Activist Learners’ Creative Thinking Processes in Posing and Solving Geometry Problem

<p style="text-align: justify;">This study aimed to describe the creative thinking process of students with active learning styles in proposing and solving problems on geometry material. The research instruments were Honey and Mumford's Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ), problem-solving and submission test sheets, and interview guidelines. The LSQ questionnaire was distributed to students majoring in mathematics education at a university in Malang, Indonesia, with a total of 200 students. Students who have an active learning style and meet the specified criteria will be selected as research subjects. Based on research on creative thinking processes in proposing and solving problems in students with active learning styles, it was found that there were differences in behaviour between subject 1 and subject 2 at each stage of creative thinking. However, based on the researcher's observations of the behaviour of the two subjects at each stage of their thinking, there are similarities in behaviour, namely, they tend to be in a hurry to do something, prefer trial and error, and get ideas based on daily experience.</p>

What motivates physicians to propose private services in a mixed private-public healthcare system? A mixed methods study

Background Implementation of private elements, including private insurances, in public healthcare system is now common in many countries, and its impacts have been well studied. Little, however, is known about the motives leading physicians, major role players in the system, to promote the usage of private services. The aim of this study was to explore the various motives leading physicians within public systems to propose private services to their patients, while examining the possible associations to their specialty and level of commitment. Methods A total of 197 physicians from specialisms loaded more to private/public sectors participated in a cross-sectional telephone survey regarding their attitudes on their practices, private insurances, access to healthcare, and job satisfaction. The association between the likert scale questions to their recommendation to purchase private insurance, and the commitment they felt towards patients were analyzed using Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) as well as logistic regression models. Results Our findings suggest physicians engaged in dual practice are less likely to promote private insurances among their patients if they are satisfied with their public job (OR = 0.92, 95%CI 0.89,0.94). Physicians perceived private insurances as beneficial for patients, were found likely to promote them (OR = 1.65, %95CI 1.16, 2.35). The commitment physicians felt toward patients who paid out-of-pocket money was associated to their sense of being trusted and valued (OR = 1.99, 95%CI 1.33, 2.88; OR = 1.5, 95%CI 1.05, 2.13 respectively). Conclusion This study suggests a deeper understanding of physicians’ daily experience of the private-public mix and it’s consequences, and could provide a platform for future studies. Further studies on physician’s role in health privatization processes are needed, and could aid policymakers in their efforts to strengthen healthcare systems around the world.

Revisiting the Mesopotamian City: a Drawing of its Inhabitants' Mental- Image

Mesopotamian cities were formed sometime during the fourth millennium BCE, and many of them continued to be inhabited as much as 3000 years. While urban characteristics of these cities has been extensively studied, the current article is concerned with exploring the inhabitants' daily experience in the city; a subject that has not been sufficiently explored despite its importance in urban studies. The objective is to expand the understanding of the relation between the ancient city and its occupants. The paper adopts the concept of the City Image as introduced in the seminal work of Kevin Lunch "Image of The City" in investigating aspects of the Mesopotamian city that qualifies it to form a strong mental Image for her citizens, derived from the legibility of its elements and the structure they form. Using a descriptive analytical method in reviewing previous literature, the research first clarifies the shared characters of Mesopotamian cities, and addresses the stature of the city in Mesopotamians' culture. I then specify the five urban elements of the city image as categorised by Lynch; paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks, in addition to addressing manifestations of the citizens' urban life in the Mesopotamian city. Afterward, visualization of the citizen's daily experience through the urban fabric of the city is provided, to arrive at a conclusion of the Legibility of the mental image of the Mesopotamian city in the perception of its citizens.

The Notion of Common and Social Representations

The recent emergence of social and political movements calling for common sense and the use of the notion of common in philosophy and social sciences has led to the opening of a reflection on the social and scientific representations concerning them. After having mentioned some political uses of the notions of common sense and common, we examine a notion that is closely associated with them: that of community on which S. Moscovici expresses a reserved position but introduces a new perspective on cybercommunities and the importance attached to affectivity in community groups. The ways of dealing with common sense, identified over time, from antiquity to the present day, highlight certain recurrences from a double perspective. From a typological point of view, several characterizations are distinguished: through simple sharing, through the sameness of moral values and emotional dimensions, through rooting in daily experience, through its devaluation as a form of knowledge in relation to science, through rationality, through its potential for revolt or on the contrary through conformity. From a conceptual point of view, common sense is analyzed as an epistemic characteristic of a group, in its content, formation, transmission, and role in social cohesion. The latest developments in the reflection highlight its link with democracy and populism. The term common of recent appearance is situated opposite the notion of common goods which, after having focused on material realities, now integrates the facts and practices of knowledge, being the subject of a specific domain: the commons of knowledge. The common appears as a new way of approaching social relationships and responds to the desire to introduce a relational, ethical and political dimension into the analysis of social and change processes. In this respect, the call to the common presents affinities with the approach of social representations. The examination of the different scientific and secular representations regarding the notions of community, common sense and common makes it possible to establish connections with the perspective of the study of social representations and to open the way for new investigations.

Accuracy in perceptions of a partner’s sexual goals

Intimate partners engage in sex for a variety of reasons, and their perceptions of each other’s sexual goals play an important role in intimate relationships. How accurate are these perceptions of a partner’s sexual goals and is accuracy associated with relationship quality and sexual satisfaction for the couple? To answer these questions, we conducted a 21-day dyadic daily experience study of 121 couples, which we analyzed using two different approaches to examine accuracy: the profile approach and the Truth and Bias Model. Results from these two approaches demonstrated that people’s perceptions of their partner’s sexual goals were indeed accurate, but that accuracy was not associated with relationship quality or sexual satisfaction for the perceiver or their partner. Rather, perceiving a partner’s sexual goals in normative (or socially desirable) ways was associated with relationship quality and sexual satisfaction for both the perceiver and their partner. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Scraping By and Making Do: Navigating New Zealand’s Welfare System

<p>In August 2017, debate over Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei’s declaration of two-decade-old benefit fraud sparked an ongoing discussion around poverty in New Zealand that revealed the fraying edges of the country’s welfare safety net. The perception that New Zealand has a low level of poverty and a fair, coherent welfare system that ensures those “deserving” of support receive what they need is untrue. Instead, there is an extraordinary disconnect between those responsible for running New Zealand’s welfare system and the daily experience of beneficiaries and NGO workers who must navigate the complex welfare landscape to address hardship. Patching together the threads of a fraying safety net, for New Zealand’s most vulnerable, is little-appreciated work, but crucial to their survival nonetheless. In this thesis, I explore how beneficiaries and NGO workers use tactics to manage the gaps between policy, practice and need created by state strategy in order to address hardship. I examine the resilience and experiential expertise of beneficiaries and NGO workers as they work around the limitations of state bureaucracy to address high levels of poverty in New Zealand.</p>

Scraping By and Making Do: Navigating New Zealand’s Welfare System

<p>In August 2017, debate over Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei’s declaration of two-decade-old benefit fraud sparked an ongoing discussion around poverty in New Zealand that revealed the fraying edges of the country’s welfare safety net. The perception that New Zealand has a low level of poverty and a fair, coherent welfare system that ensures those “deserving” of support receive what they need is untrue. Instead, there is an extraordinary disconnect between those responsible for running New Zealand’s welfare system and the daily experience of beneficiaries and NGO workers who must navigate the complex welfare landscape to address hardship. Patching together the threads of a fraying safety net, for New Zealand’s most vulnerable, is little-appreciated work, but crucial to their survival nonetheless. In this thesis, I explore how beneficiaries and NGO workers use tactics to manage the gaps between policy, practice and need created by state strategy in order to address hardship. I examine the resilience and experiential expertise of beneficiaries and NGO workers as they work around the limitations of state bureaucracy to address high levels of poverty in New Zealand.</p>

TWO-DIMENSIONAL COLOUR APPEARANCE SCALES FOR COLOUR STIMULI HAVING HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE

New colour appearance scales close to daily experience and image quality enhancement are highly desired including whiteness, blackness, vividness and depth. This article describes a new experiment to accumulate the data under HDR (high dynamic range) conditions. The data were then used to test the performance of different colour appearance scales such as CIELAB and CAM16-UCS plus the recent extension by Berns’ Vab*, Dab*. The results showed those Berns’ scales gave reasonable performance. However, there was no scale capable of predicting colour appearance data covering a wide dynamic range. New scales were developed based on the absolute scales of brightness and colourfulness of CAM16-UCS and gave accurate prediction to the data.

Changes in Momentary Experience Were Associated With the Onset of the COVID Pandemic

We explored the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on daily experience using momentary recordings of affect, activities, locations, and social interactions, documenting changes in the pandemic’s early stages. 123 individuals 50 years or older from an ongoing panel study completed 1-week bursts of Ecological Momentary Assessment (6/day) in March, May, and July. A pronounced spike in negative affect and decrease in positive affect was observed in late March compared with early March, which in May and June returned to early March levels. Levels of fatigue, however, did not follow this pattern. Being with one’s spouse/significant other and family also increased, then decreased. Working and interacting with others dropped from early to late March and then remained steady; doing chores had the opposite pattern. Regarding location, being at the workplace dropped from early to late March and remained steady, and being at home had the opposite pattern. Additional analyses explored these patterns.

COVID-19 and Emancipatory Gerontology: Perspectives of Political Economy and the American Rescue Plan

The present historic moment – a pandemic worsened by far-right extremism – reveals how mounting individual and collective precarity across the lifecourse and in old age resides within societal institutions of colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. Contradictions between systems of democracy and capitalism construct an ageist society aligned with neoliberal ideologies attempting to dismantle and privatize Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These issues confront the call for a critical inquiry that matters in the lives of those who daily experience social injustices (Denzin, 2017). This paper presents emancipatory gerontology (Estes & DiCarlo, 2019) as a critical praxis to challenge assumptions, frameworks, and delirium writ large in American society as it relates to how we conceive of age, aging, and generations. We elucidate how the $1.9 trillion 2021 American Rescue Plan represents a paradigm shift that aims to supplant austerity economics with human, public, and community benefit. This knock on the hegemonic commitment to austerity and its mantra is an opportunity to interrogate the effects of, and advance, emancipatory policies and practices. Gerontology is inadequate without a lens for examining how critical analysis and social action might inform one another. To shift from disruption to transformation in the “new normal,” scholars must bring the past and future into the present to engage realistic utopian pedagogies of hope. Emancipatory gerontology offers a theoretical framework and vocabulary for interrogating individual and social consequences of major policy and institutional forces in relation to aging and generations across the lifecourse.