Search results for "WER"

Turning experience into expertise : technologies of the self in Finnish participatory social policy

2017

This article investigates the micro-level practices of subject-construction in Finnish participatory social policy. Through a governmental ethnography on projects that invite former beneficiaries to become ‘experts-by-experience’ in social welfare organizations, I discern the possibilities for freedom in the participants’ self-construction. By making use of Michel Foucault’s conceptual tools of care of the self and confession, I illustrate how, contrary to the projects’ emancipatory promise of providing the service users the freedom to reconstruct themselves, the projects entail practices that curb the participants’ way of ‘knowing themselves’. They require the service users to reframe thei…

‘The will to not be empowered (according to your rules)’: Resistance in Finnish participatory social policy

2018

Participation has increasingly become a means and an end for successful and ‘empowering’ social policy. Building on previous governmentality critiques of participatory initiatives, this article investigates practices of resistance in the context of Finnish participatory social policy. I adopt a Foucauldian counter-conducts approach as my lens to study critical speech as a form of resistance in initiatives that invite marginalised people as ‘experts-by-experience’ in social welfare organisations. I illustrate how practices of governing and resistance are intertwined and mutually dependent in a much subtler and more practical manner than allows the often-used analytical dichotomy between domi…

Kuntouttava sosiaalityö kunnallisessa perussosiaalityössä : etnografinen tutkimus kuntouttavan sosiaalityön määritelmistä ja käytännöistä

2006

Data practices and inequality in South African early childhood development policy: Technocratic management versus social transformation

2019

Background: In 1994, the African National Congress identified early childhood development as a potential strategy to redress the inequalities of apartheid, however, two and a half decades later, poverty still persists, and South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. Aim: This article explores how policy texts based on and with the use of certain data practices establish ‘truths’ about childhoods and society, construct families and communities, and determine forms of provision to address inequality. Setting: In 2015, the South African government published the National Integrated Early Childhood Policy (NIECDP) to continue to address poverty and inequality. Its implementat…

Hierarchies of knowledge, incommensurabilities and silences in South African ECD policy: Whose knowledge counts?

2017

AbstractPolicy for young children in South Africa is now receiving high-level government support through the ANC’s renewed commitment to redress poverty and inequity and creating ‘a better life for all’ as promised before the 1994 election. In this article, I explore the power relations, knowledge hierarchies and discourses of childhood, family and society in National Curriculum Framework (NCF) as it relates to children’s everyday contexts. I throw light on how the curriculum’s discourses relate to the diverse South African settings, child rearing practices and world-views, and how they interact with normative discourses of South African policy and global early childhood frameworks. The NCF…

Participation in Social Media: Studying Explicit and Implicit Forms of Participation in Communicative Social Networks

2016

The diverse forms of participation in social media raise many methodological and ethical issues that should be acknowledged in research. In this paper, participation in social media is studied by utilising the framework of explicit and implicit participation. The focus is on the communicative and communal aspects of social media. The aim of the paper is to promote the reconsideration of what constitutes participation when online users create connections rather than content. The underlying argument is that research on social media and the development of methods should concentrate more on implicit forms of participation.

The Industrial Applicability of PEA Space Charge Measurements, for Performance Optimization of HVDC Power Cables

2019

Cable manufacturing industries are constantly trying to improve the electrical performance of power cables. During the years, it was found that one of the most relevant degradation factors influencing the cable lifetime is the presence of space charge in the insulation layer. To detect the accumulated charge, the pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) method is the most used technique. Despite the wide use of the PEA cell, several issues are still present. In particular, the PEA output signal is strongly disturbed by the acoustic waves reflections within the PEA cell. This causes the distortion of the output signal and therefore the misinterpretation of the charge profiles. This, in turn, may result…

Editorial: From Meristems to Floral Diversity: Developmental Options and Constraints

2021

Spatial Succession for Degradation of Solid Multicomponent Food Waste and Purification of Toxic Leachate with the Obtaining of Biohydrogen and Biomet…

2022

A huge amount of organic waste is generated annually around the globe. The main sources of solid and liquid organic waste are municipalities and canning and food industries. Most of it is disposed of in an environmentally unfriendly way since none of the modern recycling technologies can cope with such immense volumes of waste. Microbiological and biotechnological approaches are extremely promising for solving this environmental problem. Moreover, organic waste can serve as the substrate to obtain alternative energy, such as biohydrogen (H2) and biomethane (CH4). This work aimed to design and test new technology for the degradation of food waste, coupled with biohydrogen and biomethane prod…

Service-learning in physical education teacher education: towards a critical and inclusive perspective

2020

The purpose of this study was to analyse the impact of service-learning (SL) in physical education teacher education students (PETEs). The PETEs (n = 169) completed one of the editions of a SL program carried out between 2015–2018. This program consisted of designing and leading motor game sessions to facilitate the inclusion of 116 children with special educational needs (SEN). The program was based on Kolb’s learning stages to promote reflection and critical thinking. Reflective journals were used as an instrument to gather information from their experiences. These data were analysed qualitatively through a multiphase approach, initial open-coding and axial coding, using NVivo (10) softwa…