Education Commons^™

Applying Gadamer’S “Prejudices” To A Grounded Theory Study, Claire Manton

The Qualitative Report

Interpretation and analysis of qualitative data inevitably involves a collision with one’s own lived experience. This paper reflects on a postgraduate research project that employed the methodology of grounded theory to determine themes around the meaning that individuals in a school community give to the term spirituality. Reflecting on the process has highlighted ways in which unexamined personal assumptions were at play as the researcher conducted analysis, influencing the interpretation of data. It is argued here that in researching the concept of spirituality, which is both nebulous and highly subjective, becoming aware of one’s own assumptions throughout the process is …

The Spirituality Of Immersion: Solidarity, Compassion, Relationship, Michael E. Lovette-Colyer

Engaging Pedagogies in Catholic Higher Education (EPiCHE)

While the term spirituality can be problematic, obscuring as much as revealing, immersion experiences cannot be understood fully without exploring the contours of what can only be described as spirituality. To the extent that they work, immersions effect change when they speak to the deepest longings of the heart. While manifesting in many different ways, the spirituality of immersion revolves around three major components: solidarity, compassion, and relationship. The spirituality of immersion is a developed relationality, a desire to enter into richer, wider, more expansive relationships with others, which naturally leads into deeper relationship with God.

Spiritual Frameworks In Pediatric Palliative Care: Understanding Parental Decision-Making, Lindy Grief Davidson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Parents of seriously ill children are charged with making complicated medical decisions, and many of those decisions are made during their children’s hospitalizations. As medical staff seek to support parents, it is important for them to understand what resources parents are drawing upon for decision-making. This project explored parental decision-making by examining the following research questions: RQ1: What resources do parents draw upon to make medical decisions for their seriously ill children? RQ2: How do parents enact their spiritual or religious frameworks in clinical settings when faced with medical decisions for their seriously ill children? Methods of research included ethnographic …

Uncovering Meanings Of Death, Trauma, And Loss As Experienced By Hospice Bereavement Coordinators: A Phenomenological Study, Rochelle S. Clarke

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

This study examined the experiences of Hospice Bereavement Coordinators (HBCs) and Hospice Chaplains working with grief narratives from patient-family units exhibiting signs of anticipatory or complicated grief. While a significant amount of research has been conducted on Hospice employees, no qualitative studies have examined the interpretation of meaning from employees whose primary role focused on the psychosocial-spiritual aspects of clients exhibiting anticipatory or complicated grief. The researcher identified shared meaning of death, trauma, and loss from six participants in the context of a high stress and high loss environment. This study‘s findings revealed ten central themes: Death is an earthly …

Religiosity, Spirituality, And Quality Of Life Among Selected University Students, Abby Austin Kreitlow

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Objective: College marks a time of transition and self-exploration. Quality of life can be enhanced or diminished throughout this experience. The objective of this study was to identify the level of religiosity, spirituality and quality of life and identify if there was a relationship between a person's level of religiosity and spirituality and quality of life.

Participants and Methods: The sample group, consisting of 548 Midwestern university undergraduate students, completed the Spiritual Wellbeing Scale (SWBS) and the Ontological Wellbeing Scale (OWBS) in the spring semester of 2015.

Results: Findings indicate that Midwestern university students have a moderate sense of spiritual …

Communication As Yoga, Kristen Caroline Blinne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I am in conversation with the following questions: How can individuals and communities teach and learn to engage more peacefully, nonviolently, and compassionately with each other? Further, how can one practice a style of communication that helps at least one person suffer less each day? In asking these questions, my goal has been to imagine as well as attempt to actualize a world where individuals and communities work together to create less suffering in each other's lives by first developing compassionate awareness of our interconnectedness, then "waking up" not only to our own divinity but also to …

The Specter Of ‘Spirituality’—On The (In)Utility Of An Analytical Category, Chad M. Bauman

Chad M. Bauman

I would like to make it clear that nothing in this article should be taken as a comment, one way or another, on the question of whether "spirituality" deserves a place in higher education. I consider that issue a distinct one, though no doubt in some ways related to the one I am addressing here, particularly since many of those authors who write about spirituality do so in order to argue for greater institutional and classroom attention to the spiritual lives of college students.

Fuzzy But Not Warm: On The (Continuing) Descriptive And Analytical Inutility Of ‘Spirituality', Chad M. Bauman, Gene Gallagher, Davina Lopez

Chad M. Bauman

In her response, Nadine Pence helpfully turns the conversation towards actual practices in teaching and the array of practical decisions that have to be made in the classroom and on campuses when it comes to addressing "Big Questions" and students' aspirations and interior lives. Several dimensions of her argument are worth amplification.

The Specter Of ‘Spirituality’—On The (In)Utility Of An Analytical Category, Chad M. Bauman

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

I would like to make it clear that nothing in this article should be taken as a comment, one way or another, on the question of whether "spirituality" deserves a place in higher education. I consider that issue a distinct one, though no doubt in some ways related to the one I am addressing here, particularly since many of those authors who write about spirituality do so in order to argue for greater institutional and classroom attention to the spiritual lives of college students.

Fuzzy But Not Warm: On The (Continuing) Descriptive And Analytical Inutility Of ‘Spirituality', Chad M. Bauman, Gene Gallagher, Davina Lopez

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

In her response, Nadine Pence helpfully turns the conversation towards actual practices in teaching and the array of practical decisions that have to be made in the classroom and on campuses when it comes to addressing "Big Questions" and students' aspirations and interior lives. Several dimensions of her argument are worth amplification.