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This chapter highlights the impacts of social media on contemporary future thinking, offering the concept of mass emotional events to advance the concept of emotional contagions in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. It sets out this new conceptual framework in contrast to earlier models for thinking about emotional climates and landscapes. It also provides reflections that contrast the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Black Summer bushfires in Australia as examples of mass emotional phenomena. The chapter looks at recent work on theories of collective emotions that has recognized emotions as phenomena that spread between individuals and groups to form collective emotional moods, landscapes, and climates. It discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has caused sudden and dramatic shifts in social interaction that warrants a reimagining of emotional contagions.

Increasingly, people turn to online sources for health information, creating human-non-human relationalities. Health websites are considered accessible in scope and convenience but can have limited capacity to accommodate complexities. There are concerns about who gets to 'assemble' with these resources, and who is excluded. Guided by Ahmed's socio-political theories of emotions, we questioned our feelings as we intra-acted with a consumer information website about back pain (MyBackPain). This encouraged us to approach resource evaluation in a way that alters conventional rational/cognitive judgement processes. Our inquiry was 'supra-disciplinary' involving public health, sociology, allied health and consumer collaborators. Specifically, we considered relationality - the feelings circulating between bodies/objects and implicated in MyBackPain's affective practices; impressions - the marks, images or beliefs MyBackPain makes on bodies/objects; and directionality - how these intra-actions pushed in some directions and away from others. Although Ahmed would likely not consider herself 'post-humanist', we argue that her socio-political theories of how objects and emotions entangle are of great interest to furthering critical post-human understandings of health. Rather than threatening decision-making, we suggest that feelings (and their affects) are central to it. The article demonstrates the productive potential of critical post-human inquiry in identifying/countering 'othering' possibilities, and catalysing a 'nomadic shift' towards new human-non-human formations.

Chronic low back pain is characterised by multiple and overlapping biological, psychological, social and broader dimensions, affecting individuals’ lives. Multidisciplinary pain services have been considered optimal settings to account for the multidimensionality of chronic low back pain but have largely focused on cognitive and behavioural aspects of individuals’ pain. Social dimensions are usually underexplored, considered outside or beyond healthcare professionals’ scope of practice. Employing Actor Network Theorist Mol’s concept multiplicity, our aim in this paper is to explore how a pain service’s practices bring to the fore the social dimensions of individuals living with low back pain. Drawing on 32 ethnographic observations and four group exchanges with the service’s clinicians, findings suggest that practices produced multiple enactments of an individual with low back pain. Although individuals’ social context was present and manifested during consultations at the pain service (first enactment: ‘the person’), it was often disconnected from care and overlooked in ‘treatment/management’ (second enactment: ‘the patient’). In contrast, certain practices at the pain service not only provided acknowledgement of, but actions towards enhancing, individuals’ social contexts by adapting rules and habits, providing assistance outside the service and shifting power relations during consultations (third enactment: ‘the patient-person’). We therefore argue that different practices enact different versions of an individual with low back pain in pain services, and that engagement with individuals’ social contexts can be part of a service’s agenda.

Drawing on a discourse analysis of emotions in national human research ethics guidelines from Australia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and United States, I argue that such guidelines treat emotions as superfluous, harmful, risky and threats to rational decision-making. Such uncritical appreciation of emotions sees instructions to show ‘respect’ position non-Western participants as ‘the other’, sees directives to consider ‘emotional welfare’ undermine the autonomy of people from ostensibly vulnerable groups, and risks undermining qualitative research’s cathartic potential. These findings underpin a call to revise guidelines to position emotions as part of everyday life; and to encourage researchers to adopt embodied, caring and emotionally reflexive approaches to human research, where researchers draw on guidelines and emotions in deciding how to produce ethical research.

Low-dose computed tomography lung cancer screening has mortality benefits. Yet, uptake has been low. To inform strategies to better deliver and promote screening, in 2018, we interviewed 27 long-term smokers immediately following lung cancer screening in Australia, prior to receiving scan results. Existing lung screening studies employ the Health Belief Model. Reflecting growing acknowledgement of the centrality of emotions to screening uptake, we draw on psychological and sociological theories on emotions to thematically and abductively analyse the emotional dimensions of lung cancer screening, with implications for screening promotion and delivery. As smokers, interviewees described feeling stigmatised, with female participants internalising and male participants resisting stigma. Guilt and fear related to lung cancer were described as screening motivators. The screening itself elicited mild positive emotions. Notably, interviewees expressed gratitude for the care implicitly shown through lung screening to smokers. More than individual risk assessment, findings suggest lung screening campaigns should prioritise emotions. Peer workers have been found to increase cancer screening uptake in marginalised communities, however the risk to confidentiality-especially for female smokers-limits its feasibility in lung cancer screening. Instead, we suggest involving peer consultants in developing targeted screening strategies that foreground emotions. Furthermore, findings suggest prioritising humanistic care in lung screening delivery. Such an approach may be especially important for smokers from low socioeconomic backgrounds, who perceive lung cancer screening and smoking as sources of stigma and face a higher risk of dying from lung cancer and lower engagement with screening.

COVID-19 has plunged us into times of loss—loss of friends and family, loss of purpose, and loss of a sense of certainty about the immediate future. As we traverse this time of anomie and loss between pre-and post-COVID-19 times, through pandemic surges that threaten to exhaust our resources and seemingly endless troughs of calm, we need to care for each other. Care provided to those in need of hospitalization due to COVID-19 should undoubtedly be prioritized, but we should not forget to care for those who are physically well but suffering, by recognizing the fear and sorrow that flavor changed experiences due to COVID-19. Narratives that reveal challenges and triumphs are central to this kind of care. Frank (2007) argues that care is about “helping people find their stories.” We find comfort in telling these stories and in hearing them; recognizing ourselves in another’s tale allows us to find meaning in our own suffering. This paper tells the narratives of three health professionals on the COVID-19 frontline.

Motherhood can bring joy and enrichment but may also be associated with stress leading to poor health outcomes and low life satisfaction. Young mothers are a group particularly at risk of adverse outcomes, including increased social, economic, and health disadvantage following early entry to motherhood. This article reports results from a mixed-method study examining variations in levels of social support reported by mothers. Cross-sectional analyses of survey data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children showed that young mothers (aged less than 25 years when their child was born) generally reported higher levels of social support, but poorer family relationships than older mothers. In-depth interviews with nine young mothers provided insights into how they perceived support under these circumstances. Our research shows that young mothers often experienced difficult childhoods and strained relationships with parents, but many reconnected with their mothers after pregnancy and saw them as important sources of support.

Scholars studying emotions in social life typically work mono-logically, within a paradigmatic camp, drawing on distinct theories of emotion. In isolation, each offers a singular conceptualisation of emotions in social life. Working multi-logically, in contrast, offers richer, comparative insight into the layered meanings of emotion relevant to a social context. Rather than treating them as incommensurate, we not only argue for the benefits of drawing on multiple paradigms, methods and theories of emotions in social life, we offer a worked example of a post-paradigmatic methodology for analysing emotions in social life that values multi-logicality and epistemic flexibility. Setting aside debates about what emotions are, we work from the premise that different conceptualisations of emotions do things: shape what we see and ignore, and discursively position people. We show how multiple theories and concordant methods can – and should – be applied to studying emotions in social life in the same study. In this empirical illustration of a methodological innovation, we map theories and methodologies of emotions in social life against four research paradigms and against four phases of a study into the emotional dimensions of interprofessional practice, depicting the realisations afforded through a post-paradigmatic methodology for analysing emotions in social life.

Effective interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) requires a new way of working characterized by distributed leadership skills, shared decision-making, and the adoption of uniprofessional and interprofessional identities. Health professional educators are tasked with preparing clinicians for IPCP through interprofessional education (IPE). Numerous IPE teaching interventions have been developed, ranging in length from hours to semesters, designed to introduce students to interprofessional ways of working – usually evaluated in terms of student satisfaction, perceptions of other disciplines and conceptual knowledge. However, working interprofessionally also requires integrating dispositional knowledge into one’s emerging interprofessional habits and values. In this paper, we describe a learning activity, inspired by a new video-reflexive methodology, designed to foster dispositional learning of interprofessional skills using a video-based assessment tool: the Video Observation Tool for Interprofessional Skills (VOTIS). Based on focus group and interview data, we suggest the activity’s usefulness in fostering conceptual, procedural and dispositional knowledge, as well as reflexive feedback literacy. Overall, our qualitative evaluation of the VOTIS suggests the merits of drawing on video-reflexive methodology and pedagogical theory to re-imagine IPE as a dynamic process, requiring the development of interprofessional skills that must be appropriated into students’ emerging (inter)professional identities.

INTRODUCTION Like medicine and health care, feedback is a practice imbued with emotions: saturated with feelings relevant to one's identity and status within a given context. Often this emotional dimension of feedback is cast as an impediment to be ignored or managed. Such a perspective can be detrimental to feedback practices as emotions are fundamentally entwined with learning. In this critical review, we ask: What are the discourses of emotion in the feedback literature and what 'work' do they do? METHODS We conducted a critical literature review of emotion and feedback in the three top journals of the field: Academic Medicine, Medical Education and Advances in Health Sciences Education. Analysis was informed by a Foucauldian critical discourse approach and involved identifying discourses of emotion and interpreting how they shape feedback practices. FINDINGS Of 32 papers, four overlapping discourses of emotion were identified. Emotion as physiological casts emotion as internal, biological, ever-present, immutable and often problematic. Emotion as skill positions emotion as internal, mainly cognitive and amenable to regulation. A discourse of emotion as reflexive practice infers a social and interpersonal understanding of emotions, whereas emotion as socio-cultural discourse extends the reflexive practice discourse seeing emotion as circulating within learning environments as a political force. DISCUSSION Drawing on scholarship within the sociology of emotions, we suggest the merits of studying emotion as inevitable (not pathological), as potentially paralysing and motivating and as situated within (and often reinforcing) a hierarchical social health care landscape. For future feedback research, we suggest shifting towards recognising the discourse-theory-practice connection with emotion in health professional education drawing from reflexive and socio-cultural discourses of emotion.

Current research on emotions represents a broad church of methodological approaches. The essays in this special issue will investigate how social emotions inform research across numerous disciplinary fields and methodological approaches. This introduction will set out the social dimensions of emotions like shame, anger, anxiety, empathy and pity from a specifically sociological perspective. In sum, this will work to counter tendencies that individualise emotions as purely subjective or cognitive phenomena, and to demonstrate how the significance of social emotions is not restricted to any singular discipline.

The teaching profession offers meaningful, stimulating work that accords with teachers’ sense of professional pride and identity, but is also synonymous with high levels of stress, conflict (and associated emotions such as anger and shame) and ultimately, attrition. The degree to which teachers within a national population ‘up-manage’ the former or ‘down-manage’ the latter emotions is unknown. This study utilises new data from the Australian Survey of Emotions and Emotion Management (SEEM) to examine emotions and emotion management among teachers, and workers in comparable service roles, such as health care and customer service, in contemporary Australian society. It finds that teachers exhibit great natural happiness, but also experience and hide (through surface-acting) high levels of stress. Teachers also experience high levels of anger compared to other professions, though they usually manage this successfully through deep acting strategies. These findings imply that teachers are generally happy and professionally committed to (and proud of) their work, but at the cost of managing significant levels of stress and conflict. We discuss the implications for teacher professional development, initial teacher education and policy, and the need to investigate anger/shame dynamics and management in future research into pedagogy.

Amy Goods’s software review article V-Note: A video analysis tool for teacher | researchers stimulated our interest in adopting this software to understand social bonding dynamics in a group of 10th-grade science students’ during a science inquiry project. Three of us employed V-Note to analyze two video files for the same lesson in which the student group completed an inquiry about the effects of mass on speed using a marble and ramp. Subhashni provides her perspective as teacher | researcher, James offers an analysis as an independent researcher, and Alberto is the classroom researcher who designed a larger project investigating the interplay of social bonds with science learning of which this study is a part. Alberto also drew upon a more extensive set of data sources including social bond diaries completed by students, and reflective dialogs with the class. Rebecca interprets the three video analyses, as an independent researcher who did not access the video data. Our independent analyses and additional data sources produce diverse understandings about the impact of shifting social bond status on science learning and science inquiry. Outcomes include differentiation between social bonds and social roles adopted by students during the inquiry. Data analyses also reveal the researchers’s different ontologies and epistemologies. We also showcase V-Note’s capabilities, affordances, and constraints for social inquiry. Implications for further research on social bonds in science education are presented.

This systematic search and review of international literature (1979–2017) finds links between emotion management and gender (in 1/2 the studies), and teaching attrition outcomes (1/3). Results contextualise these connections, suggesting female teachers use deep acting strategies, though experience more emotional exhaustion and unpleasant emotions. Male teachers practice distancing and surface acting, and experience depersonalisation, but also success in controlling disruptions and stimulating subject interest. Studies are limited by self-reported data and omission of school context, but highlight important teacher organisational identifications, suggesting future research use observational methods for understanding emotion management as an embedded, interactionist phenomenon.

Objective The purpose of this study is to explore academic faculty, employer, and recent graduate perspectives of the work readiness of Australian new graduate physical therapists for private practice and factors that influence new graduate preparation and transition to private practice. Methods This study used a mixed-methods design with 3 surveys and 12 focus groups. A total of 112 participants completed a survey, and 52 participated in focus groups. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the quantitative data, and thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. Triangulation across participant groups and data sources was undertaken. Results Australian new graduate physical therapists were perceived to be “somewhat ready” for private practice and “ready” by their third year of employment. Participants proposed that new graduates bring enthusiasm, readiness to learn, and contemporary, research-informed knowledge. New graduates were also perceived to find autonomous clinical reasoning and timely caseload management difficult; to have limited business, marketing, and administration knowledge and skills; and to present with underdeveloped confidence, communication, and interpersonal skills. Factors perceived to influence graduate transition included private practice experience, such as clinical placements and employment; employer and client expectations of graduate capabilities; workplace support; university academic preparation and continuing education; and individual graduate attributes and skills. Conclusion Australian new graduate physical therapists have strengths and limitations in relation to clinical, business, and employability knowledge and skills. New graduate work readiness and transition may be enhanced by additional private practice experience, employer and client expectation management, provision of workplace support, and tailored university and continuing education. Impact The number of new graduate physical therapists employed in private practice in Australia is increasing; however, until this study, their work readiness for this setting was unknown. This exploration of new graduate performance in private practice and transition can help to increase understanding and enhancement of work-readiness.

Tobacco control policies reinforce a health imperative that positions citizens as duty-bound to manage their health by abstaining from or quitting smoking. Limited attention is paid to the repercussions – especially for lung screening – of anti-smoking rhetoric emphasising individual responsibility. Drawing on interviews with 27 long-term smokers involved in an international lung screening trial, this study analysed Australian smokers’ narratives of smoking. By attending to stigma and the use of public health rhetoric within personal narratives, we show how narratives underscoring individual responsibility for quitting were layered with conflicting explanations of biological responsibility and normative expectations. Ironically, narratives of individual responsibility potentially undermine smoking cessation. In positioning smokers as responsible for their own healthy choices, such rhetoric also positions smokers as responsible for managing their emotional health, which some did through smoking. Thus, anti-smoking campaigns pit the neoliberal imperative of health against the happiness imperative. These findings have implications for the design and delivery of lung screening campaigns. They also support calls to move beyond health messaging emphasising individual choice, towards acknowledging the moral power of structures and public health campaigns to discipline citizens in unintended ways.

Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Clinical research advocates using the biopsychosocial model (BPS) to manage LBP, however there is still no clear consensus regarding the meaning of this model in physiotherapy and how best to apply it. The aim of this study was to investigate how physiotherapy LBP literature enacts the BPS model.We conducted a critical review using discourse analysis of 66 articles retrieved from the PubMed and Web of Science databases.Analysis suggest that many texts conflated the BPS with the biomedical model [Discourse 1: Conflating the BPS with the biomedical model]. Psychological aspects were almost exclusively conceptualised as cognitive and behavioural [Discourse 2: Cognition, behaviour, yellow flags and rapport]. Social context was rarely mentioned [Discourse 3: Brief and occasional social underpinnings]; and other broader aspects of care such as culture and power dynamics received little attention within the texts [Discourse 4: Expanded aspects of care].Results imply that multiple important factors such as interpersonal or institutional power relations, cultural considerations, ethical, and social aspects of health may not be incorporated into physiotherapy research and practice when working with people with LBP.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONWhen using the biopsychosocial model with patients with low back pain, researchers narrowly focus on biological and cognitive behavioural aspects of the model.Social and broader aspects such as cultural, interpersonal and institutional power dynamics, appear to be neglected by researchers when taking a biopsychosocial approach to the care of patients with low back pain.The biopsychosocial model may be inadequate to address complexities of people with low back pain, and a reworking of the model may be necessary.There is a lack of research conceptualising how physiotherapy applies the biopsychosocial model in research and practice.

Research focusing on the management of emotion features prominently in studies of employee attrition, gender inequality and workplace satisfaction, but rarely in research on worker solidarity. Against a backdrop of increasing individualisation within late modern society, research about workplace management of emotion has become bifurcated along sociological or organisational psychology lines. Within the sociology literature, management of emotion is theorised as a commercialised, relational and (often) alienating experience. Within organisational psychology literature and research, the emphasis is on harnessing individual traits and skills (e.g. emotional intelligence) to regulate emotions for increased productivity and employee retention. In this article, the authors call for a new research agenda that prioritises the examination of solidarity between workers alongside the analysis of emotion management. This call is based in a critical reading of the sociological and organisational psychology scholarship addressing the management of emotions. Through the example of teaching work, the authors provide a critique of scholarship on workplace strategies that promote highly individualised understandings of managing emotions through resilience training and other simplified techniques. They argue that workplaces should recognise the dangers of uncritically adopting individualised strategies for managing emotions, and propose a research agenda that seeks to understand how emotion management can affect worker solidarity.

Discussions of crying and love are not what one might expect to find when examining interactions between recreational bodybuilders online. Gendered emotion ideologies, especially related to muscular masculinities, usually forbid men from exhibiting emotional vulnerability in front of other men, as emotional detachment is one of the ways gender hierarchies are maintained. Building on Connell’s concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ and Hochschild’s concept of ‘emotion management’, this article analyses emotional exchanges within an international community of male recreational bodybuilders: fans of Aziz Shavershian, known as ‘Zyzz’. We examine the meaning of emotions within the Zyzz fandom’s local hierarchy of masculinities, the expressive freedoms afforded by the context of their emotional interactions, and the strategies employed by Zyzz and fans to traverse masculine emotion ideologies that usually prevent men from expressing love and affection.

Within palliative care, clear and open communication about death is encouraged. Euphemisms are discouraged as threats to promoting clear understanding of the prognosis; to opening communication about what a good death means to individual patients and families; and to fostering collaborative planning aimed at achieving this ‘good death’. Principles of patient-centred and culturally competent care, however, which reflect trends of individualisation, plurality and multiculturalism that are characteristic of late modernity, encourage respect for and support of patients' and families' preferences. These may include wishes to avoid open communication, preferences for euphemisms, and definitions of a ‘good death’ that vary from the practitioner's, and within families. The aim of this study was to examine how physicians navigate these competing priorities. Analysis is based on interviews with 23 doctors, ranging in experience from medical students through to senior palliative care specialists, and eight recorded observations of palliative care multidisciplinary team meetings with 52 clinicians collected in 2017 at two hospitals in one Australian metropolitan area. Findings show that synonyms familiar to clinicians are often used to communicate prognoses in multidisciplinary meetings. In communication with patients and families, doctors rely on emotional and cultural cues to decipher the preferred terminology and response. Drawing on a late modern re-imagination of emotion management, we conceptualise the work performed in this context as emotionally reflexive labour. These findings suggest that blanket protocols for direct communication overlook the complexity of end-of-life communication in an era where a ‘good death’ is understood to be culturally relative.

Based in a novel ‘meta-reflexive’ review of sociology of emotions (SoE) articles, we suggest that there are two primary SoE theoretical traditions that function within geographic silos: the USA is distinctly social psychological, while in the UK and Australia, SoE is more aligned with the humanities. In both traditions, parallel calls are emerging for interdisciplinarity and further engagement with physiological and pre-personal elements of emotion. Based in Archer’s and Bourdieu’s concepts of reflexivity, we assert the merits of reflexively examining SoE, and then identify key changes in SoE that have emerged across time and geography. Using Kuhn’s work on paradigm shifts, we conclude that SoE is entering a stage of growth and change, and raise important questions about the subdiscipline’s future direction.

The contradictory work environments of new economies in late modernity are associated with a range of emotional experiences, requiring diverse emotion management strategies. Late modernity offers the capacity to pursue happy, safe, rewarding, and meaningful work for the privileged few; a potential trade-off between stressful meaningful and boring precarious work for a greater number; and the prospect of non-meaningful, precarious work for many in the new economy characterised by short-term contracts, gig work, precarity, and anxiety. This study draws on data from the 2015–16 Australian Social Attitudes Survey to examine workers’ emotions in various combinations of meaningful and precarious employment, and the degree to which these emotions are managed. It finds that it is best to have secure meaningful work, worst to have highly precarious work, and slightly better to have safe but alienating than risky meaningful work, in terms of avoiding often hidden negative emotions.

BackgroundUnderstanding the knowledge and beliefs of key stakeholders is crucial in developing effective public health interventions. Knowledge and beliefs about obesity and eating disorders (EDs) have rarely been considered, despite increasing awareness of the need for integrated health promotion programs. We investigated key aspects of knowledge and beliefs about obesity and EDs among key stakeholders in Australia.MethodsUsing a semi-structured question guide, eight focus groups and seven individual interviews were conducted with 62 participants including health professionals, personal trainers, teachers and consumer group representatives. An inductive thematic approach was used for data analysis.ResultsThe findings suggest that, relative to obesity, EDs are poorly understood among teachers, personal trainers, and certain health professionals. Areas of commonality and distinction between the two conditions were identified. Integrated health promotion efforts that focus on shared risk (e.g., low self-esteem, body dissatisfaction) and protective (e.g., healthy eating, regular exercise) factors were supported. Suggested target groups for such efforts included young children, adolescents and parents.ConclusionsThe findings indicate areas where the EDs and obesity fields have common ground and can work together in developing integrated health promotion programs.

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Interprofessional education (IPE) – students of different professions learning together, from and about each other – is increasingly common in health professional degrees. Despite its explicit aims of transforming identities, practices and relationships within/across health professions, IPE remains under-theorised sociologically, with most IPE scholarship focussed on evaluating specific interventions. In particular, the significance of a shared knowledge base for shaping professional power and subjectivity in IPE has been overlooked. In this paper we begin to develop a framework for theorising IPE in allied health, by drawing parallels with a cognate area in which there has already been fruitful conceptual development: interdisciplinarity. Specifically, we offer a worked example of how the two areas may be brought into dialogue, by deploying Barry, Born and Weszkalnys’ (2008) conceptualisation of interdisciplinarity as a lens for understanding IPE. Following Barry et al. (2008) we delineate a number of ‘modes’ and ‘logics’ of knowledge-production that emerge both in IPE literature and in our own empirical study of IPE. Our empirical data are drawn from 32 semi-structured interviews with 19 allied health students participating in an IPE curriculum at one Australian university. Findings point to the emergence of interprofessional practitioner identities among students that have the potential to undermine traditional epistemological boundaries and transcend role-based distinctions in future health profession(al)s. We argue that Barry et al.’s ‘logic of ontology’ sheds light on previously unidentified processes of transformation within IPE, and offers a theoretical framework that can explain the importance of a shared pan-professional knowledge base for the reflexive individual construction of new interprofessional ontological subjects.

Changes to the purpose and scope of health and physical education (HPE) in schools have prompted revisions in teacher education degrees within Australia. Using a qualitative approach, this study explored HPE teachers’ perceptions of these changes. Of particular interest was pre-service HPE teachers’ reflections on the importance of skill acquisition (also referred to as motor learning) content in their university degree, which focuses on the theories and practices involved in learning movement and perceptual skills. Findings were based on the thematic analysis of four semi-structured focus groups with 25 pre-service HPE teachers at one Australian metropolitan university. Analysis suggests that the importance of skill acquisition and the imperative to increase physical activity without a focus on competence are contradictory priorities within pre-service HPE curricula. The goal of promoting enjoyment of physical education sustained this tension, implying that there is a new discourse in HPE and suggesting the need for further research into the self-reflection and emotional dynamics of pre-service HPE teachers’ reflections on curricula.

Background Abundant evidence demonstrates a relationship between physical activity and mental wellbeing. However, the strength of the relationship is not consistent. Factors contributing to variation in the strength of association are not well understood and, therefore, it remains difficult to optimize physical activity to ensure the strongest possible relationship with mental health. Self-determination theory suggests that more autonomously motivated behaviors lead to better mental health outcomes, when compared to more controlled behaviors. Therefore, we examined whether autonomous and controlled motivation moderated the relationships between physical activity and affective wellbeing within two domains (i.e., leisure-time and active travel). Methods Between February and April 2014, adolescents (N = 1632, M age = 12.94 years, SD = 0.54, 55% male) wore an accelerometer across seven-days and completed self-report measures of leisure-time physical activity and active travel. They also completed two measures of motivation (towards leisure-time physical activity and active travel) and an affective wellbeing measure. Results Structural equation modeling revealed that greater self-reported leisure-time physical activity was associated with greater positive affect (β = .29) and less negative affect (β = −.19) and that motivation did not moderate these relationships. Self-reported active travel had no linear relationship with affective wellbeing, and motivation did not moderate these relationships. Accelerometer-measured leisure-time physical activity had no relationship with positive affect but, had a weak inverse association with negative affect (β = −.09), and neither relationship was moderated by motivation. Accelerometer-measured active travel had no association with positive affect; however, autonomous motivation significantly moderated this association such that active travel had a positive association with positive affect when autonomous motivation was high (β = .09), but a negative association when autonomous motivation was low (β = −.07). Accelerometer-measured active travel had no association with negative affect. Despite some significant moderation effects, motivation did not consistently moderate the relationship between all physical activity variables (leisure-time and active travel, and self-report and accelerometer) and affective outcomes. Conclusions Tailoring physical activity interventions and guidelines to prioritize leisure-time ahead of other life domains could benefit wellbeing. Promoting autonomous participation in active travel may also be associated with increased wellbeing among adolescents. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12966-018-0722-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The literature on interprofessional education (IPE) in allied health has historically been atheoretical and dominated by interventionist approaches using survey-based methods. Little is known about the social and contextual factors underpinning university-based interprofessional socialisation across allied health degrees. Using Holland et al.’s theory of ‘identities as practice’ and in-depth interview data from 19 students, we analyse first year Australian allied health students’ experiences of university-based IPE. Doing so unlocks a reimagination of IPE as both a top-down and bottom-up process of ongoing professional self-discovery mediated by university contexts and health curricula. This contradicts the preliminary sociological theorisation that has been employed in understanding IPE thus far, depicting professional socialisation as inculcation. Furthermore, findings highlight the importance of student and context characteristics beyond profession to understanding variations in allied health s...

Background Evidence shows that the relationship between physical activity and mental wellbeing varies across different life domains. However, little is known about the reasons for such variation. We aimed to explore motivation as a potential underlying factor that may explain some of the variation, by qualitatively examining adolescents’ physical activity experiences and perceived affective outcomes during leisure-time, active travel, and physical education. Method We conducted computer-assisted-self-interviews with 144 adolescents ( M age = 14.42 years) about physical activity experiences they believed led to positive and negative affect. The participants were asked when the activities occurred, their reason for participation, and with whom they participated. Participants also responded to questions specifically about leisure-time, active travel, and physical education. Results Thematic analysis revealed that adolescents perceived leisure-time physical activity led to positive affect, because it was fun, increased self-esteem, and provided a sense of belonging. However, active travel was associated with positive affect among those who participated for enjoyment or health benefits, far more than those who participated because it was their only means of transportation. Similarly, those who believed physical education was fun, and experienced a sense of belonging, were more likely to report it led to positive affect, compared to those who participated in physical education because they were forced. Conclusions Compared to other life domains, more adolescents associate leisure-time physical activity with positive affect. However, promoting more autonomous motivation may enhance the effect of physical activity on wellbeing in other domains, such as active travel and physical education.

STEM education disciplines are facing a dilemma internationally. There is high demand for qualified high quality teachers in science, technology, and mathematics subjects in schools and a trend towards high attrition rates of teachers in the early years. Teacher attrition has been associated with, in part, the high demand for emotion work required on a daily basis in classrooms. Despite this fact, there is dearth of research on teachers’ emotion management in specific disciplinary fields such as science and mathematics education. In this chapter, we address the need for research on teacher emotion work in science and mathematics education through sociological analysis of the lived experiences of two authors. Using narrative vignettes of classroom experiences, we consider what the sociology of emotions can contribute to understanding the emotion work required in science and mathematics classrooms. Following an analysis of the two vignettes, we offer suggestions for research, policy, and practice for addressing STEM teachers’ emotional work through teacher education courses and professional learning.

In qualitative research into emotions, researchers and participants share emotion-laden interactions. Few demonstrate how the analytic value of emotions may be harnessed. In this article we provide an account of our emotional experiences conducting research with two groups: adults living with cystic fibrosis and spouse caregivers of cancer patients. We describe our emotion work during research interviews, and discuss its methodological and theoretical implications. Reflections depict competing emotion norms in qualitative research. Experiences of vulnerability and involuntary “emotional callusing” illustrate the insight into participants’ experiences afforded to us through emotion work. This prompted us to extend Hochschild’s theory to incorporate unconscious activity mediated through habitus, allowing us to demonstrate how the “emotional” nature of emotions research can galvanize analytic insight.

Following changes in the structure and funding of the Australian medical system, patients have become 'consumers' or 'clients'. Family and friends have become 'carers' or 'caregivers', signifying their increased responsibilities as patients move from hospitals to communities. While policy makers embrace the term 'carer', some argue that the title is not widely recognised and has disempowering connotations. This paper examines spouses' reflections on the term 'carer' based on qualitative interviews with 32 Australians caring for a spouse with cancer from a study conducted between 2006 and 2009. Recruitment involved survey and snowball sampling. Following a grounded theory approach, data collection and analysis were performed simultaneously. Using Holland and colleagues' sociocultural 'identity as practice' theory and a thematic approach to analysis, findings depict identification with the 'spouse' and 'carer' label as relationally situated and dependent on meaningful interaction. Although others argue that the term 'carer' is a 'failure', these findings depict identification with the label as contextual, positional and enacted, not fixed. Furthermore, and of most significance to practitioners and policy makers, the title has value, providing carers with an opportunity to position themselves as entitled to inclusion and support, and providing health professionals with a potential indicator of a spouse's increased burden.

Informal carers of cancer patients have high rates of burden, stress, anxiety and unmet needs; yet, some describe caregiving as fulfilling. Building on the work of Thomas and colleagues, this study takes a sociology of emotions approach to understanding variations in carers of cancer patients’ emotional experiences, using interview data with 32 carers of a spouse with cancer. Analysis indicates that a clearly terminal (negative) prognosis facilitates clear priorities, unambiguous emotion management and improved social bonds. A more ambiguous (positive) prognosis, that includes a greater chance of survival, fosters role conflict, clashing feeling rules and ongoing guilt within spousal carers. This study highlights the importance of a prognosis to emotion management, underscoring a phenomenon that is likely to grow as survival rates continue to improve and explaining some of the variation in carers’ experiences.

Objectives During the past decade, several studies have systematically reviewed interprofessional education (IPE), but few have inclusively reviewed this literature. None has focused primarily on IPE in allied health, despite differences in recruitment and socialisation across the health professions. This systematic review seeks to uncover the best approach to pre-licensure, university-based allied health IPE to determine which aspects require modification in which contexts to provide optimal learning experiences. Methods A systematic search of 10 databases was conducted for articles published in English, between January 1998 and January 2013. Studies were included if they used quantitative or qualitative methodologies to report on the outcomes associated with IPE in allied health. Two independent reviewers identified studies that met the inclusion criteria, critically appraised the included studies and extracted data relating to the effectiveness of IPE in allied health. Data were synthesised narratively to address the study aims. Results Large gaps – relating to methods, theory and context – remain within this body of literature. Studies measured students' attitudes and understanding of other health professional roles, teamwork and knowledge in response to IPE interventions using patient scenarios, lectures and small-group work. Differences in power and curriculum placement were described as factors affecting IPE effectiveness. Conclusions Evaluation remains the primary aim within this literature. Few studies use theory, take an inductive approach to understanding the processes behind IPE or include detailed participant descriptions. Therefore, we suggest that IPE research is currently caught in an epistemological struggle, between assumptions underpinning biomedical and health science research, and those underpinning education studies. As part of a systems approach to understanding interprofessional socialisation, we call for researchers to take a realistic approach to evaluation that is inclusive of, and responsive to, contextual factors to explore how IPE leads to improved long-term outcomes in differing circumstances.

Cancer trajectories now follow a jagged path based on multiple probabilities. Thus, uncertainty now typifies cancer caregiving. What impact does uncertainty have on cancer carer grief? This article explores cancer carers' experiences of loss, based on qualitative interviews with 32 Australian carers of a spouse with cancer. Findings suggest that in addition to conventional and anticipatory grief, many carers experience indefinite loss. Indefinite loss characterised the experiences of spouses caregiving outside of the terminal stage. They experienced the current loss of a taken-for-granted certain future, but the future loss of their spouse remained uncertain. They described a heightened awareness of mortality, and an inability to plan for the future. Losses that are uncertain and potential are largely neglected within the grief literature. In this article, I offer the concept indefinite loss and extend health professionals' understanding of cancer carer loss.

Recently, the Australian Government has provided significant support for the expansion of Nurse Practitioner services in the community. As a result, the emerging role and ongoing retention of these professionals is an area for policy investigation. However, there is also a broader significance in the Nurse Practitioner role for which sociological perspectives can provide insight. Sociologists identify two key characteristics of late-modernism as the rise in service work and the emphasis on service worker knowledge as a commodity. This paper argues that the Nurse Practitioner role is an embodiment of these trends. Specifically, the paper considers the expanding Nurse Practitioner role as an example of the shifting boundaries between human care professionals. The paper argues that these changes point to a need for renewed consideration of identity, interaction, negotiation and emotion in relation to professional human care work. It concludes by considering conceptual resources that could support new sociological understandings of the Nurse Practitioner role in the future.

Much of the literature on informal carers of cancer patients is quantitative and psycho-oncology based. This literature has established that cancer carers experience higher rates of stress, depression and anxiety than their non-caregiving counterparts, with younger female carers reporting higher rates of burden and unmet needs. The reasons behind this variation and variations in support preferences are poorly understood: some carers prefer support groups and others prefer practical support. This study takes a sociological approach to exploring carers' varied experiences. Longitudinal interviews were conducted with 32 carers of a spouse with cancers of varying stages and diagnoses in the Australian Capital Territory. Analysis, informed by the discretionary time literature, shows time-sovereignty illuminates much of the variation in carers' emotional experiences and support preferences. Carers with few competing commitments and less onerous caregiving responsibilities had time to experience and unpack the range of emotions associated with cancer, and reconnect with their spouse. These carers preferred emotion-focused support. In contrast, carers with multiple commitments had little time to themselves and viewed emotions as an indulgence. These carers preferred practical support. A time-sovereignty framework offers health and support professionals a means of understanding carers' varying needs and tailoring support services.