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Against the backdrop of the increasing depletion of the planet's ecological 'resources' and endemic environmental problems, the view of creativity as servicing the ideal of infinite economic growth has become problematic. We need, instead, to explore how creativity can contribute to grounding our intentions and actions within an ongoing and mutually shaping engagement and cohabitation between people and things-in-the-world. To explore this issue, we introduce the creative preservation framework. It allows to study practices which have received little attention in the literature to date, despite ensuring continuity, preventing deterioration, and valuing what already exists. Our working definition of creative preservation refers to practices of creation that prevent the decay of existing materials and ideas by updating and adapting them, or re-expressing them in another way through the exploration of their affordances. We examine four practices that reflect non-exhaustive forms of creative preservation practices: upcycling, bricolage, low-tech, and craft. The article opens with an ethos of creative preservation in the context of degrowth. It marks a first step towards creative practices that, rather than viewing us as occupants of the world, make us inhabitants of it, thereby contributing to reimagining new modes of relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making investment decisions is usually considered a challenging task for investors because it is a process based on risky, complex, and consequential choices (Shanmuganathan, 2020). When it comes to Investments in human capital (IHC), such as startups fundings, the aspect of decision-making (DM) becomes even more critical since the outcome of the DM process is not completely predictable. Indeed, it has to take into consideration the will, goals, and motivations of each human actor involved: those who invest as well as those who seek investments. We define this specific DM process as multiactor DM (MADM) since not a group is making decisions but different actors, or groups of different actors, who - starting from non-coinciding objectives - need to reach a mutual agreement and converge toward a common goal for the success of the investment. This review aims to give insights on psychological contributions to the study of complex DM processes that deal with IHC to provide scholars and practitioners with a theoretical framework and a tool for describing the complex socio-ecological systems involved in the DM processes. For this purpose, we discuss in the paper how the third generation of activity theory (Leont'ev, 1974, 1978; Engeström, 1987, 2001) could be used as an appropriate model to explain the specificities of MADM construct, focusing on the particular case of startup funding. Design thinking techniques will be proposed as a methodology to create a bridge between different activity systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Making investment decisions is usually considered a challenging task for investors because it is a process based on risky, complex, and consequential choices (Shanmuganathan, 2020). When it comes to Investments in human capital (IHC), such as startups fundings, the aspect of decision-making (DM) becomes even more critical since the outcome of the DM process is not completely predictable. Indeed, it has to take into consideration the will, goals, and motivations of each human actor involved: those who invest as well as those who seek investments. We define this specific DM process as multi-actor DM (MADM) since not a group is making decisions but different actors, or groups of different actors, who – starting from non-coinciding objectives – need to reach a mutual agreement and converge toward a common goal for the success of the investment. This review aims to give insights on psychological contributions to the study of complex DM processes that deal with IHC to provide scholars and practitioners with a theoretical framework and a tool for describing the complex socio-ecological systems involved in the DM processes. For this purpose, we discuss in the paper how the third generation of activity theory (Leont’ev, 1974, 1978;Engeström, 1987, 2001) could be used as an appropriate model to explain the specificities of MADM construct, focusing on the particular case of startup funding. Design thinking techniques will be proposed as a methodology to create a bridge between different activity systems.

This manifesto, discussed by 20 scholars, representing diverse lines of creativity research, marks a conceptual shift within the field. Socio‐cultural approaches have made substantial contributions to the concept of creativity over recent decades and today can provide a set of propositions to guide our understanding of past research and to generate new directions of inquiry and practice. These propositions are urgently needed in response to the transition from the Information Society to the Post‐Information Society. Through the propositions outlined here, we aim to build common ground and invite the community of creativity researchers and practitioners to reflect up, study, and cultivate creativity as a socio‐cultural phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: The present article argues for the need to incorporate a theory of identity in the study of creativity and develops a socio-cultural framework of creative identity drawing inspiration from work on social representations. Creative identities are considered representational projects emerging in the interaction between self (the creator), multiple others (different audiences), and notions of creativity informed by societal discourses. An important temporal dimension is added to this model making the self–other–object triad expand into time and highlighting the changing nature of our representations of creativity and creative people. A basic typology of creative identities is proposed and illustrated with examples ranging from the work of artists and TV show hosts to everyday contexts such as the school and ordinary practices like craft activities. Promoted, denied and problematic identities are defined and contrasted in order to gain a better understanding of how identity – a simultaneously individual and collective project – fosters or, on the contrary, can impede creative work. In the end, a more comprehensive vision of creative identities as social, dynamic, contextual, multiple and mediated is formulated and arguments offered for why this perspective is important for both theory and practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reducing a test administration to standardised procedures reflects the test designers’ standpoint. However, from the practitioners’ standpoint, each client is unique. How do psychologists deal with both standardised test administration and clients’ diversity? To answer this question, we interviewed 17 psychologists working in three public services for children and adolescents about their assessment practices. We analysed the “client categorisations” they produced in their accounts. We found that they had shared perceptions about their clients’ diversity, and reported various non-standard practices that complemented standardised test administration, but also differed from them or were even forbidden. They seem to experience a dilemma between: (a) prescribed and situated practices; (b) scientific and situated reliability; (c) commutative and distributive justice. For practitioners, dealing with clients’ diversity is a practical problem, halfway between a problem-solving task and a moral dilemma. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the present paper is described the learning process of pupils of a popular workshop of painting. Discursive, behavioral and social aspects of learning are integrated. The need to analyze the concrete contexts of learning beyond the simple description of the activities inside the workshop is defended. The paper suggests the social origin of the discursive resources of the pupils and in this way “the artistic thought” is relabeled as “artistic speech”. The social contexts of activity out and inside the workshop are located in the apex of what is called an inverted triangle of the artistic education.

The aim of this paper is to discuss Charles's () attempt to turn E.B. Holt's theoretical approach into the only possible bridge to connect Gibsonian ecological psychology with social psychology. Criticism of Charles's claims is carried out at four different conceptual levels: historiographical, logico-epistemological, methodological, and theoretical. From this critical perspective, Charles's resort to Holt's ideas is viewed as an effort to legitimate Charles's own line of work. Moreover, far from being this the only possible approach to the subject, many other rich alternatives to the application of Gibsonian principles to the explanation of socio-cultural phenomena already exist. In fact, it is questionable whether Holt's behavioral neorealism allows dealing with many of the most complex socio-cultural issues, particularly those related to purposive behavior and intersubjective contexts. In order to address these questions from a Holtian point of view, Charles is forced to make a number of argumentative leaps and epistemological transgressions. In the last analysis, his insistence on keeping to the Holtian stance leads him to lose sight of the Gibsonian framework and to modify the very nature of his object of study, the social phenomenon-which, along the lines of classic neorealist behaviorism, becomes reduced to a simple consideration of behavioral purposiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atavism in word evolution means that in the evolutionary process, a certain word or a meaning of a certain word disappeared long before it reappears. A good case in point is the atavism displayed by the development of the two words of "kan ((This character cannot be represented into ASCII text))" and "zhengkou ((These characters cannot be represented into ASCII text))" and the evolution of the meanings of the two words of "xiaojie ((These characters cannot be represented into ASCII text))" and "xiuli ((These characters cannot be represented into ASCII text))". Such an atavism is the consequence of the principles of economy in human thinking and socio-cultural psychology as well as the internal selective mechanism of human language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream cognitive science has usually adopted a disembodied conception of the mind, according to which we have a faculty of reason separate from our faculties of perception and bodily movement. In this paper, I present Lakoff and Johnson's elaborated theory of embodiment and criticize it for ignoring the cultural aspects as well as the recursive nature of the human mind. Finally, I present some guidelines for a contextual inquiry into the embodied mind by leaning on ideas from cybernetics and socio-cultural psychology. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argumentation is an important aspect in the field of education because of its impact on learning processes. At the same time, argumentation is a complex activity in terms of cognitive, relational, emotional and social dynamics. In this paper, I investigate and I describe possible difficulties encountered by children during the argumentative process. The study involves 25 preschool children at a kindergarten engaged in three building tasks. The tasks were video-recorded and the argumentative discussions transcribed. For the aim of this paper, I analyze how argumentation are distributed among participants. I select interactions in which participants apparently do not argue or there are differences in the degree of argumentative participation between participants of the same group. I analyze these interactions and moments of impasse in the argumentative steps. The findings show how the simplicity of solving the task (e.g., when children do not encounter any problem in completing the activity) and the children's self-perception of their competences in solving the task may have an impact on argumentation activities. Moreover, this perception is co-constructed by children within the interaction. The study contributes to the line of research on designing argumentation and highlights the role of the adult in managing children's interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]