Our understanding of how the world works is shaped through countless interactions with things in it. These interactions are our first exposure to science. Through them, we learn that heavy things are hard to push and books do not fall through tables. Our interactions are also shaped by the rules of the groups to which we belong (e.g., families, religious organizations, athletic teams). These rules lead us to accept that some things cannot or should not be done, limiting our interactions with the world. At the same time, these rules change our appreciation for what we do experience. Prior research has focused largely on the separate influences of either physical interactions or social interactions, leaving (relatively) unexplored their combined effects. In this dissertation, I describe how adults understand science related to their long-term participation in a recreational road bicycling group. The cyclists demonstrated a rich understanding of gearing and air resistance that paralleled, on a practical level, the explanations taught in school. This understanding was shaped by the cyclists’ years of physical experience interpreted in light of their individual goals for participating. For the cyclists in this study, knowing the science helped them be more efficient and faster riders. In the end, this study supports the idea that productive and valuable learning takes place in many settings and that it is important to account for the relationship between the social and physical aspects of learning when designing instructional experiences.

The field of mediation has emerged as one of the premier tools in the peacemaking process. While mediation has grown in popularity and become widely accepted in the judicial court system and corporate America, very few studies have focused on how mediators are impacted by the conflict resolution process. Moreover, few studies have focused on the role of spiritual self-care on the mediator. This research study explored how mediators who identify as spiritual integrate their spirituality in their own self-care practice. In order for mediation to continue as one of the most important tools in the peacemaking process, mediators of today and the future must have effective and beneficial self-care practices to perform professionally at a high level. This study utilized transcendental phenomenology to capture the lived experiences of 11 conflict professionals who incorporate spirituality into their self-care practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore how they practiced self-care and the essence of what spiritual self-care entailed. The major themes identified in this study were: (a) mediators spiritual practices were used as tools for preparation and protection in conflict work, (b) spiritual practices invoked deep and meaningful feelings of connectedness, and (c) that spiritually identifying mediators began to embody the same practices they used. Essentially, spiritual self-care was vital to being effective in their professional lives. Mediators were able to offer deep value to their clients through their spirituality and simultaneously found deep value in their spiritual self-care practices. The research was significant, as it allowed for a deeper understanding of conflict practitioners and could benefit the personal and professional growth of the mediation field.

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This thesis presents a close reading of the award-winning novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a framework, and the notion of embodiment, the study sheds light on metaphorical linguistic expressions that contribute to the realization of conceptual container metaphors pertinent to the main character’s psychological state. The thesis demonstrates that there are dual results for containment. Firstly, the author conceptualizes the character’s body as a container that is imprisoned because of the patriarchal regime’s control. Secondly, the body is portrayed as a container for safety and love before the regime’s takeover. In addition to this, the thesis examines themes of nature symbolism and time. The containment of nature serves as a metaphor for oppression because of environmental destruction in the country. Nevertheless, it carries a glimpse of hope and freedom and/or different forms of escape. Finally, through time conceptualized as a container, the character enters the past, and the memories it brings. This either provides an escape from the present reality — mental time travel that has positive or negative effects on the character’s mental state, or reminds her of the imprisoned life she is presently in.

Because no government body has mandated a national or state curriculum for music education in the United States, elementary general music teachers can vary widely in their curricular choices about whether and how to include movement. To contribute to an understanding of children’s experiences engaging in movement during their elementary music education, the purpose of this research was to examine influencers on pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade general music teachers’ choices to use movement in elementary general music classes. With a pragmatic worldview, I approached the study through a lens of embodied teaching and learning, acknowledging a person’s bodily movements as connected ways of musical knowing. I used a mixed methods, explanatory sequential design in two phases of the research. In Phase I, I posed four research questions. Research questions one through three: For two types of movement (i.e., non-locomotor, locomotor), to what extent does variance in (a) school socioeconomic status (i.e., Title I, Non-Title I), (b) physical classroom space, and (c) class size significantly relate to the use of movement by type in elementary general music classes? Research question four: (d) To what extent do school socioeconomic status, physical classroom space, and class size in combination explain the variance in the use of movement in elementary general music classes? In Phase II, I posed four additional research questions to explain the results of Phase I. Research questions five through seven: How do music teachers describe the (e) purpose, (f) benefits, and (g) challenges in their use of different movement types in elementary general music classes? Research question eight: (h) What results emerge from comparing the quantitative data on influencers to the use of movement by type with the qualitative data that describes teachers’ choices in movement instruction? For that question, I examined the results from Phase I and Phase II to complete the mixed methods design of this study. In Phase I, pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade general music teachers (N = 251) teaching in the United States voluntarily completed a researcher-designed web-based survey. For research questions one through three, I conducted independent t-tests on the survey data for each of the related variables. For research question one, participants in Title I schools (n = 163) used non-locomotor steady beat gestures (t = 1.99) and locomotor choreography (t = 2.37) statistically significantly more than participants in non-Title I schools (n = 88). For research question two, participants without a dedicated physical music classroom space (n = 30) used non-locomotor movement for showing pitch relations and melodic contour with hands (t = 2.21) statistically significantly more than participants with a dedicated music classroom (n = 221). Participants with a dedicated music classroom (n = 221) used locomotor choreography (t = 3.87) statistically significantly more than participants without dedicated music classroom (n = 30). For research question three, participants with large class sizes (n = 107) used non-locomotor dramatizing (p = -.132) and locomotor creative/exploratory movement (p = -.198) statistically significantly more than participants with medium (n = 108) or small (n = 36) class sizes. For research question four, I conducted a multiple regression on the survey data to examine the influence of school socioeconomic status, physical space, and class size on use of movement by type. Results indicated one statistically significant correlation for the variables in combination: participants in Title I schools with dedicated music rooms statistically significantly used non-locomotor moving with flow (t = 2.303). In Phase II, I purposefully sampled 17 of 106 interested Phase I survey participants based on their responses to demographic information in relation to five conditions established a priori: Self-Reported Frequency of Movement Use, School Socioeconomic Status, Class Size, Physical Classroom Space, and Professional Development Experience. To answer research questions five through seven, I conducted a thematic analysis of those 17 Phase II participants’ transcribed and member-checked individual, semi-structured interviews. From their interview data, I identified 31 representative meaning units, 10 lower order themes, and four higher order themes (i.e., Who I Am, Who My Students Are, Where We Are Together, and What We Do Together). For research question eight, I compared the quantitative data on influencers to the use of movement by type with qualitative data that describes participants’ choices in type of movement. Participants’ choices to use locomotor movement were constrained by their physical classroom space and large class sizes but not by school socioeconomic status. Teachers’ choices to use movement in general music settings are also influenced by teacher identity and body image. Since participants volunteered for this study, results need to be applied with caution. By examining the results of Phase I and Phase II, I concluded that teachers in this study connected their choices of whether and how to use movement in elementary general music to their own identity, understandings of students’ identities, school context, and students’ musical engagement. Teachers desire students’ engaging movement experiences that lead to students’ empowerment through embodied learning. Teachers’ choices to use movement potentially connect teachers’ and students’ embodied experiences with teachers’ personally formational instruction, regardless of their school socioeconomic status, physical classroom space, or class size. Implications for the field of music education include widening our understanding of the role of identity at various junctures of a music teacher’s career. Because administrators assign physical teaching spaces and determine maximum class sizes, they play an important role ensuring general music teachers can teach in a dedicated space that is physically and socioemotionally safe for students and their teacher. By contemplating ways to engage in personal movement experiences beyond their practice in their classrooms, teachers may boost their self-confidence, and expand possibilities for using movement instruction in less-than-ideal teaching spaces. Future researchers might investigate the (a) role music-teacher body image plays as it influences teachers’ choices to use movement, (b) ways teachers connect students’ dance cultures to music learning, (c) use of movement in remote, cyber, or virtual general music classes. Depending on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic, future researchers may explore general music teachers’ choices to use movement relative to social distancing practices. / Music Education

This thesis explores how gender inequality in the photographic staff of the main Colombian media outlets, has established a hegemonic view of representation and examines the way recent social outbursts in the country, have been the ideal setting for the rise of citizen journalism, visual activism, and new visual citizenships. It seeks to present how diverse individuals, including female photojournalists are producing alternative visual narratives and igniting a paradigm shift on traditional photojournalism. By embracing new digital visualities and depictions of the other, these individuals are confronting traditional media organizations, questioning their visual narratives, inclusion, and representation policies.   Positioned from a Phenomenological and Feminist Media Theory standpoint, this project aims to observe this phenomenon from the bottom up, building from the experiences of the subject’s study. This project will consider emotions, affections lived experiences of three Colombian female photojournalists in active exercise of their profession, who will take part of this study, and those experiences will be basic inputs of interpretation. I contend that not sufficient research has been done on this topic, and expose an evident research gap, existing in Latin-American and Colombian Media Studies, since it’s connected to new technologies, recent social change and in general, a phenomenon still developing. Drawing from a Phenomenological Psychology field methodology, data will be obtained through semi-structured interviews and examined with coding and interpretation tools provided by this discipline. This study concludes how the female body becomes a political and visual signifier exercising an embodied practice in photojournalism, but also by emotions connected to what they are seeing through their lenses, which in turn, produces affective visualities and narratives many times, opposed to the claims of objectivity, rationality and newsworthiness traditional journalism stands for.

Denna studie undersöker hur ’känsla av plats’, betraktat som menings- och anknytningsskapande till plats, påverkar individuellt och allmänt mentalt välbefinnande. Genom appliceringen av förkroppsligad autoetnografi syftar den till att skildra ett personligt narrativ om egna upplevelser från att gå på gatorna i Stockholms innerstad. Forskningsfrågan är: V ad kan ett autoetnografiskt och förkroppsligat tillvägagångssätt bidra till framväxande teorier och metoder som berör sambandet mellan känsla av plats och mentalt välbefinnande? Från det explorativa tillvägagångssättet presenteras några påståenden framåt slutet baserat på resultaten. För det första är det viktigt för utövare, teoretiker och medborgare att utforska platsbetydelser som en del av och i platsen, för att utveckla förståelse och ifrågasätta sociokulturella konstruktioner av att veta och leva. För det andra är det ett etiskt imperativ att vara uppmärksam på affekter och känslor i relation till plats, där ett ökat intresse från de som jobbar med offentliga miljöer behövs. För det tredje består meningsfulla platser av invecklade nätverk av jaget, andra och miljöer, vilket belyser hur miljön sällan har företräde i sig själv. Slutligen visar det autoetnografiska och förkroppsligade tillvägagångssättet på potential för förändring bortom fantasin, där känslighet kan öppna länge stängda dörrar och välkomna något nytt. Resultaten och reflektionerna antyder gemensamt att den inneboende komplexiteten i förhållandet måste bemötas med flexibilitet och öppenhet, snarare än att reduceras och separeras i fraktioner. / This study explores how sense of place, viewed as the attribution of meaning and emotional attachment to place, influences individual and public mental wellbeing. It is performed through a practice of embodied autoethnography, which seeks to portray a vulnerable narrative of the researcher herself in relation to walking the streets of inner-city Stockholm. The research question is: What can an autoethnographic and embodied approach contribute to emerging theories and practices concerned with the relationship between sense of place and mental wellbeing? From the explorative approach applied, some tentative prompts and claims are made towards the finishing chapters. First, it is vital for practitioners, theorists, and citizens to explore place meanings first-hand, to further understand and question socio-cultural constructions of knowing and living. Second, it is an ethical imperative to pay attention to affects, feelings, and emotions in place, in which heightened acknowledgement is needed for all concerned with ordering public spheres. Third, meanings of place consist of intricate networks of self, others, and environments, highlighting how the environment rarely takes precedence in or for itself. Finally, the autoethnographic and embodied approach to study recognizes the potential for change beyond imagination, in which vulnerability can open long-shut doors and welcome the becoming of something new. The findings and reflections jointly suggest the complexities must be met plurally rather than reduced and separated into fractions.

The topic of menstruation has gained traction in the last couple of decades amongst critical menstruation scholars and feminist theorists, but it was not until 2015 (“The Year of the Period”) that the topic of menstruation entered mainstream conversations, and policymakers across the globe started taking tangible steps towards menstrual equity. Yet, there is little sociological work done on menstruation, an experience that is still shrouded in stigma and taboo in many cultures. To address this gap, this study aims to explore the experiences of menstruation among young women in the Swedish context.  This study uses a phenomenological approach and is based on 10 interviews with 18 young women in a Stockholm high school. From the interview data, four major themes arose: maturity, solidarity, fear & panic, and personal vs. political. These findings shed light on the complexity and situatedness of the menstrual taboo and highlight how strong social bonds and feelings of solidarity help the young women find embodied worth and develop prevention strategies. Overall, this research contributes to our understanding of the social and cultural significance of menstruation in the Swedish context amongst young Gen Z women.