Search results for "Everyday life"

Constructing relational space in early childhood education

2014

This paper examines early childhood education (ECE) by applying and developing relational-spatial perspectives on everyday life in educational institutions for young children. The aim is to investigate the dynamic process of construction of space and to illustrate with selected empirical episodes how this process occurs in ECE. Drawing on authors such as Soja and Bourdieu, the starting point for the analysis is that space is socially produced in everyday interactions in a process that intertwines the physical environment and concrete objects, personal interpretations of physical and cultural space, and cultural and collective views about space in ECE. We illustrate this process with ethnogr…

Important themes in research on and education of young children in day care centres: Finnish viewpoints

2013

The aim of this article is to outline important themes, according to Finnish early childhood education researchers, that need to be addressed in researching and educating children under three years of age in Finland. To achieve this aim, the article divides into two parts. First, we present and discuss the results of a small-scale survey, conducted in Finland, on the views of key informants in the early childhood education units of Finnish universities. Second, the views presented in the survey are used as a starting point to introduce two ongoing qualitative case studies on the everyday life of toddlers in Finnish day care centres. In line with the survey findings, these case studies empha…

Clothes

2019

Niina Rutanen, Raija Raittila, Mari Vuorisalo write about Clothes and clothing practices in Finnish early childhood education and care. The adopted approach combines relational sociology and geography and addresses the different kinds of spaces clothing practices create in ECEC. Clothing and clothing practices play an important role in the everyday life of ECEC, but often have a different meaning to educators, to the children and to parents. Niina, Raija and Mari show how these different spaces collide with each other and create one possible story of Arctic childhood. In their understanding, space is a social construction and changes in action. They state how ‘the ‘ideal’ Nordic child is th…

Physics demos for all UVEG degrees: a unique project in Spain

2016

Abstract The Physics Demo Project at the University of Valencia ( www.uv.es/fisicademos ) has developed a collection of physics demonstrations to be used during lectures. It consists of more than 130 experimental demos about different physics topics. More than 30 professors borrow them whenever they lecture on physics in any of our 40 courses in 17 different science or technical degrees, involving 246 ECTS and more than 3500 students. Each demo kit with a simple experimental set displays a particular physics phenomenon. An on-line user guide highlights the main physics principles involved, instructions on how to use it and advices of how to link it to the theoretical concepts or to technica…

Tinker, Tailor…: Creativity in Foreign Language Learning and Teaching

2017

The word creativity has recently won great popularity in numerous contexts, showing both positive (“creative writing”) and negative (“creative accounting”) connotations. The concept itself has many meanings as it may refer to the end product of one’s activity, the cognitive processes involved in the creative act, the personality of a creative person, the development of creativity across the life span, and also the factors that either stimulate or inhibit the process of creation (Łukasik, 2015; Simonton, 2000). There is also a distinction between exceptional creativity, manifesting itself in important works that are significant for a given society, and everyday creativity, which can be obser…

Using Problem-focused Approach to Nurture Creativity and Entrepreneurship among Students

2015

Abstract This paper discusses the use of a problem-focused approach to nurture creativity and entrepreneurship among students in a school setting. The study sample consisted of three groups of students (age 16 years old) from three secondary schools in Malaysia. The participants consist of 25–35 students from each school (n=95). The data collection took place during three workshops, which were conducted using a problem-focused approach, with participants from each school. At the end of each workshop, participants were asked to fill in an electronic diary about their experience. The participants’ reflections after the first workshop were analysed to identify the use of a problem-focused appr…

The relationship between online vigilance and affective well-being in everyday life: Combining smartphone logging with experience sampling

2021

Contains fulltext : 220301.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Through communication technology, users find themselves constantly connected to others to such an extent that they routinely develop a mindset of connectedness. This mindset has been defined as online vigilance. Although there is a large body of research on media use and well-being, the question of how online vigilance impacts well-being remains unanswered. In this preregistered study, we combine experience sampling and smartphone logging to address the relation of online vigilance and affective well-being in everyday life. Seventy-five Android users answered eight daily surveys over five days (N = 1615) whilst having their…

Music Listening for Supporting Adolescents’ Sense of Agency in Daily Life

2020

Sense of agency refers to the ability to influence one’s functioning and environment, relating to self-efficacy and wellbeing. In youth, agency may be challenged by external demands or redefinition of self-image. Music, having heightened relevance for the young, has been argued to provide feelings of self-agency for them. Yet, there is little empirical research on how music impacts adolescents’ daily sense of agency. The current study investigated whether music listening influences adolescents’ perceived agency in everyday life and which individual and contextual determinants would explain such an influence. Participants were 44 adolescents (48% female, 36% with training in music, mean age …

2020

Abstract Trait anxiety refers to the stable tendency to attend to threats and experience fears and worries across many situations. According to the widely noticed, pioneering investigation by Etkin et al. (2004) trait anxiety is strongly associated with reactivity in the right basolateral amygdala to non-conscious threat. Although this observation was based on a sample of only 17 individuals, no replication effort has been reported yet. We reexamined automatic amygdala responsiveness as a function of anxiety in a large sample of 107 participants. Besides self-report instruments, we administered an indirect test to assess implicit anxiety. To assess early, automatic stages of emotion process…

Challenging Unequal Gendered Conventions in Heterosexual Relationship Contexts through Affective Dissonance

2019

In Nordic countries, intimate relationships are routinely compared against ideals of gender equality, even though equality is not always achieved in everyday life. In this article, we analyse interviews with women that lived in unconventional relationships: mid- to later-life women in relationships with younger men, and bisexual women who have had relationships with people of different genders. The women’s expectations of equality and reciprocity in heterosexual relationships collided with the lived reality of inequalities, causing affective dissonance. We identify three strategies that women use to deal with this affective dissonance. In the first strategy, unequal relationship patterns ar…