10,590 research outputs found

    Waking up to the Present: Vipassana Meditation and the Body

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    Using ethnographic methods I examine the process of learning vipassana meditation, a form of meditation in which the practitioner focuses on their bodily sensations, and the ways in which learning this form of meditation affects the practitioner\u27s daily life. I employ reflexivity alongside an ethnography of the particular to capture my experiences as the student of a Thai Theravada Buddhist monk who teaches at a temple in Portland, Oregon. Through this process I have found that learning vipassana meditation pervades numerous aspects of daily life, extending beyond direct instruction and meditation practice, bringing about perceptual changes in reality as learned concepts become embodied through both meditation and lived experience

    Wandering Fests: Relational Orientations in Academic Writing

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    Based on a number of PhD workshops called Wandering Feasts, in collaboration between Monash University and Design School Kolding, this article explores academic writing as both a mode and a method of inquiry. The article both points to and performs five creative-relational orientations to alternative academic writing: Performativity in challenging dominant ways of knowing and representing knowledge in the academy; emergence as mindfully holding open ideas of purpose and destination in favour of not-knowing; reciprocity in collectively creating charged encounters that spark new ways of knowing; improvisation in building social space where we felt comfortable jamming and givenness as a fundamental playfulness in which an academic community nurtures the courage to giveā€“of ourselves. The article is in itself a manifestation of exploration writing in a playful and loosely defined process

    How do Pedagogical Conversational Agents affect Learning Outcomes among High School Pupils: Insights from a Field Experiment

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    Pedagogical conversational agents (CA) support formal and informal learning to help students achieve better learning outcomes by providing information, guidance or fostering reflections. Even though the extant literature suggests that pedagogical CAs can improve learning outcomes, there exists little empirical evidence of what design features drive this effect. This study reports on an exploratory field experiment involving 31 pupils in commercial high schools and finds that students achieved better learning outcomes when preparing for their tests with a pedagogical CA than without. However, the drivers of this effect remain unclear. Neither the use frequency of the design features nor the pupilsā€™ expectations towards the CA could explain the improvement in marks. However, for the subjective perception of learning achievement, pupilsā€™ expectations was a significant predictor. These findings provide support for the use of pedagogical CAs in teaching but also highlight that the drivers of better learning outcomes still remain unknown

    Applications of brain imaging methods in driving behaviour research

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    Applications of neuroimaging methods have substantially contributed to the scientific understanding of human factors during driving by providing a deeper insight into the neuro-cognitive aspects of driver brain. This has been achieved by conducting simulated (and occasionally, field) driving experiments while collecting driver brain signals of certain types. Here, this sector of studies is comprehensively reviewed at both macro and micro scales. Different themes of neuroimaging driving behaviour research are identified and the findings within each theme are synthesised. The surveyed literature has reported on applications of four major brain imaging methods. These include Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), Electroencephalography (EEG), Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG), with the first two being the most common methods in this domain. While collecting driver fMRI signal has been particularly instrumental in studying neural correlates of intoxicated driving (e.g. alcohol or cannabis) or distracted driving, the EEG method has been predominantly utilised in relation to the efforts aiming at development of automatic fatigue/drowsiness detection systems, a topic to which the literature on neuro-ergonomics of driving particularly has shown a spike of interest within the last few years. The survey also reveals that topics such as driver brain activity in semi-automated settings or the brain activity of drivers with brain injuries or chronic neurological conditions have by contrast been investigated to a very limited extent. Further, potential topics in relation to driving behaviour are identified that could benefit from the adoption of neuroimaging methods in future studies

    Object Relations in the Museum: A Psychosocial Perspective

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    This article theorises museum engagement from a psychosocial perspective. With the aid of selected concepts from object relations theory, it explains how the museum visitor can establish a personal relation to museum objects, making use of them as an ā€˜aesthetic thirdā€™ to symbolise experience. Since such objects are at the same time cultural resources, interacting with them helps the individual to feel part of a shared culture. The article elaborates an example drawn from a research project that aimed to make museum collections available to people with physical and mental health problems. It draws on the work of the British psychoanalysts Donald Winnicott and Wilfred Bion to explain the salience of the concepts of object use, potential space, containment and reverie within a museum context. It also refers to the work of the contemporary psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas on how objects can become evocative for individuals both by virtue of their intrinsic qualities and by the way they are used to express personal idiom

    Dysacademia in the Ivory Towers: Performativity, Discipline, Control & Chaotically Moving Towards the Shadows of the 3Rd Educational Spaces

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    This theoretical inquiry is based upon an archaeological and genealogical deconstruction of the character, utility and state of being of the modern university in the United States. In introducing Dysacademia as an apt metaphor for today\u27s dysfunctional academy, the current discursive analysis describes the various affects and effects that neoliberalism, performativity, discipline, and control have had upon the inorganic institutions of higher learning, and upon its primary subject concerns, the organic constituents known as the professoriate and the student body. As a follow up to this Ivory Tower deconstruction, a reconstructive enunciation is shaped using a conglomeration of postmodern, open systems,chaos, and poststructural theories to highlight the recursive potential that philosophy, cultural studies, and popular culture contain for opening undetermined and turbulent spaces that hold the promise and potential to expand the University\u27s undertakings regarding learning, culture, social engagement, critical epistemology, and authentic and reflexive ontology

    Dysacademia in the Ivory Towers: Performativity, Discipline, Control & Chaotically Moving Towards the Shadows of the 3Rd Educational Spaces

    Get PDF
    This theoretical inquiry is based upon an archaeological and genealogical deconstruction of the character, utility and state of being of the modern university in the United States. In introducing Dysacademia as an apt metaphor for today\u27s dysfunctional academy, the current discursive analysis describes the various affects and effects that neoliberalism, performativity, discipline, and control have had upon the inorganic institutions of higher learning, and upon its primary subject concerns, the organic constituents known as the professoriate and the student body. As a follow up to this Ivory Tower deconstruction, a reconstructive enunciation is shaped using a conglomeration of postmodern, open systems,chaos, and poststructural theories to highlight the recursive potential that philosophy, cultural studies, and popular culture contain for opening undetermined and turbulent spaces that hold the promise and potential to expand the University\u27s undertakings regarding learning, culture, social engagement, critical epistemology, and authentic and reflexive ontology

    Mindfulness in the workplace: Mindful self-regulation

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    Organizations are under pressure to perform and adapt to an ever-changing environment, creating stress on the employees, translating to direct and indirect costs to the organization. Mindfulness is recognized as an effective approach to managing stress, and has benefits on cognition, attention, and well-being, but limited research has investigated how individuals integrate mindfulness into their workplaces, which is the purpose of this study. The primary research question in this study asked how mindfulness workplace practice help individuals to self-regulate a) attention or thoughts, b) emotions, and c) both attention or thoughts and emotions and what the associated benefits are in mindfulness workplace practice. It also examined the barriers to mindfulness workplace practice and what can support it. This study addressed these questions through a qualitative exploratory approach using semi-structured interviews with working individuals who have a mindfulness practice (N=8). Each participant was interviewed three times for about thirty-minutes over a course of six to ten weeks. The interviews were transcribed and coded using descriptive and thematic codes to reduce, analyze and report the data. A major finding in this study was self-regulation grounded specific mindfulness facets (non-judging, non-striving, acceptance, letting go) as foundational to the integration of mindfulness in the workplace. I defined this as mindful self-regulation, and found that this fostered the ability to work mindfully. Additionally, the development of community as a grassroots effort encouraged the integration of mindfulness in the workplace. Barriers to mindfulness in the workplace included time, distractions, the work culture of ā€˜doingā€™, and systemic pressure to perform. Support mechanisms included having a space to formally practice mindfulness, developing a community to support mindfulness, and mindful leadership

    Mindfulness-Based Safety: Increasing Attention to Task in Albertaā€™s Oil and Gas Drilling and Completions Operations

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    With studies demonstrating mind-wandering to be associated with failure to perform monitoring procedural steps, a deficiency in being able to call information to mind, more false alarms, and a reduction in task performance, we cannot afford to continue to overlook the potential impact mind-wandering has on human behavior in high-risk environments within the Alberta oil and gas industry. This paper gives consideration to mindfulness-based interventions, a domain of positive psychology, for reducing the occurrence of mind-wandering and improving attention to a task. It is from a foundation of research explored in the literature reviews of mind-wandering and mindfulness, that I invite the oil and gas industry to incorporate the supplemental element of, what I am terming, Mindfulness-Based Safety, into their Health & Safety Management Systems. In support of this, I provide a suggested plan for creating awareness and implementing mindfulness into operations to reduce mind-wandering and therefore increase the amount of time employees spend with their minds on task
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