Understanding context: A concept analysis

Learning and Instruction, 1998

Although context is rapidly becoming one of the core concepts in modern educational thinking, this notion still remains ill-defined in literature. This article aims at contributing to the definition of the notion of context and examining its value for research and development of educational praxes. The article starts out from a general conception of context, identifying its basic intentions as particularization of meaning and providing for coherence. In this article the activity approach to context is explored more particularly. It is argued here that one consequence from this approach is, that context should be conceived of dynamically, i.e. in terms of contextmaking (contextualizing). Reasoning from this activity approach, several new research questions arise.

2019

The idea of context and contextual relations is so widespread in all sub-disciplines of the humanities and social sciences that one might call it a key paradigm. However, exactly how theory conceives of context and how context is analyzed deserves critical examination. For various reasons, some theories’ presuppose¬tions especially can be contested. This investigation aims to clarify the idea of context and contextual relations, explore a number of critical positions, and offer a generic model for contextual analysis. Its overall argument rejects the critique that context is a sociological simulacrum, positing instead that “context” has an open and plural meaning, which needs to be modeled on a case specific basis.

Document Design, 1999

International Journal of Law in Context, 2020

Any and every phenomenon that human beings can experience or observe or invent or imagine, except the aggregated sum total of all such phenomena, has context(s). In a current way of thinking, interaction between entity, organism or phenomenon and its 'context' or 'environment' (I will use these last two terms interchangeably) is the engine of evolution by natural selection, and of social change by language and communication, teaching and learning, remembering and recording. Identifying and understanding the aggregate, total context of any phenomenon is beyond human, physical and mental capacities. When we set out to understand the interaction between any particular phenomenon and its environment, we necessarily select a set of features of the total, aggregated context. The choice of a particular set of features will reflect our reasons for, and our interests and aims in, studying phenomenon/context interactions. To the extent that context is understood negatively as everything other than the phenomenon being studied, the choice of that phenomenon will also reflect the observer's reasons, interests and aims. There are various methods of studying interactions between phenomena and environments. Oneand in some sense, the paradigmmethod is the controlled, scientific experiment. The strength of this method is that it involves and depends on precise delineation of a phenomenon and precise specification of one or more features of its environment, in such a way as to allow the phenomenon to be effectively isolated from other contemporaneously existing phenomena, and the environmental features to be effectively isolated from other contemporaneous environmental features. This procedure enables the observer, of past and present interactions between the chosen phenomenon and its specified environment, to describe and explain those interactions in a way that others will find convincing and to make predictions about future interactions that others will accept as reliable. The price of the great power of controlled scientific experimentation to generate 'knowledge' is that such knowledge is always conditional in the sense that it remains forever, in theory at least, open to being falsified. Very many interactions between phenomena (including 'natural' phenomena) and contexts are not amenable to investigation by controlled scientific experimentation; and here, by an all-too fast route, we have arrived at the topic of this symposium: law in context. William Twining (amongst others) doubts that 'law has an essence or nature or core' (Jurist in Context (2019, hereafter 'JiC'), p. 276). Whatever meaning is given to this statement, it cannot be attributing, to those against whom it is directed, the view that law can be understood independently of context. Law is sometimes contrasted with 'water', which some would say does have an 'essence'in the philosophical jargon, water is a 'natural kind' as opposed, for instance, to a 'functional kind': something defined in terms of what it does, not what it is. This cannot mean that water can be explained or described without reference to interactions between phenomena identified independently of surroundings. Water involves an interaction between hydrogen and oxygen molecules; and water exists in certain environments, but not others. Perhaps an 'uncaused cause' may be conceptualised as an entirely acontextual phenomenon; but anything and everything that has a cause has a context. If this view is convincing, we may understand 'essentialism' as the attempt to isolate a phenomenon from as much of its context as is possible, to make the phenomenon as 'small' as we possibly can relative to the total universe

IEEE Software, 2005

0 7 4 0 -7 4 5 9 / 0 5 / $ 2 0 . 0 0 © 2 0 0 5 I E E E S e p t e m b e r / O c t o b e r 2 0 0 5 I E E E S O F T W A R E 1 3 requirements E d i t o r : N e i l M a i d e n ■ C i t y U n i v e r s i t y , L o n d o n ■ n . a . m . m a i d e n @ c i t y . a c . u k I n my software engineering interpretation of Christopher Alexander's statement,