Search Results (361)

Background/Objectives: Research examining the emotional and psychological challenges experienced by couples undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) remains limited. Existing evidence suggests that women undergoing IVF often report elevated levels of depression, anxiety, and emotional distress, whereas men may experience feelings of anger, inadequacy, and self-doubt, especially following unsuccessful treatment cycles. Successful IVF outcomes are commonly associated with intense joy, relief, and fulfilment as couples realise their aspiration to become parents. In light of the limited qualitative research conducted in Greece to date, in the present study, we aimed to explore the lived experiences of couples undergoing IVF treatment, with particular attention to emotional, relational, and systemic dimensions. Methods: A qualitative research design was employed. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with six heterosexual couples (aged 18–49 years) residing in Athens and Karditsa, Greece, all of whom had undergone IVF treatment. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Results: Our analysis revealed five interrelated superordinate themes with associated subordinate themes: (1) making sense of infertility and IVF, (2) negotiating relationships under the strain of IVF, (3) IVF as an emotionally demanding journey, (4) navigating institutional and systemic barriers, and (5) projecting the future through IVF experience. Lived experiences of infertile couples undergoing IVF treatment highlighted a range of emotions, social pressure, and attitudes towards IVF and related policies. Conclusions: In Greece, where demographic decline has been widely discussed in policy debates, IVF has gained societal and policy attention. For many participants, IVF represented a hopeful pathway towards achieving parenthood despite the emotional and practical challenges involved. Full article

Meditation-related difficulties have been systematically documented in contemporary contemplative science, yet the prescriptive resources preserved in the ancient Buddhist commentarial literature remain underutilized in comparative research. This study analyzes the case of five hundred monks in the Paramatthajotikā I’s commentary on the Karaṇīya-metta-sutta. During intensive practice, these monks experienced complex psychosomatic symptoms—perceptual disturbances, fear, somatic distress, and cognitive impairment—and received from the Buddha an integrated prescription of five protective practices (pañca rakkhā). Through Pāli textual and comparative analysis with Lindahl et al.’s taxonomy of meditation-related difficulties, this study demonstrates that the monks’ symptoms correspond systematically to the perceptual, affective, somatic, and cognitive domains of the modern taxonomy, with the critical difference residing in interpretive frameworks rather than in the phenomena themselves. The five practices—loving-kindness meditation, protective chant recitation, contemplation of impurity, mindfulness of death, and the arousal of religious urgency—constitute a sequentially structured system progressing from the emotional reframing of fear to the deconstruction of bodily and existential attachment, culminating in the restoration of soteriological motivation. This study argues that Paramatthajotikā I’s prescriptive system provides a historically grounded, soteriologically oriented complement to contemporary contemplative science, particularly in bridging the gap between phenomenological classification and meaning-centered intervention. Full article

Within the broader debate on teacher professionalism, there has been a notable increase in research interest in the identity that teachers develop over the course of their careers as assessors. More specifically, teacher assessment identity is considered a crucial component of recent conceptualisations and models of teacher assessment literacy. With the aim of providing new insights into the teacher assessment literacy debate, this article presents evidence about teachers’ self-perception as assessors. The data were drawn from an analysis of self-identikits completed by nine primary school teachers. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) revealed that the participants’ identity as assessors was somewhat inconsistent and was primarily characterised by social and relational interactions between teachers and students in the classroom. The study participants did not report aspects generally considered relevant to the current conceptualisations of teacher assessment literacy. There were no references to the knowledge and skills that teachers should have to ensure sound and effective assessment practices, as well as to the personal beliefs, values, and conceptions that remain unexplored and unconsidered in teachers’ self-reflections. Finally, the implications for research and educational practice are discussed. Full article

Heritage speakers’ language acquisition is a complex process that is affected by linguistic, social, cultural, and affective factors. Studies on heritage speakers (HSs) have primarily focused on challenges HSs face in the classroom and scarcely investigated these challenges outside of instructional settings. This study addresses this gap by exploring the lived experiences of two young adult Spanish HSs outside of educational settings through a series of interviews to create personal narratives of their HL and experiences. Through Narrative Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (NIPA), three main themes emerged from these narratives: (1) Spanish heritage language (HL) knowledge and language use, (2) emotional factors that hinder language knowledge and language use, and (3) self-positioning towards SHL and culture. The findings indicated that the participants’ experiences with their Spanish heritage language (SHL) were profoundly impacted by the nature of language input they received, hostile environments, and negative interactions with members of their communities, which led to emotional distress and communicative avoidance. This situated study also offers potential conceptual and community-based implications for the Spanish HSs. Full article

In recent decades, awareness of sexual violence against men has grown, yet research and services remain limited compared to those addressing women’s experiences. This qualitative study examined how male survivors in Canada navigate social connection, masculinity, and resilience following sexual violence. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, in-depth interviews were conducted with three men aged 40–70 who experienced sexual abuse beginning in childhood. The analysis generated six experiential themes—Nature of the Abuse, Impacts of the Abuse, Breaking the Silence, Healing Journey, Victim versus Survivor, and Life Today—alongside a central theme, Words of Wisdom, which captured survivors’ efforts to transform suffering into meaning and connection. Findings highlight how stigma, silence, and masculine norms disrupted trust and disclosure, while peer support, spirituality, and redefined understandings of masculinity fostered relational recovery. Although situated in Canada, the study offers broader insights into how men negotiate vulnerability, identity, and connection after sexual violence. These findings underscore the importance of relational, survivor-centred approaches in therapy, community support, and policy. Full article

This qualitative study examined how a 21-day integrated program fosters interoceptive awareness and mind–body integration among urban adults in mainland China (n = 11). The intervention combined daily nasal breathing regulation, spontaneous mandala making, and descriptive journaling, complemented by weekly group sharing. Using a cultural–psychological lens, we investigated how an inward–turning tradition in Chinese culture shapes embodied experience and meaning–making. Applying Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to diaries, drawings, and focus-group data, we identified three interrelated processes: (1) the refinement of bodily attention; (2) a shift from deliberate control to natural immersion; and (3) the symbolization of feeling through artistic expression and social resonance. Findings indicate that systematic engagement in the “breath–mandala” intervention heightened sensitivity to chest-centered embodied sensations and promoted the integration of bodily experience into personal narratives; a non-goal-directed, relaxed practice style facilitated the transition from control to absorption, activating self-regulatory mechanisms; and non-evaluative awareness deepened flow while supporting cognitive reorganization and reflective capacity. The study delineates a core pathway by which breath-triggered interoceptive work operates within mind–body interventions, offering a theoretical basis and practical direction for tailored regulation programs across diverse populations. Full article

This study fills a research gap regarding the risks that religion, spirituality, and faith (RSF) pose to resilience in survivors of sex trafficking. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was conducted on data from 44 interviews with 38 survivors of sex trafficking drawn from a larger qualitative study to develop a constructivist grounded theory of resilience during and after trafficking. Twenty-three (58%) identified as Christian, with the remaining participants (n = 15; 42%) identifying with non-mainstream or individualized spiritualities. Participants named religious struggles, spiritual bypassing, exclusionary and oppressive religious beliefs, and injurious behaviors from Christian communities and service providers as sources of harm. The core phenomena of personal agency amidst divine intervention and spiritual power, and the indestructibility of faith and hope, enabled participants to nonetheless benefit from RSF as a source of resilience. Participants’ enumeration of strategies for managing, overcoming, and preventing the harms of RSF notably occurred primarily in the privacy of their personal religious practices, with neither secular nor faith-based service providers being helpful. Their insights and experiences call for service providers and faith actors to be equipped to support survivors’ spiritual strengths and address spiritual trauma and religious struggles, and to advance church culture and traditions for autonomy-affirming spiritual support and care. Full article

Individuals with a lived experience are increasingly being included in the design of mental health services research. Obtaining perspectives of persons with a lived experience of mental health challenges on research that is important to them is an opportunity to achieve equity in allocating resources so that policy-makers and health research funders are made aware of the issues that matter to people who are affected by research. The purpose of this study is to explore lived experience perspectives on research needed for the improvement of care and services for persons with mental health challenges in order to improve the quality of care and service delivery. This qualitative study was conducted in Australia and was informed by biographical research and interpretive phenomenological analysis [IPA]. Twenty-one participants were interviewed for the study. The theme, ‘Access to care and early detection’ included eight categories. The theme, ‘Care and treatment’, included fifteen categories. The theme, Continuity of care’, included six categories. Research questions were developed for each category and serve as a first step towards initiating research on the identified topics. Research topics identified in this study were categorized as insufficiently researched, emerging areas of interest, or well researched with insufficient translation into practice. Full article

Workplace stress in the construction sector is noted to have poor implications for employees and work procedures. Although workplace stress is discussed extensively in the literature, reporting of workplace stress-related matters remains relatively unexplored. This research explored the experiences of reporting stress-related issues among a sample of construction managers in Ireland. The study adopted an interpretative qualitative approach, comprising semi-structured interviews with twenty-five construction managers. The data were examined using interpretative phenomenological analysis. All participants reported experiencing various workplace stressors in construction settings. They expressed a strong hesitancy to report their experiences of workplace stress caused by these stressors, and reasons for disclosure hesitancy included fear, stigma, and possible repercussions. The inability to report these stressors exacerbated the issue and created a deep sense of mistrust, which resulted in low productivity and absences from work. Disclosure hesitancy of workplace stress undermines efforts to build safe, equitable, and inclusive construction workplaces by rendering a noteworthy occupational hazard invisible. When construction managers are reluctant to report work-related stress, organisations may remain unaware of both its presence and its impact, allowing stress-related risks to persist unaddressed. This lack of disclosure can effectively shield organisations from accountability in cases of litigation or regulatory enforcement. Full article

Dissipative systems that evolve on time-dependent domains occur across systems science whenever redistribution, loss, and global restructuring are coupled with geometric change. This work develops a phenomenological, system-level framework for analyzing such processes and focuses on invariant organizational constraints rather than on microscopic mechanisms or specific physical realizations. Redistribution on an evolving domain is modeled through a diffusion–dissipation equation with curvature- and volume-dependent dissipative loss terms, interpreted as effective drivers of irreversible reorganization. Lie symmetry analysis reveals a non-semisimple structure whose generators act as invariants of admissible system-level reorganizations rather than as sources of conservation laws. By selecting a symmetry-compatible subalgebra, an emergent geometric representation is constructed that compactly encodes global balance constraints without invoking a physical spacetime interpretation. The framework yields time-independent geometric invariants and a system-level balance relation that stabilizes global organization despite ongoing local dissipation. A dimensionless geometric indicator is introduced to quantify intrinsic anisotropy of reorganization and to classify dissipative regimes. Owing to its invariant and phenomenological character, the approach is applicable to a broad class of complex systems with evolving domains and irreversible dynamics, consistent with the scope of systems research. Full article

Phase transition in quantum mechanics is interpreted as an evolution, at the end of which, typically, a parameter-dependent and Hermitizable Hamiltonian $H\left(g\right)$ loses its observability. In the language of mathematics, such a “quantum catastrophe” occurs at an exceptional point of order N (EPN). Although the Hamiltonian $H\left(g\right)$ itself becomes unphysical in the limit of $g\to g^{EPN}$, it is shown that it can play the role of an unperturbed operator in an innovative perturbation-approximation analysis of the vicinity of the EPN singularity. As long as such an analysis is elementary at $N\le 3$ and purely numerical at $N\ge 5$, we pick up $N=4$ and demonstrate that for an arbitrary quantum system, the specific (i.e., already sufficiently phenomenologically rich) EP4 degeneracy becomes accessible via a unitary evolution process. This process is shown realizable inside a parametric domain ${\mathcal{D}}_{\mathrm{physical}}$, the boundaries of which are determined, near $g^{EP4}$, non-numerically. Possible relevance of such a mathematical result in the context of non-Hermitian photonics is emphasized. Full article

There is increasing pressure on South African Universities of Technology (UoTs) to incorporate cutting-edge Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to enhance teaching and learning. Adopting Learning Management Systems (LMSs), which offer adaptable, easily accessible, and data-driven education, is essential to this change. Nevertheless, many UoT lecturers still struggle to successfully adopt and use LMS platforms, even with investments in digital infrastructure and policy development. This study presents the equity-sensitive Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework as a conceptual addition to inclusive digital pedagogy and investigates lecturers’ experiences with LMS integration at South African UoTs. This study aimed to explore how lecturers at South African UoT experience the adoption and integration of LMSs and to examine how institutional support, digital literacy, and infrastructural factors shape inclusive digital pedagogy. The results of an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of six interviews with academic staff were structured into three thematic subsections (i.e., (1) lecturers’ experiences of LMS adoption, (2) institutional, infrastructural and personal factors and (3) institutional support, training and inclusivity) that directly align with the three study’s research questions. Rethinking TPACK from an equity-sensitive perspective advances theory by establishing access and equity as central mediating conditions of technology integration, especially in Global South higher education contexts with limited resources. In practical terms, the findings show that to promote inclusive and sustainable LMS adoption, specific capacity building, policy alignment, and institutional investment are required. The paper is relevant to policymakers, academic developers, and institutional leaders because of these implications, which align with the National Digital and Future Skills Strategy, the National Research Foundation (NRF) priorities, and the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) White Paper on Post-School Education. Full article

This article examines the theoretical and practical frameworks surrounding liminal states of consciousness—specifically lucid dreaming and out-of-body experiences (OBEs)—within Indian religious and philosophical traditions. Through a comparative analysis of Vedāntic, Yogic, Buddhist, and Jain systems, the article argues that these states are not merely anomalous psychological events but deliberately cultivated “architectures of liminality” designed to investigate the nature of self, consciousness, and reality. Methodologically, this article offers a comparative analysis of models and categories of liminal consciousness across Indian traditions, critically engaging relevant neurophenomenological frameworks and incorporating a small set of representative first-person exemplars. The results reveal a spectrum of interpretations: from the mind-only projection model of Buddhist dream yoga to the subtle-material interaction model of Jain karmic ontology, and from the embodied cognition framework of modern neuroscience to the disembodied consciousness theories of classical Indian systems. The study concludes that a comprehensive understanding of liminal consciousness must integrate first-person phenomenological reports with the soteriological, ritual, and metaphysical contexts that structure their interpretation, thereby challenging reductionist approaches in contemporary consciousness studies. Full article

Natural convection heat transfer is commonly described using dimensionless correlations relating the Nusselt number to the Grashof and Prandtl numbers. For gases and non-metallic liquids, these parameters combine into the Rayleigh number, $Ra=Gr·Pr$, while for liquid metals they form the Boussinesq number, $Bo=Gr·P{r}^2$, whose physical roles are often underrated. Focusing on the classical configuration of laminar flow over an isothermal vertical plate, the present work adopts a phenomenological perspective to examine how the governing variables influence the thickness of the thermal boundary layer, and, consequently, the heat transfer rate. Within this framework, the Rayleigh and Boussinesq numbers emerge naturally as the controlling dimensionless parameters. Once a power law functional dependence between the Nusselt number and the Rayleigh and Boussinesq numbers is assumed, a physically consistent range for the associated exponents is identified, together with the necessity of introducing a weak corrective function of the Prandtl number, which plays just a refining role. An overall order-of-magnitude analysis is further developed to recover the classical one-fourth power law structure of natural convection correlations and to clarify the origin of the Prandtl number corrective function. The primary contribution of this study is to demonstrate that the Rayleigh and Boussinesq numbers are not merely the outcome of solving the governing equations, but are the dimensionless groups that encapsulate the underlying physics of natural convection, in contrast to the Grashof and Prandtl numbers considered separately. This perspective provides a comprehensive physical interpretation of the existing heat transfer correlations, also offering guidance for identifying the appropriate dimensionless parameters when developing new correlations, useful both to researchers and educators. Full article

This study investigated the narratives of teachers of children and youth orchestras regarding their identity as educators. A qualitative phenomenological approach was employed to compare the experiences of teachers from two orchestral programs in Mexico within two different contexts. One group of teachers from each program participated. Each group consisted of nine orchestra teachers who had at least two years of experience in their respective programs. Additionally, a coordinator from each program was interviewed. The study aimed to understand the subjective representations of what it means to be a teacher in interaction with each educational music context. Fieldwork was conducted between August 2021 and August 2022. Empirical data were obtained through autobiographical multimethodology, which allowed for data triangulation across participants’ narratives. Interpretative analysis was conducted in accordance with Kelchtermans’ conceptual framework of teachers’ self-understanding, which encompasses five components: self-image, self-esteem, task perception, job motivation, and future perspective. The findings reveal differences between the two studied contexts, mainly regarding their opportunities for teacher training and professional development. Similarities were also found between the narratives of the teachers from both programs, finding that task perception and job motivation are associated with the socio-emotional support they provide to students. Teacher narratives highlight training needs and working conditions that require attention to enhance the development of similar programs. Full article