This thesis analyzes specific challenges concerning 'truth-telling' war reporters face when reporting on international conflict. For this purpose truth is examined in accordance with journalistic principles outlined in codes of ethics, with a focus on objectivity and fairness. The aim is to discover ways to improve the application of principles, in order to battle epistemic errors and the effects they entail: polarization, reductionism, and superficiality. The study concludes that providing context and nuance is crucial, but that codes - although essential - are insufficient in helping journalists decide what is relevant and what is not. An approach in virtue ethics is recommended where phronesis (or practical wisdom) can inspire responsible journalists to comply with the spirit, rather than the letter of the principles.

Syftet med den här essän är att undersöka om det går att synliggöra ett mellanrum som upplevs finnas mellan tillsynsansvarigs upplevelse av förskolans kvalitet, hur förskolan beskriver sin kvalitet och vad kvalitet är för barnen i deras vardag på förskolan. Mellanrummet gestaltar sig som ett fält med information som är svår att få syn på. Essän utgår ifrån två berättelser om hur barn kan uppleva sin vardag på förskolan och vad kvalitet kan vara utifrån ett barnperspektiv. Berättelserna har också fokus på mötet mellan tillsynsansvarig, förskolechefer och pedagoger. Deras roller prövas utifrån att vara nyckelpersoner som har att föra in begreppet kvalitet i förskolan.Teorier och styrdokument om vad kvalitet är i förskolan ställs i relation till tillsynsansvarigs, förskolechefers och pedagogers roll. Aristoteles kunskapsbegrepp fronesis blir ett stöd för att få syn på den praktiska kunskap som nyckelpersonerna äger och utövar. Tillsynsbesöket granskas i skrivandet som ett kontrollerande möte men också som ett möte med möjlighet till utveckling. I mötet har tillsynsansvarig två roller som lyfts fram, den kontrollerande och den vägledande. Det prövas också som ett gränsobjekt för deltagarna att förenas runt. Synen på begreppet kvalitet studeras i spänningsfältet mellan tillsynsansvarigs syn på kvalitet och förskolechefers och pedagogers syn på kvalitet. Under skivandet träder nya perspektiv på kvalitetsbegreppet fram. Ett intresse för fortsatt utforskande väcks, där begrepp som makt, interaktion, profession och självkännedom blir intressanta.

The aim of this study has partly been to explore how social work students develop their conception of relevant competence during their bachelor education. This part of the study is based on qualitative interviews with a sample of twelve students from Lillehammer University College interviewed individually focusing on the relationship between theory and practice, competence learned at the university and college and in practice placement and on the personal aspect of professional action. The most significant research finding was the ways in which the students changed their view on relevance after a period of practice placement during the second year of the bachelor program. The students consider competence experienced in practice placement as the "real thing" and competence learned in college as a secondary, but necessary competence for passing the final exam. Competence learned in practice placement was taken for granted and critical reflection on knowledge systems, practices and the relationship between welfare politics and professional action was outside the limits of what the students deemed relevant competence. From these research findings and interpretations I derived new research questions which I have investigated in five articles. Article 1 scrutinizes the strong impact of practice placement, article 2 explores the purpose of ethics in a context where social work tries to mediate between social control and users participation, article 3 is concerned with the necessity of moral competence in order to make good judgements in the application of the mandate given from the welfare state, article 4 asks to what extent the concept of empowerment requires certain techniques of intervention in order to make conform clients to conventional ways of living, while article 5 explores the potentials in Buddhism applied to relevant social work issues. The articles are situated in three different theoretical traditions. I use the traditions partly to challenge core elements within the traditions themselves, partly to challenge conventional viewpoints concerning competences in social work like arguments in favour of scientific knowledge because it contributes to the elevation of the status of social workers The first one draws on the tradition from situated learning and explores learning as participation in two different contexts (college and workplace). I challenge the notion that development of competence is about negotiations between contexts. I contend that the institutionalised practices in social work have a very disciplinary impact on the concept of relevant competence which is rather underestimated by our educational system. Article 2, 3 and 4 profit from Michel Foucault's governmentality-concept. His perspective on the ways in which the population in modern societies is governed. is used to explore how the welfare state uses its professions to combine social control with freedom and self-governing. In my interpretation, ethics is a part of a soft and subtle intervention strategy to transform social and structural issues to individual troubles and make clients cooperative and responsible. I also contend that the mandate given to social workers requires good judgement in their application of individualized strategies which actualize their phronetic competence. I also interpret empowerment as a strategy for intervention that makes clients conform to conventional ideals in society. This interpretation challenges the notion of empowerment as liberation strategy defined by the clients themselves. Article 5 is entirely devoted to the question of moral character, drawing heavily on core values from Buddhism. Buddhism is used to identify and suggest ways to overcome ego-related problems which are frequently occurring in social work (such as the problem of "burn-out" and the ways bureaucratic distance is used as a shield against demanding clients). I also suggest that Buddhism can be used as a strategy for promoting personal social engagement in social work. My empirical study as well as my articles identifies "phronetic competences" in social work as the most important ones. This concept is derived from the aristotelian "phronesis" meaning personal, experienced-based competence for making morally right judgements according to particular situations. I argue that phronetic competence is highly relevant because it includes capacities for actualizing moral aspects of a situation, critical analytical reflection and for scrutinizing knowledge systems, practices and impacts of welfare goals which tend to be taken for granted.  I contend that the education of social workers must make a stronger effort to facilitate phronetic competences among social work students to prevent social work from being reduced to technical skills and social engineering.

Zugl.: Freiburg, Universiẗat, Diss., 2008.

In this essay I make an attempt to define the abilities that helped me in my antisocial choices that as a woman to become a decorator and throw me into the male construction industry. I use the metaphor of the wolf pack, which may symbolize hierarchies, norms, and even gender. What helped me to take my place among the males? Is it practical knowledge to deal with new antisocial environments, or what is it? I have not only survived, but also survived in the industry. In the pursuit of abilities and its knowledge of relevance, I analyse different stories from my 25 years in the profession and how I 've handled it encountered. These abilities I have then analysed on the basis of gender and Aristotle and Nussbaum's concept of knowledge, mainly Fronesis and various virtues. All in a try to see if it has to do with knowledge to survive in unfamiliar terrain. / I den här essän gör jag ett försöka att definiera förmågor som hjälpt mig i mitt normbrytande val att som kvinna bli målare och kasta mig in i den manliga byggbranschen. Jag använder mig av metaforen vargflocken som får symbolisera hierarkier, normer och även genus. Vad är det som hjälpt mig att ta min plats bland hanarna? Är det praktisk kunskap att hantera nya normbrytande miljöer eller vad är det? Jag har inte bara överlevt utan levt i branschen. I jakten på förmågor och dess kunskapsrelevans analyserar jag olika berättelser från mina 25 år i yrket och hur jag har hanterat det som uppstått. Dessa förmågor har jag sedan analyserat utifrån genus och Aristoteles och Nussbaums kunskapsbegrepp, då främst fronesis och olika dygder. Allt i ett försöka att se om det har med kunskap att göra att överleva i okänd terräng.

abstract: This project draws on sociocognitive rhetoric to ask, How, in complex situations not of our making, do we determine what needs to be done and how to leverage available means for the health of our communities and institutions? The project pulls together rhetorical concepts of the stochastic arts (those that demand the most precise, careful planning in the least predictable places) and techne (problem-solving tools that transform limits and barriers into possibilities) to forward a stochastic techne that grounds contemplative social action at the intersection of invention and intervention and mastery and failure in real time, under constraints we can't control and outcomes we can't predict. Based on 18 months of fieldwork with the Sudanese refugee diaspora in Phoenix, I offer a method for engaging in postmodern phronesis with community partners in four ways: 1) Explanations and examples of public listening and situational mapping 2) Narratives that elucidate the stochastic techne, a heuristic for determining and testing wise rhetorical action 3) Principles for constructing mutually collaborative, mutually beneficial community-university/ community-school partnerships for jointly addressing real-world issues that matter in the places where we live 4) Descriptions and explanations that ground the hard rhetorical work of inventing new paths and destinations as some of the Sudanese women construct hybridized identities and models of social entrepreneurship that resist aid-to-Africa discourse based on American paternalism and humanitarianism and re-cast themselves as micro-financers of innovative work here and in Southern Sudan. Finally, the project pulls back from the Sudanese to consider implications for re-figuring secondary English education around phronesis. Here, I offer a framework for teachers to engage in the real work of problem-posing that aims - as Django Paris calls us - to get something done by confronting the issues that confront our communities. Grounded in classroom instruction, the chapter provides tools for scaffolding public listening, multi-voiced inquiries, and phronesis with and for local publics. I conclude by calling for English education to abandon all pretense of being a predictive science and to instead embrace productive knowledge-making and the rhetorical work of phronesis as the heart of secondary English studies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2012

How can you as a planner tackle messy realities without losing sight of possible problematic outcomes of what you put in practice? This study explores the value of everyday frictions as a resource for phronetic planning, i.e. the ability to make situated ethical judements of what is ’better’ or ’worse’ in a particular setting. The intent is to offer a situated gaze of frictions from the perspective of a civil servant of the well organised and innovative municipality of Botkyrka in the metropolitan area of Stockholm, Sweden. From this outset, an autoethnographical methodology from a poststructural approach, is used to explore the frictions that the author has experienced as a practicing planner. The study shows that frictions can be used as 'weak signals' to identify possible tricky consequences of the creation and the staging of planning 'simplifications'. Based on this insight a 'seismological' approach to planning is proposed. The argument is that planning practice should on the one hand utilize frictions when they arise and, on the other hand, actively challenge existing 'simplifications'. To achieve this, practical tools are offered to 'evoke', 'narrate' and 'diffract' on frictions and 'trickster-objects' within the constraints of the planner’s role as a municipal civil servant. / Denna avhandlings syfte är att utforska skavningars möjliga värde som resurs för praktisk klokhet inom svensk kommunal planeringspraktik. Med praktisk klokhet avses förmågan att göra situerade etiska bedömningar om 'bättre' och 'sämre' på ett reflexivt sätt i ett visst sammanhang. Studiens teoretiska ram utgörs av poststrukturell subjektteori och arbetet bygger på en metodologisk ansats grundad i autoetnografi. Avsikten är att erbjuda en situerad ’inifrån blick’ om vardagliga skavningar i planering i en svensk kommunal förvaltningskontext baserat på författarens egen yrkespraktik från en kommun. I analysen framkommer att skavningar ofta kan uppstå när planeraren ikläder sig i grunden motsatta sätt att uppträda som planerare; i studien identifierat som en central, entreprenöriell och kommunikativ persona. Det som då sker är att olika idéer om ‘hur saker funkar’, olika typer av praktiska tekniker för att uppnå uppsatta mål och olika etiska ramverk om vad som är 'rätt' införlivas och 'krockar' inom planeraren. En slutsats är att skavningar kan ses som ’svaga signaler’ för att förnimma eventuella problematiska konsekvenser av de 'förenklingar’ som av nödvändighet görs inom planeringspraktik. En medvetenhet om sådana signaler kan bidra till en beredskap om existerande konfliktytor som den kommunala organisationen kan adressera i sin planering och verksamhetsutveckling. Den typ av planerarroll som har bäst förutsättningar att inrymma skavningar är en central persona, men för att den möjligheten ska realiseras krävs att skavningar uppvärderas som en av flera komponenter för att stärka planerarens bedömningsförmåga. I ljuset av studiens lärdomar tecknas ett utkast till vad som benämns en ’seismologisk’ ansats till planering. Argumentet som förs fram är att planeringspraktik å ena sidan bör tillvarata skavningar när de väl uppstår, och å andra sidan aktivt utmana existerande 'förenklingar’. För att uppnå detta föreslås exempel på praktiska verktyg som planeraren och organisationen kan använda för att 'framkalla', '(åter)berätta' och 'diffraktera' kring skavningar inom gränserna för planerarens ansvar. / <p>QC 20171017</p>

In Lesotho, there are no formal opportunities for professional training of teacher educators. Consequently, the majority of teacher educators have not received a training that could equip them with professional knowledge base that is foundational to any profession. Therefore the question: what are the sources and application of professional knowledge among teacher educators appeared justifiable. Arguably, the teacher educators’ professional knowledge is intricately linked to education practice. Teacher educators have to address the discrepancy between education policy and practice through the training of student teachers who, in turn, have to contribute to the quality of the Lesotho education system. An interpretivist approach was followed in undertaking this study. Data was collected through: narratives, observations of teacher educators and analysis of the curriculum and assessment documents. The unit of analysis was eight teacher educators who are based at the National University of Lesotho’s Faculty of Education. Verification of the extent to which the topic was researchable was through undertaking a pilot study with six teacher educators who were based in the department of Educational Foundations in the same faculty. The analysis of the data revealed an immersion in the teacher educators’ professional landscape provides them ample opportunities to learn from an array of experiences. They accumulated experienced-based professional knowledge relevant to their world of work as they learn to teach, construct, apply and model it in the context that is uniquely teacher education. They have learned to teach teachers mainly from existing education practices which perpetuate what already exists. They face numerous challenges; their teaching is biased towards conventional teaching techniques of a transmissive nature and to a less extent interactive techniques; construction of professional knowledge remains a complex and challenging undertaking. Opportunities to construct own teaching research-based knowledge and supervision of student research are limited. In practice teacher educators have to rethink their pedagogy. Engaging in research adopting a “self-study” approach is unavoidable. Research will enhance their professional development and the quality of the student teachers. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Humanities Education / unrestricted

Denna essä undersöker rektors roll i en verksamhet där statligt uppdrag ser ut att kollidera med de förutsättningar som ges till skolorna via kommunen som finansiär och arbetsgivare. Upplevelsen speglas i situationer där lärare och vårdnadshavare ser ut att ha en annan förståelse för skolans uppdrag än den som rektor upplever sig ha utifrån de styrdokument som råder och de möjligheter som kommunen tillhandahåller. En fråga är vad rektor behöver veta om kunskapen hos medarbetare för att kunna leda. Undersökandet utgår från Aristoteles kunskapsbegrepp med fronesis som tyngdpunkt, läsning av Finks beskrivning av Aristoteles begrepp samt med hjälp av Sa Cavalcante Schuback och Schön gällande förståelse som övergår i handling.   Dessutom utifrån teorier om ledarskap och synen på förståelsens roll i ledarskap där ett perspektiv av mytbildning i skolan undersökts vilket kan vara en förklaring till den svåra situation som både lärare och rektor befinner sig i. / The essay examines the role of the principal in an organization where the state’s mission seems to clash with the conditions provided to schools by the municipality as the fonder and employer. The experience is reflected in situations where teachers and parents seem to have a different understanding of the school’s mission than the principal perceives based on the curriculum and budget provided by the municipality. One question is what the principal needs to know about the knowledge of teachers in order to lead. The investigation is based on Aristotle’s concept of knowledge with phronesis as the focus, reading Fink’s description of Aristotle’s concept, and with help from Sa Cavalcante Schuback and Schön regarding understanding that transitions into action. Additionally, based on theories of leadership and the role of understanding in leadership, a perspective of myths in school is also examined, which may be an explanation for the difficult situation in which both teachers and principals find themselves.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’élucider l’intention, la pertinence et la cohérence de l’appropriation par Heidegger des concepts principaux de la philosophie pratique aristotélicienne dans ses premiers cours. Notre analyse portera principalement sur les notions clefs d’energeia et de phronēsis. La première section de la thèse est préparatoire : elle est consacrée à une analyse étroite des textes pertinents de l’Éthique à Nicomaque, mais aussi de la Métaphysique, en discussion avec d’autres commentateurs modernes. Cette analyse jette les fondations philologiques nécessaires en vue d’aborder les audacieuses interprétations de Heidegger sur une base plus ferme. La deuxième et principale section consiste en une discussion de l’appropriation ontologique de l’Éthique à Nicomaque que Heidegger entreprend de 1922 à 1924, à partir des textes publiés jusqu’à ce jour et en portant une attention spéciale à Métaphysique IX. Le résultat principal de la première section est un aperçu du caractère central de l’energeia pour le projet d’Aristote dans l’Éthique à Nicomaque et, plus spécifiquement, pour sa compréhension de la praxis, qui dans son sens original s’avère être un mode d’être des êtres humains. Notre analyse reconnaît trois traits essentiels de l’energeia et de la praxis, deux desquels provenant de l’élucidation aristotélicienne de l’energeia dans Métaphysique IX 6, à savoir son immédiateté et sa continuité : energeia exprime l’être comme un « accomplissement immédiat mais inachevé ». L’irréductibilité, troisième trait de l’energeia et de la praxis, résulte pour sa part de l’application de la structure de l’energeia à la caractérisation de la praxis dans l’Éthique à Nicomaque, et du contraste de la praxis avec la poiēsis et la theōria. Ces trois caractéristiques impliquent que la vérité pratique ― la vérité de la praxis, ce qui est l’ « objet » de la phronēsis ― ne peut être à proprement parler possédée et ainsi transmise : plus qu’un savoir, elle se révèle surtout comme quelque chose que nous sommes. C’est ce caractère unique de la vérité pratique qui a attiré Heidegger vers Aristote au début des années 1920. La deuxième section, consacrée aux textes de Heidegger, commence par la reconstruction de quelques-uns des pas qui l’ont conduit jusqu’à Aristote pour le développement de son propre projet philosophique, pour sa part caractérisé par une profonde, bien qu’énigmatique combinaison d’ontologie et de phénoménologie. La légitimité et la faisabilité de l’appropriation clairement ontologique de l’Éthique à Nicomaque par Heidegger est aussi traitée, sur la base des résultats de la première section. L’analyse de ces textes met en lumière la pénétrante opposition établie par Heidegger entre la phronēsis et l’energeia dans son programmatique Natorp Bericht en 1922, une perspective qui diverge fortement des résultats de notre lecture philologique d’Aristote dans la première section. Cette opposition est maintenue dans nos deux sources principales ― le cours du semestre d’hiver 1924-25 Platon: Sophistes, et le cours du semestre d’été 1924 Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie. Le commentaire que Heidegger fait du texte d’Aristote est suivi de près dans cette section: des concepts tels que energeia, entelecheia, telos, physis ou hexis ― qui trouvent leur caractérisation ontologique dans la Métaphysique ou la Physique ― doivent être examinés afin de suivre l’argument de Heidegger et d’en évaluer la solidité. L’hypothèse de Heidegger depuis 1922 ― à savoir que l’ontologie aristotélicienne n’est pas à la hauteur des aperçus de ses plus pénétrantes descriptions phénoménologiques ― résulte en un conflit opposant phronēsis et sophia qui divise l’être en deux sphères irréconciliables qui auraient pour effet selon Heidegger de plonger les efforts ontologiques aristotéliciens dans une impasse. Or, cette conclusion de Heidegger est construite à partir d’une interprétation particulière de l’energeia qui laisse de côté d’une manière décisive son aspect performatif, pourtant l’un des traits essentiels de l’energeia telle qu’Aristote l’a conçue. Le fait que dans les années 1930 Heidegger ait lui-même retrouvé cet aspect de l’energeia nous fournit des raisons plus fortes de mettre en doute le supposé conflit entre ontologie et phénoménologie chez Aristote, ce qui peut aboutir à une nouvelle formulation du projet heideggérien. / The purpose of this thesis is to sort out the intent, the philosophical relevance and the consistency of Heidegger’s appropriation of the basic tenets of Aristotle’s practical philosophy in his early lecture courses. Our analysis will focus mainly on the key notions of energeia and phronēsis. The first preparatory section of the thesis is devoted to a close analysis of Aristotle’s relevant texts of the Nicomachean Ethics, but also of the Metaphysics, in discussion with other modern commentators. This lays the philological groundwork which will enable us to engage Heidegger’s challenging interpretations on a more secure footing. The second and main section discusses Heidegger’s ontological appropriation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics from 1922 to 1924 on the basis of the texts so far published, and with a special attention to Metaphysics IX. The main result of section I is an insight into the central character of energeia for Aristotle’s project in the Nicomachean Ethics and, more specifically, for his understanding of praxis, which in its genuinely original sense turns out to be a way of being of human beings. Our analysis recognizes three essential traits to energeia and praxis, two of which stemming from the analysis of Aristotle’s own elucidation of energeia in Metaphysics IX 6, namely immediacy and continuity: energeia expresses being as an ‘immediate unfinished fulfillment’. Irreducibility, the third trait of energeia and praxis, results from applying the structure of energeia to the characterization of praxis in the Nicomachean Ethics, and from contrasting it with poiēsis and theōria. These three features entail that practical truth―the truth of praxis, the ‘object’ of phronēsis―cannot be properly possessed and thus transferred: more than something we know, it is something we are. It is this special character of practical truth that primarily attracted Heidegger to Aristotle in the early 1920s. Section II, devoted to Heidegger’s texts, starts by reconstructing some of the intellectual steps that led him to resort to Aristotle for the development of his own philosophical project, characterized by a profound, yet intriguing intermingling of ontology and phenomenology. The legitimacy and feasibility of Heidegger’s pointedly ontological appropriation of the Nicomachean Ethics is also discussed, on the basis of the results of section I. The analysis of these texts is characterized by the sharp opposition set by Heidegger between phronēsis and energeia in his 1922 programmatic Natorp Bericht, a perspective that strongly diverges from the results of our philological reading of Aristotle in section I. The assessment of this opposition is maintained throughout the discussion of the two main sources―the 1924-25 winter course Platon: Sophistes, and the 1924 summer course Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie. Heidegger’s direct commentary of Aristotle’s text is followed closely in this section: concepts such as energeia, entelecheia, telos, physis and hexis―which find their ontological characterization in the Metaphysics or Physics―need to be scrutinized in order to follow Heidegger’s argument and to assess its soundness. Heidegger’s hypothesis from 1922―namely, that Aristotle’s ontology does not fit the insights of his more penetrating phenomenological descriptions―eventually culminates in a clash between phronēsis and sophia which divides being into two irreconcilable spheres and brings Aristotle’s ontological efforts to a dead end. Yet, this conclusion of Heidegger is built upon a specific interpretation of energeia that critically leaves in the shade its performative side, one of its essential traits as Aristotle conceived it. The fact that in the 30s Heidegger himself comes to see this side of energeia provides us with stronger grounds to question the supposed conflict between ontology and phenomenology in Aristotle, which can result in a new formulation of the Heideggerian project.