Including people with intellectual disabilities in the mobilities turn: mobile interviews in Toronto,Canada

ABSTRACT

Geographic research about disability and mobility often foregrounds the built environment as a site of in/exclusion. People with intellectual disabilities (IDs) have been mostly absent from this scholarship. To respond to this gap, we draw from an in-depth set of ‘mobile interviews’ with people with IDs in Toronto, Canada. Using a thematic approach, this paper suggests that more-than-material relations matter to the everyday mobilities and immobilities of people with IDs in urban settings. We aim to centre the participants’ experiences and call for greater inclusion of people with IDs in critical-geographic studies of the disability-mobility nexus. We highlight participants’ regular, planned, and spontaneous mobilities; their attitudes towards their own movement, stillness, and ‘stuck-ness’; and their experiences of staring in public spaces. The contingencies of belonging/exclusion, choice/regimen, and fitting/mis-fitting – as well as the more-than-material, varied, and contextual nature of those tensions – are present in many of the participants’ (im)mobilities in and through the city.     

Dads Tuning in to Kids: A randomized controlled trial of an emotion socialization parenting program for fathers

Fathers play an important role in shaping their children’s emotional competence although most literature has focused on the influence of mothers. Dads Tuning in to Kids (Dads TIK) is a parenting program that teaches fathers to coach their children in learning about emotions, while also helping fathers increase awareness and regulation of their own emotions. A randomized controlled efficacy trial of Dads TIK was conducted with a community sample of 162 fathers of a 4‐year‐old child attending preschool in Melbourne, Australia. Those allocated to the intervention attended a seven‐session manualized group program. Questionnaires were completed by fathers, the fathers’ partners and the children’s teachers at baseline and 6‐month follow‐up. Results were that fathers in the intervention condition but not control condition reported significant increases in emotion socialization, parenting satisfaction and efficacy, and reductions in their children’s difficult behaviors. Partners of fathers in the intervention condition reported reductions in their own emotion dismissing parenting and improvements in psychological well‐being. Partners and teachers reported significant improvements in children’s behavior across both intervention and control conditions. These findings suggest a father‐focused program appears to lead to changes in fathers’ emotion socialization skills that may have benefits for partners’ functioning and children’s behavior.     

Psychosocial experiences of concussed collegiate athletes: The role of emotional support in the recovery process

Abstract

Objective: Understand from whom concussed football players seek and receive emotional support, and whether this support is associated with injury perceptions. Participants: Football players (N?=?26) from three NCAA Division I programs. Methods: With approval from the head athletic trainer, concussed athletes (2017 season) completed short surveys within 4–6?days of diagnosis and when cleared to return. Results: Concussed athletes perceived their injury as a normal consequence of playing football, not serious, and reported little, if any, depression and anxiety. Athletes reported the most support from athletic trainers; the least from coaches and teammates. Emotional support was associated with fewer adverse psychosocial reactions, more sport-injury related growth, and greater intentions to report future concussion symptoms. Conclusion: Results from this pilot study suggest that emotional support during the concussion recovery process should be understood and fostered by university officials charged with the health and well-being of collegiate football players.     

When Heterosexuality is Questioned: Stifling Suspicion Through Public Displays of Heterosexual Identity

This study examined public heterosexual identity management practices of heterosexual-identified young adults in the United States. Analysis of 415 participants’ written narratives indicated that 41% (n = 169) described consciously engaging in public displays of their heterosexual status in relation to suspicion about their sexual orientation. This article describes our findings regarding five aspects of these narratives of suspicion: types of suspicion, causes of suspicion, reasons for concern about suspicion, the types of public displays of heterosexual status employed to quell suspicion, and intended audiences for these displays. Overall, the results indicated that heterosexual identity suspicion is multifaceted, this suspicion serves as a catalyst for public displays of heterosexual status, and the climate of suspicion described by our participants reflects and reinforces contemporary heterosexism.     

The social construction of strategic coherence: Practices of enabling leadership

The construction of “strategic coherence,” defined as the development of a system of mutually compatible meanings among organization members about desirable organizational directions, is clearly a crucial issue for organizations. Yet, how to achieve it is in part an open question. While previous studies have considered how strategic coherence may emerge across top levels of management through strategic planning activities and negotiations among senior leaders, we know much less about the contribution of other actors and processes behind the scenes (in non-strategy roles). Drawing on an ethnographic study of a public hospital's planning and project management practices, this paper therefore focuses on the bundles of practices, people and tools through which strategic coherence can emerge across different levels and sectors in mundane activities. We build on the concept of “enabling leadership”, grounded in practice theories of leadership, as our analytical lens. The study reveals how strategic coherence is socially constructed by practices of ‘fueling’, ‘shaping’ and ‘entwining’ mutually compatible meanings, in interactions among diverse people and tools. We propose a grounded model of the construction of strategic coherence as the progressive socialization of meanings about organizational direction that is not just administered from the top, nor naturally emergent from the grass-roots, but that is a collective and inherently socio-material accomplishment of enabling leadership.     

Masculinity and Men’s Choice of College Major

Gender Issues - We investigate whether adherence to dominant masculine norms and choice of college major are related among undergraduate men in the United States. Our results indicate that...     

Voices of youths on engagement in community life: a theoretical framework of belonging

Little is known from the perspectives of youths with intellectual and developmental disabilities themselves about their experiences related to inclusion, engagement in community life and friendship, and their quality of life. The Voices of Youths research project used an inclusive approach to learn from youths about these experiences. Twenty-four youths (age 13–24 years) with a range of intellectual and developmental disabilities diagnostic ‘labels’ participated in three video-recorded, community-based interviews. Constructivist grounded theory data analysis revealed a theoretical framework comprising the core concept of belonging and four associated concepts: engaging with similar people, having social relationships, negotiating meaningful roles, and navigating norms and expectations – finding a good fit. The findings contribute new knowledge about the ways in which these youths experience a sense of belonging from their own perspectives and can inform development/enrichment of policies, programmes, and services for these youths.     

Brexit and its Consequences

In this brief essay, I argue that the ‘Brexit’ vote is but the latest manifestation of popular dissatisfaction with the utopian ideal of autonomous markets beyond the reach of regulatory democracy. Brexit represented the collective, if (to my mind) often misguided, efforts of those ‘left behind’ in Britain to protect themselves from the predatory nature of market fundamentalism. In a Polanyian sense, it is a form of social self-protection from self-regulating markets in money, trade and labour.