Search results for "KNOWLEDGE"
showing 10 items of 3108 documents
Empowered by stigma? Pioneer organic farmers' stigma management strategies
2019
Abstract Pioneers of organic farming often faced social challenges as their innovative ideas on agriculture not only encountered opposition in the conventional farming community, but led to stigmatization of organic farmers as social deviants. In this study, we examine what kind of stigma management strategies pioneer organic farmers engage with in order to cultivate an alternative positive image of themselves. Our research is based on the interviews with 14 pioneer organic farmers. Based on a qualitative analysis of the interviews, we provide a model of those strategies that the creation from a stigmatized to valued identity requires. Our study increases the understanding of the institutio…
Reintegration Failure and Outsourcing Upside: Organisation of Public Transport in Norway
2014
AbstractAfter two decades of public sector outsourcing, debates for reintegration of services back into the public sector have emerged. However, so far outsourcing remains prevalent and reintegration is sparsely utilised. An in-depth analysis of the reorganisation of public transport in a Norwegian county, Sor-Trondelag, provides three key reasons as to why there is an ‘outsourcing upside’. Firstly, existing structures limit available alternatives for legislators, thereby making reintegration of public services back into public hands difficult. Secondly, under certain conditions competitive tendering may enhance political steering and thus make outsourcing politically desirable. Thirdly, th…
Assessing the previous economic knowledge of beginning students in Germany: Implications for teaching economics in basic courses
2016
Study-related prior knowledge plays a decisive role in business and economics degree courses. Prior knowledge has a significant influence on knowledge acquisition in higher education, and teachers need information on it to plan their introductory courses accordingly. Very few studies have been conducted of first-year students’ prior economic knowledge or differences among students in such knowledge. In this article, the prior economic knowledge and the influence of personal factors on first-year students’ prior economic knowledge are examined. For this purpose, an adaptation of the fourth, revised edition of the American Test of Economic Literacy was administered, which was adapted in 2014…
Digital participation in service environments among senior electricity consumers in Finland
2018
Research to date suggests that older adults engage with digital technologies less frequently than young adults. Studies typically focus on chronological age, ignoring the effects of life course factors on the adoption and use of digital technologies. By utilising multiple triangulation, the article investigates the role of age and life course stage in the usage of an electricity company's online services among senior consumers. The data are derived from an internet-based survey study (N = 1366) and six focus group discussions involving Finnish electricity consumers (N = 29). The results suggest that online consumers aged 50 and over utilise electricity company online services more frequentl…
Human–Insect Relationships: An ANTless Story? Children's, Adolescents', and Young Adults' Ways of Characterizing Social Insects
2015
ABSTRACTAnts may serve as powerful model organisms for uncovering principles of insect biology and social behavior. The aim of this study was to provide a quantitative analysis of secondary-school students' perceptions and knowledge of ants. It was part of a longitudinal project based on the concept of “ant research” in classrooms. The outcomes were to be used to implement studies of ants into a progressive curriculum for all secondary-school students. In order to design modules for science education, it was necessary to identify the perceptions and knowledge that students in different grades had of ants. Three hundred and twenty-one students from 14 classes in the 6th, 7th, 9th, and 12th g…
The relationship among gender, interest in economic topics, media use, and the economic knowledge of students at vocational schools
2019
The results of numerous studies indicate that male students achieve better results on economic knowledge tests than their female classmates. Although this phenomenon has been known for a long time, the gender-specific mechanisms of this gap have not been explored in depth. According to social and educational scientific theories and the current state of research, interest and media use could be related to gender. In this study, we administered a German adaption of the internationally accepted Test of Economic Literacy to explore the gender gap in the economic knowledge of 983 students from 62 classes at 7 vocational secondary schools and commercial vocational schools specializing in business…
Accumulation and destruction of the trust ? : Popperian inspiration plan
2000
When, following other social sciences, economists address the mechanism of trust, they typically focus on the search of a justification or a foundation for trusting, the implicit starting point of the process they have in mind being zero trust, or distrust. By contrast, the present paper, inspired by the philosophy of Popper, suggests, as a starting point for trust, an individual decision associated with what Popper calls a conjecture - that is, a kind of theory - on how the individual (potentially) trusted "functions". The conjecture requires no justification but only the test of its implications. In turn, the decision to trust or to distrust does not reflect in a mechanical or passive way…
Trends in scientific research on climate change in agriculture and forestry subject areas (2005–2014)
2017
The term “Climate change” involves an alteration of the mean and variability of the climate properties. It implies unusual variations in the planet earth atmosphere, which causes related effect on other parts of the planet. The reduction in the land crops annual yield is derived from those alterations. The objective of this paper was to contribute to a better understanding of the scientific knowledge of climate change and its effect concerning agriculture and investigate its evolution through published papers. The items under study were obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) platform from Thomson Reuters. A bibliometric and social network analysis was performed to determine the indicators o…
Pre-service Primary Teachers' Scientific Knowledge and Attitudes towards Science Learning and Their Influence on Understanding of the Nature of Scien…
2016
The present study focused on the knowledge about the nature of science and the question of the extent to which this knowledge could be explained by employing scientific knowledge, as well as attitudes towards science learning. We obtained data from 171 Spanish pre-service primary school teachers on their knowledge about: a) science concepts, b) science process skills, c) the nature of science (that was split into science construction and validation and the role and function of scientific models), and d) their attitudes towards science learning. Quantitative and qualitative analyses provided interesting results: a) there were significant correlations between any pair of scores of conceptual …
User Psychology: Re-assessing the Boundaries of a Discipline
2010
Currently, efforts of psychologists to improve interactive technology have fragmented and the systemization of scientific knowledge stalled. There is no home for integrative psychological research on computer use. In this programmatic paper, we reassess three meta-scientific issues defining this discipline. As the first step, we pro- pose to extend the subject of study from the analysis of human mind in the interaction to the broader view of human as an intentional user of interactive technology. Hence, the discipline is most aptly called user psychology. Secondly, problem-solving epistemology is advocated as an alternative to the notion from natural sciences that progress in science involv…