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The aim of this study was to explore the note-taking experiences of university students using paper-based (non-electronic) and paperless (electronic) resources. By means of a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, the note-taking experiences of 18 students from an international program at a university in Belgium were examined throughout a semester. In order to document these students' practices with paper-based and paperless resources, four data collection methods were used: (a) in-depth interviews (b) observations (c) focus group discussions and (d) document analysis of students' lecture notes. The results showed that students experience note-taking as a complex phenomenon in which lived body, lived human relations, lived space and lived time come into play, and in which they try to find a balance between multiple engagements, between autonomy and authority, between attention and distraction, and between being original and mirroring others. This struggle for balance occurs irrespective of which medium (paper-based or paperless) they choose to use. These results provide an in-depth view of the phenomenon, and also highlight the complexity of the note-taking experience.

Neoliberal ideologies influence both the content and pedagogical approach of educational leadership programmes. This article proposes an alternate pedagogy, one which privileges the experiential nature of the leadership and challenges students to critique prevailing ideologies within education. The authors describe the reshaping of a compulsory, foundational academic paper within a Masters of educational leadership programme to focus on the phenomenon of leadership more explicitly. They illustrate the use of student stories and hermeneutic interpretation to deepen the appreciation of the contextual nature of educational leadership practice. The authors suggest that the influence of this pedagogical approach resides in the sincerity of the pedagogical comportment of the teaching faculty and the elusiveness of the taken-for-granted nature of leadership. They conclude that pedagogical processes that maintain a centrality of concern for the humanity of leadership experiences are a matter of urgency in our present educational context.

New trends in language teaching have resulted in a move towards research in the language classroom. A brief overview of classroom research reveals three distinct but inter-related research paradigms: classroom-centered research, classroom process research, and qualitative research, respectively.

In this paper, the author explores the prospect of, and the rationale for, the "critical workplace information literacy" (CWIL) construct, by situating it at the junction of critical information literacy (CIL) and workplace information literacy (WIL), the two hitherto discrete frameworks and subdomains of information literacy (IL). This preliminary attempt at the conceptualisation of a new construct was guided by the question of what role CIL can play in empowering workers to attain decent work. The author frames the conceptualisation around the 'decent work' (DW) concept, as a normative goal of the critical workplace information literacy construct, and discusses the rationale for it in the framework of the discussion on the decent work deficits in the contemporary work and information environment. Freire's critical hermeneutics and dialectics of voice and empowerment are drawn upon. The paper argues positively for the role of CIL in attaining decent work and for the need for a new construct that would help fill the knowledge and discursive gap in IL and its subdomains and overcome the current silos in the IL community. The author concludes that developing a concept requires a broad deliberative process informed by both theoretical and empirical research, and gives suggestions for future research.

In this paper, this theme of the open question is offered as a hermeneutical approach to problem-based learning. Most of the scientific literature on problem-based learning is in the realm of the behavioral-sciences. To the extent that the latter becomes the exclusive focus of research on problem-based learning, there is a risk of instrumentalization. The hermeneutical approach of this paper is meant to complement this field of research. The subjects of humanities research are not directly available to a humanities scholar, at least not in the way experimental subjects are to a natural scientist. This is Wilhelm Dilthey's epoch-making understanding of the humanities in a nutshell. Philosophical anthropologist Helmuth Plessner, drawing on Dilthey, extends this insight to the historicity of human existence as such, summarizing the latter as an 'open question' that is always impressing itself upon us as human beings, but which at the same time cannot be answered definitively. It is through this process of asking and answering that we leave behind a history in the first place. I use these arguments to show that the theme of the open question yields a series of interconnected educational insights: notably the importance of subjectification, the social and historical context within which education necessarily takes place, and the construction of new knowledge and experience. These educational insights are rendered explicit and put into practice in problem-based learning. I hope in this way to develop a research perspective on problem-based learning as not only a set of behaviors, but as the scene of meaningful action.

A key epistemological assumption in the ideologies of many of the groups termed extremist is that there is an unmediated access to a Divine Will. Driven by this assumption, and facilitated by several other factors, a range of coercive actions (including violence) to force others into submission to the perceived Will of God are seen as justified by some of these groups. A consideration of how religion is discussed in various contexts, from seminaries and schools to media and policy discourses, shows that this assumption about unmediated access to Divine Will is widely shared and that most children grow up socialized into it. In this paper, Farid Panjwani argues that challenging this assumption through educational settings can help young people acquire critical capacities that may lead to a critique of extremist narratives, thereby decreasing their attractions. In this regard, the paper draws upon a range of theoretical ideas, for example, the hermeneutical tradition (in particular the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer), as well as historical and textual examples, to make a case for a rethinking of religious education to develop more critical capacities among the students.

This paper is a combination of a grandfather's musings over his grandson's drawings, combined with a reconsideration of hermeneutics as an early childhood educational theory.

Purpose: Reflexivity involves critical reflection by the qualitative researcher as to the influence of the researcher's culture, history and belief on the conduct and outcome of the research. It is often seen as a practice exercised in the analysis of results in order to attempt to objectify the research. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the value of reflexivity is located in its practice in the field encounter as a means of recognising and embracing subjectivity. In order to widen reflexivity as hermeneutics, the paper draws on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics as developed in "Truth and Method". Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper which distils critical themes from Gadamer's truth and method and applies them to the concept of reflexivity as applied in the field. Findings: The paper suggests that reflexivity is an important component in the field encounter. Immersion in the language and terms of the field is critical to understanding meaning; who I am, my past, my lived experience are essential inputs to my research; the researcher's opinions, ideas and outspoken statements are part of the fabric of qualitative research; qualitative interpretation as a creative exercise; qualitative research should bring insight and understanding that can be applied to catalyse change. Practical implications: Understanding and applying reflexivity in the field will provide innovative insights which can be carried through to the data analysis. Originality/value: This study uniquely applies Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics to reflexivity and the field encounter.

Hermeneutical religious positions among Muslim educators vary in flexibility and openness to critical thought. Those within a school community may disagree on how Islam should be interpreted and practiced. In the light of this, who determines which expressions of the faith are acceptable in particular locations, and how? And what messages do these processes send to students? Based on 18 months of ethnographic research at a K-12 Islamic school in the midwestern United States, this paper describes conflict-ridden instances in which school faculty subtly communicated interpretive norms through implication or example. These demonstrate select ways that distinct approaches to Islam were constructed and contested within the community.

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding the place of 'worldviews' in Religious Education. We examine the British Commission on Religious Education proposal that the subject be renamed 'Religions and Worldviews' from the perspective of Worldview Theory and Critical Religious Education and make the following suggestions: (a) the twin notion of 'ultimate nature of reality' and 'our place in the 'ultimate order-of things' provides a substantial content for RE largely absent from the Commission's vision; (b) worldviews are frequently implicit rather than explicitly affirmed in religious creeds and philosophical assertions; (c) worldviews are complex, interpersonal and take varying communal forms, surpassing the polarity of 'personal' and 'institutional'; (d) the concept of 'worldview' has pedagogic and hermeneutical potential transcending content-driven curriculum development.

The curriculum work of teachers is understood and conceptualised in different ways. A prevalent view is that teachers are an integral part of a system of transmission and their work with curriculum essentially a technical exercise. Some form of this view seems to be assumed by policymakers, parents and at least some teachers. However, when this same work is considered from the perspective of interpretation theory or 'hermeneutics', a contrasting picture emerges. Rather than positioning teachers as relays of explicit information, interpretation theory alerts us to the complexities and uncertainties inherent in the reading, appreciation and application of texts. On this view, meaning is not stable but transformed through interpretation, and the process itself has no definite end point. Interpretation theory thus undermines major assumptions of the technical-transmission understanding of curriculum work. In this paper, the potential contribution of this body of theory to illuminating curriculum work is explored. Noting that hermeneutics is a vast area of study, a selection of concepts will be made that demonstrates some of these insights. The exploration will yield both critical and generative contributions to curriculum theory. The way hermeneutics undermines the transmission view of teachers' curriculum work will become clear, and at the same time, the inherent creativity of curriculum interpretation becomes an inescapable feature of teacher expertise that could be celebrated rather than neglected, denied or repressed. A hermeneutic analysis of curriculum work thus has implications for what teachers know and do and for their role in contemporary society.

Informed by a combined framework of 'translanguaging' and 'epistemic injustice', this paper examines how a group of teachers and students from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds negotiated their knowledge participation through translanguaging in an English medium instruction (EMI) degree program at a Chinese university. Data were collected over a 12-month classroom ethnography, including lesson recordings, stimulated recalls, and reflexive journals. A thematic analysis of the data reveals that transnational teachers and students actively employed translanguaging to challenge the prevailing hegemony of Western thinking and knowing in the EMI environment. We identified three key translanguaging capacities that facilitated transformative knowledge negotiation: (1) counteracting testimonial injustice; (2) providing hermeneutical resources; and (3) enhancing the sensitivity of trans-epistemic practices. Our study attests to the value of translanguaging as a transformative strategy to generate epistemic access for transnational students engaged in EMI learning, informing efforts to foster educational equity in the internationalization of higher education and to empower transnational teachers and students to reclaim their epistemic contribution capacities in the EMI context.

This research paper explores the effects of promoting empowerment in the key stage three history curriculum. For this research the term 'empowerment' relates to engaging pupils, enlightening them to the world around them and encouraging them to use their voices. Through applying an empowering approach to the history curriculum we can teach pupils the historic challenges that people have faced which help explain current issues, and educate pupils on how and why to use their voices.

This paper considers reading a hermeneutical co-respondence with understanding's becoming. It describes how understanding's plurality is caught up in the dialogical interplay of reading, rhetoric, and rhythm characteristic of hermeneutic engagement. Reading positions a reader in relationship with a text seeking participation in the matter under consideration. As such, its potential for creating new understanding lies in a reader's ability to attend to unfamiliar forms of expression and engage with the speculative nature of sense and sense-making. Rather than reduce hermeneutic practice to an unmoored relativism, reading hermeneutically fosters a radical responsibility that comes with the uncertain and difficult labor of speculative thinking.

Given the hegemony of developmentalism in early childhood education and care, this article uses a poetic juxtapositional approach to bewilder Piaget's theory of cognitive development. Critical consideration of how the theory of cognitive development has contributed to the imagining of a universal, ahistorical child and childhood(s) are discussed and analysed whilst providing a rationale for a more complex and nuanced understanding of how children develop, drawing on the theoretical concept of clocking practices. This paper analyses data from Piaget's writing in 'The Origins of Intelligence in Children' and micro-ethical events from research with children, teachers, families from an affirmative diffractive stance through the lens of bewilderment. Creative poetic vignettes are included which encourage readers to unsettle dominant and deficit assumptions made about children and their abilities, framed by Piagetian theory. The insights are shared via three propositions: following learning experiences of and with children requires openness, forms of resistance to linear understandings of time are generative, and resist the desire to chase secure meanings and intentions. These propositions and the corresponding questions offer possibilities for seeing children's ideas and contributions through a capability-oriented lens.

This manuscript is an edited transcript of a panel discussion held at a Society of Biblical Literature conference (Boston, Massachusetts, November 22 to 24, 2008). Alice Hunt begins the discussion by summarizing the content and significance of a new book by Dale Martin, "The Pedagogy of The Bible" (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008) in which he argues that biblical studies in seminaries and divinity schools give too much emphasis to teaching the historical critical method and not enough to preparing students for ministry by teaching them to be self-reflective practitioners of the improvisational skills of interpreting scripture. Then a panel of bible scholars, including the author, conduct a wide-ranging discussion that raises questions about how biblical studies might better prepare students for ministry, as well as the proper role and appropriate pedagogies for introducing biblical studies in the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum.

Describes how a Norwegian high school student constructed meaning about a poem with the help of her interactions with two peers in a response group that integrated writing, reading, speaking, and listening. (SM)

Women are born to be leaders, yet there still have been many disputations which grounding their arguments based on Al-Qur'an and Sunnah. However, the study on women's leadership needs to be reconstructed arguing that the traditional interpretations are no longer suitable in this changing times. Hence, this paper aims at advocating women position and their leadership in Islam. In addition, this paper also serves as a re-actualisation of the concept of Islam and also interpretation and re-understanding of the Qur'an and al-Hadith to provide opportunities for women associated with the concept of their equality with men. Furthermore, this paper attempts to reconstruct the Islamic doctrine of women's leadership seen from the perspectives of the Qur'an, al-Hadith, "fiqh," "tasawwuf," "siyasah," and history. The consideration of hermeneutical aspect of normativity and historicity is a necessity in the contextual, comprehensive, and holistic interpretation of the text, since it can be stated that there is no compelling reason or argument that can reject women's leadership. Thus, it is found that principally there was no strict prohibition in Islam that could reject women's leadership in various fields.

This paper is a collation of the experiences of four Black women, all senior-level educational leaders in the United States of America. Considering the predominance of White males in educational leadership, our paper furthers the conversation around race-gender diversification in this realm. We employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, focusing on the intersections of race and gender, in the effort to challenge epistemological incongruencies within this context. Using in-depth, timed, semi-structured interviews, participants reflected on their journeys, experiences, and perceptions as non-archetypal leaders in education. In highlighting contributors' perspectives,our objective was to bring the matter of race-gender underrepresentation in educational leadership to the forefront. Study participants revealed the importance of visibility, education, collaboration, exposure, mentorship, pursuit, authenticity, and living one's truth in the move towards diversifying the educational leadership sphere. Participants' recollections underscore the need for more research specific to the journeys of non-typical educational leaders in the United States.

Bernard Stiegler highlights many of the problems faced by education with respect to the 'bringing forth' of knowledge on an individual, collective, and technical level in the Anthropocene. These problems include the short-circuiting of dreams, automatization of thought, and toxic digital networks. Stiegler's [foreign characters] (pharmakon) seeks to treat the toxicity of the Anthropocene with a care-ful hermeneutic approach that is directed towards the disautomatized, inventive, co-individuating knowledge act. This paper first explores Stiegler's Anthropocene and his development of Heideggerian [foreign characters] (poeisis) in terms of the challenge of the 'bringing forth' of knowledge acts, which are illustrated by free software. It then explores, through the additional example of free radio, of Félix Guattari's work in free radio, the problem and "possibility" of creative co-individuating ex-pression in the Anthropocene by expanding on Stiegler's emphasis on the importance of hermeneutics. This raises the question of how to read Stiegler's own ex-pression of the future of knowledge. Next, the paper reviews Stiegler's educational project involving a dis-automatizable hermeneutic web. Finally, the paper gives an autoethnographic account of an attempt to 'bring forth' learning through the implementation of free software in local, online classrooms. The free software example does not solve the problem of the Anthropocene but does raise the question of our "responsibility" to choose our digital tools care-fully and the importance of maintaining the possibility of co-individuating ex-pression like the kind that is remembered in song and which online education should remind us of.

Current epistemic governance analyses in higher education ignore systemic power relations between Northern and Southern researchers. This paper does focus on previous approaches to understanding epistemic governance, but rather moves beyond these towards a Southern evaluative and prospective comprehension. The paper is primarily theoretical. We draw on Fricker's theorizing of epistemic justice, but note the importance of the institutional. Amartya Sen's capability approach enables envisioning possibilities for change at individual and systemic levels, placing agency and epistemic freedoms at the centre of epistemic governance to foster solidarity and reflexive actions for change. To make the case, the paper explores testimonial and hermeneutical (including hermeneutic obstruction) injustices in research, presenting unfair practices and the unjust consequences for scholars in the South arising from 'the colonial epistemic structure'. The paper proposes that this structure, and its West-centric episteme, shapes epistemic governance which, among other effects, invisibilizes race and racism and is unable to account for the experiences of Southern subjects. The paper concludes by suggesting that it is a moral responsibility in higher education to exercise reasoned agency to promote equal epistemic opportunities, especially for those situated on the wrong side of the epistemic line. This requires epistemic humility and ethical responsibility.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that systematically captures the ambiguity of different understandings about science, the university and its relation to society, while conceptualising sustainability. Following Corley and Gioia (2004, p. 174) on identity ambiguity and change, it seems pivotal to better understanding the ambiguity of sustainability in relation to academic cultures and university models to manage the transition more effectively. Design/methodology/approach: The nature of this paper's objectives as well as the wide thematic scope leads to the need of exploring a broad knowledge base. This was best addressed by an exploratory literature review with data collection from primary and secondary sources. The data was interpreted through a hermeneutic analysis and resulted in the inductive development of first categories and goals (further referred to as category development). In addition, a multi-method approach further adjusted the categories and raised their empirical validity and social robustness. Findings: Implementing sustainability involves dealing with a double bound ambiguity due to organisational and individual identity reasons. Five fields of ambiguity were developed to systemise the conceptualisation of a sustainable university along contradictory understandings of science, the university and sustainability. These fields offer a framework to qualitatively assess the degree of sustainability in higher education institutions. Arguments for and against sustainability in universities have been categorised around five criteria and associated to the fields of ambiguity. The finding indicates that meaning in organisational change management for sustainability can be considered both, a potential driver and barrier for a sustainability transition in universities. Research limitations/implications: This paper exclusively focussed on the internal perspective and left aside any external factors that influence the sustainability transition, such as political measures to stimulate sustainability in higher education. In addition, the operational dimension of a sustainable university has been neglected, which is by all means a necessary and important aspect. The interrelation of the identified goals has not been discussed. Originality/value: This paper focusses on the conceptualisation and understanding of sustainability within the institution, an often-forgotten but fundamental aspect of implementation. The fields of ambiguity are designed to be applied for assessing the "degree of maturity" of a sustainable university. The fields reveal the different understandings about the role, the mission and the governance of universities, stemming from competing preferences about goals and their assumed relations by various stakeholders of a higher education institutions. The five fields are not an attempt to resolve the hidden contradictions and tensions in a sustainability transition, but to state them clearly to anticipate resistances and conflicts that hinder the development of a shared understanding.

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the perceived sustainable supervisory relationships between supervisors and postgraduate international students at a research university in Malaysia. Design/methodology/approach: Drawing on a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews with 33 international postgraduate students and 10 academic staff at a Malaysian research university. Findings: Perceived sustainable supervisory relationships were perceived by both stakeholders in terms of future employment rapport, further research collaborations upon graduation and global engagement via networking initiatives. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the supervision literature by establishing novel nuances in the nature and lived experiences of the sustainable supervisory relationships beyond graduation. The implications of developing significant and profound relationships beyond graduation at micro and macro levels are also discussed.

Purpose: This paper explores the challenges of conducting qualitative research from ELT (English Language Teaching) Ph.D. candidates' perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: The participants of the study consisted of 30 Iranian Ph.D. students majoring in ELT. The semi-structured interview was employed to investigate the heart of experiences, issues and concerns of participants with regard to conducting qualitative research (QLR) challenges. To analyze the collected data, the recorded interviews were transcribed, and then the grounded theory approach was employed (Charmaz, 2006). Findings: The results revealed that the major challenges of the participants consist of the credibility of QLR in ELT contexts, hermeneutic and fuzzy nature of QLR, qualitative data analysis and interpretation, publishing qualitative findings and the system of measuring professors' productivity. Originality/value: The findings may help professors, mainly EFL ones, in research mentoring and developing research syllabi for graduate students. In addition, it may motivate Ph.D. candidates to employ QLR methods in their research studies. The pedagogical and theoretical implications of the study are discussed at the end of the paper.

This research paper considers the place of the European lifelong-learning philosophical concept of Bildung (self-formation) and how Socratic questioning activities might be used to facilitate its development. Originating with the great philosophical thinkers of the German Renaissance, it is a concept that is again attracting attention because of its focus on developing the "whole" person and its potential for developing phronesis "practical wisdom." The primary source of research data is a podcast in which a diverse group of BAME (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic) learners discuss COVID-19 vaccinations from their own cultural perspectives through a Socratic dialogue. During this process, Bildung was developed by participants recognizing mutual concerns during this process, and Gadamer's (1960/1989) hermeneutic dialectical concept known as the "Fusion of Horizons" was played out. The dialogue identifies "trust" as an essential moral value and one that is needed in any just and stable society. This research suggests an alternative educational paradigm should be realised that lends itself better to developing Bildung and phronesis. The implications of this for teacher training are discussed and why it is important to develop "phronetic" educators. Reference is made to what this might look like in reality by highlighting the use of Socratic questioning in Danish folk high schools and how they have made the philosophical concept of Bildung central to their mission.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the digital knowledge emerged in the context of the information society and that has introduced new cultural profiles in young people, called digital natives by the academic literature. It is approached according to hermeneutic theoretical and methodological principles where, through the analysis and reflection of different research experiences, it was possible to unveil these digital knowledges in the teacher training processes to respond to the learning styles of contemporary student profiles. The study allows to conclude that there is a great opportunity for the construction of contemporary cultural profiles, both of university teachers and students, as well as of the university community itself, with an impact on the educational processes when making decisions, in their training from the appropriation of a culture and the good use of information and communication technologies and experiences that have left the pandemic by the COVID-19. This adaptation and innovation have allowed to create and recreate family, academic and work life, looking for alternatives of constant change and where this stage of emergency has been an opportunity for growth in knowledge in science and technology, together with public policies as part of the training processes.

Neoliberal ideologies influence both the content and pedagogical approach of educational leadership programmes. This article proposes an alternate pedagogy, one which privileges the experiential nature of the leadership and challenges students to critique prevailing ideologies within education. The authors describe the reshaping of a compulsory, foundational academic paper within a Masters of educational leadership programme to focus on the phenomenon of leadership more explicitly. They illustrate the use of student stories and hermeneutic interpretation to deepen the appreciation of the contextual nature of educational leadership practice. The authors suggest that the influence of this pedagogical approach resides in the sincerity of the pedagogical comportment of the teaching faculty and the elusiveness of the taken-for-granted nature of leadership. They conclude that pedagogical processes that maintain a centrality of concern for the humanity of leadership experiences are a matter of urgency in our present educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]