Discourses We Live By

"What are the influences that govern how people view their worlds? What are the embedded values and practices that underpin the ways people think and act? Discourses We Live By approaches these questions through narrative research, in a process that uses words, images, activities or artefacts to ask people – either individually or collectively within social groupings – to examine, discuss, portray or otherwise make public their place in the world, their sense of belonging to (and identity within) the physical and cultural space they inhabit. This book is a rich and multifaceted collection of twenty-eight chapters that use varied lenses to examine the discourses that shape people’s lives. The contributors are themselves from many backgrounds – different academic disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, diverse professional practices and a range of countries and cultures. They represent a broad spectrum of age, status and outlook, and variously apply their research methods – but share a common interest in people, their lives, thoughts and actions. Gathering such eclectic experiences as those of student-teachers in Kenya, a released prisoner in Denmark, academics in Colombia, a group of migrants learning English, and gambling addiction support-workers in Italy, alongside more mainstream educational themes, the book presents a fascinating array of insights. Discourses We Live By will be essential reading for adult educators and practitioners, those involved with educational and professional practice, narrative researchers, and many sociologists. It will appeal to all who want to know how narratives shape the way we live and the way we talk about our lives.

2020 Mom Community Action Toolkit

2020 Mom developed this toolkit to serve as a roadmap for coalitions working to improve the continuum of care for maternal mental health (MMH) disorders in their communities. 2020 Mom is committed to facilitating A.C.T.I.O.N. (Advancing Collaboration through Toolkits, Initiatives, and Online Networking) among community coalitions.This project is intended for existing maternal child health community coalitions or group leaders looking to improve screening and treatment rates for MMH disorders in their communities. We believe local leaders understand the unique needs in their regions and are best suited to address gaps in care, drive policy change, and build partnerships to improve maternal mental health.The Community Action Toolkit is a manual for creating an MMH community action plan by working through the 2020 Mom Action Cycle. This process includes: assessing the community's MMH services, analyzing findings, setting priorities, determining local interventions, and ultimately drafting an evidence-based MMH Action Plan.The toolkit includes templates for developing a membership invitation, meeting agendas, meeting minutes, project workplans, a strategy grid, SMART objectives, a logic model, and the action plan with built-in evaluation. The toolkit also provides a menu of interventions with guidance for selecting those that will address local issues within a realistic budget

New Research and Trends in Higher Education

This book aims to discuss new research and trends on all dimensions of Higher Education, as there is a growing interest in the field of Higher Education, regarding new methodologies, contexts, and technologies. It includes investigations of diverse issues that affect the learning processes in Higher Education: innovations in learning, new pedagogical methods, and new learning contexts.In this sense, original research contributions of research papers, case studies and demonstrations that present original scientific results, methodological aspects, concepts and educational technologies, on the following topics:a) Technological Developments in Higher Education: mobile technology, virtual environments, augmented reality, automation and robotics, and other tools for universal learning, focusing on issues that are not addressed by existing research;b) Digital Higher Education: mobile learning, eLearning, Game-based Learning, social media in education, new learning models and technologies and wearable technologies for education;c) Case Studies in Higher Education: empirical studies in higher education regarding digital technologies, new methodologies, new evaluation techniques and tools, perceptions of learning processes efficiency and digital learning best practice

Accessibility of Health Data Representations for Older Adults: Challenges and Opportunities for Design

Health data of consumer off-the-shelf wearable devices is often conveyed to users through visual data representations and analyses. However, this is not always accessible to people with disabilities or older people due to low vision, cognitive impairments or literacy issues. Due to trade-offs between aesthetics predominance or information overload, real-time user feedback may not be conveyed easily from sensor devices through visual cues like graphs and texts. These difficulties may hinder critical data understanding. Additional auditory and tactile feedback can also provide immediate and accessible cues from these wearable devices, but it is necessary to understand existing data representation limitations initially. To avoid higher cognitive and visual overload, auditory and haptic cues can be designed to complement, replace or reinforce visual cues. In this paper, we outline the challenges in existing data representation and the necessary evidence to enhance the accessibility of health information from personal sensing devices used to monitor health parameters such as blood pressure, sleep, activity, heart rate and more. By creating innovative and inclusive user feedback, users will likely want to engage and interact with new devices and their own data

Problem space of modern society: philosophical-communicative and pedagogical interpretations. Part II

This collective monograph offers the description of philosophical bases of definition of communicative competence and pedagogical conditions for the formation of communication skills. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study using the methods of logical and semantic analysis of concepts, the method of reflection, textual reconstruction and comparative analysis. The theoretical and applied problems of modern society are investigated in the context of philosophical, communicative and pedagogical interpretations

The role of creative art in community education : art education and art therapy

The thesis looks firstly at creativity and the creativeprocess, approaching the subject from a whole range of different viewpoints, such as the psychological, philosophical, biographical and anthropological angles. Following from this there is an exploration of the ways in which creativity way be awakened and unfolded. Special attention is given to the conditions and situations that are likely to encourage creative development and to the blocks and difficulties that inhibit its expression.Particular reference is made, on the one hand, to art education and to the art, leisure, and teaching student, and on the other hand, to art therapy and the psychiatric patient. The themes of the individual and the community are explored in a complementary way in the final two chapters. The thesis emphasizes the viewpoint of the student and the patient, but since these people do not exist in a vacuum, this involves looking also at the teacher, the therapist and society. With reference to the psychiatric field, other specific questions arise, for example: How may creative opportunities assist the healing process? What are the reciprocal influences of artand mental illness? Throughout the thesis the term 'art' is used in the visual sense, but references are made to creativity in other fields where parallel conclusions apply. The emphasis has been placed on the adult, but the subject of 'Creativity and the Teaching Student' involves some references to child art and 'Creativity and the Community' involves all ages

The contribution of education and learning for older adults’ well-being: Proceedings of the 9th Conference of the ESREA network “Research on Education and Learning of Older Adults”

This e-book contains full length papers of contributions presented at the 9th Conference of the ESREA network “Research on education and learning of older adults” held in the University of the Algarve between 11 and 13th of October, 2018. Given the growing importance of well-being for reserchers, policy makers, social worker and adult educators, namely in old age, the organization selected the following theme for the 2018 conference: “The contributions of education and learning for older adults’ well-being”. Participants were invited to submit proposals on one of four topics: (1) theoretical approaches on older adults’ well-being, quality of life and related concepts; (2) well-being and policy/social policy; (3) analysing the older adults’ well-being, in all its dimensions and through different methodological approaches; and, (4) educational and learning experiences: contributions to the well-being of older adults

The Development and Implementation of a Pilot Training Course in Pastoral Diagnosis for Six Pastors in the Lake Region Conference

Problem This study was an examination of the counseling style of six pastors and to determine if they have a clearly defined method of informing their interventions. Method The task of this dissertation was to design a curriculum to train a pilot group of six pastors in the Lake Region Conference to do spiritual diagnoses and assessments and to have a better psychological understanding of diagnosing in their pastoral ministry. They learned how to integrate spirituality and psychology into their counseling. They were also taught some DSM-IV concepts and how to use the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) Scale. I worked with the six pastors over a three-month period. A pre-training questionnaire was administered before the training program and a post-training questionnaire was administered afterwards. Due to the small size of the sample, the results of the two questionnaires are not intended to be applied to pastors in general. Some general observations were made from the findings. My intention was test the psychological knowledge of the six pastors and to assess their biblically based approach to counseling. Results I expected that pastors would have knowledge of psychological terms because they typically use them in counseling. The survey data revealed that they did not have adequate knowledge to do psychological counseling even though they were attempting just that. It was anticipated that the pastors would be able to make a clear differentiation between psychologically based counseling and scripturally based counseling. However, the results in the survey showed that they could not. While they claimed that they did both, the discussions during the workshops revealed some confusion as to how they applied the two disciplines independently of each other. It was believed that pastors would be able to identify pastoral diagnosis, but the survey showed a general lack in their ability to do so. Pastoral counseling and diagnosis are a significant part of parish ministry. Yet many Seventh-day Adventist pastors are entering parish work with inadequate training in this area. Many Christians facing emotional and spiritual turmoil turn to their pastors first because of easy access and because they are typically not charged for pastoral counseling. Often-times, pastors who provide counseling do so more from a psychological approach than from a biblical perspective. Pastors must be able to recognize mental disorders as described in the DSM-IV and other clinical literature, but their primary responsibility is to diagnose spiritual problems that are described in Scripture. This endeavor is designed to help pastors who are already in the field to improve their skills through conference-sponsored training. This training program is designed to help create within the church a safe place for hurting people who through appropriate spiritual diagnosis can be led towards wholeness and reconciliation to God