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Although qualitative research on the learning experiences of disabled students at university is burgeoning, either/or, medical or social approaches are most often used to study disablement. In this study, I adopted an interpretive phenomenological analysis--which considers the fundamental imbrication of bodies, identities, and environments--to explore the learning experiences of students with disabilities at the University of Manitoba in Canada. While some students received social support to attend university, other students negotiated a challenging journey to higher education, characterized by low expectations for academic success. At university, the students reported bodily-social challenges to academic achievement that hindered the learning process. Students anticipated an uneasy future upon graduation, characterized by poor job opportunities and economic disparity. The findings suggest that great strides and much advocacy are still required for students with disabilities to be viewed as bodies that bear intellectual value in university settings. Researchers should consider the merits of phenomenological approaches to thinking about the body-social challenges that disabled students still face in the struggle for inclusive higher education.

In pediatric settings, the concept of hope is frequently positioned as a fundamental aspect of care and at odds with the possibility and proximity of death. This arguably fosters silence about death and dying in childhood despite evidence indicating the benefits of open communication at the end of life. In this paper, we describe the unspeakable nature of death and dying in childhood, including its conceptual and clinical causes and dimensions, its persistence, and the associated challenges for children and youth facing critical illnesses, their families, and society. We explore how the tension between hope and death can be reframed and apply our analysis to the context of medical assistance in dying for mature minors in Canada. Considering the lack of related literature, this paper offers initial reflections to form a framework for the unspeakable nature of death and dying in childhood and to advance the crucial need for research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lives of children who live at the intersectional nexus between childhood autism and race may be considered as "shadow stories" that have remained silenced in autism literature. We explored the experiences of racialized parents who provide care to autistic children. We drew on a theoretical framework known as DisCrit and decolonizing arts-based methodologies. Racialized parents of autistic children demonstrated resistance along various themes, including fighting the system, protecting my child, and creating cultural communities. We join black girlhood studies, critical race theory, and disabled children's childhood studies by continuing the journey of decentering Whiteness in childhood disability research. We demonstrate how disabled racialized communities engage in activism and social justice while forming powerful counter-discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Objective: Illness disclosure refers to when individuals with chronic illnesses make decisions to tell others about their disease. There is a lack of research on the complexity of disclosure among children and youth with chronic illnesses. We conducted a review of the literature to understand the process of disclosure among children and youth with chronic illnesses in the context of peer-based relationships. Methods: A narrative review was completed using three databases. The search yielded 11 articles that utilized various research designs. Results: Most of the literature was qualitative in nature. Most children and youth engaged in non-disclosure and concealment which is born out of fears of discrimination. Fewer children and youth engaged in unplanned disclosure, passive disclosure, partial disclosure, and open disclosure. Children and youth carefully consider who they are disclosing to and perceptions about other peoples' responses strongly impact disclosure. Children and youth disclose verbally, behaviorally, and in written form. Disclosure is associated with both positive and negative effects, such as confidence, self-advocacy, and distress. Discussion: Health providers and researchers should critically support disclosure and empower children and youth with the resources they need to be agents in their own disclosure decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-disclosure is a psychosocial process in which individuals decide who, what, where, and how they tell others about their illness. This study utilized a qualitative secondary analysis to investigate whether and how children and youth disclose their illness to their peers. A thematic analysis was undertaken to analyze 21 interviews completed by children and youth who experienced cancer and were from two summer camps in Ontario, Canada. This resulted in four themes including talking about cancer, thinking about cancer, attitude toward illness, and social environments and relationships. The findings affirm that illness disclosure is complex and has several contributing factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is important to directly engage children and adolescents with disabilities (CAWD) in health promotion research to ensure their health needs are met. Arts-based research methods may help CAWD better express their ideas; photo-elicitation is one such technique, using self-captured photographs to enhance verbal descriptions of complex concepts. This review 1) summarizes findings from health promotion studies using photo-elicitation with CAWD; 2) explores benefits and challenges of using photo-elicitation; 3) identifies recommended photo-elicitation practices. A scoping review was conducted using rapid review principles. Four health and social science databases were searched (2009–2019) using terms related to children, adolescents, disability, and photo-elicitation. Articles meeting inclusion criteria were summarized and analyzed thematically. Eight studies met inclusion criteria and explored a range of health promotion topics. Benefits of photo-elicitation included the ability to mediate communication and direct participants' focus. Challenges included difficulty operating a camera and understanding instructions about photograph subject matter. Four recommended practices were identified: 1) brainstorming photograph ideas; 2) photograph-taking training; 3) having CAWD select photographs for discussion; 4) limiting the number of photographs CAWD could capture. Integrating practices to support CAWD in using photo-elicitation can help researchers more fully understand their health experiences. There is a need to directly engage children and adolescents with disabilities to express themselves in health promotion research. The arts-based method of photo-elicitation may help children and adolescents with disabilities convey how they view and experience health. Children and adolescents with disabilities may need supports, including camera training, to participate in photo-elicitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interdisciplinary knowledge is critical to moving beyond categorical ways of knowing, this comes with its own set of pedagogical challenges. We contend that acknowledging existing knowledge hierarchies and epistemological differences, recognizing the ideological baggage that students’ bring to the classroom in terms of their understandings of health, embracing intellectual uncertainty, and encouraging learning-as-witnessing, are fundamental to fostering an interdisciplinary pedagogy that opens up a space for dialogue between psychology and sociology. We draw on the case of obesity and physical inactivity in the Canadian context as an exemplar of a kinesiology dilemma in which both psychology and sociology have important, albeit different, roles to play. We suggest that the anxiety provoked by such an approach is not only necessary but productive to forge an intellectual space where psychologists and sociologists may better hear one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although physical activity may reduce lung function decline in youth with cystic fibrosis (CF), most patients are inactive. Little is known about why youth with CF are inactive or how to facilitate physical activity. This study explored perceptions toward physical activity in 14 youth with CF at a Canadian Hospital. Qualitative interviews were conducted and a grounded theory analysis was undertaken. The participants demonstrated positive or negative perceptions toward physical activity and different experiences-such as parental support and illness narratives- influenced youths' perceptions. In addition, the participants experienced physical activity within the context of reduced time. Recommendations for developing physical activity interventions, including the particular need to ensure that such interventions are not perceived as wasteful of time, are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some time and temporarily scholars suggest that separation is one of the most arduous of human experiences. Given what is often a long history of unpleasant relationship endings, the clients of therapy themselves may be particularly susceptible to painful ruptures. Informed by a qualitative approach, I describe and explain how 10 Canadian children living with cystic fibrosis and their caregivers felt at the end of a research-based counselling support programme. At the programmes' end, the participants reluctantly but unquestioningly accepted the decision. However, they expressed their desire for ongoing and continuous therapeutic opportunities to help them manage weighty emotional issues, such as living with grief and loss. I theorize the findings using time and temporality scholarship. Although academics and clinicians regard them as separate pillars, I suggest that participants experience considerable overlap between "research" and practice". Further, I propose that researchers and clinicians pay attention to therapeutic endings as an important issue in research. Finally, using a time and temporality lens, I use the findings to discuss how therapeutic work might better be regarded as occurring in the space of psychological time, rather than linear time. In so doing, it is evident that time and temporality are critical to how young people with CF and their families experience therapeutic endings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary Western society, both anorexic and obese1 bodies are regarded to be “out of bounds.” Although scholars have enhanced our understanding of anorexia and obesity, these “disorders” have most often been studied in isolation from one another. In this article, we examine the similarities and differences in the embodied experiences of anorexic and obese women. Informed by the phenomenological research tradition, we follow in the footsteps of other scholars who have already begun to depart from binarized, polarized views by describing how women living with anorexia and obesity in two Canadian provinces experience the body, food and eating. Anorexic and obese women described a vast range of intense emotional experiences to characterize their relationship to food, the body and eating. Shame marked the bodies of these women. Family relationships also changed how the women experienced the body and food over time. The women ascribed a diverse array of complex meanings to the body and food. We hope that our study opens new phenomenological terrain to dialogue with and for anorexic and obese bodies in a relational way, recognizing that both of these bodies hurt in a remarkably similar manner. In a judgement day of sorts, both anorexic and obese bodies carry the heavy burden of culture’s expectations to fit within a narrow range of normative slenderness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]