Splashes of light: Parents of children with dyslexia explore experiences through visual arts

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Watt
Keyword(s):  
Learning Disabilities ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract This article examines the critical disability praxis grounding a research study that explored the lived experiences of parents of children with dyslexia through in-depth interviews and arts-based focus group. The participants engaged in visual arts practices to create provoking images of the issues facing themselves or their families. This multimodal experience became an opportunity for the participants to raise awareness of the needs of families with learning disabilities. This article focuses on two parent-artists who created visual pieces that shared a thematic focus on darkness and light. Both pieces contribute to a deeper understanding of the challenges and difficulties that these parent-artists encountered, but also gave them the opportunity to voice the more affirmative and empowering aspects of their experiences.

Challenges Faced by Community Volunteers in Community Development: Voices from Volunteers in Chegutu District, Zimbabwe

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110345
Author(s):  
Itai Kabonga ◽  
Kwashirai Zvokuomba
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Focus Group Discussion ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Group Discussion ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Spiritual Support ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Community Volunteers ◽  
Depth Interviews

Volunteer scholarship in Zimbabwe tends to focus on volunteer motivations, volunteers’ role in community development and, to a lesser extent, volunteers’ challenges. In this study, we captured the lived experiences of volunteers in the current milieu of socio-economic challenges. We discovered that the major challenges affecting community volunteers in the Chegutu District are poverty and vulnerability, burnout, too much work, lack of community appreciation of volunteerism and lack of adequate volunteer paraphernalia. We move beyond other studies to explore how volunteers are coping with the challenges. Volunteers are reliant on spiritual support and encouragement by some community members. The study adopts a qualitative approach with data collected using in-depth interviews and focus group discussion. The findings are presented and discussed thematically.

Young Adults’ Contextualization of Environmental and Sustainability Issues: A Critical Issue for Environmental Education Intervention

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony KOLA-OLUSANYA
Keyword(s):  
Young Adults ◽  
Environmental Education ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Critical Issue ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Insight Into

As soon as decision makers are expected to make differences towards sustainable future, young adults’ ability to make informed and sound decisions is considered essential towards securing our planet. This study provides an insight into young adults’ knowledge of key environment and sustainability issues. To answer the key research questions, data were obtained using a qualitative phenomenographic research approach and collected through 18 face-to-face in-depth interviews with research participants. The findings of this study suggest that young adults lived experiences that play a huge role in their level of awareness of topical environmental and sustainability issues critical to humanity’s future on earth. 

scholarly journals Nairobi Early Childcare in Slums (NECS) Study Protocol: a mixed-methods exploration of paid early childcare in Mukuru slum, Nairobi

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. e000822
Author(s):  
Robert C Hughes ◽  
Patricia Kitsao-Wekulo ◽  
Sunil Bhopal ◽  
Elizabeth W Kimani-Murage ◽  
Zelee Hill ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Epidemiological Methods ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Early Childcare ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Childcare Providers

IntroductionThe early years are critical. Early nurturing care can lay the foundation for human capital accumulation with lifelong benefits. Conversely, early adversity undermines brain development, learning and future earning.Slums are among the most challenging places to spend those early years and are difficult places to care for a child. Shifting family and work structures mean that paid, largely informal, childcare seems to be becoming the ‘new normal’ for many preschool children growing up in rapidly urbanising Africa. However, little is known about the quality of this childcare.AimsTo build a rigorous understanding what childcare strategies are used and why in a typical Nairobi slum, with a particular focus on provision and quality of paid childcare. Through this, to inform evaluation of quality and design and implementation of interventions with the potential to reach some of the most vulnerable children at the most critical time in the life course.Methods and analysisMixed methods will be employed. Qualitative research (in-depth interviews and focus group discussions) with parents/carers will explore need for and decision-making about childcare. A household survey (of 480 households) will estimate the use of different childcare strategies by parents/carers and associated parent/carer characteristics. Subsequently, childcare providers will be mapped and surveyed to document and assess quality of current paid childcare. Semistructured observations will augment self-reported quality with observable characteristics/practices. Finally, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with childcare providers will explore their behaviours and motivations. Qualitative data will be analysed through thematic analysis and triangulation across methods. Quantitative and spatial data will be analysed through epidemiological methods (random effects regression modelling and spatial statistics).Ethics and disseminationEthical approval has been granted in the UK and Kenya. Findings will be disseminated through journal publications, community and government stakeholder workshops, policy briefs and social media content.

Of Vulnerability and Agency: Perspectives from Survivors of Sex Trafficking in India

2021 ◽  
pp. 097370302110036
Author(s):  
Nisha James ◽  
Shubha Ranganathan
Keyword(s):  
Field Study ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Women's Narratives ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Paternalistic Attitude

The recent Anti-Trafficking Bill in India (2018) has received considerable criticism for perpetuating a paternalistic attitude towards victims of sex trafficking. Scholars, activists and legal experts have pointed out the failure of the Act to recognise the agency of trafficked girls and women. In thinking about victimhood and agency, we draw attention to the need for thinking of ‘vulnerability’ in terms of complex intersectional processes and situations that render certain persons more vulnerable to trafficking. This article delves into contexts and vulnerabilities in the process of trafficking by drawing on women’s narratives about the lived experiences of sex trafficking. It is based on a qualitative field study through in-depth interviews of 51 survivors of sex trafficking who were sheltered in government and non-government organisations in the cities of Chennai and Hyderabad.

scholarly journals Lower Case Truth: Bridging Affect Theory and Arts-Based Education Research to Explore Color as Affect

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 160940692199891
Author(s):  
Ellie Haberl
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
Western United States ◽  
Visual Method ◽  
School Practice ◽  
Lower Case ◽  
Project Participants ◽  
Grade Classroom

As education researchers increase our focus on affect as a crucial dimension of school practice and pedagogy, we also have the responsibility of taking up the paradoxical nature of seeking to represent and analyze moments of feeling that, by their very nature, evade our understanding. This article explores the question of attending to affect in education research by drawing on research conducted in a seventh grade classroom in a mid-sized city in the western United States, where students were explicitly invited to ground argumentative writing in lived experiences that were significant to them, including those experiences often deemed difficult and thus saturated with affective intensities. Invited to use visual arts-based methods of representing the felt dimension of the project, participants used both color and abstract design as a method for representing the complexity of these affective intensities. The author makes an argument for this visual method of representation that invites students to illustrate their affective experience in ways that maintain its complex, contrasting and often non-linguistic nature.

Everyday updates: How parents ask about their young children’s lived experiences

2021 ◽  
pp. 026540752098236
Author(s):  
Darcey K. deSouza
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Family Communication ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Canadian English ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
Parent Child Interactions ◽  
Parent Child

This research study explores how children respond to solicitations for updates about their (recent) experiences. Instances of parents soliciting updates from their children were collected from over 30 hours of video-recorded co-present family interactions from 20 different American and Canadian families with at least one child between the ages of 3 and 6. Previous research has documented that caregivers of very young children treat them as being able to disclose about events they have experienced (Kidwell, 2011). In building upon the literature on family communication and parent-child interactions as well as the literature on epistemics, this paper explores the concept of “talking about your day” in everyday co-present family interactions, showing three ways in which parents solicit updates from their children: through report solicitations, tracking inquiries, and asking the child to update someone else. Data are in American and Canadian English.

Kinship construction variability among Nigerian international migrants: The context of contemporary Diaspora

Human Affairs ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olayinka Akanle ◽  
Olanrewau Olutayo
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
First Century ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Kinship Networks ◽  
Methodological Triangulation ◽  
International Migrants ◽  
Depth Interviews

AbstractUnderstanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks.

Concurrent Engineering Assessment: A Proposed Framework

1996 ◽  
Vol 210 (4) ◽  
pp. 321-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
J Poolton ◽  
I Barclay
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Concurrent Engineering ◽  
Research Study ◽  
New Product ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Past Experiences ◽  
Depth Interviews

There are few studies that have found an adequate means of assessing firms based on their specific needs for a concurrent engineering (CE) approach. Managers interested in introducing CE have little choice but to rely on their past experiences of introducing change. Using data gleaned from a nine month case study, a British-wide survey and a series of in-depth interviews, this paper summarizes the findings of a research study that examines how firms orientate themselves towards change and how they go about introducing CE to their operations. The data show that there are many benefits to introducing CE and that firms differ with respect to their needs for the CE approach. A tentative means to assess CE ‘needs’ is proposed which is based on the level of complexity of goods produced by firms. The method is currently being developed and extended to provide an applications-based framework to assist firms to improve their new product development performance.

Disability and Social Exclusion

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elina I. Tobias ◽  
Sourav Mukhopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Community Activities ◽  
Individual Interviews

This article explores the experiences of social exclusion of individuals with visual impairment (IWVI) as they negotiate their daily lives in their homes and societal settings in the Oshana and Oshikoto regions of Namibia. Employing qualitative research approach, this research tried to better understand the lived experiences of IWVI. Nine IWVI with ages ranging from 30 to 90 years were initially engaged in focus group discussions, followed by semi-structured in-depth individual interviews. The findings of this research indicated that IWVI experience exclusion from education, employment and social and community participation as well as relationships. Based on these findings, we suggest more inclusive policies to address social exclusion of IWVI. At the same time, this group of individuals should be empowered to participate in community activities to promote interaction with people without visual impairments.

A post-intentional phenomenological investigation of inclusivity in a therapeutic theatre production

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-191
Author(s):  
Angelle Cook
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Thematic Analysis ◽  
Personal Growth ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Inclusive Production ◽  
Societal Change ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
Therapeutic Theatre

This article presents a dissertation study that investigated the lived experiences of participants engaged in an inclusive therapeutic theatre production through a post-intentional phenomenological lens, informed by critical dis/ability theory. The study included ten participants aged 14–26 with a variety of dis/abilities. The data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and a focus group and analysed using thematic analysis. The qualitative findings included six themes and fifteen subthemes. These findings suggested that the participants experienced belonging and community, personal growth and insight, feelings of empowerment and the desire to make societal change by being a part of the inclusive production.

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