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Social relational notions of successful aging: Contesting dominant individualized conceptions of successful aging by examining migrant intergenerational lived experiences
Get PDFBackground and Objectives: Critiques of the concept of successful aging (SA) include attention to its foundation on an individualized western medical approach that emphasizes personal choice, agency, and lifestyle. This paper aims to examine how individual notions of SA can be linked to, and co-constituted by, relational and intergenerational notions of personhood within the broader socioeconomic, familial, and cultural contexts of migration. Research Design and Methods: Qualitative research was conducted in Australia (2020–2021) with 42 Vietnamese migrants using ethnographic interviews and participant observation. Data analysis applied inductive reasoning and intersectional analysis to investigate the notion of SA from the perspectives of research participants. Results: Vietnamese migrants identified 3 dimensions of SA as significant: family fulfillment, individual achievements, and social engagement and protection. Family fulfilment is the most important; other dimensions are rendered meaningless without it. We found out that different generations interpreted SA in varying ways. Adult children prioritize personal success, self-independence, and longevity whereas grandparents place greater emphasis on the success of their adult children and maintenance of intergenerational relationships. Discussion and Implications: Migrant understandings of SA are deeply influenced by the sociocultural contexts of both their homeland and current residence. The emphasis on family in shaping SA reflects a social–relational understanding that contrasts with dominant individualistic models of SA. Given the social–relational dimension of SA, further research should investigate how distinct migrant experiences of SA shape access to wellbeing in later life
Work-integrated learning in business and management: Gauging impact and opportunities for growth
Get PDFWork-Integrated Learning\u27s (WIL) widely heralded role in developing future-capable graduates has boosted growth in diverse WIL offerings in Australia. Yet comparatively low participation among certain student groups and ongoing talent shortages highlight the need for further expansion, particularly in disciplines where WIL is optional. This study explores student engagement in different types of WIL and the impact it has on student employability and graduate labour force outcomes. Survey data were gathered from over 60,000 graduates of bachelor and postgraduate Business and Management degrees across Australia and compared to other disciplines where WIL is traditionally elective. Despite recent rises in student participation in WIL, findings illuminate opportunities for further growth, particularly among equity groups and at the postgraduate level. Data affirm the significant benefits that bachelor students can gain from WIL, including increased confidence, capability development and better access to quality employment. More flexible models that support different career stages and experience levels may encourage greater engagement among postgraduate students and improve WIL\u27s impact on labour force outcomes. The study provides unique insights into WIL provision and impact in Business and Management, informing nuanced strategies for strengthening WIL to support the development of future-capable graduates for personal, societal, and economic gain
Drivers of local communities perceptions of tourism impacts: An empirical investigation in Bogor Regency, Indonesia
No full textBy integrating social exchange theory, the norm activation model, and the theory of planned behaviour, this study investigates the effects of awareness of environmental consequences (AEC), environmental attitudes (EA), and local communities’ attachments (LCA) on perceptions of tourism impacts, including economic, environmental, social, and physical impacts. Four hundred seventy-eight responses were collected from local communities in Bogor Regency, Indonesia, and the data was analysed using Smart PLS version 4. This study analyses all factors influencing perceptions of tourism impacts to fill the gap from earlier conceptual and empirical studies. Further, it was found that environmental attitudes needed to influence all perceptions of tourism impacts, and local communities also needed to influence perceptions of social impacts. By analysing a thorough model, this study advances factors of perception of tourism impacts by providing supporting and non-supporting factors. Practical applications and potential research directions are discussed
Regenerative values in sustainability education: Learning with ecological family
No full textRegenerative sustainability education is revitalising sustainable ways to live through restoring place-knowledges, reviving health and rejuvenating climates and species. It is intentionally decolonising, that is, it stands against structural and systemic forcefulness. This chapter shows how regenerative sustainability education creates new narratives that include ancient knowledges and ways of knowing, being, seeing, hearing and feeling. These are re-emerging alongside innovative, active regeneration of place-cultures everywhere. It illustrates the way four regenerative educators walk as a learning practice to experience participation in an animate, sentient and sapient more-than-human world. They use walking as a way to renew relationships and understandings of relationality and to refine place-based learning. In this way, walking is a way for humans to re-introduce themselves to ecological families and come to know themselves as active participants inside environments rather than separated from them. Walking practitioners are likely to discover they already live in layered worlds of relationships, and now it is time to participate in the reciprocity of mutual care. Regenerative sustainability education is important because it offers hope for new ways of knowing, doing and being in modernity. Regenerative education is interdisciplinary and is everybody’s business
The Impact of Using Practicum Portfolio On Early Childhood Student Teachers\u27 Reflective Practice
Get PDF: This study aimed to investigate how the use of practicum portfolios impacts early childhood student teachers\u27 reflective practice in Palestine. The study utilized qualitative and quantitative methods to gather and analyze student teachers\u27 perspectives on using practicum portfolios for their professional development. The main focus was to understand the student teachers\u27 stance on reflective teaching and their engagement in different stages of the reflective practice cycle. The study involved 16 student teachers at Al-Quds University in Palestine. Data were collected through a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. Results indicated that the portfolio helped student teachers assess their work and improved their ability to reflect on their practices. Before lesson planning, they wrote their reflections with specific questions to help them articulate their plans. After the planning, they continued to reflect on their experiences. The study identified four stages of reflective practices that student teachers went through during their practical education courses: 1) pre-planning and post-reflection, 2) teaching, 3) reviewing and criticizing, and 4) reconstruction. Finally, the student teachers observed improvement in their practicum and teaching skills through portfolios
Climate Change Impacts on Drinking Water Security: A Comparative Study in Australia’s Remote Central Australia and Torres Strait Islands
Get PDFAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are well adapted to the many different environments in which they have lived for thousands of years. However, their environments and communities are highly vulnerable to impacts of anthropogenic climate change, including increasing threats to the security of drinking water supplies. Climate change is intensifying the significant social and economic disadvantage Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities face from poverty, poor housing, and poor health including high exposure to infectious and other diseases. Lack of sufficient safe, clean, drinking water could force Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to leave their homelands, adding the hardship of displacement to the devastating legacies of colonisation, with profound consequences for people’s identity, culture, and rights as Traditional Owners. As governments, industry, and communities are making decisions about the end use and allocation of finite water resources, including for new agribusiness, gas and mining developments, which might exacerbate an already stressed system, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and organisations in the Barkly and Torres Strait Islands are becoming actively engaged in water security issues, and they are demanding a strong voice over the governance of water resources. This case study highlights that, for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, a precautionary approach to water policy links sustainable water management with community demands for effective adaptation and mitigation strategies and aspirations for climate justice
Interconnectedness: Yoga and ecology
No full textThe purpose of this study is to examine the potential for yoga to contribute to sustainability objectives via pro-social and environmental attitudes and behaviours. It locates core principles and concepts embedded within the meaning of the term interconnectedness in both western and eastern histories of ideas, with particular emphasis on yoga, integralism, and ecological theory. It evaluates and investigates yoga\u27s potential toward recognition or realisation of a non-dualist paradigm of interconnectedness that might invoke social and environmental change. It explores how a tripartite model of yoga understands interconnectedness at a deeper level than the mechanistic worldview, and could support proactive measures toward a more fair, just, and sustainable world. It locates cultural barriers to yoga\u27s potential for a pro-environmental and pro-social worldview and lifestyle, suggesting options to advance yoga\u27s ecological values by improved education and scholarship. To access suitable models, the study learnt and practiced traditional teachings, applied them to contemporary issues and sought perspectives from under-represented sources. To answer research questions on how yoga can benefit contemporary issues, it also critically reflected on how scholarship impacts upon the communities from which the knowledge is obtained. The project contributes new knowledge on interconnectedness, its meaning and historic cultural context. It contributes a novel epistemic and methodological framework consistent with traditional knowledge, particularly relevant for progress on culturally appropriate scholarship in yoga studies. The project is the first of its kind to deeply explore the meanings of the word interconnectedness. It is one of the most committed attempts to date to seek out a doctrinal model from the traditions that can embrace both transcendent and immanent aspects of yoga in both theory and practice toward a coherent eco-yoga model. In doing so it engages with a wide lacuna between rhetorical appeals to yoga as a sustainability praxis and mind body intervention by supplementing existing theory with some of the traditional knowledge to explain how yoga works, and how it can help to meet sustainability objectives like cultivating an interconnected worldview. The project calls to seriously examine the legacy of colonial classification systems and methodological issues in the representation of yoga cultures. It appeals for the review of academic conventions among yoga scholars and for the prioritisation of sincere regard for the impact of scholarship on yoga’s intangible cultural heritage value, particularly considering yoga’s protection under UNESCO
A thematic analysis of what Australians state would change their minds on climate change
Get PDFWhat do Australians believe would change their current opinions about climate change? In this study, we used audience segmentation analysis through the Six Americas Short Survey to identify groups of climate opinion holders within a representative sample of Australians. We had 4857 participants tell us what it would take to change their current opinions about climate change and leveraged OpenAI’s Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) to identify the presence or absence of themes (Nothing, Evidence and Information, Trusted Sources, Action, and Unsure) and subthemes in their responses. GPT performed at near-human levels, proving to be a highly useful tool for thematic analysis. Our analyses revealed that strong climate denialists and believers tended to display greater dogmatism, with increased likelihood of stating that nothing would change their mind and lower likelihood of being unsure. Results also highlighted the need for diverse forms of evidence and information and the importance of trusted sources of information across audience segments. These findings provide support for GPT’s utility in managing large datasets in the social sciences and offer participant-informed insights into climate opinion change
Effects of vertical reinforcement on the shear performance of UHPC deep beams with synthetic and steel fibres
Get PDFThis study examines the shear behaviour of ultra-high-performance concrete deep beams (UHPC-DBs) reinforced with three fibre types: 2 % hooked-end (HE) steel fibres, 0.76 % 5D steel fibres, and 0.11 % Forta-Ferro (FF) synthetic fibres. It evaluates the effects of fibre type, fibre content, vertical web reinforcement (ρsv), and shear span-to-depth ratio (λ) on shear capacity. Load-deflection curves, crack patterns, and ρsv strain were analysed, and the optimal ρsv was determined using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to maximise shear capacity while minimising costs. Findings reveal that, compared to specimens without ρsv, those with ρsv = 0.38 % exhibit shear capacity increases of 12.42 %, 15 %, and 16.46 % for specimens reinforced with HE, 5D steel fibres, and FF synthetic fibres, respectively. Additionally, ρsv strains increase by 19.99 %, 26.45 %, and 24.03 % for specimens reinforced with HE, 5D steel fibres, and FF synthetic fibres, respectively, when ρsv rises from 0.075 % to 0.38 %. Higher ρsv enhances stiffness and ductility, underscoring its role in improving these properties. Additionally, specimens reinforced with 2 % HE fibres exhibit more ductile behaviour than those reinforced with 0.76 % 5D steel fibres. Beams reinforced with 0.11 % FF achieve 80.35 % of the shear capacity of those reinforced with 0.76 % 5D, indicating FF as a viable alternative. Shear-compression failure occurs in all UHPC-DBs at λ = 0.923 and λ = 0.739, except for those reinforced with 2 % HE steel fibres and ρsv values of 0.19 %, 0.30 %, or 0.38 %, which fail in diagonal tension. An increase in ρsv reduces crack width in UHPC-DBs reinforced with all three fibre types. Additionally, UHPC-DBs reinforced with 5D fibres exhibit narrower cracks than those reinforced with FF fibres. Three 3D graphs were developed to illustrate the combined effect of λ and ρsv on the shear capacity of UHPC-DBs. The results show that increasing ρsv and decreasing λ enhance shear capacity. These findings highlight a gap in ACI 318–19, which does not explicitly address the interaction between λ and ρsv in fibre-reinforced UHPC-DBs, suggesting that these graphs could help refine existing standards. When the optimal ρsv of 0.19 % is incorporated, the resulting shear capacity reaches 90.47 %, 98.42 %, and 89.23 % of the capacities achieved with ρsv = 0.38 % for UHPC-DBs reinforced with HE, 5D steel fibres, and FF synthetic fibres, respectively, while reducing steel reinforcement costs by 46 %
How young migrants perceive school health education in Sweden
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to provide insights into how young people who have been forced to migrate perceive school health education. Eighteen individuals aged 15–19 years (10 females, 8 males, average age 16.9 years) took part in either focus group interviews (n = 7) or individual interviews (n = 1). Participants were first presented with short scenarios concerning health education and were invited to use these scenarios as starting points to discuss their own experiences of health education. Participants were then presented with a collection of photographs that portrayed people displaying broad dimensions of health. Participants were asked to discuss the significance of the health dimensions in their lives, and describe how these dimensions were covered in school health education. Our findings suggest three broad perceptions of health education content: a moderately enthusiastic perception, a disengaged perception, and a marginalized perception. These findings: raise questions about whether the provision of health education matches the needs of young migrants, point to cultural differences in the way health topics are understood, and suggest that school health education might influence how migrants interact with health service providers