1,720,953 research outputs found

    Sustainable living for a sustainable earth : from an education for sustainable development towards an education for sustainable living

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    This research project responds to the observation of radical ecologists and ecopsychologists that our present approaches to environmental change are widely limited to technological, behavioural and cognitive strategies, and lack a deep understanding of the complex psychological and sociocultural interrelationships that underpin human perception and behaviour. To gain a deepened understanding of our ecological crises from depth psychological, holistic, and transpersonal perspectives, a number of counsellors, psychotherapists, naturopaths, and one environmental educator were either interviewed or completed questionnaires that explored the meaning of the terms ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’. They were also invited to express their views on environmental deterioration and what it means to them to live sustainably. The knowledge obtained from the research participants, an extensive literature review, and my professional experience as a psychotherapist, workshop facilitator and trainer, suggest that the current dominant theories and practices of environmental education, and other change practices, are limited in their effectiveness. The study proceeds with a discussion of key issues related to the ecological approach proposed in this study; and of emergent areas such as environmental education, education for sustainability, deep ecology and ecofeminism. A critique focuses particularly on the common assumption of conventional learning paradigms that deep change can be achieved without addressing emotional resistance to such change. By using the work of the Resilience Alliance, “a multidisciplinary research group that explores the dynamics of complex adaptive as a reference point it is argued that our need to compensate for our fragmented selves leads to significant resistances to changes in consciousness. The study concludes with a summary of the main findings and thoughts on possible sustainable and unsustainable futures

    Sustainability work : an urgent need for a new profession

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    Recognising that educational efforts to create a more ecologically aware society, and that the mission of social work to facilitate positive social change have so far largely failed to achieve this, we are arguing here for the need to create a profession of “sustainability worker,” professionals who are able to help individuals and groups to develop personal sustainable living and healing pathways. We explore two key shortcomings in the current dominant thinking about ecological change: that technological progress will suffice to create a sustainable world and that generic environmental and sustainability education are able to create a deep ecological consciousness. The experiences of many ecotherapists and ecologically aware counsellors suggest that transformation towards ecological consciousness needs to be developed as part of a whole-person healing journey in which each individual is enabled to enhance their physical and mental health, while developing their ability to live with a reduced ecological footprint. We describe the professional skills required to enable this integrated process, and the educational initiatives needed to make this possible. In considering the most practical pathway for the development of this new profession, we compare sustainability work with social work by highlighting some of their significant differences. Applying a social ecology approach, we review the current critiques of social work theories and practices and argue that the needed social change cannot be achieved by just addressing the needs and disempowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed and living in poverty. Most ecological destruction and ethical decline are caused by people engaging in “retail therapy”: the practice of seeking to manage past traumas and present stresses through the compensatory, unreflective and addictive consumption of non-essential goods and services. The roots of this adaptive behaviour must be recognised and worked with to enable the needed transformation. We conclude that both social work and sustainability work should be regarded as complementary approaches needed to finally effect deep ecological change. We propose that sustainability work programmes initially be offered by ecologically progressive universities as a major in social work studies. The architecture for a related training programme has recently been developed by the first author for an Indian University and can be viewed by interested readers online

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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