30115 research outputs found
Sort by
From Looking to Learning: Working with and for Young Black Women in Systems of Whiteness
Get PDFIn this paper, I explore both the need and possibility for liberatory work with and in service of young Black women within two systems of Whiteness. First, I discuss a process of exclusion experienced by a group of young women in their inner-London 6th form college: namely being constructed as hypervisible and hypersexual, and subsequently being erased from sight within spaces connected to the college’s public image. I discuss this with reference to a neoliberal framework that insidiously sustains norms of Whiteness in increasingly marketised school settings. I also extend critical analysis to the research process itself, uncovering parallel processes of silencing and stereotyping, with reference to understandings of Whiteness as structurally violent yet invisiblised acts of looking. Crucially, however, I also explore the potential for resistance within these systems. Drawing on Black feminist pedagogical frameworks, I discuss the possibility for co-created spaces in which young Black women’s cultural practices and forms of knowledge take centre-stage. I ultimately find how forms of ‘dancing with’ and ‘listening to’ can serve as important practices of (un)learning for White teachers and/or researchers, specifically within UK schools and education research
Evaluating poetry: Navigating the divide between aesthetical and creativity judgments
Get PDFThe comprehension and appreciation of poetry are inherently subjective, involving both creativity and aesthetic appeal. However, do these assessments of aesthetics and creativity rely on identical criteria, or do they vary depending on underlying factors? We addressed this question in this study. Participants (N=96) evaluated twenty-five English poems across nine subjective characteristics: reading fluency, vivid imagery, perceived emotions (valence and arousal), surprise, originality, usefulness, aesthetic appeal, and creativity. Linear mixed model analysis revealed that a poem’s creativity was primarily predicted by its originality, followed by its usefulness and vivid imagery. Conversely, the evaluation of a poem's aesthetic appeal followed a different route; it was mainly predicted by a poem’s reading fluency, followed by arousal, valence, and vivid imagery. Additionally, the association between creativity and originality was significantly moderated by participants’ personality traits, specifically, openness, vividness of visual imagery and curiosity. The relationship between aesthetic appeal and reading fluency was moderated by the vividness of auditory imagery trait. These findings further suggest that a poem's creativity evaluation closely aligns with the standard definition of creativity, relying on its originality and usefulness. The study provides novel insights into the implicit internal models in the evaluation of poetry
Saying Ceanothus: The Indefinite Garden
Get PDFThis paper mediates between the work of mourning and the practice of gardening as a space of play. Both ‘work’ and ‘play’ are transplanted across various contexts, theoretical and geographical. It draws upon the vegetal tongue of deconstruction as the common language at the verdurous heart of the lives on which it reflects – the author’s and her green-fingered parents – cultivating the indefinite garden growing on.
7 Photographs accompany the text
Nods of Agreement: Webcam-Driven Avatars Improve Meeting Outcomes and Avatar Satisfaction Over Audio-Driven or Static Avatars in All-Avatar Work Videoconferencing
Get PDFAvatars are edging into mainstream videoconferencing, but evaluation of how avatar animation modalities contribute to work meeting outcomes has been limited. We report a within-group videoconferencing experiment in which 68 employees of a global technology company, in 16 groups, used the same stylized avatars in three modalities (static picture, audio-animation, and webcam-animation) to complete collaborative decision-making tasks. Quantitatively, for meeting outcomes, webcam-animated avatars improved meeting effectiveness over the picture modality and were also reported to be more comfortable and inclusive than both other modalities. In terms of avatar satisfaction, there was a similar preference for webcam animation as compared to both other modalities. Our qualitative analysis shows participants expressing a preference for the holistic motion of webcam animation, and that meaningful movement outweighs realism for meeting outcomes, as evidenced through a systematic overview of ten thematic factors. We discuss implications for research and commercial deployment and conclude that webcam-animated avatars are a plausible alternative to video in work meetings
Hegemonic Islamic masculinities: Contextualising a new form of hegemonic masculinities in the Iranian diaspora in the UK
Get PDFMasculinities research has started to explore the possibility of alternative manhood among migrant men. This paper aims to contribute to this emerging work by touching upon a less-explored subject in relation to hegemonic masculinity and migration and the perceptions towards sexual violence in the UK. Thirty participants were interviewed, and the data were analysed using framework analysis. The discourses such as ‘gheirat’ and ‘real man’ and ‘complete Iranian man’ showed that Connell's concept of hegemonic masculinity is useful, but does not provide an adequate theoretical framework for analysing other forms of masculinities in the migration studies. Hence a new concept, ‘hegemonic Islamic masculinities’, is introduced as the subsection of hegemonic masculinity to contextualise the lived experience of Iranian men to sexual violence in the U
A Right to Health Case for Access to Affordable Procreative Assistance
Get PDFThis article contends that States have procedural and aspirational obligations towards the provision of affordable procreative assistance. I locate this obligation on a normative understanding of the human right to reproductive health that accounts for lived experiences of reproductive decision-making and involuntary childlessness. I argue that while involuntarily childlessness should not be viewed as a disease or pathology, there is nevertheless, a healthcare entitlement to procreative assistance as a means of furthering valued liberties and autonomies. Further, this article argues that involuntary childlessness arising from ‘social’ reasons is sufficiently similar to instances where it is caused by physiologically diagnosable infertility. Drawing on this, I make a case for parity in access for same sex couples, older women, single women, and seekers from underserved communities
The material force of categories
Get PDFThe function of categories of the human sciences is a well-established field of scholarly inquiry, animated by debates over their capacity to reduce, exclude, determine, abstract, produce, loop, control, and/or restrain. This special issue takes an interdisciplinary perspective to investigate urgent questions about the ‘material force’ of categories as they operate in practice. Specifically, we emphasise the plasticity of categories and how their ambivalent boundaries can render their categorical forcefulness continuously operative. Categories morph and shift as they traverse different fields, re-articulating difference as they interact with divergent institutions and epistemic infrastructures. The five interdisciplinary articles in this issue explore the material force of categories across varied contexts, including the prison system, digital culture, legal frameworks, psychiatric diagnostics, and applied governmental research. In so doing, the special issue as a whole emphasises the capacious yet persistent nature of categorisation, revealing how, in multiple ways, categories can stabilise the management of people precisely through their inherent structures of contingency and ambivalence
Religious disaffiliation and sexually minoritised groups: A scoping review of the literature
Get PDFReligious teachings and beliefs often convey an understanding of sexuality that excludes and marginalises sexually minoritised people. This PRISMA-compliant scoping review selected 29 peer-reviewed papers about the religious disaffiliation of sexually minoritised people for full-text analysis and synthesis. With the use of reflexive thematic and bibliometric analysis, the review found that current research highlights the complicated relationship between religious and LGBTQIA+ identities. This relationship often leads individuals to disaffiliate from their religions and, in turn, either reaffiliate with a different faith tradition, remain with the same but under different terms, or stay non-affiliated indefinitely. Further research is needed to better understand the non-linear and intricate process of disaffiliation that occurs when there is tension between one’s religious identity and sexuality, as well as the impact that these pressures have on the mental health and well-being of LGBTQIA+ individuals
The school bullying research program: How it has developed, 1976-2020
No full textSeveral bibliometric analyses have commented on the rapid growth of research on bullying, and especially school bullying, over recent decades. There is now an international research effort, which might be called a research program, with several articles appearing on a daily basis. We review the previous bibliometric studies on school bullying and cyberbullying, which have mainly used the Web of Science database. To examine the content of research articles on bullying, we report an extension of previous research (Smith et al. 2021) to an examination of randomly selected samples of 100 journal articles relevant to school bullying over each of four time periods: 1976–95, 1996–2005, 2006–2015 and 2016–2020. Besides the number and country/continent of authors, and proportion of cross-country studies, we report on the type of article. For empirical articles, we report on the type of study (cross-sectional, longitudinal), type of data (quantitative, qualitative), source of data (e.g., self-reports, peer-reports, teacher nominations), main data focus (definitions/methodology, prevalence, correlates, attitudes, coping, cross-national), different types of bullying, various peer roles (bully, victim, bystanders etc.), differences in bullying (age, gender, ethnicity, disability), prejudice-based bullying, correlates of roles (e.g., individual, family, school, societal factors), peer roles, significant others, and interventions. We summarise what this analysis tells us about the development and focus of this research program, and some challenges the program faces in the future
How can young people’s multilingual digital storytelling foster intercultural responsibility and an ethics of care?
Get PDFThis chapter draws on a global research project, Critical Connections (2012-ongoing), to critically examine how young people use multilingual digital storytelling to develop as global ethical thinkers. I look at how digital storytelling allows young people to investigate the dilemma of sustainable futures in critical, speculative, and imaginative ways. Applying the theoretical lenses of intercultural responsibility and an ethics of care, this research moves beyond borders and adopts a decolonial critical stance towards entangled local and global partnerships. I demonstrate in this chapter how this focus on an ethics of care can be amplified in a digital story with its power to magnify what matters, paying attention to the particular and the importance of everyday experiences. I discuss the pedagogical approaches and challenges of implementing digital storytelling with young people (8-16-years-old) in different educational contexts including a secondary school in India, a residential school trip in Malaysia, and a primary school in the UK. In the research presented in this chapter, I analyse particular moments from these digital stories created around intercultural responsibility and an ethics of care and listen carefully to the voices of these young filmmakers. To conclude, I reflect on whether young digital storytellers can create a community platform where their voices are heard, and they can call for action and seek solutions