scholarly journals Beyond the academic’s dilemma: Transdisciplinary and existential perspectives of re-enchantment

Author(s):  
Rennie Naidoo

The purpose of this article is to stimulate debate about the developing paradoxes and dilemmas facing the university academic. This article argues that academics are increasingly being steeped in an inauthentic existence due, at least partly to, egocentrism and sociocentrism. A modest transdisciplinary- existential analytical framework is applied as an intellectual method to reflect on the prevailing monological perspectives stifling the role of academics, in working towards building a more sustainable future. Using concepts such as the subject, facticity and transcendence, the article investigates the dialectical tensions between some of these monological perspectives and proposes avenues to create new possibilities to progress the role of the academic. The article argues that the multilogical perspectives of transdisciplinary thinking and the empowering perspectives of existential thinking can provide academics with the necessary conceptual tools to transcend egocentrism and sociocentrism. While it is likely that new contradictions will emerge as a result of this synthesis, open-minded academics are urged to ignite their imaginative powers and take up the challenge of creating and acting on new possibilities. A transdisciplinary-existential dialectical approach can provide a richer understanding of present dilemmas in academia and the world, and suggest more satisfying paths to a sustainable future.

2008 ◽  

The Erasmus programme is one of the outstanding Community initiatives, even if it is spoken little of outside the world of the university. This book, one of the first devoted to the subject, analyses the virtuous effects that the programme has had on the university system, the geography of student flows, and the motivations and propositions of those who have taken part in it. The reports of the students indicate the Erasmus as a 'bubble of experience' and the book explores these inner experiences through a sociological approach, illustrating the vast potential in terms of the moulding of a 'homo novus Europaeus'. The data gathered prompt a reflection on the redefinition of the role of the student when he or she directly experiences the comparison with a context different and distant from that of origin, to which he or she is nevertheless destined to return. From this perspective, the Erasmus experience assumes the significance of a sort of temporary upheaval of status open to forms of 'experimentation of identity'.


2016 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Pier Giuseppe Rossi

The subject of alignment is not new to the world of education. Today however, it has come to mean different things and to have a heuristic value in education according to research in different areas, not least for neuroscience, and to attention to skills and to the alternation framework.This paper, after looking at the classic references that already attributed an important role to alignment in education processes, looks at the strategic role of alignment in the current context, outlining the shared construction processes and focusing on some of the ways in which this is put into effect.Alignment is part of a participatory, enactive approach that gives a central role to the interaction between teaching and learning, avoiding the limits of behaviourism, which has a greater bias towards teaching, and cognitivism/constructivism, which focus their attention on learning and in any case, on that which separates a teacher preparing the environment and a student working in it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 193-197
Author(s):  
Alan Glasper

In light of the emergence in China of COVID-19, the novel corona virus, emeritus professor Alan Glasper, from the University of Southampton discusses the role of the World Health Organization and other public health institutions in responding to potential new global pandemics and deliberates on the role of NHS staff in coping with infectious disease in clinical environments.


Educação ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 73
Author(s):  
Evandro Coggo Cristofoletti ◽  
Milena Pavan Serafim

The economic and political changes in the world, from the 1970s, changed the political education of the Public Institutions of Higher Education in the world. The direction of these changes was clear: the university approachedthe market and the company and created interaction mechanisms that did not exist. The article therefore reviews the academic literature that interprets the relationship between university and market/company from two perspectives: approaches that positively position of interactions, exposing their motivations, interests and forms of interaction, especially the notions on Knowledge Economy and Entrepreneurial University; approaches that observe this interaction critically and reflectively, exposing the problems of interaction, its negative aspects and the reflection of the true role of the public university from the perspective of Academic Capitalism.


Bastina ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Đurđina Isić

The paper presents the results of research that included comparative study of the place and role of female characters in selected and representative comedies by Serbian comedigrapher Branislav Nušić (eng. MP, Suspicious person, Mrs Minister, Bereaved family, Dr, Deceased; srb. Narodni poslanik, Sumnjivo lice, Ožalošćena porodica, Dr, Pokojnik, Vlast) and Bulgarian comedigrapher Stefan Kostov (eng. Gold mine, Golemanov, Grasshoppers, Nameless comedy; blg. Zlamnama mina, Golemanov, Skakalci, Komediâ bez ime) in order to find similarities and differences in the process of comedigraphic shaping of female characters in the work of these two authors. The subject of the research was viewed primarily from a literary-theoretical point of view, and the dominant methods of study were comparative and analytical-synthetic. During the research, there was a differentiation of female characters in accordance with their motivational structures, psychological assemblies and the nature of the place and the role they play in the social environment in which they are located. Therefore, we can distinguish female characters who live in the province and who are fully representative of the small-town spirit, female characters who live in the capital and are a symbol of the modern age and female characters who dwell in the capital, but in fact, deeply down still carry a small-town view of the world. The structure of this paper is in line with this distinction. Conclusions made at the end of the study show that the representation of female characters in analyzed comedies of both comedigaphers is highly similar in its nature.


Author(s):  
Alexey D. Koshelev ◽  

The paper presents a language of thought (a set of cognitive units and relations) used to provide non-verbal definitions for the following five concepts: ARMCHAIR, MUG, RAVINE, LAKE, TREE. These definitions make it possible to describe concepts on two levels of specificity. On the first level, a concept is presented as a holistic cognitive unit. On the second, more specific, level, the same concept is viewed as a partitive system, i.e. a hierarchical system of its parts, the latter being smaller concepts into which the original holistic unit is decomposed. A hypothesis is advanced that such structure is inherent to all visible objects. The partitive system is argued to play a major role in human cognition. It, first, provides for an in-depth understanding of the perceived objects through understanding the role of their parts, and, second, underlies the formation of the hierarchy of concepts with respect to their generality. Besides, it can be considered as one of the defining properties of the human species as it accounts for the human ability to purposefully change the world.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred Cooper ◽  
Charlotte Jones

PurposeThis paper explores the dissonance between co-production and expectations of impact in a research project on student loneliness over the 2019/2020 academic year. Specific characteristics of the project – the subject matter, interpolation of a global respiratory pandemic, informal systems of care that arose among students and role of the university in providing the context and funding for the research – brought co-production into heightened tension with the instrumentalisation of project outputs.Design/methodology/approachThe project consisted of a series of workshops, research meetings and mixed-methods online journalling between 2019 and 2020. This paper is primarily a critical reflection on that research, based on observations by and conversations between the authors, together with discourse analysis of research data.FindingsThe authors argue that co-producing research with students on university contexts elevates existing tensions between co-production and institutional valuations of impact, that co-production with students who had experienced loneliness made necessary space for otherwise absent support and care, that the responsibility to advocate for evidence and co-researchers came into friction with how the university felt the research could be useful and that each of these converging considerations are interconnected symptoms of the ongoing marketisation of HE.Originality/valueThis paper provides a novel analysis of co-production, impact and higher education in the context of an original research project with specific challenges and constraints. It is a valuable contribution to methodological literatures on co-production, multidisciplinary research into student loneliness and reflexive work on the difficult uses of evidence in university contexts.


2021 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Anna Kowalewska

This paper presents the scientific and educational activities of Professor Andrzej Jaczewski in the field of training pedagogues in the biological and medical foundations of development and upbringing. These activities were an important part of the concept of comprehensive student care advocated by Professor Jaczewski. His scouting experience, his work as a doctor, a secondary school teacher, or a research and didactic staff member at the Medical Academy and the Institute of Mother and Child at the University of Warsaw, as well as his cooperation with other research and teaching centres in Poland and abroad, played an important role in shaping his views on the training of pedagogues in medical issues. The paper presents the process of implementation and realisation of the subject “Biomedical foundations of development and upbringing” at pedagogical faculties in Poland with particular emphasis on the role of Professor Andrzej Jaczewski in this process. The article discusses activities concerning education in medical issues of the local and nationwide range carried out at the Faculty of Education of the University of Warsaw. Finally, Prof. Jaczewski’s suggestions and dreams concerning the future of the subject “Biomedical foundations of development and upbringing” in the education of pedagogues are referred to.


Author(s):  
PHILIP VAN BEYNE ◽  
VANDA CLAUDINO-SALES ◽  
SAULO ROBERTO DE OLIVEIRA VITAL ◽  
DIEGO NUNES VALADARES

In its third edition, the “William Morris Davis – Journal of Geomorphology” presents its second interview with geographers, to head the “Interviews” section, which opens each published issue. This time, it is the first international interview, carried out with Professor Philip van Beynen, from the University of South Florida, in the United States. Professor Philip van Beynen was interviewed on the topic “Karst in Urban Areas”, and brings important data on the subject, with beautiful illustrations and with examples from all over the world. The interview took place on September 17, 2020, with the participation of Vanda de Claudino-Sales (Professor of the Academic Master in Geography at the State University of Vale do Acarau-UVA) and Saulo Roberto Oliveira Vital (Professor of the Department of Geography and the Post-Graduate Program in Geography at the Federal University of Paraiba - UFPB), and was transcribed by Diego Nunes Valadares, master's student on Geography at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Professor van Beynen was born in New Zealand, where he received his degree in Geography at the University of Auckland. He earned a master's degree from the same university, and a doctorate and post-doctorate from McMaster University, Canada. He has been a professor at the School of Geoscience at the University of South Florida since 2009, where he   has been developing research related to different components of karst environments. The interview shows his great expertise on the subject, and is very much worth to be read and seen even for those who are not specialists in karst.


1985 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 169-175
Author(s):  
George A. Nankervis

The role of cytomegalovirus in human disease is a still-evolving story. Hanshaw presented an excellent review article on the subject in 1981 in this publication; this current review is an update, with particular emphasis on new concepts in the epidemiology and prevention of cytomegaloviral infection and disease. Historically, evidence of infection with cytomegalovirus was first reported by pathologists in many parts of the world. They noted the presence of giant cells with intranuclear inclusions while examining a diversity of organs microscopically. Isolation of the virus and development of serologic techniques eventually enabled a definitive study of the agent, its pathogenesis and epidemiology. Biologically, it is one of the herpesviruses and, as such, is a DNA virus. Other members of the group include varicella-zoster, herpes simplex, and Epstein-Barr virus. Several different strains of cytomegalovirus exist, and they have specific characteristics which are of interest. The virus is cell associated and tends to be very labile; it has a tendency to become latent and may possibly have malignant potential. EPIDEMIOLOGY Prevalence Infection with cytomegalovirus is found throughout the world. Studies of prevalence in a number of diverse populations have indicated that cytomegaloviral infection is ubiquitous. The major differences in prevalence between populations are related to the speed of acquisition of infection in various geographic and socioeconomic settings.


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