درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

Recent years have witnessed a surge in research on the impact of the cyberspace on social movements. The feminist movement has built a vocal platform online which attempts to underscore sexual violence against women. Scholars have begun to suspect that the internet has ushered in a new wave, the fourth wave of feminism. The fourth wave’s main feature is its reliance on social media. The accessibility, reach of a widespread audience, low costs and user-friendly environment have encouraged women to use social media to speak out against various forms of sexual violence directed against women. It is also assumed that going forward; the movement will also tackle issues such as the gender pay gap, neoliberal policies, maternity leave, and cultural sexism. Moreover, the internet-based movement is striving to bring to the fore the topic of intersectionality, that is, the intersection of oppressive institutions, and the attempt to rectify the failings of past waves by representing those oppressed by multiple institutions such as sexism, classism, and racism. This commentary provides an overview of the emerging academic literature on the fourth wave of feminism and critically reflects the lack of social realism in its existing form of knowledge production.

Purpose: Considering rich theoretical underpinnings of positive psychology (PP), the current study aimed to investigate the effects of an extra educational curriculum on the basis of PP on distress and attainment of Iranian high school students who are living in dormitories in boarding schools. Methodology: This is an empirical study with a post-test only control group design in which a sample of 346 male students were selected through convenience sampling from two boarding schools in Qom city during 2018-2019. A translated and validated version of K10 distress questionnaire (Kessler et al, 2010) was administered to them and 67 students with high distress symptoms were identified and randomly allocated to a control group (N=23), experimental group one (N= 22) and experimental group two (N=22). First, the experimental group underwent 16 sessions (twice a week for 90 minutes) of PP curriculum integrated with religious counseling. Employing a post-test only control-group design, the group’s performance on a distress scale (Goldberg, 1981) and their mean scores were compared after the intervention. Kruskal-Wallis and ANOVA tests were used to compare differences between the groups. Findings: Findings revealed that positive curriculum alleviated distress symptoms of the experimental groups vis-à-vis the control (χ2 (2) = 52.851, p ≤ 0.001). Also, to investigate the effect of the intervention on educational attainment, their semester mean scores were analyzed through ANOVA (F = 8.244(2, 66), p≤0.001) where promising results were obtained. Conclusion: It was concluded that both interventions exerted meaningful effects on the attainment and distress of dorm-living students. Also, follow-up studies added proof on the permanence of the effects.