Master of Arts in Fine Arts - Fine Arts / A Community Partnership Art Event, resulting from curating and facilitating an educational collaboration was held on the 23 March 2004, ten years into South Africa’s democracy. Through a Masters in Fine Arts coursework entitled “Creating, Curating and Critiquing” offered at the University of Witwatersrand, I attempted to test the boundaries of the Arts and Culture Learning Area and explore alternatives to the current definition of “outreach”. The grade six learners from The Ridge School, an independent boys’ preparatory school and Salvazione Christian School, an assisted government school, were brought together over a period of ten weeks during regular school art lessons. Through the guidance and expertise of various artists, workshops were cocoordinated with the collaborative ideas of the learners coming to the fore. The process and dialogue established between learners, artists and educators was intended to shift my own parameters of teaching primary school art. Focusing on people rather than the final products points to a readiness to view knowledge not as a commodity owned b#31;#31;the expert teacher, but rather as something which can be constructed and developed with the learners. Originally the collaboration was intended as a celebration of the opening of new premises for Salvazione Christian School. The public art happening was held in a tent next to the informal settlement where a large majority of the children from Salvazione Christian School live. 3 Rather than what might be described as a modernist approach to art education, where the focus seems to be on the artist and artwork, the focus was on linking art to social interaction, and it was through the discovery of a form of hybridity that a number of differences between the two communities were challenged and exposed. This resulted in an approach that seems similar to the manner in which the Indian writer, Salman Rushdie writes of hybridity: “Hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs.” (Coombes, 2000:39) Through this hybridity tensions were created and explored rather than a ‘rainbow’ or melting pot created, where differences are glossed over as in a multicultural approach. The primary research methodology was participant observation in which directly observed data was analyzed and interpreted. Data was gathered from the interactions in the workshops, setting up the exhibition and the art event. As intended, a link between art and ‘outreach’ was established. In order for this link to change into a community partnership, it must be seen as part of a much longer process. The process as a whole did become a different kind of primary school art space, preparing the way for possible positive transformation of the visual arts in the arts and culture learning area at primary school level.

Critical care nurses work in an environment rich in informative interactions. Although there have been post hoc self-report survey studies of nurses' information seeking, there have been no observational studies of the patterns and content of their on-duty information behavior. This study used participant observation and in-context interviews to describe 50 hours of the observable information behavior of a representative sample of critical care nurses in a 20-bed critical care hospital unit. The researcher used open, in vivo, and axial coding to develop a grounded theory model of their consistent pattern of multimedia interactions. The resulting Nurse's Patient-Chart Cycle describes nurses' activities during the shift as centering on a regular alternation with the patient and the patient's chart (various record systems), clearly bounded with nursing "report" interactions at the beginning and the end of the shift. The nurses' demeanor markedly changed between interactions with the chart and interactions with the patient. Other informative interactions were observed with other health care workers and the patient's family, friends and visitors. The nurses' information seeking was centered on the patient. They mostly sought information from people, the patient record and other digital systems. They acted on or passed on most of the information they found. Some information they recorded for their personal use during the shift. The researcher observed the nurses using mostly patient specific information, but they also used some social and logistic information. They occasionally sought knowledge based information. Barriers to information acquisition included illegible handwriting, difficult navigation of online systems, equipment failure, unavailable people, social protocols and mistakes caused by multi-tasking people working with multiple complex systems. No formal use was observed of standardized nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, or nursing outcomes taxonomies. While the nurses expressed respect for evidence-based practice, there clearly was no time or opportunity for reading research literature (either on paper or online) while on duty. All participants expressed frustration with the amount of redundant data entry required of them. The results of this study have significant implications for the design of clinical information systems and library services for working critical care nurses.

The purpose of this study is to examine the symbolic use in sports and thus discuss the limits of what can be seen as religion and what can be said to be sacred and profane in our time. Data were collected through participant observation during and in connection with the ice hockey games in Löfbergs Arena in Karlstad. Collected data is then analyzed based on Émile Durkheim's theory of the elementary forms of religion. The results indicate that the club badge and club colours of Färjestad BK can be interpreted as totems both before, during and after a ice hockey game. The symbols appear in a number of different contexts, and in some more exposed than others. They share largely the function of the totems in the Australian and North American tribes that Durkheim studied because it bind together and create identification between the fans of Färjestad. Färjestad's symbols are those that to some extent create and maintain sacred and profane, maintain the group and at the same time separates it from others. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka symbolanvändning inom sport och därigenom diskutera gränserna för vad som kan ses som religion och vad som kan sägas vara heligt och profant i samtiden. Data har samlats in via deltagande observationer under och i anslutning till ishockeymatcher i Löfbergs Arena i Karlstad. Insamlad data har sedan analyserats utifrån Émile Durkheims teori om religionens elementära former. Studiens resultat pekar på att Färjestad BK:s klubbmärke och klubbfärger kan tolkas som totems både inför, under och efter en ishockeymatch. Symbolerna uppträder i en rad skilda sammanhang och är i vissa mer exponerade än i andra. De delar till stor del funktion med de totems Durkheim studerade hos australiensiska och nordamerikanska stammar, i den meningen att de binder ihop och skapar identifikation Färjestadfansen emellan. Färjestads symboler är de vilka i viss utsträckning skapar och upprätthåller heligt och profant, upprätthåller gruppen och samtidigt avgränsar den från andra.

This thesis is concerned with the experience of aphasia in Khayelitsha, a township on the outskirts of Cape Town characterised by poverty, violence, limited resources and a culture and language that differs from the setting of most speech and language services in South Africa. It is based on three years of intermittent fieldwork that entailed participant observation of the everyday life of five adults living with aphasia and interviews with participants, kin and healthcare workers in various settings. Grounded in sociocultural theory, this thesis has aimed to provide an ethnographic account of cultural frameworks of interpretation of communication impairment following stroke and of the daily reality of life for adults living with aphasia in this setting. An exploration of causal notions in this setting provided interesting commentary on social and cultural processes and how people, caught up in these processes, search for meaning and for cure. Participants entertained plural notions of causation of aphasia and explored numerous therapeutic avenues. The wide variation in causal notions included biomedical causes, social and behavioural determinants, and the influences of supernatural powers, such as witches and ancestors. Similarly participants experienced aphasia through multiple healing systems, including traditional, biomedical and religious therapy options. All however seemed to be ambiguous sources of help. Whilst encounters with the health system presented serious challenges to participants, traditional and religious avenues for help were obscured by a burgeoning and not always ethical open market offering miracle cures. An articulation of the circumstances of this group of adults provided further commentary on the influence of the social context on aphasia. In a context where sociopolitical processes have had a disintegrating effect on social cohesion, questions of support, care and security were of primary concern. Prejudices towards the elderly and women were more acutely felt and vulnerability, isolation, insecurity and fluidity of circumstance emerged as overarching themes. The central argument in this thesis is that the genesis of these experiences can be found in contextual factors in Khayelitsha, such as poverty, inequality, urbanisation and changing cultural paradigms. These emerging themes highlight the disjunctions between the medical alignment of the discipline of speech language therapy in South Africa and the capacity for socially-engaged practice. They also highlight the socio-cultural complexity of the experience of aphasia, specifically the influences of culture and poverty. There is thus theoretical and clinical relevance in using anthropological objectives to explore the world of the adult living with aphasia and the interface between context and service provision. Interventions and healthcare communications that will make a meaningful difference to adults with aphasia in a setting such as Khayelitsha are proposed.

A key factor to the Scottish Governments' public policy and public service reconfiguration is collaborative working between service providers and service users in a framework of co-production. A second key factor in this reform is a place-based approach. Despite this rhetoric of co-production of health services having been used for some time in health policy, and considering the numerous interpretations of the meaning of both co–production and 'place' in the academic and professional literature, how rural dwellers experience rurality in terms of places and space, and how this may in turn affect health and interactions with co-production, remains underrepresented in health policy planning. In light of changes in health service provision, rural health care poses itself as a potentially emotive and sometimes volatile topic. A co-productive approach may encourage understanding, acceptance and better usage of health services and neighbourhood resources, by the residents registered as patients with local medical practices. This doctoral research study considered the use of participatory mapping techniques to generate, gather and capture the local voice of residents from two rural Scottish communities, regarding the self-perception of their health in relation to the place they call home. Through a participatory action research approach, using iterative co-design, residents were asked how their environment impacted on their health, and in particular their cardiovascular health. Qualitative data were collected through participatory mapping techniques and co- analysed using a thematic analysis process. The application of the concept of therapeutic landscapes revealed the importance of the 'sense of place' and its impact on health, along with the physical, social and cultural environmental aspects traditionally considered in public health disciplines. Results were digitised using geographic information systems (GIS) to illustrate the interactions between place, people and health, through a relational lens. This research demonstrates a working example of how, drawing from the discipline of health geography, a place based approach can make an important contribution to rural health service co- planning within a co-production framework.

Les auteurs qui se sont intéressés à la pratique des éducateurs sociaux s’accordent à penser que l’agir de ces derniers procède avant tout d’un engagement quotidien, d’un souci de l’autre porté par des gestes actualisés en situation, pratique dont la mise en intelligibilité fait appel à une logique plurielle. Or, depuis l’introduction de la gestion managériale et de la sémantique des compétences dans le champ de l’éducation sociale, l’activité des éducateurs se trouve placée sous un éclairage réducteur qui s’intéresse aux seuls faits et gestes mesurables. Aussi, afin de rompre avec une pensée positiviste binaire, nous avons opéré un changement de paradigme en optant pour une approche esthétique qui conçoit l’agir humain non pas morcelé, mais envisagé comme une globalité. Une telle approche coïncide particulièrement bien avec l’activité des éducateurs qui se singularise par un entremêlement des dimensions corporelle, affective et réflexive. Cette hypothèse, nous l’avons mise à l’épreuve grâce à une enquête de terrain menée au travers d’une observation participante dans deux structures éducatives de la région genevoise. Nos analyses reposent sur les contributions de chercheurs, majoritairement situés dans le courant esthétique et pragmatiste, qui se sont intéressés aux théories de l’action. Nos observations ont dans une large mesure permis de crédibiliser notre hypothèse, nous permettant, d’une part, d’identifier quelques axes majeurs qui contribuent à la construction d’une épistémologie de l’agir des éducateurs et, d’autre part, d’ouvrir quelques perspectives pour la formation des praticiens. / Writers who are interested in the practices of special educators agree that their work proceeds above all else as a daily commitment to their concern for others undertaken as context adaptive moves. Making sense of this practice calls for multiple sources of logic. However, since the introduction of management skills and the semantics of those competences in the field of special education, the work of educators has been reduced to a singular focus on measurable acts. Therefore, in order to move away from this positivist binary thinking, we undertook a paradigm shift that opted for an aesthetic approach, one that views human action as whole rather than fragmented. This approach meshes particularly well with educators whose activities are distinguished by their intermingling of physical, emotional and reflective dimensions. We tested this hypothesis through a field survey conducted while engaged in participant observation in two educational facilities in the Geneva area. Our analysis rests on the contributions of researchers interested in the aesthetic and pragmatic dimensions of theories of action. Our observations have in large measure helped to give credibility to our hypothesis. We can, on the one hand, identify some major areas that contribute to the construction of an epistemology of educators’ actions, and, on the other hand, present some possibilities for training practitioners.

No description available.

This dissertation deals with people with mental illness that currently live in their own accommodation in the community. Common to all mentally ill people is their serious difficulties in carrying out activities and meeting needs in important areas of life. Terms such as "normalisation" and "integration" into the community of this group were important words full of promise at the time the psychiatric reform was carried out. However, there is some strong evidence that the psychiatric reform has not been completely successful. Despite the knowledge that loneliness and social isolation commonly occur among people with mental illness, there is little research that describes how mentally ill people themselves experience their life situation. The overall aim of the dissertation was to gain deeper understanding of the life situation of peop with mental illness via their own narratives on how their day-to-day life appears to them, ar through this gain knowledge of the type of support needed for them to live a satisfactory life. Various data acquisition methods were applied. Study I involved in-depth interview of two men and two women on their daily life. Data acquisition in Study II was via participant observations, an activity unit for people with mental illness. Photographs were used for Studies III and IV Eight informants were issued with disposable cameras and asked to take approximately 10 pictures of objects, situations and/or individuals. These photographs were then used as a basis for follow-up interviews. Results from Study I showed that informants were aware both of their illness and their psychosocial disadvantages, and that they had insight into what was required of them to influence their situation, while simultaneously having insight into their poor ability to tak initiatives. Informants in Study II experienced themselves as unwelcome, vulnerable and marginalised individuals with little hope of a change in existence, resulting in anxiety over the future. They felt trust was lacking in relation to other people and experienced themselves as not accepted in the company of others or by society. Study III provided description of informants occupied with themselves and their existence. The informants tell of a form of spirituality giving them a sense of peace and tranquillity, but which only exists for them at the beginning and end ol life.  Animals are more loyal than people and make no demands, but are however, according to the informants, in a position of dependence on humans. Possessions are of significance to the informants, meaning they see their possessions as part of themselves. In Study IV informants related how they would like their future to appear. They also told what having an identity meant to them, how identity is formed in individuals, what having a mental illness and feeling good means. The informants showed a longing to be seen, but at the same time not wanting to be seen. Finding a meaning with life was important since it could end at any moment. In summary, the findings point to an existential loneliness that consists of a life pattern consisting of an interaction between the impact of the mental illness and the identity as a mentally ill person feelings of marginalisation and abandonment. Experiencing that life has a meaning, possibility o social exchange and a sense of control seem to be important for the persons with mental illness in this study. Consequently, it can be inferred that if the care of people with mental illness pays attention to the dimensions of existential loneliness persons with mental illness may be helped to experience that life has a meaning despite their disability.

This study engaged in a micro-genetic analysis (Wertsch, 1984) of facilitation in participatory research (PR). The research conducted in this study explored the facilitation process of two facilitators using two participatory techniques (a 'road of life' technique and a ranking exercise) with children in a rural context. The facilitators' perceptions of facilitation and their experiences of facilitating a PR technique were examined through the use of individual interviews, and were analysed using a reading guide method (Mergendollar, 1989). Of particular concern was that in PR, there is no account of the mechanisms which bring about successful facilitation. This study exposed how some PR techniques, like the ranking exercise can simply be implemented through using a set of instructions, but other kinds of techniques such as the 'road of life' technique are inherently embedded in the principles of PR and are more difficult to implement. A lack of an understanding of the PR principles has major consequences for the implementation of PR processes, and whether or not PR processes achieve their aim i.e. critical reflection. The importance of training in PR was thus emphasised, and the importance of providing a theoretical framework of the facilitation process in PR was accentuated. / Thesis (M.Psyc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2007.

The research has been part of a larger study on developing evaluative strategies for programmes on street children in KwaZulu Natal. This study focussed on harm reduction programmes with reference to violence and crime. The phenomenon of street children has been seen to be caused by various interactive factors relating to the individual, the family, community and the society as a whole. The research was guided by a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach utilizing multiple data sources and multiple focus groups with street children and service providers. Street children were given the space to talk about their experiences and to identify indicators of successful programmes. Shelter workers who are child care workers discussed programmes presented at the shelter and their impact on protecting and preventing children from exposure to violence and crime. They also discussed indicators of success in their programmes. Children indicated that successful programmes were characterised by consistency, fairness, non- discrimination, and that they take into account that street children are children too and that they can make mistakes. On the other hand child care workers described successful programmes as contributing to change in the life of a child, through social skills, attitude of the child and child's ability to be reunited with his family. Programmes, which serve to protect street children from violence and crime should be monitored and evaluated so as to assess their effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study recommendations are made regarding the evaluation of programmes for street children. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.