New Collaboration through Artefact-Mediated Interaction with a Joint Knowledge Base

Collaboration is changing and increasingly emerging as what we call “New Collaboration”, a knowledge-based and community-oriented way of working together (especially digital, online collaboration). Unfortunately, organisations use only a small percentage of the potential of New Collaboration. One main reason for this is that they do not understand that New Collaboration is based on knowledge sharing and requires the individual knowledge of the collaborators to be integrated into a shared knowledge structure, a so-called Joint Knowledge Base (JKB). This concept of a Joint Knowledge Base as the tacit knowledge structure which is constructed, shared and maintained during collaboration, emerged during the course of our previous work and became more and more prominent as a key to collaboration. When a group interacts, the JKB functions as an interaction bridge, and this is why it is a key to collaboration. In this paper, we will revise and elaborate in more detail our concept of a JKB and explain its role in artefact-mediated interaction. First, we will explain the main characteristics of New Collaboration and summarise them based on a concise definition. Secondly, we will introduce the concept of a Joint Knowledge Base, explore the role of social negotiation in constructing it, define the JKB as a distributed knowledge structure, discuss the problem of obstacles which hinder its development and suggest how to solve it by means of gaining deeper insight into the complexity of the involved processes (communication, interaction). And next we will further develop this solution by introducing the concept of boundary artefacts and describing their implementation as tools for artefact-mediated interaction by means of a systematic approach. Finally, we will explain this systematic approach and show how boundary artefacts and artefact-mediated interaction work in practice during meetings performed on a commercially available collaboration platform where they contribute to the construction of a JKB.

Content Analysis of Developed Science Textbooks (Collins) for the Tenth Grade in Jordan in View of the Constructivism Theory : تحليل محتوى كتب العلوم المطورة (كولينز) للصف العاشر الأساسي في الأردن في ضوء مبادئ النظرية البنائية

The study aimed to analyze the content of developed science textbooks (Collins) for the tenth grade in Jordan: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geology and Environment. the study has used the analytical descriptive approach, for achieving the objective of the study the researcher has made a content analysis tool of the principles of constructivism theory that include the following five principles: Prior Knowledge, Knowledge Building, Change of Knowledge Structure, Confronting Situation, and Social Negotiation. The results that the percentage of the principles of the constructivism theory are as follows: Physics textbook (28.57%), Geology and Environment textbook (25.21%), Biology textbook (24.28%), and Chemistry textbook (21.84%). And the study recommended conducting more studies to identify the principles of the constructivism theory in textbooks and other academic grades.

A sociosemiotic interpretation of cultural heritage in UNESCO legal instruments: a corpus-based study

The past few decades have seen a plethora of interest in heritage studies in international law, as the legitimization of cultural heritage is a significant aspect of protecting the legacy of humanity’s collective memory, which is fully reflected in a series of international instruments on culture. This paper examines the meaning-making process of UNESCO legal documents on cultural heritage from a sociosemiotic perspective. The data for the corpus-based study were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively by applying the securitization theory to heritage studies. Research findings reveal three significant shifts in cultural heritage, i.e., from property to heritage, from tangible to intangible, and from material-centered to human-centered, which embodies the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, a philosophical idea embedded in traditional Chinese culture. As noted, terms targeting cultural heritage in UNESCO international instruments are the sign vehicle, generally mediated and shaped by social values, cultural beliefs, and conventional wisdom, etc. as a part of the interpretant, making different categories of heritage meaningful and interpretable. Characterized by temporality and spatiality, cultural heritage is subject to multiple interpretations. The meaning-making of international instruments for consideration is a sociosemiotic operation that can be construed through contextual factors and a process of social negotiation. This paper argues that a sociosemiotic approach to heritage studies is conducive to explicating the construction and deconstruction of heritage as discursive practices while offering some implications for future research.

Dying against Democracy: Suicide Protest and the 1905 Anti-American Boycott

The joint rise of popular movements and mass media in early twentieth-century China gave birth to a democratic imagination, which culminated in the anti-American boycott of 1905. The transnational campaign nonetheless disintegrated as a result of partisan division—an ingrained predicament of democratic agonism that is best illustrated by the story of Feng Xiawei, a grassroots activist whose suicide in Shanghai constituted a key moment in the boycott. Juxtaposing a variety of accounts about Feng's death in journalism, political fiction, reformed opera, and advertisements, this article examines how, together, these texts construct democratic agonism and suicide protest as revealing two opposing political sensibilities as well as modes of action. Instead of expressing only nationalist passion, Feng's suicide reveals a deep anxiety of his time to locate a spiritual source of authority in the face of its glaring absence in social negotiation. This fraught dynamic between the democratic and the transcendent continues to characterize modern Chinese political culture to the present.

BURNOUT FROM A SOCIAL SCIENTIST’S PERSPECTIVE

Background: Sociology is concerned with the rules existing in a society for organising itself within a behavioral context, including the interpretative paradigms that members of the society use to define their rules. Accordingly, social phenomena are both “social facts” that need to be explained as well as components of the “world as constituted by meaning” that requires both understanding and interpretation. This also applies to burnout, whereby sociology can provide various different perspectives. Method: This article considers burnout from a sociological perspective. Results: Stress theories outline theoretical conditions that contribute to an increased likelihood of burnout. Analyses of the individual’s life course and interactions enable us to see how biographically, in everyday interactions as well as in institutional contexts, individuals under stress can evolve into “people with burnout.” These perspectives allow for the social function of talking about burnout and the phenomenon itself. In this vein, co-creation and self-organization of work processes, conceived initially as emancipatory, are generalized and revert to a demand on people in the sense of marketing themselves in everyday life as an entrepreneurial project in competition with other citizens. This permanent selforganization leads to chronic overload. The result is a social mood that can be characterized by the term “exhausted self” and can be understood as an expression of the crisis of developed capitalism. Discussion: From a sociological perspective, burnout is less a question of individual pathology than a challenging social configuration that may contribute toward a focus on resource-saving and sustainability; this includes a concrete utopian moment, a claim to self-realization in meaningful work, which should be taken up socially. This realization is controversial and requires social negotiation. Conclusion: Burnout is increasingly becoming an issue addressed by doctors, despite recognizing it having been taboo for a long time now. To counteract burnout, group work within circles so-called quality, interdisciplinary professional teams can strengthen the sense of coherence, support processes of empowerment, and professional development.

Constructivist Teachers Beliefs, Instructional Practices and Students’ Mathematics Performance

This study determined the role of teachers’ constructivist beliefs in the teaching and learning mathematics and the use of instructional practices in the mathematics performance of Grade 7 secondary students in the Pacific Towns of Northern Samar for the school year 2016-2017. This study utilized the descriptive-correlational research design. The demographic profile of teachers in mathematics such as constructivist beliefs, constructivist instructional practices and performance of students was described as it exists at the present time. Multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship between the beliefs in mathematics and students’ mathematics performance. Similarly, statistical analysis was used to determine the relationship between instructional practices and mathematics performance of the students. The findings showed that more than 50% of the mathematics’ teachers are aged less than 30 suggesting that most of the teachers are neophyte in the teaching career. As to educational attainment, most of the respondents are enrolled in master’s program. Only one-third have already completed master’s degree. In terms of relevant trainings, almost a half of the respondents have attended one to two trainings. Most of the teachers believe that teaching should involve real world connections. Teachers believe that they should create real-world environments that employ the context in which learning is relevant. Beliefs about emphasizing prior knowledge were also manifested by the teacher-respondents. Highly demonstrated beliefs include encouraging the use of multiple modes of representation to facilitate easy understanding and recall and the learner's previous knowledge constructions, beliefs and attitudes are considered in the knowledge construction process. In terms of social interaction beliefs, teachers manifested support for collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation. Result of the test conducted in mathematics by the researcher showed that more than half of the students got fair performance. Only one performed satisfactorily. Beliefs about emphasizing prior knowledge and beliefs in social interaction significantly predicted mathematics performance of students. Real world connection did not significantly predict mathematics performance. Respondents’ constructivist instructional practices did not offer a significant role in developing the mathematics ability of the students. Teachers did not play an active role in assimilating knowledge into students’ existing mental framework and reconstructing new knowledge.

Culture, Cognition, and Social Exchange: A Classic Case Study of Social Negotiation Network Dynamics

How do automatic vs. controlled, hot vs. cold, and agentic vs. communal facets of cultural cognition operate together in a perspective informed by social neuroscience? This question is explored by re-imagining Malinowski’s classic ethnographic case study of the Kula in light of a contemporary social exchange theory of negotiation networks. We propose: (1) sub-institutional patterns of power-dependence form a structural foundation for the rise of tacit meanings, which evolve through social negotiation into explicit, cultural meaning agreements; (2) crucial sub-cultural categories form around the pursuit of both agentic benefits and communal benefits; (3) an individual is culturally shaped through externalization, socialization, and internalization to value and be motivated to seek both kinds of benefits; (4) an individual faces the existential task of navigating both agentic and communal situations across the negotiation network; (5) the basic individual mechanism underlying such navigation entails motivated behavioral choice and motivated cultural cognition; (6) a behavioral choice rests on automatic, largely implicit and hot cognitive processing; (7) motivated cultural cognition rests mostly on the deliberate, mostly explicit, and cool selection of materials from the prevailing cultural toolkit for assembling a justification, but whose underlying trajectory is biased by an automatic, hot value-position, whether agentic or communal. Based on the analysis, some directions for future empirical research are suggested.

Culture, Cognition, and Social Exchange: A Classic Case Study of Social Negotiation Network Dynamics

How do automatic vs. controlled, hot vs. cold, and agentic vs. communal facets of cultural cognition operate together in a perspective informed by social neuroscience? This question is explored by re-imagining Malinowski’s classic ethnographic case study of the Kula in light of a contemporary social exchange theory of negotiation networks. We propose: (1) sub-institutional patterns of power-dependence form a structural foundation for the rise of tacit meanings, which evolve through social negotiation into explicit, cultural meaning agreements; (2) crucial sub-cultural categories form around the pursuit of both agentic benefits and communal benefits; (3) an individual is culturally shaped through externalization, socialization, and internalization to value and be motivated to seek both kinds of benefits; (4) an individual faces the existential task of navigating both agentic and communal situations across the negotiation network; (5) the basic individual mechanism underlying such navigation entails motivated behavioral choice and motivated cultural cognition; (6) a behavioral choice rests on automatic, largely implicit and hot cognitive processing; (7) motivated cultural cognition rests mostly on the deliberate, mostly explicit, and cool selection of materials from the prevailing cultural toolkit for assembling a justification, but whose underlying trajectory is biased by an automatic, hot value-position, whether agentic or communal. Based on the analysis, some directions for future empirical research are suggested.

Culture, Cognition, and Social Exchange: A Classic Case Study of Social Negotiation Network Dynamics

How do automatic vs. controlled, hot vs. cold, and agentic vs. communal facets of cultural cognition operate together in a perspective informed by social neuroscience? This question is explored by re-imagining Malinowski’s classic ethnographic case study of the Kula in light of a contemporary social exchange theory of negotiation networks. We propose: (1) sub-institutional patterns of power-dependence form a structural foundation for the rise of tacit meanings, which evolve through social negotiation into explicit, cultural meaning agreements; (2) crucial sub-cultural categories form around the pursuit of both agentic benefits and communal benefits; (3) an individual is culturally shaped through externalization, socialization, and internalization to value and be motivated to seek both kinds of benefits; (4) an individual faces the existential task of navigating both agentic and communal situations across the negotiation network; (5) the basic individual mechanism underlying such navigation entails motivated behavioral choice and motivated cultural cognition; (6) a behavioral choice rests on automatic, largely implicit and hot cognitive processing; (7) motivated cultural cognition rests mostly on the deliberate, mostly explicit, and cool selection of materials from the prevailing cultural toolkit for assembling a justification, but whose underlying trajectory is biased by an automatic, hot value-position, whether agentic or communal. Based on the analysis, some directions for future empirical research are suggested.