Christian teachers of Personal social health education (PSHE) can be conflicted when confronted with sensitive and controversial issues in their professional practice. Concerns include unprofessional conduct, exercising undue influence of their personal values and beliefs on students and being untrue to their faith. These can lead to uncertainty in negotiating areas of conscience and controversy. This life history study situated within the south east of England was used to illuminate the complexities which abound when operating within a wider milieu of perceived marginalisation of the Christian faith through advancing secularisation and liberalism. These tensions are reflected in the curriculum, policy frameworks and legal documents and have implications for teachers’ personal values, Christian faith and professional practice. Semi-structured questionnaires were administered to 13 PSHE teachers and analysed for emergent themes, borrowing language from thematic, ethical and theological analysis. The research illuminates insights into a wider context of faith in professional life. It demonstrates the way teachers are in transition in these conflicts, yet understanding faith as a holistic quality. Findings show that the approaches that teachers adopt to the interpretation and application of faith in personal life influence how faith is integrated professionally. The conflicts confronted, reflect responses of resilience, compliance and rebellion, while some teachers remain unchanged in their positions. Analysis of the data suggested that discreetly integrating faith in practice is a coping strategy some teachers employ. My study suggests that silence can be a price to pay for faith, balancing courageous restraint with conflicting compromises and professional hypocrisy. The research captures teachers in transition located in professional practice obligations, ethical and theological positions as they negotiate and navigate the place of their Christian faith and personal values with students’ rights, freedoms and autonomy.

The resurgence of prayer and glossolalia (speaking in tongues) within Protestant denominations in the United States of America has stimulated widespread psychological and theological debate. Previous research has indicated that religiosity has both a negative and positive effect on mental health functioning. However, there remains an important gap in the current literature regarding the relationships between specific religious practices and mental health. Therefore the purpose of the proposed study is to report on the growing number of religious persons who pray/glossolate and the conflicting messages in the literature regarding the relationship between religiosity and mental illness. A total of 10 Protestants (5 with and 5 without mental health treatment experience) from a large urban area in southeastern Michigan were interviewed. The key research questions were the participants' prayer life, coping skills, participation in mental health services, and perception of their mental health providers' comfort level. To identify themes, the participants' responses were classified, placed into clusters of meaning, reflected upon, and then described. Identified themes included using prayer/glossolalia to resolve interpersonal conflicts and a preference for Christian identified counselors when seeking mental health services. Findings from this research clarify a need for further study regarding mental health services that are delivered to glossolates and nonglossolates. This is an important contribution to the existing literature and enhances social change initiatives through advocating training for mental health providers in the positive impact of religious practices on mental health.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2005 / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iv, 184 p. Includes abstract.

Jacques de Vitry (†1240), a noted preacher in Brabant and Languedoc, served as canon regular of Saint-Nicholas d’Oignies (1211-16), bishop of Acre (1216-29) and auxiliary bishop of Liège (1226-29), and ultimately as cardinal-bishop of Tusculum (1229-1240). Whilst his letters, sermons, and the Historia Occidentalis have been extensively studied, the Historia Orientalis, Jacques’s encyclopedic work on the Holy Land, has so far escaped any such interest. Considered as yet another crusading history or pilgrimage guide drawing on previous writings, the few editions and brief studies of this work published since the nineteenth century are based neither on a detailed textual analysis nor on a complete investigation of the manuscript tradition. This thesis, therefore, addresses an important gap in the historiographical debate by providing a detailed analysis of the contents of the Historia Orientalis and its sources, in combination with an examination of the manuscript tradition up to the early fourteenth century. In it, I argue that the work is composed of different genres, each addressing a topic that served Jacques’s agenda and his activities as theologian, preacher, historian, pilgrim, and crusader. Moreover, by examining the rich manuscript tradition, I establish the book’s legacy and show that Jacques’s contemporaries perceived the text as an eclectic work. Jacques’s combination of different popular genres contributed to the influence of the text which is preserved in no fewer than 126 extant manuscripts. The thesis falls into three sections. In the first, I introduce my investigation and provide a long overdue revised biographical note and contextualisation of Jacques’s writings. In the four chapters of the second section, I analyse the text to see how Jacques combined the editing of existing source material with his personal knowledge into a work that served the reform and crusade agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The four chapters discuss the medieval genres that can be found in Jacques’s work: a history of the crusades, an account on Islam, a description of the Holy Land, and an ethnographical treatise. In the third section, using codicological research to discuss the text’s compilation, influence, readership, and legacy in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, I argue that each genre found within the Historia was intended for and read by a different audience, thus explaining the wide appeal of the work as a whole. The sixth chapter focuses on the early manuscript tradition and dissemination of the Historia Orientalis while the seventh chapter addresses, on the one hand, the use of these manuscripts and the relationship to other texts in the same codex and, on the other hand, the authors who copied or used Jacques’s text in their own works. By combining a detailed textual analysis with extensive manuscript research, this investigation into the contents, readership and legacy of the Historia Orientalis sheds new light on the mechanisms behind the dissemination and influence of religious propaganda, as well as highlights Jacques’s seminal contribution to Church reform and the approach to crusading in the thirteenth century in accordance with the agenda set by the Fourth Lateran Council.

Sexual harassment against women represents aggressive behaviour that is often enacted instrumentally, in response to a threatened sense of masculinity and male identity (cf. Maass & Cadinu, 2006). To date, however, empirical and theoretical attention to the social-cognitive processes that regulate workplace harassment is scant. Drawing on Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 1986), the current thesis utilises the theoretical concept of moral disengagement in order to address this important gap in the literature. According to Bandura (1990, 1999), moral standards and self-sanctions (i.e., negative emotions of guilt or shame) can be selectively deactivated through various psychosocial mechanisms. The use of these moral disengagement strategies enables a person to violate their moral principles, and perpetrate injurious behaviour without incurring self-censure. This thesis investigates the general hypothesis that moral disengagement facilitates and perpetuates workplace sexual harassment. A new conceptual framework is presented, elucidating the self-regulatory role of moral disengagement mechanisms in sexual harassment perpetration at work. Eight empirical studies are reported in this thesis. Studies 1 to 3 present the development and preliminary validation of the Moral Disengagement in Sexual Harassment Scale (MDiSH); a self-report measure of moral disengagement in the context of hostile work environment harassment. These studies document the excellent psychometric properties of this new scale. The MDiSH exhibited positive correlations with sexual harassment myth acceptance, male gender identification, and hostile sexism. In Study 3, participants were exposed to a fictitious case of hostile work environment harassment. The MDiSH attenuated moral judgment, negative emotions (guilt, shame, and anger), sympathy, and endorsement of prosocial behavioural intentions (support for restitution) associated with the harassment case. Conversely, the MDiSH increased positive affect (happiness) about the harassment, endorsement of avoidant behavioural intentions, and attribution of blame to the female complainant. Using the amalgamated samples of Studies 1 and 2, the MDiSH was winnowed down to create a short form of the scale (MDiSH-S). The analyses reported in Chapter 3 attest to the strong psychometric properties of this measure. Study 4 explores the influence of social identification on the relationship between moral disengagement and judgments of hostile work environment harassment. U.S. participants were presented with a harassment case in which the perpetrators were described as being either in-group or out-group members. Moral disengagement (as measured using the MDiSH) neutralised judgments of the harassing behaviour. However, participants were not more inclined to justify and positively re-appraise harassment that was committed by in-group perpetrators. Study 5 reveals that moral disengagement leads people to make more favourable judgments about the perpetrators of hostile work environment harassment. The neutralising effects of moral disengagement on judgments of the harassing conduct were partially mediated by a positive evaluation of the harassers (but not social identification with them). The final three studies (Studies 6, 7, and 8) investigate the role of moral disengagement in accounting for men’s self-reported proclivity to commit quid pro quo harassment and hostile work environment harassment. These studies examine the causal pathway between moral disengagement and harassment proclivity, and the psychological mechanisms (emotions and moral judgment) that underlie this relationship. Taken together, the results suggest that moral disengagement mechanisms are important social cognitions that people use to deny, downplay, and justify workplace sexual harassment. The findings of this thesis also provide preliminary support for the notion that moral disengagement is a self-regulatory process in sexual harassment perpetration at work (cf. Page & Pina, 2015). The thesis concludes with a discussion of theoretical implications of the findings, methodological limitations, practical implications, and suggestions of future research avenues.

Despite the current emphasis on person centred, holistic care in health, the concept of spirituality has been discussed very little in the field of speech and language therapy (SLT). The nursing spirituality literature has proliferated in the last twenty years but, by contrast, very few SLT studies exist which mention the spiritual needs of patients with communication problems and how they express them. Individuals experiencing severe, life-changing events, such as a stroke, may need to engage with and discuss their spiritual needs, in order to make sense of what has happened to them. The aim of this study was to discover what it is like to express spiritual issues when one has an acquired communication impairment (aphasia). I also wanted to discover what it is like to be a healthcare professional working with people with communication impairment expressing their spirituality. I used a phenomenological approach in order to interview eight people with aphasia about their spirituality. Participants with aphasia used a variety of strategies to express these ideas, which included employing non-verbal communication techniques, such as gesture, writing key words, intonation and artefacts. I also interviewed five members of the multidisciplinary stroke team (MDT) about what it is like to work holistically with people with aphasia. Each interview resulted in a participant story. People with aphasia talked about religious themes, such as visions and prayer, but also non-religious life meaning-makers, such as gardening and art. MDT members discussed themes such as spirituality as part of their remit and giving the patient time to communicate. The stories were then explored through the interpretive lens of some concepts propounded by Merleau-Ponty (2002), namely ambiguity, lived body, language and thought, and wonder. Frank’s illness narratives (chaos, restitution and quest) were also considered in order to analyse the participants’ stroke journey in relation to expressing spirituality. People with aphasia can and do discuss their spiritual concerns, particularly when they are entering a quest phase of their illness narrative. They employ many non-verbal mosaics in order to convey spiritual issues, and are helped by the listener employing a phenomenological attitude of openness and attentiveness. Healthcare professionals expressed their willingness to listen to their patients’ spiritual stories, in the interests of holistic practice. Being able to express spiritual needs can enhance wellbeing, help foster therapeutic rapport, and enable people to engage more fully in the rehabilitation process.

The aim of this study was to uncover and illuminate aspects of spirituality, which may be present in the work of primary school teachers. Four themes emerged out the analysis and were coded using the methodology consistent with an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The themes were: ● Spirituality as an aspect of identity formation and understanding. ● Relationships as central to understanding and formation. ● Teaching and learning as a shared encounter through mentoring. ● Spirituality as a contextual resource. IPA was chosen as a methodology as it places the participant as central to and expert in their lived experience whilst acknowledging the ways in which the researcher impacts on the interpretative process. Drawing on phenomenology whilst adopting a systematic process of analysis, the material uncovered ways in which spirituality can be used a resource in the professional encounter. The implications for this study points towards a new definition of spirituality that encompasses ‘moments of profundity and connection with other that leads to change’. This is particularly important in relation to the teachers in this study and could be of value to others in the education profession. Seeing one’s spirituality as a source of wisdom and as a contextual resource has allowed the participants to make connections with their colleagues and pupils that draw heavily on their spirituality in order to make sense of and bring change to situations and relationships. These instances are profound in nature for each individual but has brought about change in the situation, relationship or way of teaching and relating to one’s environment. As such the definition of spirituality in this study both encompasses established understanding of what it means to be spiritual but places this in the educational environment and profession. It is hoped that the findings of this study lead to an awareness of the way in which one’s spirituality can be drawn upon as a positive agential resource will be acknowledged in teacher education programmes and school-based teaching.

This thesis examines the role of History and Nostalgia in shaping the modern Tea Party movement, which emerged across the United States of America in early 2009. Inspired by the seminal work of Professor Jill Lepore, The Whites of Their Eyes, this thesis attempts to further investigate the Tea Party movement and their unique relationship with the past: from the social movement’s links with other conservative historical organisations such as the John Birch Society, to the Tea Party movement’s adoption and exploitation of the history of the American Revolution as a means of gaining political legitimacy. This thesis contextualises as well as details the historical origins, organisations, and ideologies behind the social movement. In the process of this task, the thesis has employed an experimental methodology which attempts to fuse together the philosophy of History with the discipline of History – an idea that was inspired during the experience of carrying out the thesis research at the time. This thesis highlights: the influence of the Internet over Tea Party movement, the Tea Party movement’s historiography of the American Revolution, as well as the similarities and differences of historical experiences shared by the Tea Party movement and the generation responsible for the American Revolution.

When observers’ own face is stroked in synchrony, but not in asynchrony with another face, they tend to perceive that face as more similar to their own and report that it belongs to them. This “enfacement effect” appears to be a compelling illusion and also modulates social cognitive processes. This thesis further examined the effect of such synchronous multisensory stimulation on physical and psychological aspects of the self. Chapter 2 explored whether multisensory facial stimulation can reduce racial prejudice. White observers’ faces were stroked with a cotton bud while they watched a black face being stroked in synchrony. This was compared with a no-touch and an asynchronous stroking condition. Across three experiments, observers consistently reported an enfacement illusion after the synchronous condition. However, this effect did not produce concurrent changes in implicit or explicit racial prejudice. Chapter 3 explored whether a similar enfacement effect can be elicited with a novel gaze-contingent mirror paradigm. In this paradigm, an onscreen face either mimicked observers’ own eye-gaze behaviour (congruent condition), moved its eyes in different directions to observers’ eyes (incongruent condition), or remains unresponsive to the observers’ gaze (neutral condition). Observers experienced a consistent enfacement illusion after the congruent condition across two of three experiments. However, while the mimicry of the onscreen face affected observers’ phenomenological experience, it did not alter their perceptual self-representations. A final experiment, in Chapter 4, further investigated the cognitive locus of the enfacement effect by using ERPs. Observers were exposed to blocks of synchronous and asynchronous stimulation. ERPs were then recorded while observers were presented with images of (a) a synchronously stimulated face, (b) an asynchronously stimulated face, (c) their own face, (d) one of two unfamiliar filler faces and (e) an unfamiliar target face. Observers consistently reported an enfacement illusion after the synchronous condition. However, this enfacement effect was not evident in ERP components reflecting early perceptual encoding of the face (i.e., N170) or subsequent identity- and affect-related markers, such as the N250 and the P300. Altogether the results of this thesis show that it is possible to enface a face, even when it belongs to a different ethnic group to that of the observer. This effect is such that observers report that the enfaced face belongs to them. Interestingly, a similar phenomenological enfacement experience can be obtained with gaze-contingent mirror paradigm. However, this enfacement effect seems to be too short-lived to be reflected in ERP components.

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