Over the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of largescale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we (...) were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not.. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Negotiating Between Learner and Mathematics: A Conceptual Framework to Analyze Teacher Sensitivity Toward Constructivism in a Mathematics Classroom” by Philip Borg, Dave Hewitt & Ian Jones. Upshot: The target article offers a method for teachers to reflect on their constructivist approach in classrooms. This commentary suggests ways to augment the approach for use with groups of teachers.

Equine-Facilitated Psychotherapy is widely used, and the uses to which it can be put are still being developed. However, existing knowledge about this field is insufficient, and most of the research suffers from methodological problems that compromise its rigor. This review will explore research into the linked fields of Animal-Assisted Therapy and Equine-Assisted Activities/Therapies related to physical health. Existing knowledge of mental, emotional, and social applications of EAA/T is presented. Evaluation studies in the subfield suggest that people benefit from interventions (...) with horses. However, these studies suffer from fundamental problems, such as small sample size and lack of control groups. Naturalistic inquiry about theoretical aspects highlights the fundamental role that human-horse relations play in EAA/T, but these studies exhibit deficiencies in theory development. A multimethod approach could promote knowledge development for EFP. Suggestions for future research concern methodological solutions to improve evaluation studies, use of grounded theory method to develop theory, as well as applying attachment theory to the human-horse context, which may offer insight about the underlying processes for change. (shrink)

Research has indicated that dialogic approaches have desirable effects in education, but it is also well-known that it can be a challenge for teachers to make the transition from the traditional teacher role to that of the facilitator. Based on a case study, this article investigates the successes and shortcomings of 29 teachers learning to facilitate classroom dialogue in teacher development programmes. The article analyses the trainees’ written selfevaluations and the supervisors’ feedback to examine the extent and nature of the (...) challenges encountered as well as the teachers’ self-perceptions compared to the perceptions of the trained supervisors. The main findings were that the teachers encountered many challenges, especially when it came to adopting the role of a facilitator and supporting the students’ reasoning and interaction. In addition, their own assessments of their performances were generally unreliable. Nonetheless, with supervised training, the teachers were successful in learning to facilitate philosophical dialogues. (shrink)

As with many other countries, Malaysia is also developing and promoting biomedical research to increase the understanding of human diseases and possible interventions. To facilitate this development, there is a significant growth of biobanks in the country to ensure continuous collection of biological samples for future research, which contain extremely important personal information and health data of the participants involved. Given the vast amount of samples and data accumulated by biobanks, they can be considered as reservoirs of precious biomedical big (...) data. It is therefore imperative for biobanks to have in place regulatory measures to ensure ethical use of the biomedical big data. Malaysia has yet to introduce specific legislation for the field of biobanking. However, it can be argued that its existing Personal Data Protection Act 2010 has laid down legal principles that can be enforced to protect biomedical big data generated by the biobanks. Consent is a mechanism to enable data subjects to exercise their autonomy by determining how their data can be used and ensure compliance with legal principles. However, there are two main concerns surrounding the current practice of consent in biomedical big data in Malaysia. First, it is uncertain that the current practice would be able to respect the underlying notion of autonomy, and second, it is not in accordance with the legal principles of the PDPA. Scholars have deliberated on different strategies of informed consent, and a more interactive approach has recently been introduced: dynamic consent. It is argued that a dynamic consent approach would be able to address these concerns. (shrink)

From its inception, philosophy for/with children (P4wC) has sought to promote philosophical discussion with children based on the latter’s own questions and a pedagogic method designed to encourage critical, creative, and caring thinking. Communities of inquiry can be plagued by power struggles prompted by diverse identities, however. These not always being highlighted in the literature or P4wC discourse, this article proposes a two-stage model for facilitators as part of their ethical responsibility. In the first phase, they should free themselves from (...) assumptions and closed-mindedness. They should liberate themselves from pedagogy of fear and “banking education” in order to act freely in an educational space characterized by improvisation that cultivates participation of the children. Here, the text is based on normalizing education principles, counter-education and diasporic-education approaches in order to ensure openness and inclusiveness. In the second, they should embrace enabling-identity views and practices in order to make the community of inquiry as identity-broad and -rich as possible, recognizing and legitimizing the participants’ differences. Here, the text is based on principles such as recognizing power games as part of the community, ensuring multi-narratives human environment and enabling epistemic justice in order to ensure perspectival multiplicity, multiple identities, and the legitimization of difference characterized by pedagogy of search. (shrink)

In France a difference has been established between cultural popularization and cultural democracy. The former is aimed at spreading works of art in as large a way as possible; the latter emphasizes the participation of the public. From there, we argue that moving from cultural popularization towards cultural democracy can lead to a shift in responsibilities from professionals towards the general public. With reference to the theoretical background of reception, appropriation and participation, we lead a participant observation on three different (...) fields in order to understand what facilitates and what constrains this shift. This leads us to stress the importance of developing an adequate organizational framework. (shrink)

Memory and Cognition, Vol.36, No.1, pp.157-169. 2008.

Two questions dominate theoretical research on vagueness. The first is of a logical-semantic nature: What formal models offer the best understanding of vagueness? Many answers to this question have been proposed (e.g. [1], [2] for an overview), but none of these has found general acceptance so far. The second question is of a pragmatic nature and asks Why is language vague? This question has been asked forcefully by the economist Barton Lipman, who has shown that some seemingly plausible answers resist (...) analysis in terms of classical Game Theory [3], [4]. While a number of tentative answers to this question have been suggested (for a survey, see [6], [7]), Lipman’s question is still partly unresolved, particularly with respect to situations where there is no conflict between the speaker and the hearer (cf. [8]). (shrink)

Medical ethics committees are increasingly called on to assist doctors, patients, and families in resolving difficult ethics issues. Although committees are becoming more sophisticated in the substance of medical ethics, little attention has been given to the processes these committees use to facilitate decision-making. In 1990, the National Institute for Dispute Resolution in Washington, D.C., provided a planning grant from its Innovation Fund to the Institute of Public Law of the University of New Mexico School of Law to look at (...) what ethics committees can learn from facilitation and mediation techniques. The study's thesis was that, if adapted for use by medical ethics committees, facilitation and mediation techniques can be helpful to those bodies in case review consultations and in other internal committee processes. This article reports on that project. (shrink)

Academic integrity is a vital pedagogical responsibility that educational institutions should explicitly address. One of the best ways to uphold academic integrity is to create a culture of academic integrity throughout the school. This is especially imperative at high schools where students develop their moral identity because students who act dishonestly at high school will likely behave accordingly in post-secondary education and ultimately be dishonest in familial and professional settings. Creating a culture of academic integrity is a challenging, long and (...) multifaceted journey. In this respect, this exploratory case study set out to create a culture of academic integrity at a high school in Türkiye and explore what facilitates and impedes the process. We followed Stephens’ (2016) Multilevel Intervention Model and implemented a School-Wide Education program to guide us through the process. We conducted various activities throughout one academic year, from seminars to competitions. At the end of the term, we conducted individual and focus group interviews with the members of the school community and analyzed the interview data to identify facilitators and barriers of the process. The analysis yielded five facilitators (1) creating buy-in, (2) administrative embracement and support, (3) activities that promote student involvement, (4) external expert and school collaboration as praxis, and (5) policy as the blueprint and five barriers (1) deficiencies in responding academic misconduct, (2) prioritization of academic success over academic integrity, (3) teacher resistance against change, (4) exam-based assessment design, and (5) timing of the activities. Each theme was discussed in detail, and recommendations were made for high schools which set out on a journey of creating academic integrity culture. (shrink)

Background: Values are the basis of nursing practice, especially in making decisions about complicated ethical issues. Despite their key role in nursing, little information exists on the factors affecting their development and manifestation in nursing students. Objective: This study identifies and describes the facilitators and inhibitors of the development and manifestation of professional values based on the experiences of nursing students and instructors and nurses. Research design: Data were collected through 29 semi-structured interviews and two focus group interviews in 2013–2015 (...) and were analyzed using the conventional content analysis method of Elo and Kyngäs. Participants and research context: In total, 18 nursing undergraduates, five nursing instructors, and five nurses from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and one of the teaching hospitals in Shiraz were selected through purposive sampling. Ethical considerations: The research was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences and the teaching hospital examined. Findings: The findings consisted of two categories: personal and environmental factors. Personal factors consisted of the two subcategories of personal stimuli (work experience and past relationships, inner beliefs and acting on values, belief in God and a divine worldview) and personal inhibitors (the lack of professional motivation and enthusiasm, negative emotions). Environmental factors consisted of the two subcategories of environmental stimuli (cooperation, order and discipline) and environmental inhibitors (unfavorable work environment, society’s negative attitude toward nursing, the violation of rights). Discussion and conclusion: Given the impact of personal and environmental factors on the development and manifestation of professional values in nursing students, it is upon the education authorities to take account of them in their planning, and nursing managers are also recommended to further address these factors in their development of a proper work environment, provision of standard facilities and removal of barriers. (shrink)

(2013). Evolutionary modules and Bayesian facilitation: The role of general cognitive resources. Thinking & Reasoning: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 27-53. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2012.713177.

Background Conventional consent practices face ethical challenges in continuously evolving digital health environments due to their static, one-time nature. Dynamic consent offers a promising solution, providing adaptability and flexibility to address these ethical concerns. However, due to the immaturity of the concept and accompanying technology, dynamic consent has not yet been widely used in practice. This study aims to identify the facilitators of and barriers to adopting dynamic consent in real-world scenarios. Methods This scoping review, conducted in December 2022, adhered (...) to the PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines, focusing on dynamic consent within the health domain. A comprehensive search across Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus yielded 22 selected articles based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results The facilitators for the adoption of dynamic consent in digital health ecosystems were the provision of multiple consent modalities, personalized alternatives, continuous communication, and the dissemination of up-to-date information. Nevertheless, several barriers, such as consent fatigue, the digital divide, complexities in system implementation, and privacy and security concerns, needed to be addressed. This study also investigated current technological advancements and suggested considerations for further research aimed at resolving the remaining challenges surrounding dynamic consent. Conclusions Dynamic consent emerges as an ethically advantageous method for digital health ecosystems, driven by its adaptability and support for continuous, two-way communication between data subjects and consumers. Ethical implementation in real-world settings requires the development of a robust technical framework capable of accommodating the diverse needs of stakeholders, thereby ensuring ethical integrity and data privacy in the evolving digital health landscape. (shrink)

In “Consensus, Clinical Decision Making, and Unsettled Cases,” David M. Adams and William J. Winslade make multiple references to both editions of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Core Competencies for Healthcare Ethics Consultation in their discussion of two assumptions that are supposed to be at the heart of the facilitated consensus model’s inability to handle unsettled cases; that is, that:1. Consultants “should maintain a kind of moral impartiality or neutrality throughout the process,” “explicitly condemn[ing] anything resembling a (...) substantive ‘ethics’ recommendation,” and2. “What counts as the proper set of allowable options among which the parties are to deliberate will itself always be clearly discernible.”Herein, I argue that neither of these assumptions is required by ASBH’s ethics facilitation approach. I then conclude by suggesting that, despite their fundamentally mistaken interpretation of the ASBH approach—perhaps even because of it—Adams and Winslade have made two important contributions to the ethics consultation literature. (shrink)

Several studies have indicated that scientists are likely to have an outlook on both facts and values that are different to that of lay people in important ways. This is one significant reason it is currently believed that in order for scientists to exercise a reliable ethical reflection about their research it is necessary for them to engage in dialogue with other stakeholders. This paper reports on an exercise to encourage a group of scientists to reflect on ethical issues without (...) the presence of external stakeholders. It reports on the use of a reflection process with scientists working in the area of animal disease genomics (mainly drawn from the EADGENE EC Network of Excellence). This reflection process was facilitated by using an ethical engagement framework, a modified version of the Ethical Matrix. As judged by two criteria, a qualitative assessment of the outcomes and the participants’ own assessment of the process, this independent reflective exercise was deemed to be successful. The discussions demonstrated a high level of complexity and depth, with participants demonstrating a clear perception of uncertainties and the context in which their research operates. Reflection on stakeholder views and values appeared to be embedded within the discussions. The finding from this exercise seems to indicate that even without the involvement of the wider stakeholder community, valuable reflection and worthwhile discourse can be generated from ethical reflection processes involving only scienitific project partners. Hence, the previous assumption that direct stakeholder engagement is necessary for ethical reflection does not appear to hold true in all cases; however, other reasons for involving a broad group of stakeholders relating to governance and social accountability of science remain. (shrink)

The mammalian placenta exhibits elevated expression of endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), but the evolutionary significance of this feature remains unclear. I propose that ERV‐mediated regulatory evolution was, and continues to be, an important mechanism underlying the evolution of placental development. Many recent studies have focused on the co‐option of ERV‐derived genes for specific functional adaptations in the placenta. However, the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements could potentially lead to the incorporation of entire gene regulatory networks, which, I argue, would facilitate relatively (...) rapid developmental evolution of the placenta. I suggest a model in which an ancient retroviral infection led to the establishment of the ancestral placental developmental gene network through the co‐option of ERV‐derived regulatory elements. Consequently, placental development would require elevated tolerance to ERV activity. This in turn would expose a continuous stream of novel ERV mutations that may have catalyzed the developmental diversification of the mammalian placenta. (shrink)

Emancipatory practice development (ePD) is a practitioner‐led research methodology which enables workplace transformation. Underpinned by the critical paradigm, ePD works through facilitation and workplace learning, with people in their local context on practice issues that are significant to them. Its purpose is to embed safe, person‐centred learning cultures which transform individuals and workplaces. In this article, we critically reflect on a year‐long ePD study in an acute care hospital ward. We explore the challenges of practice change within systems, building (...) collective strength with frontline collaborations and leadership to sustain new learning cultures. Our work advances practice development dialogue through working closely with the underpinning theories. Our critique analyses how ePD can enact and sustain change within a complex system. We argue that ePD works to strengthen safety cultures by challenging antidemocratic practices through communicative action. By opening communicative spaces, ePD enables staff to collectively deliberate and reach consensus. Their raised awareness supports staff to resist ways of working which conspire against safe patient care. Sustainability of practice change is fostered by the co‐operative democracies created within the frontline team and meso level enablement. We conclude that the democratising potential of ePDt generates staff agency at the frontline. (shrink)

Despite the numerous benefits associated with forgiveness, many individuals find it difficult to forgive. This is especially true in organizations, where forgiveness is rare and can be under-valued. Across two studies, we explore how to facilitate forgiveness within organizational contexts and in the aftermath of workplace unfairness. We examine whether individuals can reduce the “injustice gap” that can be created by violations and enhance forgiveness through expressive writing interventions—guided writing techniques that can be self-administered. Participants wrote about their reactions to (...) a fictional scenario or an actual workplace experience. Results indicate that expressive writing was associated with higher reported perceived resolution. Whereas negative emotions mediated this relationship in Study 1, positive emotions and perceived injustice mediated this relationship in Study 2. Perceived resolution also mediated the relationship between expressive writing and forgiveness. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

To build a culture of integrity in a HE institution, innovative approaches are needed to enhance education of research ethics and integrity. In addition to educating students, understanding is needed on how to facilitate for those who lead others. The focus is on early-career researchers as future REI leaders. The current study sheds light on how learning and REI leadership competencies evolve during scaffolded collaborative research ethics training for this target group. The study combines new instruments as part of holistic (...) DBR. Data was collected from 3 groups of experienced researchers attending 3 training sessions in the form of written group reports and group discussion recordings. Qualitative deductive analysis was utilised for monitoring the learning process, scaffolding patterns, and display of REI leadership principles. Also, quantitative analysis was applied to group discussion data, displaying the nature of collaboration. Results imply that collaborative case-based role play format is effective in training future REI leaders. All groups displayed high levels of understanding. Combining ECRs and researchers with leadership experience supported knowledge building in the groups by bringing in various perspectives. Even though groups required different amounts of scaffolding, the nature was similar: maintaining goal orientation, highlighting critical features and redirecting learners. Learning analytics of collaboration indicated that the person with leadership experience was not necessarily the most active participant nor took the role of a ‘group leader’. Still, it was mostly that person who displayed leadership competencies thus supporting other group members to develop leadership aspects. (shrink)

Positive spillover occurs when changes in one behaviour influence changes in subsequent behaviours. Evidence for such spillover and an understanding of when and how it may occur is still limited. This paper presents findings of a one year longitudinal behaviour change project led by a commercial retailer in the UK & Ireland to examine behaviour change and potential spillover of pro-environmental behaviour, and how this may be associated with changes in environmental identity and perceptions of ease and affordability as well (...) as perceptions of how participation in the project has helped support behaviour change. We draw on both quantitative and qualitative. Study 1 examines quantitative data from the experimental and a matched control group. Study 2 reports qualitative findings from a follow up interview study with participants of the experimental group. As expected, we found significant changes in reported pro-environmental behaviour and identity in the experimental group as well as some indications of behavioural spillover. These changes were not significantly associated with changes in environmental identity. The interviews suggested that group dynamics played an important role in facilitating a sense of efficacy and promote sustained behaviour change and spillover. Moreover, the support by a trusted entity was deemed to be of crucial importance. (shrink)

This paper introduced the letter insertion and letter deletion tasks. In these tasks participants are presented with letter strings and are instructed to insert or delete a letter to create a word. Experiment 1 demonstrated facilitation priming and established these tasks as sensitive indirect measures of memory. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated interference priming effects. In Experiment 4 the process dissociation paradigm was applied to investigate the contributions of automatic and consciously controlled processes to performance on the letter insertion (...) task. In addition, performance in the exclusion condition demonstrated an interference effect caused by automatic retrieval. Potential applications for the letter insertion and letter deletion tasks are discussed. (shrink)

There is currently an important debate about whether philosophical intuitions are intended as evidence for the theories philosophers promote. On one side are those who argue that philosophers do rely on intuitions as evidence; on the other side are those who deny any such role for philosophical intuitions. This paper argues that both sides of this debate are partially right and partially wrong. Intuitive judgments do not, as psychological states, function as evidence in most well-known philosophical thought experiments. Philosophers nevertheless (...) strongly depend upon these intuitive judgments. Where both sides go awry is in assuming that the importance of intuitive judgments rests solely upon their role as evidence. We need to distinguish between evidence, as such, from various nonevidential psychological states that are needed for something else to serve as evidence. The paper calls these latter conditions “evidence facilitators” and argues that intuitive judgments belong in this category. (shrink)

The social facilitation of eating plays a significant role in influencing individuals’ eating decisions. However, how social eating cues are processed in health promotion messages is unclear. This study examined individuals’ food craving in response to social cues in images and emotional experiences, perceived threat, perceived efficacy, behavioral intentions, and motivational coactivation elicited by social eating cues in obesity prevention fear appeals. Results suggested that the presence of a group of people eating in an image facilitated food craving for (...) the presented foods. Moreover, fear appeals that presented obesity and its consequences with more social eating cues, versus individual eating cues, generated greater positive emotional responses, perceived threat severity, response and self-efficacy, and motivational coactivation indicating more attention and threat vigilance. However, these cues also generated fewer self-reported intentions to change unhealthy eating behaviors. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. (shrink)

There is evidence that problem-based learning (PBL) is an effective approach to teach team and problem-solving skills, but also to acquire content knowledge. However, there is hardly any literature about using PBL in philosophy classes. One problem is that PBL is resource intensive because a facilitator is needed for each group of students to support learning efforts and monitor group dynamics. In order to establish more PBL classes, the question is whether PBL can be provided without the need for facilitators. (...) We present a combination of five strategies—among them the collaborative argument visualization software AGORA-net—to replace facilitators. Additionally, we present evidence that these strategies are sufficient to provide a PBL experience that achieves intended learning goals in an ethics class and is satisfying for students without facilitators. (shrink)

The thresholds of human observers detecting line targets improve significantly when the targets are presented in a spatial context of collinear inducing stimuli. This phenomenon is referred to as spatial facilitation, and may reflect the output of long-range interactions between cortical feature detectors. Spatial facilitation has thus far been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds. This study compares spatial facilitation with line targets and collinear, edge-like inducers defined by luminance contrast to spatial facilitation with (...) targets and inducers defined by color contrast. The results of a first experiment show that achromatic inducers facilitate the detection of achromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of chromatic targets. Chromatic inducers facilitate the detection of chromatic targets on gray and colored backgrounds, but tend to suppress the detection of achromatic targets. Chromatic spatial facilitation appears to be strongest when inducers and background are isoluminant. The results of a second experiment show that spatial facilitation with chromatic targets and inducers requires a longer exposure duration of the inducers than spatial facilitation with achromatic targets and inducers, which is already fully effective at an inducer exposure of 30 ms only. The findings point towards two separate mechanisms for spatial facilitation with collinear form stimuli: one that operates in the domain of luminance, and one that operates in the domain of color contrast. These results are consistent with neural models of boundary and surface formation which suggest that achromatic and chromatic visual cues are represented on different cortical surface representations that are capable of selectively attracting attention. Multiple copies of these achromatic and chromatic surface representations exist corresponding to different ranges of perceived depth from an observer, and each can attract attention to itself. Color and contrast differences between inducing and test stimuli, and transient responses to inducing stimuli, can cause attention to shift across these surface representations in ways that sometimes enhance and sometimes interfere with target detection. (shrink)

The increasing need for innovative research driven by rapid global changes gives doctoral supervisors of early-stage researchers a significant role in facilitating the ethical conduct of qualitative research. In the context of European Commission funding, the demands of research ethics and integrity place a tremendous responsibility on the supervisors of early-stage researchers involved in cross-national projects. This document study seeks to illuminate the role of the supervisors in facilitating research ethics in these projects. Specifically, we describe and discuss the supervisor (...) role associated with five approaches to doctoral supervision of qualitative research, namely those described as ‘Functional’, ‘Enculturation’, ‘Critical thinking’, ‘Emancipation’ and ‘Developing a quality relationship’. The main challenges for supervisors of cross-national research projects are the cultural and linguistic mobilisation of ethical principles in qualitative research processes and the management of the future use of open data. The results from this study have implications for planning and conducting cross-national studies within research involving human participants. These results can guide supervisors in the codification and mobilisation of ethical qualitative research in practice. (shrink)

The participation of families in schools where their children study is a recurring research topic. This field tends to address the perception of parents or teaching staff. This work is novel in that it considers what teachers, and not families, do to facilitate this participation. The purpose of this work has been to contrast a theoretical model with a multidimensional questionnaire designed to obtain information on the assistance provided by teachers to improve parental involvement in schools. It will allow us (...) to lay the foundations for the content necessary for the initial and permanent training of teachers. Then, an initial questionnaire was created and, after being subjected to expert judgment, it was applied to 225 Spanish teachers, using a quantitative and a non-experimental methodology. After calculating the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and applying the structural equation model, a questionnaire was obtained that had satisfactory construct validity and reliability. (shrink)

(1999). A facilitative agenda setting for the evolutionary strategies of the XXI century. World Futures: Vol. 54, Challenges of Evolution at Pat I: The Human Factor in Evolution, pp. 337-353.