De la reflexión a la acción. Relato de la experiencia RoadsMOOC, como viaje educomunicativo de transformación personal y social

Con la intención de experimentar con nuevas formas de aprendizaje a través de la Educomunicación y de los MOOCs sociales o sMOOC, creamos una experiencia de aprendizaje colaborativo y de empoderamiento individual y social, a través de nuestra propuesta “Road sMOOC: Un viaje Eduktransformador”, llevado a cabo en la Plataforma ECOLearning. La finalidad de este sMOOC ha sido emprender un viaje de descubrimiento personal y de alfabetización digital crítica, motivando a los participantes a que dejen aflorar su potencial transformador y que participen activamente en las redes sociales, generando así un aprendizaje colectivo y aumentando el impacto social de nuestras acciones. Se reflexiona sobre los autores que nos inspiraron, sobre lo que entendemos por Educomunicación transformadora y las posibilidades que ofrecen los sMOOC. Finalmente resumimos los objetivos, recursos creados, aprendizajes compartidos y conclusiones que surgen al co-crear una identidad colectiva y un espíritu de trabajo en comunidad como “Eduktransformers”.

‘EXISTENCE AS RESISTANCE’: UNDERSTANDINGS OF IDENTITY, PLACE & BELONGING FOR YOUNG PALESTINIANS

In this thesis, I offer an exploration of what it means to be Palestinian, and constructions of identity, belonging and community, through drawing on the experiences of younger generations of Palestinians who have not lived in Palestine. This project seeks to investigate how understanding of our own individual, familial and community’s history plays in shaping our own understandings of identity, place, belonging and indigeneity, as a younger generation of Palestinians now living and studying in the diaspora. In particular, this project examined how the process of remembering and sharing memories in community act as a form of resistance to 68 years of settler colonial violence and erasure of Palestinian land and peoples, asking what our responsibilities this therefore entails from each and every one of us.

Redrawing Identity Boundaries through Integration Policies: Strategies of Inclusion/Exclusion of Immigrants in Québec and South Tyrol. EDAP Paper 01/2013

Following the research agenda introduced by Will Kymlicka, this qualitative study offers an interpretation of how the sub-national elites of Québec and South Tyrol police the integration of immigrants. For these national minority groups, which are constantly undergoing a process of redefinition of their collective identities by differentiating themselves from the Others who do not belong to the in-group, immigrants have progressively become the most significant Others as they are not part of the original system of compromises. This article questions how sub-national elites are handling this relatively new kind of ethnocultural diversity brought about by large-scale permanent immigration on two levels: first, the political narrative of the ruling sub-national parties, their electoral appeals, manifestos and speeches; second, the policy arrangements for the integration of immigrants in education, language and social policy. The initial approach of the article is pessimistic, as it assumes that sub-national elites will marginalize immigrants to please core nationalist supporters. In fact, the hypotheses to be tested are whether the national minority groups of Québec and South Tyrol engage in a process of reconstruction of their ethnic identity bounded by opposition to real or imagined Others – the newcomers; and whether they adopt practical measures that force newcomers to be assimilated into the group or to be marginalized. The comparison between Québec and South Tyrol provides a basic understanding of the impact of immigration in two sub-national polities that are very different, but still adopt similar political narratives and policy strategies with regard to the integration of newcomers.

The 2009 European Parliament Elections: A Disaster for Social Democrats. The European Parliament Elections of 2009 and the Fate of Euroscepticism.

None.

The Catholic Identity of Malta after Ten Years of Membership in the European Union: Challenges and Prospects. Occasional Paper 2/2014

Introduction. Ten years have elapsed since Malta’s accession in the European Union. One can still recall vividly the intense and acrimonious campaign prior to the membership referendum and the ensuing electoral victory that confirmed the Nationalist Party (PN) in power under the leadership of Edward Fenech Adami in 2003. In both cases the Maltese voted in favour of entry into the EU. During both exercises in democracy the Maltese were exposed to the rhetoric of both prophets of doom and prophets of plenty. For the former accession meant a loss of national and territorial independence, for the latter it meant the beginning of opportunity for all and, in some cases, the answer to all of Malta’s woes. Now, ten years later, a further appraisal of Malta’s membership and place in the European Union is called for. The purpose of this paper, however, is to reflect upon how this membership has affected the Roman Catholic Church in Malta and what prospects lie ahead for the Catholic community within Maltese society that remains in a state of constant flux on both the social and the religious level. It traces the major events that have accelerated the transformation of Malta into a secular society. The paper describes how these events, together with pressures that are being brought to bear by secular movements upon Maltese society, are profoundly affecting its Catholic identity and redrawing its moral landscape. It also discusses ways and means by which the Catholic Church in Malta can address these challenges and contribute towards the construction of a more humane Maltese society. In order to achieve this, it must first and foremost remain a coherent witness of a faith that is forever alive, dynamic and relevant.

Integrating Europeans: The Political Economy and Social Aspects of Europeanization. ACES Working Papers (Curriculum Development), 2012

This course, then, investigates the effects of integration on European citizens as well as the duality of the EU as a competitive and social model. It is sensitive to the involvement of social groups, protest, and domestic politics in the study of market integration. Some of the questions we explore are: What are the effects of regulatory policy-making on social actors, how do such actors’ strategies and behaviors change as a consequence, and how to they overcome their collective action problems? Why is it that the logic of integration has at times followed a logic of “permissive consensus” while at other times it has been described as a “constraining dissensus”? What is the importance of discourse in domestic politics in order to articulate and legitimate Europeanization? How do European identities change as a consequence of policymaking as well as of protest? To what extent do ordinary Europeans matter in terms of accepting and opposing the project of European integration, how do European citizens in core and peripheral EU states experience Europeanization, and how is their involvement in the integration project to be conceptualized?

The debates on citizenship in Morocco. Social movements and constitutional reform. EUSpring Working Paper No. 4, 11 August 2015

Introduction. The current debates on citizenship in Morocco are taking place in a political context marked by the events of the Arab Spring. How are political, social, legal, and identity-related dimensions of citizenship formulated in the context of a monarchy that has a long continuity in Moroccan history?

Identity construction through phonetic crossing among young Capetonian gang members

Uncountable gangs operate in post-Apartheid South Africa, particularly in greater Cape Town, competing over turf and controlling the drug trade. Consequently, gang violence is rife in Western Cape and especially widespread in urban areas. In this paper young Capetonians’ narratives of gang violence are analyzed. In the narratives of attacks on Black or White South Africans by Coloured gang members, the Coloured narrators make use of their victims’ varieties of English, more precisely, of phonetic features. Hence, the aggressors do language crossing towards their targets when narrating their feats. Rampton (1995a:485) considers language crossing a ‘code alternation by people who are not accepted members of the group associated with the second language that they are using (code switching into varieties that are not generally thought to belong to them)’. This switching involves a transgression of social or ethnic boundaries that allows the young gangsters to construct, negotiate, uphold and manage their social identities, as language still functions as an utterly important identity marker in post-Apartheid South Africa.

A potential case of attitude change: The Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga and used on social network sites

The Spanish spoken in the city of Malaga, as Andalusian Spanish in general, was in the past often times considered an incorrect, low prestige variety of Spanish which was strongly associated with the poor, rural, backward South of Spain. This southern Spanish variety is easily recognised because of its innovative phonetic features that diverge from the national standard, even though in the past years in the case of some features a convergence to the standard could be observed. Despite its low prestige the local variety of Spanish is quite often used on social network sites, where it is considered as urban, fashion and cool. Thus, this paper aims at analysing whether the Spanish used in the city of Malaga is undergoing an attitude change. The study draws on naturally occurring speech, data extracted from Facebook and a series of questionnaires about the salience, attitude and perception of the local variety of Spanish. The influence of the social factors age and gender is analysed, since they are both known to play a crucial role in many instances of language change. The first is of special interest, as during the Franco dictatorship dialect use was not accepted in schools and in the media. Results show that, on the one hand, people from Malaga hold a more positive attitude towards non-standard features used on social network sites than in spoken language. On the other hand, young female users employ most non-standard features online and unsurprisingly have an extremely positive attitude towards this use. However, in spoken Spanish the use and attitude of some features is led by men and speakers educated during the Franco dictatorship, while other features, such as elision of intervocalic /d/, elision of final /ɾ/, /l/ and /d/ and ceceo, are predominantly employed by and younger speakers and women. These features are considered as salient in the local variety and work as local identity markers.

Revisando el uso de grupos focalizados en la investigación social

Las reflexiones metodológicas sobre grupos focalizados (GF) de este artículo tienen como punto de partida una investigación con sectores medios del Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. El estudio de referencia aborda los discursos y prácticas de cuidado de la salud en el escenario contemporáneo caracterizado por la diversificación de especialistas, la creciente cobertura mediática de recomendaciones sobre la vida sana y el bienestar, la implementación de políticas públicas de promoción de la salud, y el crecimiento de la industria de productos y servicios vinculados con la temática. El objetivo del artículo es reflexionar, a partir de nuestra experiencia de investigación, sobre dos aspectos que han recibido especial atención en la literatura metodológica más reciente: los criterios para componer los grupos y sus consecuencias para la dinámica de las conversaciones grupales, y las estrategias para dar cuenta de la interacción grupal en el análisis de los datos. En este último eje exploramos el potencial de los GF para observar el trabajo identitario vinculado con el cuidado de la salud. Enmarcamos nuestro estudio y las decisiones metodológicas tomadas en los debates actuales sobre la variedad de usos de los GF.

'You Never Truly Feel at Home': Students' Perceptions of their Multilingualism and its Role in their Identity Construction : - A Study Performed in a Suburb Located in a Socially Vulnerable Area

A relevant subject in our globalized world concerns the relationship between language and identity, specifically amongst migrant youngsters’ experience of group belonging. This study therefore focused on how adolescents born to foreign parents in Sweden, perceived their multilingualism as part of their identity formation. I also aimed to include how socio-economic aspects could affect the process of identity construction. Thus, the investigation was performed with seventh grade students at a primary school located in the Stockholm suburb Bredäng. The methods consisted of a questionnaire, which was completed by the entire class and a group interview where six students participated. The results revealed that students adapted their language use based on the context, but Swedish was used most habitually. The informants viewed their multilingualism as beneficial but yet fully aware of the linguistic ideologies functioning in society. By combining their minority and majority language, the students were left with different ethnic identities and had diverse interpretations of what it meant to be Swedish. Even though all of them perceived themselves to have multiple ethnic identities, this was not solely seen positively. The issue of belonging was raised and the students claimed to be outcasts everywhere. However, the results differed depending on whether the students were born in Sweden or not. Also, most of them struggled with the process of assumed and ascribed identities, since they perceived themselves to be Swedish but experienced that society valued them as immigrants. Lastly, the study revealed that there were connections between their multilingualism and social mobility as the relationship towards the motherland was highly prioritized even with low levels of economic capital. 

Políticas académicas y reconocimiento social en universitarios de Educación Física de la UNLP : El diseño de la investigación

Este trabajo se propone socializar e intercambiar con la comunidad académica de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (FaHCE) la construcción del proyecto de tesis de maestría. Dicho proyecto busca comprender la construcción del reconocimiento social de un grupo de universitarios de Educación Física (EF) de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) a partir de su participación en políticas académicas entre 1992 y 2004. La investigación se focaliza en las prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad vinculadas a la legitimación de su campo disciplinar y su carrera en la FaHCE, en un período histórico particularmente intenso en cuanto al diseño y desarrollo de políticas académicas ligadas a la revisión curricular, la formación académica y la producción científica. El trabajo se plantea analizar, desde la perspectiva de los actores, las formas de apropiación y resignificación actual de esas políticas, prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad con relación a la configuración identitaria de la EF como disciplina académica. El enfoque teórico y metodológico de la investigación localiza a los actores objeto de estudio a partir de su participación en una compleja y cambiante trama de relaciones y prácticas sociales diversas (disciplinares, corporativas, profesionales, políticas y personales). Asimismo, se indagan los sentidos que construyeron en cuanto al reconocimiento social logrado en el presente, tanto de su campo disciplinar como carrera en la FaHCE-UNLP

Políticas académicas y reconocimiento social en universitarios de Educación Física de la UNLP : El diseño de la investigación

Este trabajo se propone socializar e intercambiar con la comunidad académica de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (FaHCE) la construcción del proyecto de tesis de maestría. Dicho proyecto busca comprender la construcción del reconocimiento social de un grupo de universitarios de Educación Física (EF) de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) a partir de su participación en políticas académicas entre 1992 y 2004. La investigación se focaliza en las prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad vinculadas a la legitimación de su campo disciplinar y su carrera en la FaHCE, en un período histórico particularmente intenso en cuanto al diseño y desarrollo de políticas académicas ligadas a la revisión curricular, la formación académica y la producción científica. El trabajo se plantea analizar, desde la perspectiva de los actores, las formas de apropiación y resignificación actual de esas políticas, prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad con relación a la configuración identitaria de la EF como disciplina académica. El enfoque teórico y metodológico de la investigación localiza a los actores objeto de estudio a partir de su participación en una compleja y cambiante trama de relaciones y prácticas sociales diversas (disciplinares, corporativas, profesionales, políticas y personales). Asimismo, se indagan los sentidos que construyeron en cuanto al reconocimiento social logrado en el presente, tanto de su campo disciplinar como carrera en la FaHCE-UNLP

Políticas académicas y reconocimiento social en universitarios de Educación Física de la UNLP : El diseño de la investigación

Este trabajo se propone socializar e intercambiar con la comunidad académica de la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación (FaHCE) la construcción del proyecto de tesis de maestría. Dicho proyecto busca comprender la construcción del reconocimiento social de un grupo de universitarios de Educación Física (EF) de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) a partir de su participación en políticas académicas entre 1992 y 2004. La investigación se focaliza en las prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad vinculadas a la legitimación de su campo disciplinar y su carrera en la FaHCE, en un período histórico particularmente intenso en cuanto al diseño y desarrollo de políticas académicas ligadas a la revisión curricular, la formación académica y la producción científica. El trabajo se plantea analizar, desde la perspectiva de los actores, las formas de apropiación y resignificación actual de esas políticas, prácticas, estrategias y formas de sociabilidad con relación a la configuración identitaria de la EF como disciplina académica. El enfoque teórico y metodológico de la investigación localiza a los actores objeto de estudio a partir de su participación en una compleja y cambiante trama de relaciones y prácticas sociales diversas (disciplinares, corporativas, profesionales, políticas y personales). Asimismo, se indagan los sentidos que construyeron en cuanto al reconocimiento social logrado en el presente, tanto de su campo disciplinar como carrera en la FaHCE-UNLP