Psyche and Planet: Multiplicity of Systems Mirroring Modes of Being and Bonding via Eco Arts Therapeutic Practices

Through discerning the art of life, this thesis is a review of literature which looks at how psyche and planet processing systems mirror one another and merge through eco arts therapeutic practices. It is an inquiry into philosophic ideas behind the nature of sensibility, perceptibility, and experience. As art mirrors the self and nature mirrors the self, a twofold entry-point opens, where one travels into accordance with all planes of consciousness. The literature investigates relationships amongst the arts, science, biology, and interspecies and ecological sentience to address collective conditions of deception, displacement, etc. It examines how directing attention to self and planet through eco arts therapeutic practices facilitates restorative powers, conscious harmonious flow, reciprocal dynamic functioning, communion, and embodiment of life-giving resources, etc. Theoretical contributions are delved into involving ecopsychology, transpersonal psychology, quantum physics, systems theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, relational and intersubjectivity theories, self-reflexive consciousness, ecosomatics, and the idea of a collective disorder termed nature deficit disorder. Methodological contributions involve studies treating educationally, behaviorally, contextually, playfully and artistically, communally, relationally amongst interspecies, with biophilia, etc. Ultimately, this literature review generates space for enhancing perceptual being and contextual belonging through creativity

Towards effective practice in offender supervision

This paper has been prepared principally for the Performance Improvement Strategy Group - a group convened by the Community Justice Division of the Scottish Government to advise and assist in the development of criminal justice social work services in particular and of community justice more generally. The PISG comprises representatives of the Scottish Government's Community Justice Division, of the Effective Practice Unit, of the Association of Directors of Social Work, of the voluntary sector service providers in Scotland, of the Scottish Prison Service, of the Risk Management Authority and from various Scottish universities. Discussions between the chair and some of the members of the PISG charged with leading work-streams on accreditation, interventions and inspection, indicated the need for the provision of a summary of effective practice that was sensitive to the unique Scottish context for the community supervision of offenders. The paper aims to provide that summary and to develop some ideas around a Scottish model of effective practice in offender supervision; as such it is concerned principally with the roles and tasks of criminal justice social work staff rather than with the important but broader debates around community and criminal justice in Scotland

Muddying the waters: what urban waterways reveal about bluespaces and wellbeing

This paper urges geographies of waterscapes beyond the blue to consider brown, grey and green waters, demonstrating the value of remembering water is not everywhere always the same. Inland urban waterways are introduced as places which might enhance wellbeing, broadening the variety of places and experiences considered as therapeutic bluespaces. This challenges assumptions that bluespaces are strongly salutogenic, and highlights the importance of a relational perspective. The relationship between bluespaces and wellbeing is revealed as less straightforward than previously suggested, muddying the waters. Qualitative research including participants not currently using them for health raises questions about waterscapes' enabling potential and demonstrates varied ways people experience them. Qualities associated with blueness - freshness, fluidity, luminescence, rippling - seem particularly therapeutic, but are not inherent to water, nor its only properties. Rather than assuming water is always everywhere the same, I propose the term wateriness helps attend to what is distinct about places with water, whilst recognising this varies across space, time and through interaction with other materials. Through such attention this study highlights elements of wateriness which can be highly disabling, including submersion, slipperiness and wetness. Considering urban waterways as potentially therapeutic bluespaces highlights the need to acknowledge the diversity, ambiguity and complexity of water experiences in relation to wellbeing. Waterways therefore takes geographers beyond the blue to consider a wider palette of water experiences and variations in their enabling potential. They are emblematic of waterscapes more brown than blue, offering deep waters for human geographers to wade into

Meta-Heuristics Analysis for Technologically Complex Programs: Understanding the Impact of Total Constraints for Schedule, Quality and Cost

Program management data associated with a technically complex radio frequency electronics base communication system has been collected and analyzed to identify heuristics which may be utilized in addition to existing processes and procedures to provide indicators that a program is trending to failure. Analysis of the collected data includes detailed schedule analysis, detailed earned value management analysis and defect analysis within the framework of a Firm Fixed Price (FFP) incentive fee contract. This project develops heuristics and provides recommendations for analysis of complex project management efforts such as those discussed herein. The analysis of the effects of the constraints on management of the program indicate that, unless unambiguous program management controls are applied very early to milestone execution and risk management, then plans, schedules, tasks, and resource allocation will not be successful in controlling the constraints of schedule, quality or cost

Social Brain-Constructed Relational Leadership: A Neuroscience View of the Leader-Follower Duality

Relationship-based approaches to leadership represent one of the most fast growing leadership fields that emphasize the interaction between the leader and the follower. The critical question though is the way that leadership actors (leaders and followers) are linked to each other and in particular how they try to understand how to do that in the workplace. Also, what is even less understood is the role of consciousness in this relationship. In this respect, this conceptual paper explores consciousness within the context of the social brain theory to argue that leadership actors need to revise their approach to individuality and focus on mutually dependent relations. We introduce the concept of Homo Relationalis arguing that leadership is not just social constructed element, but also social brain constructed phenomenon. We finally recommend a new approach of applying cognitive style analysis to capture the duality of leader/follower in the same person, following the self-illusion theory

Felt_space infrastructure: Hyper vigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension

Felt_space infrastructure: Hypervigilant spatiality to valence the visceral dimension. This thesis evolves perception as a hypothesis to reframe architectural praxis negotiated through agent-situation interaction. The research questions the geometric principles of architectural ordination to originate the ‘felt_space infrastructure’, a relational system of measurement concerned with the role of perception in mediating sensory space and the cognised environment. The methodological model for this research fuses perception and environmental stimuli, into a consistent generative process that penetrates the inner essence of space, to reveal the visceral parameter. These concepts are applied to develop a ‘coefficient of affordance’ typology, ‘hypervigilant’ tool set, and ‘cognitive_tope’ design methodology. Thus, by extending the architectural platform to consider perception as a design parameter, the thesis interprets the ‘inference schema’ as an instructional model to coordinate the acquisition of spatial reality through tensional and counter-tensional feedback dynamics. Three site-responsive case studies are used to advance the thesis. The first case study is descriptive and develops a typology of situated cognition to extend the ‘granularity’ of perceptual sensitisation (i.e. a fine-grained means of perceiving space). The second project is relational and questions how mapping can coordinate perceptual, cognitive and associative attention, as a ‘multi-webbed vector field’ comprised of attractors and deformations within a viewer-centred gravitational space. The third case study is causal, and demonstrates how a transactional-biased schema can generate, amplify and attenuate perceptual misalignment, thus triggering a visceral niche. The significance of the research is that it progresses generative perception as an additional variable for spatial practice, and promotes transactional methodologies to gain enhanced modes of spatial acuity to extend the repertoire of architectural practice

Teachers Building Dwelling Thinking with Slideware

Teacher-student discourse is increasingly mediated through, by and with information and communication technologies: in-class discussions have found new, textually-rich venues online; chalk and whiteboard lectures are rapidly giving way to PowerPoint presentations. Yet, what does this mean experientially for teachers? This paper reports on a phenomenological study investigating teachers’ lived experiences of PowerPoint in post-secondary classrooms. As teachers become more informed about the affordances of information and communication technology like PowerPoint and consequently take up and use these tools in their classrooms, their teaching practices, relations with students, and ways of interpreting the world are simultaneously in-formed – conformed, deformed and reformed – by the given technology-in-use. The paper is framed in light of Martin Heidegger’s “Building Dwelling Thinking” (1951) and “The Thing” (1949). In these writings, Heidegger shows how a thing opens a new world to us, revealing novel structures of experience and meaning, and inviting us to a different style of being, thinking and doing. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, May 2010, Volume 10, Edition

Concepts of work wellbeing: A multidisciplinary approach to theory and method

The focus of this thesis is on work wellbeing. The interface and tensions between organisational psychology researchers and practitioners are explored through the lens of work wellbeing. Prevailing disciplinary values favour a form of natural or experimental science over interpretivist science. (Experimental science is a general term used throughout the thesis to include experiments, quasi experiments, and quantitative surveys.) The study proposed additions to the theoretical and methodological repertoire to facilitate the applicability of research in work settings

Sensitivity analysis in a scoping review on police accountability : assessing the feasibility of reporting criteria in mixed studies reviews

In this paper, we report on the findings of a sensitivity analysis that was carried out within a previously conducted scoping review, hoping to contribute to the ongoing debate about how to assess the quality of research in mixed methods reviews. Previous sensitivity analyses mainly concluded that the exclusion of inadequately reported or lower quality studies did not have a significant effect on the results of the synthesis. In this study, we conducted a sensitivity analysis on the basis of reporting criteria with the aims of analysing its impact on the synthesis results and assessing its feasibility. Contrary to some previous studies, our analysis showed that the exclusion of inadequately reported studies had an impact on the results of the thematic synthesis. Initially, we also sought to propose a refinement of reporting criteria based on the literature and our own experiences. In this way, we aimed to facilitate the assessment of reporting criteria and enhance its consistency. However, based on the results of our sensitivity analysis, we opted not to make such a refinement since many publications included in this analysis did not sufficiently report on the methodology. As such, a refinement would not be useful considering that researchers would be unable to assess these (sub-)criteria