Weightlifting during the COVID-19 Pandemic—A Transnational Study Regarding Motivation, Barriers, and Coping of Master Athletes

Sport has been heavily impacted by the pandemic for over a year with restrictions and closures of facilities. The main aims of this study are to identify motivation and barriers for an international group of Master weightlifters (ages 35 and up) and analyze age and gender differences in pandemic-related changes to physical activities. A sample of 1051 older athletes, 523 women and 528 men, aged from 35 to 88 years, from Australia, Canada, Europe, and the USA provided responses to an online survey conducted in June 2021. A confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine age, gender, and regional differences about motivation, barriers, and pandemic impact on sport and physical activities. Participants showed enthusiasm for the opportunity to compete despite health challenges with increasing age but faced barriers due to access to training facilities and qualified coaches even before the pandemic. The oldest athletes had the greatest reduction in physical activities during the pandemic. Weightlifters had the opportunity to compete in virtual competitions and 44% would like to see some of these continued in the future, especially women. These findings highlight the benefits of competitive sports and may provide future directions in strength sports for organizations, sports clubs, and coaches.

Working the urban assemblage: A transnational study of transforming practices

This article places those working for change in urban neighbourhoods at the centre of debates on urban transformation, directing attention to the importance of human agency in the work of assembling urban transformation. Drawing on cross-national qualitative fieldwork undertaken over 30 months shadowing 40 urban practitioners in neighbourhoods across four European cities – Amsterdam, Birmingham, Copenhagen and Glasgow – our research revealed the catalytic, embodied roles of situated agents in this assembling. Through exemplar vignettes, we present practices in a diverse range of socio-material assemblages aimed to address complex problems and unmet needs in the urban environment. The practices we studied were not those of daily routines, but were instead a purposeful assembling that included nurturing and developing of heterogeneous resources such as relationships, knowledges and materials, framed through an emerging vision to inform, mobilise and channel action. This article brings together assemblage-theoretical and practice-theoretical ideas, with rich empirical insight to advance our understanding of how the city may be re-made.

Mapping the transnational imaginary of social media genres

This article presents a transnational study of the classification and evaluation of social media content. We conducted a large-scale survey ( N = 4770) in five countries (Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, and the United States) with open-ended questions about the types of content people like and dislike. Through iterative and inductive coding, we identified 29 topics, or broad areas of interest, and 213 recurrent genres, or narrower categories that share elements of form and content. We compared the results according to country, gender, age, and education level, identifying patterns of cultural difference and commonality. While we found significant differences in the prominence and preferentiality of content, these distictions were less pronounced for disliked topics around which social media users tended to converge. Finally, we discuss genre imaginaries as normative maps that reflect ideas about morality in general and the purpose of social media in particular.

The Development and Initial Validation of a Short, Self-Report Measure on Social Inclusion for People with Intellectual Disabilities—A Transnational Study

Sport has been promoted as a means of increasing the social inclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities. Suitable tools for evaluating this claim are not readily available. The aim of this study was to develop a self-report tool for use by people with intellectual disabilities regarding the social inclusion they experience in sport and in the community. A three-phase process was used. In the first phase an item bank of questionnaire items was created and field-tested with 111 participants. Initial factor analysis identified 42 items which were further evaluated in Phase 2 with 941 participants from six European countries. Construct validity was established first through Exploratory and then Confirmatory factor analysis. These analyses identified ten items relating to inclusion in sports and ten to inclusion in local communities. A third phase checked the usability and test-retest reliability of the short form with a further 228 participants. In all, 1280 athletes and non-disabled partners were involved from eight countries. This short social inclusion questionnaire has been shown to be a reliable and valid measure for use transnationally. Further psychometric properties remain to be tested; notably its sensitivity to change resulting from interventions aimed at promoting social inclusion.

Conceptualising Teacher Education for Inclusion: Lessons for the Professional Learning of Educators from Transnational and Cross-Sector Perspectives

Despite policy calling for enhanced inclusive practice within all schools and colleges, educators across Europe are facing increasing challenges when providing effective inclusive education for all students as a result of increased diversity within European society. This paper focuses on the development of our understanding of how to support educators’ professional learning around issues of diversity and inclusion. Specifically, it aims to explore what diversity looks like across countries, sectors, and roles, what challenges and dilemmas are posed for educators, and how new approaches to professional learning can support the educators across all sectors. The exploratory study described in the paper emerged from work undertaken as part of an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project called PROMISE (Promoting Inclusion in Society through Inclusion: Professional Dilemmas in Practice). Traditional approaches to professional learning to support teachers’ inclusive practice have tended to focus on discrete courses which address specific learning needs such as autism, literacy difficulties, or behavioural issues. The paper presents findings from a transnational study which indicate that the professional dilemmas facing educators are complex and unpredictable and argues, therefore, that educators require professional learning that is collaborative, interprofessional, and acknowledges that the challenges they face are multifaceted.

Review of the Book ”Building Bridges: Promoting Wellbeing for Family. Handbook for Parents”, Coordinator Aurora-Adina Colomeischi, Lumen Publishing House, 2018

The volume “Building bridges: Promoting wellbeing for family. Handbook for parents ”, published by Lumen Publishing House from Iași in 2018, was developed within the project “Building bridges: Promoting social inclusion and well-being for the families of children with special needs (PSI-WELL)”, and is the result of a cross-sectional and transnational study on social inclusion, stress levels and the well-being of families with children with special needs, carried out in each of the 6 countries that were partners in the project (Romania, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey and Lithuania). The volume coordinated by Assoc. Prof. PhD. Aurora Adina Colomeischi provides concrete results of the extensive research undertaken within the project and seems to be a viable starting point for the development of an educational policy for parents and families of children with special needs. The work is very well substantiated scientifically, and is especially useful for parents who face the special needs of their children, but also for the specialists who undergo therapy with them. In our opinion, the book deals with desirable aspects in the development of social intervention programs often aimed at parents with children with special needs, programs dealing with improving personal resources and parenting skills needed to solve various special and difficult situations presented by children.

Odla tillsammans

Grow Together: Save the World While Building a Meaningful ‘Bee-lationship’ Paul Sherfey Keywords: insects; interspecies relationships; human-animal studies; community gardens Collective gardens – in which individuals work collectively to cultivate and care for a common gardening area – have become a growing phenomenon in recent years. At these sites, the cultivation of community is often as important as the cultivation of organic, local produce. However, observation and digital research carried out in the context of a transnational study of such gardens demonstrates that this community is not limited to human participants, but instead also includes other animal species at these sites. The article investigates the relationships cultivated with one such group – insects. How might we understand the interest shown by gardeners in building hotels and cafés, sowing meadows and arranging festivals for insects? Do participants only see insects for their use-value, or is there something more occurring in the relationship they cultivate, and how it is represented and discussed? Beginning with a discussion of the built environment of the studied collective gardens, the article analyses how certain design choices are specifically oriented towards the use and benefit of insects – especially bees. Progressing from physical space to digital space, the empirical discussion then investigates this interest in bees and their welfare further through several paradigmatic examples. In so doing, discourses communicated in manifestos, social media and news interviews are analysed. This is done in order to explore the worldviews from which individuals and groups understand the importance of bees, as well as the backgrounds that influence their actions and the fantasies for the future that provide a focal point towards which to orient their efforts. Finally, I contrast the discourses about bees with the lack of similar discourse about another group of insects which are readily observable at many sites – wasps. I discuss how differing cultural heritages related to each affect how they are valued and reflect on the possibilities available to us as humans to see ourselves and our future as being dependent on one species, while being comparably indifferent to the presence and important contributions of the other.