When an Infant Grandchild Dies: Family Matters

<p>When a child dies the main focus of both clinical practitioners and researchers is on the parents and, to a lesser extent, the siblings. In contrast grandparents have been called the "forgotten grievers". Are grandparents "forgotten"? If so - by whom? My interest in this study, as a nurse working with bereaved families, was to explore how grandparents, parents and health/bereavement professionals constructed grandparent bereavement when an infant grandchild died unexpectedly. The 26 participants, living in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, included 16 grandparents and 6 parents from 11 families, in addition to 3 health/bereavement professionals. As a theoretical framework I used constructivist inquiry informed by writings on nursing, storying and postmodernism. Through an exploration of the methodological and ethical issues that arose and were addressed during the study, this work adds to knowledge of how constructivist inquiry can be used in nursing and bereavement research. In addition, the context of this research as a partnership with multiple family members contributes to the ongoing debate about whether participation in bereavement research may be harmful or therapeutic. Our conversations in this research formed a series of interviews and letters, which led to the development of a joint construction and each individual's story. A grandchild's death was constructed as a challenge which grandparents faced, responded to and then managed the changes that arose from the challenge. When facing this challenge, grandparents felt "pain" and had a strong sense of "being unprepared", despite extensive life experience. The context of their bereavement was seen as underpinned by their relationship as "parents of the adult parents" of the grandchild who died. This meant that grandparents placed their own pain second to their wish to support and "be with" the parents. Parents and health/bereavement professionals appreciated the support that grandparents offered at a time when they, too, were bereaved. It was outside the family where many grandparents found friends, colleagues or their community forgot, or chose not to acknowledge, their bereavement. From this work the stories of individuals offer previously unspoken voices, to appreciate the multiple meanings and ways in which grandparents are bereaved. In particular, recognising that some grandparents help to create a space within the family which maintains a continuing relationship with the grandchild who died. Combining the stories with the joint construction offers us as clinicians, researchers and members of communities, a perspective to consider in acknowledging grandparent bereavement as an ongoing part of people's lives.</p>

When an Infant Grandchild Dies: Family Matters

<p>When a child dies the main focus of both clinical practitioners and researchers is on the parents and, to a lesser extent, the siblings. In contrast grandparents have been called the "forgotten grievers". Are grandparents "forgotten"? If so - by whom? My interest in this study, as a nurse working with bereaved families, was to explore how grandparents, parents and health/bereavement professionals constructed grandparent bereavement when an infant grandchild died unexpectedly. The 26 participants, living in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, included 16 grandparents and 6 parents from 11 families, in addition to 3 health/bereavement professionals. As a theoretical framework I used constructivist inquiry informed by writings on nursing, storying and postmodernism. Through an exploration of the methodological and ethical issues that arose and were addressed during the study, this work adds to knowledge of how constructivist inquiry can be used in nursing and bereavement research. In addition, the context of this research as a partnership with multiple family members contributes to the ongoing debate about whether participation in bereavement research may be harmful or therapeutic. Our conversations in this research formed a series of interviews and letters, which led to the development of a joint construction and each individual's story. A grandchild's death was constructed as a challenge which grandparents faced, responded to and then managed the changes that arose from the challenge. When facing this challenge, grandparents felt "pain" and had a strong sense of "being unprepared", despite extensive life experience. The context of their bereavement was seen as underpinned by their relationship as "parents of the adult parents" of the grandchild who died. This meant that grandparents placed their own pain second to their wish to support and "be with" the parents. Parents and health/bereavement professionals appreciated the support that grandparents offered at a time when they, too, were bereaved. It was outside the family where many grandparents found friends, colleagues or their community forgot, or chose not to acknowledge, their bereavement. From this work the stories of individuals offer previously unspoken voices, to appreciate the multiple meanings and ways in which grandparents are bereaved. In particular, recognising that some grandparents help to create a space within the family which maintains a continuing relationship with the grandchild who died. Combining the stories with the joint construction offers us as clinicians, researchers and members of communities, a perspective to consider in acknowledging grandparent bereavement as an ongoing part of people's lives.</p>

Exploring experiences of ableism in academia: a constructivist inquiry

To understand the experiences of the disabled in academia, a fully accessible and inclusive workshop conference was held in March 2018. Grounded in critical disability studies within a constructivist inquiry analytical approach, this article provides a contextualisation of ableism in academia garnered through creative data generation. The nuanced experiences of disabled academics in higher education as well as their collective understandings of these experiences as constructed through normalisation and able-bodiedness are presented. We show that disabled academics are marginalised and othered in academic institutions; that the neoliberalisation of higher education has created productivity expectations, which contribute to the silencing of the disabled academics’ perspectives and experiences due to constructions of normality and stigmatisation; and that it is important to enact policies, procedures, and practices that value disabled academics and bring about cultural and institutional changes in favour of equality and inclusion.

Affordances of Flipped Classrooms: Unveiling the Paradox of Basics and Key Principles of Flipped Learning

The flipped classroom is an active, student-centered strategy that has been developed to enhance the quality of the classroom era. For many years up till now, language experts have been seeking better ways to teach and learn. Flipped learning in the classroom that spreads rapidly throughout the world is not well established. All through the history of teaching and learning, traditional methods have come and gone. Despite traditional methods, modern methods tend to be more of a student-centered, constructivist, inquiry-based one. "Flipped learning" is an eye-catching model that has recently become popular. This article seeks to provide perspectives into flipped classes: roles, processes, and step-by-step what really happens inside and outside! That is to attract attention to its potential in the education field and provide to make it recognize more by educators and researchers. To this end, it has been tried to clarify the benefits and constraints of what flipped classroom strategy is all about.

Bridging the Action Gap by Democratizing Climate Change Education—The Case of k.i.d.Z.21 in the Context of Fridays for Future

Formal schooling frequently lacks both democratic learning culture and effective climate change education (CCE). This study analyzes the effects of the participatory CCE initiative k.i.d.Z.21 and the impacts of the current Fridays For Future (FFF) climate protests on teenagers’ climate change awareness. The mixed-methods approach comprises online pre-and post-tests, and personal interviews with selected students. k.i.d.Z.21 follows moderate constructivist, inquiry-based learning approaches and addresses 14-year old students from secondary schools in Austria and southern Germany. Considering the effectiveness of the CCE intervention of school year 2018/2019 (N = 169), quantitative findings reveal an increased mean of major components of climate change awareness, including climate-friendly behavior. When separating participants and non-participants in Fridays For Future, personal concern and refusing meat have both increased significantly only among protest participants. A closer examination of this group identifies an enhanced feeling of self-efficacy that might be triggered by perceived collective efficacy. Besides, more climate-friendly consumption behavior, as well as enhanced multiplicative action, are detected. The interviewed students also clearly assigned increased action-related components of climate change awareness to the attendance of FFF. From the findings, we conclude that democratic learning in and out of school can enhance action-related components of climate change awareness, and a combination of both can have an even stronger effect.

Authenticity in Constructivist Inquiry: Assessing an Elusive Construct

Methodological rigor in constructivist inquiry is established through an assessment of trustworthiness and authenticity. Trustworthiness parallels the positivistic concepts of internal and external validity, focusing on an assessment of the inquiry process. Authenticity, however, is unique to constructivist inquiry and has no parallel in the positivistic paradigm. Authenticity involves an assessment of the meaningfulness and usefulness of interactive inquiry processes and social change that results from these processes. However, the techniques for ascertaining authenticity are in the early stages of development. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to describe a process for assessing authenticity in a constructivist inquiry. A brief overview of constructivist inquiries are described in relation to a set of techniques designed specifically to assess five dimensions of authenticity. Implications for constructivist researchers and social work research are presented.

Libraries, Scholars, and Publishers in Digital Journal and Monograph Publishing

As the budget increases of the post-World War II era that favoured science and education were being rolled back in the 1970s, information and communicational technological (ICT) development began to be rolled out. Research libraries responded by developing data systems and expertise that led eventually to new services such as institutional repositories and journal hosting. Twenty years later, continued ICT development encouraged entrepreneurship in digital journal publishing among a variety of scholars in Canada and elsewhere. Globally, public and private sector funded digital projects emerged aimed at regime change in the circulation of research knowledge. These dramatic developments are noteworthy for themselves as well as in recognition of valuable library/researcher partnerships that leave content to scholars and administration to libraries. On the whole, these partnerships have not been extended to university press-based monograph publishing with the presses joining as a third partner. Instead calls for reorganization verge on subordinating university presses to institutional mandates that could well diminish freedom of inquiry. A three-way partnership among scholars, libraries and publishing professionals has much to recommend it. Such a partnership, cast as constructivist inquiry, or social science and humanities R&D, would encourage extensive public sector participation scholarly publishing and open a long-overdue dynamic into the social science and humanities research.

Understanding the nature of science and scientific progress: A theory-building approach

In 1993 Carey and Smith conjectured that the most promising way to boost students’ understanding of the nature of science is a “theory-building approach to teaching about inquiry.” The research reported here tested this conjecture by comparing results from two Grade 4 classrooms that differed in their emphasis on and technological support for creating and improving theories. One class followed a Knowledge Building approach and used Knowledge Forum®, which together emphasize theory improvement and sustained creative work with ideas. The other class followed an inquiry approach mediated through collaborative project-based activities. Apart from this, the two classes were demographically similar and both fell within the broad category of constructivist, inquiry-based approaches and employed a range of modes and media for investigative research and reports. An augmented version of Carey and Smith’s Nature of Science Interview showed that the Knowledge Building approach resulted in deeper understanding of the nature of theoretical progress, the connections between theories and facts, and the role of ideas in scientific inquiry.