Immigrant academic mothers negotiating ideal worker and mother norms during the COVID-19 pandemic: Duoethnography as a co-mentoring tool for transformative learning

How are immigrant academic mothers negotiating the confounding terrains of work and family during the pandemic? How can they support each other in learning how to resist the prevalent notions of ideal working and mothering amidst the demanding schedule of working remotely and parenting? This study addresses these questions through sharing a narrative of how two immigrant mothers in academia challenged and began the journey of transforming their gendered work and family identities. Building on personal essays and 6 weeks of extensive journaling that reflected our positionalities and experiences of motherhood, work-life, and intersections between work and home during the pandemic, we offer a fine-grained understanding of how we helped each other as co-mentors to identify moments of our lived experiences as triggers for transformative learning. In doing so, we realized how duoethnography could be more than just a research methodology in helping us co-construct a relational space to empathize and challenge each other’s perspectives about our roles as mothers and professors and the gendered nature of social forces shaping those roles.

Investigating the “Embodied Spaces of Health” in Marathon Running: The Roles of Embodiment, Wearable Technology, and Affective Atmospheres

This paper examines how spaces of health are produced through embodied and affective practices in marathon running in China. While the social-cultural effects of distance running have gained increasing attention among public health scholars and policymakers, there has been little effort paid to the spatiality of running and its contributions to producing healthy spaces for the general public. This paper therefore fills the lacuna through a qualitative study that was conducted with 29 amateur marathon runners in China. Drawing on the Gioia Methodology in coding and analyzing qualitative data, we highlight the interactive effects of body, wearable technology, and affective atmospheres in producing what we call “embodied space of health.” We suggest that the embodied space of health is not simply the bodily experience per se but rather a relational space constituted through the co-production of body, non-human objects, and space/place. It is through these relational spaces that the effects of health and well-being (e.g., self-exploration and therapeutic feelings) emerge in marathon.

THE ONTOLOGICAL TRIANGLE OF THE RELATIONAL PARADIGM

The philosophical analysis of three main paradigms in the basis of physical knowledge is carried out. It is permissible to conclude that in the case of electromagnetic interaction between the emitter and the absorber: 1) the process of interaction of the photon with the medium in space and time can occur; 2) in the case when the photon “teleports” - there is only a relation outside of space and time. The following classification of fundamental concepts, with which the relational paradigm deals, is revealed. The ideal: space and time, field, information, a set of movements of quantum particles. The material: interactions, environment. Nothing more than countable: time, electromagnetic interactions. Uncountable: space, environment, interactions with the environment, a set of movements of quantum particles. Substantial: environment, interactions, information, a set of movements of quantum particles. Relational: space, time, field - as a means of description.

School Mathematics and miyō-pimōhtēwin

We want mathematics to be a process of miyō-pimōhtēwin (walking in a good way). Using a narrative inquiry methodology, we share our experiences working alongside two Cree elementary school teachers and the students in their mathematics classroom. The teachers taught principles that balance kohtawān (our spiritual being) and make curriculum into a relational space. The principles invite school mathematics to be learned and taught in a way that foregrounds self-awareness, doing things properly, learning new ways, being thankful, being humble, leaving problems behind you, helping yourself and keeping trying. This paper also demonstrates a promising practice of Indigenization in the mathematics classroom by providing a contextual way in which Cree students and teachers engaged in school mathematics in relational ways.

Storying place: A tok stori about relationalities in Oceanic education and development

<p>Education and development are intimately connected and highly contested in Oceania, in theory and in practice. Indigenous Oceanic notions and practices of both education and development are fundamentally relational, and are expressions of culture, identity, kinship, and embeddedness in place. Oceanic peoples are engaged in ongoing resistance and negotiation with externally imposed models of education and development, at a variety of scales. This study is an inquiry into relationalities at the intersection of education and development in Oceania. It is a body of work that has emerged from the author’s extensive relationships in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The research has an explicit decolonising agenda, reflected in the use of the relational practice of tok stori as the primary methodological framework, in order to centre the knowledge, practices and interests of Oceanic peoples. The relational space created by storying with Gunantuna/Tolai elders, educators, development practitioners, and other community members in East New Britain, brought forth uniquely place centred insights about the ways development and education are articulated, contested, negotiated and reclaimed by Indigenous peoples at the local level.</p>

Storying place: A tok stori about relationalities in Oceanic education and development

<p>Education and development are intimately connected and highly contested in Oceania, in theory and in practice. Indigenous Oceanic notions and practices of both education and development are fundamentally relational, and are expressions of culture, identity, kinship, and embeddedness in place. Oceanic peoples are engaged in ongoing resistance and negotiation with externally imposed models of education and development, at a variety of scales. This study is an inquiry into relationalities at the intersection of education and development in Oceania. It is a body of work that has emerged from the author’s extensive relationships in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The research has an explicit decolonising agenda, reflected in the use of the relational practice of tok stori as the primary methodological framework, in order to centre the knowledge, practices and interests of Oceanic peoples. The relational space created by storying with Gunantuna/Tolai elders, educators, development practitioners, and other community members in East New Britain, brought forth uniquely place centred insights about the ways development and education are articulated, contested, negotiated and reclaimed by Indigenous peoples at the local level.</p>

Figuring the Transition from Circular Economy to Circular Society in Australia

The combined pressure of economic, environmental, and social crises, including bushfires, waste management, and COVID created conditions for a turn to the circular economy in Australia. In addition to a dominant circular discourse of ecological modernization in state and federal policy and business and public consultations, other more socially inclusive and ecologically sensitive discourses are circulating. The two main competing discourses are a techcentric circular economy and a reformist circular society, the latter reflected in ‘growth agnostic’ doughnut economics. In the context of unambitious federal and state policies, the circular transition is being supported by a range of intermediary organizations whose key representatives envision or ‘figure’ the sustainability transition in hybrid discursive combinations. Few studies of the circular economy transition in Australia exist and none focus on competing discourses and intermediation for sustainability transition. Since intermediary organizations both discursively reflect and lead the circular change, fuller understanding of how circularity is interpreted or ‘figured’ by key actors is crucial. This study identifies how twenty representatives from intermediating organizations actively ‘figure’ the process of the circular transition for Australia, including while managing the tension between personal positions and organizational missions. Employing the concept of figured worlds this qualitative thematic discourse interview study analyses how, drawing on available circular discourses, key actors and their organisations actively ‘figure’ the present and future circular transition. The study contributes to debates on circular discourses, nature, and the limitations of the circular economy in Australia, the relational space of intermediation, and the nature of MLP transitions for a sustainable circular transition economy in Australia.

A connected community response to COVID-19 in Toronto

In this commentary, we describe initial learnings from a community-based research project that explored how the relational space between residents and formal institutions in six marginalised communities in Toronto, Ontario, Canada impacted grassroots responses to the health and psycho-social stresses that were created and amplified by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Our research found that grassroots community leaders stepped up to fill the gaps left by Toronto’s formal public health and emergency management systems and were essential for mitigating the psycho-social and socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic that exacerbated pre-existing inequities and systemic failures. We suggest that building community resilience in marginalised communities in Toronto can embody health promotion in action where community members, organisational, institutional and government players create the social infrastructure necessary to build on local assets and work together to promote health by strengthening community action, advocating for healthy public policy and creating supportive environments.