Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / Post-apartheid South Africa has strived for change through the implementation of preferential procurement policy legislations such as the Black Economic Empowerment Act, Employment Equality Act, as well as the right to education for all has opened opportunities for many who were previously disadvantage. Being black in apartheid South Africa meant being middle class came with many constant difficulties of negotiating boundaries with community members that were not middle class and spaces that were middle class but white, thus raising several racial dynamics not experienced at ‘home.’ Being black in post-apartheid South Africa has also come with difficulties of constantly evolving social identity changes and categorisation.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Background: Recent literature on professional identity formation (PIF) conceptualizes the developmental process into stage theories that remove critical context. This study employed a longitudinal approach to PIF that explored the processes through which professional identity is formed in second (MS2) and third (MS3) year medical students and how their perceptions of professionalism transformed and influenced their PIF. Methods: Nine medical students (n=9) from Indiana University School of Medicine completed this study spanning MS2 and MS3. Participants completed three semi-structured interviews and submitted 10 audio diaries at two-month intervals between interviews. Participants also completed the Professionalism Assessment Tool (PAT) at the beginning of MS2 (PAT1) and end of MS3 (PAT2). Interviews and audio diaries were analyzed using the constant comparative approach and a Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to determine significant differences between mean domain scores of PAT1 and PAT2. Results: This study found several processes of PIF within five themes: Exploring Self in Medicine, Connecting to Image of Medicine, Embodying Role, Internalizing Values, and Exploring Specialty Choice. Processes of participating in patient care and selecting a specialty have the most profound impact on PIF and resulted in medical students feeling like members of the medical community. Analyses revealed participants’ perceptions of professionalism became more complex with clinical experiences and their perceptions of their ability to enact those behaviors transformed across the study period. Furthermore, the participants’ perceptions of professionalism set the foundation for the values they desired to demonstrate as part of their professional identities. Conclusions: This study presents a cohesive picture of how PIF occurs across MS2 and MS3 and how professionalism influences this important developmental process. These results indicate PIF is best cultivated within a medical curriculum where students are able to utilize processes to foster its development. Since professionalism serves as an important foundation to professional identity and a comprehensive understanding is needed for medical students to appreciate a physician’s role in society, the curriculum must be structured in a way to promote a complex, reflective understanding of professionalism that is based on values, actions, and who one wants to be as a physician.

Thesis advisor: James W. Morris / This dissertation is a comparative phenomenological and theological analysis on Catholic and Muslim traditions of pilgrimage to sacred tombs and shrines in south central Java, Indonesia. Both in the Muslim and Christian traditions, pilgrimage is a rich and complex religious practice that has served as a privileged milieu in which pilgrims and their communities attempt to foster diverse kinds of communion with God and His spiritual company of saints and other sacred figures, including the founders and paradigmatic ancestors of the local community. Precisely due to its richness and complexity as a spiritual and religio-cultural practice driven by the deeper and inclusive dynamics of communion, pilgrimage has also become a crucial practice in which a distinctive and hybrid religio-cultural identity is forged and negotiated in creative and fruitful ways--among others through the process of engaging various forms of otherness including other religious traditions and cultures--in the context of a long historical continuum that is also marked by tensions and ambiguities. Based on the underlying and multifaceted category of communion with God, the self, and the other that lies at the heart of the pilgrimage traditions in Islam and Catholicism, and guided by the method of the new comparative theology, this study attempts to offer a focused analysis of the major ways in which this dynamic of communion is played out in the deeper shared features and intimate encounters that exist between these two pilgrimage traditions in south central Java. Carried out from the perspective of the Catholic tradition, this study also seeks to explore the ways in which the extraordinary depth and breadth of these dynamics of communion in the Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage traditions--that in Catholic theology can be placed under the inclusive category of the work of the Spirit (pneumatology)--can serve as a creative avenue for a comparative theological enrichment of our contemporary understanding of the Catholic doctrine and practice of communio sanctorum ("communion of saints and the holy"). Drawing from both the most salient features of both the Muslim and Catholic pilgrimage practices in south central Java as well as the corresponding insights from the larger Islamic and Catholic traditions, this proposed pneumatological framework for a renewed understanding of the Catholic theology of communio sanctorum can be seen as the modest constructive fruit of this study's comparative theological engagement with the dynamics of pilgrimage in these two traditions. Through this process, the Catholic theology and practice of communio sanctorum is also made more richly anchored in the Catholic principles of communion, mediation, and sacramentality. And since this very process includes other religious tradition(s), the Catholic doctrine of communio sanctorum becomes remarkably inclusive and expansive as well, thus becoming a profoundly "catholic" theological vision. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

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The purpose of this research is to explore the processes and strategies through which members of a group or organization use their organizational identity to make salient a normatively dissonant identity. Using both the functionalist perspectives of social identity theory and the existing narrative literature on identity formation in organizations, a conceptual process model of identity formation is created that integrates the identification process with the interaction of multiple identities, including the identity as members of an organization, a normatively dissonant identity, and other salient preexisting identities such as race and gender. This research also examined part of this conceptual model empirically, using members of a national running organization for Black women, Black Girls Run!, using a mixed-methods design including interviews and surveys of participants. Distance running, as a form of physical activity, is not a normative identity for Black women in the United States. Findings from Study 1 showed that members developed a running identity that informed their running behavior. Study 2 highlighted the process through which members used their identity as members of the organization to negotiate through their dissonance and become runners using modeling strategies. Findings from this study contribute to both sport management and organizational literature by empirically demonstrating the effects of and the processes through which an organizational identity might create a pathway for marginalized groups to adapt previously dissonant identities. It highlights the importance of organizational identities in the formation of deeper connections with physical activity, which has been shown to be an essential element of health maintenance and a conduit for sustainable active behaviors. / Tourism and Sport

This dissertation focuses on the process of identity development and the role of boundaries in that process. Toward this end a study was conducted to explore the interaction between Hartman's (1991) boundaries, Marcia's (1966) identity statuses, and Berzonsky's (1989) identity styles. Data for this study was collected via survey from a convenience sample of undergraduate college students (n = 549) between ages 18 and 24 and across 4 courses at a large state institution in rural Southeastern United States. A 2-way ANOVA was used in this study to explore differences in boundary scores for both Marcia's (1966) identity statuses and Berzonsky's (1989) identity styles. No significant main effect was found for identity status, and no interactional effect was found between identity status and identity style, but a significant main effect was found for identity style. Post-hoc analyses for identity style revealed the diffuse/avoidant style as significantly higher in boundary score than the informational style, which in turn was significantly higher in boundary score than the normative style, with higher boundary scores indicating thinner boundaries. A discussion of these results and their implications for counseling practice are provided. / Ph. D.

As evidenced by a large body of research within the engineering education community, those individuals who do not maintain a sense of belonging, identify with engineering groups, or perceive themselves as engineers are more likely to leave the profession. However, little is known about the ways in which engineering students construct or develop their personal and professional identities as influenced by the disciplinary values, behaviors, and practices learned during the undergraduate education experience. In order to deepen the understanding of professional identity formation within the engineering disciplines, a grounded theory study was conducted to explore the experiences of 31 sophomore, junior, and senior level undergraduate students enrolled in a civil engineering program. Upon conducting an iterative process of data collection and analysis, a theory of professional identity negotiation emerged from interviews depicting participants' experiences. This theory titled Negotiating Equilibrium: Advancing from Outsider to Insider or the AOI Model, captures the identities negotiated by students as they iteratively define, adjust, and readjust definitions of self and profession to maintain a balance between their personal self and the learned disciplinary identity of the civil engineering profession. As participants gained this balance, they began to see themselves as professionals and advance from an outsider (i.e., one not belonging to the civil engineering profession) to an insider (i.e., one belonging to the civil engineering profession). The AOI Model provides a framework for researchers to further explore professional identity formation, promotes the development of identity-influencing coursework and instructor teaching approaches, and inspires future research trajectories in engineering and civil engineering education. / Ph. D.

Using a uniquely developed research methodology called ‘feminist virtual ethnography’ this thesis explores female adolescent subculture on the social network site Facebook, looking specifically at a group of four girls who are ‘Facebook friends’ with each other as well as friends at the same high school in a large metropolitan city in south-western Ontario in Canada. The thesis is guided by research questions that focus on how these girls virtually-represent their bodies on Facebook, and develops a theory of concurrent identity formation (CIF) as a way to understand the translatability and conversion between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual.’ Built as a collaborative inquiry between the researcher and research participants, I invited the girls to analyze screenshots of their own (and each other’s) virtual self-representations during a series of virtual conversations and to express their understandings of femininity and beauty as they problematize their identities on Facebook and in ‘real’ contexts such as at school and at home. Overall, findings reveal an interplay of body, image, and text within the girls’ systems of imagery and language. I suggest that the female adolescent body is virtually self-represented in negotiated as well as discursive ways, and that the girls’ identities are always in flux. While CIF provides a good basis for understanding these girls’ identities as ‘in flux,’ further investigation into virtual representation and CIF is needed to understand how and why adolescents display their bodies and articulate their identities in certain ways. Pedagogical implications are also discussed in my concluding chapter, where I call for a reconceptualization of literacies and methodologies, especially when dealing with girls on/and Facebook.

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This thesis examines the Museum of Art of El Salvador (MARTE) and its art education programming to understand its role in community building and cultural revitalization efforts in post-war El Salvador. MARTE emerges onto El Salvador’s landscape showcasing the country’s artistic heritage while organizing art education opportunities for the capital city, San Salvador. After six weeks of onsite observations and interviews with museum staff and community members, this investigation explores how MARTE’s art education programming contributes to the development of a refashioned collective cultural identity and, as a result, reinfuses the value of art, cultural awareness, and solidarity back into the community. MARTE provides a beneficial model for understanding the complex relationship between Western-influenced cultural institutions and non-Western communities, and the challenges of placing value on arts education when greater social concerns (e.g., economic insecurity) prevail. / text