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Exploring Mobility Help-seeking Behavior Among People with Physical Disabilities: A case study of Jaipur Foot
Get PDFIt is estimated that as many as 90 million people living in India experience some sort of disability (The World Bank, 2007). As India’s population keeps growing and aging, not only will the medical aspects, but also the societal impacts of disability need to be brought to the forefront of discussion, developmental strategy, and policy implementation. This study sought to analyze factors influencing the process of seeking help from formal and informal sources for people with physical disabilities. Data was collected from 10 people with physical disabilities receiving a variety of mobility aids from the NGO, Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS). Six other professionals working at BMVSS and another Indian NGO, Sangath were also interviewed. Overall, it discovered that help-seeking is very nuanced and elicits conflicting thoughts and feelings about independence, dependence, and sympathy. While seeking help from a formal source may be a more straightforward process, several barriers still exist. Informal everyday help-seeking for mobility related difficulties were much more complicated and situational and require further in-depth research. While disability advocates continue to fight for rights, stigma and inaccessibility of services, support, and opportunity still embody the everyday lives of people with disabilities
Terra Nullius: The Effects of Australia’s Colonial History on Sense of Place
Get PDFAustralia’s history of colonization of Aboriginal communities continues to affect not only the indigenous population of Australia, but also non-Aboriginal Australians. This study focuses on how Australia’s complex history of colonization and its lasting effects influence the ability of Non-Aboriginal Australians to connect to place. One potential effect of colonization is “settler-guilt” or the complex feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame felt by “settlers” at their privilege derived from the racist, violent, and genocidal treatment of indigenous people and communities due to the colonization of indigenous lands and the legacy of colonization. This study asks whether settler-guilt exists in Australia, and if it does, how it might impact connection to place and the environment. The ultimate goal of this study is to better understand the ways in which colonization affects non-Aboriginal sense of place in order to create a post-colonial environmental and nature connection movement.
I collected 69 online survey responses via distribution in environmental and sense of place Facebook groups as well as conducted 13 in-depth interviews from participants who had already completed the survey. No participants were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent as this study focused on the effects of colonization on Non-Aboriginal Australians. Additionally, as invasion occurred differently in different locations of Australia this study compares how effects of colonization differ across three locations as surveys were collected in Northern Rivers, New South Wales, Hobart, Tasmania, and Melbourne, Victoria.
A strong majority of participants reported feeling complex emotions such as guilt, shame, anger, and grief (emotions which we categorize as “settler-guilt”) when thinking about colonization. Additionally, a majority of participants agreed that, although they felt a strong connection to place, they felt that colonization affected, and in some cases presented a barrier to, their connection to place. Participants noted that in order to decolonize the environmental and nature connection movements they hoped to learn more about local indigenous communities and form personal connections with Aboriginal people. Additionally, participants placed a strong emphasis on hoping to create space for Aboriginal leadership within the environmental and nature connection movements. Although there does appear to be a connection between differing colonial effects and location in Australia, more data is needed to fully understand why differences occur. Overall, this data suggests that settler-guilt among non-Aboriginal Australians is not only present but also influences the connection to place of non-Aboriginal Australians. Looking forward, the environmental movement needs to integrate more Aboriginal leadership and create spaces and support for non-Aboriginal Australians to question their own role in the settler-colonial framework
Sex and Senesce: A Exploration of Aging Women’s Sexual Selves
Get PDFThe sexual lives of women over the age of 50 are often forgotten from just about every medium. This research hopes to uncover how aging women interpret their current sexual selves, sexual histories, and changing bodies. In thinking about this, four women were interviewed about their life stories surrounded love, passion, and sex. Each of these women told brave accounts of their lives and through their narratives, we were able to draw theoretical conclusions about bodily shame, age performativity, and prescribed stereotypical roles. These four stories, told individually as to support each woman\u27s personal narrative are vastly different yet intersect in many ways. The research concludes an important theoretical analysis of an aging woman\u27s connection to life and how both age and gender are situated in a faulty timeline. Their unforgettable stories explore what life looks like as the years slip away and show how the process of aging is a universal human struggle
Laguna de los Datos: Usos y Percepciones de RNU Laguna de Los Patos, Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
Get PDFLa protección de las áreas naturales urbanas es un tema importante que requiere tanta atención a los aspectos humanos de estos espacios como a sus características naturales. Río Grande, Argentina tiene un sistema de reservas naturales urbanas (RNUs) que comenzó en 2012 para proteger el hábitat de las aves migratorias en la ciudad. En este proyecto, estudié las actividades y las percepciones de los visitantes de una de estas reservas, RNU Laguna de los Patos. Conté todas las personas que visitaron la reserva durante 13 días, registrando lo que hicieron y cuánto tiempo se quedaron. También encuesté a una muestra de los visitantes y les pregunté sobre su uso de la reserva y sus opiniones. Descubrí que la cantidad de visitantes en la reserva variaba mucho y dependía del clima. Las respuestas a mi encuesta mostraron que los visitantes valoran la reserva igualmente por sus aspectos sociales y ambientales y, en general, aprobaron las restricciones actuales en el espacio. Las sugerencias para mejorar la reserva incluyeron plantar más árboles, mantenerla más y añadir más lugares para sentarse. Recomiendo que se realicen estudios similares en otras reservas de la ciudad.
The protection of urban natural areas is an important issue that requires as much attention to the human aspects of these spaces as to their natural features. Río Grande, Argentina has a system of urban natural reserves started in 2012 to protect the habitat of migratory birds in the city. In this project, I studied the activities and perceptions of visitors to one of these reserves, the Laguna de los Patos (Duck Lake). I counted all of the people who visited the reserve for 13 days, recording what they did and for how long they stayed. I also surveyed a sample of the visitors and asked them about their use of the reserve and opinions of it. I found that the number of visitors in the reserve varied greatly and was dependent on the weather. Responses to my survey showed that visitors value the reserve equally for its social and environmental aspects and generally approved of the current restrictions in the space. Suggestions to improve the reserve included planting more trees, maintaining it more, and adding more places to sit. I recommend that similar studies be done in the city’s other reserves
Socio-Political Criticism in Contemporary Indonesian Art
Get PDFThe objective of this paper is to understand the connections between contemporary art and politics in Indonesia both in terms of how politics has shaped art practices, and in terms of how art influences politics. Questions I was interested in exploring include how contemporary art practices have changed considering the political changes over the past 30 years; if and how contemporary art is being used to facilitate political dialogues in the country; if and how contemporary art is being used to criticize and invoke change regarding social issues; and what the role of art spaces, collectives and foundations is in enabling the success of Indonesian artist’s socio-police criticism.
My interest in this subject was sparked by a contemporary art book, Contemporary Indonesian Art: Artists, Art Spaces, and Collectives, by Yvonne Spielmann. The book said that during the Suharto Dictatorship, from 1966 to 1998, all visual art other than state-supporting realism and apolitical abstraction was strictly censored (Spielmann, 2017, p. 51). Therefore, it was not until the Reformasi era starting 20 years ago after the fall of Suharto that Indonesian art and artists were able to freely create, express and criticize (Jurriëns 2013). Today, Yogyakarta is home to an art scene where art practices are “social critical in intention, using expressive and realistic styles… to embed political criticism in a broader, widely familiar, and unsuspicious traditional cultural context” (Spielmann, 2017, p. 54). I was interested in learning more about how Indonesia’s brand-new contemporary art scene is able to start dialogues, spread information, and criticize society and politics; how the artists create the work; and how it is received by the public. For me, an artist, this topic is part of an important global discussion about the power of visual art as a tool for radical change.
This paper will conclude my findings about the factors that both pushed and allowed artists to make contemporary art that addressed social and political problems. In this paper, I will analyze eleven pieces of art made between 1994 and today, which I have chosen because I feel that they successfully represent both the breadth of methods artists have employed to make political art, and the ways artists’ practices have changed over the last decades. To understand any piece of art, it is important to understand the context in which the piece was made. Therefore, the eleven pieces of art presented in this paper will be woven together with the narrative of art and politics in Indonesia beginning with the de-politicization of art under the New Order beginning in 1965, continuing through the creation of the New Art Movement (GSRB) in 1974, the fall of Suharto in 1998, and the 2007 Asian Art Market Boom, and concluding with the issues that contemporary artists are most impacted by and interested in exploring today: globalization, history, and education
Building a Curriculum for the English Language Learning Program at a New University
Get PDFTurkish learners entering university for the first time have high expectations that a university education will be vastly different in its approach from their previous educational experiences. The hope is that learners will learn the skills needed to become independent, lifelong learners. While this may be true in their faculties, it is often not the case for learners attending English language preparatory programs (ELPP) where the course content is often dictated by textbooks. This use of the course books illustrates Krahnke\u27s (1987) concern that while course books are not intended to be syllabi, they often become so. Many current English language course books take a structural approach to their design that does not meet the learning needs of learners intending to study in an English language medium. This material development project aims to investigate the various approaches to curriculum design and use the tools found there to create the framework for an explicit four-module curriculum that provides student-centered learning, fosters learner autonomy, develops communication skills and prepares learners to study in their faculties in English. This project proposes to reach these goals through a systems approach to curriculum design (Nation & Macalister, Graves, 2000) utilizing the critical ideas of understanding by design (UbD) (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006) and Bloom\u27s Taxonomy
The African American Experience on Study Abroad: A Closer Look at the Student Perspective
Get PDFWhile the number of students participating in education abroad is on the rise, historically African American students are absent from study abroad research. African American students recount their personal experiences through interviews and surveys. Students live in the following locations: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, India, Nicaragua, Samoa, and Switzerland.
The guiding research questions were: What are the experiences of African American students in study abroad? What are the basic practices of a program that will successfully support African American students while studying abroad? What advice do alumni have on how programming can be improved? Four open ended interviews and 19 surveys were utilized to focus in on issues that were important to students. Three main areas of racism directed at students studying abroad were: treatment by the locals, treatment by the local staff and treatment by the U.S. American peers on the program.
The focus is on the experience of African American college students and the findings show issues of gender, race, and nationality. Discussed is the relationship between students of different races on the programs and how that plays a role in the study abroad experience. Recommendations for host country staff and program planners are discussed as well as areas for future research
Age, Aptitude, and Autonomy: An Exploration of Self-Guided Learning and Autonomy Development in Adult Learners
Get PDFOptimal language learning facilitation requires drawing on insights from many feeder disciplines. Key among them has been the field of second language acquisition. With the significant developments in technology and the urgency for English learners to compete in today’s globalized world, there has been a particular focus on more advanced learning strategies as well as on research in the area of student autonomy. The latter type of research has tapped into insights offered not just by applied linguists but also by polyglots who have achieved high levels of fluency in multiple languages. Independent language learning has drawn further attention as it has been shown to be an important factor in the experiences of learners who have acquired exceptional levels of attainment. This has necessitated a careful analysis and some revision of extant theories of language acquisition, with some promoting self-directed language learning as perhaps the most feasible method for individuals seeking optimal language development and cultural immersion conducive to deeper, expedited learning. This research paper seeks to understand traditional theories of second language acquisition as they relate to self-directed learning, and the fostering of autonomy in adult learners with limited educational background, studying in a somewhat mixed level context. The author will examine factors such as age, motivation, and aptitude, and correlate their interpretation in the literature with observations, surveys, and analyses of students in the context under study. To these she will add an emic perspective to self-directed learning, describing her own experience with three months of self-directed language learning. The goal of this multifaceted description is to shed light on methods, learning strategies, and other variables that determine levels of attainment outside conventional language learning approaches
Expanding Access to Finance in Nyarugusu Refugee Camp: From Conceptualization to Implementation
Get PDFAmidst the world’s worst refugee crises in history, as the number of refugees worldwide climbs past 22.5 million (OHCHR 2017), it is imperative that we find real, lasting and empowering solutions to their needs. We must ask ourselves, how can we best serve these refugees and the countries that host them? What needs of refugees remain elusive?
Programs directed at refugees traditionally cater to their physical needs such as food, clothing, shelter and medicine, while their financial needs are disregarded. Furthermore, programs that do generate income do not cater to the needs of safely storing, saving, sending and/or receiving money
This paper is a multidisciplinary research study into the conceptualization and implementation of finance literacy programming in Tanzania’s refugee camps. Using qualitative research methods, this study validates that refugees have similar financial needs to non-refugees, a savings group led approach is a promising solution, and using connectivity through digital means is a creative, advantageous way to connect refugees to financial literacy programming and, in the long term, connect refugees to formal financial institutions. An interdisciplinary approach was used to develop a greater understanding into the intricate nature of the financial barriers affecting refugees.
Participants are Burundian and Congolese (DRC) refugees residing in the Nyarugusu, Nduta, and Mtendeli refugee camps in Tanzania.
Keywords: Refugees, Savings Groups, Digital Literacy, Financial Literac
From Theory to Curriculum: A Best Practices Model for a New International Student Cultural Acclimation Course
Get PDFThis course-linked capstone (CLC) is inspired by the current international student cultural acclimation course at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta. Surprisingly, there are few cultural acclimation courses offered in the United States and there is lack of academic research evaluating the effectiveness of such courses. This course model will incorporate the successful aspects of the few current cultural acclimation courses offered, including the Oneonta course, and integrate learning, cultural adjustment, and student development theories into the curriculum to provide a basis for the content and structure of the course. Qualitative research through surveys and interviews with international students and international education professionals also inform the course content.
This course provides a safe space for international students to inquire, learn, and grow throughout their first semester at a U.S. university and after attending the course, students will be able to navigate more comfortably and successfully through life in the U.S. and in their campus community. The intention of this research is to provide a resource for international education professionals to implement similar programs in higher education institutions, as well as to provide international students with the tools and ongoing structured support to form meaningful relationships, to reflect upon and discuss their own experience of cultural adjustment, and to recognize and explore the characteristics, norms, and values of U.S. culture