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The advent of post-industrialism in western societies saw social theorists pay greater attention to the blurring of traditional work and life conceptual categories and the growing role of service professions. Further, much of the theorisation around the human service professions has focussed on occupational stress and professional burnout. This focus on the challenges to worker health has limited considerations of how human service professionals can thrive, and not just survive, in demanding employment contexts. In response, the paper considers the 'lifeworld' as a conceptual resource that can encourage new ways of thinking about the work of human service professionals, as well as reworks this resource using the concept of affect to expand consideration of the interconnected, inter-subjective, bodily and emotive nature of human service work. The paper concludes by presenting a heuristic tool that can make these concepts more accessible to professional discourses and can facilitate their use within collaborative research with the human service professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How moral decision-making occurs, matures over time and relates to behaviour is complex. To develop a full picture of moral decision-making, moral development and moral behaviour it is necessary to understand: (a) how real-time moral decisions are made (including relevant social and contextual factors), (b) what processes are required to develop to enable mature moral decisions, (c) how these processes develop over time, and (d) how moral decisions relate to behaviour. In this paper, psychological and social neuroscience theories of moral decision-making and development are briefly reviewed, as is the development of relevant component processes. Various component processes and factors are seen as required for moral decision-making and development, yet there is no comprehensive framework incorporating these components into one explanation of how real-time moral decisions are made and mature. In this paper, we integrated these components into a new framework based on social information processing (SIP) theory. Situational factors, and how both cognitive and affective processes guide moral decisions was incorporated into the Social Information Processing-Moral Decision-Making (SIP-MDM) framework, drawing upon theories and findings from developmental psychology and social neuroscience. How this framework goes beyond previous SIP models was outlined, followed by a discussion of how it can explain both real-time moral decisions and moral development. We concluded with how the SIP-MDM framework could be used to guide future research and theory development in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of the Salamanca Statement, inclusive education has gained prominence at a global range. In China, this has seen the implementation of 'Learning in Regular Classroom' – a nationwide program initiated by the Chinese government in the 1980s to make regular schools accessible to children with disabilities. The developments of 'Learning in Regular Classroom' over a nearly four-decade time are laudable. Yet structural problems abound and persist. One has been 'lazy inclusivism' that insidiously conceals the unequal social order by strategically labelling certain populations as disadvantaged and diligently providing support to them through a mainstream framework that de facto silences their epistemologies and practices. 'Lazy inclusivism' sustains an astute system that tailors a cloak of laborious business to shroud its own laziness in achieving inclusion. Such labourious business is paradoxically lazy owing to its reductionist approach to inclusion that shows little interest in deconstructing the conservative understanding of disability, which itself is constructed and sustained within current schooling. This Special Issue collects wisdom of Chinese children, parents, and educators to force 'lazy inclusivism' to retreat. At the core of the collective wisdom is agency and resilience, both demonstrating autonomy and power in precarious conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflecting the theme of the 2015 Gerontological Society of America (GSA) Annual Scientific Meeting, "Aging as a Lifelong Process," this paper examines intersections between aging processes and their environmental context, develops theory regarding constructive developmental processes and their environmental context, and considers potential implications for conceptualizing and creating aging-friendly communities. The first section examines the primary goals of aging-friendly communities, that is, promoting elder well-being. The second section explores the role of environmental pathways in fostering well-being throughout the lifecourse. The third section presents a new Process Model of Constructive Aging that identifies key developmental processes at the intersection of individual and environmental pathways. The final section considers potential implications for creating aging-friendly communities, including ways in which cities and towns can promote the ability of community members to live fully throughout their lives, and identifies some key conceptual and empirical challenges affecting the future of the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on women's drinking occurs in largely disparate disciplines—including public health, health promotion, psychology, sociology, and cultural studies—and draws on differing philosophical understandings and theoretical frameworks. Tensions between the aims and paradigmatic underpinnings of this research (across and within disciplines) have meant that knowledge and insight can be frequently disciplinary-specific and somewhat siloed. However, in line with the social and economic determinants of the health model, alcohol research needs approaches that can explore how multiple gender-related factors—biological, psycho-social, material, and socio-cultural—combine to produce certain drinking behaviours, pleasures and potential harms. We argue that critical realism as a philosophical underpinning to research can accommodate this broader conceptualization, enabling researchers to draw on multiple perspectives to better understand women's drinking. We illustrate the benefit of this approach by presenting a critical realist theoretical framework for understanding women's drinking that outlines interrelationships between the psychoactive properties of alcohol, the role of embodied individual characteristics and the material, institutional and socio-cultural contexts in which women live. This approach can underpin and foster inter-disciplinary research collaboration to inform more nuanced health promotion practices and policies to reduce alcohol-related harm in a wide range of women across societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Clients facing decision-making for long-term care are in need of support and accessible information. Construction of preferences, including context and calculations, for clients in long-term care is challenging because of the variability in supply and demand. This study considers clients in four different sectors of long-term care: the nursing and care of the elderly, mental health care, care of people with disabilities, and social care. The aim is to understand the construction of preferences in real-life situations. Method: Client choices were investigated by qualitative descriptive research. Data were collected from 16 in-depth interviews and 79 client records. Interviews were conducted with clients and relatives or informal caregivers from different care sectors. The original client records were explored, containing texts, letters, and comments of clients and caregivers. All data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Results: Four cases showed how preferences were constructed during the decision-making process. Clients discussed a wide range of challenging aspects that have an impact on the construction of preferences, e.g. previous experiences, current treatment or family situation. This study describes two main characteristics of the construction of preferences: context and calculation. Conclusion: Clients face diverse challenges during the decision-making process on long-term care and their construction of preferences is variable. A well-designed tool to support the elicitation of preferences seems beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Cognitive Orientation to daily Occupational Performance (CO-OP) approach is a complex rehabilitation intervention in which clients are taught to use problem-solving cognitive strategies to acquire personally-meaningful functional skills, and health care providers are required to shift control regarding treatment goals and intervention strategies to their clients. A multi-faceted, supported, knowledge translation (KT) initiative was targeted at the implementation of CO-OP in inpatient stroke rehabilitation teams at five freestanding rehabilitation hospitals. The study objective was to estimate changes in rehabilitation clinicians’ knowledge, self-efficacy, and practice related to implementing CO-OP. Methods: A single arm pre-post and 6-month follow up study was conducted. CO-OP KT consisted of a 2-day workshop, 4 months of implementation support, a consolidation session, and infrastructure support. In addition, a sustainability plan was implemented. Consistent with CO-OP principles, teams were given control over specific implementation goals and strategies. Multiple choice questions (MCQ) were used to assess knowledge. A self-efficacy questionnaire with 3 subscales (Promoting Cognitive Strategy Use, PCSU; Client-Focused Therapy, CFT; Top-Down Assessment and Treatment, TDAT) was developed for the study. Medical record audits were used to investigate practice change. Data analysis for knowledge and self-efficacy utilized mixed effects models. Medical record audits were analyzed with frequency counts and chi-squares. Results: Sixty-five health care providers consisting mainly of occupational and physical therapists entered the study. Mixed effects models revealed intervention effects for MCQs, CFT, and PCSU at post intervention and follow-up, but no effect on TDAT. No charts showed any evidence of CO-OP use at baseline, compared to 8/40 (20%) post intervention. Post intervention there was a trend towards reduction in impairment goals and significantly more component goals were set (z = 2.7, p = .007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human society is organised through communicative interactions between co-present people. Speech pathology (SP) assessment and intervention strategies aim to access these sites of communication in order to facilitate participation in life situations for people with communication disorders. Surprisingly, however, there is no explicit theory of communication underpinning SP practice and research. As a result, the conceptual and practical basis for rigorous, empirical measurement of communication remains limited, which is a significant challenge for professional practice and research. This critical review discusses the prevailing ways that co-present communication has been conceptualised and measured in SP. In particular, we examine how models of health have informed current ideas and measurement practices. We argue that although patently valuable for SP, they are largely incommensurate with the realities of co-present communication. Drawing on current empirical research in Sociology and Linguistics, we specify the properties of real-time co-present communication and discuss their relationship to current SP concepts and measurement practices. We conclude by suggesting directions for conceptual development and empirical research that will draw SP assessment and intervention strategies closer to real-time co-present communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obesity has become a mainstay of media in all its forms and sociologists and others have increasingly sought to understand what reporting on obesity can tell us about the construction of social problems, health, and health policy. In this commentary, I review recent social science writing on the representation of obesity in the media. I explore three dominant themes in this research, the framing of obesity in the media, media reporting of obesity research, and media characterizations of and reporting on obesity policy. I highlight the strengths of these studies and conclude with suggestions for further avenues of research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]