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"Constructivism (Philosophy)"
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The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability.
eBook
Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science
Social constructionists maintain that we invent the properties of the world rather than discover them. Is reality constructed by our own activity? Do we collectively invent the world rather than discover it?André Kukla presents a comprehensive discussion of the philosophical issues that arise out of this debate, analysing the various strengths and weaknesses of a range of constructivist arguments and arguing that current philosophical objections to constructivism are inconclusive. However, Kukla offers and develops new objections to constructivism, distinguishing between the social causes of scientific beliefs and the view that all ascertainable facts are constructed.
eBook
International relations' last synthesis : decoupling constructivist and critical approaches
\"In the wake of the rising popularity of the argument that there might be an \"end of IR theory\" Samuel Barkin and Laura Sjoberg see a world in which IR theorizing is alive and well, and a key part of both disciplinary analysis and disciplinary self-identification. At the same time they recognize, with those who declare theory's death in the discipline, that things have changed in the structure and function of IR theory. Specifically, they are critical of a new, and increasingly popular, strand of thought: what they call the constructivist-critical school. This new strand is a reaction against the neo-neo synthesis school, which emerged in the 1970s and combines neorealist and neoliberal thought -- what are characterized by some as \"problem-solving\" theories. The constructivist-critical school uses non-traditional methods to analyze global politics and focuses on a politics of emancipation and social justice. But Barkin and Sjoberg contend that the ideas upon which this new constructivist-critical synthesis is founded misconstrue the base assumptions of both constructivism and critical theory in IR\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Profound Improvement
The book discusses the idea of the learning community as a vehicle for professional learning and school development.
As the authors show, the learning community develops in response to building capacity in three domains: personal, interpersonal and organizational. In the personal domain, educators deconstruct and reconstruct their professional narratives to enhance student learning and professional practice. In the interpersonal domain, educators generate norms and values that foster experimentation and critical analysis of educational practice and that promote collective and individual learning. In the organizational domain, visible and invisible structures are constructed that enable community members to enact educational practices in support of profound improvement in teaching and learning. This revised and updated edition of Profound Improvement not only brings this important work up-to-date but also shows how the authors thinking has changed and developed since the book was originally written.
The book focuses on the life of educators as it relates to professional learning and growth. It is concerned with human growth and development, human cognition and affect and human interactions and actions in the context of a school community.
For the new edition the authors also:
elaborate more fully the notion of learning communities based on living systems and ecological perspectives
develop their capacity building model
They show that building a learning community is a dynamic process that engages the individual, the group and the organization in embedded interdependencies and mutual influences. As the authors clearly demonstrate: education is a living system as opposed to a managed system.
eBook
A Cultural Theory of International Relations
In this volume, Richard Ned Lebow introduces his own constructivist theory of political order and international relations based on theories of motives and identity formation drawn from the ancient Greeks. His theory stresses the human need for self-esteem, and shows how it influences political behavior at every level of social aggregation. Lebow develops ideal-type worlds associated with four motives: appetite, spirit, reason and fear, and demonstrates how each generates a different logic concerning cooperation, conflict and risk-taking. Expanding and documenting the utility of his theory in a series of historical case studies, ranging from classical Greece to the war in Iraq, he presents a novel explanation for the rise of the state and the causes of war, and offers a reformulation of prospect theory. This is a novel theory of politics by one of the world's leading scholars of international relations.
eBook
Is absorptive capacity the \panacea\ for organizational development? A META analysis of absorptive capacity and firm performance from the perspective of constructivism
There is a long-standing academic consensus that the higher the absorptive capacity of an organization is, the better its performance. Recently, however, the assumption that absorptive capacity can unconditionally contribute to firm performance has begun to be challenged, and empirical results differentiating absorptive capacity and firm performance have also begun to emerge. Therefore, to effectively integrate the variability of different empirical results and reveal the mechanism by which absorptive capacity acts on firm performance, this paper explores the relationship between absorptive capacity and firm performance from the perspectives of both theoretical exploration and META analysis. Through the process of theoretical combing, this paper finds that the existing core concept of absorptive capacity is based on cognitivism, and the existing process behind absorptive capacity is based on a linear cognitive information processing process that focuses on the internal cognitive structure and process of the subject. However, due to the dynamic and complex nature of social phenomena, the process model cannot effectively reflect the influence of contextual factors on their relationships. Next, based on the results of theoretical sorting, the results of existing empirical studies are synthesized by means of META analysis and different contexts are examined, finding that the role of absorptive capacity on firm performance has significant contextual characteristics, among which the research context, economic context and sample context all have significant but distinct moderating effects on absorptive capacity and firm performance. Overall, by including contextual factors, this paper further deepens the understanding of the relationship between absorptive capacity and firm performance. It also provides a preliminary basis for the role of contextual factors in absorptive capacity.
Journal Article