Extensions to knowledge acquisition and effect of multimodal representation in unsupervised learning

The phenomenal behaviour and composition of human cognition is yet to be defined comprehensibly. Developing the same, artificially, is a foremost research area in artificial intelligence and related fields. In this chapter we look at advances made in the unsupervised learning paradigm (self organising methods) and its potential in realising artificial cognitive machines. The first section delineates intricacies of the process of learning in humans with an articulate discussion of the function of thought and the function of memory. The self organising method and the biological rationalisations that led to its development are explored in the second section. The next focus is the effect of structure restrictions on unsupervised learning and the enhancements resulting from a structure adapting learning algorithm. Generation of a hierarchy of knowledge using this algorithm will also be discussed. Section four looks at new means of knowledge acquisition through this adaptive unsupervised learning algorithm while the fifth examines the contribution of multimodal representation of inputs to unsupervised learning. The chapter concludes with a summary of the extensions outlined.

Connecting with carnival : developing critical business education through reflective writing

In response to recent criticisms, and following a sustained effort by Critical Management Scholars, business education, especially the MBA, is increasingly taking seriously the idea that it needs to enable students to develop the capacities of critical and reflective thought. One method in particular is suggested as meeting this end; reflective writing. The aim of this current paper is to consider if this method lives up to the promise of developing critical and reflective coporate citizens. Using a body of critical theory on reflective practice, I argue that reflective writing as done by students tends to be a Truth posing exercise. This is insufficient to the end that critical scholars envision. My aim with this paper is to introduce a new form of reflective writing. Drawing on the based on Bakhtin's (1984) notion of carnival, I argue for a dialogical text in which different voices and perspectives jostle and claim that this is productive of texts that grant autonomy to the reader to make meaning. This form of writing is more conductive to the constitution of ethical and critical thinking than are the current truth books (Masschelein, 2006) that dominant reflective writing. I illustrate this through my experiences introducing reflective writing in an undergraduate accounting unit and to an MBA. I argue that the latter is more dialogical and carnivalistic as the reflective writing is a joint effort.

Ethics and reflective practice : continuing the conversation

This paper is a response to the question asked by Tony Ghaye in Reflective Practice Volume 8, Number 2, 2007, ‘Is reflective practice ethical?’. My response is to re‐consider the pervasive idea in reflective practice that experience is always private and personal. This common understanding of experience leads to a reluctance when writing for the purpose of assessment and to a type of writing that tends towards the confessional. Contrary to that notion of experience, I suggest that a return to Charles Sanders Peirce enables the acknowledgement that experience is not personally owned but rather a conversation between the self and that which is not‐yet known. This conversation is precipitated by the element of surprise, thus making the study of surprise a central feature of reflective practice. This argument is illustrated through examining a dramatic moment in Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical novel Thus spake Zarathustra (1887) in which Zarathustra’s teaching techniques are challenged and rendered different. Eschewing the belief that experience is ‘personal’ offers a version of reflective practice as the attempt to continually engage in conversations precipitated by the Other

Midwifery work and the making of narrative

This paper draws on a study of birth support conducted across three Melbourne maternity units. Midwife informants were asked to participate in semistructured interviews with two researchers and describe the activity and role of lay birth support people. In the course of the study, the activity of the midwives themselves became a research focus. The study found that one of the key tasks midwives described was assisting birthing women to develop and negotiate satisfactory birth narratives that could encompass the intense and sometimes difficult experience of birth. Midwife informants offered strategies for the development of such narratives as part of their professional and personal labour in the birth room.

Australian pre-service secondary teacher education courses : challenges and Dilemmas

Fostering resilience later in life: a narrative approach involving people facing disabling circumstances, carers and members of minority groups

Over the last two decades, the concept of resilience has become the focus of a growing body of gerontological research. However, there is a dearth of qualitative research that explores how socio-economic and socio-cultural factors shape older people's resilience. This study addresses this gap and explores the concept of resilience through the lens of 25 Australians from a variety of backgrounds, investigating the resilience strategies they employed in the face of different challenging life events. A qualitative narrative methodology involving one focus group and semi-structured interviews was employed. A stratified convenience sample of 34 people aged 60 and over participated in semi-structured interviews between 2009 and 2011. The study describes the meaning participants assigned to the term resilience, and focuses on the range of resilience responses and strategies they employed, bringing to light some key commonalities and differences. The study's findings suggest that access to economic and cultural resources and the nature of the adversity older people face can shape and limit their resilience strategies. The article outlines how the concept of resilience could be incorporated into aged care practice and argues that resilience-focused interventions that potentially broaden the resilience repertoire of older people should be explored within an aged care context.

Rethinking Chinese power : a conceptual corrective to the 'power shift' narrative

A growing body of literature has focused on an alleged “power shift” from the United States to China (and from the West to the East more generally). For all its complexities and nuances, much of this power-shift literature continues to unreflectively hold onto a conventional way of conceptualizing power as a type of quantitatively measurable and zero-sum property possessed by the state.  Without critically engaging with the conceptual question of what power means, however, the power-shift debate is both inadequate and misleading. Drawing on some alternative ways of conceptualizing power, I aim to illustrate the contingent and socially constructed nature of “Chinese” economic power and, in doing so, problematize the widely held view of a US-China power shift. I contend that insofar as power is socially constructed, how it is conceptualized matters for international relations. The need to rethink power is at the core of building a new type of major power relationship.

Generating repudiable, memorizable and privacy preserving security questions using the Propp Theory of Narrative

 Security questions are often based on personal information that is limited in variety, available in the public record and very difficult to change if compromised. A personalized folktale shared only by the communicating parties provides memorizable basis for individualized security questions that can be readily replaced in the event of a security breach. We utilize the Propp theory of narrative to provide a basis of abstraction for story generation systems. We develop a proof-of-concept system based on placeholder replacement to demonstrate the generation of repudiate and memorizable questions and answers suitable for online security questions. A 3-component protocol is presented that demonstrates the use of this process to derive a shared secret key through privacy amplification. This combination of story generation and communication security provides the basis for improvements in current security question practice.

Love and leadership: constructing follower narrative identities of charismatic leadership

Most extant research on charismatic leadership has an essentialist orientation that characterises it as leader behaviour, leader communication or follower dependency. Our approach is more discursively oriented. To research charismatic leadership, we used aesthetic narrative positivism, which undertook utilitarian as well as critical method. We examined followers' implicit narratives of their lived experiences of charismatic leadership in organisational settings. We examined metaphors for this experience. Most respondents identified with positive affect, a form of love story; a minority experienced negative affect, especially anger; and some experienced both positive and negative emotions. We posit that if one adopts a certain identity within the context of a dramatic narrative, one might be attributed with charismatic qualities by followers. In this way, we suggest that charismatic leadership might be less a gift from God and more a 'gift from followers'. © The Author(s) 2013.

Viewing the leadership narrative through alternate lenses: an autoethnographic investigation

This conceptual-theoretical article revisits the work of Parry and Hansen on the nature of the organizational story as leadership. The present article is written in the autoethnographic style. The original narrative work is re-examined through the lenses of autoethnography, narrative theory, metaphor/discourse, critical realism and conventional quantitative research. The insights provided by this methodological triangulation are examined. The conclusion is that organizational stories will reflect leadership if they are plausible to the intended audience, give all organizational members an empowered part in the story, have a moral to the story, and have a happy ending. The overarching theme that is proposed is of leadership as the generation of individual hope for a better existence.