The Role of the Essay Genre and Contextual Influences in Shaping Adult English Learners’ Choices About Sociocultural Resources

In this multiple case study, I examine relationships among the essay genre, contextual influences, sociocultural resources, and choices made by four adult English learners enrolled in an English composition course at a community college. My primary objective is to provide an expanded view of the writing processes used by adult English learners. The research draws heavily on participants’ sociocultural realities before and after their arrival in the United States. The patterns in the data showed that the essay genre along with context significantly contributed to participants’ agentive capacity. The essay genre, in particular, determined the types of competencies they needed to demonstrate, while contextual influences shaped the available resources and their access to those resources.

Strategies Used by Interprofessional Teams to Counter Healthcare Marginalization and Engage Complex Patients

Low-income U.S. patients with co-occurring behavioral and physical health conditions often struggle to obtain high-quality health care. The health and sociocultural resources of such “complex” patients are misaligned with expectations in most medical settings, which ask patients to mobilize forms of these assets common among healthier and wealthier populations. Thus, complex patients encounter barriers to engagement with their health behaviors and health care providers, resulting in poor outcomes. But this outcome is not inevitable. This study uses in-depth interviews with two interprofessional primary care teams and surveys of all six teams in a complex patient program to examine strategies for improving patient engagement. Five primary care team strategies are identified. While team member burnout was a common byproduct, professional support offered by the team structure reduced this effect. Team perspectives offer insight into mechanisms of improvement and the professional burdens and benefits of efforts to counter health care marginalization among complex patients.

Funfair past and present for geocultural branding of Ural cities

The subject of this research is the funfair past and present for geocultural branding of Ural cities. The object is the geocultural potential of small historical Ural cities – Irbit and Krasnoufimsk. In the course of study it was established that in modern urban space there are noticeable creative initiatives that demonstrate an alternative vision of image of the city and its local communities (production, consumer, artistic). It is underlined that geocultural resources of the city is a fusion of particular natural-landscape and sociocultural resources that permanently “provoke” arrangement of a situation for a creative action – determination of latent capabilities of these resources and their subsequent utilization for the purpose of testing new promising suggestions, are useful for artistic self-expression, as well as mending an effective strategy for geocultural branding of the city. Solution of the indicated problems leans on the concept of geocultural branding of the city and territories in the forma that it was described in scientific writings of D. N. Zamyatin, as well as on the theory of creative city of C. Landry, namely the thesis on creative action. The scientific novelty consists in demonstration of potential application of the concept of geocultural branding to a funfair action. Shifting away from the traditional understanding of designation of funfair, its recognition as the generator of “creative energy” of the city, the center of cultural and artistic activity of the people, allows finding consensual solutions between the local authorities, business communities and creative groups.

TOWARD A NETWORK OF CHANGE: PROMOTING AGE-FRIENDLY COMMUNITIES FROM THE INSIDE OUT

The experience of aging is often framed by the communities in which we live, work and play. At the same time, these communities are also impacted by individuals as they age in place. This symposium presents research using community-partnered methods to highlight the agency of local actors—including older residents themselves—as they work to change their local communities. At the broadest level of geographic scale, Black illustrates how information from population surveys with older adults can be leveraged to mobilize public-private partnerships from the local to state level to advance policy and practice on housing and transportation to support aging in place. Focusing regionally in New Jersey, Greenfield and Reyes analyze longitudinal, qualitative interview data from leaders of age-friendly community initiatives to develop empirically-grounded theory on the range of roles of older adults in aging-friendly community change processes. The final two papers present depth in understanding how older adults actively construct their own sense of community vis-à-vis more micro-social processes. Yeh uses Photovoice methodology to understand how older adults aging in place manage the societal trends of urbanization and social inequalities as they manifest within their own city. Versey examines how older adults aging in place in the context of neighborhood gentrification mobilize networks to preserve a community “sense of place” when sociocultural resources are displaced. Consistent with a community gerontology framework, the presentations demonstrate how community-level dynamics around aging are shaped not only by macro-social influences, but also micro-social interactions including, and sometimes initiated by, older residents themselves.

Are teacher-credentialing programs providing enough training in multiculturalism for pre-service teachers?

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore how multicultural curriculum and instruction in a teacher-credentialing program prepared pre-service teachers to work with diverse students. Design/methodology/approach The research method used was a qualitative approach. The research design was a descriptive single embedded case study to interview pre-service teachers who were in their second semester in a teacher-credentialing program at a university on the west coast and pre-service teachers who were in their final semester in the same teacher-credentialing program. Pre-service teachers discussed their disappointment in the program for their lack of training in how to work with culturally diverse students. Findings The findings from the study will add to the body of knowledge specific to teacher-credentialing programs, curriculum developers and universal design for learning on K-12 education. Research limitations/implications As schools become more diverse, an important role of teacher-credentialing courses is to train future teachers with the knowledge to assist culturally diverse students. If teachers were multicultural teachers, they would be better prepared to instruct culturally diverse students and could acknowledge sociocultural resources and information that students bring to the classroom. Originality/value The study is essential because training teachers to instruct culturally diverse students is critical as student demographics become more diverse.

Sociocultural Investigation of Cancer Caregiving

This chapter provides theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the role of sociocultural factors in caregiving involvement, caregiving stress, caregivers’ unmet needs, and caregivers’ quality-of-life outcomes. This chapter concludes that taking socioculturally tailored and targeted approaches is promising for identifying subgroups of caregivers who are vulnerable to the adverse effects of cancer in the family and developing evidence-based interventions. To improve caregiver quality of life and minimize caregiver morbidity and premature mortality, sociocultural resources and risk factors should be further studied and integrated into clinical practice. Transdisciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations are necessary to achieve the ultimate goals of the emerging field of cancer caregiver research and practice around the globe.

Development of agritourism as an innovative approach to agricultural complex management in Russia

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the problems and prospects for the further development of agricultural tourism in Russia. The paper focuses on innovations in the agricultural complex, particularly on an innovative approach to agricultural tourism management. Design/methodology/approach The authors use statistical analysis and a case study approach as the main methods. The paper contains statistical data on agricultural complex and agritourism development in a number of Russian regions. The case study illustrates the prospects for implementing innovations in the management of an agricultural complex and the development of agritourism. Findings The research sheds light on the contemporary state of the agricultural complex in the Russian Federation and on the challenges for the development of agriculture during economic sanctions, with a related impact on exchange rates and the value of the Russian Ruble. Originality/value The paper comments on the sociocultural resources for agricultural development based on the results of a three-year study of tourism-based networking involving entrepreneurs, locals and state and municipal authorities.

Representations of love in the early stages of love

Love, especially romantic and partnership love, has been a legitimate research theme in social science since the mid-twentieth century. In the research less attention is paid to how personal conceptions of love are formed within specific sociocultural contexts. One question that emerges in relation to social representations theory is: how are ideas about love, or knowledge of love, re-presented among particular social groups and which sociocultural resources are used in the process? In our questionnaire-based research we ascertained which perceptions, ideas and knowledge are prevalent among young people who are gaining their first experiences of partner relationships, what they consider love to be in their own context and what knowledge they have of love. The questionnaire was completed by 268 higher education students, who provided 38 representations of love, based on personal experience and linked to sociocultural sources of love.

Theories of Gender in Adjustment to Medical Illness (DRAFT)

Caregiving has historically been considered the role of women, yet the number of male caregivers has increased substantially in recent years. Such changes call for systematic understanding of the role of gender in caregiving processes. This chapter summarizes theoretical perspectives pertaining to gender issues in caregiving and then evaluates their adequacy for the cancer caregiver population. Despite lack of gender theory–driven research in cancer caregiving, studies support the adequacy of gender theories in identifying subgroups of caregivers who are vulnerable to adverse effects of cancer in the family and in developing evidence-based interventions. Integration of the issues related to the medical trajectory of the patients, lifespan stage of the caregivers, sociocultural resources, and risk factors in this emerging area of gender-oriented research and practice in cancer caregiver is highly encouraged.

Responsive play: Creating transformative classroom spaces through play as a reader response

This eight-month study, conducted in a first-grade classroom in the southwestern United States, analyzed young children's playful responses to literature. It focuses on framing a theory that underpins play as a form of reader response, which I term ‘responsive play’. It further aims to answer the overarching research question and the sub-question: What are the affordances of play for responding to text in a first-grade classroom? What are the sociocultural resources that children use to respond to and make meaning with text? Findings suggest that the children in this study created a space for learning and understanding, through their responsive play, that allowed them to think through, demonstrate, and share their experiential knowledge, their funds of knowledge, and their intertextual knowledge – as sociocultural resources – and to connect these to their literacy learning as they cooperatively transacted with and responded to various books. These findings suggest that children's play, language, and literacy are complementary, that children's responsive play should be encouraged in the classroom setting, and that children's experiences and funds of knowledge should be valued as additive to the academic learning context. Implications of this study include that responsive play can be viewed as a generative source of academic learning and that the notion of reader response, in research and practice, can be reconceived to include responsive play.