Unsolicited written narratives as a methodological genre in terminal illness: challenges and limitations

Stories about illness have proven invaluable in helping health professionals understand illness experiences. Such narratives have traditionally been solicited by researchers through interviews and the collection of personal writings, including diaries. These approaches are, however, researcher driven; the impetus for the creation of the story comes from the researcher and not the narrator. In recent years there has been exponential growth in illness narratives created by individuals, of their own volition, and made available for others to read in print or as Internet accounts. We sought to determine whether it was possible to identify such material for use as research data to explore the subject of living with the terminal illness amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/motor neuron disease—the contention being that these accounts are narrator driven and therefore focus on issues of greatest importance to the affected person. We encountered and sought to overcome a number of methodological and ethical challenges, which is our focus here

Physical education for students with spina bifida : mothers' perspectives

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of mothers’ perspectives of their children’s experiences in inclusive physical education. It describes the value mothers placed on physical education, the meaning they ascribed to their children’s physical education experiences, the role of the Personal Program Plan (PPP) in mother’s communication with the school, and the other means of communication they used to share their thoughts about children’s participation. The stories of mothers of elementary (1 boy, 3 girls) and secondary (2 boys, 1 girl) aged children with spina bifida were collected and analyzed using the hermeneutic phenomenological methods of semi-structured interviews, artifacts, documents, and field notes. The thematic analysis revealed three themes: A Good Thing But…, Connection to Disability Sports, and Beyond the Curriculum. Peters’ (1996) model of disablement provided the conceptual framework for the interpretation of the findings

Effective performance management of inter-organisational collaborations through the construction of multiple identities

Although inter-organisational collaborations can offer better services, their performance management is complex and can often fail. Through the exploration of multiple (collaborative and non-collaborative) identities formed by partners, the paper offers guidelines for a more effective performance management of inter-organisational collaborations. More specifically, drawing upon a longitudinal qualitative study of a Greek inter-organisational collaboration, the findings of the research illustrate that both collaborative and non-collaborative identities can lead to better collaboration performance. Secondly, the study suggests that it is better to maintain the tension between stability and change within the collaborative process than resolve it. Finally, it offers four collaborative patterns for a more effective performance management of inter-organisational collaborations

Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise

Partnerships with an Oral Historian

Oral history research methodologies are growing in popularity as an instrument of capturing contemporary stories or voices, of the local, personal, public and the global experience. A corporate or global organisation can benefit from partnering with an oral historian to produce collections that are relevant and useful to both, but superior methodology is essential

Afghanistan: A Glimpse of War—Contemporary History at the Canadian War Museum

How do you exhibit the history of an ongoing conflict, with an unknown outcome and with most documents restricted on the basis of operational security? What story can you tell? Afghanistan: A Glimpse of War, a special exhibition developed by and currently on view at the Canadian War Museum (CWM), addresses these questions by using first-hand accounts from eyewitness records, media reports, interviews, open source material, and the visitors themselves. The exhibition presents the origins of the war in Afghanistan, and Canadian participation from the first deployments in 2002 to current operations in Kandahar province. The personal stories in the exhibition examine how individual Canadian soldiers and Afghans experienced conflict and reconstruction in Afghanistan, and were made available to the CWM primarily through the work of two Canadian journalists, Stephen Thorne and Garth Pritchard

The Most Significant Change Technique

{Excerpt} The Most Significant Change technique helps monitor and evaluate the performance of projects and programs. It involves the collection and systematic participatory interpretation of stories of significant change emanating from the field level—stories about who did what, when, and why, and the reasons why the event was important. It does not employ quantitative indicators. Development (as so much of knowledge and learning) is about change—change that takes place in a variety of domains. To move towards what is desirable and away from what is not, stakeholders must clarify what they are really trying to achieve, develop a better understanding of what is (and what is not) being achieved, and explore and share their various values and preferences about what they hold to be significant change. Evaluation has a role to play. However,on the word of Albert Einstein, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.

An Introduction to Narrative Therapy

Counseling in a narrative way is a way of seeing, hearing, and thinking about clients’ problems as shaped and given meaning by stories or narratives. Problems are not hard realities that permanently define people; rather, they are problem stories by which people know themselves and are known by. This separating of the problem from the person opens up space for seeing the problem and thinking about it in new ways, and opens up the possibility of authoring a better story—a better way of being and doing, and is based on what has become a narrative mantra: “The problem is the problem. The person is not the problem” (Winslade & Monk, 1999, p. 2

Developing Deadly Skies

The Canadian War Museum’s exhibition Deadly Skies – Air War, 1914-1918 examines the first air war from the perspective of nine international participants representing Canada, the United States, France, Great Britain, and Germany. Eschewing the romantic mythology of First World War aviation that focuses on the achievements of individual fighter pilots, the exhibition examines four key aspects of the air war: training, observation, bombing, and aerial combat. Adopting an interpretive approach that appeals to intergenerational audiences and that highlights personal experience in the war, the exhibition is presented as a series of life-sized graphic novels, supplemented with key artifacts, photos, audio clips, and videos. The historical and interpretative approaches together present a holistic and modern examination of the world’s first air war

Methodologies for Housing Justice Resource Guide

This Resource Guide is the outcome of a Summer Institute on Methodologies for Housing Justice convened by the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin as part of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, which is supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS 1758774). Held in Los Angeles in August 2019, the Summer Institute brought together participants from cities around the world. As is the case with the overall scope and purpose of the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, it created a shared terrain of scholarship for movement-based and university-based scholars. Dissatisfied with the canonical methods that are in use in housing studies and guided by housing justice movements that are active research communities, the Summer Institute was premised on the assertion that methodology is political. Methodology is rooted in arguments about the world and involves relations of power and knowledge. The method itself – be it countermapping or people’s diaries – does not ensure an ethics of solidarity and a purpose of justice. Such goals require methodologies for liberation. Thus, as is evident in this Resource Guide, our endeavor foregrounds innovative methods that are being used by researchers across academia and activism and explicitly situates such methods in an orientation towards housing justice