Higher Education
Z. Maher
Abstract
Education field experts believe that effects and consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic on education in general and on higher education in particular are not only less than the other social institutions, but are much more comprehensive. In this study, an attempt is being made to represent lived experiences ...
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Education field experts believe that effects and consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic on education in general and on higher education in particular are not only less than the other social institutions, but are much more comprehensive. In this study, an attempt is being made to represent lived experiences and perceptions of students and teachers in the virtual education system. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to assess the same among professors and students of the University of Isfahan during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to identify the most important challenges of this type of education in universities and by relying on the findings of the study, effective solutions and approaches are presented for improving virtual education in universities. In the course of study, “phenomenology” has been used as a qualitative method whereas the research population includes all students and professors in the University of Isfahan in the academic year of 2020-2021. Total participants in the qualitative part of research were 32 people consisting of 14 professors and 18 students. Based on the purposive sampling, a mixture was selected and interviewed. The data was evaluated using Colaizzi’s seven step method (1978). Findings showed that the damages incurred by virtual education damage are: “educational damage”, “damages related to university culture”, damages related to social-economic infrastructures” and “damage from reduced sense of presence”.
Ali Rabbani; Zahra Maher
Abstract
The main characteristic (feature) of the sociology of knowledge and science is its emphasis on the culture and cultural analysis within the scientific and technological research. This study concerns with the study of two research fields in which new sociologists of science and technology have presented ...
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The main characteristic (feature) of the sociology of knowledge and science is its emphasis on the culture and cultural analysis within the scientific and technological research. This study concerns with the study of two research fields in which new sociologists of science and technology have presented their cultural analysis. These two fields include: sociology of scientific knowledge and cultural studies of science.Sociology of scientific knowledge is the first school of thought which makes the content of scientific knowledge inclined to and compliant with the cultural and sociological analysis. In SSK, the main presupposition is that “the scientific knowledge is totally arbitrary.” Accordingly, the design and evaluation of scientific theories and claims are the consequence of social interests and cultural inclinations (trends), in a way that the scientific theories become a tool for the justification, legitimating, encouragement and contentment.At the early 1990s, with the rise of crisis (chaos) within the explanations of sociology of scientific knowledge and a flood of criticism against it, the whole subjectivity of the field came to a standstill (reached an impasse) and the initiatives in scientific research were replaced by different theoretical orientations like cultural studies. In contrast to the sociology of scientific knowledge, the cultural studies of science concerns with the rejection of “explanation” and, instead, focuses on the “meaning” and “understanding”. In other words, it has come back to an old dispute between explanatory and hermeneutic approaches and those which pursue the regulative (legalistic) comprehensiveness along the more positivistic lines.This emerging field emphasizes the issue that the uncertainty, instability, ambiguity (vagueness) and difference must be given a more important role in sciences. Cultural studies of science gave rise to a change from the sociology of scientific knowledge to a new culturalism.
Ali Rabbani; Zahra Maher
Abstract
Formerly most sociologists of science and technology did little to research in the formal literature of the Sociology of Culture and may even were resistant to cultural analysis. The sociologists of culture have also written little analysis on the process of knowledge and technology production. This ...
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Formerly most sociologists of science and technology did little to research in the formal literature of the Sociology of Culture and may even were resistant to cultural analysis. The sociologists of culture have also written little analysis on the process of knowledge and technology production. This is contrary to the basic characteristic of the new sociology of knowledge and science that is emphasis on culture and cultural analysis in science and technology studies. In this article, we trace and analyze how sociologists of science and technology have performed cultural analysis. More recent moves to extend studies of science and technology "outward" beyond formal scientific settings have created new possibilities for the sociology of culture. They have also attracted more attention to the place of culture in knowledge and technology studies. Of these recent attempts are the studies on materialistic culture, scientific citizenship, macro - epistemic (culture in knowledge society), and finally civic epistemologies.
