Social Space Research Articles

Factors affecting new students’ sense of belonging and wellbeing at university

ABSTRACT A higher sense of belonging has been shown to be associated with general wellbeing among students, and its benefits are known to relate to academic and post-academic successes. Yet, we know little about newly enrolled students’ lived experience that links sense of belonging and wellbeing. This small-scale qualitative study (n = 8) showed that an interplay of factors including academic, social, surroundings, and personal space influence new students’ sense of belonging and wellbeing at university and within the discipline. Specifically, our findings revealed that undergraduate and postgraduate (home and international) students have different experiences depending on demographic characteristics, such as age, gender as well as socio-economic factors. Further details revealed that enhanced student support is needed to ensure that different groups of students’ needs are addressed in an inclusive manner.

Does anyone still want to go to lectures? Student perceptions of the face-to-face lecture in an Irish university

ABSTRACT Lectures have been part of the University tradition for centuries and remain an integral part of Higher Education in Ireland. However, in recent years the place of the lecture has been questioned, particularly in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study conducted amongst Arts students in the University of Galway sought to establish whether students still valued the face-to-face lecture as part of their University education, and how they felt this learning experience could be enhanced for them in the future. The study revealed a very clear desire amongst students to maintain the face-to-face lecture as a feature of their University education. The reasons cited are related overwhelmingly to the opportunities afforded by the lecture as a social space. Students expressed a strong desire to be able to interact within the large lecture but our findings also showed that students wish to be able to do this in a ‘safe' way. Tools such as the Vevox polling tool were cited as mechanisms to facilitate ‘safe’ participation in the lecture and to comfortably share their opinions and ideas. Above all, our study highlights that future research needs to focus more on developing face-to-face lecture as a safe interactive social space.

Learning From Listening To A Citizen Board

Listening is a skill that goes beyond hearing another person’s words. It is an attentive communication process that deeply acknowledges individual backgrounds in making sense of the world. In this paper, we propose a listening approach to museums in their conception as social spaces in the service of society. Departing from the museum’s historic to contemporary concerns for citizen participation, we detail our work with a citizen board in the ‘Right to the Museum?’ project within a comparative study of five Viennese museums. Engaging in intense dialogue through accompanied museum visits and post- surveys, we present our learnings regarding citizens’ situated interpretation strategies in permanent exhibitions and potential discrepancies between museum missions on paper and perceptions on-site. Based on the responses by the citizen board to museum and exhibition scripts, we also reflect on how such a listening approach can be used to pluralise perspectives on cultural heritage and its societal value. Keywords: museum missions, exhibition scripts, citizen board, listening, identity politics.

On the all-inclusive society, or how to leave no one behind

This interview article brings together Dan Goodley, Yanki Lee, Jos Boys, and Sarah Glerup in conversation about an overall exploratory question of how we can create an inclusive society for all, taking the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and pledge to Leave No One Behind (LNOB) as point of departure. The panel embodies perspectives from different academic disciplines in disability studies and architectural design, but also knowledge based on lived experience from activist practices. In discussing themes of social inclusion, individualisation, methodology, representation, identity politics, normal space, disruption, and change; the panelists share their reflections on critical concepts such as neoliberal ableism, the super cripple, and equity tourism. Besides contributing with an interdisciplinary scholarly dialogue the article concludes by highlighting key insights from the interview on the relationship of contemporary societal and cultural disability issues in theory and practice.

C. A. Doxiadis's Pedestrian Esplanades

In the early 1960’s, the phenomena of the displacement of free social space and people in cities due to the reshaping of urban centers to accommodate automobiles, became a driving force propelling C. A. Doxiadis (1913-1975) to explore design variations for urban squares and esplanades. In this article, analysis of a series of urban plans for Korangi, Islamabad and Lahore Pakistan, New Eastwick Philadelphia, Louisville Kentucky, USA, Tema, Ghana, Aleppo University, Saigon, Vietnam, and Miami, Florida USA, developed from 1957to 1972 applies space syntax and Conzenian methods to understand the genotype of Doxiadis’s new urban design variants for pedestrian urbanism. Viewed holistically, the project sequence reflect Doxiadis’s epistemology of design inquiry into future social spatial relationships in the city. His experimentation with a diversity of planning strategies for pedestrian squares and esplanades are found to generate a distribution of movement in ways that often downplays urban centrality forming a new genotype for the 20th century post war city.

The mobilisers: private climate finance, legal expertise, and the limits of innovation

ABSTRACT This article explores the emerging field of private climate finance mobilised through public resources. These mechanisms aim to leverage financial resources to close the ‘finance gap’ between needed and available funds for climate adaptation and mitigation. Innovative forms of climate finance require new contracts and legal frameworks to govern transactions in a manner satisfactory to both the public and private actors involved. This article examines the knowledge practices at the technical and bureaucratic ‘back end’ of this type of climate finance. Drawing on narrative interviews and participant observation, I show that the public efforts to mobilise private resources have been accompanied by three points of tension within financial legal practice: (1) Differences between the legal work of ‘innovative’ climate finance and its more conventional counterpart, such as grants and loans to sovereigns; (2) ‘boundary work’ undertaken internally between legal experts, and (3) externally between legal and non-legal experts, as actors seek to create and lay claim to expertise and authority over novel practices. These tensions constitute a social space in flux, and challenge the confident rhetoric of ‘closing the finance gap’.

The Standpoint of ‘Praxis’: Practitioner Inquiry into Language and Learning within English Classrooms

ABSTRACT So much emphasis is placed these days on measuring the performance of pupils that it is difficult to imagine the social space of the classroom being used for any other purpose. But our intention in this essay is not to succumb to pessimism about the surveillance imposed by standards-based reforms. Such bleak determinism can be challenged by examples of everyday classroom interactions that refuse to be contained by the instrumental rationalism embedded in those reforms. Yet educators still need to develop a capacity to learn from those moments in order to enact a ‘praxis’ that provides a counterpoint to the way such reforms construct the subjectivities of pupils and their teachers. To this end, we explore the notion of ‘praxis’, focusing on the way early career English teachers learn from experience through writing nuanced accounts of how children and adolescents use language which challenge the reified knowledge underpinning standards-based reforms.

The interface of Latinos, language and space in restaurant naming in Philadelphia

Abstract Considering the growth of the Hispanic or Latino population reported by the 2020 Census Bureau in Philadelphia and an increase of Latino restaurants bearing names in Spanish in the city, this article explores the use of Spanish in eighty three restaurant names to determine the types of meanings that Spanish construes, the restaurateurs’ apparent motivation, and its relevance within Latino studies in a city and state that do not historically have a large number of Latinos. The qualitative analysis relies on a linguistic landscapes approach, specifically Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) and Ben-Rafael’s (2009) frameworks. The analysis reveals that the use of Spanish not only functions as a sign of identity and group membership, but also serves to create the restaurateurs’ social space and to distinguish their establishments. These dynamics increase the visibility of some of these Latino groups and of the Latino community as a whole, in a city where their presence and visibility has not yet received much attention.

Youth and Socialization Spaces: A Field Study on Prediction of Risky Alcohol Use by Need for Social Approval and Drinking Motives in Alcohol-Using University Students

Youth and Socialization Spaces: A Field Study on Prediction of Risky Alcohol Use by Need for Social Approval and Drinking Motives in Alcohol-Using University Students

Research on the spatial morphology of traditional settlements in Turpan Oasis – centred on the karez settlement

The study takes the traditional settlements in the Turpan of China as a case and explores their spatial features under the joint influence of water resource constraints and technological support from the aspects of location, form, and society. The study shows there are intermountain valley-type settlements, pre-mountain alluvial fan-type settlements, and karez settlements in the region, of which karez settlements are the most prevalent. In spatial form, it is characterised by the close association and intertwining of settlements and plantations in different patterns. In the place shaping, it is expressed as a multicultural form centred on the karez. In terms of social space, it’s a form of grassroots organisation linked to the sharing of water dividends. These features are the result of residents adapting to the water environment and creating a better home. At present, the karez settlement continues to play a key role in cultural heritage and social development.

Соотношение социальных и персональной идентичностей: современное состояние проблемы

<p style="text-align: justify;">The relationship between the features of personality identification structures and the characteristics of modern social space does not need detailed evidence. In the conditions of "fluid" modernity, the attention of researchers naturally shifts from the structural components of the "I" to the procedural manifestations of identity. As a result, the problem of the correlation of a person's personal and social identities, which is traditional for social psychology, begins to acquire a new sound.</p>

Power, Environment, and Depoliticized Conflict in Social Space: Threats to Sustainable Development from the Perspective of Environmental Activists in Poland

Do local environmental conflicts have a political dimension? Can the fight for social space be an opportunity for ecological activists to enter the “historical level” and question the fundamental principles of the existing political and economic order? This article aims to answer these questions and—based on the statements of environmental activists obtained during a sociological intervention—reconstruct the threats and socioinstitutional obstacles to sustainable development. It also aims to indicate sets of public actors that can be described—from the perspective of environmental activists—as opponents of the ecological movement in Poland. In this sense, the article attempts to determine what is at stake in the conflicts in which the ecological movement is engaged under the conditions of the crisis of democracy. It also asks about the relationship between local environmental conflicts and the dominant logic of the official state policy.

Impact of the Stigma of Mental Illness: A Descriptive Exploratory Study of Outpatients in a Public Mental Health Hospital in Ghana.

Despite ongoing efforts, persons with mental illness (PWMI) continue to experience stigma and discrimination and with profound negative outcomes. This study examined the psychological and social impact of the stigma attached to mental illness as experienced by out-patients at a public mental health facility. We applied a descriptive exploratory method using a semi-structured interview guide to elicit subjective responses from 12 Outpatient Department members. Study participants described various ways the stigma of mental illness impacted them within the social space. Overall, five (5) themes emerged. These include devaluing, losing their partners, social exclusion, unemployment, and loss of self-esteem. Participants' account of their experiences with stigma so far depicts stigma as an everyday occurrence that adversely impacts their social standing. To effectively address stigma requires intentional efforts to bridge the gap created by deliberate acts of discrimination and lack of support for PWMI within our social framework.

A classification framework for generative artificial intelligence for social good

Many policy makers and corporate leaders are adjusting their strategies to harness the power of GenAI. There are numerous debates on how GenAI would fundamentally change existing business models. However, there is not much discussion on roles of generative AI in the domain of social good. Broader views covering potential opportunities of GenAI to enable diverse initiatives in the social good space are largely missing. We intend to reduce the gap by developing a classification framework that should allow researchers gauge the potential impact of GenAI for social good initiatives. Through case analysis, we assess how value-added abilities of GenAI may influence various social good initiatives. We adopt/develop two loosely connected classification frameworks that are grounded in task-technology fit (TTF) theory. Subsequently, we investigate how our analyses of GenAI initiatives utilizing different dimensions of these two frameworks may be synthesized to provide appropriate explanation for potential success of GenAI for social good. We develop five propositions that will provide guidance to practitioners and researchers. The theoretically grounded analysis of 21 GenAI for social good use cases based on the two classification frameworks, and the resulting propositions are the original contributions of this paper to the AI for social good literature.

Problem-oriented stimulus of teaching foreign-language listening in a secondary school. Part 2

The problem for the research. Listening skills are important for a modern person in many areas of life: at work, at home, travelling the world, etc., when immersed in the social space of culture in the fullness of its spiritual meanings. However, in school teaching of foreign languages, there is a contradiction between the large reserve listening capabilities in achieving students’ personal, metasubject and subject educational results in a foreign language and the established practice of teaching this type of foreign-language speech activity, where there are many difficulties associated with students’ perception and understanding of foreign-language information by ear. Methods of investigation. 50 ninth-graders of secondary school named after S. S. Rakitina in Murashi, Kirov Region (Russian Federation) took part in pilot testing. To obtain personal learning results, the “Methodology for studying the motivation of teaching older adolescents” was used; metasubject – L. F. Tikhomirova’s “Exclude the word” method; subject (in the field of foreign-language listening) – the method for calculating the success rate of V. P. Bespalko and A. N. Shamov. The results were processed using the G–criterion of signs. The findings of the study. The final control revealed an increase in the level of proficiency in personal learning outcomes in 40 % of ninth-graders; metasubject – in 45 %; subject – in 61 %. The reliability of the presented results is confirmed by the use of mathematical statistics methods for personal, metasubject and subject results. The results of calculating the criterion of G-signs in the experimental group: G_(emp.)is above ≤ G_(cr.): 0 ≤ 3 for personal, 0 ≤ 5 for metasubject and subject results (p < 0.05). Conclusion. The purpose of the study is achieved: the article describes the characteristics and proves the effectiveness of using the problem-oriented stimulus in the process of teaching foreign-language listening in a secondary school (based on materials from the senior stage in secondary school). The theoretical foundation and testing of a set of exercises for teaching students foreign-language listening using the components of the problem-oriented stimulus led us to the conclusion that the presented exercises contribute to the formation of personal and metasubject universal educational actions of students, increases the level of their proficiency in the oral receptive type of foreign-language speech activity.

Analyzing Gender Representation in English Textbooks (IX & X) through Gender Schema Theory

The current English textbooks of Nepal misrepresent gender in lexical, graphic, and symbolic ways. If a teaching material starts misrepresenting gender through an academic approach, It directly hits the mental and behavioural aspects of students. This study explores gender representation in the current English textbooks IX and X from the perspective of qualitative research design and the Gender Schema Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis to explore how gender is represented in terms of visibility, character attitudes, and gender stereotypes. The results indicate that these textbooks misrepresented gender differently, including profession, social roles, prioritizing male roles, and social space. This dominance reveals a persistent gender bias favoring men in various activities, such as becoming athletes, holding prestigious positions, and participating in sports. Despite this bias, gender stereotyping has significantly decreased compared to previous research, with some evidence of equality in responsibilities, activities, and pictorial representations. This study suggests contributing to raising gender awareness in education in order to maintain equity and equality in learning.

초등 예비교사교육자의 관점으로 본 체육 학습 공간에 관한 이해

This study aims to explore the role, structure, and cultural meaning of physical education learning spaces from the perspective of elementary school preservice teacher educators. Data were collected using the researcher’s learning space diary and the participant’s stimulated recall questionnaire. The results of the inductive category analysis method are as follows: First, the role and meaning of physical education learning spaces were categorized into the following: learning space (a place for learning experiences), personal space (a place for movement and challenge), social space (a place for coexistence and relationships), and expansive space (a place for lifelong education). Second, the structure of the physical education learning space was shown to be a horizontal space structure (a space for sharing various learning contents) and a vertical space structure (a community learning space). The cultural meaning of the learning space was derived as a place of meeting, learning, and unfolding. It is hoped that this study will facilitate understanding of the spatial characteristics of physical education learning spaces and the movements of learners within learning spaces.

Critical Discourse of Social Space in Urban Sustainable Development: A Neo-Marxian Social-spatial Political Perspective

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have grown prevalent in development discourse across numerous cities, incorporating economic, ecological, and social aspects. The critical discourse on social space in urban sustainable development, viewed through the lens of neo-Marxian socio-spatial politics, underscores the intricate interplay among space, power, and economy within the urban environment. The language of the SDGs is examined through the lens of capitalist economic frameworks and power dynamics in the development of urban environments. Sustainable development frequently entails intricate conflicts of interest among diverse stakeholders, including governments, corporations, local communities, and civil society organizations. Figures such as Henry Lefebvre and David Harvey engage in neo-Marxian social-spatial political critique. Manuel Castell and Edward Soja emphasize that power and spatial control frequently engender conflict through the commodification of space, illustrating that urban and rural areas are often regarded as commodities for economic profit, leading to gentrification, forced evictions, and social alienation. Economic and social disparities are manifested in spatial inequalities within urban development. Neo-Marxist socio-spatial political theorists emphasize equality, social justice, and individuals' rights to urban space. The research of SDGs is predominantly focused on the junction of economic and ecological mutualism, rather than sufficiently addressing the social and spatial components. This neo-Marxian social-spatial political approach elucidates the complexities and inequities inherent in urban development, providing an analytical framework to comprehend and tackle the issues associated with attaining sustainable and inclusive urban growth.

Shapeshifting in Social Spaces: Sociolinguistic Competence of Multilingual Learners

The study aims to determine the sociolinguistic competence level of the multilingual Grade 10 learners at Buhisan Night High School for the Academic Year 2024-2025. Terogo et al. (2018), stated that even though students have been shown to gain exceptional grades in English subjects, they fall short in sociolinguistic competence since it is not practiced more often in the Philippines. Thus, assessing sociolinguistic competence is important as well as addressing the low-level sociolinguistic competency of the learners through an action plan. A descriptive quantitative research method was used to determine the sociolinguistic competence level of the multilingual 48 student-respondents. The researcher adapted a TOIEC test and used a researcher-made questionnaire to assess the learners’ sociolinguistic competence. A weighted average mean was used to determine their proficiency and sociolinguistic competence level. Based on the results of the study, situational judgment got the highest rank while reading comprehension got the lowest rank in terms of the learners’ proficiency level. However, the study revealed that the respondents got a general weighted average of 15.83 which means that the respondents’ sociolinguistic competence level is under “Basic Sociolinguistic Competence” which is below the passing rate with a percentage of 58.63. The study recommends enhancing students’ sociolinguistic competence through the integration of sociolinguistic competence in language teaching through enhancement activities and exercises such as role-playing, dialogues and situational exercises, and future researchers may use the findings as a basis for future research or conduct related studies to enhance the sociolinguistic competence of Filipino multilingual learners.

Syrian refugee youths' science learning in a “dialogic” third space: Pushing boundaries in the Lebanese educational system through translanguaging

AbstractThe purpose of this study was to explore translanguaging space as a transformative third space, where alternative and competing discourses are celebrated and where science learning and the development of science's discourse and epistemic practices expand across overlapping boundaries (e.g., home, school, and community). The study focused on Syrian refugee youth adapting to learning science in English in the Lebanese multilingual educational system that esteems international languages (English or French) over Arabic. Our research questions included: (1) What translanguaging practices and functions emerge during a linguistically responsive life science unit designed for refugee multilingual learners? (2) How does a translanguaging space act as a third space for refugee learners to engage in meaning‐making and science practices and discourse around the topic of “respiration”? The study utilized a qualitative instrumental case‐study approach to generate data around refugee learners' languaging practices and their development of science understandings, practices, and discourse. We also engaged in participatory methodologies that challenge boundaries between researchers and participants. The data sources were 22 Zoom recordings, students' work, and participant‐generated feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyze transcripts and students' work while adhering to trustworthiness criteria. Our findings center translanguaging as a justice‐oriented pedagogy that enables a productive and “inviting” third space for refugee multilingual learners to make meaning of phenomena by bringing together and extending their semiotic and epistemic repertoires. Serving multi‐tiered functions, translanguaging fostered dialogic connections that affirmed students' “outside” social spaces as valuable resources for meaning‐making in science classrooms. The implications discuss design features that support a fluid and purposeful translanguaging third space for asset‐oriented science learning.