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Relationships Matter Most:A Mixed Methods Study into Meaning in Life in Personality Disorder, Before and After Treatment
No full textMeaning in life is often at stake in patients with personality disorder (PD) and associated with a lack of self-direction. Meaning in life, including religion and spirituality, seems to contain facets within personality and facets independent of personality and might change during treatment. The sample included patients with PD (pre-treatment n = 125, post-treatment n = 85) and a control group (n = 69). To clarify (changes in) facets of meaning in life, open interview questions on meaning, meaninglessness, recovery, and supportive resources were subjected to a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The results show that significant others are the primary, most important source of meaning in life and support for PD patients and controls. Negative feelings, feelings of loss, and a psychiatric disorder are the three most frequent “causes” of meaninglessness in patients, stressing the importance of therapy to treat these issues. In the PD group, pets are a relevant source of meaning in life. Treatment is likely to contribute to the restoration of meaning in life. Here, addressing interpersonal functioning represents a key element, probably by improving connectedness with loved ones
Flourishing as an educational aim
No full textSince the 1990s, there has been a spate of influential research defending flourishing as the aim of education. Promoting student flourishing is a key goal of education that extends beyond academic achievement. This approach recognizes the holistic development of students, nurturing their intellectual, emotional, social, and physical well-being. Over the past two decades, we have also witnessed increased practical uptake of this theoretical stance. Educators, schools, and head teachers from all over the world have drawn inspiration from this movement explicitly to prioritize virtue language and student flourishing in their classrooms or adopt a whole-school approach that aims to cultivate students' virtuous characters with the goal of student flourishing and well-being. This is clearly a wide educational remit and one that has been championed and criticized. In response to objections, some of which were recently made, defenders of flourishing as an educational aim ought to revisit their premises and further explicate and defend their claim that education should aim at flourishing. This is precisely what the five contributions to this suite of articles do, making a timely contribution to furthering the debate over how and why education can and should aim at flourishing
In the Minor Key: The Minuscular Mycelium and its Implications for Citizen Science
No full textIn an era marked by ecological precarity and growing demands for knowledge systems that are more inclusive, situated, and responsive, grassroots initiatives have begun to challenge dominant models of science and expertise. Among these, citizen science has emerged as a powerful mode of inquiry that brings together university-based scientists with communities to highlight lived experience, local knowledge, and collective sense-making. One such initiative, which is grounded in a commitment to care, justice, and co-creation is the project Diamonds on the Soles of our Feet (DSF) which originated as a locally rooted water literacy project in the province of Limpopo in South Africa. Since its inception in 2019, the project has evolved in unexpected, generative and at times even unfathomable ways. From its start in one rural village, it grew into a multi-sited, transnational, and increasingly entangled exploration of environmental justice and relational care. This paper seeks to make sense of these developments through the conceptual lens of a ‘fungal turn’ and the aesthetics of care. Engaging with the entanglements of citizen science, we found, can open up forms of learning that stretch beyond conventional scientific frameworks. Here the image of the fungal as a (dis)organizing principle allows us to contrast it with the more rigid image of science as a container. As DSF networ(ld)s extend into uncharted geographical terrains, the application of an ethics of care, coupled with fungal imagery, offers a valuable lens to interpret the unexpected and indeterminate textures that characterize our unfolding DSF journey. By equipping both learners and educators, DSF aims to create a collaborative model that supports long-term behavioral change and where authentic, value-transparent conversations become the fertile ground for meaningful engagement. We thus aim to create a pedagogy of connection, one that links ecology, identity, and imagination, resisting the impulse to fix, explain away or simplify, but instead to cultivate the capacity to remain present with the troubling complexity of it all. Once we took citizen science out of the container, we began to inhabit a space where encounters became unpredictable, often uncomfortable and occasionally deeply troubling. By resisting the impulse to command, to classify and to control and by resting instead in the minor key, meaning in the unfolding process rather than the singular event, we allowed ourselves to become entangled. Mushrooms offer more than a biological metaphor; they become a lens to reimagine ecological entanglement and the often-invisible networks that shape our understanding of science, learning, and care
