11,934 research outputs found

    Implementing Health Impact Assessment as a Required Component of Government Policymaking: A Multi-Level Exploration of the Determinants of Healthy Public Policy

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    It is widely understood that the public policies of ‘non-health’ government sectors have greater impacts on population health than those of the traditional healthcare realm. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a decision support tool that identifies and promotes the health benefits of policies while also mitigating their unintended negative consequences. Despite numerous calls to do so, the Ontario government has yet to implement HIA as a required component of policy development. This dissertation therefore sought to identify the contexts and factors that may both enable and impede HIA use at the sub-national (i.e., provincial, territorial, or state) government level. The three integrated articles of this dissertation provide insights into specific aspects of the policy process as they relate to HIA. Chapter one details a case study of purposive information-seeking among public servants within Ontario’s Ministry of Education (MOE). Situated within Ontario’s Ministry of Health (MOH), chapter two presents a case study of policy collaboration between health and ‘non-health’ ministries. Finally, chapter three details a framework analysis of the political factors supporting health impact tool use in two sub-national jurisdictions – namely, Québec and South Australia. MOE respondents (N=9) identified four components of policymaking ‘due diligence’, including evidence retrieval, consultation and collaboration, referencing, and risk analysis. As prospective HIA users, they also confirmed that information is not routinely sought to mitigate the potential negative health impacts of education-based policies. MOH respondents (N=8) identified the bureaucratic hierarchy as the brokering mechanism for inter-ministerial policy development. As prospective HIA stewards, they also confirmed that the ministry does not proactively flag the potential negative health impacts of non-health sector policies. Finally, ‘lessons learned’ from case articles specific to Québec (n=12) and South Australia (n=17) identified the political factors supporting tool use at different stages of the policy cycle, including agenda setting (‘policy elites’ and ‘political culture’), implementation (‘jurisdiction’), and sustained implementation (‘institutional power’). This work provides important insights into ‘real life’ policymaking. By highlighting existing facilitators of and barriers to HIA use, the findings offer a useful starting point from which proponents may tailor context-specific strategies to sustainably implement HIA at the sub-national government level

    Building body identities - exploring the world of female bodybuilders

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    This thesis explores how female bodybuilders seek to develop and maintain a viable sense of self despite being stigmatized by the gendered foundations of what Erving Goffman (1983) refers to as the 'interaction order'; the unavoidable presentational context in which identities are forged during the course of social life. Placed in the context of an overview of the historical treatment of women's bodies, and a concern with the development of bodybuilding as a specific form of body modification, the research draws upon a unique two year ethnographic study based in the South of England, complemented by interviews with twenty-six female bodybuilders, all of whom live in the U.K. By mapping these extraordinary women's lives, the research illuminates the pivotal spaces and essential lived experiences that make up the female bodybuilder. Whilst the women appear to be embarking on an 'empowering' radical body project for themselves, the consequences of their activity remains culturally ambivalent. This research exposes the 'Janus-faced' nature of female bodybuilding, exploring the ways in which the women negotiate, accommodate and resist pressures to engage in more orthodox and feminine activities and appearances

    TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF EFFORTFUL FUNDRAISING EXPERIENCES: USING INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS IN FUNDRAISING RESEARCH

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    Physical-activity oriented community fundraising has experienced an exponential growth in popularity over the past 15 years. The aim of this study was to explore the value of effortful fundraising experiences, from the point of view of participants, and explore the impact that these experiences have on people’s lives. This study used an IPA approach to interview 23 individuals, recognising the role of participants as proxy (nonprofessional) fundraisers for charitable organisations, and the unique organisation donor dynamic that this creates. It also bought together relevant psychological theory related to physical activity fundraising experiences (through a narrative literature review) and used primary interview data to substantiate these. Effortful fundraising experiences are examined in detail to understand their significance to participants, and how such experiences influence their connection with a charity or cause. This was done with an idiographic focus at first, before examining convergences and divergences across the sample. This study found that effortful fundraising experiences can have a profound positive impact upon community fundraisers in both the short and the long term. Additionally, it found that these experiences can be opportunities for charitable organisations to create lasting meaningful relationships with participants, and foster mutually beneficial lifetime relationships with them. Further research is needed to test specific psychological theory in this context, including self-esteem theory, self determination theory, and the martyrdom effect (among others)

    The crisis of cultural authority in museums : contesting human remains in the collections of Britain

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    Museums in Britain have displayed and researched human remains since the eighteenth century. However, in the last two decades human remains in collections have become subject to claims and controversies. Firstly, human remains associated with acquisition during the colonial period have become increasingly difficult to retain and have been transfered to culturally affiliated overseas indigenous groups. Secondly, a group of British Pagans have formed to make claims on ancient human remains in collections. Thirdly, human remains that are not requested by any community group, and of all ages, have become the focus of concerns expressed about their treatment by members of the profession. A discourse arguing for 'respect' has emerged, which argues that all human remains should be treated with new care. The claims made on human remains have been vigourously but differentially contested by members of the sector, who consider the human remains to be unique research objects. This thesis charts the influences at play on the contestation over human remains and examines its construction. The academic literature tends to understand changes to museums as a result of external factors. This thesis argues that this problem is influenced by a crisis of legitimacy and establishes that there are strong internal influences. Through a weak social constructionist approach I demonstrate that the issue has been promoted by influential members of the sector as part of a broader attempt to distance themselves from their foundational role, as a consequence of a crisis of cultural authority stimulated by external and internal factors. The symbolic character of human remains in locating this problem is informed by the unique properties of dead bodies and is influenced by the significance of the body as a scientific object; its association with identity work and as a site of political struggle, in the high modem period

    Epistemologies of possibility: social movements, knowledge production and political transformation

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    Urgent global problems - whether military conflicts, economic insecurities, immigration controls or mass incarceration-not only call for new modes of political action but also demand new forms of knowledge. For if knowledge frameworks both shape the horizons of social intelligibility and chart t he realms of political possibility, then epistemological interventions constitute a crucial part of social change. Social movements play a key role in this work by engaging in dissident knowledge practices that open up space for political transformation. But what are the processes and conditions through which social movements generate new ways of knowing?'What is politically at stake in the various knowledge strategies that activists use to generate social change? Despite a growing literature on the role of epistemological dimensions of protest, social movement studies tend to neglect specific questions of epistemological change. Often treating knowledge as a resource or object rather than a power relation and a social practice, social movement scholars tend to focus on content rather than production, frames rather than practices, taxonomies rather than processes. Missing is a more dynamic account of the conditions, means and power relations through which transformative knowledge practices come to be constituted and deployed. Seeking to better understand processes of epistemological transformation, this thesis explores the relationship between social movements, knowledge production and political change. Starting from an assumption that knowledge not only represents the world, but also works to constitute it, this thesis examines the role of social movement knowledge practices in shaping the conditions of political possibility. Drawing from the context of grassroots queer, transgender and feminist organizing around issues of prisons and border controls in North America, the project explores how activists generate new forms of knowledge and forge new spaces of political possibility. Working through a series of concepts-transformation, resistance, experience, co-optation, solidarity and analogy - this thesis explores different ways of understanding processes of epistemological change with in social movement contexts. It considers processes that facilitate or enable epistemological change and those that limit or prohibit such change. Bringing together a range of theoretical perspectives, including feminist, queer, critical race and post-structuralist analyses, and drawing on interviews with grassroots activists, the thesis explores what is politically at stake in the different ways we conceptualise, imagine and engage in processes of epistemological change

    Towards thinking classrooms: foundation stage possibilities in Northern Ireland

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    The integration of thinking skills programmes into primary and secondary school curricula has gained increasing prominence in global educational policy over the past two decades. This research investigated the factors that influence how a particular approach to the development of thinking skills adopted in the Northern Ireland (NI) context is interpreted and implemented by teachers in early years classrooms. The Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities Framework (TSPC) was introduced as a statutory component of the revised NI curriculum in 2007 and this study explores its enactment through the perceptions of key groups that interface with the policy from a range of different contexts: teachers and Head Teachers, Curriculum Advisory and Support staff, university academics and Initial Teacher Education staff. The study adopted an interpretive approach, utilising interviews with members of these key groups to explore their perceptions of the factors that influence the effective and consistent implementation of the TSPC and to explain possible reasons why it has embedded effectively in some NI primary schools and not in others. In addition to interviews, policy analysis of key texts that shape teachers’ approaches to the TSPC was undertaken using a framework based on Fairclough’s three-dimensional approach to critical discourse analysis. The purpose of this analysis was to explore the connection between the discourses used in these texts, and the extent to which the ideological cues that underpin them exert an influence on how teachers interpret and implement thinking skills in their practice. The study also explored how human capital theory, and an ecological approach to the enactment of the TSPC based on Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model (1979), provide different frameworks for understanding how the TSPC is interpreted and implemented in practice, with particular reference to Northern Ireland. The findings suggest that there are a number of significant factors that both enable and constrain the effective implementation of the TSPC across schools. The region’s political, social and historical context was viewed by participants as playing a key role in how policy reforms are interpreted and implemented. School leaders can play a central role in mediating the impact of these reforms to ensure that they are implemented in ways that take account of diverse and specific school contexts. From the perspective of participants, Head Teachers and school leaders also play a pivotal role in nurturing teachers’ professional learning, skill, and motivation in the teaching of thinking skills. Consistent opportunities for professional development, including collaborative working, and sharing of practice, both in and beyond the school, was viewed as the primary means of ensuring the development of a shared vision and language about thinking skills, and participants agreed that this is central to its consistent implementation across all schools. Analysis of the participants’ understandings of the purpose of teaching thinking skills, and the aims of education more broadly, highlighted a tension between approaches to education that focus on children’s holistic development, and policy discourses, especially those related to Human Capital Theory that view education as a mechanism for achieving economic goals. The influence of these discourses across a range of public policy areas, as well as the disconnect between what participants and policy-makers viewed as the purpose of thinking, was highlighted in the analysis. For participants, the integration of thinking skills into the curriculum was about developing autonomy, criticality, and independence in children’s thinking, whereas policy-makers viewed it from a human capital perspective and strongly linked it to discourses of ‘lifelong learning’, ‘employability’ and ‘skill’. From the perspective of participants, the findings indicate that for policy makers in Northern Ireland to better understand how to embed the TSPC as a core component of the curriculum in all schools a number of cross-system actions need to be undertaken. These include a baseline review of the impact of the TSPC in the ten years since its inception as part of the comprehensive review of education announced by the Minister for Education in January 2021. The data suggests that this review should ensure that teachers and school leaders are central to its design and approach and that it is fully inclusive of all schools in Northern Ireland that sit within its scope. A return to more localised support and advice services with a coordinated approach to the development of the TSPC in all schools was also viewed by participants as essential to its development and embedding in all schools. A more coordinated, multi-disciplinary approach to implementation would, it was argued, ensure that ongoing professional learning in thinking skills was accessible, including the establishment of more strategic, collaborative partnerships with higher education, ITE and Inspection Services. This changed focus, I conclude, requires a move away from human capital and sector specific approaches to the consistent development of thinking skills programmes in all Northern Ireland schools. Recommendations also centre on future policy reforms that are inclusive and that give teachers their professional place as the primary implementers for the development of thinking skills programmes in schools
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