Learning social studies content is important for all students, including those with severe disabilities. However, there is a limited amount of research that specifically examines teaching social studies to this population of students. Therefore, educators must look to research-based practices in other academic areas (e.g., English language arts) to determine new strategies to teach this important content. Using a multiple probe across participants design, three fifth-grade students with severe disabilities were taught to answer comprehension questions during read-alouds of social studies (...) text using a modified system of least prompts and graphic organizer. Findings indicate all students improved on the correct number of comprehension questions answered independently. Implications for practice and ideas for future research to teach social studies to students with severe disabilities are discussed. (shrink)

One of the most influential contemporary authors of the new materialist turn in the social sciences is Karen Barad. Barad’s work in agential realism, based on her interpretations of quantum physics, has been widely cited within a growing body of new materialist publications. However, in translating Barad’s assertions into social domains, there has been increasing critical appraisal of the physics underlying her work and its relationship with non-quantum domains. In this paper, we contribute to this discussion by exploring aspects of (...) agential realism through quantum decoherence and quantum Darwinism. We explore implications for Barad’s metaphysics and the relationship of the social with the rest of the material world. (shrink)

Piéron's Law describes the relationship between stimulus intensity and reaction time. Previously (Stafford & Gurney, 2004), we have shown that Piéron's Law is a necessary consequence of rise-to-threshold decision making and thus will arise from optimal simple decision-making algorithms (e.g., Bogacz, Brown, Moehlis, Holmes, & Cohen, 2006). Here, we manipulate the color saturation of a Stroop stimulus. Our results show that Piéron's Law holds for color intensity and color-naming reaction time, extending the domain of this law, in line with (...) our suggestion of the generality of the processes that can give rise to Piéron's Law. In addition, we find that Stroop condition does not interact with the effect of color saturation; Stroop interference and facilitation remain constant at all levels of color saturation. An analysis demonstrates that this result cannot be accounted for by single-stage decision-making algorithms which combine all the evidence pertaining to a decision into a common metric. This shows that human decision making is not information-optimal and suggests that the generalization of current models of simple perceptual decision making to more complex decisions is not straightforward. (shrink)

I use a hypothetical case study of a woman who replaces here biological arms with prostheses controlled through a brain–computer interface the explore how a BCI might interpret and misinterpret intentions. I define pre-veto intentions and post-veto intentions and argue that a failure of a BCI to differentiate between the two could lead to some troubling legal and ethical problems.

This paper provides an alternative theoretical conceptualisation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to further our understanding of prosocial organisational behaviour. We argue that consumption provides a perspective that enables theorists to escape the confines of existing CSR literature. In our view the organisation is re-imagined as an arena of consumption where employees are engaged in a quest for value, constructing and confirming their identities as consumers. Using the award-winning tour operator Laskarina Holidays as an illustrative case, it is (...) suggested that CSR can provide combinations of functional, social, emotional, epistemic and conditional value. This new perspective on CSR facilitates the coexistence of a plurality of values that are relativistically constructed and narrativised by organisational stakeholders. Our consumption paradigm provides a thought provoking means of reconciling divergent perspectives and encourages further interdisciplinary research. We argue that future research should begin, not by asking the question of why organisations assume responsibility, but by contemplating the notion of why organisations consume responsibility. (shrink)

Contemporarily, higher education workplaces are characterised by collaboration, transitions, fluidity and the crossing of boundaries, where individuals are involved in ongoing negotiation of multilayered identities and simultaneous membership to various groups. These conditions impact the negotiation of professional identities, work and work relationships. One group of professionals affected by the impetus to fluidly operate within institutions are academic language and learning advisors. In this article, we explore the identity negotiation of a novice ALL advisor through a positioning lens, focusing on (...) small stories conveyed during an interview. We highlight the ways in which she constructs identities vis-à-vis interactions with students and within the ideological and institutional structures of the contemporary university. This article contributes an important new perspective to existing depictions of ALL advisors as a marginalised group of professionals, making space for the study of advisory agency alongside structural analyses. While continuing to negotiate structural challenges, we argue that the participant’s sense of agency needs to be garnered to strengthen group identity and allow for professionals to transition to the role. (shrink)

The contentious debate over same-sex marriage raises significant questions about the public relevance of theistic ethics in addressing broad social issues beyond the moral boundaries of the Christian community. Using the issue of same-sex marriage as a case study, it is argued that “natural law” kinds of arguments can provide epistemic support as “public reasons” for cogent theological-based arguments against same-sex marriage and can be successfully defended against frequent objections to the use of religious reasons in a pluralistic context.