A hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to investigate the meaning of everyday experiences of power. Twenty interviews were conducted wherein participants were asked to discuss situations where they were aware of power. They were asked one prompt question, “Think of a time when you were aware of power and describe that experience as fully as possible.” Thematic analysis yielded a structure that consisted of four themes, position, control, respect, and prestige, all situated within a ground of hierarchy. The understanding of power revealed by the data analysis was discussed in light of both qualitative and quantitative studies of power, particularly those that addressed French and Raven’s (1959) bases of power. French and Raven proposed that there were five forms of power: coercive, reward, legitimate, referent, and expert. Most experiences described within the current study can be classified according to their schema. Six situations, however, did not fit French and Raven’s typology. The power possessed by electronic equipment and natural/chance occurrences was discussed and represents a non-social power type that is characterized by an utter lack of control on the part of the participant. Furthermore, the underlying mechanism via which various types of power occur and interact with each other is not often addressed in the literature. The current findings, thus, serve to provide some insight into how power forms are experienced and made meaningful to the individual. Current findings suggest that a hierarchical relationship is the primary setting wherein power is identified and understood. Within the hierarchical relationship, various forms of power are drawn upon in order to gain and/or maintain control. The type, intensity, and successfulness of the type of power used is augmented by an individual’s position within the hierarchical relationship and by the reciprocity of respect that exists within the relationship. The presence of respect and prestige as figural elements in the experience of power are unique in that many studies that seek to understand and define power look to the amount of control that is possessed and/or exerted by power holders and ignore the impact of the perceptions of non-power holders.

The purpose of the present study was to explore and describe the lived experiences of mothers living in dual-career families. Using existential phenomenology as the guiding research methodology, I interviewed 10 mothers living in dual-career families. Analysis of the interview transcripts revealed four themes that stood out as figural for participants in the study: (a) "Free time isn't really free anymore": Timing is Everthing; (b) "It's because of the support I get": Supporting Me; (c) "I feel like I'm lacking in one area all the time, just a little bit": Struggling to Find a Balance; and (d) "I know how I would do things": Knowing Myself. Each theme stood out against the ground of world, specifically the two worlds of home and work and the struggle that existed in integrating the two. Study findings revealed that the two primary struggles faced by these mothers living in dual-career families were those associated with balancing and time. A limited amount of time necessitated a need to try to balance home and work, a balance that was not easily achieved. Mothers perceived support networks and certain personality characteristics as helpful in balancing the two worlds (although personality characteristics were perceived as disadvantageous at times). Although challenges existed for these mothers, they noted overwhelmingly that they desired to have a career. These mothers saw their careers as one of the primary benefits of the dual-career lifestyle, and it was a lifestyle they willingly chose. Two findings from the study warrant future research. First, supportive others in the community were an integral part of the support network for mothers in the present study, and little empirical literature is dedicated to the impact of this type of support on the dual-career family. Second, participants perceived certain personality characteristics as either advantageous or disadvantageous in helping them navigate the dual-career lifestyle, and little empirical literature is dedicated to denoting the impact of individual personality characteristics on managing the dual-career lifestyle. It would behoove family scholars to be aware of these two unique aspects of the study.

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Studien undersöker vilka signifikanta andra som är betydelsefulla för före detta missbrukares förändringsprocess och beskriver upplevelser av interaktionen med dessa signifikanta andra. Intervjuer med sex före detta narkotikamissbrukare genomfördes. Den teoretiska referensra-men som uppsatsen använder är en syntes av Beckers teori om avvikelse och Beger & Luck-mans kunskapssociologi, Syn-tesen förklarar före detta narkotikamissbrukare i förändringsprocessen. Tidigare forskning har redovisat vägen in i missbruk, missbrukares självpresentation och relationer.Resultatet visade att de signifikanta bestod av familjen, professionella, ex-missbrukare och vänner. Upplevelserna av interaktionen beskrivs och förändras i relation till tre tidsskeden i förändringsprocessen.

A Day With The Mountain is an inquiry that ventures into the experience of self-movement through the context of freeskiing. This inquiry focuses on both my experience with three freeskiers; Leah Evans, Josh Dueck, and Mark Abma and my personal experience with freeskiing. The intention behind this inquiry is to challenge, celebrate, and evoke the self-movement experience in order to gain understandings of something so fundamental to human development. This intention is met by asking the main research question; ‘What is the experience of self-movement?’ Self-movement was fleshed out in this inquiry within a phenomenological approach. Phenomenology aims to evoke human experience through descriptive writing, which also proved to be the main challenge of this study. Stories, poetry, and images within a narrative entitled A Day With The Mountain were used to address this challenge and to invite the reader into deeply textured experiences of self-movement. A Day With The Mountain is a day of freeskiing where accumulation, threshold, breakthrough, and release make up the rhythms of the experience; these same rhythms also serve as the chapters of this text. Woven within the evocative writing of the experience of freeskiing are theoretical insights into self-movement, movement itself, of wonder. Emerging from this inquiry are ideas and questions about self-movement and movement that challenge the ground of formal physical education. I sense a potential pedagogical approach that combines movement, self-movement, and wonder as presented in this text. The emerging pedagogical approach focuses on evoking wonder, situates movement as a realm of possibility, and self-movement as possible freedom. The margins of self-movement and movement itself remain beyond the horizon of this text, and those margins are in need of more evocative description. Continuing to inquire into self-movement may reveal new possibilities and expanded understandings of self-movement, which may have significant pedagogical potential.

Self-compassion has recently been introduced to Western psychology literature and is defined as a kind, understanding, and nonjudgmental toward oneself (Neff, 2003a). While self-compassion has been conceptualized as a construct that is important to ones overall sense of self, it might also be relevant to more specific self-attitudes, including ones attitude toward the body. Body-related attitudes have received much attention from sport and exercise psychology researchers in kinesiology and it was anticipated that body self-compassion would be relevant to women who exercise, as women often exercise for body-related reasons. The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of body self-compassion for young adult women who exercise and have experienced a change in their attitude toward their body over time; and to discover the essential structure of the womens experiences. <p>Five women between the ages of 23 and 28 years participated in this study. The women identified themselves as Caucasian and middle-class, were university students, and indicated that they exercised at least four times a week. Each woman participated in an individual interview in which she was asked to describe two instances where she experienced body self-compassion. The womens interviews were analyzed using an empirical phenomenology method (Giorgi, 1985; Giorgi & Giorgi, 2003) to identify the components of the womens stories that were essential to their experience of body self-compassion. A follow-up focus group discussion provided the women with the opportunity to offer feedback on the essential structures. Four essential structures emerged from these interviews: appreciating ones unique body, taking ownership of ones body, engaging in less social comparison, and body self-compassion as a dynamic process. A facilitating structure, the importance of others, also emerged. The findings of this study are generally consistent with Neffs (2003a) conceptualization of self-compassion as they reflect Neffs overall description of self-compassion without merely replicating the three components of self-compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. <p>The findings of this study provide support for the exploration of more specific domains of self-compassion, such as the body. This study also makes a significant contribution to the body image literature, which has been criticized for being pathology-oriented and for focusing mainly on appearance-related attitudes (Blood, 2005; Grogan, 2006). This study explored a positive body attitude and highlighted the womens attitudes toward their physical capabilities in addition to their appearance. Further research is needed to develop the body self-compassion construct by exploring the generalizability of the essential structures that emerged in this study to broader populations.

This is a phenomenological study of the experiences of three teacher leaders in the context of high school reform. It examines the essence of teacher leadership and how these teacher leaders made sense of their experiences. At the outset is a portrayal of my position and connection to the phenomenon of teacher leadership. This study reviews literature within three distinct areas. First, the nature of school reform is examined, including the rationale for reform, the challenges associated with reform, how to achieve sustainable reform, and a review of six drivers for effective reforms. Then, an investigation of distributed leadership follows which includes a discussion of the processes and forms of distributed leadership and a description of the facilitators and tensions for distributed leadership. The third area of the review is focused on teacher leadership including the roles and characteristics of teacher leaders, their connection to staff development, issues of effectiveness, and tensions for teacher leaders. Following this review, the research design and methodology is presented. Transcendental phenomenology including the concepts of phenomenological reduction and imaginative variation are explored in detail. Protocol writing was utilized to select participants for this study. From collected writings by formal teacher leaders, participants suited for phenomenological research were selected. Three teacher leaders participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. The interviews were transcribed by the researcher. Participants shared their experiences as teacher leaders. Additional questions were asked to elicit more details about their experiences and to find out how participants made sense of their experiences. In the experiences of the participants, five themes emerged: Grappling with teacher leadership identity, facing the uncertainties of sustaining the reform initiative, negotiating the tensions between management and leadership, experiencing challenges of leading, and feeling the empowerment of success. Participants made sense of their experiences in these four ways: learning, communicating, doing, and reflecting. Several forces that impact the experience of teacher leadership and facilitate the formation of teacher leadership identity emerged. Through the process of making sense of their experiences, teacher leaders came to understand theory, which they termed getting it, and then enacted their learning. The ways in which teacher leaders made sense of their experiences were influenced in part by their leadership persona and in part by the culture and context within which they lived. Among the implications for theory from this study is that more needs to be learned about the leadership identity of teacher leaders leading reforms. Implications for practice include the provision of time for teacher leaders to reflect on and discuss their experiences, as well as the provision of professional development focused on change praxis and leadership praxis for teacher leaders and instructional leadership for in-school administrators. Among the implications for research are the need to investigate teacher leaders association with administration, both in their aspirations and in how they are perceived towards administration, the cognitive changes that occur for teacher leaders, whether a context of instructional leadership eases tensions in teacher leadership, and whether formal teacher leader roles are an effective way for school divisions to plan for leadership succession. In addition, the phenomenological research method is reflected upon.

This descriptive phenomenology had two purposes: first, to explore the experience of making decisions for women with advanced cancer; and second, to explore the experience for significant others and health care team members as women made their decisions. A plethora of research exists on making decisions during the cancer experience, including research regarding: 1) decision-making styles; 2) factors or determinants which play a role in decision making; 3) information: needs, seeking behaviours, and utilization; and 4) decision support technologies. However, a gap exists in the literature regarding the experience of making decisions. Conversational interviews were conducted with five women and three relevant others for each woman: her primary nurse, her oncologist, and one significant other. Women were also provided with the opportunity to journal in a diary or email their memories of decisions and the surrounding experience. Van Manens (1990) phenomenology guided the analysis of data. For the women, analysis centered on the four existentials of lived time, lived other, lived space, and lived body, revealing four themes of the lived experience of making decisions: 1) control, 2) influence, 3) normalcy, and 4) vulnerability. Phenomenological analysis on data from the significant others revealed three themes: 1) what used to be, 2) power shift, and 3) life on hold. Themes for the health care teams experience as women made decisions were: 1) emotional detachment, 2) discomfort, and 3) acquiescing. Understanding the perspectives from these lived experiences will assist the health care team to support women, and their significant others, through the experience of making decisions.

One of the fundamental insights of Kants ethical theory is that moral requirements cannot follow from our understanding of motivational capacities. Ethics must precede psychology. But Kant also believes we can learn new things about what we are capable of from ethics, in particular what it would be like to act out of respect for the moral law. This is the task of Kants moral psychology. It must explain how practical reason can, in place of desire, serve as an incentive for action. I argue that Kants psychology of the moral incentive plays a crucial, but often ignored, role in his project of moral justification. While our view of human motivational capacities cannot dictate our understanding of moral requirements, we must still show how those requirements become effective in human conduct. That is, we must show how they enter into the structure of human motivation. The challenge for Kants moral psychology is to explain this. The trouble is that the relationship between practical reason and human sensibility is so puzzling that we may begin to doubt their connection. So we face a problem the problem of motivational skepticism. My dissertation is organized into two parts. First, I argue that Kants project of moral justification in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) fails because it does not specify the psychological conditions required for moral action (PART I). Part of the problem is that Kant thought he could only explain these conditions in causal terms. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) Kant abandons this assumption and develops a new analysis of the influence practical reason has on feeling. Secondly, I show that this analysis is meant to address a skeptical worry left unresolved in the Groundwork, namely, the worry that our will may be unfit for morality (PART II). By showing how we are capable of moral sensibility, then, I argue that the second Critique develops a powerful response to skepticism about moral motivation. / PhD

Maurice Merleau-Ponty thinks that many classical theories of perception, especially reductionism, are influenced by the objective and the scientific form of thinking. Such influence is expressed in two preconceptions. The first preconception is that perception is reduced to units such as “impressions”. The meaning of these units is considered to be a representation of the world. The second preconception is that such perceptual meaning is caused by the world and the living being is passive in its relation to such constitution of meaning. In my view, the results of Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of these two preconceptions constitute his two main concepts: the phenomenal body and the perceptual meaning determined by the structural relation with the world. Despite the fact that some traces of these preconceptions can be found in the introduction of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, there is no straight argument that shows how he approached these two results from the rejection of these two preconceptions. My thesis is to present Merleau-Ponty’s view on the phenomenal body based on his criticism of the two preconceptions described above. In my view, Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of these preconceptions can be traced through his argument against Gestalt psychology, associationism, and behavioral associationism.