Shifting sands: a case study of conceptual development as competition between alternative conceptions

2001 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 731-753 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith S. Taber
2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 1221-1238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adib ◽  
Paul Emiljanowicz

This article argues that colonial time is fractured, uneven, and co-constituted by tension. Despite coercive violence and instruments of temporal control, non-internalized alternative conceptions of time can/do exist, hybridize, and transform autonomously. We explore these tensions through an examination of post-revolution Iran's attempt to project colonial time through the prison system, and the persistence of non-internalized temporal alternatives as articulated through prisoner memoirs and narratives. Prisons and imprisonment, by removing bodies from the body politic, functions to colonize time to erase, homogenize, and mediate past, present, and future – thereby reproducing ideational-material governance. Yet prisoner memoirs and narratives reveal this process to be incomplete as the agency of individuals to retain, create, and testify provide indications of non-internalized decolonial temporal imaginaries. In taking into consideration our case study and recent trends in anthropology, we inject into the field of International Relations an understanding of colonial time as tension, which can be applied to political-economic and cultural contexts in which time is actively being colonized.


2013 ◽  
pp. 133-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanne Andersen

This paper focuses on Thomas S. Kuhn's work on taxonomic concepts and how it relates to empirical work from the cognitive sciences on categorization and conceptual development. I shall first review the basic features of Kuhn's family resemblance account and compare to work from the cognitive sciences. I shall then show how Kuhn's account can be extended to cover the development of new taxonomies in science, and I shall illustrate by a detailed case study that Kuhn himself mentioned only briefly in his own work, namely the discovery of X-rays and radioactivity.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Myers ◽  
P. Grace ◽  
E. Lopez Calva ◽  
X. Zhang

This paper explores the impact of water conservation and rainwater harvesting practices implemented at the site or district scale on the infrastructure, energy and water cycles of their larger urban systems. A case study is presented of a conceptual development in a Southeast Asian climate. Two technologies are examined: water-efficient fixtures and appliances and rainwater harvesting and beneficial use. Practices to reduce water consumption at the site or district scale have implications in the larger system, ranging from reductions in water that has to be treated and distributed, reductions in wastewater that has to be collected and treated, and reductions in energy consumed. Similarly, using rainwater for irrigation will reduce the amount of potable water demand, and will have system energy implications. The paper considers performance criteria for the entire water-energy system, including peak runoff, pollutant loads, energy and carbon footprints.


1997 ◽  
Vol 01 (01) ◽  
pp. 23-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qing Wang

A considerable number of studies have been assembled over the last decade on the management of the R&D/marketing interface in product innovation. Most of these studies focus on the R&D/marketing interface as a self-contained unit of analysis, offering little explanation of the interface's contribution to a firm's competence building in ways essential to innovation success. This paper is based upon research that demonstrates that the importance of the R&D/marketing interface lies in its dynamic capability in influencing the direction of product development projects towards enhancing existing, or building new, competencies. The case study results show that the shared tasks performed by R&D and marketing departments are concentrated in three areas, i.e. corporate conceptual development (CCD), product conceptual development (PCD) and project implementation (Ip). The results reveal that the performance of the cross-functional team in general, and the R&D/marketing interface in particular, during a project's implementation, is heavily dependent on earlier activities in the areas of CCD and PCD. The former usually involves a sustained period of company-wide strategic preparation, which may or may not be directly targetted at a specific project, whilst the latter refers to previous co-operative experience at the project level. The evidence shows that, even when top management attempts to build an instant platform (e.g. by means of heavyweight project management), in the absence of such earlier activities, the effectiveness of this kind of platform has been far from satisfactory, thus pinpointing the vital importance of learning-before-doing in the innovation process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-162
Author(s):  
CHRISTIAN BÜSCHER ◽  
SUSANNE SCHNELL

The present study investigates the processes of how German middle school students (age 14) interpret, contrast and evaluate different (informal) statistical measures in order to summarise and compare frequency distributions. To trace the developing insights into the properties of these measures, this paper uses the ‘emergent modelling’ perspective: measures are understood as models, which can either be used to make sense of a given situation or to reason about the statistical measures themselves, e.g. in terms of when they can be applied adequately. The emergent modelling approach is used (1) as a theoretical framework for describing students’ conceptual development, and (2) as a design heuristic for developing a teaching-learning arrangement aiming at developing insights about (frequency) distributions and statistical measures. In the qualitative analysis of a design experiment, two students’ emerging contextual and statistical knowledge is identified, revealing the intertwined nature of both types of knowledge. Overall, this paper illustrates the important role the emergent modelling perspective can play for designing as well as describing students’ learning pathways in statistics education. First published November 2017 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives


2021 ◽  
pp. 255-262

INTRODUCTION: The major events occurring in recent decades have demonstrated that human societies are constantly affected by disasters which have always posed a threat to people's lives and properties. The present study aimed to introduce and expand the concept and capacities of "the survival vehicle" in Iran. This descriptive case study was conducted based on an applied research design. METHODS: This descriptive case study was conducted based on an applied research design. The library research method was used to develop theoretical backgrounds, and to collect information, the field method was employed with observation and researcher's information. FINDINGS: Considering that rescue forces have to be present at the scene of the disaster for consecutive days and weeks, they are directly exposed to threats, injuries, shortages, and problems as affected people are. Therefore, rescue experts and the Rapid Reaction Team of the Red Crescent Society of Kurdistan Province embarked on designing and using a vehicle called "Survival vehicle" taking into account the priorities in the affected area. This vehicle maintains the strength and motivation of relief forces by meeting their basic needs. Moreover, it increases the productivity of the relief forces and facilitates disaster management by strengthening the resilience of relief workers. CONCLUSION: As evidenced by the results of the present study, the use of the survival vehicle brings about numerous positive advantages for the members of the Red Crescent rapid response team, as well as relief and operational teams, at the time of crises.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Ayşegül Dedetürk ◽  
Aslı Saylan Kırmızıgül ◽  
Hasan Kaya

Engineering design process-oriented STEM activities are activities that involve solving a real-world problem with teamwork by using integrative engineering design and engineering applications using scientific and mathematical concepts and 21st century skills. The research aimed to examine the effects of engineering design process-oriented STEM activities, which were developed for sound concept, on the conceptual development of 6th grade students. In the research, comparative case study design was used. The study group consisted of 40 students attending a middle school in Kayseri, Turkey. The teaching was carried out by the activities in science curriculum in the control group, while it was carried out by engineering design process-oriented STEM activities in the experimental group. Each student was individually interviewed using 11 open-ended questions in a verbal format. The mean of Kappa coefficients of the questions was 0.93. As a result of content analysis, 11 categories, including 21 themes and 81 codes, were obtained. When the differences between pre- and post-interviews were examined, it was seen that conceptual understanding levels of the students in experimental group were more positive than the students in control group. This shows that engineering design process-oriented integrated STEM activities have positive effects on students’ conceptual understanding of sound. Keywords: case study, conceptual development, engineering design, STEM


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