The purpose of this study was to explore how spouses of persons with a disability following stroke describe their lived experiences regarding assistive devices in everyday life. A phenomenological lifeworld approach was used and conversational interviews were conducted with 12 spouses. Their lived experiences of assistive devices were explored in relation to four lifeworld existentials intertwined in everyday life. The results showed that lived body concerns aspects of feelings, habits, and incorporation of the devices with one's own body. The devices are, from the spouses' perspective, a prerequisite for their partner with stroke living at home. Successively the devices are incorporated into the couples' homes, and they provide a new view of the environment, aspects related to lived space. The devices bring about a changed relation to lived time, related to past, present, and future. Further, lived human relation concerns changed relationships to husbands/wives with stroke, including a great responsibility due to the devices and their usage. The results also included stigmatizing aspects and a twofold relationship to health professionals regarding participation in decisions about prescribing assistive devices. Understanding the unique meaning of assistive devices from the spouses' perspective is vital for occupational therapists prescribing such devices.

The purpose of this article is to analyse how education and schooling took part in handling the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in eight European countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland and Sweden). The focus is on primary education and on decisions to close schools, or not. Our research was informed by assemblage theory in order to analyse how different components interacted in developing societal responses to mitigate the pandemic. The research was designed as a comparative case study of practical reasoning in diverse contexts. Data sources were the mass media and statements from governments and authorities. Our analyses showed that decisions to close schools, or not, were based on two alternative discourses on schooling. Closing primary schools was a preventive measure underlined by discourses of schools as places for infection. Keeping primary schools open was underlined by a discourse in which schools were conceived of as a place for social supportive measures and caring. Furthermore, the closing alternative was often combined with attempts to replace school practices by distance learning or computerized instruction. Legal constitutions and lawmaking were of significant importance in selecting discourses and the relative impact of different components, mostly political or medical, in responding to the pandemic.

Th is methodological article explores issues related to having the ontological ground for phenomenological empirical research present throughout the research process. We discuss how ontology needs to be taken into consideration regarding the phenomena to be studied and how ontological aspects of phenomena need to be highlighted during various data collection and analysis procedures. Here, we discuss how philosophical works can be used in the context of specific research projects. In illustrating our statements, we present four empirical examples connected to the themes of life changes and learning processes with the purpose of exemplifying and discussing how general lifeworld ontology can be integrated as an active resource in empirical phenomenological research.

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