Shared Narratives Research Articles

“We Need to Feel Safe”: Experiences of Gifted LGBTQ+ Students and Implications for School Counselors

Individuals who identify as gifted or LGBTQ + often have qualitatively different academic, social, and emotional experiences throughout their adolescent development. However, scant research exists exploring the development of individuals who hold these intersecting identities. Using an anonymous retrospective qualitative survey, 75 participants who identify as both gifted and LGBTQ + shared narratives about their development as gifted LGBTQ + students. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, the data revealed three superordinate themes that articulated the overall description of the gifted LGBTQ + participants’ development. Implications of the results for school counselors are provided.

Where were you during the Queen's visit? Using photographs to facilitate collective storytelling, resident identity and positive care relationships in aged care.

This paper explores the potential of photographs as a tool to facilitate storytelling, reminiscence and social connections for older residents living in residential aged care and caregiving staff. Fourteen residents and three staff attended two sessions in which residents brought and shared personal photographs. Narrative enquiry was used to elicit individual and collective stories. Narrative analysis of residents' selected photographs overwhelmingly showed a younger self (n=6), highlighting relationships (n=6) and achievements (n=6). Sharing images with other residents and staff enhanced new connections and personal communications. This research highlights the communicative value of photographs in aged care. Residents were able to reflect upon shared personal and global events-from the role of pets in their lives to public events such as the Queen's visit to Australia-and through discussion build a collective shared narrative. This enabled new connections and sharing of stories between staff and residents.

Convergence of Public Participation, Participatory Design and NLP to Co-Develop Circular Economy

The concept of a circular economy is at a crossroads. To date, it has been largely driven by top-down national or trans-national legislation such as EU Circular Economy Package or Chinese Circular Economy Promotion. Bottom-up or grassroots engagement has been minimal and innovation has been largely restricted to use of 3R or 4R frameworks to reduce, reuse, recycle materials and products or recover waste as energy. Greater implementation of a circular economy needs a paradigm shift in public attitudes coupled with greater innovation that moves from 3R to 9R framework. Building on the insights gained from the successful transition of two Scandinavian cities of Växjö and Sønderborg to becoming fossil fuel-free economies, the article explores use of natural language processing tools to create shared narratives and stories from large format public engagement that expresses common interests, values and priorities that in turn can contribute to a participatory design of a circular economy. The article uses published data from Christchurch ‘Share an Idea’ as a case study.

Is Alt-Europe possible? Populist radical right counternarratives of European integration

ABSTRACT After the 2016 Brexit referendum, European populist radical right (PRR) parties shifted towards what I call an alt-European policy programme. Alt-Europe is a conservative, xenophobic intergovernmental vision of a European ‘community of sovereign states’, ‘strong nations’ or ‘fatherlands’, that abhors the EU’s ‘centralised’ United States of Europe. Whereas most work on the PRR examines its national impact and plots party programmes on a spectrum from soft to hard Euroscepticism, this article instead contributes to cutting edge transnational research on PRR narratives. I use qualitative content analysis to identify narratives that support or undermine alt-Europe, and tropes that refer to them, in the thirteen parliamentary, presidential and European election manifestoes since 2012 of four major PRR parties, AfD (Germany), PiS (Poland), Lega (Italy) and FN (France). Contesting the hard-soft dichotomy in Euroscepticism studies, the article identifies enduring alt-European master narratives across Europe. These stories of geopolitics, democracy, money and especially ethnic understandings of Christian civilisational identity offer important shared narrative resources for programmes of both reforming and replacing the EU. Common narratives also support the PRR unity needed to implement an alt-European programme. However, PRR parties’ extreme nationalism and different interpretations of these narratives strongly impede this cooperation.

Strange Frame Fellows: The Evolution of Discursive Framing in the Opt-Out Testing Movement

Background/context In recent years, opposition to accountability policies and associated testing has manifested in widespread boycotts of annual tests—mobilized as the “opt-out movement.” A central challenge facing any movement is the need to recruit and mobilize participants. Key to this process is framing—a discursive tactic in which activists present social issues as problems that require collective action to solve. Such framing often relies on compatible political and ideological commitments among activists and potential recruits. Yet the opt-out movement has successfully mobilized widespread boycotts in diverse communities. How have participants in the movement framed issues relating to testing and accountability? Purpose/objective/research question/focus of study I explore the discursive tactics of participants in the opt-out movement by analyzing how they frame issues related to testing and accountability over time. I ask two research questions: (1) What frames did participants in opt-out-aligned social media groups use to convince others that standardized accountability tests are a problem and build support for the movement? (2) To what extent and how did the deployment of frames change over time? Research design I conducted a mixed-methods study combining qualitative content analysis to identify frames and computational analysis to describe their co-deployment over time. Data collection and analysis I compiled a text corpus of posts to opt-out-aligned social media pages from 2010–2014. I analyzed posts using open coding to identify frames used by participants in online communities. Frames were categorized by their orientation—the general way in which they framed the problem of testing and accountability. I then analyzed the co-deployment of frames using network analysis and hierarchical clustering. Conclusions/recommendations The longitudinal analysis of frames reveals key differences in the frames used by participants. While more politically oriented frames—those characterizing testing as a social issue affecting the public schools at large—were common in early stages of the movement, less overtly political frames—those characterizing testing as an individual issue affecting children and local schools or a technical issue—became more prominent over time. Over time, socially oriented frames became decoupled from other frames, showing independent patterns of deployment. This suggests that the movement may have benefited from de-emphasizing politically oriented frames, but that it lacked an overarching shared narrative, which has the potential to limit how it might affect accountability policies and testing.

Going Against the Current of Hegemonic “White-IST” Discourse: A Doctoral Program Journey from Critical Student + Guide Perspectives

This article presents a critique of systemic library and information science (LIS) education and its hegemonic “White-IST” (White + elitist) discourse prevalent across the conceptualization and implementation of doctoral programs in the United States. The text illuminates the structural aspects of the doctoral experience embedded in (yet beyond) a shared narrative, to present implications for doctoral education for LIS students of color. The article extends an autoethnographic approach to personal narrative and storytelling from the critical perspectives of a student + guide. It identifies challenges to overcome barriers in achieving milestones in the LIS doctoral journey while critiquing programmatic issues in the process.

Doing their damnedest to seek change: How group identity helps people with dementia confront public stigma and maintain purpose.

Dominant messages about the capabilities of those with dementia post-diagnosis are often dehumanising and focused on mental declines. Additionally, carers for those with dementia are more likely to be involved in consultations and enquiries about the condition. This study helps to challenge stigmatising cultural messages by reporting upon the experiences of 13 adults diagnosed with early-stage dementia and how their involvement with empowerment groups in Northern Ireland has led to their involvement in consultations with policy makers and educational opportunities with the wider public. The study finds that this not only helps in challenging stereotypical ideas about dementia, as well as informing others, but also gives a sense of purpose to adults in their post-diagnosis lives. It is further noted that group identity helps give confidence and amplifies the voice of those who take part, allowing members to adopt a shared narrative and learn from each other.

Easy in, tough out: the dam of health-care racism

Until the 1980s, the practice of turning away patients on the basis of their ability to pay, without evaluating or treating them, was legal and frequent in US hospitals. A 1986 study at Cook County Hospital, a public hospital in Chicago, noted that 89% of patients transferred from private hospitals to their facility were Black and Hispanic, and 87% of them were transferred because they did not have adequate insurance. Mortality was disproportionately high among those transferred, likely due to delays in stabilisation and definitive care. This practice was ultimately disrupted—although it continues today—not by institutions recognising its unethical nature and voluntarily halting it, but by the passage of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, which requires hospitals to stabilise and treat patients before transfer, irrespective of insurance status. It took an act of Congress to change this fundamentally racist, inequitable practice. Introducing The PenumbraThere are few topics that cause as much discomfort as inequities, particularly those related to race, gender, and other social identifiers. As a frequent lecturer, I've found the issue of how inequities shape one's experience in the health-care system, whether as a patient or in the workforce, often elicits avoidance, dismissiveness, defensiveness, or even anger. Health-care curricula typically neglect discussion of structural racism or sexism, and relegate race, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and disability to the vague and misplaced category of risk factors. Full-Text PDF Parenting in the time of COVID-19Before COVID-19, you could put any two physician parents together and we'd have a shared narrative of all our “fails” as we juggled hospital work with child rearing: missed teacher conferences, late sign-ups for activities, being the only one who didn't attend the field trip. These were all crises in the Before Times. Our lives changed abruptly with COVID-19. The ways we educated, enriched, and entertained our kids were obliterated overnight. For many parents, child care evaporated, as did the endless march of activities that helped to keep our kids happy. Full-Text PDF

Parenting in the time of COVID-19

Before COVID-19, you could put any two physician parents together and we'd have a shared narrative of all our “fails” as we juggled hospital work with child rearing: missed teacher conferences, late sign-ups for activities, being the only one who didn't attend the field trip. These were all crises in the Before Times. Our lives changed abruptly with COVID-19. The ways we educated, enriched, and entertained our kids were obliterated overnight. For many parents, child care evaporated, as did the endless march of activities that helped to keep our kids happy.

Comer em tempos de Covid-19: a experiência de um morador em uma comunidade carente

Este trabalho trata de uma análise narrativa sobre o comer em uma comunidade carente, território remanescente quilombola e as relações compreensivo-hermenêuticas que se estabeleceram naquele espaço simultaneamente ao advento da pandemia por Covid-19. Foram analisadas narrativas de um membro do Quilombo do Orobu, localizado na cidade de Salvador, Bahia, Brasil, obtidas de modo virtual. Utilizou-se a metodologia interpretativa com contribuições dos escritos de Gadamer, que remeteu aos significados histórico-sociais para interpretação do comer, da fome, do mundo do trabalho, do pertencimento e do distanciamento físico como medida de prevenção ao novo coronavírus em uma comunidade culturalmente aglomerada. A principal contribuição da interpretação dessa experiência narrativa surge da percepção de moradores da comunidade quanto a ausência de escuta ativa por parte do poder público, pertencimento alimentar ancestral e a compreensão aparentemente antagônica de isolamento sociointerativo dos moradores para enfrentar o Covid-19. Para um momento pós-pandêmico, veio à tona a interpretação da necessidade de discussões sobre a renda mínima infantil relacionada à alimentação escolar para crianças de baixa renda como medida de proteção à Segurança Alimentar e Nutricional na comunidade.

Academically Achieving Hmong American Students in Higher Education

As the largest Asian-American ethnicity at one large public Institution of Higher Education in California, undergraduate Hmong students as a whole are falling behind other sub-groups in graduation rates. Fortunately, a handful of Hmong students do find their way through the challenges of their collegiate experiences to attain academic success. This study identified and connected with four high achieving undergraduate female Hmong American students at the IHE to explore the factors for a successful academic experience counter-narrative. This qualitative asset-based in-depth, semi-structured virtual interview approach allowed discovery into unique and shared narratives regarding their academic achievements. Verbatim transcript analyses in relation to the current literature on Hmong American college students and the frameworks of the Model Minority Myth, Critical Race Theory, and Microaggressions, illuminated important themes as considerations to cultivate increased undergraduate Hmong American student academic achievement. These included aspects of recognizing the mismatch of traditional Hmong cultural norms and the individualistic values of the U.S. IHE, supporting student self-advocacy, and increasing awareness of the Hmong ethnicity as distinct from other Asian groups to dismantle the harmful consequences of the Model Minority Myth on Hmong student success.

Left Behind in the Hungarian Rustbelt: The Cultural Political Economy of Working-Class Neo-Nationalism

Nationalism is back with a renewed force. Hungary is a virulent example of the new nationalist ascendancy. As the country was a former liberal star pupil, Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn has been puzzling researchers for years. This study goes beyond the entrenched polarisations in the literature by highlighting the dynamic interplay between culture, structure and identity. It proposes to conceptualise Hungary’s neo-nationalist turn as a Polanyian countermovement against commodification, globalisation and deindustrialisation. The article presents the results of a thematic analysis of 82 interviews with workers in four towns in Hungary’s rustbelt and highlights how the multiscalar lived experience of commodifying reforms violated an implicit social contract and changed workers’ narrative identities. In the absence of a class-based shared narrative and lacking a viable political tool to control their fate, working-class neo-nationalism emerged as a new narrative identity to express workers’ anger and outrage.

A Collaborative Problem-Solving Approach to Improving District Attendance Policy

Collaborative problem-solving research approaches have the potential to support improvement in educational policy and practice beyond instruction, by facilitating the development of a shared understanding of complex problems and creating social structures where district, community, and research partners can work together to solve them. This study investigates how findings from a developmental evaluation of a district attendance initiative were incorporated into the initiation process of a networked improvement community to create a shared narrative about how members conceptualized the problem of absenteeism and how they should adapt their levers to better align to that problem. The developmental learning process created an infrastructure within which district leaders and community partners could develop a partnership culture that facilitated change in policy. This study suggests the need to revisit the assumptions that have driven non-instructional improvement efforts and highlights the potential of collaborative problem-solving to strengthen the implementation of district reforms.

Exploring a Social Identity Theory of Shared Narrative: Insights from Resident Stories of Police Contact in Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio

Narrative identity theorists have long held that individuals construct identities as a coherent tale of their past, present, and future selves. These life stories are structured along predictable scripts borrowed from cultural master narratives. Heretofore, legitimacy theorists have relied on social identity theory to explain legitimation processes. I propose integrating elements of narrative identity theory with social identity for a more complete legitimation theory. I analyze 92 in-depth interviews with individuals who encountered the police departments of Newark, New Jersey, and Cleveland, Ohio. Respondents’ narratives followed common narrative scripts, suggesting a shared master narrative guiding interpretations of police encounters. A significant proportion of the sample interpreted their views of the police from a group-based lens, while an equally significant proportion used alternative narratives. An integration of social identity, narrative identity, and current legitimacy theory holds promise for a more comprehensive model of legitimation and a more complete theory of self.

Shared narratives

Shared narratives

Kosovo: A Silent European Consensus

The present tensions in Belgrade–Pristina relations highlight the relevance of a consensus regarding the question of Kosovo. This article argues that the cyclical nature of Kosovo’s history has been muted by the thesis ‘Kosovo is a unique case’ which through unilateral decisions produced various legal schizophrenias. These legal schizophrenias embodied in a power triangle—Ahtisaari Plan–European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX)–Kosovo’s Constitution. Despite gaps and inherited chaos, the indisputable achievements of the EU’s efforts in normalizing relations between Belgrade and Pristina show that the EU not only can facilitate peace but also possesses the capacity to achieve a consensus. Already there is a ‘silent’ consensus among actors on the status of Kosovo—the European protectorate. The article also discusses institutional design based on the consensus, which aims to promote shared narratives.

Narratives that Matter: #MeToo and Performative Narrative Identity Construction

The study of narrative identity has provided a strong empirical basis for management and organization studies, but we still lack understanding of how narratives might matter and make a real difference in people’s lives. We argue that the crux of the issue is performativity, which remains a poorly understood aspect of narratives and storytelling. In this paper we present and analyze a unique case inspired by the #MeToo movement and a collective mobilizing of people’s narrative accounts. Drawing on both Paul Ricoeur and performativity theory we show how narratives matter, and how multiple others, when they form a shared narrative, affect our decision to act or to remain passive in a situation – to speak or to be silent. Performative narratives are powerful in their emancipatory effect on individual and collective identities. Our findings show that the narratives have strong performative power, and the narrative identity is constructed and reconstructed in the process.

Cultural Competence of Professionals Working With Unaccompanied Minors: Addressing Empathy by a Shared Narrative.

BackgroundThe number of migrant youth traveling without parents continues to rise in Europe and North America. Some of t hem leave their home countries on their own and find themselves in a new country, separated from their family and cut off from their cultural roots. Besides those who leave to study, work, and pursue a better life, others are escaping war-torn countries. They need adequate social, educational, and therapeutic spaces, where they can feel entitled to speak. Social workers often ask about how they can understand these young people better so that they can provide them with better care (cope with their trauma and suspicion, deal with the cultural distance between the adolescents and their social workers, etc).AimAt Cochin Hospital in Paris, we led a participative action-research program to transmit cultural competence to social workers who provide care for these youth. The aim was to develop an approach to help these young migrants to share their representations about themselves and to train these social workers to encourage this sharing in a culturally sensitive manner.MethodsThis study used a qualitative method that mixed narrative and transcultural approaches. Two researchers met each youth and social worker with an interpreter-cultural mediator three times (once a month) to assess changes in their relationships during the study. The youth were asked to bring three items of their choice, representing their past, present, and future. They could use their imagination and creativity. We also used the circle test described by Cottle for this purpose. We used a phenomenological approach to analyze the interviews.Results and DiscussionThis study included 29 young people from 13 different countries and 29 social workers. A transcultural approach appears to be a useful framework for reactivating their identity construction process. It promotes the emergence of cultural representations and takes their experiences before, during, and after migration into account. We assisted them in developing their ability to produce a thorough narrative of their bicultural adolescences and simultaneously helped their social workers to develop their cultural competence.ConclusionTogether, a transcultural approach and methods stimulating the production of narrative are relevant ways to help children to describe their representations of themselves, especially those who have learned to protect themselves by remaining silent. This protocol could be useful for both preventive action and therapy for psychotrauma.

What about the men? Perinatal experiences of men of color whose partners were at risk for preterm birth, a qualitative study

BackgroundPreterm birth in the United States is associated with maternal clinical factors such as diabetes, hypertension and social factors including race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. In California, 8.7% of all live births are preterm, with African American and Black families experiencing the greatest burden. The impact of paternal factors on birth outcomes has been studied, but little is known about the experience of men of color (MOC). The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of MOC who are partners to women at medical and social risk for preterm birth.MethodsThis study used a qualitative research design and focus group methods. The research was embedded within an existing study exploring experiences of women of color at risk for preterm birth conducted by the California Preterm Birth Initiative.ResultsTwelve MOC participated in the study and among them had 9 preterm children. Four themes emerged from thematic analysis of men’s experiences: (1) “Being the Rock”: Providing comfort and security; (2) “It’s a blessing all the way around”: Keeping faith during uncertainty; (3) “Tell me EVERYTHING”: Unmet needs during pregnancy and delivery; (4) “Like a guinea pig”: Frustration with the healthcare system. Participants identified many barriers to having a healthy pregnancy and birth including inadequate support for decision making, differential treatment, and discrimination.ConclusionsThis study shows novel and shared narratives regarding MOC experiences during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum periods. Healthcare providers have an essential role to acknowledge MOC, their experience of discrimination and mistrust, and to assess needs for support that can improve birth outcomes. As MOC and their families are at especially high social and medical risk for preterm birth, their voice and experience should be central in all future research on this topic.

Gambling Addiction Norway – experiences among members of a Norwegian self-help group for problem gambling

ABSTRACT Most previous studies on self-help groups for problem gambling have been conducted in the US and Canada involving Gamblers Anonymous. We report findings from an interview study with an phenomenological approach comprising nine participants from two Gambling Addiction Norway self-help groups, thus examining another location and type of self-help group. Gambling Addiction Norway is atheoretical, the groups and their work are not based on specific beliefs or strategies for recovery. Participants met the criteria for current (n = 4) or life-time (n = 5) Gambling Disorder (GD). Thematic analysis was used to investigate how group processes were experienced. Three themes were identified. The first theme ‘Shared narratives and understanding’ included accounts of relatedness, understanding, hope of recovery, and socially rewarding experiences. The second theme ‘Keeping it relevant to problem gambling’ included accounts of disagreements over meeting structure, contemplation and realization of one’s gambling problem and gambling-related content. The final theme ‘Changes over time’ included accounts of starting in the group, reduction of gambling urges among people with current GD and relapse prevention among people with life-time GD. Results are interpreted in light of established theories of self-help groups and suggest that common therapeutic factors operate across various types of self-help groups for problem gambling.