Unifying Purpose Research Articles

Advancing a Science of Learning and Development That Can Promote Dignity-Affirming Educational Environments: Some Considerations for the Field

In this collection of commentaries, the authors respond to the suite of chapters in this special issue and ask and answer: “Where do we need to go?” Thinking through the “mother value” of dignity, the authors explore the possibilities for education research under the unifying purpose of cultivating “dignity-affirming educational environments” for all people.

Living in the skin of dictatorship: an encounter with the Belarus Free Theatre

On 12 March 2022, I attended Dogs of Europe, a performance by Belarus Free Theatre (BFT) at London’s Barbican Theatre. Adapted from the novel by Belarusian writer Alhierd Bacharevič, the play imagines a dystopian future in which Russia’s imperial expansion swallows up swathes of eastern Europe to create a ‘Russian Reich’. The timing of the work is uncanny and unsettling – it unintentionally (but astutely) coincided with the horrifying Russian invasion of Ukraine. The novel and stage adaptation depict a Europe that has become a fragmented European League of States with little unifying purpose or moral compass (‘people in Europe no longer read’, as one character announces). My encounter with Dogs of Europe considers how the BFT uses performance techniques to offer an affecting and intimate geopolitics, with the aspiration of motivating audiences towards an activist stance.

Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

Italian Politics and Culture from Fascism to Postwar Democracy in the Life and Work of Uguccione Ranieri di Sorbello (1906–1969)

Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno ed. by Luis Álvarez-Castro

Reviewed by: Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno ed. by Luis Álvarez-Castro Linda Bartlett Álvarez-Castro, Luis, editor. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno. The Modern Language Association of America, 2020, pp. 247. ISBN 978-1-60329-442-3. The articles contained in this book are diverse in scope, yet share a unifying purpose: that of providing practical pedagogical strategies for teaching the work of Miguel de Unamuno to undergraduates across various disciplines and course levels. Approaches to Teaching the Works of Miguel de Unamuno’s content and organization reflect both the breadth of its project and the range of its target audience. Professional Hispanists and other teachers and scholars deeply familiar with Unamuno’s work will find a great deal here that is useful, including the incisive analysis of specific texts and the succinct synthesis of relevant scholarly literature. Those less well-acquainted with the author and his vast body of work will appreciate the care that is given to contextualize Unamuno’s life and writings, as well as the general accessibility of the volume’s content (which includes English translations of all quotes and titles). The book’s first section, “Materials,” includes a variety of resources, such as a concise, yet thorough, summary of available editions of Unamuno’s work (including those in translation) and an extremely valuable review of the most prominent extant scholarship on his life and work. Wisely, the editor limits this survey to book-length treatments of Unamuno and his texts; the “Works Cited” in the back of the book is an excellent companion resource. The “Materials” section also includes a helpful segment on digital and audiovisual resources, including two recent films on Unamuno. “Approaches,” the second and most substantial part of the book, is organized according to four distinct instructional contexts: those emphasizing historical texts, those examining literary objects, those focusing on philosophical/religious inquiry, and the foreign language classroom. The brief introduction to this section effectively orients the reader to the material to follow. The first section in “Approaches,” “Teaching Unamuno,” consists of three articles, which are appropriately broad in scope: “Unamuno for the Twenty-First Century,” by Gonzalo Navajas; “Teaching Unamuno in Seven Contexts,” by Nelson R. Orringer, and “Teaching the Multifaceted Unamuno in a Semester-Long Undergraduate Course,” by Leslie J. Harkema. The seven chapters in the next unit, “Literary and Historical Milieu,” meaningfully situate Unamuno in his historical and literary context. These address an array of diverse topics, as the titles indicate: “Toward a Twentieth-Century Modernity: Unamuno’s Paz en la guerra” (Salvador Oropesa); “Dressing Up Unamuno’s Naked Theater: Contextualizing Unamuno’s Drama in the Classroom” (Tracie Amend); “Teaching Unamuno’s Poetry: Romanticism and Modernity” (Stephen J. Summerhill); “Unamuno, an Iberian Thinker: Portuguese Culture and Travel Literature in Por tierras de Portugal y España” (Juan Francisco Maura); “Unamuno’s Niebla: A Lesson in Paradox, Adaptation, and Innovation” (Edward H. Friedman); “The Perversion of Genius: Unamuno’s Exile and the Censors” (Ana Urrutia-Jordana); and “Unamuno’s Press Articles: The Badge of Identity of the Unamunian Intellectual” (Stephen G. H. Roberts). The nine entries in the “Critical and Theoretical Approaches” section focus almost exclusively on Unamuno’s novels: “The Pathos of the Hero in Unamuno” (Francisco LaRubia-Prado); “Of Love and Power: Teaching Unamuno’s Amor y pedagogía to Undergraduates outside the Literary Major” (Mark J. Mascia); “Trains, Time, and Technology: Teaching “Mecanópolis through Mobility and Science Fiction Studies” (Benjamin Fraser); “Unamuno’s Metafiction: Niebla as a Deviation from Convention” (Craig N. Bergeson); “Teaching Unamuno’s Novels: Confrontation and Existence” (Juan Herrero-Senés); “Abel Sánchez; or, The Reader’s Personality as Textual Assemblage” (Thomas R. Franz); “Teaching Cómo se hace una novela and Its Legacy in Contemporary Spanish Autofictions” (Cristina Carrasco); “San Manuel Bueno, mártir, as Literary Artifact” (Brian Cope); and “Teaching Miguel Picazo’s La tía Tula to College Students in the United States” (Diana Roxana Jorza). The six chapters in the subsequent part, “Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Religion Classrooms,” present interdisciplinary approaches to teaching Unamuno beyond the Spanish [End Page 505] classroom. Contributions to this section include: C. A. Longhurst, “Belief...

Report for the Association of Chaplaincy in General Practice on Spiritual Care During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Chaplaincy has been provided in primary care for over 20 years. There are various iterations across the United Kingdom, but their unifying purpose is personcentered holistic care delivered through listening and guidance. This report seeks to describe and analyse the impact of COVID-19 on chaplaincy services in primary care. Initial reflections highlight the range of presenting issues, old and new. Organizational factors such as logistical questions and virtual communication issues demonstrate the barriers faced by patients and chaplains, alongside new opportunities. As existing support networks and services have become less accessible, chaplaincy has a role to play in anticipating and responding to patients’ unmet needs. These include “losses,” both personal and communal, grief, both past and current, and questions of an existential nature. In responding to these challenges, chaplaincy should seek to be more visible, more intentional in identifying those at risk of loneliness, and more accessible to those less proficient in the new communication technologies, such as the elderly. This report suggests how chaplaincy will have a significant role in supporting patients with anxiety, lockdown traumas, loss of well-being, and the many socioeconomic effects of the pandemic.

Conceptualizing Legal Childhood in the Twenty-First Century

The law governing children is complex, sometimes appearing almost incoherent. The relatively simple framework established in the Progressive Era, in which parents had primary authority over children, subject to limited state oversight, has broken down over the past few decades. Lawmakers started granting children some adult rights and privileges, raising questions about their traditional status as vulnerable, dependent, and legally incompetent beings. As children emerged as legal persons, children’s rights advocates challenged the rationale for parental authority, contending that robust parental rights often harm children. And a wave of punitive reforms in response to juvenile crime in the 1990s undermined the state’s long-standing role as the protector of children. We address this seeming incoherence by identifying a deep structure and logic in the regulation of children that is becoming clear in the twenty-first century. In our conceptual framework, the law’s central goal, across multiple legal domains, is to promote child wellbeing. This unifying purpose has roots in the Progressive Era, but three distinct characteristics distinguish the modern approach. Today, lawmakers advance child wellbeing with greater confidence and success by drawing on a wide body of research on child and adolescent development and the efficacy of related policies. This is bolstered by the clear understanding that promoting child wellbeing generally furthers social welfare, leading to a broader base of support for state policies and legal doctrines. Finally, there is a growing recognition that the regulation of children and families has long been tainted by racial and class bias and that a new commitment to minimizing these pernicious influences is essential to both the legitimacy and fairness of the regime. In combination, these features make the contemporary regulatory framework superior to earlier approaches. Rather than pitting the state, parents, and child in competition for control over children’s lives—the conception of family regulation since the 1960s—our Child Wellbeing framework offers a surprisingly integrated regulatory approach. Properly understood, parental rights and children’s rights, as well as the direct role of the state in children’s lives, are increasingly defined and unified by a research-driven, social-welfare-regarding effort to promote child wellbeing. This normatively attractive conceptualization of legal childhood does not define every area of legal regulation, but it is a strong through-line and should be elevated and embraced more broadly. In short, our framework brings coherence to the complex legal developments of the past half-century and provides guidance moving forward for this critical area of the law.

Dartington Hall and the Quest for ‘Life in its Completeness’, 1925–45

Abstract In the wake of the First World War, reformers across the Western world questioned laissez-faire liberalism, the self-oriented and market-driven ruling doctrine of the nineteenth century. This philosophy was blamed, variously, for the war, for industrialization and for urbanization; for a way of life shorn of any meaning beyond getting and keeping; for the too great faith in materialism and in science; and for the loss of a higher, transcendent meaning that gave a unifying purpose to individual existence and to society as a whole. For many, the cure to these ills lay in reforming the liberal social framework in ways that made it more fulfilling to the whole person and that strengthened ties between individuals. This article looks at Dartington Hall as an outstanding practical example of this impulse to promote holistic, integrated living – exploring the project as an interlinked constellation of experiments in education, the arts, agriculture and social organization; and also looking at how Dartington’s philosophy and trajectory matched those of other such enterprises begun in interwar Britain and further afield, making it a bellwether of changes in reformist thinking across the century.

A "Just Sense of Well-Being": Social Work's Unifying Purpose in Action.

For over a century the social work profession has had a dual purpose, to promote both human well-being and social justice, but we have not found research that explores how social workers understand and work toward both purposes across multiple practice roles and settings. Authors of this article conducted qualitative research to examine how 18 social workers in various roles and settings understand and implement both purposes in their practice. Instead of a dual purpose, participants described a unifying purpose: a "just sense of well-being" that transcends role and setting. Valuing the dignity and worth of all human beings frames and fuels their work toward a just sense of well-being through three interactive themes: challenging injustice on every level; constructing justice through relationship and resource organizing; and constructing justice through the creation of accepting environments where professionals, clients, and community members can reflect and question, and change mind-sets and actions. Participants provided an array of possibilities for action with clients, professionals, and public leaders within organizations and communities. The implication here is that social workers are charged to reinvigorate purpose and values back into practice with value-based assessment thinking that frames possibilities for action across methods and settings.

Designing Competitive Industry Sectors

Industry sectors are typified by their complex, networked, and open nature, characteristics making them well suited to innovation through the application of design. Despite this apparent suitability, there remains little research published specifically regarding the application of design to sector‐level strategy formation. This article describes the application of a design‐led innovation (DLI) approach to industry transformation strategy. DLI is a design thinking method that integrates deep customer insights into business models, informing organizational transformation and strategy. This article explores the adaptations and challenges that occur when scaling design to a sector in the form of a proposed framework: the Sector Grand Challenge Framework (SGC Framework). This is described through a case study applying the SGC Framework to the development of a food and agribusiness (agrifood) growth and competitiveness strategy in partnership with Food Innovation Australia Limited, an Australian Federal Government Industry Growth Centres initiative. The SGC Framework uses many of the same principles as DLI, scaling this approach to an entire industry sector. This scale exacerbates key challenges observed within a firm, including poor linkages between groups, large and complex stakeholder networks, and lack of unifying purpose or vision.

Applying Research to Enhance Capacity: A Unifying Purpose for an Integrated Profession

ABSTRACTFor more than a century the social work profession has had a dual purpose: to promote individual well-being and social justice, but the micro–macro divide is fragmenting the profession. This article suggests that the profession’s aim might best be realized by adopting a unifying purpose, a just sense of well-being. Research on complex adaptive systems conceptualizes a unifying purpose as vertical integration carried out in differentiated ways in discrete moments of practice in various settings. Interpersonal neurobiology and Aristotle’s interdependence of character virtues and practical judgment inform a corresponding shift from the dualities of personal and professional to the social worker as a person with differentiated professional capacities and activities. Integration with differentiation enhances capacity to promote the profession’s purpose.

Caodaism in Times of War: Spirits of Struggle and Struggle of Spirits

Caodaism is an indigenous and syncretistic religion of Vietnam that appeared in the 1920s, during the French colonial period. Caodaists believe that they have the responsibility to save humanity through spirit-mediumship and conversion before the impending end of the world. Their theology thus clearly intersects with politics: Cao Đài texts encouraged Vietnamese nationalism and endorsed the overthrow of French colonial rule. Between 1940 and 1965, Caodaist leaders made a range of strategic choices during wartime: armed struggle, collaboration, alliance and, finally, diplomacy. The biographies of three important Caodaist leaders highlight the diversity of their alliances, disagreements and conflicts, while making clear that all three shared the ultimate and unifying purpose of transforming Caodaism into the “national religion” of Vietnam.

Non-canonical roles for caveolin in regulation of membrane repair and mitochondria: implications for stress adaptation with age.

Many different theories of ageing have been proposed but none has served the unifying purpose of defining a molecular target that can limit the structural and functional decline associated with age that ultimately leads to the demise of the organism. We propose that the search for a molecule with these unique properties must account for regulation of the signalling efficiency of multiple cellular functions that degrade with age due to a loss of a particular protein. We suggest caveolin as one such molecule that serves as a regulator of key processes in signal transduction. We define a particular distinction between cellular senescence and ageing and propose that caveolin plays a distinct role in each of these processes. Caveolin is traditionally thought of as a membrane-localized protein regulating signal transduction via membrane enrichment of specific signalling molecules. Ultimately we focus on two non-canonical roles for caveolin - membrane repair and regulation of mitochondrial function - which may be novel features of stress adaptation, especially in the setting of ageing. The end result of preserving membrane structure and mitochondrial function is maintenance of homeostatic signalling, preserving barrier function, and regulating energy production for cell survival and resilient ageing.

Principals’ Leadership Behavior and Teachers Commitment in Adama Town Public Secondary Schools of Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

The intent of this paper was to examine the impact of Secondary School Principals Leadership Behavior on Teachers Commitment in Adama City Administration of Oromia Region, Ethiopia. To achieve this purpose, researcher used concurrent triangulation mixed approach research paradigm. By using simple random sampling technique 120 (68.4%) secondary school teachers were selected. Moreover, 29 leaders from different echelons were purposely selected for qualitative data and included in the study. To this end two different but complementary instruments: Questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed to solicit data from key informants in the study setting. Data were analyzed both through qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. The study result showed that almost all school principals were from non-management or leadership educational background, they lack knowhow on how to influence and get teachers to perform beyond expectation, develop sense of school citizenship and work for unifying purpose. Hence, the study recommends the importance of setting structures to promote change, as well as opportunities for individual learning and appropriate means for monitoring progress toward improvement; endorse visions that embody the best thinking about teaching and learning. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n4s1p204

How are the activity and participation aspects of the ICF used? Examples from studies of people with intellectual disability.

Interdisciplinary differences regarding understanding the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) concepts activity/participation may hinder its unifying purpose. In the ICF model, functioning (and disability) is described as a tripartite concept: 1) Body structures/functions, 2) Activities, and 3) Participation. Activities refer to an individual perspective on disability that does not tally with the basic structure of social models. To review how activity and participation are actually used in studies of intellectual disability (ID). Based on 16 papers, four different usages of activity/participation were found. 1) Theoretical reference to tripartite ICF concept with attempts to use it. 2) Theoretical reference to tripartite ICF concept without actual use of activities. 3) "Atheoretical" approach with implicit focus on participation. 4) Theoretical reference to bipartite concept with corresponding use of terms. The highlighted studies have in common a focus on participation. However, the usage of the term "activity" differs both within and between studies. Such terminology will probably confuse interdisciplinary communication rather than facilitating it. Also, the use of an explicit underlying theory differs, from references to a tripartite to references to a bipartite concept of disability. This paper is focused on ID, but the discussed principles regarding the ICF and interdisciplinary disability theory are applicable to other diagnostic groups within rehabilitation practices.

T. Matthew N. McCabe Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the Confessio AmantisGower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the Confessio Amantis. T. Matthew N. McCabe. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Pp. vi+258.

<i>T. Matthew N. McCabe</i> Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the <i>Confessio Amantis</i><i>Gower’s Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the <i>Confessio Amantis</i></i>. T. Matthew N. McCabe. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011. Pp. vi+258.

Into the Past: The Cinema of Guy Maddin

INTO THE PAST: THE CINEMA OF GUY MADDIN By William Beard Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010, 504 ppReviewed by Jovana JankovicGiven the collegial and affectionate tone with which the volume begins, it is clear that William Beard's personal engagement with Guy Maddin, the films and the man, stems from deep sympathy and admiration for his object of study. Perhaps remarkably, then, Beard's book Into the Past: The Cinema of Gay Maddin also unfolds as soberly-researched and rigorous source of information on everything from the minutae of Maddin 's production strategies to the dominant themes found in his films. It is rare critic who can be so objective while retaining open display of affection for filmmaker.Beard's book focuses almost exclusively on Maddin's feature-length films, and each of the ten chapters concentrates on one particular film, although appendix considers some aspects of the short films which align well with the dominant themes of the analysis. The method is hardly fresh one, and yet the chronological order in which Beard traces Maddin's productions allows for the emergence of subtle yet important evolution in the filmmaker's work: while early features such as Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1989) and Careful (1992) allow their rabid enthusiasm for older forms (silent cinema, German Expressionism, deliberately degraded aesthetics, absurdism, surrealism, melodrama) to cloud any unifying purpose within the films' narratives, unabashedly more direct expression of Maddin's Weltanschauung emerges in later features such as My Winnipeg (2007). Beard is astute to point out, however, that these more overt expressions in the later films hardly come with less absurd forms and visual signatures. Indeed, if anything, Maddin's cinema as retold by Beard grows more absurd as it abo becomes more honest. My Winnipeg, for example, deals more directly with the filmmaker's provenance and genealogy (as opposed to, say, Archangel [1991], which is set in the WWI-era Russian Arctic, locale and period strangely arbitrary and otherworldly), but it lacks none of the stylistic flourishes and narrative embellishments that have marked Maddin's work throughout his career. Certainly, the weighty contributions of frequent Maddin collaborators George Toles, deco dawson, and Jon Gurdebeke, among many others, cannot be understated in the filmmaker's evolution, and Beard gives these influential artists their due. For example, it was dawson 's editing style on The Heart of the World (2000) that changed the pacing and feel of Maddin's films from that point on, and one wonders where Maddin would be without the varied and frequently obscure literary influences that underscore Toles' scriptwriting.Beard begins by highlighting the difficult-to-disprove assertion that Maddin's work is decidedly unlike that of any other filmmaker, which could be said of many artists, and yet, somehow, Maddin seems to be the most of them all. It is worth noting that such vastly different filmmaker has built his oeuvre entirely on the highly original recycling of histories (cinematic, social, and personal), and Beard takes this seeming contradiction as his central theme throughout the book. Namely, he asserts that Maddin's films both point out the uselessness of older forms which preyed on the idyllic innocence of their spectators, and also attempt recuperation of the kind of genuine feeling once evinced by these forms. While his films are a fantasy on themes from the historical past accompanied by an awareness of the serious ethical limitations of the past, they also point to the unreachableness of what is desirable in this world... solidarity, social wholeness, personal security deriving from solid sense of the individual's place in the group, absence of the chaotic freedom to want and go after everything and anything- in short, life without fundamental alienation. In Maddin's films, the desire for the impossible kind of cohesion we recognize from psychoanalysis may be unattainable, and yet his films encourage that we, at the very least, consider its possibility (if only to have it dashed away). …

The Tie that Binds? A Case Study of Student Perceptions of their Recreation-related Majors

Academic departments change to meet university and social demands. The dynamic nature of higher education leads to discourse among park and recreation educators over the unifying purpose that binds the academic field as well as practice. The purpose of this research was to use a case study at one major university to explore how undergraduate students perceived their recreation-related majors and the connections among specialty areas within the department. Analyses of focus groups along with other documents revealed four themes: learning environment, dealing with misperceptions, identification with a specialty, and connections among specializations. Students generally do not perceive connections across their academic specialties, but feel a sense of cultural commonality within the department regarding these themes. Similar to concerns raised about the fragmentation of knowledge in higher education, student perceptions reflected this phenomenon in their recreation-related majors.

The service-dominant logic and the future of marketing

According to Vargo and Lusch (Journal of Marketing, 68:1–17, 2004a, Journal of Service Research, 6:324–335, b), service is the appropriate logic for marketing. For them, service is an interactive process of “doing something for someone” that is valued. More radically, goods also render service and have value-in-use. In this context service becomes the unifying purpose of any business relationship. This marketing world-view involves broadening and reframing what by convention counts as service and stands in opposition to 200 years of mainstream economic logic in explaining productive capacity. In our view they have succeeded in applying their scholarly thinking to old themes with synergistic results. Their thesis challenges marketing orthodoxy, and will in our view support much future innovation in both theoretical and practical terms.

Reliving the past in a changed environment: Hydropower ambitions, opportunities and constraints in Tajikistan

In Central Asia, various arguments, ranging from a unifying purpose to political control to conflict potential, have been made about the relationship between downstream water utilisation and the upstream water control infrastructure. This paper analyses the construction and utilisation of the Nurek dam in Tajikistan during and after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The political and socio-economic changes that ensued after independence influenced the utilisation of the water control infrastructure. The new economic reorientation of Tajikistan demanded by the break-up caused concerns to downstream riparian states. The conflict potential is based not on water resource allocation, but on the utilisation of water for energy production, its control and transmission infrastructure. Even though there is conflict potential, the situation could be turned into a win–win situation for all the riparian states.

Tabensky on The Unity of Life and the Skill of Living

This paper examines Pedro Tabensky’s claims that rational human life has a single unifying purpose, and that there is an analogy between the skill of living and that of painting. It examines his arguments for the first claim, in particular the relation between rationality and different ways in which a life might be unified. For, in addition to the narrative or artistic unification which Tabensky favours, there is also (for example) the possibility of unifying one’s life through the adoption of a so-called monolithic end, such as pleasure (assuming that pleasure is monolithic). The paper also investigates the implications of each of these modes of unification for how we should understand the skill of living. According to the narrative or artistic model, living will indeed be like painting; however, according to the monolithic-end model, living may be more like business management; and other models may make other analogies salient. All this will make a difference to our attitudes to events within our lives, for example, whether the inevitable disturbances within our lives are to be integrated or, rather, eliminated.