Personal Journey Research Articles

Why mentorship?

Mentors help guide a deeply personal journey.

Transformative advertising: well-being Instagram messaging

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine well-being messaging on Instagram to understand what constitutes transformative social media advertising with potential to enhance consumer lives and create change at a community and societal level. Design/methodology/approach A novel-phased approach using transformative advertising research and positive psychology is adopted for an in-depth examination of Lululemon, a well-being brand advocate. The study combines secondary case data, analysis of brand messaging on Instagram, interviews with brand followers, and six months of Instagram posts consumer responses. Findings Four themes – inspiring personal journeys and potential, encouraging mindfulness and gratitude, supporting connection and community and advancing diversity and equity – are used to develop a typology of well-being advertising message elements on Instagram. Originality/value This study contributes to the call for research on transformative advertising by establishing that Instagram is a powerful platform for well-being messages, particularly from brands committed to social issues. Practical implications for brands and avenues for future research are provided.

Patients’ expectations of primary health care from both patients’ and physicians’ perspectives: a questionnaire study with a qualitative approach

BackgroundPatients’ ideas, concerns, and expectations are three important concepts in consultation techniques. Limited studies on these concepts include responses from both health care providers and care recipients of the same consultation. Highlighting both perspectives provides an increased understanding of the consultation. This study aims to explore the perspectives of patients and health care professionals about patients’ expectations of primary health care during consultations with primary care physicians and compare the two sets of perspectives.MethodsA cross-sectional study. Patients (n = 113) and physicians (n = 67) from five primary health care centers completed a questionnaire after planned consultations. Their responses to open-ended questions about patients’ expectations, from patients’ and physicians’ perspectives were analyzed with qualitative content analyses.ResultsThe patients expected a personal journey, through the primary health care system where they were the subject of interest. A journey, with ready access to a health care provider followed by a consultation with the physician, medical measures administered, their outcomes discussed, and a plan developed for continued health care. The physicians observed patients’ expectations to concern the responsibilities placed on primary health care where patients were the object of interest. Patients’ short-term expectations were described in a similar way by both patients and physicians. Patients expressed their long-term expectations as more personal and interpersonal whereas physicians observed them from a more professional and organizational standpoint.ConclusionsPatients and physicians have different views of what patients expect of primary health care. While patients’ short-term expectations were perceived by physicians, their long-term expectations were not. Patients expected more of a personal journey through the primary health care system while physicians observed patients’ expectations to concern the responsibilities placed on primary health care. Identifying and meeting patients’ expectations is an important part of patient-centered care, and a better understanding of patients’ expectations is needed to improve health professionals’ consultation skills.

The Role of the Human-Canine Bond in Recovery from Substance Use Disorder (Medline).

Abstract Recovery from substance use disorder (SUD) can be conceptualized as a personal journey that includes connection with self and others, as well as animals - known as the human-animal bond (HAB). Research shows that canines are the most common type of animal integrated into animal-assisted interventions to support people with SUD and that there is growing acknowledgement of companion animals in the lives of people with SUD. To address this gap, the objective of this scoping review was to examine the literature on the role of the human-canine bond with respect to recovery from SUD among adolescents and adults, including how the bond may help or hinder recovery.

Movement-based experiential learning in dance/movement therapy graduate education: facilitating and hindering factors for competency development

Dance and movement are used as the primary means of learning in graduate education programmes for dance/movement therapy in the United States. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study that used thematic analysis to identify factors that facilitate and hinder student learning in movement-based experiential learning. Learning was facilitated when the learning community, the students, and the faculty worked synergistically and enabled the students to enter personal journeys into developing competencies and the self of the therapist. Factors that hindered learning were those that were internal to the learner, such as their mental, emotional, and physical states, as well as factors that were external to the learners. These included lack of clarity about the purposes for experiential learning, unclear boundaries, and lack of structure. Social constructivist embodied pedagogy is proposed as a pedagogical philosophy for movement-based experiential learning.

Contributing to 'a sense of purpose' - Evaluating consumer recovery progress after attending a therapeutic-recreation intervention programme: A quantitative analysis.

The recommended objective for mental health plans and policies is the adoption of recovery approaches to mental healthcare. Mental health recovery is no longer defined by symptom resolution but as a journey towards a meaningful life from the consumer's own perspective. Recovery approaches focus on consumers' strengths, feelings of well-being and the achievement of personal goals. Designing recovery-oriented interventions is crucial for supporting people in their personal recovery journey. This study sought to evaluate how attending a recovery-oriented intervention impacts the recovery of attending people living with serious mental illness. A quasi-experimental approach was utilised to examine changes in self-reported recovery progress in a purposive sample of consumers living with enduring mental illness (N = 105). Recovery progress was evaluated via the Recovery Assessment Scale - Domains and Stages (RAS-DS). Data were collected at entry and exit to a therapeutic recreation programme grounded in principles of recovery-oriented care and social contact theory. Pre-post scores were analysed via a repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance (RM-MANOVA) per the four RAS-DS recovery domains. After attending the therapeutic recreation programme, consumer recovery scores significantly increased in the functional, personal, and social recovery RAS-DS domains as measured by 'Doing Things I Value', 'Looking Forward', and 'Connecting and Belonging' (respectively). No changes were observed to consumers' clinical recovery progress, as assessed via the recovery domain 'Mastering my Illness'. The results of this study demonstrate that therapeutic recreation camps can provide a recovery-based approach to mental healthcare, with positive effects on the three areas of: a purposeful life; connection and belonging; and optimism and hope. Recovery Camp has been previously identified by the Productivity Commission as having potential person-centred recovery benefits for mental health consumers. The results of this study now establish these benefits as evidence based and can be used to guide mental health practice and policy for the implementation of therapeutic recreation camps for mental health recovery.

We-Care-Well: exploring the personal recovery of mental health caregivers through Participatory Action Research.

Family caregivers play a critical role in supporting the recovery journeys of their loved ones, yet the recovery journeys of family caregivers have not been well-explored. Using a Participatory Action Research approach, we explore the personal recovery journeys of family caregivers for individuals with mental illness. This case study involved piloting and exploring the impact of a novel online workshop series offered to mental health caregivers at Ontario Shores Center for Mental Health Sciences. Recovery courses and workshops conventionally engage patients living with mental health conditions. In the current case, the recovery model is adapted to the needs and experiences of their family caregivers, resulting in a pilot workshop series called "We Care Well". Through participant-led discussions, interactive and take-home activities, and experiential learning, caregivers co-created workshop content and engaged in peer-learning on seven personal recovery-oriented topics. This included: self-care, resilience-building, non-violent communication, storytelling, and mental health advocacy. Throughout the sessions, participants implemented their learnings into their caregiving roles, and shared their experiences with the group to progress through their own recovery journeys. The We Care Well series was found to be an effective intervention to adapt and apply the personal recovery framework to mental health caregivers. PAR, and co-design are viable approaches to engage caregivers in mental health research, and can facilitate knowledge exchange, as well as relationship building with peers and program facilitators.

Teaching and Learning a Joyful Citation Praxis: Affective Relations for Fostering Community Through Our Compositions

Many of us learned to cite sources to avoid plagiarism or to give credit. Yet there are many more generative reasons to teach and learn citation. This essay offers a teacher’s perspective and a student’s perspective on our personal journeys toward viewing and practicing citation as a way of joyfully generating community with others. We describe our individual struggles, how anti-oppressive, anti-racist, and critical feminist scholars have shaped our thinking, and what we do within the classroom to practice a joyful, generative way of citing. We offer suggestions for how to hold ourselves and students accountable to more inclusive and community-oriented ways of citing by infusing reflective practice throughout the semester in college writing-intensive courses.

The functions of negativity and benign aggression in the development of humanistic values: A Frommian clinical journey

In this paper I present an analysis of a personal journey, based on Erich Fromm's concept of benign aggression, part of The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973). I analyze its role in the dynamics of change based on the interaction between the psyche and the social. In Fromm's conceptual framework, benign aggression results from an unlived life, shaped by limitations on individuals' freedoms, supported by institutional and oppressive structures in a neo-capitalistic society. I explore how benign aggression, replayed between patient and therapist, can bring about changes in the self and modes of relatedness, leading to the recognition of humanistic values. In my practice, projective identification and attachment -detachment dynamics were experienced as forms of benign aggression, while anger and conflict became a way to acknowledge them. Fragments of two clinical cases illustrate how needs for relatedness-through-conflict are experienced. Relatedness expressed through a negative form of attachment can lead to the co-creation of a psychic space, a “Social Third” where ethical values are experienced and shared. This Frommian conceptual framework and methodology require total connectedness with a subject, together with the recognition and acceptance of an “Other” unto oneself. In my experience, such recognition encourages the emergence of humanistic values.

Nurse-Led Care Coordination in a Transitional Clinic for Uninsured Patients With Diabetes.

The purpose of this article is to inform the reader of the practice of the registered nurse care coordinator (RNCC) within an interprofessional, nurse-led clinic serving uninsured diabetic patients in a large urban city. This clinic serves as a transitional care clinic, providing integrated diabetes management and assisting patients to establish with other primary care doctors in the community once appropriate. The clinic uses an interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) model with the RNCC at the center of patient onboarding, integrated responsive care, and clinic transitioning. Interprofessional, nurse-led clinic for uninsured patients with diabetes. Interprofessional models of care are strengthened using a specialized care coordinator. Care coordination is a key component in case management of a population with chronic disease. The RNCC, having specialized clinical expertise, is an essential member of the interdisciplinary team, contributing a wide range of resources to assist patients in achieving successful outcomes managing diabetes. Transitional care coordination, moving from unmanaged to managed diabetes care, is part of a bundled health care process fundamental to this clinic's IPCP model. In a transitional clinic setting, frequent interaction with patients through onboarding, routine check-ins, and warm handoff helps support and empower the patient to be engaged in their personal health care journey.

Outside Looking In

In this autoethnographic narrative, I reflect on my journey through vision loss and life with visual impairment, which comprises so much more than loss alone. “Outside Looking In” serves as a triple entendre. It signifies a reflection on the internal aspects of my lived experiences. It embodies the barriers that I often feel between me, other people, and activities as I navigate the gap between normal sight and full blindness. It is also an invitation to the reader to view, as an outsider, these reflections through my eyes. Drawing on trials encountered in personal, professional, and academic settings, I hope to evoke awareness of the challenges faced, and to inform recommendations for support and understanding while allowing individuals to maintain autonomy. The account that emerges highlights the shared experiences of another with vision loss and the areas in which they diverge while also detailing a personal journey from frustration to integration, identity reformation, and resilience.

Dreamscapes of Belonging

This paper presents a personal journey through the application of Jungian Art-Based Research (JABR), initiated by attending a course by Susan Rowlands. It delves into the transformative experience of exploring the multiverse of dreams and their impact on the author's professional and personal development. The exploration began with the author’s repetitive dreams, characterized by detailed urban landscapes, serving as the primary material for research. By physically mapping these dreamscapes and integrating various symbolic materials, the author engaged in a deep, introspective process, highlighting the non-linear and spiraling nature of JABR. This journey further intertwined with reflections on identity, homelessness, and the longing for a sense of belonging, amplified by historical and cultural dislocations. Through spontaneous dance and subsequent reflections, the author confronts the disillusionment with idealized spaces and faces the reality of changing perspectives and attachments. The paper concludes by pondering the broader implications of our attachment to the Earth, suggesting that our efforts to save it might be hindered by our need to name and possess, rather than embrace its intrinsic, unnamed existence. Through a Jungian lens, the author proposes a reevaluation of our relationship with the planet, advocating for a detachment from specific names to foster a more universal and sustainable connection.

Artist as healer

Amidst escalating ecological crises, artists grapple with representing landscapes in the Anthropocene era, where human activity dominates. Departing from traditional portrayals, the artist advocate for acknowledging interconnectedness within ecosystems. Through personal experiences and projects like "Happy Owners," the author challenges conventional perceptions and inspire critical engagement with nature. Recent explorations into ancestral rituals and the Breton coast underscore a personal journey towards understanding human-environment relationships. Ultimately, art serves as a medium for interpretation and exploration, rather than didactic activism.

‘Patience, persistence and proportionality’: Probation officer's perspectives of desistance in practice

Desistance from crime is a priority for criminal justice policy and practice yet the term carries varying definitions across research literature. Contemporary discourses promote a refocusing from desistance's representation as an individual's personal journey, to understanding desistance more akin to a social movement. Research has predominantly focused on the lived experience of those striving to achieve desistance, with practitioner perspectives remaining under researched. This study, conducted post COVID-19, aimed to explore and evaluate how probation officers operationalise desistance in practice. Outcomes evidence that whilst practitioners acknowledge the diverse conceptualisations of desistance, it remains a priority in practice, even where the focus is predominantly risk management. Key practice features emerging as essential to promoting desistance include identifying and cultivating a motivation to change, approaches to forming the supervisory relationship and how practitioner's respond when risks increase. A supporting organisational ethos is critical but challenged in the complex post COVID-19 context.

Stenhouse in Scotland and England: Context and culture in curriculum development

AbstractThis paper uses biographical, historical and comparative perspectives to examine some of the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, widely regarded as one of the leading curriculum theorists of the twentieth century. Although his best‐known work was carried out in England, he had strong Scottish connections and some of the influences on his output can be traced to his higher education in Scotland, his teaching experience in Glasgow and Fife, and his time as Principal Lecturer in Education at Jordanhill College of Education. Particular attention is given to Culture and Education (1967), written during Stenhouse's time in Scotland, and An Introduction to Curriculum Research and Development (1975), the product of his experience as Director of the Humanities Curriculum Project and subsequently as Director of the Centre for Applied Research in Education at the University of East Anglia. Stenhouse's personal intellectual journey is related to policy developments in Scotland and England and, in particular, to the different approaches to curriculum development in the two countries. His early death in 1982 meant that he did not live to see the assault on his creative, teacher‐centred approach to curriculum development mounted by the political right in the 1980s and 1990s, but his ideas were kept alive by members of the team he had built up. The paper ends by summarising the reasons for Stenhouse's continuing importance. It is noted, however, that the many tributes to Stenhouse's achievements in England have not been matched by similar recognition in Scotland. Arguably, his ideas could have enabled Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence reform programme, launched in 2004, to have avoided some of the problems it encountered in the transition from conception to implementation.

Becoming a mother in neoliberal academia: Subjectivation and self‐identity among early career researchers

AbstractThis paper investigates how becoming a mother—and navigating such a complicated life transition—while pursuing an academic career impacts the way female researchers perceive themselves as acting subjects. By analyzing in‐depth virtual interviews with Italian female early career researchers, this work explores the relationship between fertility decisions, motherhood hardships, self‐identity, and career‐related experiences in the interviewees' biographical trajectories. Despite their consideration of childbearing as a mental and practical obstacle to scientific production, many of the interviewees ascribe positive career outcomes to the arrival of their first child. The reflexivity set in motion by the interview process allows us to observe the collected interviews as double‐layered narratives. The postponement of fertility choices and the presence of work‐family conflict tend to be described as ordinary facets of a common career pattern, intrinsic to the female academic working experience. Meanwhile, the positive impacts of motherhood on self‐identity and work‐related skills are recounted on a more individual level, framed as a sort of paradox, a personal journey of self‐discovery or—to some extent ‐ a heroic performance.

Subverting the Difference: Reading Roja Singh's Spotted Goddess as a Dalit Testimonio

Accurately capturing the lived experiences of the oppressed within broader historical and social settings is the cornerstone of testimonio, a genre serving to bear witness to oppression and catalyse social change. The central premise of Roja Singh’s insightful testimonio Spotted Goddesses: Dalit Women's AgencyNarratives on Caste and Gender Violence asserts the inherent connection between misogyny, sexual domination, and the caste system. While engaging contemplatively with Singh's personal journey, the lived experiences reveal that caste-based violence is systemic and that Dalit women embody the "difference" that makes them distinct and untouchable. The paper explores how the testimonial narratives illustrate the way caste undermines the dignity of the oppressed, and it highlights the unwavering determination and tenacity of Dalit women who seek justice against caste hierarchy. It concludes by demonstrating how, despite all the obstacles, Dalit women form alliances with organisations and government authorities to elevate their standard of living and, ultimately, build a democratic and equitable society for the future generations of Dalit children. 

Out to Pasture: Transitioning From Servant-Leadership to Post-Leadership Roles in Academia

Faculty in leadership or administrative roles may continue their career advancement until retirement. In some cases, faculty may choose or have chosen for them, to not continue in a leadership role in the academy. An extensive search of the literature on post-leadership roles using the search term post-leadership in Web of Science, Communication Abstracts, PsycArticles (ProQuest), ProQuest Research Library, and Education Full-text (EBSCO) databases failed to uncover research specifically related to post-leadership faculty roles in higher education. According to Jasinki (2020) while much scholarship has focused on leadership development in academia, little scholarship has focused on the phenomena of “stepping down.” Utilizing autoethnographic method (see Ellis et al., 2011), the author seeks to understand the connection between the personal journey and the effects of our cultural expectations of post-leadership in academia on self-identity. This current project aims to begin the conversation by sharing a personal narrative about the process of reflection related to post-leadership roles and offering a critical self-analysis within the context of servant leadership.

Personal journeys to and in human genetics and dysmorphology.

Genetics has become a critical component of medicine over the past five to six decades. Alongside genetics, a relatively new discipline, dysmorphology, has also begun to play an important role in providing critically important diagnoses to individuals and families. Both have become indispensable to unraveling rare diseases. Almost every medical specialty relies on individuals experienced in these specialties to provide diagnoses for patients who present themselves to other doctors. Additionally, both specialties have become reliant on molecular geneticists to identify genes associated with human disorders. Many of the medical geneticists, dysmorphologists, and molecular geneticists traveled a circuitous route before arriving at the position they occupied. The purpose of collecting the memoirs contained in this article was to convey to the reader that many of the individuals who contributed to the advancement of genetics and dysmorphology since the late 1960s/early 1970s traveled along a journey based on many chances taken, replying to the necessities they faced along the way before finding full enjoyment in the practice of medical and human genetics or dysmorphology. Additionally, and of equal importance, all exhibited an ability to evolve with their field of expertise as human genetics became human genomics with the development of novel technologies.

The risk of road traffic crashes for occupational drivers: A responsibility study with comparison to the general population.

Road accidents are the leading type of work-related fatalities, but the impact of work-related travel on overall traffic safety has been scarcely studied. The main objective of the present study was to assess drivers' relative road accident risk between work-related and personal journeys. A responsible/non-responsible case-control study was performed on a sample of 7,051 road accidents in France from the VOIESUR project. Logistic regression determined odds-ratios according to work-related versus personal travel, and identified risk factors for responsibility, specific to each of the two sub-groups. Drivers traveling on duty or commuting home were significantly less often responsible for accidents than drivers on personal journeys: OR = 0.75 [0.63; 0.89] and 0.65 [0.53; 0.80] respectively. Responsibility was significantly more frequent in commuting to versus from work: OR = 1.38 [1.06; 1.78]. Among on-duty drivers, professional passenger-transport drivers had the lowest risk of responsibility (OR = 0.25 [0.11; 0.58]), while those on temporary or work/study contracts and professional light goods vehicle drivers had the highest risk (OR = 11.64 [2.15; 62.94] and OR = 29.83 [5.19; 171.38] respectively). When driving under the influence of alcohol, risk of responsibility was higher in commuting home than in personal journeys. On-duty drivers showed lower risk of responsibility for an accident than other drivers. However, on-duty drivers on temporary or work/study contracts, who are usually not subject to specific regulations, showed higher risk, and should be the subject of particular attention regarding occupational risk prevention.