Social enterprises have responded to personalisation of social care with enthusiasm as they aim to improve communities, investing profits into social or environmental aims (The Plunkett Foundation 2010). Personalisation has, likewise, heightened interest in services offered to people with disabilities, beyond those offered by local authorities and the NHS. The goals of the social enterprise in this study reflected the values of green care, which enables engagement with nature to produce health, social and education benefits (Fieldhouse & Sempik 2014). Green care and personalisation can both be understood from an occupational perspective, based on the idea that occupation sustains well-being in individuals. If social enterprises can create person-centred occupational experiences for people, they can play an important part in bridging the gap between traditional care settings and community participation. This research examined a social enterprise involved in food growing using a permaculture approach (Holmgren 2011); addressing the question: What is the occupational experience of people with and without disabilities participating in an inclusive horticultural social enterprise? This qualitative research used participatory action research (PAR) and critical ethnography as methodologies to build a case study of the social enterprise. Methods used were photography, mapping, and other accessible modes of data collection. Two PAR groups involving twenty-two people were convened, followed by six key-informant interviews. A reflexive log was maintained throughout project planning and PAR processes. Participants contributed to data analysis, identifying early themes, and interviews added context to the three final themes: Exclusion within inclusion; choice, transformation and ownership; and people, place and participation. As a result of the study the author considers that there are a number of governance and power challenges within green care social enterprises but these organisations have a role in addressing marginalisation through reducing bureaucratic barriers to social change and increasing skills for resilience and sustainability.

abstract: This study explores the ways in which LGBTQ young adults describe the aspects of their identities, and how those identities shape their service needs and experiences. A participatory action research component was explored as a research and service approach that is sensitive to LGBTQ young people living at the intersections of multiple identities. Although it is understood that LGBTQ young people come from a variety of backgrounds, research is limited in its understanding and exploration of how aspects of identity, such as race and class, influence the lives and service needs of this population. The data was collected through an initial set of interviews with fifteen LGBTQ-identified young adults ages 18 to 24. The interviewees were recruited from an LGBTQ youth-serving organization using a purposive sampling approach to reflect racial/ethnic and gender identity diversity. Following the interviews, eight of the participants engaged as co-researchers on a participatory action research (PAR) team for sixteen weeks. The process of this team's work was assessed through a reflective analysis to identify factors that impacted the participants' lives. Analysis of the interviews identified key themes related to identity among the LGBTQ young people. The interviewees experienced a multiplicity of identities that were both socially and individually constructed. These identities were impacted by their immediate and social environments. The young people also identified ways that they used their identities to influence their environments and enhance their own resilience. The service experiences and needs of the LGBTQ young people in this study were directly influenced by their multiple identities. Implications for intersectional approaches to serving this population are explored. Analysis of the PAR process identified four areas in which the young people were most impacted through their work and interactions with one another: relationships, communication, participation, and inclusion. Implications for research and service approaches with LGBTQ young people are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Social Work 2013

This PhD thesis was developed in the context of contemporary challenges within water policy and governance; specifically the issue of managing diffuse pollution risk in fresh water catchments. As highlighted in the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) diffuse pollution poses a major risk in many European catchments where the sustainability of the ecosystems and water uses is compromised by intensive agriculture. The challenge for catchment management is the tricky nature of diffuse pollution. It is what you would term a ‘wicked problem’ or ‘Post Normal Science’ wherein the facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, stakes are high and decision-making is urgent (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993; Patterson et al., 2013). In response to the WFD the UK Government have proposed the Catchment Based Approach (CaBA) which represents a paradigmatic shift in approaches to water management; from a ‘command and control’ approach (i.e. the historic practice of direct regulation) to a participatory governance approach (i.e. devolution of power and involvement local stakeholders) (Dryzek, 2005; Müller-Grabherr et al., 2014). The project had two aims. The practical aim was to identify the drivers and barriers to delivering the CaBA. The academic aim was to employ the relational concept of ambiguity to explore why and how catchment stakeholders understand, frame and respond to diffuse pollution risk differently. In order to address these aims Timothy embedded himself in Loe Pool Forum (www.loepool.org) for four years. Loe Pool Forum (LPF) are a voluntary catchment partnership, based in West Cornwall, working to address the risk of diffuse pollution through taking a CaBA at the WFD waterbody scale. The methodology was directed by Participatory Action Research (PAR) and underpinned by ethnography. PAR enabled Timothy to work collaboratively to engender positive change within LPF while ethnography generated data upon how partnership and participatory working happens in practice. New insights into the geographies of risk stemmed from the application of ambiguity as the conceptual lever. Ambiguity is a dimension of uncertainty which accounts for the relational properties of risk. Ambiguity is defined as the simultaneous presence of multiple frames of reference about a certain phenomenon (Brugnach et al., 2007). Timothy examined ambiguity from three different directions. Firstly, where the ambiguities are in catchment management and how local partnerships negotiate them. Secondly, how risk frames are produced by both water scientists and the agricultural community. Thirdly, what the drivers and barriers are to delivering the CaBA. By thinking through risk relationally this thesis provides new insights into the practice of catchment management and the socio-cultural geographies around the water-environment.

Master of Science / Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional & Community Planning / Cornelia Flora / Economic development in Appalachia has failed to achieve socioeconomic parity with the rest of the nation, especially in coal-dependent communities. This thesis examines the history of development in the region including a case study of unincorporated former coal camps in Clearfork Valley to understand how Community Capitals Framework and Appreciative Inquiry may contribute to equitable and inclusive community development. While community capital asset investment was key to achieving results and creating additional assets in the focus community, the community often had limited access to natural, financial, built and financial capitals. Social capital was the sustaining and catalyzing asset. Community developers can play a key role in Appalachia by providing capacity, outreach, and helping communities identify and invest in their accessible capitals.

This study was inspired by the ever growing need for significance expressed both by my life coaching and pastoral therapy clients as well as the need for existential meaning reported both in the lay press and academic literature. This study reflected on a life that matters with a group of co-researchers in a participatory action research context. The study has been positioned within pastoral theology and invited the theological discourse into a reflection of existential meaning. Adopting a critical relational constructionist epistemology, the research was positioned within a postmodern paradigm. The implications for meaning and research were explored and described. My fellow researchers were invited to reflect on what constitutes a meaningful life or “a life that matters” to them personally. These stories of meaning were explored and situated within personal meaning histories. Meaning discourses introduced to the discussion of “a life that matters” were deconstructed, their effects externalised and embedded in life long meaning stories. In the process outsider witnesses were introduced to these stories, enriching these as we did. Together the research community made up of me and my fellow researchers, reflected on the meaning discourses introduced to the conversation on a life that matters in this way. These discourses included spirituality, purpose, and being meaningful in somebody else’s life. Only then did the group decide that perhaps these discourses were complemented by identity discourses. When we reflected upon the value of the research process as meaning enhancing action in their lives, my co-researchers suggested that it was the reflection process which added most value to their own experiences of meaningfulness. Throughout the research process, the voices of literature were invited into the conversation, exploring their perspectives on existential meaning. These voices acted as outsider witnesses, authenticating the stories of meaningfulness which were introduced by my fellow researchers. This study may serve to revive the conversation both in the practical theology discourse and the pastoral theology discourse. It positions existential meaning within an uncertainty discourse and suggests that reflexive co-construction in the manner suggested previously, can contribute to the meaning enhancing multilogue. Meaning making is introduced in a non-totalitarian way, strongly suggesting that an experience of meaningful living is possible even in postmodern times often described as confusing and potentially relativistically or nihilistically meaningless. This study creates space for spirituality in the existential meaning conversation; perhaps even strongly proclaiming that it should be part of any conversation on meaningfulness. Meaningfulness has been introduced as a local experience devoid of the power discourses of meta narratives and do-it-yourself recipes. Local process rather than universal content was positioned as meaning enhancing in the study, thus opening space for local life knowledges and negating the need to conform to meta-narratives of meaningfulness which may in effect be alienating and disempowering in that they relegate the life knowledges of objectified people into anecdotal and fictional. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Practical Theology / unrestricted

This research project explores and evaluates the usefulness of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a methodological framework for Educational Psychology consultations with young people. A significant part of the role of an Educational Psychologist (EP) can be to hold consultations with young people in secondary schools who are perceived to be experiencing difficulties or challenges. These difficulties can often prevent young people from engaging positively in the learning opportunities available to them putting them at risk of under achievement and possible exclusion from school. AI is more commonly known as an organisational development methodology, however by drawing explicitly from the philosophical and theoretical paradigms of social constructionism and the social model of disability, this project’s unique contribution to knowledge is to reconfigured AI as a framework to engender the inclusion and participation of young people in identifying positive changes at school. AI is a change methodology that begins with the premise that within any system or organisation there already exist success, positive experiences, and strengths that are life giving and life affirming. The nature of the exploration is centred on uncovering narrative accounts of what is already working in order to inform any future change.The project was based within a secondary school and was designed specifically to run concurrently with an ‘in house’ programme of support run by the school’s Learning Mentor, so that data from the AI consultations could be used to inform and support the work of the Learning Mentor. The findings (both content and process) indicated that AI consultations with students can support their inclusion and participation. Students identified change through co-constructing alternative narratives that challenged the ‘authority’ view of the students’ difficulties. The process of using AI as a methodology in this way is described as a multidirectional cycle (differing from traditional AI cycles which are presented as unidirectional). Being fluid, flexible and emancipatory the AI consultation framework is considered both useful and appropriate in providing an epistemological basis for Educational Psychology practice.

Enquanto caminhamos para a terceira década no século XXI, o mundo enfrenta problemas expressivos e complexos, interligando desenvolvimento e estilo de vida, sem esquecer alguns desafios um pouco mais urgentes, como o aumento das desigualdades sociais, desmatamento e desaparecimento de espécies, mudanças climáticas, qualidade e escassez de água, e segurança alimentar. Ainda que possamos identificar os resultados do modelo positivista e mecanicista de desenvolvimento adotado, em especial no mundo ocidental, temos sido incapazes de agir para evitar a destruição do planeta. A educação popularizada nos últimos séculos, com o objetivo de sustentar e promover o modelo de desenvolvimento em questão, enfrenta um movimento global de contestação, e tampouco tem conseguido evoluir. Frente a esse panorama, este estudo, de caráter exploratório, faz uso da teoria da Educação Sustentável como ponto de apoio para propor uma metodologia de Aprendizagem Baseada em Projetos (ABP) em turmas do curso de Administração de Empresas, e compreender os efeitos da ABP quando aplicada no ensino de Sustentabilidade. A Teoria da Aprendizagem Experiencial (TAE) dá o suporte teórico para o entendimento dos processos vividos pelos participantes da pesquisa. Para viabilizar a concepção, aplicação e acompanhamento dos resultados e verificar a percepção dos discentes, a metodologia utilizada foi a Pesquisa Ação Participante (PAP). Durante os doze meses de pesquisa no campo, foi possível desenvolver dois ciclos de aplicação da ABP, onde mais de 150 alunos construíram projetos que se propuseram ultrapassar os muros da universidade e influenciar a comunidade, tendo a sustentabilidade como tema transversal e conector das propostas desenvolvidas O estudo apoia-se na percepção dos alunos, através de processos contínuos de feedback e recursivos de adaptação da metodologia, para refinar a proposta metodológica de aplicação da ABP e verificar a percepção dos alunos com relação à proposta desenvolvida. Ainda que haja estranhamento por parte dos estudantes em um primeiro momento (a característica mais progressista da disciplina, que coloca o aluno em uma posição de protagonismo, em muitos casos induz à incapacidade ou não interesse em exercer esse papel), ao final do semestre, após repetidos processos de reflexão sobre a experiência vivida, o desconforto em geral é ressignificado como aprendizado. Tal qual a TAE e a PAP, a proposta desse trabalho é avançar no entendimento das formas e resultados possíveis de serem atingidos com o uso da ABP tendo a sustentabilidade como contexto, porém tendo clareza sobre a complexidade da temática e a recursividade do processo de aprendizagem e sobre espaços para melhorias e adequações da metodologia. Esperamos que esse movimento possa inspirar outros colegas docentes a fazer uso da ABP ou outras metodologias ativas que ajudem na transformação urgente e necessária que vivemos hoje. / As we move towards the third decade of the 21st century, the world faces significant and complex problems involving development and lifestyle, added by some more urgent challenges, such as increase in social inequalities, deforestation and extinction of species, climate change, and water scarcity and food safety. Although we can identify the results of the positivist and mechanistic model of development adopted in the Western world in particular, we have been unable to act in order to prevent the destruction of the planet. The education popularized in recent centuries with the aim of supporting and promoting the development model mentioned is being challenged in a global scale and has not been able to evolve. This exploratory study makes use of the Sustainable Education theory as a fulcrum in order to propose a Project-Based Learning (PBL) methodology in business administration courses and understand the effects of PBL when applied to sustainability teaching. The Theory of Experiential Learning (TEL) gives the theoretical support for understanding the processes experienced by the study subjects. Participant Action Research (PAR) was used as methodology to facilitate the design, implementation and monitoring of results, and verify the perceptions of students. During the twelve months of field research, it was possible to develop two application cycles of PBL, where more than 150 students built projects targeting a public wider than the university community, using sustainability as an overarching theme connecting propositions The study is based on the students' perception through continuous feedback and recursive processes of methodology adaptation in order to refine the methodological proposition of application of PBL and verify the students' perception regarding the proposition developed. Although the students were initially uncomfortable (given the progressive characteristic of the course, which puts the student in a position of prominence, often making students feel unable to or not interested in playing this role), this discomfort is generally resignified as learning at the end of the semester, after repeated processes of reflection on the experience. Similar to TEL and PAR, the intention of this thesis is to advance our understanding of the forms and results achieved with the use of PBL having sustainability as context, while being aware of how complex the theme is and how recursive the learning process is. We also acknowledge that there is room for improvement and adaptation of the methodology. We hope that this initiative may inspire fellow educators to make use of PBL or other active methodologies in order to assist them in the urgent transformation which is needed today.

abstract: The purpose of this study was to understand how community members within a segregated school district approached racial inequities. I conducted a ¬nineteen-month-long ethnography using a critical Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach to explore how members in a community activist group called Eliminate Racism interacted and worked with school district officials. My goal was to identify and examine how community members addressed racially inequitable policies and practices in the Midwestern city of Pinecreek (pseudonym) in the context of a school district that had undergone two school desegregation lawsuits. I conducted 32 interviews with 24 individuals, including teachers and school leaders, parents, and community members. This study answers three research questions: (1) What strategies did the community activist group use to influence local education policy for addressing racism in the schools? (2) How did community participation influence local education policy? (3) What were the motivating factors for individuals’ involvement in issues of local school segregation? To answer these questions, I used concepts from Critical Race Theory and Social Capital Theory. I employ Putnam’s and Putnam and Campbell’s social capital, Warren’s civic participation, Bonilla-Silva’s color-blind racism, Yosso’s community cultural wealth and religio-civics. My analysis shows that the community group used the social capital and community cultural wealth of its members to create partnerships with district officials. Although Eliminate Racism did not meet its goals, it established itself as a legitimate organization within the community, successfully drawing together residents throughout the city to bring attention to racism in the schools. The study’s results encourage school and district leaders to constantly bring race to the forefront of their decision-making processes and to question how policy implementation affects minoritized students. This research also suggests that strategies from this community group can be adopted or avoided by other antiracist groups undertaking similar work. Finally, it provides an example of how to employ critical PAR methods into ethnography, as it notes the ways that researcher positionality and status can be leveraged by community groups to support the legitimacy of their mission and work. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Policy and Evaluation 2020

This project employs participatory action research methods in efforts to create a community specific environmental curriculum for the high school age youth at the only Jain faith community in the North Texas region. Aligned with the community’s goals, the youth led in deciding, creating, and carrying out initiatives that were aimed at increasing the level of awareness about environmental issues amongst community members. The research done by the youth aimed at looking at environmental issues through the lens of Jain doctrine. The final creation of a curriculum as a living document to be used by the youth in efforts to promote critical thinking skills and class discussion continues the participatory model. The curriculum encourages experiential and interpretative learning, which grants ownership of the topics to the youth themselves and ultimately empowering them to learn more and spread the importance of being environmentally friendly.

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