Cocooning in Culture: Exploring the development and implementation of a culturally-situated trauma-informed approach within an Aboriginal community controlled out of home care program

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 11 times more likely to be placed in Out of Home Care (OOHC) than non-Indigenous children. Trauma-informed practice has been identified as an approach to effectively support children in OOHC. For Aboriginal children cultural connection in the context of trauma-informed practice is found to be lacking. There is little formal exploration about what is needed to develop a culturally-situated trauma-informed practice (CSTIP) approach to supporting Aboriginal children in OOHC. This community-led Indigenous Informed Participatory Action Research (IPAR) investigates participants\u27 understandings and perceptions of what is required to co-create CSTIP with an Aboriginal organisation providing OOHC to Aboriginal children. This research privileges the voices of Aboriginal community members, staff and carers in the discussion about what constitutes, enables and hinders a CSTIP approach in supporting Aboriginal children to heal from trauma. It is undertaken on the South Coast of NSW Australia on Dharawal Country in partnership with an OOHC program managed by an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (ACCO). The research uses a relational ontology, an epistemology of ignorance and an Indigenous conceptual frame. Multiple interpretive methods are used, including individual and group yarning, artefact and document analysis, co-analysis, observations, ethnographic field notes and reflexive writing. Using this methodological approach, the ‘knowing, being and doing’ of CSTIP is examined

Education in the climate emergency: school sustainability practices, climate imaginaries, and teaching hope

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has reported with very high confidence that human activity is changing the climate, that climate change has severe impacts for human and natural systems, and that we have a limited window to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming to 1.5 °C. Our future is being shaped by this crisis and our collective responses to mitigate and adapt to it. This article-based thesis presents interdisciplinary research on the response of secondary schools in England to climate change. The chapters first introduce a doctoral journey over 3.5 years, including adaptations in response to COVID-19. They then present a combined literature review, weave together the three academic articles, and end by exploring the contributions of this research and sharing future plans. The first paper (Chapter 3) was based on a large number of semi-structured interviews and focus group conversations with different school stakeholders at both state and independent schools. Theories of social practice and practice architectures were used to explore bundles of practices and the arrangements that support them related to sustainability, especially in terms of semantic (sayings), material (doings) and social (relatings) dimensions. The article, currently under peer review by the journal Energy Research and Social Science, argued for expanding whole-school approaches to sustainability to incorporate insights from practice architectures. The second paper (Chapter 4) involved data collection through a questionnaire distributed to Sixth Form students and teachers, primarily comprising measures of action competence and climate hope that were previously developed and validated by other researchers. Quantitative analysis of this data revealed the relationship between teacher practices and student reported hope, and compared responses based on students from independent versus state schools and students that identified as female versus male. This article was published in the journal Environmental Education Research. The third paper (Chapter 5) used the creative, participatory method of speculative digital storytelling, in which 16-18-year-olds in the UK and Ireland participated in workshops to produce a short ‘letter from the future’ in a video format. Through reflexive thematic and narrative analysis, themes related to the scripts and visuals were identified, as well as different narratives of climate futures. This article was published in the journal Children’s Geographies. The discussion (Chapter 6) outlines three threads that weave together the research – education, futures, storytelling – and offers a series of methodological, theoretical and empirical contributions, including speculative digital storytelling, practice-informed whole-school sustainability, and hope-based pedagogies in climate education

Researching animal research

Animal research is part of a complex web of relations made up of humans and animals, practices inside and outside the laboratory, formal laws and professional norms, and social imaginaries of the past and future of medicine. Researching Animal Research sets out an innovative approach for understanding and intervening in the social practices that constitute animal research. It proposes the idea of the animal research nexus to draw attention to the connections that make up animal research today and to understand how these elements have become entangled over time. The authors examine moves towards openness, inclusion, and interdisciplinarity in science, and open up questions that move debates beyond polarised pro- and anti-public positions. The book is written as a collaboration and conversation between historians, geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, science and technology studies scholars, and engagement professionals, with commentaries from the arts, social sciences, and animal research sector. Through detailed qualitative analysis of regulation, care, expertise, and public engagement the book offers an unparalleled picture of the changing cultures, practices, and policies of UK animal research. By incorporating critical commentaries and examples of creative practices, it also seeks to animate and potentially transform the animal research nexus that it describes. As the social imaginaries and regulations around animal research continue to change in the UK and beyond, this book is a vital interdisciplinary contribution to the search for new ways to conduct and research animal research today

The Non-Literate ‘Other’: The Gendered Narratives of Indian and Pakistani Female Migrant Spouses with emerging English language and literacy skills

Adult migrant women with limited formal schooling or emerging English language and literacy skills (known as LESLLA learners) face formidable challenges not only in their personal lives, but also in their efforts to improve their English language and literacy skills in a hyper-literate society that expects migrants to be proficient in the language to demonstrate their willingness to integrate and belong. The presence of these learners in institutions where practitioners are skilled at teaching students from either literacy-based cultures or those already literate in a language other than English, presents various challenges for Further Education (FE) lecturers. Despite these challenges, LESLLA learners remain an under-researched group of students in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and English Language Teaching (ELT) studies, in particular with regards to research that focuses on LESLLA women, learners who have been discursively produced within the wider media and policy landscape as passive victims of oppression in need of empowerment; incapable or ignorant learners; and migrants reluctant to learn English. This cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study was designed to provide a counter-story to this deficit view. It contributes to knowledge by giving visibility to the voices of seven emergent-English speaking and emerging-literate female migrant spouses from India and Pakistan. A theoretical fusion of the Community Cultural Wealth framework (Yosso, 2005) and the Capability Approach (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000) was used to examine the role education plays in the women’s lives, highlight their knowledge and assets and identify the complex ways in which their lives, educational experiences and aspirations are shaped by broader social, cultural, and institutional contexts

Death and Dying in Human and Companion Canine Relations

Since before the Neolithic Revolution, when human civilisation first emerged, humans and canines have lived, and died, together. This Scottish study is conducted in the field of animal-human interaction and, using qualitative methods, applies established insights from the sociology of health (born of human-to-human interaction) to a human-animal relationship. Specifically, this thesis explores death and dying in relations between the companion canines, and the human members, of ten families. Nonhuman illness narratives are found in profusion in this study, and it was also found to be possible to apply biographical disruption to nonhumans, when conceptualised as biographical disruption-by-proxy. Unexpectedly, there emerged from the data support for a four-fold model of canine selfhood, as forged within the family. This is, as far as I am aware, the first modelling of a specific nonhuman consciousness, within the discipline. Suffering was found to exist in both physical and non-physical forms for the companions, and a mutual vulnerability to loneliness, and desire for companionship, appears to be a powerful point of connection between the humans and the canines. Being together emerged as both a practice, and as an ideal, that moulded the human-canine relations, and it was regarded as unfitting for a canine to die alone. Companion canine dying comes forth as a negotiated process, shaped by a divide between gradual and sudden death. This work encountered developed narratives of departure, that seem to structure the experience of losing a companion. In particular the role of the expert is a privileged voice in the negotiations of dying, and the biomedical view is treated as being definitive. The role of the expert is not simply submitted to however, but a range of stances to veterinary authority are displayed, being; acquiescence, resistance and invalidation of the veterinary voice. Ultimately, whilst interplays of wellbeing are present, they are less biophysically grounded, than they are rooted in the everyday routines of life, in the rituals of eating, sleeping, walking, and playing together, that compose the shared world of the human and companion canine

Exploring the benefits and challenges of volunteering: Participatory action research with people with lived experience of mental illness

Volunteering is associated with a range of health and employability benefits. However, there is limited evidence of the collective experience of volunteering for people recovering from mental illness. This thesis presents a participatory action research project in collaboration with a group of ten working age adults comprising four men and six women of white British ethnicity, predominantly Scottish and all living in the same Scottish city. All had lived experience of mental illness; many had significant experience of volunteering and all were actively engaged at the time of the research in unpaid volunteering in the community through personal choice as part of their recovery journey. The aim of the project was to hear about the benefits and challenges of volunteering including the positives and negatives of sociopolitical and welfare systems that support people with lived experience of mental illness to volunteer, with a view to producing something through action that would be of benefit to the group and/or the wider community. Participants took part in a preliminary interview and attended a series of five participatory action research groups. Thematic data analysis of the interviews was carried out by the researcher. Data generation and analysis of the PAR groups was combined and followed Freire’s (1970, p. 80; p. 104) process of “problem posing” and “conscientization” or critical consciousness raising where participants by asking critical questions about their situation recognised the potential for transformation. Data analysis of the PAR groups was collaborative, iterative, cumulative and coconstructed with themes revisited and revised by participants. Findings revealed factors that supported and hindered a positive volunteering experience including challenges from the socio-political impact of welfare reform. Participants produced a briefing paper to inform newly devolved powers supporting the Social Security (Scotland) Bill to support change at policy level and resolve the problem of mandatory volunteering in Scotland. This project has generated a new understanding of the experience of volunteering for people with lived experience of mental illness proposing an original theory of five conditions for successful volunteering that are necessary to support recovery namely: readiness and support to volunteer; synergy between volunteer and experience to ensure volunteering is meaningful; flexibility to stay well; opportunity to meet needs for identity and connectedness; and opportunity for influence and activism. Findings have also highlighted the negative effects of neoliberal welfare policies on the experience of volunteering for out-of-work disabled welfare recipients; demonstrated how PAR contributes to positive socio-political change with findings supporting Scottish Government policy development; and exposed how at a practice level the hegemony of paid work dominating occupational therapy vocational services limits an understanding of volunteering to one viewed solely through a work lens, with limited critique

The Non-Literate ‘Other’: The Gendered Narratives of Indian and Pakistani Female Migrant Spouses with emerging English language and literacy skills

Adult migrant women with limited formal schooling or emerging English language and literacy skills (known as LESLLA learners) face formidable challenges not only in their personal lives, but also in their efforts to improve their English language and literacy skills in a hyper-literate society that expects migrants to be proficient in the language to demonstrate their willingness to integrate and belong. The presence of these learners in institutions where practitioners are skilled at teaching students from either literacy-based cultures or those already literate in a language other than English, presents various challenges for Further Education (FE) lecturers. Despite these challenges, LESLLA learners remain an under-researched group of students in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and English Language Teaching (ELT) studies, in particular with regards to research that focuses on LESLLA women, learners who have been discursively produced within the wider media and policy landscape as passive victims of oppression in need of empowerment; incapable or ignorant learners; and migrants reluctant to learn English. This cross-linguistic and cross-cultural study was designed to provide a counter-story to this deficit view. It contributes to knowledge by giving visibility to the voices of seven emergent-English speaking and emerging-literate female migrant spouses from India and Pakistan. A theoretical fusion of the Community Cultural Wealth framework (Yosso, 2005) and the Capability Approach (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000) was used to examine the role education plays in the women’s lives, highlight their knowledge and assets and identify the complex ways in which their lives, educational experiences and aspirations are shaped by broader social, cultural, and institutional contexts

Feminist New Materialisms: Activating Ethico-Politics through Genealogies in Social Sciences

The idea to create a Special Issue journal around the topic of feminist new materialisms emerged out of the editors’ collaboration in the frames of European project New Materialism: Networking European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’ (European Cooperation in Science and Technology), and more specifically it was born at the 9th Annual Conference on the New Materialisms, held at Utrecht University in June 2018. The editors were then able to trace the discussions within new materialism, but also on the margins of it, and in dialogues with researchers with different academic backgrounds or coming from other theoretical standpoints. Those dialogues all have different affective modalities, raised various theoretical (counter) arguments, and imagined heterogeneous practices. As editors of this issue of “Social Sciences,” we recognized the need to rethink feminist new materialisms, yet again accentuating and activating its ethico-political dimensions and stakes. We are undertaking this endeavour together with scholars, who have been composing the cartography of feminist new materialist research for some time now (among them: Alaimo and Hekman 2008; Coole and Frost 2010; Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012; Van der Tuin 2015; Cielemęcka and Rogowska-Stangret 2018), and we aim at grasping specifically its ethico-political practices.COST IS1307: Networking European New Materialisms: How matter comes to matte

Ethnic Studies Implementation in a K-8 District: Culture, Critical Consciousness and Collective Efficacy

This research was a descriptive study in which the researcher explored the beginning phases of Ethnic Studies implementation in a Kindergarten through Eighth grade (K-8) school district in Northern California. Using a social justice lens, and through a review of Ethnic Studies, Collective Efficacy, Critical Consciousness, and School Culture constructs, the researcher attempted to capture and articulate a cultural profile of the school district and the degree to which it aligned to the cultural typologies articulated among Ethnic Studies scholars.The study included the collection of several types of data, including: (1) archival documents; (2) teacher focus groups; and (3) administrator interviews. Analyzing these three types of data through the aforementioned constructs yielded six key findings. First, the school board proposed Ethnic Studies through a resolution however, broader support for its implementation appeared evident. Second, critical consciousness was defined by documents and participants in terms of the adult work within the system and as student outcomes. Third, Ethnic Studies in this district was still being defined; seen by some as a classroom or school cultural element and as a discrete subject by others. Fourth, fear of public backlash while implementing Ethnic Studies was felt by some educators. Evidence suggested that administrative buy-in and supports were helpful in dealing with that fear. Fifth, a vision for grassroots leadership with top-down support was beginning to take shape. Finally, professional development needs for Ethnic Studies implementation were articulated