Wise Practices Research Articles

Wise Practices for Cultural Safety in Electronic Health Research and Clinical Trials With Indigenous People: Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.

BackgroundThere is a paucity of controlled clinical trial data based on research with Indigenous peoples. A lack of data specific to Indigenous peoples means that new therapeutic methods, such as those involving electronic health (eHealth), will be extrapolated to these groups based on research with other populations. Rigorous, ethical research can be undertaken in collaboration with Indigenous communities but requires careful attention to culturally safe research practices. Literature on how to involve Indigenous peoples in the development and evaluation of eHealth or mobile health apps that responds to the needs of Indigenous patients, providers, and communities is still scarce; however, the need for community-based participatory research to develop culturally safe technologies is emerging as an essential focus in Indigenous eHealth research. To be effective, researchers must first gain an in-depth understanding of Indigenous determinants of health, including the harmful consequences of colonialism. Second, researchers need to learn how colonialism affects the research process. The challenge then for eHealth researchers is to braid Indigenous ethical values with the requirements of good research methodologies into a culturally safe research protocol.ObjectiveA recent systematic review showed that Indigenous peoples are underrepresented in randomized controlled trials (RCTs), primarily due to a lack of attention to providing space for Indigenous perspectives within the study frameworks of RCTs. Given the lack of guidelines for conducting RCTs with Indigenous communities, we conducted an analysis of our large evaluation data set collected in the Diagnosing Hypertension-Engaging Action and Management in Getting Lower Blood Pressure in Indigenous Peoples and Low- and Middle- Income Countries (DREAM-GLOBAL) trial over a period of five years. Our goal is to identify wise practices for culturally safe, collaborative eHealth and RCT research with Indigenous communities.MethodsWe thematically analyzed survey responses and qualitative interview/focus group data that we collected over five years in six culturally diverse Indigenous communities in Canada during the evaluation of the clinical trial DREAM-GLOBAL. We established themes that reflect culturally safe approaches to research and then developed wise practices for culturally safe research in pragmatic eHealth research.ResultsBased on our analysis, successful eHealth research in collaboration with Indigenous communities requires a focus on cultural safety that includes: (1) building a respectful relationship; (2) maintaining a respectful relationship; (3) good communication and support for the local team during the RCT; (4) commitment to co-designing the innovation; (5) supporting task shifting with the local team; and (6) reflecting on our mistakes and lessons learned or areas for improvement that support learning and cultural safety.ConclusionsBased on evaluation data collected in the DREAM-GLOBAL RCT, we found that there are important cultural safety considerations in Indigenous eHealth research. Building on the perspectives of Indigenous staff and patients, we gleaned wise practices for RCTs in Indigenous communities.Trial RegistrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT02111226; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02111226

Transboundary Hydro-Governance: From Conflict to Shared Management: Book Review. Written by Jacques Ganoulis and Jean Fried. Springer: Cham, Switzerland, 2018, 222 pages. ISBN 978-3-319-78624-7; eBook ISBN 978-3-319-78625-4

This book came as a support of the UNESCO International Hydrological Programme (IHP) activities on the International Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM) project launched in the year 2000, with the goal of developing wise practices and guidance tools for the shared management of groundwater resources and to contribute to the multifaceted efforts required for global water cooperation [...]

Wise Practices and Intercultural Understandings: A Framework for Educator Videoconferencing

Educators utilize videoconferencing services for a variety of purposes in their classrooms, including offering a means to connect and learn with people of different cultures, geographies, and experiences. However, there has been little research into how educators use videoconferencing in their classrooms. Drawing on technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) and intercultural pedagogies, we report and analyze findings from a survey of 117 videoconferencing educators. These educators reported possibilities and challenges for using videoconferencing, particularly for intercultural experiences. We offer a framework for videoconferencing in education drawn from the wisdom of videoconferencing educators and consider implications future teaching and research.

Connections with the Land: A Scoping Review on Cultural Wellness Retreats as Health Interventions for Indigenous Peoples Living with HIV, Hepatitis C, or Both

Abstract Despite the availability of prevention and treatment services, the ongoing process of colonization has significantly contributed to disproportionate rates of HIV, hepatitis C (HCV), and HIV/HCV coinfection among Indigenous peoples. This inequity highlights a deficit in health care's ability to provide effective and culturally relevant services. Indigenous peoples have used land-based cultural practices to promote wellness since time immemorial, yet they have rarely been evaluated as health interventions. Given the severity of these health inequities, it is imperative that gaps in research and services be addressed quickly and in “good way,” whereby the research undertaken is a sacred endeavor that is connected to ceremony and ancestral wisdom and contributes to healing. Land-based cultural-wellness retreats represent a fruitful path toward wholistic wellness and decolonization. The purpose of this review is to understand the theoretical utility of and wise practices for conducting land-based cultural-wellness retreats for Indigenous peoples with HIV, HCV, or both.

Videoconferencing for Global Citizenship Education: Wise Practices for Social Studies Educators

While videoconferencing technologies have been available to the larger public since the late 1990s, educational uses of them in the social studies have been both underpracticed and undertheorized. We define videoconferencing as synchronous audio and video communication between participants from two or more geographic sites. In this paper, we draw on our analysis of scholarly, practitioner, and popular sources to offer pedagogical rationales for utilizing videoconferencing as a medium for global citizenship education (GCE). First, we will offer background information for videoconferencing in education, and social studies education in particular. We will then describe and define global citizenship education to provide a lens for considering civic purposes for videoconferencing. We will present three general purposes for videoconferencing -- intercultural experiences, intercultural projects, and learning about cultures -- while providing a variety of examples and options from elementary to higher education. We will share technology requirements and common problems of videoconferences. Finally, we will conclude with implications for educators and researchers.

Effective knowledge translation approaches and practices in Indigenous health research: a systematic review protocol

BackgroundEffective knowledge translation (KT) is critical to implementing program and policy changes that require shared understandings of knowledge systems, assumptions, and practices. Within mainstream research institutions and funding agencies, systemic and insidious inequities, privileges, and power relationships inhibit Indigenous peoples’ control, input, and benefits over research. This systematic review will examine literature on KT initiatives in Indigenous health research to help identify wise and promising Indigenous KT practices and language in Canada and abroad.MethodsIndexed databases including Aboriginal Health Database, Bibliography of Native North Americans, CINAHL, Circumpolar Health Bibliographic Database, Dissertation s, First Nations Periodical Index, Medline, National Indigenous Studies Portal, ProQuest Conference Papers Index, PsycInfo, Social Services s, Social Work s, and Web of Science will be searched. A comprehensive list of non-indexed and grey literature sources will also be searched. For inclusion, documents must be published in English; linked to Indigenous health and wellbeing; focused on Indigenous people; document KT goals, activities, and rationale; and include an evaluation of their KT strategy. Identified quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods’ studies that meet the inclusion criteria will then be appraised using a quality appraisal tool for research with Indigenous people. Studies that score 6 or higher on the quality appraisal tool will be included for analysis.DiscussionThis unique systematic review involves robust Indigenous community engagement strategies throughout the life of the project, starting with the development of the review protocol. The review is being guided by senior Indigenous researchers who will purposefully include literature sources characterized by Indigenous authorship, community engagement, and representation; screen and appraise sources that meet Indigenous health research principles; and discuss the project with the Indigenous Elders to further explore the hazards, wisdom, and processes of sharing knowledge in research contexts. The overall aim of this review is to provide the evidence and basis for recommendations on wise practices for KT terminology and research that improves Indigenous health and wellbeing and/or access to services, programs, or policies that will lead to improved health and wellbeing.Systematic review registrationPROSPERO CRD42016049787.

Community-based participatory research with Aboriginal children and their communities: Research principles, practice and the social determinants of health

Conventional health and social science research has contributed to advances in public well-being over the past century. Despite these advances, a significant gap exists in the health of Aboriginal children as compared to non-Aboriginal children in Canada. This has occurred, in part, as a result of the failure of conventional research to acknowledge the worldview of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, to fully take into account their experience of the social determinants of health (SDOH) and to address the intergenerational impact of colonization. In this article we review and discuss the social determinants of health (SDOH) with a specific focus on Aboriginal children and youth. Motivated by our experience in carrying out community based participatory research (CBPR) with children and families from First Nations and Métis communities in Alberta, Canada we review how use of CBPR) approach to research with Aboriginal children and communities can serve to enhance research results, resulting in greater relevance to community identified questions. We will address these issues in the context not only of good research practice but as an aspect of “wise practices” (Wesley-Esquimaux & Calliou, 2010) occurring within an “ethical space of engagement” (Ermine, 2007). We conclude that CBPR allows for meaningful and equitable research partnerships to occur in an ethical space without reinforcing colonial processes of knowledge construction and translation while marginalizing Indigenous knowledge.

Innovation, traditional knowledge and awareness lead to good practices for avoiding biodiversity loss in the Sahara

The creation and sound management of large protected areas in the Sahara is a sure means to addressing biodiversity loss. However, achieving this goal is rarely accepted by all the stakeholders involved and can generate confusion and instability: leading to land degradation instead of sustainable use of natural resources. Water is a key resource in the desert and governments, supported by donors and development partners, are willing to multiply boreholes and provide free water to a maximum number of herders ignoring that this can lead to overgrazing, habitat loss and desertification. Over the years, several innovative conservation projects in eastern Niger have been undertaken, run by the NGO Sahara Conservation Fund (SCF), with the support of the local population. Amongst these initiatives, a management committee composed of local leaders, community game guards and project staff was set up to assist with habitat protection in the Termit Massif: the last stronghold for an amazing array of species including the critically endangered dama gazelle and addax. Traditionally, the pastures of the Termit Massif are used by herders when pasture areas around the permanent wells outside of the Massif is not good enough. By curtailing the sinking of wells in the Massif, the management committee is endeavouring to manage sustainably the area’s precious and fragile natural resources. This article argues that innovation, awareness and traditional knowledge are a good combination to develop wise practices leading to sustainable use of the scarce natural resources for the benefit of both local communities and wildlife. Examples of the practices developed by the project are presented in this article and the challenges faced for the management of the recently gazetted Termit & Tin Toumma National Nature Reserve discussed.

An Instructional Model to Support Problem-Based Historical Inquiry: The Persistent Issues in History Network

For over a decade, we have collaborated with secondary school history teachers in an evolving line of inquiry that applies research-based propositions to the design and testing of a problem-based learning framework and a set of wise practices that represent a professional teaching knowledge base for implementing a particular model of instruction, problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI). PBHI centers history instruction on decision-making about persistent societal problems as they occur in particular historical periods. In order to prepare future teachers to be better able to implement this model in their classrooms, we have integrated components of this model throughout our secondary social studies teacher education program and incorporated a suite of digital tools and resources to facilitate modeling and implementation of PBHI strategies. In an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of the implementation of our model with pre-service teachers, a scenario-based survey was administered to 120 pre-service social studies teachers to examine their knowledge regarding problem-based historical inquiry (PBHI) teaching strategies. Results of data analysis suggest that pre-service teachers were able to recognize and incorporate core components of the PBHI curricular framework into the scenario-based activity more effectively on the post-survey than on the initial survey. In addition, participants were able to better articulate their reasoning for their instructional choices on the post-survey, and their reasoning tended to align with the core components of PBHI. Implications for the use of scenario-based instruments to measure knowledge of curricular innovations are also discussed.

Food Security: The Challenges of Agricultural Management in India

Historically, Indian rulers were able to ensure that adverse weather conditions – such as periodic drought – did not lead to famines. This was done by husbanding water and other resources through wise practices. However, this system was thrown out of equilibrium during the age of European imperialism, because the new rulers had mercantile agendas, and because they used techniques that had an adverse impact on the land and on the people.Today’s prevailing western-style agricultural management is based on intensive cultivation that degrades the land, wastes water, depends heavily on fossil fuels without adequate use of organic matter, and makes indiscriminate use of newly evolved high yielding varieties, all of which are unsustainable.The UN World Summit on Food Security which was held in Rome on November 16th to 18th 2009 said that the fact that there are one billion hungry people in the world was “our tragic achievement in these modern days.” Particularly appalling from an Indian point of view is that a large proportion of these hungry people, perhaps as many as 40%, are probably Indians. The Summit further suggested that the “gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the poor.” Here too, India is guilty as charged: despite rhetoric, agriculture has been the Cinderella in the Indian policy-maker's agenda since independence.India has proved Malthus wrong by achieving a record four-fold grain output in a span of five decades, yet, paradoxically, a majority of its rural population faces hunger and malnutrition. If India applies sound long-term management principles and makes the right political decisions, it may well gain food security and become the greatest agricultural power. India has a competitive advantage in agriculture because of genetic diversity, the proportion of arable land, and age-old practices honed through millennia of experience.India has a long history of remarkably good agricultural practices. A number of staple foods, including rice, not to mention livestock, are believed to have been domesticated in India. Some of the earliest agricultural settlements in the world (ca. 7000 BCE) have been discovered at Mehrgarh at the foot of the Bolan Pass in Baluchistan (now part of Pakistan).Contrary to popular belief based on colonial-era stereotypes and the enduring current misery, India was not a land of starving millions throughout history. It was only after 1750 that India became impoverished, in synchronicity with the growing prosperity of Britain. Among other things, the British destroyed the existing water-management system, expropriating it and diverting it towards cash crops and away from food crops – this was to lead directly to famine.India suffers periodic and punishing droughts due to the El Nino phenomenon. Roughly once every twelve to fifteen years, India suffers from erratic and below-average monsoons, as in 2009. Since El Nino-related trouble was anticipated, Indian society adapted through the centuries – the kings and other local rulers built up stockpiles, evolved mechanisms of employment and cash payment in times of drought-induced stress, and thereby avoided famine. The result of proper management is starkly evident from the data: during the imperial era of 200 years, there were 31 major famines, as compared to only 17 in the preceding 2,000 years.Finally, India has great genetic diversity. Major crops enjoy variety: for instance, some fifty different types of rice were grown in Kerala in the 19th century CE. Some of this is natural variation based on the different climatic and soil conditions. But a great deal of it must be carefully tended variation based on observation, experimentation, and cross-breeding over millennia.Unfortunately, this diversity is in peril and India is on a path that mirrors the dangerous monoculture of the United States. Experts have pointed out the problems of the current system of agricultural management in that country, which, while productive in the short term, is not sustainable long-term. Besides, a single pest, such as the potato blight that caused the Irish famine of the 1840s, could wipe out much of American agriculture, typified by mile after mile of monoculture corn in the prairie. This offers a window of opportunity for India to offer its own differentiated, organic, high-genetic-diversity products, much as France has been able to brand itself as a high-value-added producer.There are risks in this approach: the subsidies offered to farmers in developed countries, and possible water shortages, as well as the effects of global warming.Still, India has the potential to be the world’s largest and most diverse food producer. There is no good reason why India cannot use its comparative advantage in agriculture and increase its trading and strategic clout. All that is needed is vision, leadership and management. We explore some steps that can turn India into a breadbasket for the world, and, not incidentally, offer full food security to its own citizens.

Wisdom in the Flesh: Embodied Social Practices of Wisdom in Organisations

The majority of contemporary models of wisdom define it in terms of a cognitive ability that is located in an agent’s mind. Even those models that include emotions, affective states, gut feelings etc. hardly recognise the relation between those non-cognitive dimensions, agents’ bodies and how they shape the content of experiences and how social practices of wisdom enfold. This paper will address this gap by providing a phenomenological account that depicts wisdom not as generated by wise individuals but as being produced by and within embodied practices of agents relating to other people, artefacts, concepts, and ways of using others and things. It is argued that management should aim at building facilitative contexts that afford people to make use of and exploit the embodied dimension of wise practices. Exemplary strategies and tools that establish such sites, where embodied social practices of wisdom happen, are described.

Viewing Violence, Mental Illness and Addiction Through a Wise Practices Lens

The progressive approaches First Nations, Metis, and Inuit communities use to address health and wellness concerns are rarely written about or acknowledged in a positive manner. This paper speaks to a concept introduced through the Canadian Aboriginal Aids Network (CAAN) entitled “wise practices”. CAAN saw a wise practices model as more useful and inclusive of Aboriginal community practice and knowledge exchange than the current “best practice” model. In addition, wise practices acknowledge and express the notion of “Changing the Face of Aboriginal Canada”, a metaphor frequently used by the senior author of this paper, as a long overdue vehicle for lifting up the collective morale of Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Indigenous peoples worldwide have long articulated an inherent wisdom in developing recovery processes. This natural wisdom has been chronically dismissed and underutilized as a framework for re-building a healthy social construct and worldview. The social and emotional utility of constructing and implementing a “wise practices” healing model based on what are commonly referred to as the Seven Sacred Values, has great potential for addressing violence, mental illness and addictions in Aboriginal communities and can better serve health promotion alongside the western model of “best practices.” A wise practices model becomes another, deeply humane way, of expressing and operationalizing the traditional knowledge base of Aboriginal Canada and returns a sense of self-efficacy and social strength to Aboriginal communities.

Mental health courts – a human rights perspective

This presentation analyzes specialised mental health courts (MHCs), as one solution to the long-standing, growing challenge of dealing fairly and justly with persons with mental illness (PMIs) coming before the criminal justice system, from a human rights (HR) perspective. MHCs have garnered professional and political support in North America. Redefining their primary purpose from the determination of fault and the imposition of punishment to the provision of treatment and the enhancement of well-being, to date little consideration has been given to whether the costs of MHCs in terms of de-individualised justice are worth their benefits. As Harris points out, 'sometimes wise policies and practices can have unintended side effects'. And as Thomas Jefferson reminds us, 'the price of liberty is eternal vigilance'. Thus, addressing the HR implications of MHCs should rank highly on its advocates' agendas. Potential HR concerns, arising from MHCs and relating to PMIs essential dignity rights as well as their rights to non-degrading treatment, autonomy, privacy, due process and non-discrimination, will be assessed. Like other writers, the presenter urges that only through respecting PMIs' rights to services and fulfilling society's duty to provide same, and not through MHCs, will PMIs be afforded the full rights that democratic states ought to provide their citizens. The manner in which MDOs are managed (or not) by the multiple services and systems they typically encounter creates a broad measure of dissatisfaction that goes beyond any single jurisdiction or country. Moreover, the sufficient issue overlaps and fundamental commonalities in approaches to the problems faced by MDOs provide a general societal and judicial context for an analysis of MHCs and a related HR discussion, notwithstanding the presenter references the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (1950) for her HR analysis.

Education in an Era of Accountability: Do you have to Sacrifice Wise Practices?

This research explores the history, philosophies and practices of an “A rated” public charter school (serving infants through 8th grade) in Florida. Participants are the professional educators who were involved in the founding of the school in 1999. Findings are based on semi-structured interviews probing the details of the history of the school and the educators’ beliefs and practices. Analysis of the educators’ responses reveal a strong sense of ownership and investment by the teachers and administrator who were part of the founding of the school, a focus on doing what is wise for children, a culture of autonomy, and a profound respect for children. Prevailing customs of the school include meetings, field studies, and service. Implications are related to school reforms, teacher autonomy and wise practices.

Food Security through Traditions: Replanting Trees and Wise Practices

Food Security through Traditions: Replanting Trees and Wise Practices

Book Review: Transition assessment: Wise practices for quality lives

Book Review: Transition assessment: Wise practices for quality lives