In this paper, we argue that technology use depends on the action of human agents and is influenced by the context in which this use takes place. We draw upon the literature on social shaping of technology, particularly that which looks at its usage, to base our claims. We have used a practice-oriented approach to studying technology, derived largely from Giddens’ structuration theory, to under...

Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. More than afty years have passed since Hans Morgenthau introduced “realism” as an approach to the study of international relations. Since then, the approach has withstood not only a steady assault from such external quarters as liberal institutionalism, the democratic peace school, and “constructivism” but also a marked divisive tendency. Splin...

This article presents work in progress exploring social constructivism within Mode Neutral, and how various conditions impact upon the student experience. Mode Neutral’s three dimensions – curriculum design, the role of the tutor and communication for learning – are affected by the conditions that can vary in any given context. The authors realise that both students’ and tutors’ expectations ma...

Until recently, the accepted model for instruction was based on the hidden assumption that knowledge can be transferred intact from, the mind of the teacher to the mind of the learner. Educators therefore focused on getting knowledge into the heads of their students, and educational researchers tried to find better ways of doing this [1]. Unfortunately, all too many of us who teach for a living...

In 1980, the liberal political philosopher John Rawls delivered a remarkable series of lectures at Columbia University. The Dewey Lectures, subsequently published in the Journal of Philosophy as “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” detailed a metaethical procedure–or method for formulating principles–that informed his earlier A Theory of Justice (1971) and that would make possible its sequ...

The Radical Constructivist Postulate says that the cognitive system (mind) is operationally closed. It interacts necessarily only with its own states. The nervous system is " a closed network of interacting neurons such that any change in the state of relative activity of a collection of neurons leads to a change in the state of relative activity of other or the same collection of neurons " (Wi...