Liminal Spaces in Teams Research

Humans and their feelings are a 'unique' study in architectural design, such as how humans behave in some spatial settings. Spatial settings are usually defined as an environment that contains specific activities. However, what about transitional spaces or corridors that only serve as intermediaries for 'some walking experience'? The discussion related to liminal space becomes interesting, mainly when studied from the perspective of architectural psychology. This study aims to investigate human experiences and perceptions of liminal spaces, focusing on two locations: the corridors and the stairs at the campus. The research method used is mixed methods, with random samplings collected through an online survey to explore feelings, visuals, and hearing responses to liminal spaces. The study results show that respondents who have experienced being in a liminal space tend to have contra-perceptions of the Alienation theory by Marx, which can be attributed to the habits of the respondents in dealing with that space and their objective nature. Meanwhile, respondents with perceptions that align with Alienation theory tend to be influenced by their feelings and visual imagination. Moreover, respondents whose perceptions aligned with the theory expressed their discomfort and anxiety caused by unconducive room conditions. This research contributes to understanding human experiences and perceptions in liminal spaces with limitations including a small number of respondents and intangible indicators, making it difficult to explain perceptions in nominal terms. Thus, this research can broaden the understanding of architectural psychology and spatial perception.

The aim of this article is to explore the processes of learning when students are engaged in intercultural historical learning (IHL), specifically how spaces of learning were, or were not, opened by students’ struggle to construct meaning. Since IHL is complex, involving both intrinsic disciplinary and extrinsic curricular goals, it is vital to understand this process in detail. The research questions address which aspects seem to activate intercultural learning, and which ones hinder or complicate it. The methodological approach employed was an instrumental, multisite case study where three teaching–learning sequences from two secondary classrooms were investigated. Here, the concepts of ‘decentring’ and ‘perspective recognition’, as aspects of IHL, were seen as threshold concepts. The threshold concepts framework – and specifically the idea of ‘liminal space’, a ‘place of potential learning’, the in-between moments in the learning process where students find themselves before ‘getting it’ – was applied as an analytical tool to uncover and describe specific moments in the selected teaching–learning sequences. Several liminal spaces were unpacked, and it transpired that ‘troublesomeness’ is an integral, potentially productive component when students navigate liminal space as a place for intercultural learning. ‘Barriers’ that obstructed learning, as well as possible ‘entry points’ where a student steps into a productive liminal space, were identified, as well as some major enabling breakthrough moments – ‘junctures’ – for IHL.

Social relationships play an important role in organizational entrepreneurship. They are crucial to entrepreneurs' decisions because, despite the bleeding-edge technological advancements observed nowadays, entrepreneurs as human beings will always strive to be social. During the COVID-19 pandemic many companies moved activities into the virtual world and as a result offline Social relationships became rarer, but as it turns out, even more valuable, likewise, the inter-organizational cooperation enabling many companies to survive. This chapter aims to develop knowledge about entrepreneurs' SR and their links with inter-organizational cooperation. The results of an integrative systematic literature review show that the concept of Social relationships, although often investigated, lacks a clear definition, conceptualization, and operationalization. This chapter revealed a great diversity of definitions for Social relationships, including different scopes of meaning and levels of analysis. The authors

The context of this paper surrounds my Master’s thesis which was written in 2010 related to recovering crack cocaine addicted mothers who had lost custody of their children. Every qualitative thesis has a story attached to it—an impetus for engaging in the research. When the research combines sensitive topics and the research mirrors the experience of the researcher, decisions must be made considering the research processes and methods. This paper explores the reflexive processes that were employed in the 10 months preceding taking my first thesis course. Using the preface of my reflexive journal as data, three themes arose from subsequent coding with qualitative data analysis software: liminality, the wrestle, and the third space. The resultant discussion of the three themes highlights my journey into the depths of reflexivity and back again as I journeyed into and through the spaces of liminality.

Family Caregiver Partnerships in Palliative Care Research Design and Implementation.

Privatisation of the Production of Public Space

As undergraduate students engage with disability studies coursework, they learn about sociocultural concepts that address issues of ableism, normalcy, equity, and inclusion of disabled people in all facets of society. A transformational ideological change in how students view disability often occurs during these courses. To further explore this phenomenon, I completed a study on the capstone course for a DS minor program at a mid-sized public university. Two research questions asked: 1) How do undergraduate students make sense of and understand disability while completing a DS course? and 2) Which pedagogical decisions made by course instructors promote undergraduate students' development of new understandings of disability? A review of the scholarship on DS pedagogy in postsecondary contexts and the transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1990) concept of critical reflection situated how these students' perspectives shift over a semester. The weekly reflection assignment of 69 students over two semesters were coded with qualitative methods. Findings include themes related to the process of reflection unearthing realizations and identifying both problems and solutions, connecting to moral obligation. The findings explore connections to the process of reflection while the students were within the liminal space of understanding course content that contrasted their prior assumptions about disability. I discuss implications for postsecondary educational pedagogical methods to understand and utilize the liminal space while teaching DS courses.

The current study is an attempt to explore threshold Identity in Hamid's Exist West from Rushdie's Perspective. This research paper seeks to find out the societal complex patterns that are involved in the creation of diasporic identities. In this study, the researcher examines Salman Rushdie's 1982 essay, "Imaginary Homeland,"( 1982) which is drawn from his book Essays and Criticism (1928), about Mohsin Hamid's 2017 novel Exit West (2017). In terms of theoretical framework, the suggested study adheres to Catherine Belsey's (2013) method of textual analysis. Moreover, the research philosophy under which the study has been conducted is interpretative in nature. The objectives of the research are to discuss the challenges faced by diaspora communities and contextualize the term magical realism by relating it to excessive immigration. Nevertheless, identity crisis is such a serious issue that such a grand term magical realism is unable to ease the pain of the diasporic community. This research aims to bring out elements of dissemination, homelessness, and identity crisis of immigrants who live in a “liminal space’’ by using ‘‘magical realism’’ (2017) as a tool that facilitates their mobility. The novel's protagonists experience a sense of alienation, dislocation, and broken identity, which are hallmarks of a diasporic identity, even with the convenience of traveling abroad made possible by magical "doors." These emotions are characteristic of diasporic identities that eventually lead to identity crises.

This essay analyzes Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an adaptation of Betty Smith’s bestselling novel of the same title (published two years earlier). The central visual elements in this film are thresholds or openings, such as windows, doorways, and stairways, which together comprise a liminal space whose crossings serve as the literal inscriptions of Kazan’s dialectical project. These are sites of indeterminacy, where personal transitions and economic transactions take place. Significantly, the film’s most intense moments of emotional harmony and discord occur in front of (or through) these in-between thresholds, where softness gives way to hardness (and vice versa). The alternating pattern of harmony, contrasted with interpersonal conflict, constitutes what the authors call the ‘emotional dialectics’ of the film. Transitions from dreamy contentment to harsh realization or an awareness of the hard truth of a situation occur rapidly in these liminal spaces. Building on the work of theorists such as André Bazin, Jean Mitry, and Dudley Andrew, the essay concludes that A Tree Grow in Brooklyn not only targets the relational chasms to be crossed by its main characters but also builds a bridge between the producers of the past (including director Kazan) and viewers of the present, contemporary audiences who are asked to peer through a cinematic ‘window’ and partake in a view of the warmth and intimacy to be found in an immigrant family’s life.

Background This paper presents the findings from an exploratory study on alcohol and other drugs (AOD) nurses’ views on current career opportunities and challenges and on how their role has been affected by clinical and structural changes in service delivery. Methods The paper is based on qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of twelve AOD nurses in the UK. A narrative approach to interviewing aimed to encourage emergence of new insights and suggest theories for future examination. Interview domains were informed by the research team’s knowledge of AOD nursing and by themes from published literature. Interviews were recorded, transcribed, and coded and a reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. Results Key themes emerging focused on the growth, advantages, and challenges of non-medical prescribing (NMP), and the impact on AOD nursing of changes in workforce structures and environments. The findings indicate considerable doubts about career opportunities for nurses in AOD services although NMP may offer some limited routes to career advancement. Conclusions Some long-standing issues around the identity and professional status of AOD nurses persist and current clinical and structural changes have created a “liminal space” within which the nursing role and AOD nurse identityare disrupted and in transition.

From the Editor

How to Conduct a State-of-the-Art Literature Review.

Rhetoric <i>In Situ</i>

In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography. The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world? In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering. The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.

The politics of symbolic representation is uncovered by our examining the represented cultural landscape. In this process, semiotics and discourse analysis were the methods complementing each other and enabling us to underline how Romanians’ understanding of power relations, of past and present events and ultimately of reality was shaped by signs, symbols, and stories in official visual materials. This research aims to discuss the geography of Romania’s southern border during the socialist period (1948-1989). This geography is made of the Danube and of the Danubian settlements as represented in images within Geography of Romania school textbooks and picture postcards. Thus, the aim of our article is to decode the visual construction of territorial identity of the Danubian settlements in Romania. To reach this aim, we considered the following research questions: Is the Danube the main subject in these representations or a secondary one? How is the Danube represented? What are the key-themes of its representation? How is the past of the settlements on the Danube integrated into the visual discourse during the socialist period? What was the role played by the Danube in the history of these settlements according to these representations (i.e. textbooks and picture postcards)? Results show that the Danube is a liminal space, changing functions depending on historical, political, economic, and social circumstances. The Danube is represented as landscape, defined through its economic (i.e. transport, commerce) or historical functions (i.e. border to the south or communication route with the west). Due to its representations, also the other elements seem truthful and “natural”. The presence of people and activities in the displayed places inform and educate visitors and inhabitants how to use space (contemplative, for entertainment, for relaxation, to learn, etc.). We provide an informed understanding of Romania through visual imagery: representations are singling out its uniqueness and achievements, fitting into the metanarrative of socialist propaganda.