Social system

About: Social system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2974 publications have been published within this topic receiving 92395 citations.

The Ecology of the Gym: Reconceptualized and Extended

Abstract: The ecological paradigm has become a powerful framework for understanding how teachers and students negotiate the learning environment. This article articulates the ecological paradigm into a more cohesive framework and expands it using influential work from the sociology of physical education. First, we explain several core concepts of ecological theory and explain how they fit together. Next, we overview past ecological work in each of the three main task systems, while integrating literature from outside traditional ecological theory to show how it better enhances the paradigm's usefulness. We show how culturally relevant content, student ownership/control, and cooperation/competition provide richness in further explaining the instructional task system. Similarly, we broaden the student social system into a social task system with three dimensions: relationships between teachers and students, relationships among students, and the social climate of the school.

Social networks in changing environments

Abstract: Social network analysis (SNA) has become a widespread tool for the study of animal social organisation However despite this broad applicability, SNA is currently limited by both an overly strong focus on pattern analysis as well as a lack of dynamic interaction models Here, we use a dynamic modelling approach that can capture the responses of social networks to changing environments Using the guppy, Poecilia reticulata, we identified the general properties of the social dynamics underlying fish social networks and found that they are highly robust to differences in population density and habitat changes Movement simulations showed that this robustness could buffer changes in transmission processes over a surprisingly large density range These simulation results suggest that the ability of social systems to self-stabilise could have important implications for the spread of infectious diseases and information In contrast to habitat manipulations, social manipulations (eg change of sex ratios) produced strong, but short-lived, changes in network dynamics Lastly, we discuss how the evolution of the observed social dynamics might be linked to predator attack strategies We argue that guppy social networks are an emergent property of social dynamics resulting from predator–prey co-evolution Our study highlights the need to develop dynamic models of social networks in connection with an evolutionary framework

Reform Policies and Change Processes in Europe

Abstract: Policy-makers and administrators responsible for evaluating pressing problems in need of solutions tend to emphasize an actor’s perspective. Scholars entertaining an actor’s perspective often claim that policies are the product of the actions of major actors, like policy-makers and affected groups, where policies are understood interms of the preferences of the actors involved in the decision process (Ostrom, 1990; Scharpf, 1997; Tsebelis, 1999). According to these interpretations, the degree and pace of change depend on the aims of the actors and may be explained either by changing values and aims among actors or by changes in the constellation of actors involved. However, other scholars have depicted reform processes as complex, hard to delimit and difficult to interpret in terms of specific actors, choices, outcomes and consequences (Bleiklie, 2004; Bleiklie, Hostaker and Vabo, 2000; Kogan et al., 2006). Such observations have often been taken to support an institutionalist perspective, according to which policy change tends to be pathdependent and slow. Change becomes abrupt only if circumstances create a situation in which existing policies are considered inadequate to sustain institutionalized values, norms and practices in a given policy field (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; March and Olsen, 1989; Maassen and Olsen, 2007). A third perspective is based on the observation that structural change tends to be based on evolving needs generated by developing pressures on social systems. According to this functional perspective, change depends on external pressures and how social systems respond to them in order to remain stable (Ben-David, 1971; Parsons and Platt, 1973). The specific organizational forms of concrete universities depend on how society’s need for cultural functions is expressed.

13 Moral Development

Abstract: This chapter addresses theory and research on the development of morality from early childhood through adolescence. A structural-developmental-relational approach is presented proposing that children construct configurations of thinking about welfare, justice, and rights connected with emotions like affection, sympathy, and empathy. Along with the construction of moral judgments, children form systems of judgments in the domain of social convention, involving uniformities within social systems, and the personal domain, involving understandings of legitimate arenas of choice, freedoms, and autonomy. In this social domain approach, moral, conventional, and personal judgments are distinct from each other and constitute separate developmental pathways. The structural-relational domain approach is compared with other approaches to moral development and associated general psychological assumptions. A critique is offered of past and contemporary views that assume that people's decisions are most frequently nonrational or even irrational and that morality is not based on substantive concepts like welfare and justice. The critique of those approaches is followed by discussion of the relation of morality and culture, taking into account societal contexts and cultural practices in explaining development. Research is presented indicating that cultures need to be characterized as heterogeneous, and that individuals both partake in culture practices and engage in opposition to and resistance of practices entailing inequalities and domination of one group (such as males) over another (such as females). It is proposed that morality is not relative to cultural contexts, but that commonalities across cultures do not reflect absolutism in moral decision making. After considering the research on social domains, processes of decision making are discussed. Social decision making involves coordination, or weighing and balancing of different moral and social goals, or of different and competing moral goals. Processes of coordination are also central to explanations of age-related continuities and discontinuities in moral development. The body of research on distinct social domains, the development of moral judgments, and orientations to cultural practices supports a structural-constructivist and relational theory of moral development. Keywords: coordination; cultural practices; emotions; justice; morality; moral relativism and universality; moral resistance; reasoning; rights; social conventions; social domains; social hierarchy; social inequalities; social opposition; structural-relational systems; welfare