (power) and framings (control) are identified, namely: the national research assessment framework; the economic value of research; discourses of social and academic values; academic freedoms; and mixed-discipline research and the interdisciplinary nature of real world problems. Though competing and sometimes contradictory values seem to underlie academics’ knowledge work, it seems that the strong framing for knowledge production and knowledge exchange provided by national policies steers staff efforts towards economised codes of knowledge. The conclusion suggests that such a strong steer does not value social transformation in all its diverse non-economistic dimensions and limits universities’ potential to transform societies to further social justice.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Little, Brenda , Abbas, Andrea , Singh, Mala
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66934 , vital:29002 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7369-0_8
- Description: publisher version , Bernstein’s concept of classification and framing links notions of knowledge, democracy and social justice, providing a perspective from which to address critical questions of what knowledge is produced, who has access to it, and how knowledge is distributed. Bernstein’s conceptual framework is used to inform an analysis of national policies steering knowledge production and knowledge transfer in the UK, and the changing practices and values associated with knowledge production and knowledge transfer in two UK institutional case study universities. The analysis reveals how reputational and financial consequences of the formal assessment of research quality interacts with the institutional and disciplinary contexts of research units to differently shape what knowledge is valued and produced, and with whom it is shared. Five discursive areas, each involving a complex set of classifications (power) and framings (control) are identified, namely: the national research assessment framework; the economic value of research; discourses of social and academic values; academic freedoms; and mixed-discipline research and the interdisciplinary nature of real world problems. Though competing and sometimes contradictory values seem to underlie academics’ knowledge work, it seems that the strong framing for knowledge production and knowledge exchange provided by national policies steers staff efforts towards economised codes of knowledge. The conclusion suggests that such a strong steer does not value social transformation in all its diverse non-economistic dimensions and limits universities’ potential to transform societies to further social justice.
- Full Text: false
Heat shock protein inhibitors: success stories
- McAlpine, Shelli R, Edkins, Adrienne L
- Authors: McAlpine, Shelli R , Edkins, Adrienne L
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66359 , vital:28940 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32607-8
- Description: publisher version , Introduction: Medicinal chemistry is both science and art. The science of medicinal chemistry offers mankind one of its best hopes for improving the quality of life. The art of medicinal chemistry continues to challenge its practitioners with the need for both intuition and experience to discover new drugs. Hence sharing the experience of drug research is uniquely beneficial to the field of medicinal chemistry. Drug research requires interdisciplinary team-work at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. Therefore, the topic-related series Topics in Medicinal Chemistry covers all relevant aspects of drug research, e.g. pathobiochemistry of diseases, identification and validation of (emerging) drug targets, structural biology, drugability of targets, drug design approaches, chemogenomics, synthetic chemistry including combinatorial methods, bioorganic chemistry, natural compounds, high-throughput screening, pharmacological in vitro and in vivo investigations, drug-receptor interactions on the molecular level, structure-activity relationships, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, toxicology and pharmacogenomics. In general, special volumes are edited by well known guest editors. , This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No 98566), the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA), Medical Research Council South Africa (MRC-SA) and Rhodes University. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the DST, NRF, CANSA, MRC-SA or Rhodes University. We apologize if we have inadvertently missed any important contributions to the field.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: McAlpine, Shelli R , Edkins, Adrienne L
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66359 , vital:28940 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32607-8
- Description: publisher version , Introduction: Medicinal chemistry is both science and art. The science of medicinal chemistry offers mankind one of its best hopes for improving the quality of life. The art of medicinal chemistry continues to challenge its practitioners with the need for both intuition and experience to discover new drugs. Hence sharing the experience of drug research is uniquely beneficial to the field of medicinal chemistry. Drug research requires interdisciplinary team-work at the interface between chemistry, biology and medicine. Therefore, the topic-related series Topics in Medicinal Chemistry covers all relevant aspects of drug research, e.g. pathobiochemistry of diseases, identification and validation of (emerging) drug targets, structural biology, drugability of targets, drug design approaches, chemogenomics, synthetic chemistry including combinatorial methods, bioorganic chemistry, natural compounds, high-throughput screening, pharmacological in vitro and in vivo investigations, drug-receptor interactions on the molecular level, structure-activity relationships, drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, elimination, toxicology and pharmacogenomics. In general, special volumes are edited by well known guest editors. , This work is based on the research supported by the South African Research Chairs Initiative of the Department of Science and Technology and National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant No 98566), the Cancer Association of South Africa (CANSA), Medical Research Council South Africa (MRC-SA) and Rhodes University. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the DST, NRF, CANSA, MRC-SA or Rhodes University. We apologize if we have inadvertently missed any important contributions to the field.
- Full Text: false
LCT and systemic functional linguistics: Enacting complimentary theories for explanatory power
- Maton, Karl, Martin, James R, Matruglio, Erika S
- Authors: Maton, Karl , Martin, James R , Matruglio, Erika S
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66491 , vital:28955
- Description: publisher version , Interdisciplinarity is the future. Such is the thrust of pronouncements repeatedly heard across the social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinarity is often equated with intellectually and socially progressive stances and greater responsiveness to business and workplace needs. Yet such axiological and economic benefits are more often assumed or proclaimed than evidenced or demonstrated (Moore 2011). Moreover,what is declared to be 'interdisciplinary' often comprises the appropriation by literary or philosophical discourses of ideas from other fields rather than genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue. Nonetheless,to highlight the vacuity of much written in its name is not to dismiss the potential of interdisciplinarity itself. There are serious ontological and epistemological arguments for bringing disciplines together in substantive research (Bhaskar and Danermark 2006). Simply put,the social world comprises more than the phenomena addressed by any one discipline. Education,for example,involves at least knowledges, knowers, knowing, and the known, implicating insights from, among others,sociology,linguistics,psychology,and philosophy (Maton 2014b: 212-13). This is not to suggest a single study must encompass the disciplinary map in order to recreate reality in its entirety, Rather,it highlights that drawing on more than one disciplinary approach may offer greater explanatory power when exploring a specific problem-situation.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Maton, Karl , Martin, James R , Matruglio, Erika S
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66491 , vital:28955
- Description: publisher version , Interdisciplinarity is the future. Such is the thrust of pronouncements repeatedly heard across the social sciences and humanities. Interdisciplinarity is often equated with intellectually and socially progressive stances and greater responsiveness to business and workplace needs. Yet such axiological and economic benefits are more often assumed or proclaimed than evidenced or demonstrated (Moore 2011). Moreover,what is declared to be 'interdisciplinary' often comprises the appropriation by literary or philosophical discourses of ideas from other fields rather than genuinely interdisciplinary dialogue. Nonetheless,to highlight the vacuity of much written in its name is not to dismiss the potential of interdisciplinarity itself. There are serious ontological and epistemological arguments for bringing disciplines together in substantive research (Bhaskar and Danermark 2006). Simply put,the social world comprises more than the phenomena addressed by any one discipline. Education,for example,involves at least knowledges, knowers, knowing, and the known, implicating insights from, among others,sociology,linguistics,psychology,and philosophy (Maton 2014b: 212-13). This is not to suggest a single study must encompass the disciplinary map in order to recreate reality in its entirety, Rather,it highlights that drawing on more than one disciplinary approach may offer greater explanatory power when exploring a specific problem-situation.
- Full Text: false
LCT in mixed-methods research: evolving an instrument for quantitative data
- Maton, Karl, Howard, Sarah Katherine
- Authors: Maton, Karl , Howard, Sarah Katherine
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66479 , vital:28954
- Description: publisher version , A mantra of social science declares a fundamental divide between the quantitative and the qualitative that involves more than methods. According to this depiction, the two methodologies are intrinsically associated with a range of ontological, epistemological, political and moral stances. Each of these constellations of stances is strongly integrated, such that choice of method is held to involve a series of associated choices. Each constellation is also strongly opposed to the other, along axes labelled positivism/constructivism, scientism/humanism, conservative/critical, old/new, among others. These ‘binary constellations’ (Maton 2014b: 148-70) offer a forced choice between two tightly-knit sets of practices that are portrayed as jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. So widespread is this methodological binarism that many scholars ‘are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to one research school of thought or the other’ (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004: 14). A competing mantra disclaims this divide. Distinctions underpinning the picture of binary constellations have been regularly dissolved. Arguments that one deals with numbers, the other with words, one studies behaviour, the other reveals meanings, one is hypothetico-deductive, the other inductive, one enables generalization, the other explores singular depth, among others, have been repeatedly undermined (e.g. Hammersley 1992). Indeed, the death of the divide is frequently declared. Calls for ‘transcending’ (Salomon 1991) or ‘getting over’ (Howe 1992) the quantitative-qualitative debate and arguments for mixed-methods research (Brannen 2005; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004) are recurrent. These calls highlight how the methodologies offer complementary insights for research and demonstrate that eschewing either methodology on principle is unnecessarily renouncing potential explanatory power. However, the call to mixed-methods research remains more breached than honoured. Methodological monotheism remains dominant – studies of education and society typically adopt either quantitative or qualitative methods. As we shall discuss, the former is typically associated with the influence of psychology and the latter is often claimed as emblematic of sociology. Studies utilizing the sociological frameworks on which Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) builds have echoed this pattern by overwhelmingly adopting qualitative methods. Accordingly, Part I of this volume begins by exploring how LCT concepts can be enacted in qualitative research (Chapter 2). However, LCT is not limited to one methodology and a growing body of mixed-methods research is engaging with both qualitative and quantitative data. In this chapter we illustrate how this research works and the gains it offers. For resolutely qualitative researchers, the prospect of reading anything quantitative, even in mixed-methods research, may be unenticing. However, it would be a mistake to pass over this chapter, for several reasons. First, we offer insights into research practice that might surprise such scholars. As Bourdieu argued, ‘methodological indictments are too often no more than a disguised way of making a virtue out of necessity, of feigning to dismiss, to ignore in an active way, what one is ignorant of in fact’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 226). Our aim is to contribute towards removing this reason for one-sidedness. We show, for example, how quantitative methods confound their common portrayal as neat, straightforward and procedural; they are complex and involved and require craft work and judgement. Our focus is, therefore, more practical than metaphysical. We shall not enter seemingly endless debates over whether the ‘quantitative-qualitative divide’ refers to paradigms, epistemologies or methods and whether these are complementary or incommensurable. Rather, we discuss the development of an instrument for enacting LCT concepts in quantitative methods and ground this account in real examples of mixed-methods research. Specifically, we trace the evolution of an instrument for embedding specialization codes within questionnaires through its creation for research into school music and then its development within studies of educational technology. Given that mathematics can be off-putting to the noviciate, we minimize discussion of statistics and explain measures in lay terms. Second, this is much more than a story of quantitative methods. The evolution of the instrument both shaped qualitative methods and was shaped by the data they generated, offering insights into how qualitative research can more fully engage with LCT. Its development also involved intimate dialogue with theory that shed fresh light on LCT itself, making explicit the ‘gaze’ embodied by the framework (Chapter 1, this volume). We shall highlight wider lessons learned about the craft of enacting LCT in research, lessons of direct relevance for studies using any methods. Third, we shall illustrate the explanatory power offered by using quantitative and qualitative methods together, such as providing a robust basis for detailed findings, identifying wider-scale trends typically inaccessible to qualitative methods that provide a context for their data, and facilitating knowledge-building through greater replicability across contexts and over time. For example, the technology studies built directly on the music studies to cumulatively develop the instrument and generated probably the largest data set in code sociology: 97,386 responses (83,937 student and 13,449 staff surveys) on the organizing principles of academic subjects, alongside 20 in-depth qualitative case studies of secondary schools. This offers a foundation of substantial breadth and depth for making claims about knowledge practices across the disciplinary map and a firm basis on which future research into disciplinary differences can build. Moreover, the quantitative instrument itself can be adopted or adapted in new studies, further enabling cumulative knowledge-building. Given these substantive, methodological and theoretical gains, it is perhaps surprising there exists any temptation to skip past discussion of mixed-methods research. This reflects the methodological character of the fields in which LCT emerged. We thus begin by briefly illustrating how the sociological frameworks on which the theory builds have become distanced from quantitative methods.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Maton, Karl , Howard, Sarah Katherine
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/66479 , vital:28954
- Description: publisher version , A mantra of social science declares a fundamental divide between the quantitative and the qualitative that involves more than methods. According to this depiction, the two methodologies are intrinsically associated with a range of ontological, epistemological, political and moral stances. Each of these constellations of stances is strongly integrated, such that choice of method is held to involve a series of associated choices. Each constellation is also strongly opposed to the other, along axes labelled positivism/constructivism, scientism/humanism, conservative/critical, old/new, among others. These ‘binary constellations’ (Maton 2014b: 148-70) offer a forced choice between two tightly-knit sets of practices that are portrayed as jointly exhaustive and mutually exclusive. So widespread is this methodological binarism that many scholars ‘are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to one research school of thought or the other’ (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004: 14). A competing mantra disclaims this divide. Distinctions underpinning the picture of binary constellations have been regularly dissolved. Arguments that one deals with numbers, the other with words, one studies behaviour, the other reveals meanings, one is hypothetico-deductive, the other inductive, one enables generalization, the other explores singular depth, among others, have been repeatedly undermined (e.g. Hammersley 1992). Indeed, the death of the divide is frequently declared. Calls for ‘transcending’ (Salomon 1991) or ‘getting over’ (Howe 1992) the quantitative-qualitative debate and arguments for mixed-methods research (Brannen 2005; Johnson and Onwuegbuzie 2004) are recurrent. These calls highlight how the methodologies offer complementary insights for research and demonstrate that eschewing either methodology on principle is unnecessarily renouncing potential explanatory power. However, the call to mixed-methods research remains more breached than honoured. Methodological monotheism remains dominant – studies of education and society typically adopt either quantitative or qualitative methods. As we shall discuss, the former is typically associated with the influence of psychology and the latter is often claimed as emblematic of sociology. Studies utilizing the sociological frameworks on which Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) builds have echoed this pattern by overwhelmingly adopting qualitative methods. Accordingly, Part I of this volume begins by exploring how LCT concepts can be enacted in qualitative research (Chapter 2). However, LCT is not limited to one methodology and a growing body of mixed-methods research is engaging with both qualitative and quantitative data. In this chapter we illustrate how this research works and the gains it offers. For resolutely qualitative researchers, the prospect of reading anything quantitative, even in mixed-methods research, may be unenticing. However, it would be a mistake to pass over this chapter, for several reasons. First, we offer insights into research practice that might surprise such scholars. As Bourdieu argued, ‘methodological indictments are too often no more than a disguised way of making a virtue out of necessity, of feigning to dismiss, to ignore in an active way, what one is ignorant of in fact’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 226). Our aim is to contribute towards removing this reason for one-sidedness. We show, for example, how quantitative methods confound their common portrayal as neat, straightforward and procedural; they are complex and involved and require craft work and judgement. Our focus is, therefore, more practical than metaphysical. We shall not enter seemingly endless debates over whether the ‘quantitative-qualitative divide’ refers to paradigms, epistemologies or methods and whether these are complementary or incommensurable. Rather, we discuss the development of an instrument for enacting LCT concepts in quantitative methods and ground this account in real examples of mixed-methods research. Specifically, we trace the evolution of an instrument for embedding specialization codes within questionnaires through its creation for research into school music and then its development within studies of educational technology. Given that mathematics can be off-putting to the noviciate, we minimize discussion of statistics and explain measures in lay terms. Second, this is much more than a story of quantitative methods. The evolution of the instrument both shaped qualitative methods and was shaped by the data they generated, offering insights into how qualitative research can more fully engage with LCT. Its development also involved intimate dialogue with theory that shed fresh light on LCT itself, making explicit the ‘gaze’ embodied by the framework (Chapter 1, this volume). We shall highlight wider lessons learned about the craft of enacting LCT in research, lessons of direct relevance for studies using any methods. Third, we shall illustrate the explanatory power offered by using quantitative and qualitative methods together, such as providing a robust basis for detailed findings, identifying wider-scale trends typically inaccessible to qualitative methods that provide a context for their data, and facilitating knowledge-building through greater replicability across contexts and over time. For example, the technology studies built directly on the music studies to cumulatively develop the instrument and generated probably the largest data set in code sociology: 97,386 responses (83,937 student and 13,449 staff surveys) on the organizing principles of academic subjects, alongside 20 in-depth qualitative case studies of secondary schools. This offers a foundation of substantial breadth and depth for making claims about knowledge practices across the disciplinary map and a firm basis on which future research into disciplinary differences can build. Moreover, the quantitative instrument itself can be adopted or adapted in new studies, further enabling cumulative knowledge-building. Given these substantive, methodological and theoretical gains, it is perhaps surprising there exists any temptation to skip past discussion of mixed-methods research. This reflects the methodological character of the fields in which LCT emerged. We thus begin by briefly illustrating how the sociological frameworks on which the theory builds have become distanced from quantitative methods.
- Full Text: false
Learning style of Chinese event management students
- Louw, Mattheus J, Louw, Lynette, Li, Yanxia
- Authors: Louw, Mattheus J , Louw, Lynette , Li, Yanxia
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69167 , vital:29438 , https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110366778-028
- Description: There is a demand for social development in China by establishing, inter alia, a framework focusing on the employability of university graduates and developing self-directed learners. The key to achieving this would be to gain a better understanding of how learning styles, as one of the cognitive factors, contribute towards academic performance in order to provide meaningful learning experiences.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Louw, Mattheus J , Louw, Lynette , Li, Yanxia
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/69167 , vital:29438 , https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110366778-028
- Description: There is a demand for social development in China by establishing, inter alia, a framework focusing on the employability of university graduates and developing self-directed learners. The key to achieving this would be to gain a better understanding of how learning styles, as one of the cognitive factors, contribute towards academic performance in order to provide meaningful learning experiences.
- Full Text: false
South African perceptions of the good life twenty years into democracy
- Authors: Moller, Valerie
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67215 , vital:29060 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_15
- Description: publisher version , South Africa celebrated 20 years of democracy in 2014. In 1994, life satisfaction among all South Africans peaked following the first open non-racial elections. Since that time, only some 45–55 % of the total population, on average, state that they are satisfied. Drawing on Alex Michalos’ classic Multiple Discrepancy Theory (MDT), this chapter explores the needs, expectations, aspirations and perceptions of progress among black South Africans, who were promised a better life under democracy by the new government they voted for in 1994. Findings suggest that expectations raised by the new government in the early years of democracy, coupled with a strong sense of entitlement to state services and welfare in later years, are among the strongest drivers of life satisfaction 20 years into democracy. South Africa’s democracy project is still a work in progress and black South Africans continue to hope for a better life in the future.
- Full Text: false
- Authors: Moller, Valerie
- Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Type: text , book
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/67215 , vital:29060 , https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20568-7_15
- Description: publisher version , South Africa celebrated 20 years of democracy in 2014. In 1994, life satisfaction among all South Africans peaked following the first open non-racial elections. Since that time, only some 45–55 % of the total population, on average, state that they are satisfied. Drawing on Alex Michalos’ classic Multiple Discrepancy Theory (MDT), this chapter explores the needs, expectations, aspirations and perceptions of progress among black South Africans, who were promised a better life under democracy by the new government they voted for in 1994. Findings suggest that expectations raised by the new government in the early years of democracy, coupled with a strong sense of entitlement to state services and welfare in later years, are among the strongest drivers of life satisfaction 20 years into democracy. South Africa’s democracy project is still a work in progress and black South Africans continue to hope for a better life in the future.
- Full Text: false
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