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Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

This chapter focuses on how the idea of ‘an ordinary day in the life’ can serve as an entry point for understanding media use. I discuss how everyday media use can be conceptualized as mundane and meaningful, and as most easily noticed when changing. Building on day-in-the-life interview segments from qualitative studies, I discuss methodological merits and challenges of this approach. The analysis follows media users an ordinary day from morning to night, as they wake up with the smartphone, navigate across social domains, and seek connection and companionship. I argue that seemingly mundane media use practices are made meaningful through the connection they entail, and particularly discuss the conflicted position of smartphone checking in everyday life. The chapter empirically substantiates the arguments made in Chapter 1 about the centrality of smartphones in digital everyday lives.

This extensive lesson involves grades pre-K-3 students in exploring the similarities in the experiences in a single day that children have across the world. Students use discussion, comparing and contrasting, drawings, and digital photos to capture their own and others’ daily experiences in and out of school. They use One World, One Day as a resource and springboard for the development and testing of the generalization, “a typical day in the life of a child is very much the same around the world.” The book includes photos of children from many nations. Students locate the nation in which the photo was taken and consider similarities found in photos with events in a typical day in their lives. The lesson originates in social studies but incorporates interdisciplinary elements.

The learning skills used by students at a technical college to fully participate in their classes were the focus of this investigation. Researchers shadowed two full-time students for one full day as they each went to their classes in a technical college in Qatar. An observation schedule was used to record what students did in their classes (for example: solve problems, listen to the teacher, ask questions). At the end of the day students were interviewed and asked to comment on the importance of the learning skills that they used, how they built the skills they needed and how to become a better student. It was found that students used a variety of learning skills throughout a typical day and that they had their own ideas about learning. The learning skills the two students used most during their classes were not the same, owing partly to the format of the courses and partly to personal learning approach. The four learning skills students identified as most important were: understand and apply concepts to current work; concentrate and maintain focus; follow written instructions; and ask questions. The information gathered in this investigation can be used to inform students, instructors and course planners about the skills students need to be active participants in their classes and to ensure that educators support the development of required learning skills.

I was asked to join the editorial board of A Life in the Day to provide a service user perspective. It is the intention to have an article reflecting this perspective in every issue.The idea for a ‘day in the life’ article is far from unique; what is still unusual is for such an article to be written by a service user and published. It is painful to write about your experiences as Veronica Dewan has done so movingly. It takes great courage to speak up and speak out about your life as a mental health service user. Veronica has done this and more are following in her footsteps every day. They deserve all the support and encouragement we can give them. We must take note of what they say and do something positive in our own ‘day in the life’.

The burnout, stress, and work-life balance challenges faced by teachers have received renewed interest due to the myriad disruptions and changes to K-12 schooling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even prior to the pandemic, relatively little was known about teachers' time use outside of the classroom, the blurring of work and home boundaries, and how teachers compare to similar professionals in these regards. We use daily time-diary data from the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for 3,168 teachers and 1,886 professionals in similarly prosocial occupations from 2003 to 2019 to examine occupational differences in time use. Compared to observationally similar non-teachers, teachers spend significantly more time volunteering at their workplace and completing work outside the workplace during the school year. On average, teachers spend 19 more minutes working outside of the workplace on weekdays than observably similar non-teachers and 38 more minutes on weekends. The weekend disparity is particularly large among secondary school teachers. This suggests that before the widespread switch to online and hybrid learning necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers were already navigating blurrier work-life boundaries than their counterparts in similar professions. This has important implications for teacher turnover and for the effectiveness and wellness of teachers who remain in the profession.

This article explores some service development practices that help to promote social inclusion through day services modernisation (DSM). It is based on the experiences of one NHS trust that successfully negotiated the transition from segregated, buildings‐based in‐house day care services operating during working hours to ones that are individualised, person‐focused and operate at times and in places used also by the general public, providing individual, person‐to‐person support to enable recovery and quality of life in the wider community. Key to success is the concept of the modern, inclusive day service as a community bridge builder operating across a number of life domains and spanning the mental health/community boundary while retaining strong connections with the rest of the mental health system.

Traditionally, participation in the local community has been considered a crucial component of community living for people with learning disabilities. Highlighted in Valuing People (DH, 2001) and in Valuing People Now (DH, 2007), this concept ‐ now appearing as ‘inclusion’ ‐ has retained its prominence, and is an important area for service development and monitoring. Monitoring of community activities was undertaken pre‐ and post‐closure of two small day service facilities. The findings indicate that for this group of people (generally older with higher support needs) the closure of the day service facilities did not, overall, result in a significant increase in community activities. The availability of the time that the person had previously spent in specialist day services was not, by and large, used to develop social inclusion. Even though, for some individuals, some gains were recorded, overall these gains were considered a poor return for the hours released from the closure of the day service facilities.

This chapter presents the research questions, approaches, and arguments of the book, asking how our everyday lives with media have changed after the smartphone. I introduce the topic of media use in everyday life as an empirical, methodological, and theoretical research interest, and argue for its continued centrality to our digital society today, accentuated by datafication. I discuss how the analytical concepts of media repertories and public connection can inform research into media use in everyday life, and what it means that our societies and user practices are becoming more digital. The main argument of the book is that digital media transform our navigation across the domains of everyday life by blurring boundaries, intensifying dilemmas, and affecting our sense of connection to communities and people around us. The chapter concludes by presenting the structure of the rest of the book, where these arguments will be substantiated in analysis of media use an ordinary day, media use in life phase transitions, and media use when ordinary life is disrupted.