scholarly journals Information-related behaviour as meaning-making processes: a study of science centre visitors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mette Skov ◽  
◽  
Marianne Lykke ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Visitor Experience ◽  
Information Behaviour ◽  
Science Centre ◽  
Mediational Means ◽  
Casual Leisure

Introduction. This paper studies the science centre visitor experience from an information behaviour perspective. The study contributes to the area of casual-leisure information behaviour. Method. The qualitative walk-along method rooted in ethnographic research was applied to study the in-situ visitor experience of forty-four families (seventy-four children and seventy adults) at a science centre in Denmark. An inductive content analysis approach was adopted focusing on three analytical themes. Analysis.The concept of mediational means was used to analyse how the different exhibit features facilitate visitors’ meaning-making processes. Results. Results from the study show how different exhibition features facilitate visitors’ information use and meaning-making processes in multiple ways providing rich opportunities for meaning-making. The results further illustrate, how visitors’ meaning-making processes become informed through a duality of cognitive and corporeal ways of knowing. Conclusions. In the immersive and highly interactive exhibition, visitors mainly become informed about the importance of movement and health through corporeal information that is experienced through the situated body.

Ethnography Is an Option

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Philbrick Yadav
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Opportunities For Learning

Reflecting on her own uneven experience carrying out fieldwork in Yemen, Stacey Philbrick Yadav highlights the advantages of ethnography and interpretative methods when working in settings or on questions related to meaning-making. The chapter argues that the tools of ethnographic research can help to reframe what positivists might regard as mistakes into opportunities for learning and reassessment.

scholarly journals "It Isn't All about You": The Management of ICT and Non-ICT Information Resources via Human Information Behaviour

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Paul Daniel Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Activity Theory ◽  
Information And Communication Technologies ◽  
Time Management ◽  
Information Seeking ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Information Use ◽  
Information Behaviour ◽  
Systems Model ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Impact

<p>"Applications that gather dust... Technologies no one understands... Information that's ignored... [thus, there is still very much a need to] pay attention to Information behaviour" (Davenport, 1997, p.2). Human Information Behaviour is as important a concept today as it has ever been, as there are still millions of dollars going into improving information technology. While information seeking behaviour has been rigorously studied over the years, information use has not received the same attention. Neither has the IT artefact or choice of such technologies at the hands of users of information. This research paper aims to produce a taxonomy of the information use behaviours and ICT and non-ICT resource use of IT academics through a qualitative study involving both observation (incorporating thinking aloud) and structured face-to-face interview techniques. The research question asks "How do IT Academics manage the integration between various Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and non-ICT sources to support their information behaviours (IB) and, therefore, achieve their desired outcome? We observed and interviewed six IT academics carrying out their normal working activities, looking into actual information events as they occurred, information outcomes, information behaviours, and the technologies used by academics in their daily interactions with information. We developed a systems model, informed by activity theory, to frame the discussion. What was uncovered by the study was a tendency for academics to converge on a single technology - that of the laptop. This together with email was what academics tended to prefer to use, both at the office and in their homes; a surprising find as it was assumed that there would be a plethora of different ICTs in use. We found that technologies contributed to a blurring of the work/life equilibrium for many academics. Academics did exhibit a wide range of behaviours in their laptop and email use. Many of them were relatively unproductive, and involved moving information from one place, or one form to another, and finally ending in deletion rather than active use. Many of our interviewees reflected a need to use their time wisely through time management, and the impact of email on time management. These results also yielded the justification of Activity Theory which was used in the study, and of the systems framework which was constructed for the study. The study also confirmed the importance of environmental influences on academic's working lives, which tended to create a somewhat cyclic nature to their information events. Overall, it was not clear that patterns of use of ICTs contributed to effective information use behaviour by IT academics.</p>

scholarly journals Giving and Receiving: A Case Study of the Stowaways Exhibit in Blood, Earth Fire - Whāngai, Whenua Ahi Kā at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lynne Carmichael Allan
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Visitor Experience ◽  
Visitor Studies ◽  
Museum Exhibit ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Individual

<p>The role that the physical environment of an exhibition plays in the visitor's experience of a museum is a topic that, though increasingly acknowledged in museum studies, has not yet received detailed attention from researchers. The interaction of exhibitor and visitor, in and through exhibitions, can be situated in the wider context of the recent paradigm shirt within museum practice, towards communication with the public and developments in museum theory, which consider the qualitative aspects of the visitor experience as an active dialogue, conversation or a process of meaning-making. This dissertation examines the interactive exhibit Stowaways in the permanent exhibition, Blood, Earth, Fire - Whāngai, Whenua, Ahi Kā, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. It considers the question 'How does the physical environment affect the meanings that the visitor makes in and after visiting the exhibition?' The study builds on existing New Zealand research, which questioned the gap between exhibition creation and visitor reception. A theoretical framework was constructed from relevant strands of the literature of museum studies, visitor studies and exhibition design. A qualitative approach was employed, in order to examine in detail both the exhibition development process and then how the visitor responded to the exhibition. Several methods were used to conduct the research, such as archival research and interviews with both the museum staff and seven visitors, who came with their families to the exhibit. The findings provide interesting evidence of the complex and deep affect that the built exhibition space can have on the visitor, not just at the time of the visit but long afterwards. This was an affect that rippled out from the individual to their family group and everyday life. This dissertation makes a small but significant contribution to museum studies in New Zealand, through an integrated examination of the production and reception of a museum exhibit, from the perspective of both the visitor and the museum. One of the main conclusions was to re-iterate the important role of exhibition evaluation in facilitating a more complete communication between museum and visitor, by allowing museum professionals to build on the experience of the development process in a way that can inform future practice.</p>

Expanding God’s Redemptive Fractal: Spirit-Centered Counseling and the Transformative Wisdom of Jesus

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 29-54
Author(s):  
Bill Buker
Keyword(s):  
Systems Theory ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Order Change ◽  
Way Of Knowing ◽  
Second Order Change ◽  
The Mind

Using the image of a fractal, a Spirit-centered approach to counseling is proposed that conceptualizes the Spirit’s activity as seeking to replicate the patterns of God’s redemptive story throughout creation by facilitating deep second-order change. Involving an epistemological shift from ways of knowing shaped by the conventional wisdom of culture to a renewed mind grounded in the transformative wisdom of Jesus, this deep change is explored from the perspectives of science and Scripture. Integrating findings from systems theory with the ministry and message of Jesus, this approach to counseling emphasizes relational premises and values believed to be characteristic of the mind of the Spirit. Defined as the capacity to know and see in ways that are consistent with the passion and purposes of God, cultivating the mind of the Spirit is viewed as the essence of Spirit-centered counseling. Presumed to be seen most clearly in the life of Jesus, this model focuses on his distinctive way of knowing and seeing by examining what can be learned about the epistemological facets of perception and meaning-making when comparing his Way with the patterns of this world. It is proposed that Spirit-centered counseling is guided by the premises and patterns contained in Jesus’ transformative wisdom.

scholarly journals Becoming a complementary health practitioner: The construction of alternative medical knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 136345932094646
Author(s):  
Maayan Roichman
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Medicine ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Health Practitioner ◽  
Medical College ◽  
The Core ◽  
Practitioner Training ◽  
Experience Of Illness ◽  
Complementary And Alternative

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) has become widely popular in many countries, yet little is known about the actual training of CAM practitioners. This article employs ethnographic research methods to closely examine the meaning-making processes used in such training at a complementary and alternative medical college. It delineates how CAM practitioners in training, specialising in naturopathy, make sense of alternative medical knowledge and transform it into medical truth. The study indicates that the core of CAM training rests on overturning the biomedical epistemological hierarchy between the objectification of disease and the experience of illness through extended intersubjective sharing by instructors and students. This study therefore adds to the extensive CAM literature by carefully examining the way naturopathic knowledge is inculcated during practitioner training. The emerging insight is that introspection and the search for authenticity, a central narrative of modernity, have become powerful resources in CAM’s construction of alternative medical truth.

Multiple temporalities of knowing in academic research

2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Smith
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Functional Relationship ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Academic Knowledge ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
Crisis Of Modernity ◽  
The Relationship

Based on ethnographic research at five Czech universities from 2011 to 2013, this article explores how academics make sense of and claims to three qualitatively distinct temporal regimes in which their activities as knowledge producers are inscribed: disciplinary time, career time and project time. This conceptual framework, a modification of Shinn’s distinction between disciplinary, transitory and transversal knowledge-production regimes, seeks to replace images of competition and succession between regimes with images of their recombination and intersection. It enables an interpretation of the empirical findings beyond the indigenous complaint that excessive speed is compromising the quality of knowledge production. The relationship between projects, careers and disciplines emerges from the study as problematic rather than synergistic. In this respect the paper does not contradict the claim by critical theorists that we are witnessing the disintegration of what used to be a functional relationship between the multiple temporalities of academic knowledge production based on standardized career scripts, nor the related claim that this may reflect a deeper crisis of modernity as a predictive regime for the production of futures. It proposes, however, that transversal projects can still be mediators of ‘disciplinary respiration’ insofar as their timeframes are available for variable calibration commensurate with the increasingly heteronomous ways of knowing and knowledge routines that academic researchers practise.

scholarly journals From cooperative practice to research and back

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 194-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiri Langmead
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Construction ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Research Performance ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Construction Of Knowledge ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
A Site

Purpose This paper aims to explore how experiences and emotions arising from the performance of ethnography shape the construction of knowledge about democratic practice in two social enterprises. It argues that ethnographers can develop a more nuanced understanding of organisational practices by moving beyond the self-reflexive work of being aware of one’s position to embrace the emotional work of engaging reflexively with this position, re-embedding reflexive moments in the process of knowledge construction. Design/methodology/approach Reflections are made on the emotions and experiences arising during a 12-month ethnographic study in two social enterprises. Findings The author found that engaging reflexively with relational and emotional processes of meaning-making opened up three analytical starting points. First it highlighted and helped the researcher to see beyond the limits of their assumptions, opening them to new understandings of democracy. Second, it gave rise to empathetic resonance through which the researcher was able to feel into the practice of democracy and re-frame it as a site of ongoing struggle. Finally, it brought to consciousness tacit ways of knowing and being central to both research and democratic praxis. Originality/value The paper adds to limited literature on processes of knowledge construction. Specifically, it contributes new insights into how emotional experiences and empathetic resonance arising at the meeting point of research performance and democratic praxis can offer analytical starting points for a more nuanced understanding of democratic organising in social enterprise.

Tourism and Existential Transformation: An Empirical Investigation

2016 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 638-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ksenia Kirillova ◽  
Xinran Lehto ◽  
Liping Cai
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Life Changes ◽  
Experience Economy ◽  
Meaningful Life ◽  
Existential Anxiety ◽  
Long Term Changes ◽  
Existential Givens

Couched in the context of the experience economy 3.0, this research conceptualized transformations as changes in existential authenticity and anxiety, and phenomenologically explored the essence of a transformative tourist experience and subsequent long-term changes. This research uncovered nine chronologically ordered themes in which existentially oriented concerns were prevalent. It found that tourists did not reflect on existential givens in situ until a triggering episode initiated the meaning-making process. Existential anxiety felt post-trip was found to motivate tourists to resolve pertinent existential dilemmas and to initiate meaningful life changes. Participants sustained enhanced existential authenticity and became more sensitive to existential anxiety in their lives thereafter.

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