Dienst van SURF
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In our research we focus on the architectural characteristics of a location, seen as a precondition to appeal to the imaginative power of learners that plays a part in satisfying their (presupposed) spiritual hunger and longings for a better world. The concepts space, nonplace, and place, in their relation to the concepts place attachment and sense of place are central in our research. In written and videotaped texts, pupils tell about their attachment to places and sense of place. The preliminary analysis of the texts of the pupils shows that friends and teacher(s) occupy a central place in these pupils’ place attachment and sense of place.
This study links self-concept and place attachment to generate a better understanding of travel behavior patterns by migrant populations, in this case, Western professional migrants who live in the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions of China. Five discrete Western professional migrant groups are identified, each with different demographic profiles, travel patterns, propensity, and intensity. The findings challenge the view that migrant populations are homogenous and also challenge the widely held notion that home return travel is their dominant mobility pattern. Conceptual and managerial implications of migrant travel behavior for destination marketers are briefly outlined.
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Out-of-home placed children or adolescents can be placed in family-style group care, a promising alternative youth care setting. It provides children and Professional Foster Parents (PFPs) with the opportunity to create a continuous relationship. This relationship, in turn, is an important factor in building and maintaining attachment. Scientific literature shows that sensitivity and responsivity are crucial interactional elements for building and maintaining an attachment relationship, but little knowledge is available on how those concepts are displayed in mundane interactions. Therefore this dissertation studies dinner conversations between experienced PFPs and adolescents in family-style group care to find out how sensitivity and responsivity unfold in these conversations. The data consist of 300 hours of videorecordings coming from six family-style group care settings. The method of Conversation Analysis was used to analyse the conversations in detail. On the basis of four studies a better understanding is gained into how the dyadic concepts sensitivity and responsivity are displayed in daily interactions between PFPs and adolescents in family-style group care. The analysis of these specific phenomena disclose the PFPadolescent interaction from different perspectives: the verbal and non-verbal actions of both PFPs and adolescents and how PFPs and adolescents align. In short, this dissertation provides a detailed analysis of interaction and improves the understanding of the dyadic concepts sensitivity and responsivity. It reveals that adolescents are active participants in interactions and shows that PFPs are inventive in their conversations with the adolescents.
Bij de ontwikkeling van kinderen speelt de omgeving waarin zij opgroeien en de wijze waarop zij zich verbonden voelen met hun buurt een belangrijke rol (Owens, 2004; 2016). Om als basisschool goed bij te kunnen dragen aan de ontwikkeling van kinderen is het van belang dat scholen de omgeving en de buurt waarin hun leerlingen opgroeien kennen en kunnen benutten voor hun onderwijs. In het bijzonder gaat het daarbij om de betekenis die deze omgeving voor hun leerlingen heeft. Voor basisscholen in wijken met een grote diversiteit aan inwoners kan de betekenis van eenzelfde omgeving voor verschillende leerlingen ook zeer verschillend zijn. Naar de wijze waarop kinderen zich verbonden voelen met de fysieke en sociale ruimte is nog weinig onderzoek gedaan (Tani, 2016). Naast inzicht in de bestaande verbinding van kinderen met hun omgeving is het voor het onderwijs belangrijk om inzicht te verkrijgen in de wijze waarop kinderen in staat kunnen worden gesteld om zich te binden aan een plek en om deze plek te benutten bij hun ontwikkeling. De capability approach (Nussbaum, 2014) en een perspectief op de veerkracht van kinderen (Enthoven, 2007) bieden een kader om naar dit vraagstuk te kijken. Het onderzoek richt zich op wat het primair onderwijs kan doen om de aan de omgeving gerelateerde vermogens van kinderen te ontwikkelen. Onderwijs waarin de leefomgeving van kinderen wordt betrokken of waarin de leefomgeving op enige wijze een rol speelt kan hiertoe een middel zijn. Dit vanuit de notie dat door het ontwikkelen van een ‘sense of place’ (Dolan, 2016) de kennis, persoonlijke verbondenheid en verantwoordelijkheid voor de lokale omgeving versterkt kunnen worden. Het onderzoek zal na een verkennende fase een ontwerpgericht karakter krijgen, waarbij op onderzoeksmatige wijze materiaal wordt ontwikkeld dat bruikbaar is op basisscholen en lerarenopleidingen basisonderwijs.
In the coming four years, the Hedwige-Prosperpolder in the Schelde estuary will be reopened for nature restoration. This creates opportunities, within a binational Dutch-Belgian consortium, to experiment with the existing dike and to perform targeted dike breach experiments and breach monitoring. We will exploit this opportunity to investigate a newly described, potentially valuable contribution of vegetated foreshores to flood safety: the restriction of dike breach extent, and thus of flooding volume, in the case of failure of the dike. Fostering marsh development in front of realigned dikes could improve safety more than hitherto thought. Not only does it reduce dike failure probabilities, it may also restrict the consequences of failures. Even though this is not the primary goal of the HPP realignment, in this Living Lab we will study how management realignment can be used as a nature-based solution for flood safety. We will model the contribution of vegetated foreshores to breach development, calculate its contribution to reduction of risks, and validate the model using the breach experiment. We will also study the conditions for, and rates of, vegetation and soil strength development in front of realigned dikes. We will explore novel designs and maintenance schemes for realigned dikes connected to a vegetated foreshore. Finally, we will study how people experience physical changes in the landscape in terms of place attachment: will they be reconnected to the changed landscape when properly informed on the new role of this landscape in ecosystem development and safety enhancement? The project consortium is composed of engineers, ecologists and social scientists with a strong track record in multidisciplinary co-operation. It is externally supported by national and regional water authorities, contractors and engineering companies. It is ideally situated to translate new knowledge into operational procedures, and incorporate this into the education of future coastal professionals.