scholarly journals Inner change and sustainability initiatives: exploring the narratives from eco-villagers through a place-based transformative learning approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. R. Pisters ◽  
H. Vihinen ◽  
E. Figueiredo

AbstractIn an earlier work, we suggested that connection, compassion and creativity could be used as key analytical dimensions of transformative place-based learning (Pisters et al. in Emot Sp Soc 34(8):100578, 2019). This analytical framework was created to study processes of place-based transformative learning which evoke shifts in our consciousness. This inner change might well be critical in the development of regenerative practices and places. This article aims to critically investigate the framework empirically using life-story interviews with people living in three different ecovillages. Ecovillages are so-called intentional communities which aim to develop sustainable, regenerative ways of living. Methodologically, the research is grounded in an ethnography and narrative inquiry. Following the empirical results, we will reflect on the merits and shortcomings of the analytical framework. The article concludes that the framework proved useful for its purpose if it includes a fourth dimension of 'transgression' and portraits the dimensions as continua.

Author(s):  
Derek A. Hutchinson ◽  
M. Shaun Murphy

Drawing on a broader narrative inquiry into the curriculum making of participants who compose identities dissonant with dominant stories of gender and sexuality, this article explores the shaping influence of the social (relationships, communities, and contexts) in one participant's life story around sexuality from a curricular perspective. The term curriculum making represents an ongoing process through which individuals make sense and meaning of experience, position curriculum broadly as a course of life, and shift notions of curriculum and curriculum making beyond the bounds of school. Individuals engage in identity making as they make sense of themselves in relation to their curriculum making, narratively understood as the composition of stories to live by. This inquiry highlights the ways that life stories are composed alongside, connected to, and shaped by other people and draws the attention of educators to the complex lives unfolding in schools.


Author(s):  
Ambreen Shahriar

The chapter explores the struggle for inclusion at home and society faced by four young people when they quit the religion they inherited from their parents. Using life-story interviews, it discusses reactions of their families about their decision to quit religion. Furthermore, the chapter sheds light on the ways these young individuals coped with the social problems that they faced after they made a difficult, socially unacceptable choice of switching from their inherited religion. The promotion of symbolic violence in the field and its use by the agents around the participants of this study is discussed through Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and field. The chapter aims to understand and highlight the dilemma faced by the participants due to their decision of conversion in a society which is still not ready for this.


Author(s):  
Elif Ayiter

This text will attempt to delineate the underlying theoretical premises and the definition of the output of an immersive learning approach pertaining to the visual arts to be implemented in online, three dimensional synthetic worlds. Deviating from the prevalent practice of the replication of physical art studio teaching strategies within a virtual environment, the author proposes instead to apply the fundamental tenets of Roy Ascott’s “Groundcourse”, in combination with recent educational approaches such as “Transformative Learning” and “Constructionism”. In an amalgamation of these educational approaches with findings drawn from the fields of Metanomics, Ludology, Cyberpsychology and Presence Studies, as well as an examination of creative practices manifest in the metaverse today, the formulation of a learning strategy for creative enablement unique to online, three dimensional synthetic worlds; one which will focus upon “Play” as well as Role Play, virtual Assemblage and the visual identity of the avatar within the pursuits, is being proposed in this chapter.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-688 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL MERCHANT

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the use of interviews with scientists by members of two disciplinary communities: oral historians and historians of science. It examines the disparity between the way in which historians of science approach autobiographies and biographies of scientists on the one hand, and the way in which they approach interviews with scientists on the other. It also examines the tension in the work of oral historians between a long-standing ambition to record forms of past experience and more recent concerns with narrative and personal ‘composure’. Drawing on extended life story interviews with scientists, recorded by National Life Stories at the British Library between 2011 and 2016, it points to two ways in which the communities might learn from each other. First, engagement with certain theoretical innovations in the discipline of oral history from the 1980s might encourage historians of science to extend their already well-developed critical analysis of written autobiography and biography to interviews with scientists. Second, the keen interest of historians of science in using interviews to reconstruct details of past events and experience might encourage oral historians to continue to value this use of oral history even after their theoretical turn.


2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (5) ◽  
pp. 1113-1123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia S Klokgieters ◽  
Theo G van Tilburg ◽  
Dorly J H Deeg ◽  
Martijn Huisman

Abstract Objectives Older immigrants are affected by an accumulation of adversities related to migration and aging. This study investigates resilience in older immigrants by examining the resources they use to deal with these adversities in the course of their lives. Methods Data from 23 life-story interviews with Turkish and Moroccan immigrants aged 60–69 years living in the Netherlands. Results The circumstances under which individuals foster resilience coincide with four postmigration life stages: settling into the host society, maintaining settlement, restructuring life postretirement, and increasing dependency. Resources that promote resilience include education in the country of origin, dealing with language barriers, having two incomes, making life meaningful, strong social and community networks, and the ability to sustain a transnational lifestyle traveling back and forth to the country of origin. More resilient individuals invest in actively improving their life conditions and are good at accepting conditions that cannot be changed. Discussion The study illustrates a link between conditions across life stages, migration, and resilience. Resilient immigrants are better able to accumulate financial and social and other resources across life stages, whereas less resilient immigrants lose access to resources in different life stages.


1999 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 471-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
PAUL THOMPSON

Belief that the extended family is in terminal decline has proved to be a remarkably persistent myth. It is currently being revived as a result of recent statistical trends. The belief has been closely connected to sociological enquiries undertaken over the course of the century. The validity of the belief, and in particular the significance of grandparents within the extended family, is explored in two sets of life story interviews recently undertaken with adults in Britain; one set are people in their thirties who had become step-children, and the second set participants in a multi-generational study of social mobility. The analysis addresses questions of contact after parental loss, sources of support within the family, the involvement of grandparents, the importance of co-residence, conflict, emotional closeness and communication within a family.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Stig-Börje Asplund ◽  
Héctor Pérez Prieto

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore what conversation analysis has to offer when analysing a series of life story interviews aiming to capture how reading and texts are used in a rural working-class man’s identity construction. Design/methodology/approach The conversation analysis methodology with its explicit focus on embodied social action, activity and conduct in interaction is integrated with a life story approach when analysing and describing the identity constructing processes that take place in life story interview settings. Findings Through a close and detailed analysis of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee, and by focusing and highlighting the phenomena and identities that are oriented to in the face-to-face interaction here and now (and in relation to there and then), descriptions of the complex and dynamic identity constructing processes that are set into play in the life story interview are possible. Research limitations/implications It is argued that the approach has a lot to offer when approaching life story data, and thus is a method that can increase the transparency in life story interview research. Originality/value The paper explores the intersection of what is often seen as diametrically opposed forms of analysis: conversation analysis and narrative inquiry.


2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (7) ◽  
pp. 875-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liza Lorenzetti ◽  
Jeffery Halvorsen ◽  
Rita Dhungel ◽  
Diane Lorenzetti ◽  
Tatiana Oshchepkova ◽  
...  

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