HIV remains a statistically significant issue for women of childbearing age in Ghana. Nurses and midwives form the backbone of care providers for the prevention of mother‐to‐child transmission ...programmes. However, nurses and midwives receive little support to provide the emotional aspects of HIV/AIDS care.
Aim
Our aim was to build an understanding of how midwives currently embrace their experience of hope and hoping to support mothers living with HIV.
Design
This is narrative inquiry study.
Methods
We engaged in two to three conversations with five midwives in rural settings in Ghana to understand their experiences of hope and hoping in their interactions with mothers living with HIV. Using the narrative inquiry common places of temporality, the social and personal, and space/place, we wrote narrative accounts for each participant and then searched for resonances across the narrative accounts.
Results
We highlight three emerging narrative threads that resonated across narrative accounts. The three emerging narrative threads were (1) sustaining hope by drawing on life experiences across time and place; (2) hope is sustained through a focus on relational engagement with mothers; (3) midwives embrace the possibility to learn more about hope‐focused practices.
Conclusion
The midwives began, although tentatively, to shine light on the things and events that diminished their abilities to maintain a hopeful perspective. At the same time, they became more comfortable and familiar with the notion of making hope visible and accessible in their experiences.
Impact
Since the midwives welcomed additional support to cope with the challenges they were experiencing, we imagine one day being able to make sense of how nurses and midwives engage with a narrative pedagogy of hope. Including hope‐focused practices in nursing and midwifery preservice and in‐service opportunities is important.
Patient or Public Contribution
There was no direct patient or public involvement in this study.
In this autobiographical narrative inquiry, I continued to make sense of a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope (LeMay, 2014). I started with a remembered story that occurred on a First ...Nation shortly after I commenced working at a post-secondary institution. Following that, I shared stories that led me to wonder about a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope and then what I learned in a dissertation with two teachers as we worked with a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope. From there, I unpacked the remembered story, using the three learnings that resonated in my sensemaking with the two teachers. Lastly, I reflected on how this inquiry inspired me to continue to make sense of students’ storied experiences of working with a narrative pedagogy of hope (LeMay, 2014) in relation to their well-being. Key words: a narrative conception of hope, narrative inquiry, autobiographical narrative inquiry, hope-focused practices and strategies, making hope visible and accessible Dans cette enquête narrative autobiographique, j'ai continué à donner du sens à une conception narrative de l'espoir inspirée par Dewey (LeMay, 2014). J'ai commencé par me souvenir d'une histoire qui s'est produite sur une Première Nation peu après que j'ai commencé à travailler dans un établissement postsecondaire. Ensuite, j'ai partagé les histoires qui m'ont amenée à m'interroger sur une conception narrative de l'espoir inspirée par Dewey, puis ce que j'ai appris dans le cadre d'une dissertation avec deux enseignants alors que nous travaillions avec une conception narrative de l'espoir inspirée par Dewey. Ensuite, j'ai décortiqué l'histoire dont je me souviens en utilisant les trois apprentissages qui ont résonné dans ma recherche de sens avec les deux enseignants. Enfin, j'ai réfléchi à la façon dont cette enquête m'a inspirée pour continuer à donner du sens aux expériences narratives des élèves qui travaillent avec une pédagogie narrative de l'espoir (LeMay, 2014) en relation avec leur bien-être. Mots-clés : une conception narrative de l'espoir, une enquête narrative, une enquête narrative autobiographique, des pratiques et des stratégies axées sur l'espoir, rendre l'espoir visible et accessible
Put hope to work: a commentary Larsen, Denise; Edey, Wendy; M. LeMay, Lenora
Journal of advanced nursing,
12/2005, Volume:
52, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Larsen et al highlight some of the research and observations made at the Hope Foundation of Alberta. The Hope Foundation is a research centre at the University of Alberta dedicated to the study and ...application of hope to enhance human living.
In this autobiographical narrative inquiry, I continued to make sense of a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope (LeMay, 2014). I started with a remembered story that occurred on a First ...Nation shortly after I commenced working at a post-secondary institution. Following that, I shared stories that led me to wonder about a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope and then what I learned in a dissertation with two teachers as we worked with a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope. From there, I unpacked the remembered story, using the three learnings that resonated in my sensemaking with the two teachers. Lastly, I reflected on how this inquiry inspired me to continue to make sense of students' storied experiences of working with a narrative pedagogy of hope (LeMay, 2014) in relation to their well-being.
The research puzzle, in this study, evolved as I made sense of making hope visible in my interactions at a centre that studied how intentionally using hope enhances quality of life. Over a period of ...12 years I developed a set of five hope-focused practices (LeMay, Edey, & Larsen, 2008). In this dissertation I considered three conceptions or ways of working with hope and hoping in education alongside a fourth conception, which I named a Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope. Following that I outlined the hope-focused practices (LeMay et al., 2008) along with other theoretical considerations. My research puzzle asked: What are teachers’ experiences with hope-focused practices in their curriculum making (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992)? I invited two teachers from two different school districts who were participants in ongoing professional development sessions to work alongside me to make sense of their experiences of working with hope-focused practices. Sheila, Carmen and I attended to their stories to live by (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999) using the commonplaces of narrative inquiry: temporality, sociality and place (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) from January 2012 to July 2013. As we moved from field texts to research texts, we co-composed narrative accounts of their experiences. After looking across their narrative accounts, I identified four resonant threads. The first thread was learning to live with hope in early childhood. The second resonant thread was being in the midst of embodying hope. The third thread was sharpening an embodied way of being with hope. The fourth resonant thread was the courage to be with hope (Tillich, 1952). By engaging in this inquiry I learned that hope matters but it cannot be imposed; the commonplaces of narrative inquiry inspire an understanding of a narrative conception of hope as an embodied lived experience; and the Deweyan-inspired narrative conception of hope makes it possible to live alongside the dominant conceptions of hope in education.
Josie presented her model of hope at the annual general meeting of the Hope Foundation of Alberta. "I believe there are four things that help us to have hope," she said. "I have faith in my family ...and friends. I have faith in others. I have faith in my school. They teach me so much to get into university and college." As the applause rang out, every adult in the room felt the surge of hope that Josie must have felt as she stood before us. Josie is a Grade 5 student at Meskanahk Ka-Nipa-Wip School (Montana School), in Hobbema, Alberta. Josie's model of hope is multidimensional. It is diamond shaped, and each of the diamond's four points bears one of these words: faith, dreams, courage and knowledge. On the inside of the radiant blue diamond is the word hope, and red and yellow sunrays radiate outward from it to the four words. From each word, an arrow points back to hope. On the outside of the diamond, Josie wrote the following words to Sandi Hiemer, Meskanahk Ka-Nipa-Wip School's counsellor: "That is you, Sandi!" And on the outside of each word, she wrote, "You have faith, you have courage, you have knowledge, you have dreams, and most important, you have hope." Josie's model took shape when Meskanahk Ka-NipaWip School and the Hope Foundation of Alberta joined forces to develop hope-related art for a youth art show. Art provides an entry point through which students can access and design their hopes for themselves, their families and their community. Art requires students to work with metaphorical images, and encourages meaningful and honest insight. Students' hopes become important markers embedded in an individual and collective narrative. Students tell stories that are continually shaped and reshaped. With Hiemer's support and guidance, students showed their creations to the band's elders, who in turn became inspired to work with students to create a story of hope. That story, along with the artwork and Josie's model were featured at the Hope Foundation of Alberta's annual general meeting.
There is, however, another reason I was elated to see this article in the May 17 edition of The Journal. The stories and photographs mirror what we saw and heard at the Hope Foundation's annual ...general meeting, when Montana School students shared their hope representations and stories. The students told us that they wanted to tell others that there were stories of hope in Hobbema. There is no doubt that the hope-focused service-learning program will make a difference in Hobbema. We have seen students in our pilot hope-focused service-learning projects become more engaged in their schoolwork, learn to set and attain goals, become more competent at solving problems and interacting with others.
Helping the homeless LeMay, Lenora M
Edmonton journal,
11/2006
Newspaper Article
Then it hits me. I can make spaces for these and other questions to guide my hopes for a world without homelessness. I don't have to come up with quick answers. On the contrary, paying attention to ..."the smallest thing I can do" to keep the issue alive day-to-day and moment-to-moment will feed my hope and actions toward a future that decreases homelessness, one person at a time.
