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Decision-making in case of an unintended pregnancy: an overview of what is known about this complex process
No full textUnintended pregnancies are a worldwide health issue, faced each year by one in 16 people, and experienced in various ways. In this study we focus on unintended pregnancies that are, at some point, experienced as unwanted because they present the pregnant person with a decision to continue or terminate the pregnancy. The aim of this study is to learn more about the decision-making process, as there is a lack of insights into how people with an unintended pregnancy reach a decision. This is caused by 1) assumptions of rationality in reproductive autonomy and decision-making, 2) the focus on pregnancy outcomes, e.g. decision-certainty and reasons and, 3) the focus on abortion in existing research, excluding 40% of people with an unintended pregnancy who continue the pregnancy. We conducted a narrative literature review to examine what is known about the decision-making process and aim to provide a deeper understanding of how persons with unintended pregnancy come to a decision.Our analysis demonstrates that the decision-making process regarding unintended pregnancy consists of navigating entangled layers, rather than weighing separable elements or factors. The layers that are navigated are both internal and external to the person, in which a ‘sense of knowing’ is essential in the decision-making process. The layers involved and complexity of the decision-making regarding unintended pregnancy show that a rational decision-making frame is inadequate and a more holistic frame is needed to capture this dynamic and personal experience
Exit, loyalty and focus:Dutch social workers’ responses to swing-of-the-pendulum policies
No full textMany social workers are confronted with tidal waves – cyclical or swing-of-the-pendulum policies – in the course of their career. Policies oscillate between harsh and lenient, emphasising safety and family unity, equality and tailor-made arrangements. In addition, social work organisations are being organised and reorganised in recurrent modes as well: from large-scale to small-scale, with or without team coordinators, from a generalised to a specialised division of tasks. In this article, we pose the question how social workers respond to cyclical changes in policy and management. We use a dataset of 35 interviews with Dutch social workers – trained in the early 1990s, early 2000s, and early 2010s – about their careers. We found that some social workers respond to cyclical changes in policy and management by exiting their profession or contemplating exit. Others adjusted to the policy circles and management fashions, sometimes grudgingly, sometimes because they endorsed the new policies, and sometimes because they just went along. Yet other social workers practised focus, that is: they sought refuge in the core of their profession, delivering the best possible social work, ignoring the tidal waves as far as possible. The latter response seems to be based on a strong professional identit
Micro-disruptions and struggles for success in Beirut
No full textMiddle-Eastern contexts where war, corruption, and oppressive regimes compromise and undermine wellbeing, security and basic freedoms, do not give much hope or outlook for improvement. Even against massive and protracted protests, illegitimate power endures. Some local initiatives “disrupt” these hostile and dehumanizing environments by fostering communities of refuge, care, hope and empowerment. In my Beirut-based research I employ a micro-interactional and emotion-focused sociology to dissect the innerworkings of such communities. Research settings include NGO programs, schools, martial arts gyms, basketball courts, and street corners. They contain interaction rituals, each with their own rhythms, focus, shared mood, and physical deployment. These dynamics chart young people’s disparate paths of development.In different constructive interaction rituals, young people experience three components of success: temporary boosts of positivity, a more durable elevation over difficult circumstances, and grounding in encouraging networks and stabilizing emotional states. These components in varying constellations have important restorative effects for young people suffering from debilitating and discouraging interactions. Concretely, these experiences empower young people’s efforts in education, labor and personal development. I pay substantial attention to youth workers and other adults’ contributions to young people’s struggles for success.Local initiatives can become networked “pockets of resistance, creating multiple sites of micro disruption” as sociologist Erika Summers-Effler puts it. Without outright challenging prevailing macro-structures and regimes, these initiatives provide positive counterweights for overwhelming hardship. The “horizontal” (local, peer-based) multiplication can become a grassroots change, potentially influencing “vertical” power structures. This research is an ongoing exploration of hope in contexts of despair.<br/
Samen verder na de crisis:Lessen uit coronatijd over samenwerken en afstemmen in zorgorganisaties voor mensen met EV(M)B
No full textHow do arts-based communities conceptualise their contribution to social justice for people living with intellectual disabilities? :A scoping review
No full textThis study reports key concepts of arts-based communities (ABCs) regarding their contribution to social justice for people living with intellectual disabilities and provides a foundation for future research. A scoping review was carried out, following the systematic search-strategy approach proposed by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. To extract data, a data-charting form for characteristics and topics of included publications was developed. Thirty-three publications were included in the review. Concepts and terminology were synthesised into key concepts.The identified key concepts are: empowerment and self-advocacy; social interaction, belonging and inclusion; awareness and challenging stigma; advocacy for rights and social change; and skills and employment. These concepts can be related to aims of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and to claims in art therapy literature
Rethinking veteran return trips from a relational perspective: partner’s role in challenging military discourses
No full textThe voices of women with a military partner are often unheard in research on military deployments and their aftermath, even though partners are seen as key pillars of support to military veterans, both by military institutions and society. Research on the experiences of partners is usually done from a clinical or psychological perspective, studying (secondary) traumatization, moral injury, or/and the consequences of living with someone suffering from PTSD. However, how partners themselves assign meaning to military deployments is often overlooked. We engage with this paradox by empirically studying organized group return trips to Bosnia. Recent developments indicate that military organizations gain more interest in partners’ experiences–at least on paper. Since 2023, the Dutch government has granted hundreds of Dutchbat 3 veterans (those stationed in Srebrenica in 1995) and their partners the opportunity to return to Bosnia, as a gesture of recognition and care. We analyse the role of veterans’ partners in changing hegemonic narratives on return trips to Bosnia, and add a gendered perspective to this field of research. While military discourses on the return trip mainly focus on improving the wellbeing of veterans, our research shows that partners are pertinent to invoking repair of the suffering experienced. Recognition entails renewing social relationships. By applying a relational approach, we show the return trips’ potential to renew conversations between couples. However, we also demonstrate that attempts to counter hegemonic narratives often result in a confirmation instead of a transformation of earlier acquired perspectives
Pedagogy with a heartbeat: The transformative potential of citizen science in education
No full textOver the past few years, we have worked together in a citizen science project called Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet (see also Goldin et al. 2021, Goldin et al., 2023). In this project we engaged with 420 young learners in the Limpopo Province of South Africa. We came to see participating schools as collaborative ecosystems where young citizens become entangled with water through experiential encounters that make science alive and relevant. Through our engagement with citizen science, we experienced the transformative power of affect and the relevance of emotions in education as a social and political project. In our pedagogy we depart from the idea that human beings are separate from the biosphere, thus recognising the interdependency of all life forms on earth. We believe that keeping science education in laboratories and libraries affirms what Bozalek and Zemblyas (2023) call “privileged irresponsibility”. We propose that citizen science and its transformative potential can be one way to redress such irresponsibility. Through impactful encounters with human – nonhuman entanglement and the emotions which are evoked in this process, citizen science can create opportunities for responseability (Bozalek & Zemblyas, 2023), through teaching and learning with the heart. Such entanglement also resonates with relationality as the currency of care theorists. In the context of our citizen science work, caring for unfamiliar others is a form of non-humancentred care with unfamiliar water bodies in which the binary of inside-outside learning becomes porous as the geographies of water penetrate the classroom walls. In Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet, we noted how watery spaces and images move back and forth caring-with and through human bodies – waterbodies to school, school to waterbodies. The entanglement with the nonhuman resonates with Massumi’s (2015) notion of becoming where there is an unrolling of an event that is a becoming of two together
Raamwerk maatschappelijk herstel toeslagenaffaire.:Voorbij lessen leren: transformeren en herstel dóen
No full textMastering life chances and choices; a metasynthesis of how disadvantaged young people navigate between self-identity and stigma
No full textCare-dependent people are increasingly expected to actively participate in an accelerating society. This metasynthesis provides insight into how contemporary society complicates the pathways to self-actualization for disadvantaged young people. Giddens’ concept of self-identity was used to analyze the experiences of disadvantaged young people in three participatory projects. These initiatives enable network governance where young people and professionals work together, to better match their care needs and support. Participants often feel that they need to magnify their capabilities to get opportunities for self-actualization and to magnify their disadvantages so they can be acknowledged as “care dependent”, a prerequisite to receive professional support. They call upon professionals and policymakers to recognize their multilayered self-identities and to provide a supportive environment that is adjusted to their own pace, so that they can belong and genuinely participate as their true selves
Self-Responsible Self-Determination:The Educational Theory of Martinus Jan Langeveld (1905-1989), Its Origins and Sources
No full textMartinus Jan Langeveld (1905–1989) was a key figure in Dutch academic educational studies after the Second World War. This article investigates the origins and sources of Langeveld’s theory by examining his prior publications and the main references in conjunction with the intellectual movements of his time. This research shows, first, that Langeveld built his educational theory upon a variety of sources: the German-American psychologist William Stern (1871–1938), the Dutch educationalist Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875–1951), the German philosopher Theodor Litt (1880–1962), and Edmund Husserl’s (1859–1938) philosophy of phenomenology. Further, Langeveld borrowed a phrase from the medieval theology of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) as the key idea of his theory. Last, Langeveld’s theory incorporates the important topics of the first decades of the twentieth century. In particular, the coinciding philosophies of personalism and phenomenology in the context of anti-positivist movements shed new light on Langeveld’s theory