Translating osteoporosis prevention guidelines: a case study of participatory action and the development of an oversized jigsaw

OBJECTIVE: In Australia, the social gradient of chronic disease has never been as prominent as in current times, and the uptake of preventive health messages appears to be lower in discrete population groups. In efforts to re-frame health promotion from addressing behavior change to empowerment, we engaged community groups in disadvantaged neighborhoods to translate published preventive guidelines into easy-to-understand messages for the general population. METHOD: Our research team established partnerships with older aged community groups located in disadvantaged neighborhoods, determined by cross-referencing addresses with the Australian Bureau of Statistics, to translate guidelines regarding osteoporosis prevention. RESULTS: We developed an oversized jigsaw puzzle that we used to translate recommended osteoporosis prevention guidelines. DISCUSSION: Successful participatory partnerships between researchers, health promotion professionals, and community groups in disadvantaged neighborhoods build capacity in researchers to undertake future participatory processes; they also make the best use of expert knowledge held by specific communities.

CmyView: Walking together apart

Networked learning practices are impacting the field of cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible, with implications for the way in which places of cultural significance are understood, managed, documented, engaged with and studied. Our research explores the intersection between walking, photography, technology and learning, investigating how mobile devices can be used to foster community participation and assess social value within a networked framework for digital heritage. The paper introduces CmyView, a mobile phone application and social media platform in development, with a design concept grounded on both digital heritage and networked learning perspectives. CmyView encourages people to collect and share their views by making images and audio recordings of personally meaningful sites they see, while walking outdoors. Each person’s walking trajectory (along with their associated images and audio files) then becomes a trace-able artefact, something potentially shareable with a community of fellow walkers. The aim of CmyView is to encourage networked heritage practices and community participation, as people learn to assess their own and experience others social values of the built environment. Drawing on a framework for the analysis and design of productive learning networks, we explore the educational design of CmyView arguing that the platform offers a space for democratic heritage education and interpretation, where participatory urban curatorship practices are nurtured. CmyView reframes social value as dynamic, fluid and located within communities, rather than fixed in a place. The paper presents preliminary findings of the activity of a group of four undergraduate students at an Australian university, who used CmyView to explore the immediate surroundings of their campus. Participants interacted with the platform, mapping, capturing, audio recording their impressions and sites of interest in their walks. In so doing, they created shareable trajectories, which were subsequently experienced by the same group of participants on a second walk. The paper concludes with a discussion about the impact of our research for the design of mobile technologies that embrace participation and sharing, through a networked learning perspective. The paper brings together concepts that sit at the intersection of previously separate fields, namely digital heritage and networked learning, to find their synergies.

Promoting critical thinking to high school students when teaching about climate change through a participatory approach

New paradigms in science education are focused on moving towards a sustainable society, meaning redefining the educational practices and developing new methods in order to establish better relationships among individuals, groups, and the society. Being able to reflect upon developing new pedagogic strategies, that support collective action, is crucial to favour social change. Education in the twenty-first century should be based on critical and social theories of the environment and development, in order to link the prospects for sustainability to new forms of economy, social welfare, governance and education (Barraza et al., Environ Educ Res 9(3):347-357, 2003). The nature of contemporary knowledge and knowledge construction demands increasing collaboration and communication between once isolated disciplines. Curriculum integration can reduce curriculum fragmentation, promoting a better awareness of the way different forms of knowledge work and contribute to collaborative knowledge construction, stimulating a critical and a reflexive perspective in their learners. This chapter will focus on the pedagogic strategies used in a research project aiming to provide potential young scientists from rural communities of Mexico and Alaska with a unique opportunity to learn more about their own local knowledge whilst gaining a better understanding of how it intersects with global processes. The project has helped students make cognitive links between their scientific knowledge and life experience, and has established affective and behavioral links which have intensified the ways in which they value their environment, culture, traditions and communities (Tytler et al. 2010; Bodenhorn, Learning about environmental research in a context of climate change: an international scholastic interchange (pilot project). Final report. BASC (Barrow Arctic Science Consortium)). The conjunction of collaborative, interdisciplinary work and multiple pedagogic strategies applied in this specific educational practice has shown the potential of implementing research group initiatives in science education. We believe that educational approaches that create spaces for students to work together towards a goal defined as a common good, can contribute significantly to develop effective science programs in schools.

The Ophelia (OPtimise HEalth LIteracy and Access) process : using health literacy alongside grounded and participatory approaches to develop interventions in partnership with marginalised populations

This paper seeks to explore the potential of a newly developed, grounded and participatory approach to development of health-literacy and health-care access interventions for equity – the Ophelia (OPtimising HEalth LIteracy and Access) process (Batterham et al., 2014). The methodology involves undertaking a needs assessment of the target population using intensive qualitative and quantitative methods, developing vignettes of key sub-groups within the population based on their health literacy profile of strengths and weaknesses, and then engaging with frontline practitioners and community membersin developing realistic solutions (Batterham et al., 2014).

Legitimising children’s evidence: Inclusive participatory research with children with disability

Achieving human rights is at the core of development outcomes, and the achievement of positive development outcomes increasingly relies on evidence-based policy and practice. However, people with disability have been routinely excluded from research evidence and knowledge production, both due to a lack of interest in their issues (Yeo and Moore, 2003) and through an over-reliance on research design that does not address barriers to their participation as research respondents (Wilson et al. 2013). Children with disability are even more marginalised from participation in knowledge production processes and have been passively subjected to research being conducted on or about them, rather than with them (Gray and Winter 2011a). This exclusion is even more evident in developing countries of the global south though with some rare exceptions (Kembhavi and Wirz, 2009; Singal, 2010; Wickenden and Kembhavi- Tam, 2014; Don et al, 2015; Nguyen et al, 2015). This paper reports on the ‘Voices of Pacific Children with Disability’ project (hereafter referred to as the Voices project) which, drawing on the broader field of child participatory research, developed a method for children with disability to competently provide evidence about their needs, aspirations and human rights priorities. Eighty-nine children with disability living in rural and urban areas of Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea (PNG) participated, using a suite of data collection ‘tools’ designed to support children to express their life priorities and human rights’ needs. In this paper we examine a sub-set of this data related to children’s future priorities, the primary one being employment, and explore the utility of such evidence for governments, NGOs and other stakeholders, in shaping policy and service delivery in line with the rights of children with disability. Such data is important when working in an evidence informed way as often these organisations have limited data on the needs and values of the groups they serve.

Evaluation practices in participatory arts in international development: findings of a systematic literature review

Participatory arts initiatives are increasingly used in development contexts to contribute to desired outcomes. This chapter explores evaluation practices employed in such initiatives, drawing from a systematic review of 151 articles on arts in development. Findings indicate that evaluation is undertaken infrequently, with only 23 of those articles including, or primarily consisting of, evaluations. Qualitative methodologies were most prevalent, with fewer mixed methods and quantitative studies. Claims about outcomes were ubiquitous, but evidence of theories of change or systematic data analysis to support these assertions was not strong overall. The chapter concludes with recommendations for more effective arts in development work through stronger evaluation practice.

The Movement between: Dance improvisation, witnessing and participatory performance.

This was a practice-based project which extended the possibilities for dance improvisation in performance. The project engaged questions about how live performance is constituted, about what the roles of the dancer and audience might entail, and about how a community of common experience can develop through a responsive exchange between its participants.

Disorderly categories in picture postcards from colonial Papua and New Guinea

At the turn of the century in Melbourne, a notice typed on the verso of a postcard stated that the South Yarra Baptist Young Men's class was meeting on the following Sunday at 2.45 p.m. The card, published in the United Kingdom, was numbered 51828 in the Valentine series of Papuan postcards.1 The image, a photograph of Hanuabada village taken in the early 1880s, and the text, written early in 1900, are contradictory and constitute separate realms of evidence that invite a renegotiation of meaning, analysis, and interpretation of the relationships between images, tourism, colonial rule, and ethnographic knowing. The visual evidence suggests the postcard may have played an ethnographic, educative role in the public understanding of Papua, which had just become an Australian Territory and was not yet well known. It is also suggestive of educative roles related to mission endeavours, subimperialist ambitions and the new tourist traffic through the ports of Port Moresby, Samarai, and Rabaul.

The Uses of Digital Literacy

Online social networks, user-created content and participatory media are often still ignored by professionals, denounced in the press and banned in schools. but the potential of digital literacy should not be underestimated. Hartley reassesses the historical and global context, commercial and cultural dynamics and the potential of popular productivity through analysis of the use of digital media in various domains, including creative industries, digital storytelling, YouTube, journalism and mediated fashion.

Uses of YouTube : digital literacy and the growth of knowledge

I invented YouTube. Well, not YouTube exactly, but something close – something called YIRN; and not by myself exactly, but with a team. In 2003-5 I led a research project designed to link geographically dispersed young people, to allow them to post their own photos, videos and music, and to comment on the same from various points of view – peer to peer, author to public, or impresario to audience. We wanted to find a way to take the individual creative productivity that is associated with the Internet and combine it with the easy accessibility and openness to other people’s imagination that is associated with broadcasting; especially, in the context of young people, listening to the radio. So we called it the Youth Internet Radio Network, or YIRN.

The Second Life of urban planning? Using neogeography tools for community engagement

The majority of the world’s citizens now live in cities. Although urban planning can thus be thought of as a field with significant ramifications on the human condition, many practitioners feel that it has reached the crossroads in thought leadership between traditional practice and a new, more participatory and open approach. Conventional ways to engage people in participatory planning exercises are limited in reach and scope. At the same time, socio-cultural trends and technology innovation offer opportunities to re-think the status quo in urban planning. Neogeography introduces tools and services that allow non-geographers to use advanced geographical information systems. Similarly, is there potential for the emergence of a neo-planning paradigm in which urban planning is carried out through active civic engagement aided by Web 2.0 and new media technologies thus redefining the role of practicing planners? This paper traces a number of evolving links between urban planning, neogeography and information and communication technology. Two significant trends – participation and visualisation – with direct implications for urban planning are discussed. Combining advanced participation and visualisation features, the popular virtual reality environment Second Life is then introduced as a test bed to explore a planning workshop and an integrated software event framework to assist narrative generation. We discuss an approach to harness and analyse narratives using virtual reality logging to make transparent how users understand and interpret proposed urban designs.

Critically evaluating rural women’s participation and empowerment : An interdisciplinary feminist framework for research and analysis

Community development is increasingly using participatory processes that aim to be inclusive and empowering. However, researchers have found that such processes can have contradictory effects. Australian research has highlighted the significant leadership of rural women in sustainable community and economic development and in the adoption of new communication technologies such as the Internet. A focus on gender in participatory development may therefore lead to more effective programs and policies. This chapter outlines an interdisciplinary feminist framework for critically evaluating the participation and empowerment of rural women. This framework was found effective in evaluating an Australian project that aimed to enhance rural women’s access to communication technologies and to empower its participants. Its multiple theoretical and methodological approaches are outlined. The framework advocates an analysis of diversity and difference and the macro and micro contexts. Some principles and strategies for rural women’s inclusion, participation, empowerment, and for participatory feminist evaluation are outlined.

Learning, evaluation, action and reflection for new technologies, empowerment and rural sustainability (The LEARNERS project)

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