The critical dialogical method in Educommunication to develop narrative thinking

In the conceptualization of Educommunication, progress must be made towards the integration of its two great perspectives. Encouraging critical dialogue is a goal shared by both, so it is necessary to delve into its educational properties, methods and functions. A training model in Educommunication that has been tested through empirical research is presented. For two weeks, 246 children between six and eleven years old, attended training sessions with two types of audiovisual products. Half of the children were involved in a training process using critical dialogical methodology, whereas the training process for the other half of the children followed conversational dialogue methodology. The results show that children who follow the critical dialogical training benefit significantly in the construction of their media competence and narrative thinking, compared to the children of the conversational dialogical groups. The results also reveal that not all types of audiovisual content are beneficial to the construction of children's thinking. This research reveals the properties of the proposed critical dialogical method that allows children to improve their media competence and illustrates the complementarity between the diagnostic-static process of competences and the formative-dynamic process that leads to critical thinking. From an applied point of view, the critical dialogical method has been useful for use by teachers to foster a media education in their group of students that contributes to the development of narrative thinking. En la conceptualización de la Educomunicación se ha de avanzar hacia la integración de sus dos grandes perspectivas. Fomentar el diálogo crítico es un objetivo compartido por ambas, por lo que es preciso profundizar en sus propiedades, métodos y funciones educativas. Se presenta un modelo formativo en educomunicación que ha sido testado mediante una investigación empírica. Durante dos semanas, 246 niños entre seis y once años asisten a sesiones formativas con dos tipos de productos audiovisuales. La mitad de los niños sigue un proceso formativo según la metodología dialógico-crítica y la otra mitad una metodología de diálogo-conversacional. Los resultados muestran que los niños que siguen la formación dialógico-crítica se benefician significativamente en la construcción de su competencia mediática y pensamiento narrativo, en comparación con los niños de los grupos dialógico-conversacional. Los resultados revelan también que no todos los tipos de contenidos audiovisuales son beneficiosos para la formación del pensamiento del niño. Esta investigación pone de manifiesto cuáles son las propiedades del método dialógico-crítico propuesto que permiten al niño mejorar su competencia mediática e ilustra la complementariedad entre el proceso de diagnóstico-estático de competencias y el proceso formativo-dinámico que conduce al pensamiento crítico. Desde un punto de vista aplicado, este método ha mostrado su utilidad para ser utilizado por el profesor para fomentar en su grupo de alumnos una educación mediática que contribuya al desarrollo del pensamiento narrativo.

The Biographical approach of Duccio Demetrio

The article examines the narrative thinking of Duccio Demetrio, founder of the Libera università dell’autobiografia, based in Anghiari, Italy. The paradoxical nature of autobiographical writing is studied as a cure for oneself, highlighting the theoretical affiliations that this narrative exercise involves. Then pedagogical reasons arise for which, according to Duccio Demetrio, autobiography especially is convenient as a pedagogical way in adult education. So two essential aspects of the narrative proposal of this intellectual and Italian pedagogue are highlighted: epistemological and pedagogical.

The Social Psychology of Homophily: The Collective Sentiments of Education Advocacy Groups

Background/Context As a major area of civic decision making, public education is a central arena for advocacy groups seeking to influence policy debates. An emerging body of research examines advocates’ use of social media. While debates about policy can be thought of as a clash of large ideas contained within frames, cognitive linguists note that framing strategies are activated by the particular words that advocates choose to convey their positions. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study This study examined the vociferous debate surrounding the Common Core State Standards on Twitter during the height of state adoption in 2014 and 2015. Combining social network analysis and natural language processing techniques, we first identified the organically forming factions within the Common Core debate on Twitter and then captured the collective psychological sentiments of these factions. Research Design The study employed quantitative statistical comparisons of the frequency of words used by members of different factions around the Common Core on Twitter that are associated in prior research with four psychological characteristics: mood, motivation, conviction, and thinking style. Data Collection and Analysis Data were downloaded from Twitter from November 2014 to October 2015 using at least one of three hashtags: #commoncore, #ccss, or #stopcommoncore. The resulting data set consisted of more than 500,000 tweets and retweets from more than 100,000 distinct actors. We then ran a community detection algorithm to identify the structural subcommunities, or factions. To measure the four psychological characteristics, we adapted Pennebaker and colleagues’ Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count libraries. We then connected the individual tweet authors to their faction based on the results of the social network analysis community detection algorithm. Using these groups, and the standardized results for each psychological characteristic/dimension, we performed a series of analyses of variance with Bonferroni corrections to test for differences in the psychological characteristics among the factions. Findings/Results For each of the four psychological characteristics, we found different patterns among the different factions. Educators opposed to the Common Core had the highest level of drive motivation, use of sad words, and use of words associated with a narrative thinking style. Opponents of the Common Core from outside education exhibited an affiliative drive motivation, a narrative thinking style, high levels of anger words, and low levels of conviction in their choice of language. Supporters of the Common Core used words that represented a more analytic thinking style, stronger levels of conviction, and words associated with a higher level of achievement orientation. Conclusions/Recommendations Individuals on Twitter, mostly strangers to each other, band together to form fluid communities as they share positions on particular issues. On Twitter, these bonds are formed by behavioral choices to follow, retweet, and mention others. This study reveals how like-minded individuals create a collective sentiment through their specific choice of words to express their views. By analyzing the underlying psychological characteristics associated with language, we show the distinct pooled psychologies of activists as they engaged together in political activity in an effort to influence the political environment.

ON THOMAS BERNHARD’S NARRATIVE THINKING: «ETERNAL RETURN» AND A POLYPHONIC WRITING

The article explores the typological principles and genesis of narrative thinking of Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989). It reveals the paradoxical nature of his writing, which combines, on the one hand, archetypal structures, implied ‘genre memory’, and on the other hand, a unique, innovative style. Bernhard’s constructive principle is repetition, which allows the embodiment of the idea of «eternal return» (Eliade) throughout the poetical structure, whether it is a sacred event of a myth or an «obsessive repetition» (Freud) of the traumatic memories of the protagonist or the narrator. The fragmented world is under constant reorganizing with the help of Bernhard’s polyphonic writing, which finds itself mostly in the imitation of the non-figurative, purely expressive, self-referential «art of fugue» (Bach), oriented to the cyclic, rather than linear-historical concept of time. In contrast to the literary interpretation of the «polyphonic novel» (Bakhtin) with its coexistence of multiple points of view, our attention is shifted to the musicological interpretation of the fugue’s polyphony as the embodied idea of the continuity of time, the closeness and infinity of the divine universe.

Imprese e storytelling

Telling one’s identity is a strategy on which public and private companies have begun to invest for a long time. If storytelling has always been understood as a means of interpreting and transmitting the corporate values, we are now moving to storytelling intended as a tool for realizing the identity of the company itself, and this identity is read as a fluid narrative that develops through the stories of its employees and stakeholders. Besides, storytelling is the oldest form of communication between individuals, and it can date back to the origin of our social life: humanity has always made meaning through narration. This paper, starting from theoretical studies on storytelling and the narrative thinking, investigates some samples of organizational storytelling in order to understand what are the advantages of a narrative approach over the reality of those who do business.

Digital Storytelling and Mathematical Thinking: An Educational Psychology Embrace

This article proposes Digital Storytelling as an education model that combines science, narrative thinking and art. This model has been implemented in Italian school settings over recent years. After a short introduction of the theoretical foundations of narrative thinking in the history of Educational Psychology, the paper focuses on Digital Storytelling as a co-constructive educational method that uses digital technologies for promoting an active, situated, meaningful and reflexive learning process. The proposed intervention in the Italian settings adds the artistic digital component (the use of avatar, comics and science fiction) to the Digital Storytelling systems. The set of implemented activities, as well as the individual and group actions taken, promote both the cognitive and emotional aspects of the learning process. The findings show that Digital Storytelling, spiced with artistic features, prompts the engagement of students in learning activities and offers a platform to enhance behavioural, emotional and cognitive commitment in mathematics education.