Aphasia impairs using and understanding language, and thus impacts on communication, identity and relationships. However, little research has investigated how people with aphasia understand friends and friendship. This Participatory Action Research (PAR) study explored how younger adults with aphasia experience friendship. Participants were 28 people with aphasia, some of whom were members of the Research Group. Data from 12 initial interviews in Phase 1 of the study led to a model of friendship and aphasia. This underpinned development of peer-led Friendship Events in Phase 2 of the study, after which 16 additional participants with aphasia were interviewed, contributing to elaboration of the model. Within the context of living with aphasia, which was central for all participants, eight inter-connected themes emerged. Friends could be anchors in a time of change and trusted stabilising influences while reconfiguring identity. Participants described the hard work of friendship, the place of communication in supporting friendship, and the challenge of equality within post-aphasia friendships. Time, humour and two-way flexibility were crucial in developing new kinds of friendship. Participants categorised a wide variety of relationships as friendship. These findings elucidate understandings of friendship loss and change as well as strategies to maintain friendship post-onset of aphasia. The study sheds new light on social connectedness and social support provided by friends, family and peers with aphasia. It emphasises the role of friendship in reconfiguring identity, and offers practical recommendations for harnessing the benefits of friends and friendship in life with aphasia. PAR methodology facilitated creation of accessible tools to support conversations and awareness-raising about friendship. The study highlights the strengths of relational methods for researching friendship and the transformative potential of doing PAR with marginalised groups such as people with aphasia.

Mi’kmaq women in Nova Scotia are reported to have lower rates of Papanicolaou (Pap) smear screening and have higher rates of cervical cancer compared to non-Aboriginal women. Much of the cervical cancer literature reflects mainstream values and tends to essentialize Aboriginal women as one at-risk homogenous group lacking knowledge about cervical cancer prevention. The primary purpose of this qualitative participatory study was to explore Mi’kmaq women’s and primary healthcare providers’ experiences with Pap smear screening and to consider the broader historical, economic, and socio-political contexts that shape those healthcare experiences. Mi’kmaq women’s experiences accessing Pap screening services, their encounters with healthcare providers and the health care system, and women’s past experiences with Pap smear screening were also explored. This inquiry was grounded in postcolonial feminist perspectives and Indigenous principles in a two-eyed seeing approach. Community facilitators were identified to assist with recruitment and the research process. Women participated in talking circles to learn about and shape the study. Sixteen Mi’kmaq women and five healthcare providers participated in two semi-structured interviews. Five themes were identified from the women: a) Finding Our Way, b) Our Understanding and Perceptions about Pap Smear Screening, c) The Impact of History on Our Health and Healthcare Experiences, d) Healthcare Providers’ Encounters: “Making a Difference in Our Path to Paps,” and e) “The Healthcare System is Complicating Our Going for Paps.” Two themes were identified from healthcare providers: a) Understanding the Realities of Aboriginal Women’s Lives and b) Fostering Aboriginal Women’s Access to Pap Smear Screening. This research contributes to an understanding of the continued impact of wider historical, political, and socioeconomic conditions that have resulted from colonialism, residential schools, and assimilation on Pap smear screening. It reinforces the importance of not essentializing women’s views or experiences and recognizing that some are accessing Pap smear screening regularly in spite of challenging circumstances. Mi’kmaq women have been underrepresented in the previous Pap smear screening literature. It is critical that healthcare providers understand how they can improve access to Pap smear screening and the screening process itself.

Project work has gained a prominent place in research for its significant educational potential (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Fallik et al., 2008). Teachers, however, have not been providing project work with a prominent place in the elementary classroom (Blumenfeld et al., 1991; Fallik et al., 2008; Rogers et al., 2010; Tse, Lam, Lam, & Loh, 2005). To encourage and support teachers in practicing Project-Based Learning (PBL), we need to understand what motivates teachers to enact PBL, the challenges they face in doing so, and ways to support teachers in overcoming these challenges. To examine teachers’ lived experiences in enacting student-centered project work, the current study used the method of participatory action research (PAR). This method included the active participation of a teacher (Megan) and me (the principal researcher) in the design, enactment, and reflection upon a constructivist, whole-class project in an eastern Ontario Grade 5 classroom. The study was structured around two research questions: (1) what did we perceive as challenges and benefits of organizing and enacting a student-centered project, and (2) how did we perceive that our collaboration in organizing, enacting, and reflecting upon this project impacted our thinking and practices with regard to project work? Megan’s and my reflections were collected over the course of the project through two semi-structured interviews, diary writings, a pre-structured planning journal, and three semi-structured discussions. Megan and I perceived project work as beneficial to students’ engagement and learning. Enacting the project was challenging, as we lacked the management and organizational skills to enact project work efficiently, and we possessed a strong desire to control the direction of the project. Megan and I were further challenged by students’ lack of skills and comfort with the project’s demands and the lack of school support and time we needed for the project. Collaboratively experiencing and reflecting upon the project demonstrated how essential these challenges were in increasing Megan’s and my comfort, appreciation, understanding, and skills in enacting project work. Based on these findings, the study encourages teachers to collaboratively design, experience, and reflect upon project work in the context of their classrooms. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2012-04-09 16:30:00.451

Expatriate teachers do not always have a strong connection to the place in which they are living (Richardson, von Kirchenheim & Richardson, 2006). How might this lack of connection affect how they teach environmental education? Our qualitative study explored the lived experiences of how five expatriate teachers engaged in environmental education. Using action research, we participated as a team and learned more about our perceptions of environmental education and explored how these perceptions influence our teaching. We found that our previous knowledge and passion effected how we taught environmental education. After researching how different people view and implement environmental education we reflected on our research to improve our taught curriculum. Then we used a participatory action research model to reflect and re-design our current environmental education learning engagements. After the completed research we all agreed that this method of reflection worked for us and we would continue the PAR process.

Research shows that the dominant pedagogical practices of physical education are irrelevant to young people in the 21st century, and that physical education currently exists in a time of innovation without change. Subsequently, physical education as a curriculum subject is at risk of becoming extinct unless the 'talked' about pedagogical innovations that provide authentic, relevant and transferable learning experiences can become sustainable 'actioned' futures. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was to explore how a pedagogical innovation, the Cooperative Learning model, could be used over an enduring period of time. Participatory action research (PAR) was used as the methodology to scaffold the inquiry and to support eight secondary school physical education teachers' learning and use of Cooperative Learning during an academic year. This thesis considers how PAR enabled teachers to break the dominant practice architectures of physical education and how PAR supported teachers‘ use of an emergent pedagogical approach within and beyond the honeymoon period of implementation. In other words, how PAR facilitated teachers' ability to work beyond the dominant pedagogical practices of physical education and the practices endorsed by the school as an institution. Furthermore, how PAR sustained teachers' engagement with, and use of, the Cooperative Learning model. Indeed, Cooperative Learning was firstly immersed within the milieu of the practice architectures. Yet through the use of PAR the teachers were motivated to move beyond the honeymoon period and began to use the model within, with and then against the mess of the practice architectures. Subsequently, Cooperative Learning was emerging as the dominant pedagogical approach. However, this only occurred for some teachers where social connectivity and an emerging community of practice were significant variables in sustaining and adapting the use of Cooperative Learning. The contribution to knowledge is therefore the methodological processes of how to move beyond dominant pedagogical practices and facilitate innovation with change. In order for a pedagogical innovation to become a sustainable 'actioned' future its use is context dependent and PAR facilitates its sustainability. Furthermore, teacher learning should be advanced and teachers should be encouraged to create communicative spaces with colleagues and researcher facilitators.

This Participatory Action Research (PAR) project focused on “holistic learning” which includes “social” and “spiritual” learning and “whole-brained” learning. Broadly interpreting and applying the four-quadrant brain model of Herrmann (1994), and other models of the brain, my study seeks to understand whether, to what extent and how learning can be advanced by deliberately employing holistic learning strategies to narrow the gap between theory and practice, between left-brain and right-brain learning, and between cognition and emotion. I introduced tri-dimensional (3-D) practice as the combination of using holistic learning strategies in cooperative learning groups within spiritual learning environments. The site of this PAR study was the network of cooperative learning groups in Mozambique within the educational system of the Church of the Nazarene. Facilitators were trained to use six specific “holistic learning strategies”: group discussions of various types, praxis (as reflection-dialogue-action), teamwork, rehearsing integrity, singing-for-learning and classical spiritual disciplines within cooperative learning groups, also a holistic learning strategy. These aspects are typical of the widely used model of Theological Education by Extension (TEE), refined in this study. According to data gathered in a large hybrid survey, 97% of the 595 respondents to this question responded favourably in terms of the skills of these facilitators even though the average number of years of their formal schooling, 7.7, would normally be considered “minimal”. The study generates findings to support the position that holistic learning strategies enhance the quality of adult learning, at least in settings like those in Mozambique in which the facilitation of learning was 1) bilingual (Portuguese and maternal language), 2) focused on learners who are leaders-in-training, 3) deliberate in spiritual content and ambient, and 4) conducted by minimally-schooled facilitators in cooperative learning groups. The findings, from the responses recorded in qualitative phases of the research, corroborated by descriptive statistics, indicate that the efficacy of holistic learning strategies is related to certain modes of mental activity like whole-making, categorising, and others. This PAR project was conducted within an original research framework, Arboric Research, which takes into account the dynamic, fluid and organic nature of human systems, recognising that infrastructures in which the research takes place are different at the end of the study than at the beginning, like observing the “sap” within a growing grapevine or a tree. / Thesis (PhD (Curriculum Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

Studies on health and incarceration have extensively demonstrated that incarcerated women have poorer health statuses than non-incarcerated women and than incarcerated men, both as a result of confinement and of the intersection of abuse, poverty, homelessness and addiction that are simultaneously pathways to criminalisation and to poor health. Without denying the reality of disease, physical and mental suffering experienced by women in prison, this thesis conceptualizes the “problem of health in prison” by framing it as a vehicle of and effect of power relations. By studying neoliberal rationalities and technologies that constitute health, poststructuralist scholars have demonstrated how neoliberal subjects are enticed to continuously pursue health and to adhere to the imperative to be healthy. Demonstrating the intersection of neoliberal health governance and penal governance, criminologists have shown how prisons produce the subject of a healthy prisoner, who is a self-regulated woman, freely working towards her rehabilitation. Rather than studying programs, public policies and archives, this thesis innovates by examining the experiences and narratives of the subjects who are being governed and enticed to be “healthy.” Specifically, my research provides a contextualized analysis of how women negotiate and manage their health during incarceration and upon their release from prison. The first article focuses on tensions between this work’s conceptual framework and its methodology, i.e. participatory action research. An emerging literature has been building bridges between poststructuralism and participatory action research, highlighting the latter’s potential for transformative action. Using examples from participatory action research projects with incarcerated or previously incarcerated women, the article discusses how “participation” and “action” can be redefined by using a poststructuralist definition of subjectivity. The second article tackles the issue of how women “do” health in prison. Using three issues—access to health care services, smoking, and the management of body weight—the article explores how participants adopted different embodied subjectivities, which conflicted or aligned with neoliberal governmentality. It describes how, through failure to conform to neoliberal ideals of “health,” mechanisms of self-surveillance and self-regulation are relayed by feelings of guilt, shame, and anxiety, even when incarcerated women attempt to conform to imperatives to be healthy. Finally, the last article focuses on how, upon prison release, participants attempted to “undo” the imprint of penal governance on their bodies and health. Through the exploration of corporal practices, such as taking care of one’s appearance, the use of psychoactive medications, and defecating, the article shows how women attempt to “undo” prison in order to pursue health. Though these two articles focus on different periods of participants’ lives and rely on different yet related concepts—embodied subjectivities and corporal practices—the common thread between the two is to show the attempts by participants to “undo” prison from their embodied selves, and to “do” health as incited by the ethical imperatives to be healthy. The thesis concludes with a discussion about the pursuit of health, and its effects on the populations deemed as “at risk” and “unhealthy.”

While there is a plethora of research on the church, healing and reconciliation, there is none that has taken cognisance of the need to find solutions to deal with tribalism between Ndebele and Shona clergy in the Pentecostal church of Zimbabwe. Clergy are deployed according to the language they speak, instead of the passion and call of Elohim upon their lives. Many Researches have been done on centuries of tribal conflict; however, they centred on socio-political influences instead of socio-religious influences and consequences of the tribal conflict between Ndebele and Shona clergy. Tribal conflict has transcended generations and crossed all social settings that it has found its expression even among the clergy and laity within churches across Zimbabwe. The main focus of this research is the conflict between Ndebele and Shona Clergy in the Pentecostal church in Zimbabwe and has sought to “lift the carpet” and remove all the hidden social and unspoken debris, that continues to split the church along tribal lines. The Researcher writes from the perspective of being a female clergy who is also born by a Shona father and a Ndebele mother hence she relates to both sets of people outside the church. However, within the conservative Pentecostal church setting, the researcher was made to feel like an outsider by both groups which was even aggravated by the fact that her denominational organisation doesn't ordain and recognise female ministers let alone those of mixed ethnicity. The research established a participatory action research process so as to promote both education (creating curricula that deals with tribalism) and action (speaking against tribalism from the pulpit). The Research Methodology that was initially proposed was a Mixed Methods Action Research (Ivankova, 2015: 45), however during the course of the study it was changed to a qualitative method of enquiry as it thoroughly investigated and interrogated the tribal status quo among the Pentecostal clergy (Ndebele & Shona) in Zimbabwe. The research demography was two of Zimbabwe's largest cities (namely; Bulawayo and Harare), and the reason for choosing these two cities, was because they are predominantly Ndebele and Shona concentrations, respectively. Zimbabwe is composed of these two as the major tribes and many other small tribes, however these small tribes seem to be insignificant to the social fabric of Zimbabwe compared to the two major tribes (namely the Ndebele and Shona). The effects of tribal differences between the Ndebele and Shona people was assessed, in order to ascertain their effect on pastoral care. An exploration of the history between the Ndebele and Shona tribes formulated part of this research, thereby creating an understanding of the underlying causes of the existing Tribal Conflicts. Most of the literature that deals with the Zimbabwean conflicts has not tried to bring to light the tribal conflict between the Ndebele and Shona clergy. An investigation on how this conflict began and what has been its contemporary influence among the Clergy of Zimbabwe was conducted via interviews, questionnaires, folk tales, books and journals. The power of the church as the custodian of reconciliation was discussed in order to harness and promote a visible pastoral care drive that will promote real Truth and Reconciliation while bringing healing to the church of Zimbabwe, in particular. An interrogation of the effectiveness of previous truth and reconciliation efforts assisted to lay the foundation for engaging of the Clergy. This research sought to understand whether the 1983 to 1987 Gukurahundi incidents were clarion indicators of existing tribal tensions between the Ndebele and Shona people, in particular the clergy. / Dissertation (MTh)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Practical Theology / MTh / Unrestricted

I led a participatory action research (PAR) project with the staff and homeless clients of Ahope Day Center in Asheville, North Carolina, which was meant to evaluate client satisfaction with services and attitudes about certain issues. Project is led by an inquiry group consisting of members of Ahope staff and Ahope clients. The project is a co-designed, co-implemented, and co-interpreted mixed-method evaluation of Ahope's services, client attitudes about education and the environment, client adaptive strategies, optimism levels, and a mapping of client daily routines. The data was collected through participant observation, document analysis, surveys, a listing activity, and informal interviews. Documents were coded using grounded theory and themes emerged related to the value of the intangibles of security, community, and ‘being seen' at Ahope while some suggestions were also made. Findings included client attitudes indicating the importance of the environment and education to clients, high optimism levels among clients, and a number of suggestions for the improvement of Ahope's services.

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