Search results

Criticisms of naturalistic coherentism are suggested that are not raised by its critics in the literature. The rejection of traditional foundationalism does not necessarily entail the acceptance of coherentism. Coherentism can be seen as another version of foundationalism. Most interestingly, Evers and Lakomski’s stance on “strong vs weak” naturalism seems to be vague. Then, in closing, it is suggested that a recent theory in epistemology termed “foundherentism” might provide some avenues for the further development of naturalistic coherentism, such as by emphasising empirical input in coherentism and adopting a weak version of naturalism.

Despite widespread frustration with meetings in organizations, they receive very little attention from academics. The purpose of this paper is to shed conceptual light on meetings and hence render them amenable to research and development.

From interviews with managers and employees, six common assumptions about meetings were extracted, termed a folk theory of meetings, which most office workers seem to carry in the back of their minds.

This folk theory holds meetings to be places for excessive talk, whether by a domineering leader or highly vocal participants, the purpose of which is to walk through the items on the agenda and dispose of each. This bleak and conservative concept of a meeting impedes intellectual as well as practical progress.

An alternative theory of meetings is proposed, one based on the group facilitation approach to social order in meetings. On this view, a facilitator can change meetings by controlling their form and process, providing direction, stimulating engagement and ensuring that the meeting creates value for its external stakeholders and meaning for its participants. If adopted in management training, this view of meetings – and the widely available facilitation tools that go with it – may render meetings at work the subject of conscious organizational development.

The proposed “folk theory of meetings” is novel, as is the contrast provided with the facilitation approach to meetings. Together, they constitute a reconceptualization that can be used to move meetings out of the organizational doldrums.

Purpose – To present Hayek's model of the sensory order, especially in relation to communication, classification and subjective knowledge, arguing for the necessity of a more articulated theory of the “inter-personal” dimension of the mind. We proposed then to integrate Hayek's model of the mind with the concept of “folk psychology” or “theory of mind” elaborated by modern philosophy.

Methodological approach – This chapter is philosophical but draws on the empirical.

Findings – Hayek proposed a model of the mind and the social order that explains how dispersed and fragmented knowledge can spread in a society of individuals [Hayek, F. A. (1945). The use of knowledge in society. The American Economic Review, 35(4), 519–530]. His social and psychological theories have been dedicated to the study of the spontaneous emergence of orders: institutional and mental orders are tightened together in his epistemology. However, we found that Hayek developed only in nuce the social dimension of the mind: behaviors are determined by mental events and his philosophical psychology is then “mentalistic,” that is focused on the understanding of individual inner psychological states, their relation with external stimuli and behaviors, without explaining how individuals interpret other people's mental states.

Research limitations/implications – Hayek seems not to explicitly consider the interaction between personal psychological events and other people's mental events, missing then a fundamental activity played by the mental order, that is the capacity to understand, interpret, and attribute other people's mental states, in a word to mentalize.

Originality/value of the paper – To read Hayek's philosophical psychology under a new light, which focus on the importance of the interpersonal dimension of mental processes.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to argue that leadership, including distributed leadership, is a concept of folk psychology and is more productively viewed as an emergent self‐organising property of complex systems. It aims to argue the case on the basis that claims to (distributed) leadership outrun the theoretical and empirical resources distributed and other leadership theorists can offer to support them.

The paper employs contemporary scientific as well as traditional philosophical criteria in determining the knowledge claims made by distributed leadership theories. Of particular importance are the coherence theory of evidence that employs the super‐empirical virtues, especially coherence to establish the scientific virtue of theory, and the conception of leadership as part and parcel of folk psychology.

When considering the basis of claims to distributed leadership from a neuroscientific and empirical perspective, there is little basis in fact about the existence of (distributed) leadership as an ontological category. Talk of leadership is a conventional, commonsense label for vastly more complex and fine‐grained causal physiological and neuronal activities within certain social contexts. In this sense distributed leadership is a conception available for reduction.

The significance and originality of this paper lies in the fact that it proposes causal investigations of social phenomena such as leadership; demonstrates the importance and necessity of interdisciplinary research; and outlines exciting new research agendas that both question traditional taken‐for‐granted conceptions of social explanations and suggests directions of where solutions may be found in the future that are defensible by the best of current science.

This study investigates perceptions of the use of online tracking, a passive data collection method relying on the automated recording of participant actions on desktop and mobile devices, for studying information behavior. It scrutinizes folk theories of tracking, the concerns tracking raises among the potential participants and design mechanisms that can be used to alleviate these concerns.

This study uses focus groups composed of university students (n = 13) to conduct an in-depth investigation of tracking perceptions in the context of information behavior research. Each focus group addresses three thematic blocks: (1) views on online tracking as a research technique, (2) concerns that influence participants' willingness to be tracked and (3) design mechanisms via which tracking-related concerns can be alleviated. To facilitate the discussion, each focus group combines open questions with card-sorting tasks. The results are analyzed using a combination of deductive content analysis and constant comparison analysis, with the main coding categories corresponding to the thematic blocks listed above.

The study finds that perceptions of tracking are influenced by recent data-related scandals (e.g. Cambridge Analytica), which have amplified negative attitudes toward tracking, which is viewed as a surveillance tool used by corporations and governments. This study also confirms the contextual nature of tracking-related concerns, which vary depending on the activities and content that are tracked. In terms of mechanisms used to address these concerns, this study highlights the importance of transparency-based mechanisms, particularly explanations dealing with the aims and methods of data collection, followed by privacy- and control-based mechanisms.

The study conducts a detailed examination of tracking perceptions and discusses how this research method can be used to increase engagement and empower participants involved in information behavior research.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight university-based mentor education as a negative antecedent to mentors’ beliefs which are consistent with judgementoring (Hobson and Malderez, 2013). The concept of beliefs consistent with judgementoring (evaluative or judgemental mentoring) is introduced as a quantitative construct which is then used as a dependent variable. The concept of “folk mentoring” is introduced to theorise why and how mentor education may challenge mentors’ beliefs about mentoring.

Structural equation modelling of cross-sectional survey data is used to estimate and compare the strengths between mentors’ perceived self-efficacy, role clarity, experience and education as independent variables and beliefs about mentoring aligned with judgementoring as the dependent variable. The survey was completed by 146 mentors who attended mentor education programmes in universities and university colleges across Norway.

The findings indicate that mentor education contributes to lower levels of beliefs consistent with judgementoring and strengthens mentors’ awareness of their role as a mentor. Higher levels of self-efficacy related to the mentor role were associated with stronger beliefs consistent with judgementoring. Mentor experience was not associated strongly with any tested variable.

This paper identifies new questions pertaining to the effects of mentor education and variables associated with judgementoring. Omitted variables might have influenced the explored models and the methods used do not allow us to determine causal relationships.

Taking an approach based on social exchange theory, the authors describe judgementoring as a form of mentoring that hampers potential exchanges which would enable mentoring to contribute to professional development. This paper provides new insights into judgementoring by introducing it as a quantitative construct, by testing relevant antecedents and by introducing the concept of “folk mentoring”. Mentor education is highlighted as a potential moderator of mentors’ beliefs in judgementoring.

Research shows that postsecondary students are largely unaware of the impact of algorithms on their everyday lives. Also, most noncomputer science students are not being taught about algorithms as part of the regular curriculum. This exploratory, qualitative study aims to explore subject-matter experts’ insights and perceptions of the knowledge components, coping behaviors and pedagogical considerations to aid faculty in teaching algorithmic literacy to postsecondary students.

Eleven semistructured interviews and one focus group were conducted with scholars and teachers of critical algorithm studies and related fields. A content analysis was manually performed on the transcripts using a mixture of deductive and inductive coding. Data analysis was aided by the coding software program Dedoose (2021) to determine frequency totals for occurrences of a code across all participants along with how many times specific participants mentioned a code. Then, findings were organized around the three themes of knowledge components, coping behaviors and pedagogy.

The findings suggested a set of 10 knowledge components that would contribute to students’ algorithmic literacy along with seven behaviors that students could use to help them better cope with algorithmic systems. A set of five teaching strategies also surfaced to help improve students’ algorithmic literacy.

This study contributes to improved pedagogy surrounding algorithmic literacy and validates existing multi-faceted conceptualizations and measurements of algorithmic literacy.

The educational self is a construct derived from cultural psychology that attempts to account for the role of educational experiences in the construction and elaboration of the self. It conceptualizes of self as a semiotic process that is both dialogical and polyphonic from its origin, yet grounded in some historically and culturally derived shared meanings and practices. The purpose of this chapter is to situate discussion of the educational self in the context of the United States and to explore its implications for teaching, teacher education, and self-study of practice via an examination of the life trajectory of the author that is both retrospective and introspective. An argument is put forward that examining the educational self represents a promising starting point for understanding and studying one's own teaching or teacher education practices.

As world society develops and nations become embedded in it, cultural patterns that began as properties of Western modernity diffuse to other areas. Individualism has long been noted as a unique feature of American nationalism (Arieli, 1964; Greene, 1993; Lipset, 1963, 1996). But both the spread of democracy and the declining legitimacy of dictatorship and racism after WW II opened the gates for forms of egalitarianism and individualism to spread transnationally (see Elliott & Lemert, 2006; Gaddis, 2005, p. 164ff). This chapter considers the consequences of this transformation.

PDAs (personal digital assistants) have evolved from toys for geeks into tools with real potential for professionals. This editorial examines mental models about PDAs in order to understand the expectations of patrons and to help libraries plan for the future.