Mutual Care Research Articles

Internalization of Islamic Education Values in Remote Communities in Pasangkayu Regency

This study discusses t he process of internaliz ation Islamic education values in outlying communities in Bambalamotu district, Pasangkayu Regency , Indonesia. This used a qualitative approach , and the data was gathered through in depth interviews with local public figu res and communities. The data , then, was analyzed using a thematic approach as outlined by Strauss and Corbin. The results of this study show that the process of internalizing the values of Islamic education in the communities was carried out through val ue transformation practiced by families, government, and community figures. Local religious leaders also disseminated Islamic education values through religious speech. Islamic education values were also internalized through habituation and awareness impro vement that community groups drive. The results of Islamic education values internalization were reflected in the form of moral and good attitudes. The communities become more devoted to God as they manifest in faith practices, such as regular worship, don ation, fasting, and practicing pilgrims. Islamic values were also manifested in the increase of mutual cooperation, the help of each other, and mutual caring among communities

The Value of Kinship in Educating Children: A Case Study of Homeschooling Practice

This qualitative research is a case study of HSA, which maintains kinship values in its education system. This study aimed to examine the forms of interaction within the community and how structures and kinship values form a practical learning experience for children. Data were collected through observation and interviews to see how kinship values were implemented in learning. According to this study, positive values instilled in families prepare children to cope with the real world. Then, kinship values emerge from HSA's three core values. These values are Islam, growth, and ta'awun. By teaching these values to children, they will be equipped with the necessary skills to lead successful lives to help foster strong families and communities. In addition, the valuable principle that "my children are yours, and your children are mine" further strengthens family values among HSA members. The kinship values emphasize the importance of family, focusing on mutual support and care.

Relasi Agama dan Kearifan Lokal dalam Tradisi Ter-Ater di Pamekasan, Indonesia

This study aims to reveal Islamic values contained in the Ter-ater tradition in Pamaroh Village, Kadur District, Pamekasan Regency, Indonesia. Ter-ater tradition is a cultural heritage in the Madura island carried out at certain moments, when people deliver food to neighbors and relatives. This tradition also involves activities such as tahlil and prayer together before food is distributed. While using qualitative research method with a semiotic approach, data were collected through interviews, field observations, and related literature studies. After analysing the data, we found the existence of Islamic values in the Ter-ater tradition. These values include fostering mutual care through silaturahmi, strengthening solidarity in the form of ukhuwah Islamiyyah, and maintaining good habits through acts of almsgiving. The results of the research can be a valuable source of information in preserving and strengthening this tradition, as well as increasing religious understanding and awareness of the people of Pamaroh Village.

Tradition and Transformation: Spirituality in Church-Related Caring Communities in a Pluralistic Society

Demographic change in aging societies makes it urgent to ask how care can be understood as a social task. This is where the concept of caring communities comes in, which understands care as a task of many, indeed, of society as a whole, and aims to offer mutual care in communities. While the concept has been described in theory many times, empirical studies are rare. In pluralistic Western societies, the church as an institution is becoming less important while spirituality and spiritual needs are increasing in prominence. These processes of secularization run parallel to a growing interest in spirituality and an individualization of religion. Nonetheless, church congregations have always offered a place of mutual care and lived religion that functions as a network and social resource. So far, the role of spirituality in church-related caring communities has not been sufficiently addressed. In an exploratory qualitative study of three church-related caring communities in Germany, we focus on the target group of caring relatives, of whom we interviewed nine. The results show that church-related caring communities provide important spiritual resources and rely on the basis of shared values that are closely connected to Christian convictions. However, the different understandings of care and spirituality point to the relevance of discussing the often preliminary motives and values of care. Especially in plural societies, the discourse on plural values for mutual care is important and can form a basis for caring practices such as spiritual and pastoral care. Opportunities and places to discuss and debate different and shared values underlining care practices are necessary. The potential of spiritual and pastoral care in church-related caring communities is important and needs to be further strengthened.

"An L2 Education without Love is not Education at All": a phenomenographic study of undergraduate EFL students’ perceptions of pedagogical love

The role of pedagogical love in second language (L2) education has long remained under-explored due to dogmatic religious and cultural beliefs. There is insufficient scholarship on this construct at undergraduate levels. To bridge this gap, the present study employed a phenomenographic design to uncover Iranian undergraduate students’ perceptions of pedagogical love and its features, realizations, and determinant factors. It invited 22 undergraduate L2 learners to attend a semi-structured interview and complete a narrative frame. The results of content and thematic analysis attained through MAXQDA software (v. 20) revealed that the participants had different perceptions of pedagogical love. They considered it as a non-romantic intimacy and respect, deep care for students and their emotions, and pure love based on mutual trust. Furthermore, it was found that pedagogical love is essential for L2 education as characterized by a mutual trust and respect, kindness, care, bonding, intimacy, and forgiveness. Regarding its realizations, the results demonstrated that pedagogical love shows itself through intimacy, classroom engagement/participation, confidence, academic performance, and mutual care, respect, and responsibility. Moreover, it was identified that teachers’ emotional literacy, teachers’ pedagogical expertise, and positive classroom rapport facilitated the implementation of loving pedagogy at undergraduate level. Finally, the findings indicated that loving pedagogy practice was mostly precluded by strict religious beliefs, stigmatizing socio-cultural norms, emotion expression, fear, and traditional educational systems. Implications for L2 teachers and educators are discussed to augment their understanding of pedagogical love, as an opportunity to grasp the emotional side of language education.

Adult Education and Empathy

Post COVID-19, the world experiences tension politically, socially, and educationally. COVID-19 brought a new world reality. This integrative literature review addressed how encouraging empathetic classroom activities boosts students' empathetic use in their community; how institutional empathetic communication post COVID-19 enhances students' abilities to meet educational challenges by fostering those learners' resilience due to the expansion of mutual care; how engaging learners academically, interculturally, mentally, and emotionally requires new development in institutional communicative approaches; how institutional practice and activities should embrace collaborative learning through well-designed activities; and how interpersonal perceptions shape institutional empathy practices. Therefore, infusing empathetic leadership develops a sense of belonging and profound trust in the community. Additionally, the review provides some researched pedagogical practices to spur empathy in educational environments, which support learners' academic competencies.

The Role of Leadership and Local Capital on Village Fund Management

The enactment of Law no. 6/2014 in Indonesia has raised complex issues regarding the management of Village Fund. On one hand, Village Fund (local term: Dana Desa) gives hope for a more meaningful development in the village, but on the other hand the unpreparedness of human resources to manage the Village Fund has caused some problem. Therefore, the role of leadership and local capacity are parts of the solution to village fund management. Several important findings in the management of Village Fund were obtained using quantitative method as the main method in this research. First, the role of leader has a strong influence on planning, implementation, and performance of the program. Second, local leaders are required to have strong characters which can be a role model, fulfill promises, and work hard, and actively encourage ideas as well as providing social solutions for the community. Third, social capital as part of local capacity in the form of mutual cooperation (local term: gotong royong), caring, and mutual trust is able to survive in the village as part of the solution for Village Fund management.

발달장애 자녀를 둔 부부의 동반 대처 경험 연구

This study was conducted for the purpose of examining how the emotional interactions of parents of children with developmental disabilities change the couple's intimacy and parenting coping skills. For the study, 20 participants from 10 pairs of parents with children with developmental disabilities were recruited and conducted in-depth interviews, and the collected data was analyzed following the grounded theory of Corbin and Strauss. As a result, 92 concepts, 25 subcategories, and 9 categories were discovered, which were integrated into the core category of “Living as a dyadic parenting team and supporting the family.” The entire process follows the following steps: “Confusion → Individual coping → Transition → Cooperation-adjustment → Maintenance.” However, this process shows a cyclical development where progress and regression intersect. Research suggests that there are four different types of adaptation. They are the “mutual care type,” “combat-comrade type,” “player replacement type,” and “return after neglect type.”

Fugitive Figurations of Chronic Disability: Reconstructing Black Disability Politics in Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy

Abstract “Fugitive Figurations of Chronic Disability: Re-Constructing the Black Disability Politics in Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy” fills a gap in nineteenth-century Black disability histories that have overlooked questions of chronic disabilities. In Iola Leroy, Harper writes from the perspective of the chronically disabled and offers fugitive figurations that exceed, resist, and stand apart from nineteenth-century representations of white true women’s invalidism and racial pathologizations. Harper uses Iola’s and other characters’ chronic debilities as a social location for imagining an alternative Black epistemology of the chronic with its own “phraseology” to testify to the inseparability of racial and disability justice as a part of Black freedom struggles. As part of its fugitive figurations of chronic disabilities, Iola Leroy also unbinds Black bodies and minds from a disciplinary individualistic productive capitalist time; and it centers an inclusive postbellum Black community of collective mutual care that exposes the limitations of a liberal (white) sentimental politics of sympathy. Harper’s fugitive figurations of chronic disability in Iola Leroy raise important questions about the methods critics use to recover Black disability in nineteenth-century US literature, methods which too often mine for present-day models of disabled medical verisimilitude and visibility rather than excavating the alternative figurations that Black writers such as Harper employed as part of twinned anti-ableist and anti-racist liberation and care practice.

Beyond the participant-researcher division: co-creating ethical relationships through care and rapport in studies of post-laryngectomy communication

This article presents the ethical implications for social science research emerging from our study on interpersonal communication after a laryngectomy. By tracing the evolution of our approach through specific research experiences and participant feedback, we provide empirical support for a flexible, multidimensional, and relational understanding of key ethical concepts, such as vulnerability and the researcher-participant relationship. Our approach has shifted from institutionally imposed rigid categorizations and somewhat stereotypical treatment of both the research group and the researcher-participant relationship to an emphasis on building relationships founded on mutual care and rapport. We argue that this revised perspective fosters ethical collaboration that is beneficial and secure for all parties involved, and we offer practical examples of its implementation in research practice.

Anti-Blackness and Moral Repair

For centuries, Europeans interpreted the biblical curse of Ham to justify the colonization and enslavement of Africans. Yet some Zambians today repeat this story as a demonstration of God’s intention for Africans to be servants to whites, thus explaining global inequalities. I approach these apparently anti-Black views not as evidence of false consciousness but as counterhegemonic theorizations of racism, coloniality, and capitalism. Many Zambians use the Ham narrative to challenge the liberal fetishization of equality amid the territorializing border logics of the nation-state. They demonstrate how, in a radically unequal world, these fetishes perpetuate social divisions that contravene God’s will. This constitutes a non-egalitarian decolonizing critique that instead demands relations of mutual connection, kinship, and care across continents. Working toward moral repair, I enlist the resources of liberation theology to imagine new ethical and political futures that are both anti-racist and anti-statist.

Suicide in Healthcare Workers: An Umbrella Review of Prevalence, Causes, and Preventive Strategies.

The medical profession faces a critical challenge with the mental health of its practitioners, leading to an alarming increase in suicide rates among healthcare workers (HCW). Factors such as the culture of perfectionism, excessive workloads, and stigma against seeking help exacerbate this issue. This umbrella review synthesizes the existing literature on HCW suicide, exploring the prevalence, causes, and potential preventive strategies. This study conducted a search of the literature from PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar until April 2, 2024. The non-exhaustive search terms used were "doctor suicide," "physician suicide," "medical professional suicide," "suicide in healthcare," "healthcare worker suicide prevention," and "causes of healthcare worker suicide." Hand-searches were also conducted. Of the 487 studies initially identified, a total of 10 systematic reviews/meta-analyses were included. This umbrella review collates findings from 400 primary clinical studies conducted between the years 2004 and 2023. With a focus on mental health factors contributing to suicide in HCW, there are regional and specialty-specific variations in stress prevalence in the populace. Further, anesthesiologists and psychiatrics depicted higher rates of burnout compared to other HCW; causative factors such as seeking perfection and challenging work-life balance were key when assessing suicidal behaviors in these groups. Job demand level was found to correlate directly with suicidal thoughts, specifically among psychiatric ward HCW, where access to drugs and sharp instruments is readily available. In specific contexts, female HCWs showed a standardized mortality ratio (SMR), indicating that the rate of suicide was higher among them as compared to the general female population. Interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness were effective in decreasing depression, psychological distress, and anxiety in several included studies. This umbrella review also identified major obstacles to seeking help, including stigma and the fear of professional consequences. To reduce suicide rates among HCWs, it is the need of the hour to implement evidence-based interventions and create supportive work environments that encourage mutual care for each other's emotional health. Further research is necessary to determine the effectiveness of various measures in preventing suicide among HCW.

건강소양 향상을 위한 전략

Health literacy is emerging as an important public health issue in the 21st century. Strengthening people's health literacy is the only and most powerful way to not only improve the health and wellness of each individual, but also to solve the problem of health inequality caused by social and economic disparities and the problem of rapidly increasing medical costs as the population ages. However, research on health literacy is still insufficient in Korea, and in particular, there is little research on practical measures to improve health literacy in adults.
 Lifestyle medicine, which has emerged as a fundamental solution to prevent and treat chronic diseases, which are called diseases of the 21st century, has already systematized the knowledge and technology of health literacy, so if a route to disseminate this is secured, projects to promote national health literacy can be carried out quickly.
 This study examines the definition and significance of health literacy and the background of the emergence of lifestyle medicine and its effects, then explores specific routes for implementing national health literacy education centered on lifestyle medicine, with online universities and religious facilities as the promising routes proposed.
 Since health literacy education must be conducted as part of lifelong education, formal educational institutions, social welfare facilities, religious facilities, workplaces, etc. can all serve as sites for health literacy education and practice. In particular, online universities are expected to play the most central role in many aspects, including their purpose, capability for content development, and operating system. Religious facilities are also social capital that can make a significant contribution as a center of health literacy education and mutual care in regional communities.

Virtual mutual care practices of Chinese people amid censorship during the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China

The initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic hit Wuhan, China, in early January 2020, and restrictive lockdown measures were implemented. Risks of transmission and the lockdown measures severely disrupted everyday life and affected the well-being of local residents. Applying institutional ethnography and autoethnography, this study focuses on the virtual mutual care of Chinese social network site users, which attended to the hardship of local people through activities in cyberspace. Not only were the virtual mutual care activities lifesaving, as they tackled critical challenges of the affected residents, but they also had radical meanings, as they strived for solidarity and justice in the context of crisis.

Mobilizing space to realize the transformative potential of work integration social enterprises through a politics of scale and scope

WISEs encompass a multitude of relations that both fall within – but also exceed – neoliberal capitalist relations. They are often spaces of mutual aid, collectivity and care, and these enterprises can – under limited circumstances – give rise to more-than-capitalist relations. In this paper, we examine the types of organizational and spatial structure that can best support the flourishing of non-capitalist relations, arguing that social enterprises that are part of a collective and networked space are more likely to realize the economies of scale and scope necessary to enhance their transformative possibilities. A case study of one non-profit organization in Toronto, Canada is used to support this argument.

N19 Nurses' difficulties in supporting the sexual well-being of patients with inflammatory bowel disease

Abstract Background Sexual well-being is a state of sexual happiness and satisfaction that combines mental stability and physical health as well as builds on mutual caring and intimacy with the partner. Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) undergo distress as they experience dating, marriage, and childbirth while living with the disease. Previous studies have indicated the importance of support related to sexual well-being but have suggested that it is a difficult topic for discussion. Hence, this study sought to clarify nurses' specific difficulties and barriers in supporting the sexual well-being of patients with IBD. Methods Nurses who had considerable experience caring for with patients with IBD were recruited using a snowballing method or opportunistic sampling. Semi-structured interviews were conducted via a video meeting system. Some examples of the interview questions include ‘Please tell us about your experience talking with patients about romantic relationships and sexual concerns and ‘Could you tell us about your difficulties in supporting patients with IBD in relation to their sexual concerns?’ We performed a reflexive thematic analysis. Results We interviewed 20 participants (Male: 4, Female: 16) in 13 facilities, 2 of which were focus group interviews. The mean length of experience in IBD nursing was 13 years. Three themes were identified as reflecting the difficulties nurses faced in discussing sexual issues with their patients: ‘The nurses' experience and their relationships with patients’, including gender and age barriers and difficulties in building rapport; ‘Assessment of sexual well-being’, including difficulties in broaching the issue and identifying people who needed support; and ‘Education for patients and nurses in supporting sexual well-being’, including lack of materials for patients and lack of opportunities for nurses to learn. Most participants rarely experienced discussions about sexual topics and did not initiate conversations about sexual well-being on their own. Conclusion Due to the sensitive topic of sexual issues, the difficulties described by nurses were influenced by the level of rapport with patients, the lack of training on how to handle the topic, and the lack of resources. Our results suggest the need for further research into approaches to reduce nurses' difficulties, while considering the identified barriers and needs related to the sexual well-being of patients with IBD.

Umwana w'umugore: The gendered realities of girls born of conflict-related sexual violence and their mothers in post-genocide Rwanda.

This article explores the challenges, needs and capacities of girls born of conflict-related sexual violence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. Twenty-nine interviews and 11 focus groups were conducted with girls born of genocidal rape, alongside 44 interviews with mothers of children born of genocidal rape. In a society where Umwana w'umugore - being 'the child of a woman' - is considered an insult for children born of rape, gendered realities profoundly shape girls' experiences. Data reveal that girls born of genocidal rape face challenges related to identity and belonging, multiple forms of violence and economic challenges. Moreover, girls sustain the indirect consequences of gender-based injustices committed against their mothers, making stigma and social exclusion shared and intergenerational experiences, alongside mutual care and support. Policy development must take into account the unique needs of girls born of rape, the precarious situation of their mothers and broader gender inequalities.

Collectivizing trauma: everyday experiences, empathy, and grassroots activism in Japan’s Flower Demonstration against sexual violence

ABSTRACT The Flower Demonstration is an anti-sexual violence movement launched in Japan on Twitter, 2019. By October 2023, the movement has established 67 local branches across Japan and sustained its monthly demonstrations for over four years, contributing to a landmark reform of Japan’s sex crime laws in June 2023. Based on participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and media analysis, this research explores how the Flower Demo expands and sustains to challenge Japan’s prevailing victim-blaming culture and politics. It finds that demonstrations in smaller, less visible communities feature safe expression of personal traumas (my pain), which are integrated and transformed into a collective trauma identity (our pain) through social media and in-person interactions with demonstrations held in symbolic and resourceful larger cities. Social change is then fostered through a nationwide grassroots network that engages directly with the broader society by establishing safe alternative spaces, which can be activated to challenge the male-centric institutional framework when it trivializes sexual violence. Although participants hold varying expectations for the Flower Demo, their common goal centers around trauma healing. This resonates with the vision of Tarana Burke, the initiator of MeToo, who advocates for anti-sexual-violence movements to prioritize empathetic connections and mutual care.

Research on the Development Dilemmas and Countermeasures of Rural Mutual Aid Elderly Care under the Background of Hollowing Out

Research on the Development Dilemmas and Countermeasures of Rural Mutual Aid Elderly Care under the Background of Hollowing Out

Research on the Challenges and Optimization Paths of Rural Mutual Assistance Elderly Care

Research on the Challenges and Optimization Paths of Rural Mutual Assistance Elderly Care