Meaning-making Processes Research Articles

Becoming a physical education teacher: Preservice teachers’ meaning-making process in the transition between a subject didactics course and the practicum

Research has shown that a critical teaching perspective is at risk if preservice teachers perceive a gap between university- and field-based courses. This study explores how preservice physical education (PE) teachers make meaning out of their participation in a subject didactics course and the practicum. Interviews conducted across 1 year revealed that preservice teachers experienced PE teaching as practical skills and the advocacy of movement and health during the university-based course but not during the practicum. In both contexts, teaching as didactic and embodied knowledge was perceived as being meaningful. The study suggests that emotional learning occasions, role models, and clear purposes are supportive for a critical teaching perspective.

“A Lot Can Go Through Your Mind in a Split-Second”: Survivor Stories of Falling from Height

This paper provides insight into the lived experience of individuals who have survived falls from height. Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to analyze qualitative questionnaire and interview data from four participants and from the author, who is a fellow fall survivor. Overarching themes were “Making sense of the fall”; “Chance and Agency”; “Impact” and “Recover and Reflect.” The analysis identified the importance for survivors of developing a coherent narrative to situate the fall within the life-story. Processes of meaning-making and the role of blame, guilt and fault in the construction of accident narratives were also examined. First-hand accounts of physical and psychological consequences for fall survivors provide medical and therapeutic professionals with an opportunity to improve their understanding of and care for fall survivors.

Visible body, invisible care: Family, gender politics, and the female caregiver in living donor liver transplantation in Taiwan

This study contributes to existing research on gender inequities in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) by employing a feminist and sociocultural theoretical perspective. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with 36 participants from 13 families, including 13 donors, 10 recipients, and 13 caregivers, at the Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, this study provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities of family dynamics and gender relations throughout the decision-making and meaning-making processes for LDLT in Taiwan. The interviews were transcribed verbatim, translated from Mandarin to English, and analysed using grounded theory and thematic analysis. The findings reveal that LDLT is a gendered experience embodied through four aspects: 1) the impact of family dynamics and gender politics on decision-making, 2) societal and cultural perceptions of women's bodies and families, 3) the multiple roles and multifaceted care work of female caregivers, and 4) gender differences in the discourse on the meaning-making of LDLT. The study illuminates the complex interplay of family, gender, and care within the sociocultural landscape of Taiwan. It underscores the gendered and hierarchical division of care work within households and the vulnerability experienced by female caregivers and donors, as well as other disadvantaged family members. Furthermore, the study offers insights for healthcare professionals and policymakers to recognise the value of caregiving and the need for more support and resources for caregivers. Future research could adopt a multifaceted approach and inform interventions and policies aimed at reducing gender inequities in LDLT, moving beyond the narrow focus on numerical gender imbalance.

A grounded theory of how people process their cancer experiences through a mindfulness-based expressive arts group

Abstract Background: Given the distress associated with cancer experiences, there is a growing interest in mindfulness-based expressive arts interventions (MBAIs) for promoting patients' well-being. Our research objective was to develop a theoretical understanding of how patients with cancer experience, use, and draw meaning from an MBAI. Methods: We used a constructivist grounded theory research design and gathered narrative descriptions of participants' (N = 32) MBAI experiences through semistructured interviews and field notes. Participants brought the artwork they had created in the group, facilitating art elicitation. Data were analyzed with grounded theory methods. Results: Participants described how the dynamic interplay of mindfulness, the arts, group sharing, and bearing witness facilitated the processing and sharing of hidden thoughts, experiences, and emotions. The group facilitated several unique meaning-making processes, including re-envisioning personal identity within disruption and loss, creating a fitting container for the exploration of diverse emotions, revisiting difficult experiences within the sensitivity of art, and visualizing hope and healing. This process resulted in important learnings and benefits for living in the here and now: relational connections, facing cancer through artistic play, discovering intuition and personal resources, learning an emotional language and a new mindset to move forward, understanding what one needs to heal, and fostering gratitude and hope. Conclusions: MBAIs allowed for a multimodal form of meaning making which facilitated coping, adjustment, and living well with cancer. These findings will enable practitioners to design and implement more effective health services and inform future research about this therapeutically promising approach to psychosocial oncology care.

Beyond situational meaning: From Dewey’s aesthetic experience to sensuous abstraction for deep learning

This paper seeks to introduce a meaning-making process called ‘sensuous abstraction’ as one approach to aesthetic experience in line with Dewey’s philosophy. Dewey highlights aesthetic experience as the best form of experience that integrates emotional and intellectual qualities to foster deep learning and insights. Building on contemporary research on sensation, affect, and human brain, this paper identifies two distinct modes of human understanding: the linguistic/conceptual system and the sensuous-imaginative system. The former, often associated with abstraction and intellectual thinking, is heavily emphasized in traditional schooling, but the latter, integral to human cognition, is sadly neglected and overlooked. While situational meaning offers a way to bridge the two systems, it often falls short of leading to aesthetic experience. In response, sensuous abstraction can promote a process of meaning making that becomes more general than sensation but never as general as linguistic categories while maintaining its sensory wholeness as aesthetic experience demands. Using a classical artwork as an example, this paper concludes sensuous abstraction can be adopted as one approach for educators to create learning experiences by integrating sensory experience and generalizations and abstractions that lead to aesthetic experience.

Breaking barriers: a psychobiography of Siya Kolisi from a sociocultural perspective

Siyamthanda (Siya) Kolisi OIG (1992-) is the first black captain of the South African rugby team (Springboks) in its 128 years of existence. The Springboks have long been associated with Afrikaner people and a history of racism. Siya had to navigate a tumultuous upbringing in an environment characterised by various issues such as socioeconomic inequalities, high unemployment among Black people, and lack of resources. Siya was purposively selected for this study as he has become one of the most influential individuals in South Africa. Publicly available biographical data was gathered, analysed, and interpreted using the Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (PVEST; Spencer, 2006). I used the theoretical lens to understand the role of social and cultural context, meaning-making processes in human development, and the transition between different worlds. The findings indicated a need to consider the role of context as a source of consonance or dissonance in human development. The study also sheds light on the importance of viewing marginalised individuals holistically to facilitate smooth boundary transitions. Furthermore, it underscores the importance of recognising that maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies exist on a continuum. The study contributes towards non-WEIRD psychobiographical studies and understanding culture’s role on human development.

Protecting the future ‘Us’: a rhetoric-performative multimodal analysis of the polarising far-right YouTube campaign videos in Finland

The far right is active on social media, including YouTube for its outreach, community-building and mainstreaming of radical content. This article compares campaign videos of two distinct Finnish far-right parties. It develops a rhetoric-performative and multimodal analysis of audiovisual material and unveils how the contemporary Finnish far right articulates and performs affectively ‘us’ through counterhegemonic articulation on YouTube with connection to nostalgia, national war myths and misogyny. The analysis widens from the visual to the audio-visual dimension which enables the exploration of the formation of diverse signifiers and affective interpretations. Political actors refer to nationalist ideas in a way that can create and mainstream far-right ideology building on shared myths and even spread violent thoughts. Our analysis highlights the importance of spatial and temporal signifiers in the far-right meaning-making process.

Transition from an adolescent to an adult eating disorder treatment centre: A qualitative investigation of the experience of inpatients with anorexia nervosa and their carers using interpretative phenomenological analysis.

To capture the subjective experience of eating disorder patients and their immediate family members in the transition between adolescent and adult treatment services and to explore how both groups make sense of this specific experience. Qualitative study in the form of in-depth interviews using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Participants were recruited from a university department of a large psychiatric hospital specialising in eating disorders between July 2021 and September 2022. A convenience sample of 18 participants was recruited, including 12 patients aged 19-30years (m=22.5, SD=3.8) and six of their respective caregivers. Four main themes were identified in relation to the participants' experience of transition to adult care: (1) the detailed description of the transition process, (2) the emotions associated with this experience, (3) the challenges encountered and (4) recommendations for improving the process. Two fundamental meaning-making processes emerged: the feeling of being "lost in transition" and the opportunity to "become an adult". The results highlighted the factors that characterise this experience for patients and their families, and the need for practical and psychological support during the transition process. This study provides a unique insight into the experience of patients and their immediate family members regarding the transition from adolescent to adult care. It reveals the multidimensional impact of the transition experience and highlights the need for increased support for family members. These findings may provide new insights into interventions that promote successful transition and encourage rethinking the organisation of this crucial stage of the care pathway.

Home Triad: A New Exploration of Home for People Living With Dementia Based on Lefebvre's Spatial Triad.

This article examines a novel theoretical framework, which we term Home Triad, for research and practice involving people living with dementia (PLWD). Most of the existing home-related research on PLWD focuses on interior modifications, home care interventions and models, place attachment, and/or institutional homelike environments. However, limited studies have examined the meaning of home from PLWD's perspective, and even fewer have simultaneously considered the individual experience of PLWD, the external power (e.g., the role of design), and their interaction dynamics in the meaning-making process. We developed home triad based on Lefebvre's spatial triad. Inspired by Chaudhury's home story structure, we conducted a life story analysis of a person living with dementia, "Kai," under four contexts-childhood home, neighborhood and city, daily routine, and attachment-within home triad. Home triad abstracts "home" with a dialectically interconnected relationship of the conceived, perceived, and lived home. Through PLWD's everyday life, the essence of home is primarily shaped by the interaction between their lived and perceived homes. However, a person's experiences of and participation in home living activities are also planned and/or regulated by different groups of people (caregivers, designers, and policymakers), who play important roles in the conceived home. Critically examining how PLWD's lived and perceived home is constrained or enabled through the conceived home deserves greater future research efforts. A systematic examination of the essence of home for PLWD using home triad can facilitate subsequent research and practice that promote PLWD's health, well-being, and quality of life.

Decolonising knowledge production: the experience of the Syrian Female Journalists Network (SFJN)

ABSTRACT This article delves into the Syrian Female Journalists Network’s (SFJN) approach to decolonise knowledge production, focusing on a multi-faceted deconstructive framework. Through an examination of our analytic and deconstructive process of media language and discourse, our methodology centres on identifying and challenging prevailing patriarchal and colonial power dynamics and binaries within language, particularly in the Syrian media context. Furthermore, our article addresses the transformative role of language in collectively contesting colonial structures through translation and meaning-making processes. Additionally, the article underscores the utilisation of self-identification as a feminist decolonial strategy, emphasising its role in dismantling fixed identity categories and amplifying marginalised voices. Furthermore, it highlights the significance of accountability towards targeted communities by fostering inclusivity, securing access to knowledge, and validating diverse perspectives. Ultimately, this article offers an insight into SFJN’s nuanced approach of decolonising knowledge.

Religious meaning-making among Muslim parents bereaved by homicide: Struggling to accept ‘God's will’ and yearning for ‘Qayama’ day

ObjectiveParental bereavement by homicide is considered an extremely difficult grief experience; hence it may significantly undermine one's meaning structures. Although bereaved parents' meaning-making process has been extensively researched, less is known about meaning reconstruction among Muslim parents bereaved by homicide – an understudied population. The study's goal was to gain an in-depth understanding of bereaved Muslim parents' meaning-making process in light of their religious background using Park's religious meaning-making model. MethodsEmploying a qualitative approach, in-depth interviews were held with 12 Muslim parents bereaved by homicide. The data were analyzed using both categorical-content and categorical-form analyses. ResultsThe findings indicated that Muslim parents' meaning-making process involves silencing, which is grounded in their religious background. This process is characterized by a difficulty to accept this loss as God's will, as expected from them by religion, given that it was caused by an intentional act of human violence. Consequently, their global belief meanings are undermined. They, then, yearn for “Qayama” day–the day of judgment. ConclusionsThe findings are discussed in light of Park's religious meaning-making model, highlighting that bereaved Muslim parents' coping process includes an additional challenge related to their religious background. This underscores the need for culturally-sensitive inquiry and spiritually-informed therapy.

Transition and Trans*lation beyond Binary History in Mid-century Upper Egypt; or, Portraits of Transfemininity in Asyut

Abstract: In 1958, the popular Egyptian magazine Ākhir Sā`ah ran a story about four people designated “men donning dresses and living as women” in the Upper Egyptian town of Asyut. Ākhir Sā`ah presented brief profiles explaining these people’s gender expression alongside staged photographs and opinions from an Egyptian psychiatrist, the local minister of education, a lawyer, and a social scientist. This article departs from that one. By annotating my trans*lation of the Arabic text, I interrupt its binary logics. Trans*lation is an idiomatic meaning-making process that is in intimate dialogue with the process of transition itself. In the source text, Egyptians living in tension with the gender binary were made legible through the relay of pseudoscientific evidence and details about their early childhood experiences, or in one instance, through a story about a deal between the subject and a spirit, a jinn. My analysis denaturalizes the publication’s ethnographic documentation and teleological narration of these people’s lives. Working through the Arabic text and departing from the Orientalist fixation with philology, I consider the possibilities of rendering gender alterity across languages and employ trans*lation as a method to engage narratological and historiographical processes. In my treatment of these biographies, I clarify how “nonbinary” challenges the emplotment of gender transition and the work of translation as linear processes, and I motion towards its potential to evacuate the overlapping transitions to modernity and the emergence of the postcolonial nation-state, which the aforementioned transfeminine individuals also lived, from similarly teleological narrations and binary logics. Ultimately, I situate these four subjects beyond the interlocking binaries of man/woman, human/spirit, cis/trans, modern/traditional, and East/West. In so doing, I collapse these structures and offer alternative portraits of transfemininity in Asyut.

Sensitive Child, Disturbed Kid: Stigma, Medicalization, and the Interpretive Work of Israeli Mothers of Children with ADHD.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a rapidly globalizing medical category, and there is a need to attend to the on the-ground processes through which laypeople deploy the ADHD label in different local contexts. Based on in-depth interviews with Israeli mothers of children with ADHD, this article explores how mothers, as lay actors in the social field of diagnosis, interpreted the origins and meanings of their child's 'troubles'. The temporal perspective on mothers' meaning-making processes revealed a progression of four common phases through which mothers revisited their understanding of ADHD, and recast their own responsibilities and moral roles. We found that mothers' self-understanding was crucially impacted by the invisibility of the disability and the fact that diagnosis did not fully relieve them from blame for their children's stigmatizing behavior. While not all mothers accepted the validity of the diagnosis, participating in the medicalization of their child's condition allowed them to reach similar pragmatic and narrative goals. We discuss the cultural and institutional features of the Israeli ADHD landscape that shape mothers' narratives of their children, and their relations with expertise. We point to a culturally unique framing of children with ADHD in Israel as those characterized by emotional vulnerability and risk of social exclusion.

“We always remember the Island”: Puerto Rican climate migrants’ emotional meanings of home

To contribute to the development of a sociology of home, in this article, we integrate migration, emotion, and place and space theories to study how the notion of home interacts with the experience of displacement. Through 54 in-depth semi-structured interviews with Puerto Rican climate migrants who fled Puerto Rico for the continental US after Hurricane Maria struck the archipelago in 2017, we asked this group about their experiences of the disaster and relocation. These interviews collected stories filled with place-making practices, definitions of identity, and descriptions of emotion work. The narrative analysis of these stories allowed us to gain knowledge about our participants’ meaning-making processes and emotions around simultaneously losing their sense of home and striving to (re)constitute it in a new space. The stories also showed the impact of the conditions of displacement on a population that is not commonly associated with forced migration but that is increasingly threatened by the impact of climate change. Our findings showed that the intangible emotional losses of displacement are as important for the adaptation process of climate migrants as material losses can be.

Re-Thinking Visitor Experience with Ancient Manuscripts via the Holographic Showcase: The Case of the Codex4D Project and Its First Public Results from a Mixed-Method Evaluation In Situ

Ancient manuscripts are precious and fragile objects, preserved in libraries, museums, and archives. Some of them are masterpieces, made with several materials and insights, but generally they are not accessible to wide communities of users. The purpose of this study is to present the preliminary results of the Codex4D project: a holographic showcase, conceived for museums, presenting the first 4D model of an ancient manuscript to the public at the Science Festival in Genoa in 2022. The manuscript, preserved in the Angelica Library in Rome, has been represented in a multidimensional digital model, documenting both its visible and invisible aspects, on the surface and in the stratigraphic layers. We analysed the visitor experience: informal learning, the meaning-making process, interactions between visitors, and gesture-based interaction with the showcase. The methodology used for evaluation is based on four different qualitative methods (grounded theory, narrative inquiry, case study, and digital ethnography). We collected notes from observation, narratives from interviews, and answers from structured interviews. The main findings are patterns of the visitors’ experiences with a digital interactive 4D model of an ancient manuscript, supported by storytelling, and a list of design issues and possible improvements for the next version of the Codex4D holographic showcase.

The complexity of situated text design: a negotiation between standardization and spoken language in a manufacturing company

In information design textbooks, text design is mostly understood as typography and layout. The meaning-making process of language, involving social interaction that affects language, is rarely acknowledged. Instead, texts are supposed to be “clearly” written. In this research article, we argue that the understanding of text design could benefit from also addressing text production and use situated amid social activity. This article presents a study on a text design process partly based on spoken language and owned by assembly operators in a workplace. Capturing the spoken dialogue and transforming it into instructive texts resembling transcripts are essential steps in securing the best practices for the smallest tasks in manual assembly, the minima of working, which is crucial for manufacturing. Our aim within the information design field is 2-fold: To underline the meaning-making process in language as a social phenomenon and to show that the situated design perspective, i.e., an outlook that highlights the uniqueness of the setting, can be important for the production and use of certain texts, such as instructions, and for affecting language. We asked ourselves: What are the consequences for the information design field when meaning-making in a language is understood as being socially situated in an activity? We have studied a design process and used observations, interviews, and text analysis to gather data. The result showed that the workers' ownership of text documents is crucial for the texts' use, yet the texts used do not meet the standard of information design textbooks. Moreover, the design of the text involves a continuous and non-linear collective negotiation that balances standardization in language and work procedures with the incorporation of operators' linguistic improvements. We unfold a case of text design where there is a closeness of designer and user roles, a non-linearity of the process, and an understanding of an information design product as becoming rather than having been finalized for use.

Drug Death-Bereaved Parents’ Perspectives on Family Interactions and Help Needs: A Qualitative Study

Family relations are essential for the bereaved in terms of healing and adjusting to life, especially after experiencing a traumatic death. Although 500 000 people die in drug-related deaths each year, few works focus on family interactions and the help needs of those bereaved by such losses. In this qualitative study, we interviewed 14 parents who had lost their child through a drug-related death. Through a reflexive thematic analysis, we generated three themes: (I) considerable needs in the family become our responsibility, capturing how parents try to mend the disrupted family system and provide adequate care for those who struggle after death, (II) conversations that are important for family connections are obstructed, encompassing how family members sometimes seem afraid of grief emotions and try to protect each other by not talking, and (III) as parents, we can strengthen family connections, encapsulating how parents create space to talk and listen to each other in the family and navigate relational challenges in maintaining relationships. The findings are discussed through the Dual Process Model of Coping with Bereavement as well as family resilience theory. Based on the results, we propose that professional family-oriented help efforts for drug death-bereaved families in two main domains should be considered. The first includes those related to the family’s need and ability to adapt roles and relationships to the new reality, and the second involves those connected to creating a space and environment for emotional sharing and joint meaning-making processes in the family.

Contrasting Approaches to Language, Meaning, and Knowledge in Advaita Vedanta and the Western Literary Traditions

The present research article undertakes a comprehensive examination of contrasting approaches to language and meaning, topics that have engendered contemplation and discourse across a range of disciplines including literature, philosophy, and linguistics. The article commences by delving into the foundational disparities between Indian and Western literary theories concerning the intricate relationship binding knowledge and meaning. While the Western tradition concentrates predominantly on interpreting textual meaning, treating literary works as subjects for analysis and critique, the Indian tradition perceives concepts and ideas within texts as indirect indicators of reality and self-realization. The ancient Indian school of thought, Advaita Vednata, presents a distinctive viewpoint on the dynamic interplay between language and meaning. The article further dissects the distinct attributes of the seemingly paradoxical and contradictory language prevalent in classical Indian texts. Through this exploration, it strives to uncover the methodology of constructing meaning as employed within the framework of Advaita Vednata. This analysis is juxtaposed against the approach to linguistic interpretation prevalent in the Western literary tradition—a tradition largely rooted in the empirical world. Advaita Vedanta places significance on direct experience or anubhava, prioritizing it over transmitted knowledge, and acknowledges that the true essence of the self transcends human comprehension. By navigating the quandary of defining literary language, elucidating the process of meaning-making in Western literary theory, delving into Advaita Vednata philosophy, and studying the role of language in representing the essence of the self, this research aspires to contribute meaningfully to the ongoing discourse in the areas of literary criticism and philosophical studies.

Reading the Identity of Dark Heritage Sites: A Peircean Semiotic Methodology

Shared symbolism and ideology at dark heritage sites construct the narrative of a collective national destiny. Visitors’ experiences with such sites necessarily involve decoding signs and symbols. The commonality in interpretative practices is rooted in “collateral knowledge” and forms the identity of place. Yet, cultural materiality, collective identities, and semiotics have been overlooked by dark tourism academia. In broader tourism studies, semiotic attempts lack methodological homogeneity and congruence and efforts to transpose Charles Peirce’s semiotic theory into practical experiential methodologies are scarce. This study introduces a practical, systematic, and replicable semiotic methodology for reading the identity of dark heritage sites. This methodology revolves around three interconnected Peircean concepts: the sign, the collateral knowledge, and the sign’s relationship to its dynamical object. It is proposed that reading the indexical, iconical, and symbolical functions of signs through the filter of collateral knowledge can ensure a systematic meaning-making process and reveal subtle influences.

The birth of a story: Childbirth experiences, meaning-making, and postpartum adjustment.

The present study investigated how meaning-making around a birth experience predicts relationship quality and parenting stress across the transition to first-time parenthood, a time that many new parents find stressful and challenging. Childbirth experiences may set the stage for these challenges, and how new parents make meaning of childbirth could play a role in their subsequent postpartum adjustment. Meaning-making processes (sense making, benefit finding, and changes in identity) were coded from birth narratives collected from 77 mixed-sex biological parent dyads (n = 154 individuals) shortly after the birth of their first child. Parents reported on their relationship quality during pregnancy and at 6 months postpartum, and on their parenting stress postpartum. Mothers' greater sense making and benefit finding buffered longitudinal declines in their own relationship quality, and maternal sense making also buffered declines for fathers. Fathers' greater sense making and benefit finding predicted lower levels of their own parenting stress, whereas mothers' greater sense making and benefit finding were linked with higher paternal parenting stress. Finally, fathers' discussion of changes in identity predicted lower levels of parenting stress in mothers. These results suggest the importance of meaning-making following childbirth for couples adjusting to parenthood and highlight the value of studying meaning-making processes dyadically. Clinicians may be able to support new parents by facilitating their coconstruction of meaning during their shared birth experience and transition to parenthood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).