The power of feedback.

NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness

List of Figures List of Tables Foreword Introduction Robin P. Fawcett, M.A.K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb and Adam Makkai 1 Language as Code and Language as Behaviour: A Systemic-Functional Interpretation of the Nature and Ontogenesis of Dialogue M.A.K. Halliday 2 Metaphors of Information John Regan 3 How Universal is a Localist Hypothesis? A Linguistic Contribution to the Study of 'Semantic Styles' of Language Yoshihiko Ikegami 4 Some Speculations on Language Contact in a Wider Setting Jeffrey Ellis 5 Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning Ruqaiya Hasan Index

Language as social semiotic

Diversity and mobility in education and work present a paramount challenge that needs better conceptualization in educational theory. This challenge has been addressed by educational scholars with the notion of boundaries, particularly by the concepts of boundary crossing and boundary objects. Although studies on boundary crossing and boundary objects emphasize that boundaries carry learning potential, it is not explicated in what way they do so. By reviewing this literature, this article offers an understanding of boundaries as dialogical phenomena. The review of the literature reveals four potential learning mechanisms that can take place at boundaries: identification, coordination, reflection, and transformation. These mechanisms show various ways in which sociocultural differences and resulting discontinuities in action and interaction can come to function as resources for development of intersecting identities and practices.

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Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects

No wonder you activities are, reading will be always needed. It is not only to fulfil the duties that you need to finish in deadline time. Reading will encourage your mind and thoughts. Of course, reading will greatly develop your experiences about everything. Reading invisible colleges diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities is also a way as one of the collective books that gives many advantages. The advantages are not only for you, but for the other peoples with those meaningful benefits.

Invisible colleges : diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities

This review draws on social realist approaches in the sociology of knowledge and in light of them constructs three scenarios for the future of education in the next decades. The primary focus of the review is on one of the most crucial questions facing educational policy makers- the relationship between school and everyday or common sense knowledge. The different possibilities for how the school/nonschool knowledge boundaries might be approached are expressed in three scenarios - 'boundaries as given', 'a boundary-less world’ and the idea of ‘boundary maintenance as a condition for boundary crossing’. The educational implications of each are explored and the review makes the case for the third scenario. The factors likely to make one or other scenario dominate educational policy in the next 20-30 years are also considered.

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Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge

This paper examines what is entailed by taking a socio‐epistemic or ‘knowledge‐based’ approach to considerations of curriculum and qualifications. The paper begins by examining the roots of dicipli...

Forms of knowledge and curriculum coherence

Introduction 1.The First and Last Interpretters 2. Globalization, Innovation and Knowledge 3.What Knowledge is of Most Worth for the Millennial Citizen? 4.Schooling and Everyday Life 5.Intimations of Boundlessness 6.The Well-tempered Learner 7.Critics and Reconstructors 8. Beyond Unkept Promises 9.Reason, Reality and Public Trust

Reclaiming Knowledge: Social Theory, Curriculum and Education Policy

The primary aim of this chapter is to make a positive case for the idea of ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2009; 2013) as a sociological concept and as a curriculum principle. We seek to clarify its conceptual bases and to make its meaning, and the arguments it implies, less ambiguous and less open to misunderstanding. This will enable us to suggest some of the research and policy options that it opens up.

On the powers of powerful knowledge

This paper presents a critique of 'voice discourse' in the sociology of education (and beyond). The discourse of 'voice' is identified with a position that has recurred periodically since the early 1970s, which reduces knowledge to experience in order to de-legitimise rational, epistemologically grounded knowledge forms and truth claims that are represented as expressing no more than the 'standpoints' and 'interests' of 'dominant' social groups. Today, this position is represented in a variety of postmodernist approaches and earlier in phenomenologically inspired approaches associated with the New Sociology of Education. The paper argues that these reductionist, relativistic and perspectival approaches rely upon a simplistic and positivistic caricature of science that appears unaware of significant debates in 'post-empiricist' philosophy of science. Their position is untenable and has been shown to be so for a long time. It is suggested that 'voice' discourse requires to be accounted for sociologically as...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1393108

Johan Muller

Papers

Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge

Forms of knowledge and curriculum coherence

Reclaiming Knowledge: Social Theory, Curriculum and Education Policy

On the powers of powerful knowledge

The Discourse of 'Voice' and the Problem of Knowledge and Identity in the Sociology of Education