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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
Examining People's Experiences of Working in Collaborative Relationships While Conducting Inclusive Research Involving Persons with Intellectual Disabilities
No full textThis study examined the experiences of working in collaborative relationships while conducting inclusive research involving persons with intellectual disabilities. More specifically, the study explored work relationships, social relationships, and factors that influence collaboration within inclusive research teams. Interviews were conducted with nine researchers with intellectual disabilities, eight academic researchers, and nine principal investigators who were all involved in six inclusive research projects together. The analysis of the interviews produced four themes: (1) the diverse nature of the involvement of researchers with intellectual disabilities; (2) the significance of involving researchers with intellectual disabilities within academic research; (3) shaping equity in research projects; and (4) stereotyping hindering collaborations with researchers with intellectual disabilities. These findings have implications for research and practice, both in terms of promoting inclusive research and facilitating the meaningful participation of persons with intellectual disabilities within various aspects of society, including education, employment, healthcare, and social activities
Teachers' Ideas about what and how they Contribute to the Development of Students' Ethical Compasses.:An Empirical Study among Teachers of Dutch Universities of Applied Sciences.
No full textIn this empirical study, we investigate what and how teachers in Dutch universities of applied sciences (UAS) think they contribute to the development of students’ ethical compasses. Six focus groups were conducted with teachers across three programmes: Initial Teaching Education, Business Services, and Information and Communication Technology. This study revealed that teachers across the three different professional disciplines shared similar ideas about what should be addressed in the development of students’ ethical compasses. Their contributions were grouped into three core themes: creating students’ moral awareness, developing students’ moral skills and promoting students’ moral professional behaviour. The majority of the teachers used a wide range of planned and unplanned pedagogic–didactic actions (reflecting individual learning and cooperative and group learning) to enhance the development of students’ ethical compasses. However, teachers’ strategies were mostly unstructured and unreflective and depended on the individual teacher’s ability and knowledge to address moral themes. Furthermore, the study revealed two incompatible ideals: as role models, the teachers aimed to exemplify explicitly how to be a professional with an ethical compass. However, they also wanted to adopt a neutral stance because they were afraid to manipulate the students’ ethical compasses. Therefore, they avoided promoting the ethical compass that they believed to be the best
Between structure and mystery:Exploring the spiritual dimension of mild to moderate dementia care
Get PDFExperiences of grief and maltreatment among orphans in foster homes in Namibia
No full textOrphans in SSA are often cared for in foster homes. Although there is no consistent picture of whether orphans experience more often than non-orphans child maltreatment, they are at risk of facing violence in their home situation. This study aimed to understand how Namibian orphans experience their treatment in foster care and how exposure to maltreatment influences their experiences of grief. An ethnographic design was used in which 46 children, adolescents, their carers and various experts in northern Namibia participated. Focus groups, individual interviews and art-based methods were used. The results show that the majority of the orphans experience a form of maltreatment, including differential treatment between themselves and the biological children in the household. Risk factors for child maltreatment are identified on child, carer and household level. Children and adolescents long for their parents when they are treated badly and feel the parent could have protected and comforted them, which shows the important role of having a secure foster home situation in coping with parental loss. Parenting interventions to positively influence the risk of child maltreatment in foster care are recommended
Ein Netzwerk-Wir: Religion im Zeitalter der Superdiversität
No full textThe Netherlands has changed profoundly in recent decades. The large cities of the Randstad have be-come ethnically ‘superdiverse’. There has also been a drastic change in the religious sphere, which is also characterised by diversity. What underlies these developments and what social consequences and challenges result from them will be described below. The explanations are based on two multidiscipli-nary research programmes on ‘hybrid religiosity’ and the ‘new we’ in the Netherlands, which were car-ried out atthe Theological Research Institute of the Dutch Dominicans (DSTS) and deal with the chal-lenges and effects of these diversification processes
The Spiritual Dimension of Parents' Experiences Caring for a Seriously Ill Child:An Interview Study
No full textBACKGROUND: Parents of children with life-threatening conditions may have to balance their personal, family, and professional lives in the anticipation of child loss and the demands of providing medical care for their child. The challenges these parents are confronted with may lead to specific care needs. In this paper we explore the spiritual dimension of caring for a child with a life-threatening condition from the parents perspective.METHODS: We held an exploratory qualitative study with in-depth interviews with parents of children (0-21) with life-threatening conditions. Interviews were transcribed and subsequently thematically analyzed.RESULTS: Twenty-four parents of 21 children participated in the interviews. The spiritual dimension is an important, although not always visible, aspect of the experience of parents dealing with their child's illness. The main domains with regard to spirituality were: 1) identity; 2) parenthood; 3) connectedness; 4) loss or adjustment of goals; 5) agency; 6) navigating beliefs and uncertainties; and 7) decision-making. Parents also reflected on their spiritual care needs.CONCLUSION: The spiritual dimension plays a central role in the experiences of parents who care for children with life-threatening conditions, but they receive little support in this dimension, and care needs often go unnoticed. If we want to provide high-quality pediatric palliative care including adequate spiritual support for parents, we should focus on the wide range of their spiritual experiences, and provide support that focuses both on loss of meaning as well as on where parents find growth, joy or meaning.</p
How to provide existential and spiritual support to people with mild to moderate dementia and their loved ones.:A pilot study.
No full textBackgroundPeople with mild to moderate dementia and their loved ones may experience strong existential and spiritual challenges due to the disease. People with dementia could therefore benefit greatly from ongoing conversational support. Within the literature and in supportive practice, there are very few tools that help professionals provide this type of support. Professionals may therefore be unaware of, or uncertain of, how support can be given.ObjectiveTo develop and test support approaches that may enable professionals to better conduct conversations with attention for existential and spiritual issues.MethodsParticipatory action research was conducted with dementia care professionals who spoke to 62 clients and 36 loved ones. Research consisted of two cycles of analyzing support, formulating strategies to try, testing and reflecting on the success of these actions and formulating new ones. The Diamond model for existential and spiritual issues regarding mild to moderate dementia, developed in previous research, was used as a framework.ResultsFive types of approaches, corresponding to the five fundamental polarities within the basic framework, were found to be helpful in alleviating tensions and bolstering strengths. For issues of self-confidence and -worth, an approach of exploring the felt self was developed; for issues of capacity and adaptability, an exploring daily routines approach; for issues of security and loss, an exploring a trinity of needs approach; for issues of burden and enrichment, an exploring memory approach; and for issues of faith and meaning, an exploring ones’ predicament approach. When exploring these approaches, participants found sets and sequencing of questions and prompts to be helpful and transformative.ConclusionProfessionals can use the Diamond framework to provide conversational support to alleviate tension, enhance meaning and bolster strength for clients and loved ones
Cultural and Religious Pluralism in the Age of Imaginaries
No full textIn recent debates within philosophy, religious studies, social sciences and political theory, the “secular age” is being rethought as a time in which the secular and the religious—as well as the realms of experience and imagination they stand for, i.e., immanence and transcendence—mutually inform and transform each other. This complex condition is analyzed as a cultural and religious pluralism of imaginaries, marking the so-called “end of the grand narratives”. Against the stable and compelling ideologies and worldview systems, a world of radical difference and “super-diversity” is opened up, in which the meaning of life and the sense of the world are addressed in a permanent play of hybrid, temporal, and unstable imaginaries.In this Special Issue, seven scholars contribute to the important and urgent field of philosophical and political research on pluralism, whether initiated and carried out in the French context, the German context, the South American context, the Indian context, or the Anglo-Saxon context. In the seven articles, theories of pluralism in relation to imagination are further developed, in the cross-over area between secularity and religion. For further information, we refer to the editorial below.Prof. Dr. Laurens ten KateMr. Bram van BoxtelGuest Editor