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Adequate Understanding (adequate + understanding)
Selected AbstractsFrom Representation to Emergence: Complexity's challenge to the epistemology of schoolingEDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY, Issue 1 2008Deborah Osberg Abstract In modern, Western societies the purpose of schooling is to ensure that school-goers acquire knowledge of pre-existing practices, events, entities and so on. The knowledge that is learned is then tested to see if the learner has acquired a correct or adequate understanding of it. For this reason, it can be argued that schooling is organised around a representational epistemology: one which holds that knowledge is an accurate representation of something that is separate from knowledge itself. Since the object of knowledge is assumed to exist separately from the knowledge itself, this epistemology can also be considered ,spatial.' In this paper we show how ideas from complexity have challenged the ,spatial epistemology' of representation and we explore possibilities for an alternative ,temporal' understanding of knowledge in its relationship to reality. In addition to complexity, our alternative takes its inspiration from Deweyan ,transactional realism' and deconstruction. We suggest that ,knowledge' and ,reality' should not be understood as separate systems which somehow have to be brought into alignment with each other, but that they are part of the same emerging complex system which is never fully ,present' in any (discrete) moment in time. This not only introduces the notion of time into our understanding of the relationship between knowledge and reality, but also points to the importance of acknowledging the role of the ,unrepresentable' or ,incalculable'. With this understanding knowledge reaches us not as something we receive but as a response, which brings forth new worlds because it necessarily adds something (which was not present anywhere before it appeared) to what came before. This understanding of knowledge suggests that the acquisition of curricular content should not be considered an end in itself. Rather, curricular content should be used to bring forth that which is incalculable from the perspective of the present. The epistemology of emergence therefore calls for a switch in focus for curricular thinking, away from questions about presentation and representation and towards questions about engagement and response. [source] Ideas and Change in U.S. Foreign Aid: Inventing the Millennium Challenge CorporationFOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS, Issue 2 2008Steven W. Hook Recent scholarship on foreign policy change focuses on the role of ideas in altering policies and related governing institutions. While a welcome antidote to the previous preoccupation with static analysis, this research has yet to provide adequate understanding of whether and how ideas produce change in specific instances. This study seeks to narrow this gap by examining a recent program change in U.S. foreign aid policy: the creation in 2004 of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), an independent agency designed to reward the world's most impoverished countries that had previously undertaken neoliberal economic reforms and democratic political reforms. The study identifies a convergence of widely shared principled and causal beliefs which, mediated through U.S. domestic structures, produced the most significant change in U.S. aid strategy and structures in nearly half a century. In melding societal theories that emphasize the role of transnational norm diffusion with theories of domestic politics, the study answers the call for multilevel explanations of foreign policy change. And by applying constructivist notions of ideas and discursive framing with rationalist conceptions of power and interests, the study further responds to the need for theoretical synthesis in the study of foreign policy. [source] A Rogue is a Rogue is a Rogue: US Foreign Policy and the Korean Nuclear CrisisINTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2003Roland Bleiker Two nuclear crises recently haunted the Korean peninsula, one in 1993/4, the other in 2002/3. In each case the events were strikingly similar: North Korea made public its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and withdrew from the Nonproliferation Treaty. Then the situation rapidly deteriorated until the peninsular was literally on the verge of war. The dangers of North Korea's actions, often interpreted as nuclear brinkmanship, are evident and much discussed, but not so the underlying patterns that have shaped the conflict in the first place. This article sheds light on some of them. It examines the role of the United States in the crisis, arguing that Washington's inability to see North Korea as anything but a threatening ,rogue state' seriously hinders both an adequate understanding and possible resolution of the conflict. Particularly significant is the current policy of pre-emptive strikes against rogue states, for it reinforces half a century of American nuclear threats towards North Korea. The problematic role of these threats has been largely obscured, not least because the highly technical discourse of security analysis has managed to present the strategic situation on the peninsula in a manner that attributes responsibility for the crisis solely to North Korea's actions, even if the situation is in reality far more complex and interactive. [source] Aetiology of autism: findings and questions,JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY RESEARCH, Issue 4 2005M. Rutter Abstract Background Although there is good evidence that autism is a multifactorial disorder, an adequate understanding of the genetic and non-genetic causes has yet to be achieved. Methods Empirical research findings and conceptual reviews are reviewed with respect to evidence on possible causal influences. Results Much the strongest evidence concerns the importance of susceptibility genes, but such genes have yet to be identified. Specific somatic conditions (such as tuberous sclerosis and the fragile X anomaly) account for a small proportion of cases. Over recent decades there has been a major rise in the rate of diagnosed autism. The main explanation for this rise is to be found in better ascertainment and a broadening of the diagnostic concept. Nevertheless, some degree of true rise cannot be firmly excluded. However, the epidemiological evidence on the main hypothesized environmental explanation, namely the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, is consistently negative. Conclusion Progress on the elucidation of the causes of autism will be crucially dependent on the combination of epidemiology with more basic science laboratory studies. [source] Meaning and normativity in nurse,patient interactionNURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2007Halvor Nordby phd Abstract, It is a fundamental assumption in nursing theory that it is important for nurses to understand how patients think about themselves and the contexts they are in. According to modern theories of hermeneutics, a nurse and a patient must share the same concepts in order to communicate beliefs with the same content. But nurses and patients seldom understand medical concepts in exactly the same way, so how can this communicative aim be achieved in interaction involving medical concepts? The article uses a theory of concepts from recent cognitive science and philosophy of mind to argue that nurses and patients can share medical concepts despite the diversity of understanding. According to this theory, two persons who understand medical language in different ways will nevertheless possess the same medical concepts if they agree about the normative standards for the applications of the concepts. This entails that nurses and patients normally share medical concepts even though patients' conceptions of disease and illness are formed in idiosyncratic ways by their social and cultural contexts. Several practical implications of this argument are discussed and linked to case studies. One especially important point is that nurses should seek to make patients feel comfortable with deferring to a medical understanding. In many cases, an adequate understanding of patients presupposes that nurses manage to do this. Another implication is that deference-willingness to normative meaning is not equivalent to the actual application of concepts. Deference-willingness should rather be thought of as a pre-communicative attitude that it is possible for patients who are not fully able to communicate to possess. What is important is that nurses and patients have the intention of conforming to the same meaning. [source] Behavioral phenomena in quality assurance auditingQUALITY ASSURANCE JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Terry Winchell Abstract There are some unique considerations involved with the management and direction of a Quality Assurance (QA) auditing operation in both government and industry. An adequate understanding of not only the technical but also the unique behavioral dimensions of this profession are essential to effective operation and management. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Moral Incapacity and Huckleberry FinnRATIO, Issue 1 2001Craig Taylor Bernard Williams distinguishes moral incapacities , incapacities that are themselves an expression of the moral life , from mere psychological ones in terms of deliberation. Against Williams I claim there are examples of such moral incapacity where no possible deliberation is involved , that an agent's incapacity may be a primitive feature or fact about their life. However Michael Clark argues that my claim here leaves the distinction between moral and psychological incapacity unexplained, and that an adequate understanding of the kind of examples I suggest must involve at least some implicit reference to deliberation. In this paper I attempt to meet Clark's objection and further clarify my account of primitive moral incapacities by considering an example from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. What this example shows, I argue, is how our characterization of an agent's response as a moral incapacity turns not on the idea of deliberation but on the way certain primitive incapacities for action are connected to a larger pattern of response in an agent's life, a pattern of response that itself helps to constitute our conception of that agent's character and the moral life more generally. [source] Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design and Consumption Control in the United StatesTHE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 3 2000Alejandro Del Carmen CPTED theory, research and practice are frequently held to be relatively recent developments in the field of American criminology, generated largely by the works of Oscar Newman (1972) and C. Ray Jeffery (1971). This view of CPTED and its development in the United States falls short of providing an adequate understanding of the vital part that it has played, and can play, in the advancement of crime prevention theory and public policy. CPTED is actually broader than as it is currently understood in the discipline of criminology. This is demonstrated through an examination of the ,era of consumption'' (that is, the time period roughly from the early 1800s to early 1900s where the disease later referred to as tuberculosis was widespread in the US); during this time period, efforts to control the spread of illness were achieved through CPTED strategies which preceded the academic writings of those considered to be the founders of CPTED. Our main goal is to increase the understanding of and appreciation for the vital role that CPTED has played in the history of crime prevention in the United States. Finally, implications are discussed for the prevention of tuberculosis today, as well as HIV infection and AIDS. [source] Postneoliberalism and its MalcontentsANTIPODE, Issue 2010Jamie Peck Abstract:, The onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 has been widely interpreted as a fundamental challenge to, if not crisis of, neoliberal governance. Here, we explore some of the near-term and longer-run consequences of the economic crisis for processes of neoliberalization, asking whether we have been witnessing the terminal unraveling of neoliberalism as a form of social, political, and economic regulation. In many ways a creature of crisis, could neoliberalism now be falling to a crisis of its own making? Answering this question is impossible, we argue, without an adequate understanding of the nature of neoliberalization and its evolving sociospatial manifestations. These are more than definitional niceties. The prospects and potential of efforts to move genuinely beyond neoliberalism must also be considered in this light. [source] Cities and the Geographies of "Actually Existing Neoliberalism"ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2002Neil Brenner This essay elaborates a critical geographical perspective on neoliberalism that emphasizes (a) the path,dependent character of neoliberal reform projects and (b) the strategic role of cities in the contemporary remaking of political,economic space. We begin by presenting the methodological foundations for an approach to the geographies of what we term "actually existing neoliberalism." In contrast to neoliberal ideology, in which market forces are assumed to operate according to immutable laws no matter where they are "unleashed," we emphasize the contextual embeddedness of neoliberal restructuring projects insofar as they have been produced within national, regional, and local contexts defined by the legacies of inherited institutional frameworks, policy regimes, regulatory practices, and political struggles. An adequate understanding of actually existing neoliberalism must therefore explore the path,dependent, contextually specific interactions between inherited regulatory landscapes and emergent neoliberal, market,oriented restructuring projects at a broad range of geographical scales. These considerations lead to a conceptualization of contemporary neoliberalization processes as catalysts and expressions of an ongoing creative destruction of political,economic space at multiple geographical scales. While the neoliberal restructuring projects of the last two decades have not established a coherent basis for sustainable capitalist growth, it can be argued that they have nonetheless profoundly reworked the institutional infrastructures upon which Fordist,Keynesian capitalism was grounded. The concept of creative destruction is presented as a useful means for describing the geographically uneven, socially regressive, and politically volatile trajectories of institutional/spatial change that have been crystallizing under these conditions. The essay concludes by discussing the role of urban spaces within the contradictory and chronically unstable geographies of actually existing neoliberalism. Throughout the advanced capitalist world, we suggest, cities have become strategically crucial geographical arenas in which a variety of neoliberal initiatives,along with closely intertwined strategies of crisis displacement and crisis management,have been articulated. [source] | |||||||||||||