What’s hot and what’s not on the current CLIL research agenda: Weeding out the non-issues from the real issues. A response to Bruton (2019)

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
María Luisa Pérez Cañado

AbstractThis article aims to provide an updated, empirically solid overview of what’s hot and what’s not on the current CLIL research agenda in order to weed out the non-issues which we should no longer figure on the CLIL agenda from the real issues which will continue to shape the future of the field. This objective will hopefully be attained while concomitantly answering Bruton (2019), as, unfortunately, his most recent arguments are still not rooted in any research he himself has conducted, are not grounded on the latest empirical evidence, and limit themselves to re-interpreting studies conducted over a decade ago or which present a lack of empirical robustness. Only stalwart empirical evidence from the last few years is used here to provide a recent, research-driven overview of where we stand and where we need to go in the CLIL research arena, dismantling the assumptions put forward by Bruton (2019) as regards egalitarianism, the CLIL-EFL divide, and research into the effects of CLIL, and mapping out future pathways for progression which affect attention to diversity in bilingual education, incorporating a pluriliteracies approach, and replicating, extending, and meta-analyzing existing research.

2019 ◽  
pp. 250-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deena Skolnick Weisberg

The imagination is a necessary tool for doing science, because it allows scientists to form hypotheses, make predictions about the future, and consider non-actual possibilities. But some have worried that the imagination is too unconstrained to be used in the service of scientific inquiry, which needs to be tied closely to reality. This chapter reviews these arguments and provides empirical evidence that the imagination is constrained enough for science. Both children and adults base their imagined worlds on the real world, and these worlds rarely stray from the causal structure of reality. And although the imagination may be subject to some biases that make certain kinds of worlds easier to imagine, these biases can be identified and corrected through training and enculturation in science. Finally, the conclusions drawn within an imagined context can be brought to bear appropriately on reality, allowing the results of thought experiments and hypothetical scenarios to inform the practice of science.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-27
Author(s):  
Janet H. Murray

With the advent of mass consumer virtual reality (VR) headsets and controllers in the second decade of the 20th century, some experts have predicted we are on a path toward losing the distinction between the real and the virtual. These predictions overstate the empirical evidence for the effects of VR; ignore its technical limitations; take for granted highly speculative claims about the nature of consciousness; and, most fundamentally, lose sight of the continuities between VR and other representational media. This article argues against thinking of VR as a magical technology for creating seamless illusions. Instead it situates VR as an emerging medium within an evolving community that is beginning to develop the media conventions to support sustained interaction and immersion. The future of VR is not an inevitable and delusional metaverse but a medium of representation that will always require our active creation of belief.


Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 880-885
Author(s):  
K.P. Bhavatharini ◽  
Ms Dr. Anita Albert

Manju Kapur exposes the disparity and how modernity plays a major role in our society and also the hollowness modern life through her novel Custody. The present paper deals with the key aspects of custody, like extra marital affair, exploration of children and the law system of India. Manju Kapur has published five novels and all her novels dealt with postmodern era, which became sensational in the literary world. She talks about the life of people in Metropolitan cities and how it changes the attitude of theirs and makes them to be victims of modernity through her novel Custody. She manages to disclose the atmosphere which revolves around the family and how it destroys their peace. Here the author portrays how her female protagonist goes to an extent to fulfill her need even breaking her marital relationship with her husband and lack of concern with her children. She portrays the unimaginable incident of broken marriage and illustrates how it causes their children to yearning for their custody from their parents. The children are mentally affected because of the conflict between their egoistic parents to take back their custody only to win the battle not having the real concern over the future of their children. The author manages to create an excellent atmosphere that reveals the various disasters roaming around the family. The future of the children is also hazard. This novel proves that Manju Kapur is a great curator of the modern Indian family.


Author(s):  
Matthew Rendall

It is sometimes argued in support of discounting future costs and benefits that if we gave the same weight to the future as to the present, we would invest nearly all our income, but never spend it. Rather than enjoying the fruits of our investments, we would always do better to reinvest them. Undiscounted utilitarianism (UU), so the argument goes, is collectively self-defeating. This attempted reductio ad absurdum fails. Regardless of whether each generation successfully followed UU, or merely attempted to follow it, we could never get trapped in endless saving. The real problem is different: without the ability to foresee the end of the world, UU cannot tell us how much to save. Discounting is a defensible response, but only when coupled with a rule against risking catastrophe.


2021 ◽  
pp. 104225872110268
Author(s):  
Dean A. Shepherd ◽  
Johan Wiklund ◽  
Dimo Dimov

The future of the field of entrepreneurship is bright primarily because of the many research opportunities to make a difference. However, as scholars how can we find these opportunities and choose the ones most likely to contribute to the literature? This essay introduces me-search and a special issue of research-agenda papers from leading scholars as tools for blazing new trails in entrepreneurship research. Me-search and the agenda papers point to the importance of solving a practical problem; problematizing, contextualizing, and abstracting entrepreneurship research; and using empirical theorizing to explore entrepreneurial phenomena.


2021 ◽  
pp. 053901842199956
Author(s):  
Gerard Delanty

This essay is a comment on the research program launched by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel. My comment is specifically focused on their research agenda as outlined in their trend-setting article, ‘Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation, and control: A conceptual framework’. The comment is also addressed more generally to the research program of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Futures of Sustainability’. I raise three issues: the first relates to the very idea of the future; the second concerns the notion of social imaginaries and the third question is focused on the idea of social transformation.


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