The overall aim of the article is to analyse how the universal right to education have been built, legitimized and used. And more specifically ask who is addressed by the universal right to education, and who is given access to rights and to education. The first part of the article focus on the history of declarations, the notion of the universal right to education, emphasizing differences in matters of detail—for example, the meaning of ‘compulsory’, ‘children’s rights’ or ‘parents’ rights’—and critically (...) examining the right of the child and the right of the parent in terms of tensions between ‘social rights’ and ‘private autonomy rights’. Despite differences in detail, the iterations of the universal right to education do share to the full in the idea of education as such. In the second part the attempt to scrutinize the underlying assumptions legitimizing the consensus on education, focusing again on the notion of the child. In conclusion I argue that a certain notion of what it is to be a human being is inscribed within the circle of access to rights and education. These notions of what it means to be a child, a parent, a citizen or a member of the ‘human family’ are notions of enlightenment and humanity and, to my understanding, aspects of how democracy is configured around freedom, equality and fraternity. (shrink)

Seeing the entwinement of social and epistemic challenges through COVID, we discuss the perils of simplistic appeals to ‘follow the science’. A hardened scientism risks excarbating social conflict and fueling conspiracy beliefs. Instead, we see an opportunity to devise more inclusive medical knowledge practices through endorsing experiential knowledge alongside traditional evidence types.

The aim of this article is to elaborate on how a distinct concept of the person can be implemented within person‐centred care as an ethical configuration of personhood in the tension between the two predominant cultures of knowledge within health care: naturalism and phenomenology. Starting from Paul Ricoeur's ‘personalism of the first, second, and third person’ and his ‘broken’ ontology, open‐ended, incomplete, and imperfect mediations, placed at the precise juncture where reality is divided up into two separate cultures of knowledge, (...) is identified as crucial for what makes us human. Within this context, Ricoeur's distinct ethical configuration of personhood is based on the homology between the linguistic, practical, narrative, and moral determinations of selfhood—articulated as a hermeneutics of the self, without any methodological break. Person‐centred care is thus recognized as an profound ethical approach to health care based on mediations of ‘horizontal’ (teleological) and ‘vertical’ (deontological) readings of an ethical configuration of personhood by the use of practical wisdom. (shrink)

Background: Obstetric labor and childbirth are mostly regarded as a physiological process, whereas social, cultural, psychological and transcendental aspects have received less attention. Labor support has been suggested to promote labor progress. The aim of this study was to investigate whether continuous labor support by a midwife promotes labor progress and vaginal delivery.Material and Methods: A randomized controlled study at a university hospital in Sweden in 2015–17. Primiparous women with singleton pregnancy and spontaneous labor onset were randomized to continuous support (...) or standard care during delivery. The primary outcome was the duration of active labor. Secondary outcomes were delivery mode, women's need of labor analgesia and satisfaction with delivery, maternal cortisol levels, and neonatal morbidity.Results: Continuous support was followed by shorter active labor 11.0 ± 5.7 h compared to 13.7 ± 3.9 h with standard care. Women in the continuous support group tended to have lower cortisol levels and low cortisol during the first and second stages of labor were correlated with shorter active labor. Continuous support was followed by spontaneous delivery in 73%, instrumental delivery in 24% and emergency cesarean section in 3% in contrast to standard care which was followed by spontaneous delivery in 62%, instrumental delivery in 24% and cesarean in 14%. The continuous support group received combined analgesic methods more often. Women's satisfaction with delivery and neonatal morbidity were comparable.Conclusion: Continuous labor support was followed by shorter active labor compared to standard care. Women with continuous support had a high rate of vaginal delivery and tended to have lower cortisol levels during all stages of active labor reflecting a lower stress level. Low cortisol was correlated to shorter active labor. Based on these results, we recommend continuous labor support for all primiparous women during active labor. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore the complexities of methodological, ethical and emotional challenges of studying sensitive and vulnerable communities online from the perspective of simultaneously being a researcher and a research subject. The point of departure for these explorations consists of the author’s past and ongoing studies of the role and use of a closed grief support group on Facebook for bereaved parents – a community of which the author is a member. The aim is not to provide ready (...) solutions for “how to do ethics,” but rather to contribute to the collective and ongoing work initiated by the Association of Internet Researchers, among others, and to recognize the necessity of ethical pluralism, cross-cultural awareness and an interdisciplinary approach. Design/methodology/approach This is an explorative study, drawing on an ethnographic case study. The case serves as a point of departure for discussing the complexities of methodological, ethical and emotional challenges of studying sensitive and vulnerable communities online from the perspective of simultaneously being a researcher and a research subject. Findings Being a researcher and a research subject rolled into one, as it were, presents both opportunities and challenges. To conduct responsible research from both these perspectives pose high demands on the researchers’ ethical as well as emotional capacities and responsibilities. Hopes and expectancies of the community under study might put the researcher into a dilemma, ethical aspects of anonymity and informed consent might have to be reconsidered as well as emotional challenges of engaging in and with sensitive research, all of which makes for a complex balancing act. Ethics and methods are inextricably intertwined, so are the emotional challenges of conducting sensitive research intermingled. Studying vulnerable individuals and closed communities online highlights the necessity for case and context sensitive research and for flexibility, adaptivity and mindfulness of the researcher. It also highlights the importance of discussing and questioning theoretical, methodological and ethical developments for studying everyday life practices online. Originality/value The challenges encountered in this case study contribute to the experientially grounded approach to research ethics emphasized in AoIR’s ethics guidelines. This case offers an opportunity to explore and discuss complex issues arising from the researcher’s insider position in a closed group devoted to the sensitive topic of supporting bereaved parents. Further, it highlights the necessity for research to be case and context sensitive as well as for the researcher and the research design to be flexible and adaptive. Research on vulnerable communities also heightens the demands of ethical responsibility of the researcher and the research process. (shrink)

Current approaches used in educational research and practice to evaluate the quality of written arguments often rely on structural analysis. In such assessments, credit is awarded for the presence of structural elements of an argument, such as claims, evidence, and rebuttals. In this article, we discuss limitations of such approaches, including the absence of criteria for evaluating the quality of the argument elements. We then present an alternative framework, based on the Rational Force Model (RFM), which originated from the work (...) of a Nordic philosopher Næss. Using an example of an argumentative essay, we demonstrate the potential of the RFM to improve argument analysis by focusing on the acceptability and relevance of argument elements, two criteria widely considered to be fundamental markers of argument strength. We outline possibilities and challenges with using the RFM in educational contexts and conclude by proposing directions for future research. (shrink)

Questions of ethics and the study of culture are tightly interwoven. Are we to see ethics as one thread in the fabric created by human culture or does ethics rather transcend culture? The discussions in this volume take place within this spectrum. Eleven Wittgenstein scholars explore how ethics is embedded in everyday activities and speech. The topics dealt with range from the ways we speak about human practices and nature, religious belief, gender, and moral understanding to questions about Wittgensteinâ (TM)s (...) views on ethics and what it means to understand and attend to a particular individual. Central points of departure are, firstly, that ethics cannot be reduced to any specific cultural form and, secondly, that how we conceive of language is crucially connected with how we perceive the relation between culture and ethics. The points of view put forth frequently pose radical questions to the mainstream of philosophy. The different uses to which Wittgensteinâ (TM)s thought is put also raise important questions about how one should understand the role of language, ethics and culture in his philosophy. (shrink)

The discovery that certain selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors delay ejaculation and the later development and approval of dapoxetine as an on-demand treatment option has led to a dramatic increase in medical interest in premature ejaculation. This paper analyses the diagnostic criteria and the discussion within the medical community about suitable treatments against the backdrop of theories of science, sex and gender. Our conclusion is that the diagnosis itself and the suggested treatments contribute to normative models of sexual conduct and therefore (...) reinforce the norms that cause patients9 distress over ejaculating ‘too soon’. (shrink)

The high prevalence of brain injury incidents in adolescence and adulthood demands effective models for re-learning lost cognitive abilities. Impairment in brain injury survivors’ higher-level cognitive functions is common and a negative predictor for long-term outcome. We conducted two small-scale interventions (N = 12; 33.33% female) with persons with acquired brain injuries in two municipalities in Sweden. Age ranged from 17 to 65 years (M = 51.17, SD = 14.53). The interventions were dialogic, inquiry-based, and inspired by the Philosophy for (...) Children Programme, a participatory thinking skills approach with documented higher-order cognitive outcomes, such as developed argumentation skills, in other target groups. Philosophical dialogues were conducted once a week in the two groups, totalling 12 dialogues per group. Group argumentation development was measured through compared scores from structured observations of filmed dialogues early and late in the intervention. Large positive changes in mean scores from early to late in the intervention, together with constantly high facilitator quality, suggest argumentation development in the sample due to the intervention. (shrink)

This text is dedicated to the memory of Peter Kemp (1937–2018) and his later philosophical project cultivating citizens of the world as a response to globalization. Inspired by Grundtvig, he developed world-citizenship from a post-post-national perspective, combining the aim for the equality of the people with equality of all mankind. In this presentation, Kemp is recognized as a “struggling” philosopher according to Ricoeur’s critical hermeneutics. As a horizon of understanding, the author brings in a discussion on the anthropological deficit of (...) the new competition state (Ove Kaj Pedersen), generated by the shift from a moral determination of the self to an opportunistic economic man wholly motivated by self-interest and utility maximization. Conclusively, it is being argued that Kemp’s way of introducing Ricoeur into the field of education, by transforming his hermeneutics of the self into a hermeneutics of the cosmopolitan self, has simultaneously revealed how much Ricoeur is a profound universalistic thinker. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to elaborate on the inner connection between three such diverse entities as lifelong learning, globalization and hermeneutics. After placing lifelong learning in a societal context framed by globalization, my intention is to reflect on the prerequisites for introducing a hermeneutical contribution to the understanding of lifelong learning. First, it is stated that globalization is the most profound horizon today for explaining the current interest we experience in both lifelong learning and hermeneutics. Second, from these (...) links to on globalization, we can also expect to find new links between lifelong learning and hermeneutics. Third, the predominant configuration of lifelong learning according to the logics of globalization and virtues of flexibility is demonstrated, and thereafter criticized mainly from the perspectives of philosophical anthropology. Finally, an alternative configuration of meaning and identity formation in lifelong learning is proposed by utilizing a reformulated theory of interpretation made possible thanks to recent metamorphosis inside the hermeneutical tradition itself. (shrink)

Persons with aphasia suffer from a loss of communication ability as a consequence of a brain injury. A small strand of research indicates effec- tiveness of dialogic interventions for communication development for persons with aphasia, but a vast amount of research studies shows its effectiveness for other target groups. In this paper, we describe the main parts of the hitherto technological development of an application named Dialogica that is (i) aimed at facilitating increased communicative participation in dialogic settings for persons (...) with aphasia and other communication disorders, (ii) based on comput- er game technology as well as on theory in dialogic education and argumenta- tion theory, and (iii) designed for mobile devices with larger screens. (shrink)

In this study, the age-old distinction between decision method and criterion of rightness, commonly employed in normative ethics, was used to attain a detailed understanding of inter- and intrapersonal variety in students' moral reasoning. A total of 24 Swedish students, 12–15 years of age, were interviewed. Inter- and intrapersonal varieties in and between the two dimensions of moral reasoning were found, constituting six novel forms of varieties. We describe several explanations proposed within the field of social-cognitive domain theory, and argue (...) that these do not suffice to explain all the found forms of varieties in students' moral reasoning. Some limitations of the present study are discussed, and some suggestions for future research are given. (shrink)

This article discusses the meanings that motherhood has in the everyday life of women in Sweden and how they practice their mothering. The empirical foundation is qualitative interviews conducted with mothers who live in Sweden. Social constructionist and discursive psychology inspired the article, and according to the analysis three discursive positions were identified. The first position deals with the child-mother relationship and indicates that the child's psychological well-being is dependent on the mother's accessibility. The second discursive position deals with the (...) child-mother-woman relationship. Within this framework, motherhood involves finding contentment in life beyond the child, to be able to convey that well-being to the child. The third discursive position focuses on the mother as a working woman rather than a mother. These three discursive positions are discussed in relation to a pronounced discourse within Swedish society, which centers on an intense politically induced struggle for gender equality. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe technological advances for supporting persons with aphasia in philosophical dialogues about personally relevant and contestable questions. A computer game-based application for iPads is developed and researched through Living Lab inspired workshops in order to promote the target group’s communicative participation during group argumentation. We outline some central parts of the background theory of the application and some of its main features, which are related to needs of the target group. Methodological issues connected to the design (...) and use of Living Labs with persons with aphasia are discussed. We describe a few problems with researching development of communicative participation during group argumentation using an app assisted intervention for the target group and suggest some possible solutions. (shrink)

We present results from a single case study based on semi-structured interviews with a student (a boy in school year 3) diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and his school staff after participating in a short and small-scale intervention carried out in a socio-economically disadvantaged Swedish elementary school in 2019. The student participated in a seven week long intervention with a total of 12 philosophical dialogues (ranging from 45 to 60 minutes). Two facilitators, both with years of facilitation experience and teacher (...) degree and at least BA in philosophy, facilitated the majority of the dialogues and mainly followed a ”routine” procedure. The student was interviewed in direct connection to the end of the intervention about his experiences from the dialogues and his perceptions about whether and how the dialogues had influenced him. The student’s two teachers, who had participated in the dialogues as participants, were interviewed as a pair, also in direct connection to the end of the intervention, while the school principal was interviewed two years after the study. These staff interviews concerned the staff’s experiences of the influence of the dialogues on the students within the intervention as well as transfer effects to other contexts in school. The data from the study include detailed elaborations from a student perspective of different effects on the student’s communicative and cognitive development, which are in several respects supported also by staff reports. The results show that the student was able, interested, and willing to participate in philosophical dialogues, and our data point to several positive outcomes for the student in the communicative and cognitive domains. (shrink)

Some employ neurological theories of empathy to train medical students and to explain why care work is emotionally exhausting. I argue, however, that these theories develop conceptual and methodological confusion that creates a reductive and misdirected focus in patient-centered care. Neurological theories on empathy do not help us understand patient-centered care, nor do they help us understand why care work can be exhausting. By discussing examples of care work, I argue that empathic attentiveness to patients is a dialogical ethical response (...) to the whole person and takes place in daily care settings of working, helping, and responding to each other. (shrink)

This unique collection of articles on emotion by Wittgensteinian philosophers provides a fresh perspective on the questions framing the current philosophical and scientific debates about emotions and offers significant insights into the role of emotions for understanding interpersonal relations and the relation between emotion and ethics.

Summary The article examines the reception and interpretation of the ?death of ideology? thesis in Sweden. The thesis was launched by the political scientist Herbert Tingsten in several works, and generated much attention and debate in the 1960s. The main opponents of the idea saw it as a liberal utopia, and also as an attack on Swedish social democracy. It is largely this interpretation that has gone down in history. This article seeks to demonstrate that Tingsten's idea can be given (...) another interpretation and a quite different significance if it is set in the context of the period when it was first conceived, namely in the 1940s. According to this argument, the idea that ideological clashes were being given less and less weight implied not so much an attack on social democracy, but on the contrary heralded a new emphasis on the importance of social engineering and on the use of social science as vehicle for societal reform. Thus, instead of being seen as a liberal utopia, the so-called ?death of ideology? in Sweden can be seen as much more compatible with the socialist ends that were influential in mid-twentieth-century Sweden. These are, this article maintains, the true background against which Tingsten's analysis must be understood. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical reflection on the attempts to determine the historical meaning of the present situation as a philosophical topic. To determine the specific interpretative character of the diagnostics of our contemporary situation—beyond both absolute knowledge and arbitrary thinking—this paper argues that “now” and “here” need to be defined in accordance with the concepts of “historical time” and “inhabited space.” This has been made possible as a result of the recent metamorphosis within the hermeneutical tradition.

This article is dedicated to the memory of Peter Kemp (1937–2018), whose extraordinary influence since the 1960s as an academic scholar and public intellectual transformed the Scandinavian philosophical scene in the post-analytic period. His contributions are viewed in the light of a rich biographical context, from his 1973 doctoral defense and his unflagging commitment as a teacher and author to his continued critique of narrow philosophical perspectives. I emphasize the unparalleled success of Kemp in addressing and challenging both the broader (...) society and its constituent elements of political leadership, public administration, and the business community. Finally, I show the impact of his personal life on his aim to link critical thinking and conviction in developing a philosophical commitment. In this way, as in general, Peter Kemp not only followed in the footsteps of, but also continued, Paul Ricoeur’s project. (shrink)

This article elaborates on the relationship between structuralism (and to some extent post-structuralism), hermeneutics and pragmatism, starting from what I comprehend as the inherent dilemma articulated in the policy documents concerning the emerging knowledge economy: the tension between innovation and adaptation. In the first section, I delineate a horizon of understanding for my presentation by defining the particular societal transformations in the historical context where the question of creativity and innovation has become of strategic importance. Then, in the second section, (...) I suggest a diagnosis of the new and predominant flexible organization of knowledge within the context of the new creative economy. The third section is a short interlude, where the philosophical implications of these societal transformations are being disclosed, together with the challenges that influence the agenda for a discussion about a constructive philosophical contribution. In the last two sections, I introduce a particular kind of hermeneutical perspective into the discussion by a close reading of one of Paul Ricoeur’s major works from the mid 1970s, here distinctively interpreted as a profound investigation into the micro-mechanisms of the epistemology of creativity. Thus, by the configuration of a hermeneutics of creativity and innovation from these philosophical resources, my intention is to disclose the ontological implications of innovation as well as the anthropological prerequisites for a conception of creativity “with a human face.”. (shrink)

A main issue in Swedish school debate is the question of how to teach the student a common value system based on democracy and western humanism. The debate is rather intense, to say the least. Not only is the premise that there exists one value system that we share a target for critique, but there is also the question of what value education is or could be. There is, as well, quite a body of research on children's moral development, where (...) many take as their departure the work of Kohlberg. However, there has been little or no attention on how the individual learner conceptualizes and makes meaning out of ethical issues. That is, descriptions of processes. In this paper we will present what we take to be urgent questions that need to be investigated against the background of prior research and practical work at Södra teatern in Stockholm, Sweden. For eight years in a row, Södra teatern has had as a main project to lead a practice on the subject of philosophy with children. Several groups of youths in the age of nine to eighteen have regularly met to discuss philosophical thoughts and problems, which in a democratic manner are settled for discussion by the participants. Today this philosophical practice has spread to the north of Sweden. In Backman's final exam within the teacher education she has explored the development of children's (7‐8 years old) ability to argue for different ethical positions, both verbally and in writing and painting. This practice has been inspired by the tradition at Södra teatern, but customized to fit a regular school class in Luleå, with very little experience of philosophical discussion. In the very short period of five weeks Backman has been able to see quite significant changes in the children's ability to argue for their ethical positions. The study was initiated by examining some argumentative abilities of the pupils, for instance the ability of expressing an argument for an ethical position in writing. In the final part of the study, the same ability was examined in very similar circumstances, and the augment of expressed arguments in writing was significant. Another consideration that was raised as a consequence of the study regards the pupil's conceptualizing of ethical issues. In some conversations about the notion of justice it became clear that children interpreted the term very differently. This is not very surprising but important to pay further attention to. As mentioned earlier, there has been very little attention on how individual children conceptualize ethical issues. In this paper we argue that more interest should be put on investigating these issues in more depth, and we will do this by an outlining of a research application. (shrink)

The educational method Philosophy for Children is a combined thinking skills program and a democratic dialogic approach, implemented in approximately 50 countries and translated into about 20 languages. Lately, with P4C as a point of departure, the area of philosophical dialogue has extended into the inclusion of a range of contextualized methods with different starting points for the dialogues. In this paper, two arguments for having films as starting points for philosophical dialogues are presented: a) The argument from perspective taking, (...) and b) The argument from emotional content and response. Briefly, the arguments state that films, through the perceptual input, offer the opportunity to take shared emotional content and an array of different perspectives as starting points in philosophical dialogue. These arguments are supported by warranted theses in contemporary film theory and empirical data from participants’ evaluations of philosophical dialogues during the PhilosoFilmFestival, a Swedish film festival with basic principles of P4C as a point of departure. (shrink)

Annually, more than ten million people in all age groups in the world experience an acquired brain injury, which is a brain injury caused after birth by external forces or certain internal factors. Brain injury survivors are often left with long-term impairments in cognitive, social, or emotional functioning. Despite a promising outset, research on the effectiveness of philosophical dialogues as an educational method for persons with ABI to increase their cognitive, social, and emotional functioning has, to our knowledge, been virtually (...) non-existent. The present research project targets this and uses a pretest-posttest and mixed-method triangulation design and attempts to measure effects of two small-scale interventions carried out in the northern part of Sweden. In this text, the project’s research design, data production, and data processing are described. (shrink)

Editorial for the special issue on the theme of art appraoching religion and science.

This paper considers the ethical implications of applying three major ethical theories to the memory structure of an artificial companion that might have different embodiments such as a physical robot or a graphical character on a hand-held device. We start by proposing an ethical memory model and then make use of an action-centric framework to evaluate its ethical implications. The case that we discuss is that of digital artefacts that autonomously record and store user data, where this data are used (...) as a resource for future interaction with users. (shrink)

The gifted education research area is rapidly expanding in Sweden. In the context of very limited research nationally, demands are increasing for steering documents and addressing of student and teacher needs in practice. However, Swedish research on students that are ‘twice exceptional’—students classified as being both gifted and disabled (for instance, through a neurodevelopmental disorder such as ADHD)—is nearly non-existent. In this study, we present an exploratory single case study of a female student in school year seven based on semi-structured (...) individual interviews with the student and her two guardians regarding her educational situation. The data were first inductively coded and triangulated in collaboration between three of the authors. A fourth author later independently and deductively coded one-third of the data based on the previously inductively determined thematic structure and conducted a consensus interrater reliability check, exceeding 85% percent agreement. The three main themes are as follows: (1) multiplex perspectives on academic outcomes and expectations, (2) the intersection between twice exceptionality and academic work, and (3) information and perceptions about twice exceptionality. The results indicate several educational challenges and opportunities for twice exceptional students. Further research is needed regarding twice exceptional students in Sweden. (shrink)

Much of what we believe we know, we know through the testimony of others. While there has been long-standing evidence that people are sensitive to the characteristics of the sources of testimony, for example in the context of persuasion, researchers have only recently begun to explore the wider implications of source reliability considerations for the nature of our beliefs. Likewise, much remains to be established concerning what factors influence source reliability. In this paper, we examine, both theoretically and empirically, the (...) implications of using message content as a cue to source reliability. We present a set of experiments examining the relationship between source information and message content in people's responses to simple communications. The results show that people spontaneously revise their beliefs in the reliability of the source on the basis of the expectedness of a source's claim and, conversely, adjust message impact by perceived reliability; hence source reliability and message content have a bi-directional relationship. The implications are discussed for a variety of psychological, philosophical and political issues such as belief polarization and dual-route models of persuasion. (shrink)

A recent report by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention in cooperation with the Swedish Security Service shows that the Internet has been extensively used to spread propaganda by proponents of violent political extremism, characterized by a worldview painted in black and white, an anti-democratic viewpoint, and intolerance towards persons with opposing ideas. We provide five arguments suggesting that philosophical dialogue with young persons would be beneficial to their acquisition of insights, attitudes and thinking tools for encountering such propaganda. (...) The arguments are based on stated requirements for problem solutions given by experts in violent political extremism, recent research about the effects of philosophical dialogue in young persons’ thinking skills, and parts of the basic theoretical framework of Philosophy for Children. Philosophical dialogues seem a promising way for young people to achieve a stronger democratic awareness and a more tenacious resistance against extremist views online. (shrink)

In Swedish schools, the so-called ‘Participation Model’ is used to observe and analyse participation, with the intention of supporting an inclusive learning environment. While this model is widely promoted by government agencies, its theoretical alignment to the concept(s) of inclusion is not established. This article therefore compares and maps the six aspects of participation within the Participation Model (i.e. belonging, accessibility, interaction, autonomy, involvement and acceptance) with a hierarchically ordered set of commonly occuring definitions of inclusive education (ranging from the (...) lowest level, placement, to the highest, community). The Participation Model was found to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the lower levels of inclusion, as well as necessary conditions for the higher levels of inclusion. However, we show that the model suffers from construct underrepresentation and outline a few possible solutions intended to increase the theoretical alignment between the Participation Model and the higher levels of inclusive education. Finally, we suggest directions for further research. (shrink)

In aging humans, aerobic exercise interventions have been found to be associated with more positive or less negative changes in frontal and temporal brain areas, such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and hippocampus, relative to no-exercise control conditions. However, individual measures such as gray-matter (GM) probability may afford less reliable and valid conclusions about maintenance or losses in structural brain integrity than a latent construct based on multiple indicators. Here, we established a latent factor of GM structural integrity based (...) on GM probability assessed by voxel-based morphometry, magnetization transfer saturation, and mean diffusivity. Based on this latent factor, we investigated changes in structural brain integrity during a six-month exercise intervention in brain regions previously reported in studies using volumetric approaches. Seventy-five healthy, previously sedentary older adults aged 63–76 years completed an at-home intervention study in either an exercise group (EG;n= 40) or in an active control group (ACG;n= 35). Measures of peak oxygen uptake (VO2peak) taken before and after the intervention revealed a time-by-group interaction, with positive average change in the EG and no reliable mean change in the ACG. Significant group differences in structural brain integrity changes were observed in the right and left ACC, right posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), and left juxtapositional lobule cortex (JLC). In all instances, average changes in the EG did not differ reliably from zero, whereas average changes in the ACG were negative, pointing to maintenance of structural brain integrity in the EG, and to losses in the ACG. Significant individual differences in change were observed for right ACC and left JLC. Following up on these differences, we found that exercising participants with greater fitness gains also showed more positive changes in structural integrity. We discuss the benefits and limitations of a latent-factor approach to changes in structural brain integrity, and conclude that aerobic fitness interventions are likely to contribute to brain maintenance in old age. (shrink)