The article explores the potential for a critical realist approach to researching learning in international and comparative education (ICE) with a particular focus on the emerging post-2015 education and development agenda. It provides a critique of existing empiricist and interpretivist approaches to researching learning. It is suggested that whilst both have strengths, they are based on an ontologically reductionist view of learning with implications for research, policy and practice. As a ‘third’ research approach critical realism has the potential to build on the strengths whilst avoiding the pitfalls of both empiricism and interpretivism. Such an approach it is argued needs to start from an ontologically inclusive and laminated view of learning. Further, it is suggested that comparative research should focus on the development of theories of learning that are able to explain the natural and social structures and causal mechanisms that give rise to and inhibit learning at different scales and levels and in different contexts. The development of theory ought to embrace epistemological pluralism drawing critically on, cross-cultural, inter-disciplinary and mixed methods enquiry and making use of abductive and retroductive forms of inference. In this way it is argued it becomes possible to move beyond the dominant ‘what works’ agenda favoured by empiricists to critically consider what works, for who and under what circumstances. 相似文献
ABSTRACTCritical Participatory Action Research (CPAR) requires communicative space to develop shared understandings and decisions. We examine the interactional accomplishment of such a space between a classroom practitioner and an academic researcher when meeting to reflect on a lesson and agree on future action to bring about change in the practitioner’s classroom practice. Conversation analysis of an audio recording of the meeting establishes how advice giving emerged and was managed as a delicate matter that required achieving shared understandings of what actually happened in the lesson, what could have happened, and what should happen in future lessons. Findings provide insights into how participants used reported and hypothetical speech to manage advice and reach agreement, produce and maintain intersubjectivity through interaction, and address epistemic asymmetry related to the differing experiences and roles that they brought to the action research study. Overall, the article contributes understandings of the ways that interactions produce communicative space in CPAR. 相似文献
The purpose of this study was to identify pay disparities within gender and race using private and public Association of Research Libraries (ARL) libraries as a lens. In this study, 44 ARL libraries participated, leading to 1099 usable responses to our survey. The findings indicate that race and gender pay disparities are larger at private libraries than at public libraries. However, disparity levels at both public and private ARL libraries are smaller than the national averages for all professions and continue to shrink. 相似文献
Purpose: The aim of the paper is to analyse the use of Communities of Practice and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance knowledge sharing between researchers and advisors. The associated research question is to what extent ICT supported a virtual Community of Practice and has been effective in counteracting fragmentation between research and advisory systems in terms of knowledge sharing between these two pillars of the Italian Agricultural Knowledge System (AKS).
Design/Methodology/approach: The paper uses a mixed methods approach: a questionnaire submitted to the Community of Practice participants on their experiences, observation of interaction between Community of Practice participants and data on the use of the ICT platform.
Findings: The ICT supported Community of Practice approach appears to improve knowledge sharing between researchers and advisors, and also draws in other actors of the broader Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System in which the AKS is embedded. However, ICT based tools alone are not sufficient and need to be complemented with face-to-face (non-virtual) interactions. A clear theoretical implication of this study is that this is an iterative process in which virtual and non-virtual interaction mutually reinforce each other: ICT interaction spurs real life and face-to-face interaction, and ICT supports follow-up on real life face-to-face interaction.
Practical Implications: Communities of Practice can be a useful tool for knowledge sharing between research and advisory systems, but should have a degree of flexibility in terms of the topics they address and should accommodate new members when appropriate. ICT is supportive, but should be complemented by real life meetings.
Originality/Value: The paper connects recent frameworks of the use of Communities of Practice with literature on ICT in agriculture and adds insights on the contribution of combining virtual and non-virtual interaction in Communities of Practice aimed at knowledge sharing. 相似文献
