3483 research outputs found
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Seeing beyond the image: Contextualising autism in art to shape aesthetic experience
Full text linkWe explored whether providing information that artistic photography depicts individuals on the autism spectrum and their special interests influences viewers’ preferences. Our findings demonstrated a positive impact of providing such information on participants’ ratings of aesthetic emotions and judgments. The present study suggests that artistic activities showing autistic individuals can serve as positive self-advocacy tools when framed by contextual information
Playing Politics: Is youth work a site for political education – can it be?
Full text linkThis thesis explores the potential for youth work to be a site for youth participation and political education. This interest has been grown from many years of practice, experiencing the challenges and changing landscape of youth work under the influence of contemporary neoliberal discourse and drives (Davies, 2024, Jeffs, 2015). Youth work is considered a contested practice, evoking a diversity of positions regarding its principles, purpose and practice (Cooper, Gormally and Hughes, 2015). The contention within this research is that neoliberalism and austerity have impacted significantly on youth work that orientations and opportunities for a practice located on social justice values are been profoundly compromised (Pope, 2016, de St. Croix, 2010, Davies, 2024). Working from a historical analysis to locate notions of youth participation and political education within youth work and social policy over time, this research seeks to understand the existence and nature of a radical heart of within professional practice and promote its reinvigoration.
Utilising a Participatory Action Research [PAR] orientation to explore the central research question – Is youth work a site for political education – can it be? Research endeavours were located in two research sites, one an open access, universal project and one referral only project for young people with disabilities, over a period of three years. PAR cycles were developed with young people and practitioners to explore the nature and potential of youth work, as sites for youth participation and political education. Within the PAR cycles creative methodologies were introduced and utilised for data collection. These methods promoted enjoyment, engagement, inclusion and anti-oppressive practice in action, as well as seeking to demonstrate working through social justice values and commitments.
The findings were analysed through a robust Thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2023) and six key themes were drawn from the data set which were, 1. Roles, 2. Cuts & Money, 3. Youth Work Values & Principles, 4. Youth Participation, Power & Political Education, 5. Contemporary Challenges Impacting on Young People's Lives and 6.
Opportunities, Outcomes & Impact. The findings were presented and discussed aligning with each theme in turn, connecting with the rich data from the PAR Group to bring forward meanings and conclusions for my own and wider professional practice. From the analysis of the findings two frameworks evolve, the first the ‘Taking Part – Taking Apart Spectrum which seeks to promote the expansion of practice into political and social justice terrains. Secondly, a ‘DEEP Learning Framework’ is constructed to support my own professional development and as a contribution to the youth work sector to return to, and rebuild, a social justice orientated practice. The ‘DEEP Learning Framework’ has utility to reinvigorate both social justice youth work practice and the teaching of youth work through university based programmes
Book review of Educational Secularization within Europe and Beyond: The Political Projects of Modernizing Religion through Education Reform
No full textEducational Secularization within Europe and Beyond: The Political Projects of Modernizing Religion through Education Reform is volume 6 in the series of Studies in the History of Education and Culture (currently consisting of nine volumes), the stated aim of which is to spark debate on the complex interconnections between education and culture. It does this from a deliberately international and interdisciplinary perspective. In many ways this makes this edited collection much more like a special issue of a journal than a book: its 13 chapters are wide-ranging in both location and time frame, covering over 300 years and multiple national contexts, within Europe and beyond, as the title indicate
International actors’ promotion of peacebuilding in Colombia through online subsidies: the role of spatial framing
Full text linkThis paper explores the geographical nature of the promotion of peacebuilding efforts by international actors cooperating in Colombia through information published daily in their newsrooms online. This article contends that such promotion is spatially rooted as it links to narratives about places targeted for intervention, and how these places ought to be transformed. Accordingly, the notion of spatial framing is put forward as a methodological way to assess the promotion of meanings about targeted places for peace transformation. Drawing on qualitative spatial framing analysis of online subsidies analysed with the help of NVivo software, the work explores the ways in which key post-conflict donors (United States, European Union, the United Kingdom) promoted a narrative about national and local spaces of peacebuilding transformation in the transitional period in two periods between November 2016 and February 2024. The article argues that the international actors depicted spaces in function of a normative continuum between rural (less developed) and urban (more developed) spaces and promoted spatial transformation consistent with principles of state-building and market development
Playing the Changes: How Darius and Cathy Brubeck created a jazz program in a South African university
Full text linkIn their recent book, Playing the Changes: Jazz at an African University and on the Road, Darius and Cathy Brubeck tell the story of how they set up and ran the first jazz studies degree in South Africa during the final years of the apartheid regime. In this webinar Dr Sykes will discuss the groundbreaking achievements of the Brubecks, their legacy and what we can learn from them for jazz in higher education in our own times
Postural stability and optic flow sensitivity following sight restoration from congenital bilateral cataracts
Full text linkVision is crucial for maintaining balance and facilitating locomotion. Optic flow, for example, provides key self-motion cues for navigation. Congenital blindness typically leads to increased postural sway and impaired navigation. Here we investigated postural stability and optic flow sensitivity in individuals surgically treated for congenital dense bilateral cataracts years after birth. Experiment 1 assessed whether cataract-treated participants rely on vision to stabilize their stance with eyes open compared to closed. Cataract-treated participants decreased their sway with open eyes to a lesser extent than controls, indicating a reduced ability to use vision for stabilization. Interestingly, participants tested longer after surgery showed less sway, suggesting partial learning in utilizing vision to enhance stability. Experiment 2 assessed whether different radial and translational optic flow patterns elicit distinct effects on body sway, which would indicate illusory sensorimotor perceptions. We included typically sighted controls tested either with normal vision or with experimentally reduced visual acuity. While cataract-treated participants exhibited greater sway than controls, their sway was less influenced by optic flow patterns.
Overall, the study showed that cataract-treated individuals exhibit partial learning in utilizing vision for stabilization and less pronounced illusory self-motion perception from optic flow compared to typically sighted individuals
Barriers experienced by visually impaired rugby players when undertaking concussion assessment: a qualitative investigation
Full text linkPrevious work has conjectured that visually impaired athletes may face barriers when attempting concussion assessments because they can present with signs of concussion as part of their condition. The present study aimed to explore the qualitative experiences of visually impaired players undertaking the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool 5 (SCAT5). Four visually impaired Physical Disability Rugby League players completed the SCAT5 neurological assessment (i.e. read aloud and visual tracking sections) prior to attending an online focus group discussion. Thematic analysis was performed, revealing numerous barriers and consequent additional needs experienced by the athletes. The present results support the removal of the read aloud section from the SCAT5 and suggest that the SCAT6 may thus be a more appropriate assessment tool for visually impaired athletes. Clinicians using the SCAT6 may want to make adjustments to meet the additional needs of visually impaired athletes when completing the visual tracking section
Reassessing the curvature effect in tables and chairs
Full text linkSeveral studies have consistently demonstrated that people generally prefer curved over angular contours. However, the magnitude of the curvature effect varies across stimuli, for example, with a larger effect reported for abstract stimuli compared to interior spaces. A comparison across stimuli that share similar physical features and belong to the same categories is warranted to determine whether curvature is a basis of object preference. Another important question is whether inspection differences, based on contour and object category, affect object preference. In Experiment 1, we addressed these questions by recording eye movements as participants rated their preferences for images of two types of common-use objects: tables and chairs. In Experiment 2, we limited the stimuli presentation to 84 ms, as brief presentations are thought to enhance the curvature effect. Neither of the two experiments confirmed a clear preference for curvature in tables or chairs. Yet, curvature significantly influenced fixation durations, with curvilinear tables eliciting longer fixations than rectilinear ones, although without affecting overall preference. The findings are discussed in the context of familiarity and object functionality in shaping preference judgements
Beauty on Trust: Aesthetic Testimony, Verbal Description and the Impact of the ‘Objectivity Imperative’ on the Experiences of Gallery Visitors with Visual Impairment.
Full text linkConcern for the limits of what we can learn from one another about beauty has recurred throughout the history of aesthetic theory. Dividing its attention between literary renderings of blindness and widely endorsed regulatory features of art access initiatives, this chapter positions an exploration of what the experiences of people with visual impairment might contribute to long-standing deliberations about the appropriate weighting of the degrees of epistemological credence afforded to aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony within a history of philosophical debate from which their potentially instructive perspectives have been regrettably absent. After tracing aspects of the ‘aesthetic testimony debate’ through literary representations of blindness, the chapter shifts focus in order to contemplate potential applications of insights generated by the debate to a review of the potentially impoverishing impact of selected art access guidelines on the aesthetic experiences of gallery visitors with visual impairment. The ‘objectivity imperative’ that is a feature of established verbal description guidelines is accounted for in terms of an ill-supported and distinctly unhelpful suspicion of hermeneutics within the domain of art access. Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s delineation of the threads of mutual causation and justification that fuse experience, hermeneutics and evaluation within the ‘psychological set’ of art engagement is brought into service as a means of challenging the logic and value of the repeated instructional mantra that describers of works of visual art for gallery visitors should merely ‘say what they see’
Interrelationships Among Parental Play Support and Kindergarten Children’s Playfulness and Creative Thinking Processes
Full text linkThis study examined the direct and indirect relationships of parental play support with playfulness and creative thinking processes in Hong Kong Chinese kindergarten children. Participants were 181 second-year (age range 4 to 5 years) local kindergarten children (54.1% girls) and their parents. Parents reported demographic information, parental play support, and children’s playfulness (physical spontaneity, social spontaneity, cognitive spontaneity, manifest joy, and sense of humor) through a questionnaire. Participating children were administered behavioral assessments of convergent thinking and divergent thinking at their kindergarten. Results from a path analytic model revealed social spontaneity and cognitive spontaneity as the mediators in the indirect relationships of parental play support with children’s convergent thinking and divergent thinking, respectively. In contrast, the direct relations between parental play support and creative thinking processes were nonsignificant. The findings suggest that parents supporting household play might foster their children’s creative thinking processes by nurturing children’s playfulness. Practically, the findings underscore the importance of fostering creativity in the early years by promoting kindergarten children’s playfulness