Perceived Support and Sense of Social Belonging in Young Adults Who Have a Parent With a Mental Illness

This participatory action research explores the perceived social support of youth whose parents have a mental illness during their transition to adulthood. Social support is an important protection factor during this developmental period, but few studies have explored how these young adults perceive their social support. Nor has any study assessed whether participation in a group-based participatory action research project could improve these youth's sense of support.Purpose: (1) identify which aspects of social support these youth spontaneously address when talking about their experiences in Photovoice workshops; (2) explore how participants view these types of workshops as a good way to improve their sense of social support and belonging.Methodology: Ten young adults (nine women and one man) between the ages of 18 and 25 who have at least one parent with a mental illness participated in Photovoice meetings in 2019. These group meetings aimed to explore and share their experiences as young adults whose parents have a mental illness. The testimonies were combined with data obtained from the abbreviated version of the Social Provisions Scale and the Scale of Social Belonging.Results: The quantitative results suggest that participants consider their social support levels to be high, but their qualitative statements highlight low level or absence of parental support in terms of emotional, informative or instrumental levels. They see themselves as an important source of support for their parent and discuss the importance of having other supports figures (romantic partner, employer, friends, sibling, etc.). Conversely, they have difficulty asking for help for various reasons (including fear of stigma). They consider that their participation in this Photovoice project allowed them to feel heard, supported and to develop a sense of belonging to a group.Discussion: To conclude, clinical issues to be considered for psychosocial intervention with young adults of parents with a mental illness are discussed.

Re-search, Re-enactment, Re-design, Re-programmed Art

Kinetic and programmed art has been a trend of contemporary arts that flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. Kinetic artworks often incorporated technology, at that time still immature, and involved the audience in the production of visual, sound, and somatic effects. Gruppo T was the pioneering group at the forefront of this groundbreaking vision of art as reproducible, participatory, and interactive. Through an action research project and the methodological tool of reenactment, a group of researchers, designers, and artists has proposed an alternative way to conserve Gruppo T artworks. The project ‘Re-programmed Art: An Open Manifesto’ originated from the ephemeral and experimental features, as well as fragility, of the works by Gruppo T — that is, from the difficulties of practice, conservation, technology, and market that have confined them for far too long to the margins of mainstream art history. We conceive reenactment not just a mere restaging but as re-designing, re-thinking, updating, and re-programming a series of works by Gruppo T.

Students at the Table

This chapter explores the benefits of involving students in institutional decision making. The authors describe an action research project conducted at a public institution that involved a working group of students, faculty, and administrators researching and cocreating solutions to develop a more inclusive and equitable environment for learning and student development. The university gained direct insight from the students' viewpoints, and students earned course credit while gaining skills in research methods, leadership, communication, negotiation, and writing. The collaborative, cocurricular experience resulted in the development of a center for cross-cultural engagement on campus. The authors also discuss considerations for this model. Institutions must demonstrate a firm commitment to addressing the issues they investigate by providing sufficient resources and recognizing the labor inherent in the transformative leadership of the community members who work to create institutional change.

Working Together: Cooperation or Collaboration?

Teamwork involves different types of interactions—specifically cooperation and collaboration—that are necessary in education and many other professions. The differences between cooperation and collaboration underline the teacher’s role in influencing group dynamics, which represent both a found­ation for professional design education and a prequalification for students’ competences as teachers and for critical evaluation. As a test case, we focused on the Working Together action-research project in design education for specialised teacher training in design, arts, and crafts at the Oslo Metropolitan University, which included three student groups in the material areas of drawing, ceramics, and textiles. The project developed the participants’ patience, manual skills, creativity, and abilities, which are important personal qualities for design education and innovation and represent cornerstones in almost every design literacy and business environment. The hope is that students will transform these compe­tences to teaching pupils of all ages in their future careers.

Answers on a Postcard: Photo Elicitation in the Service of Local Ecclesial Strategy

This article reports the findings of a practical Theological Action Research project in a Church of England diocese in the UK, using photo elicitation. This image-based approach resulted in findings that echoed existing diocesan strategies, but also highlighted other issues that may otherwise have remained implicit, specifically the mode of mission and concerns regarding growth and survival. The visual data itself is analysed, revealing that the images do not always function as direct signifiers, but instead were generating creative, intuited responses. From the data, four mirrors were developed to reflect back to the groups their responses. This approach enabled local strategies to emerge from within espoused theologies, but also to make explicit their coherence or departure from the normative missiologies of the diocese. Finally, the authors suggest that the exposure of church leaders within training to qualitative research methodologies is releasing a new kind of leadership to emerge.

Collaboration, movement and change: An intra-active action research approach

This article elaborates an intra-active approach to action research, with examples from a recently started action research project carried out in collaboration with three preschools. The aim of the article is to contribute to the discussion about how practice-based research for change can take shape. Therefore, these questions are asked: Which concepts are central and what is produced in intra-active action research? Which potentialities for change are enabled via an intra-active approach to action research? New materialism theories, starting with Barad, are used to rethink action research, focusing on collaboration, movements, and change. An analysis workshop within the project, starting in circular and horizontal movements, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari through the work of Lenz Taguchi, is revisited. The intra-actions in the workshop produce both generative and undermining processes. Therefore, the intra-active action research approach implies that staying in the complexity of practices, rather than seeking to reduce the ‘messiness’, holds potentialities for change that unwind from the middle.

“I Don’t let These Felonies Hold me Back!”: How Street-Identified Black Men and Women Use Resilience to Radically Reframe Reentry

This street participatory action research project trained 15 local residents to document a community sample of street-identified Black men and women’s (ages 18–35 years) experiences with reentry in two low-income Black neighborhoods. The following multi-method data were collected: (a) 520 surveys; (b) 24 individual interviews; (c) four dual interviews; and (d) three group interviews. Descriptive and univariate analysis of variance analysis revealed most participants as a function of gender and age-groups held positive attitudes toward reentry, overall; positive attitudes toward returning citizens; negative attitudes toward reentry programs; and negative attitudes toward the reentry process. Qualitative analysis suggested negative experiences with reentry were the result of a racialized structural violence complex; and strategies employed to navigate reentry included legal and illegal approaches. Also, short and long-term goals with reentry were generally achieved through enduring major bouts of unemployment, economic poverty, and low-wage work.

Building “Working with, not for” into Design Studio Curriculum

Design ManifesT.O. 2020 is a Participatory Action Research project currently underway in Toronto, Canada and is working with communities to uncover stories of grassroots placemaking and community building done through creative practice. An unexpected discovery during data collection highlighted how communities are still being left out of decision-making processes that directly affect their collective values and living conditions and are being disrespected by designers and researchers — exposing very large gaps in the education of designers in terms of values-based learning, design ethics, and informed methods for working with communities. This paper interrogates design pedagogy and practice in order to stimulate further discourse and investigation into how to successfully integrate ethical and responsible protocols into design curriculum to support co-design practices where social justice and equity becomes normalized in practice. In other words: giving students the tools to “work with, not for” communities. Demonstrating social conscience is ethically desirable in design education but if students are not given the tools required to work with communities through respectful and collaborative processes then we are training the next generation of designers to continue a form of hegemony in design practice that is undesirable.

Developing Students’ Problem-Solving Skills Using Learning Tasks: an Action Research Project in Secondary School

Studies on students’ problem-solving skills worldwide suggest there is a room for improvement. This study aimed at improving upper-secondary school students’ problem-solving skills in chemistry lessons. They were given a problem tasks pre-test focused on their conceptual knowledge regarding the periodic table, ability to apply knowledge on the factors affecting chemistry reaction rate and compounds’ properties. Most students (72 out of 112) did not succeed to solve the tasks. For this reason, an intervention was designed based on a study using eye-tracking combined with think-aloud. It consisted of students’ working on (PISA-like) context-based chemistry problem tasks with a special scaffolding. A teacher provided formative assessment promoting students’ expansive strategies. The intervention’s effect was again assessed using problem tasks in two post-tests. The results showed the action plan was successful in helping the majority of students reach above-average test score. The ratio of successful solvers also rose and unsuccessful significantly declined.