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Documentation in research activities consist of multiple works. Such combined documenting involves the contexts in its processes of polish. Polish contexts are often valuable hints that can be utilized for later works. However, it is difficult for most users, especially beginners, to manage the polish contexts and utilize them satisfactorily. This research aims to develop methods for organizing the contexts along with their strategic accumulation. A method to extract the important portion of the accumulated context information network is also proposed.

A growing body of research argues that teachers’ beliefs and practices should be studied within the sociocultural contexts of their work because the relationship between their beliefs and practices is both complex and context-dependent. There is a need for further research in this area in understudied contexts such as developing countries, in order to promote effective education in schools and the professional development of teachers. This paper argues that if this ‘black box’ of sociocultural contexts in which science teachers are embedded is better understood, it may be possible to identify specific aspects of these contexts related to educational organizations that act as either supports or barriers to pedagogical reform or to implementing innovations in science education. Consequently, the main purpose of this study is to explore the sociocultural contexts of ten Egyptian science teachers and to what extent these sociocultural contexts help in understanding teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices. This paper, by utilizing a multi-grounded theory approach and qualitative methods, reveals a variety of sociocultural contexts that are related to teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and practices.

Our lives take place within specific time-space contexts, and in everyday life these contexts are taken as self-evident. Simultaneously, we have accepted the classical idea of fixed, permanent and acontextual truths. This paper argues that people use and are aware of various time-space contexts, and have implicitly created knowledge and approaches that work within them. The paper further argues that explicit consideration of time-space contexts should influence the tools, techniques and methods we use when making sense of each situation, and determining the management interventions we make.

Organization development (OD) is a field of management in which professionals assist organizations through planned change interventions and processes (Cummings & Worley, 2009). The application of O...

Systems thinking contributes to envisioning agricultural sustainability. However, it faces two dilemmas, recently highlighted by complexity theory: the problems of boundary and change. We propose that interpreting Koestler’s holon as an intentional entity embedded in an ecology of contexts provides an ontological construct which addresses both of these issues. The holon is in some ways a whole and in other ways a part, and to see it simultaneously as both we suggest an epistemological tool that we term flickering. In our interpretation a holon is bounded by its intentionality to persist, and the imperative to do so in multiple, incommensurable, and ever-evolving contexts motivates – indeed, makes both possible and inevitable – change. Farms are compelling examples of holons, as their humans plan and act to maintain them as a source of livelihood, necessarily in contexts as diverse and shifting as climate, life histories, trade rules, subsidies, personal spirituality and public perceptions of agricultural practices.

The field of intellectual enquiry known as scholasticism grew up in the middle ages, achieving its pinnacle with thinkers such as Anselm, Scotus and Aquinas. Scholasticism held that truth was disco...

The impact of radical political changes had a surprisingly strong impact upon the universities in Hungary. In the twentieth century, Hungary was part of two empires (the Habsburg and the Soviet empires), suffered from two World Wars, lived under two totalitarian regimes (communism twice, Nazism once), and experienced several revolutions. One would expect that universities would provide asylums, hiding places for professionals to defend themselves in such stormy atmosphere. In fact, however, the universities proved to be one of the first points to which political changes were extended. Besides showing data about the political influences on the number of universities, personnel, and curricula, this paper intends to provide an analysis of this transition, and illustrate the mechanism of change on the basis of the Technical University of Budapest, focusing on the period of 1945–1953. This is the period of the introduction of the Soviet university model to replace the traditional German one. The paper aims to prove that the myth of expertise does not shield universities from political intrusion but it helps to make the intrusion somewhat endurable.

This chapter addresses education reform in conflict-affected settings and discusses the ways in which such reform can be influenced—and then elsewhere leveraged — by international organizations. In so doing, I will argue not only that conflict-affected settings are particularly susceptible to international influence, but, more broadly, that conflict affected settings can serve—indeed, have served—as an important “blind spot” where certain kinds of reforms are inscribed and then promoted by international organizations that must “sell” policies to sustain their raison d’etre (Santos, 2007).

Agroecology offers a scientific and operational framework for redesigning animal production systems (APS) so that they better cope with the coming challenges. Grounded in the stimulation and valorization of natural processes to reduce inputs and pollutions in agroecosystems, it opens a challenging research agenda for the animal science community. In this paper, we identify key research issues that define this agenda. We first stress the need to assess animal robustness by measurable traits, to analyze trade-offs between production and adaptation traits at within-breed and between-breed level, and to better understand how group selection, epigenetics and animal learning shape performance. Second, we propose research on the nutritive value of alternative feed resources, including the environmental impacts of producing these resources and their associated non-provisioning services. Third, we look at how the design of APS based on agroecological principles valorizes interactions between system components and promotes biological diversity at multiple scales to increase system resilience. Addressing such challenges requires a collection of theories and models (concept-knowledge theory, viability theory, companion modeling, etc.). Acknowledging the ecology of contexts and analyzing the rationales behind traditional small-scale systems will increase our understanding of mechanisms contributing to the success or failure of agroecological practices and systems. Fourth, the large-scale development of agroecological products will require analysis of resistance to change among farmers and other actors in the food chain. Certifications and market-based incentives could be an important lever for the expansion of agroecological alternatives in APS. Finally, we question the suitability of current agriculture extension services and public funding mechanisms for scaling-up agroecological practices and systems.

There are many textbooks that cover a range of arts-informed inquiry and explore its use in different disciplines. However, this chapter will draw on case study material from a number of international projects in order to show how arts-related research may be used effectively in diverse disciplines and complex contexts such as areas of poverty, disability, and political complexity.

Today I revisit a premise central to community psychology since its official inception (Bennett et al., 1966): the importance of developing theory, research, and intervention which locates individuals, social settings, and communities in sociocultural context. I return to this premise not because community psychology has not made significant substantive and distinctive contributions to research and practice during the last three decades but because of how much work remains to be done. We are still struggling with how to incorporate issues of culture and context into the questions we ask, the research strategies we pursue, and the ways we design and carry out interventions (Bernal & Enchautegui-de Jesus, 1994; Leidig, 1977; Loo, Fong, & Iwamasa, 1988; Myers & Pitts, 1977; Novaco & Monahan, 1980; Trickett, Watts, & Birman, 1993; Walsh, 1987a). Incorporating culture and context more fully into the conceptual frameworks and intervention activities of the field will both further the field’s originating vision and create an exciting and socially responsible agenda for the future. It represents an opportunity for community psychology to make a distinctive contribution to how we think and how we act.

The question to which I seek here to address myself may be formulated in the following way. Is philosophy to be thought of as essentially one and the same subject in all its different manifestations, carried on, certainly, in noticeably differing ways by different people at different times and in different places, but to be understood nevertheless as consisting of one overall body of knowledge? Or should the term ‘philosophy’ be regarded rather as standing for a ‘family resemblance concept’, and the family in question as containing among its members some who may be hardly capable of establishing any mutually agreed channels of communication with each other? In what follows I shall try to display, if not necessarily to disentangle, some of the underlying complexities on which, as it seems to me, answers to these questions may depend.

These two extracts from speeches delivered on the African continent by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron thrust the nature of China’s involvement in Africa into the global media spotlight again. Criticizing both China’s domestic and overseas capitalist practices, these western politicians reiterated the inability of the Chinese political and economic model to meet the global norms around good governance and the demands of its citizens. The comments also reconfirm our introductory statements that popular perceptions of China-Africa relations are still very much presented from the perspective of western powers and interests. Despite this apparent continuity in discourses around China things have changed, particularly our understanding of how China’s domestic agendas shape its interventions in Africa and how the mediation of such interventions by African actors conditions the impacts on the ground.

In contexts of development, climate is one of the several inherited background states, a geographic endowment which, along with factors such as soil types, water availability, and geographic location, exerts a strongly coercive influence on ecological system types and character, and consequentially, on human settlement patterns, health characteristics, livelihoods and economies. Climatic determinism has long been offered as an explanation (and with considerable resultant controversy) to explain the impoverishment of tropical regions relative to the economic vibrancy and affluence of societies in the mid-latitudes (Sachs 2000). However, it is indisputable that climate and climatic variability play a highly influential role in human livelihoods, economic development and health outcomes. For the global poor, the role of climate is magnified due to omnipresent vulnerability related to lower levels of the ability to cope with climatic stress. Consequentially, long-term success in poverty alleviation cannot be achieved without comprehension and engagement with issues of climatic variability and climate change.

After having dealt with the first challenge in the previous chapter, this chapter focuses on the second challenge: conceptualizing different forms of technological mediation to understand how technologies alter human action on a more detailed level. Meeting this challenge calls for reformulating Bruno Latour’s mediation theory so as to incorporate insights from Alasdair MacIntyre as outlined in the previous chapter. Most important in this respect is MacIntyre’s notion of practices, his idea of being biologically vulnerable and socially interdependent, and his distinction between practical reasoning and having reasons.

This article asks how contexts are made in science as well as in social science, and how the making of contexts relates to political agency and intervention. To explore these issues, it traces contexting for foot-and-mouth disease and the strategies used to control the epidemic in the United Kingdom in 2001. It argues that to depict the world is to assemble contexts and to hold them together in a mode that may be descriptive, explanatory, or predictive. In developing this argument, it explores how contexts are assembled in a series of different descriptive and explanatory narratives in epidemiology, policy, critical social science, and (feminist) social studies of science.

So I want to take you back to about 20 years ago, as a first year graduate student I was doing a research assistantship with a professor interested in math test performance and motivation. This was the period when the U.S. was equally awed by the Japanese automobile import/production cycle and the Japanese educational system. The systems were both efficient and effective. As part of that assistantship, I helped some staff from the Midwest State Board of Education (MSBE) do a modest longitudinal study. It was all very informal – MSBE and Midwest University (MU) faculty thought it would be interesting to see how the students in 1984 compared with 1974 – called the Decade Study. MU faculty also wanted to pilot some scales assessing student motivation and test anxiety.

This chapter identifies “context minimization error” as the tendency to ignore the impact of enduring neighborhood and community contexts on human behavior. The error has adverse consequences for understanding psychological processes and efforts at social change. The chapter describes a series of theoretical models of how neighborhoods and community settings are associated with various aspects of human welfare and reviews evidence of associations of contexts with health, psychological distress, risky behaviors, psychological attitudes, and child development. It suggests that many psychological processes may play out differently in different contexts and that contextual factors interact with sociocultural characteristics of individuals in predicting outcomes. People, in turn, can shape community contexts. A more sophisticated understanding of the effects of contexts depends on more sophisticated approaches to assessing them.

The end of the cold war has caused considerable policy and scholarly attention to be devoted to sources of political conflict other than those generated by major power rivalry.1 Concerns with global climate change, ozone depletion and acid rain have sometimes made matters of global environmental security an international political priority (Soroos, 1997). There is also a growing scholarly and policy literature on relationships between environment, renewable resource scarcities and violence, driven in part by fears of political instability and state collapse as a result of environmental degradation and resource scarcity (Gleditsch, 1997a; Diehl, 1998; Renner, 1996).

The notion of context has been an issue of research in various aspects of intelligent systems such as knowledge management, natural language processing, reasoning and so on. This paper focuses on the various contexts surrounding the design and use of Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) and proposes an initial framework of contexts by classifying them into three major groupingsc interactional, environmental and objectival contexts. Interactional contexts are used by the system, environmental contexts surround its design and use while objectival contexts refer to the objectives of an educational system as exhibited by its ‘teaching’ and ‘assessment’ practices. A better understanding of these contexts is essential for designing better and more usable intelligent tutoring systems.

Development planning in Brunei has been shaped by a range of institutional, historical and ideological factors. The particular path to independence adopted by Brunei coupled with its distinctive political structure, has bequeathed planning models and structures which reflect the strong British involvement in early planning policy in the state. At the same time, the post-independence period has been marked by a conscious effort to fashion both an individual development path for the state, and to create a range of institutions which seek to be distinctively Bruneian in scope and format. This chapter outlines the evolution and objectives of development planning in the state. Firstly, it examines the structures and institutions which shape the planning process. Secondly, it will focus on attempts to define a particular development model in the light of the economic experience of some of its Asian neighbours, and the particular religious and cultural characteristics of Brunei. After a review of the fiscal conditions underpinning development planning, a third section reviews the six National Development Plans enacted to date.