This article provides a rationale for adopting the critical realism instead of pragmatism paradigm when researching skilled migrants' workplace integration in Australia. While the extant...

Care is a contradictory terrain, as seen in the persistence of both socioeconomic vulnerabilities and the wide range of compassionate discourses and practices in society, including in the education landscape. The pandemic has laid bare the fault lines embedded within healthcare systems, schools, and biopolitical frameworks, unveiling important challenges that permeate the institutional, emotional, and relational dimensions of care provision and reception. Engaging in interdisciplinary thinking spanning from Education, Philosophy, Environmental Humanities, Film Studies, Literary Studies, to Cultural Studies, the collection (...) in this special issue hopes to contribute to the burgeoning growth of global conversations about the need to critically reevaluate the challenges, opportunities, and ambiguities associated with ‘care and caring’ today. This introductory essay provides a framing of the essays in the collection, shedding light on the complexities and challenges associated with care in schools and universities, in mental health crises, and in film and literary representations. Each essay offers its own theoretical exploration of the multifaceted nature of care, the challenges it faces, and the potential for transformative interventions to re-articulate care through the notion of ‘becoming mattering’. (shrink)

AimHealthcare workers have directly provided care for COVID-19 patients, and have faced many additional sources leading to poor mental health. The study aimed to investigate the mental health problems and related factors among healthcare staff in Vietnam.MethodsA descriptive cross-sectional mixed methods study, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods, was performed among 400 healthcare workers working at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Ninh Binh General Hospital from the first day of treatment for COVID-19 patients to May 01, 2020.ResultsThe results (...) showed that 8.0% of participants had stress, 17.5% of participants had anxiety, and 14.8% of participants had depression. Approximately 50% of participants reported that they had at least one of these symptoms. The findings illustrated that stress, anxiety, and depression were associated with the position in a hospital, health status during the COVID-19 pandemic, family members/relatives infected with COVID-19, physical and mental support from friends, family, and community, department, years of working, and the average work hours per day of healthcare workers exposed to COVID-19.ConclusionDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers who worked in the hospital providing treatment and care for COVID-19 patients dealt with mental health problems such as stress, anxiety, and depression. It is necessary to promote mental health among healthcare workers, to contribute to the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam. (shrink)

Negative self-schemas are fundamental to social anxiety disorder and contribute to its persistence, thus understanding how to change schemas is of critical importance. Memory-based interventions and associated theories propose that reconstructing autobiographical memories tethered to schemas with conceptual details that challenge the associated expectations will lead to schema change. Here, we test this proposal in a between-subjects behavioural experiment with undergraduate participants with social anxiety. All participants were asked to recall aversive social memories, evaluated these memories on a series of (...) scales, including estimates of reoccurrence, and provided ratings of negative and positive schema beliefs. Next, half the participants reconstructed (rescripted) these aversive memories with conceptual details that challenged the active schema (conceptual condition) and the other half reconstructed the memories with additional experiential details (perceptual condition). All participants provided again evaluations of the original memory and their schema beliefs. Our analysis revealed that the conceptual condition led to significant reductions in negative self-schemas, increases in positive self-schemas, and decreases in estimates of future negative event reoccurrence. Thus, effective schema-change, both a weakening of negative schemas and a strengthening of more positive, adaptive schemas, is dependent on altering the underlying meaning of associated autobiographical memories. (shrink)

In Vague Language, Elasticity Theory and the Use of 'Some', Nguyet Nhu Le and Grace Qiao Zhang present the first comprehensive study of the word 'some', focusing on its elasticity. In particular, they consider how 'some' is both a quantifier and a qualifier, has positive or negative meanings, and has local and global interpretations. They show that the word is used across a meaning continuum and can be used to convey a range of states, including approximation, uncertainty, politeness, and (...) evasion. Finally, they demonstrate that the functions of 'some' are also multi-directional and non-categorical, consisting of four major functions (right amount of information, mitigation, withholding information, and discourse management). Based on naturally-occurring classroom data of L1 (American English) and L2 (Chinese- and Vietnamese-speaking learners of English) speakers, Vague Language shows that L2 speakers used 'some' more than L1 speakers and explores the significance of this, particularly taking account of speakers' language ability and cultural backgrounds. While this book focuses on the single word 'some', the authors' discussion has important implications for language studies more generally, as they call for a rethinking of our approaches to language study and more attention to its elasticity. (shrink)