Organisational Climate and Pro-environmental Behaviours at Work: The Mediating Role of Personal Norms

Organisations are currently strongly encouraged to adopt more responsible production patterns aligned with sustainable development goals (SDGs). Pro-environmental behaviours (PEBs) in the workplace can strengthen the expected positive impacts of organisations’ environmental performance and engender more sustainable transitions to low-carbon production. Research on PEBs at work is relatively recent, so this field still lacks studies of the role of organisational policies and practices in workers’ adoption of these behaviours and of psychosocial processes that contribute to more sustainable workplaces. The present research examined how perceptions of organisations’ environmental policies and practices (i.e., organisational climate or injunctive norms) and of coworkers’ PEBs (i.e., descriptive norms) affect employees’ self-reported voluntary PEBs. Thogersen’s norm taxonomy model was also applied to address the role of personal norms. Self-commitment to sustainable goals at work can play a fundamental role in workers’ behavioural choices, so this research further investigated whether personal norms mediate the relationship between perceived pro-environmental organisational climate and reported workplace PEBs. To test the proposed model, data were collected on 210 workers from different business sectors, who completed an online questionnaire. The analyses showed that, after controlling for the effects of tenure, education level, and a management position, a pro-environmental organisational climate predicts stronger personal norms and a greater tendency to adopt PEBs at work (adjusted R squared=0.36), providing evidence of complete mediation. Coworkers’ perceived descriptive norms also contribute directly to self-reported PEBs. The discussion of the results focuses on the importance of organisational level initiatives as a way to promote change in individuals’ behaviours, which can have positive consequences for workplaces’ transition to sustainability.

Identifying the content and context of pain within paediatric rheumatology healthcare professional curricula in the UK: a summative content analysis

Background The curriculum for professionals working in paediatric rheumatology should include pain but it is unclear to what extent this currently occurs. The aim of this study was to identify pain-related curriculum content and the context in which pain is presented in educational and training documentation for healthcare professionals in this clinical speciality. Methods Core curricula documents from UK based professional organisations were identified in partnership with healthcare professionals. Documents were analysed using a summative content analysis approach. Key pain terms were quantified and weighted frequencies were used to explore narrative pain themes. Latent content was interpreted qualitatively to explore the context within which pain terms were positioned. Results Nine curriculum documents were identified and analysed from doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists specialising in paediatric rheumatology. Pain themes represented a mean percentage of 1.51% of text across all documents. Pain was rarely presented in the context of both inflammatory and non-inflammatory condition types despite being a common feature of each. Musculoskeletal pain was portrayed simply as a ‘somatic’ symptom, rather than as a complex phenomenon involving biological and psychosocial processes. Content around the assessment and management of pain was vague and inexplicit. Conclusion Current educational and training documentation in paediatric rheumatology do not include core pain topics. Curricula for these healthcare professionals would benefit from updates in contemporary pain theories and examples of in-context, evidence-based pain practices. This should be a priority starting point for optimising patient pain care in paediatric musculoskeletal healthcare.

Restoring the Balance between People, Places, and Profits: A Psychosocial Analysis of Uneven Community Development and the Case for Placemaking Processes

Recent years have seen a paradigm shift from individualistic, market-based models of community development to more sustainable and human-centered approaches that emphasize inclusion and participation. Yet processes of privatization in the era of neoliberalism threaten these efforts by concentrating profits for elites while impoverishing everyday people and the environments they inhabit, resulting in profoundly uneven access to resources, inclusion, and participation. This analysis examines the psychosocial processes that produce and are produced by these unequal and segregated settings, as well as the causes and correlates of this imbalance in the context of the United States. Then, empirical literature is reviewed exploring the harmful consequences that inequality entails for individual and societal wellbeing, arguing that inequality (a) undermines opportunity by limiting access to resources and constraining upward mobility, (b) undermines community by dissolving trust and cohesion, (c) undermines ecosystems health by accelerating environmental degradation, and (d) undermines democracy by reducing the political power of the non-wealthy relative to the wealthy. Finally, four placemaking principles are proposed as a way to promote more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive community development.

Is There a Reformation Into Identity Achievement for Life After Elite Sport? A Journey of Identity Growth Paradox During Liminal Rites and Identity Moratorium

Athletes’ identity development upon retirement from elite sport was examined through a model of self-reformation that integrates and builds on the theoretical underpinnings of identity development and liminality, while advancing seven propositions and supporting conceptual conjectures using findings from research on athletes’ transition out of sport. As some elite athletes lose a salient athletic identity upon retiring from sport, they experience an identity crisis and enter the transition rites feeling in between their former athletic identity and future identity post-sport life, during which a temporary identity moratorium status is needed for identity growth. Given the developmental challenges encountered in moratorium and psychosocial processes necessary to establish a new, fulfilling identity for life after elite sport, we identified key conditions, triggers, and processes that advance how a journey of identity growth paradox experienced during liminality serves as a catalyst toward identity achievement. Elite athletes must be encouraged to persevere in this challenging identity search and delay commitments for as long as it is necessary to achieve identity growth despite experiencing uncomfortable feelings of confusion, void, and ambiguity during the liminal phase. Reforming into an achieved identity for life after elite sport would corroborate the successful navigation of transition, as elite athletes evolved into a synthesized sense of self by cementing, through a negotiated adaptation pathway, constructed identity commitments that will provide new beginnings and meaningful directions to their life after elite sport.

Moving into the next ten years

This paper begins by introducing the Special Issue of the Journal of Language and Sexuality. Then the paper shifts focus, to consider concerns that have shaped studies of language and sexuality over the past ten years and are shaping these studies’ immediate and emerging interests. The paper also considers how the Journal could support these interests in language and sexuality oriented in terms of a “mesh of possibilities …” (Sedgwick 1993: 8) rather than psychosocial processes, masculine/feminine binaries, or hetero/homosexual hierarchies.

COVID-Dynamic: A large-scale multifaceted longitudinal study of socioemotional and behavioral change across the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive societal upheaval around the world. In the US, with 20% of global COVID-19 cases, the pandemic has also triggered a substantial economic shock and laid bare societal inequities. The extreme and highly volatile nature of this time period affords a unique opportunity to elucidate the dynamics of psychosocial processes. In April of 2020, we launched the pre-registered COVID-Dynamic longitudinal study to capture 1000+ U.S. residents’ personal and collective experiences related to the pandemic and to characterize psychological, emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral change. Participants completed a longitudinal, hour-long battery of psychological measures, including assessments of racial, political, social, moral, COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviors, and experimental tasks. Here we describe the ongoing study and provide a detailed assessment of data quality for the first 8 Waves (April to June). The remaining data will be published when data collection, which extends into 2021, has ended.

Sharing positive changes made during COVID-19 national lockdown: a multi-method co-production study

Objectives: A multi-method co-production study was designed to share psychosocial insights into the adoption of positive changes made during COVID-19 national lockdown in Scotland. We examined: i) the psychosocial patterning of positive changes, ii) the psychosocial processes by which positive change was realised, and worked with partner organizations to share our insights. Method: A sequential multi-method design included an online survey (n=2445) assessing positive changes in sleep and physical activity patterns, socio-demographics, mood, social support, coping, and resilience, with multivariate logistic regression analysis. We also employed interviews with a purposive diverse sub-sample of people self-reporting high levels of positive change (n=48) and used thematic analysis. Finally, partnership work translated insights into positive change-sharing targeted resources. Results: The survey identified positive change was significantly patterned by age, gender and vulnerability to COVID-19. Higher positive reframing and higher active coping were associated with higher levels of cross-domain positive change. Higher symptoms of depression, planning, and self-distraction were associated with less cross-domain positive change. Thematic analysis showed the centrality of perceptions of time, opportunities to self-reflect and engage with the natural world, access support in diverse ways, actively build routine and purposefully build self-efficacy and a sense of control were key to initiating positive change. Our partner organizations focused on the rapid co-production of a series of online resources that shared study insights. Conclusions: Our study, based around a salutogenic ethos and the constraints of COVID-19, sought to identify and share insights into achieving positive changes at a time of international crisis.

Representações sociais sobre o processo formativo de professores do campo e da EJA no Brasil: a realidade na Amazônia Paraense

This article articulates the debate on the initial training of rural teachers, Youth and Adult Education (EJA) and the psychosocial processes that guide the training of teachers to / in rural schools. To this end, it embarks on the theoretical field of Social Representations (RS) in order to analyze the senses and meanings of teachers who completed the Degree Course in Rural Education under the contribution of their training process to work in the EJA / countryside in the Amazon Paraense. This is a qualitative study of the exploratory / explanatory type that used the questionnaire and the semi-structured interview to collect the data. The results of this study indicate that the Social Representations of the teachers about the Degree in Rural Education are enrolled in meanings that reaffirm that specific training, geared to the needs of rural people, contributed with knowledge and teaching-learning processes that potentialized (re) thinking and innovating pedagogical practices. The rural teachers also see the course as a space for the production of differentiated knowledge of being and becoming a teacher of EJA in the field, insofar as they help to understand the social and political dynamics of the peasant way of life in the Brazilian Amazonian rural areas.