This article centers marginal organizational actors—the disenfranchised of the Global South—to remedy their theoretical erasure and disrupt the Anglo-American grand narrative of organizational communication. This task is urgent amidst discussions of decolonization and whiteness in the discipline. We reengage Western theory on liquidity, hereby conceptualized as shape-shifting and adaptive organizing, moving like a liquid at the margins. We draw on fieldworks in Nigeria and Liberia to unearth three properties of liquidity in postcolonial contexts: motion, solvency, and permeability. Motion refers to movement, solvency refers to the ability to dissolve into one's surroundings, and permeability refers to organizing that infiltrates life and vice versa. This article bears three theoretical contributions. First, it provides a blueprint to dislodge Eurocentric biases (Anglo-American) in organizational communication theory. Second, it models what decolonizing theory may look like. Finally, it provides more complex, nuanced, and inclusive theoretical accounts of liquidities in global landscapes.
The goal of this pilot study was to develop a learner-centered teaching tool that would promote meaningful learning and enable higher education instructors to model critical thinking through concept mapping. Learner-centered approaches emphasize not only content, but the context, purpose, and process of learning. They also focus on the need for students to take responsibility for their own learning. However, students may not possess the foundational critical thinking skills necessary to be independent learners. Concept mapping allows university instructors to demonstrate basic critical thinking processes and provides students with the opportunity to practice the critical thinking that is essential to their success inside and outside the classroom. It can also facilitate meaningful learning by encouraging students to integrate new knowledge into prior knowledge structures.
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