Category Archives: BA1 Society and Lifestyle

The Holmes- Rahe Stress Inventory

Leave a comment

The Holmes Rahe test was a table, ‘The Social Readjustment Rating Scale’, with a number of life events marked with a certain score. By reading through these and marking down the score of each of these life events that have happened to you in the previous year it will tell you what your score meant. After completing this test and only receiving 65 points this told me that within the last year I have had,”a relatively low amount of life change and a low susceptibility to stress-induced health breakdown”.

I feel like this test was directed more at individuals in a marriage, with children or older than me. The majority of the life events included things such as marriage, children, moving house, taking out a mortgage or divorce. All of which I have not experienced yet. Therefore, I feel like this was an inaccurate representation of my stress levels. Other life events such as examinations, studying, managing time efficiently, having a part time job while studying were all not considered. All of which I feel are relevant to my life, or the life of a student.

Stress affects individuals in a number of ways as some people may become stressed much easier than others. It is a very personal thing and every one has their own reasons behind why they are stressed. I feel like balancing my time is the most difficult and therefore most stressful thing for me. As I am a student, have university, studying and a part time job while also trying to fit in time to socialise with friends and family. It can sometimes get too much and I feel that I sometimes put my job before my studying when it should be the other way around. This can therefore affect the relationships that I have with my family and friends as all of my time is spent either at University, studying or being at work. Whereas, it is essential to find that balance in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and manage stress.

Therefore, these are the reasons why I feel The Holmes stress inventory was an inaccurate representation of stress levels. Not only because they did not directly affect my life but because stress is an individual thing and many reasons behind stress may not have been named on the scale.

stress

Inclusion and Equality

Leave a comment

What is incusion and why is it important? Inclusion embraces policies and practices that support diversity, giving a voice to certain individuals, groups and communities that have been traditionally marginalised. Inclusion applies to people that have been discriminated against for a variety of reasons. For example, their gender, sexual orientation, background, age and many more.

There are three levels of inclusion in which inclusion has different concerns (Nelson and Prilleltensky 2010): the individual level, relational level and the societal level. At the individual level, inclusion is concerned with giving people control over their own lives and having a say. At the relational level, inclusion looks to provide people with supportive relationships and welcoming communities. At the societal level, inclusion is concerned with the promotion of equality and providing people with the material help that they require.

Inclusion is also important within education. Lani Florian- Bell chair of Education at the University of Edinburgh researched inclusive pedagogy. Her first research question being “What teaching strategies help to increase the participation and achievement of all children, including those identified as having special educational needs or requiring additional support for learning?”. Florian found that for teachers to be more inclusive, they must focus on the learning of all pupils in their class and not only on those that may need additional support. I agree with Florian’s findings as the teacher will spend more time with those that need additional support within the class. Therefore, leaving the ‘more able’ pupils with a feeling that they are not included or that the teacher has not challenged them to their full potential. I found Lani Florian’s research really interesting and it enthused me to look out for this and make sure that within the classroom I am including the whole class and taking in to consideration each pupils learning.

In relation to inclusion is equality. To promote equality is to promote sameness and to provide people with the same opportunities. There are different approaches to equality. The equality of opportunity approach is based on the desire to provide people with a fair starting point in life. This approach appears to be based on the assumption that the solution to problems of inequality are to be found mainly at the level of the individual. Therefore if we can give individuals more and better opportunities, inequality will no longer be a major concern. The equality of outcome approach highlights the fact that there is a need for more than the same opportunities. Focusing on rewards and praise it states that the outcome and rewards will be the same. However, the equality as fairness and equality of condition approaches are more realistic and involve the enabling of individuals so that they can be as equal as possible in relation to the central conditions of their lives.

The Equality Act 2010 specifies nine characteristics as protected against discrimination. The act focuses on eliminating discrimination and advance equality of opportunity for all.

From learning about this topic, it has highlighted to me that as a teacher equality and inclusion are vital within the classroom. When I go on placement I will ensure that I am aware of both of these aspects.

header-picture_gender-equality

Religion, Culture and Unchurched Spirituality

Leave a comment

religiones

In this weeks lecture, I learned about unchurched spirituality, religion and culture and how they influenced each other. Unchurched spirituality is simply spirituality outside the churches and beliefs not necessarily associated with organised religion. Although there are many debates over the true meanings of the terms “religion” and “spirituality”, I learned that spirituality is understood as having a more expansive meaning than religion. We were also introduced to three theorists, Max Weber, Karl Marx and Bruce Lincoln.

In the tutorials we discussed these theorists in further detail. Max Weber was a German philosopher, he argued that one religion, Christianity (Protestantism), contributed to formation and success of socio- economic issues in the Western world such as capitalism. According to Weber, Protestantism enabled the ideological atmosphere in which capitalism could thrive in Europe. Weber called this this idea the “Protestant Ethic”. In Weber’s eyes, religion was an agent of social change.

Karl Marx was also a German philosopher who developed the theory of international communism and was critical of religion. His ideas later developed into a political philosophy called Marxism and its followers being Marxists. He argued that religion gave false consciousness in people and that it is an unnecessary part of today’s society. He believed that God is “man made”, a human creation, therefore, religion was not necessary to him.

Bruce Lincoln agrees with Karl Marx to an extent. He believes that people should believe that religious claims and ideas are there, however not to accept them all. After reading in to these theorists, it has shown me that each of their views and ideas towards religion are slightly different. However, they all agree that religion has greatly impacted culture.

Overall, I found both the lecture and tutorial really interesting. After being brought up and attending both Catholic primary and secondary schools, this weeks lecture and tutorial group opened more area for thought upon religion. I find it a really interesting topic and I intend to do further reading on the topic of unchurched spirituality and the ways in which religion affects culture.

Religion, Society and Diversity

Leave a comment

discrimination-diversity-04-religion

In our first week of society and lifestyles we were introduced to the topic of religion and society. This involved studying religion in social context. In our first week we discussed religion from both the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’. Religion from the ‘inside’ is the believers approach and religion from the ‘outside’ is the scholarly approach. There are also different types of religion. A established religion is a religion that has established roots and been around for a long time. A sect is a group which depends on voluntary membership and personal commitment. A cult is a group with more radical ideas and practices and usually has deviant and novel beliefs and is known for mind- control and manipulation of its members. We also discussed the functions of religion such as; life crisis, social relations, peace in the community and basic needs.

The independent study task included me researching the anthropologist, Bronislaw Malinowski. I found that Malinowski believed that there were scientific laws of culture that could also be applied to religion.  He said that magic was useful because it brought one individual into a leadership position during times of crisis in society. For Malinowski, religion was an institution that fulfils people’s biological and psychological needs.

In the tutorial, we discussed different aspects of religious diversity in groups. Again, my group was asked to focus on Bronislaw Malinowski. I felt that working in groups for this task was very beneficial, as everyone could share their ideas and views on the topic. Religious diversity is an area that I am still unsure of and I intend to do further reading on this area to improve my knowledge.

I now have a better understanding of the different functions of religion. However, I feel like I need to do further research on the other scholars such as Emile Durkheim as most of my research in today’s tasks was based on Bronislaw Malinowski.

This lecture and tutorial group was a great introduction to religion. It has left me keen to look in to the topics of religious diversity, scholars and the different ways that culture influences religion. I intend to do further reading in all of these areas.