Understanding Face and Shame: A Servant-Leadership and Face Management Model

Clergy can have a negative impact on churches and other individuals when they knowingly or unknowingly attempt to save face, that is, try to protect their standing or reputation. The desire to gain face and the fear of losing face and feeling ashamed will likely permeate clergy’s decision-making processes without even being noticed. This study explores the essence of face and face management and the relationship between face management and two characteristics of servant-leadership—awareness and healing—in both Chinese and American churches through the methodology of hermeneutic phenomenology. Prior to this study, to my knowledge, no hermeneutic phenomenological research of face management has been conducted in a church setting. Through a review of the literature, four areas are explored: face and shame, face management, servant-leadership, and face, shame, and face management within the church. This study obtained approval from the Institutional Review Board and informed consent from the participants. Three Chinese and three American Christian ministers were chosen to complete a question sheet and participate in two semi-structured interview sessions. A first cycle of open coding and second cycle of pattern coding were used during data analysis. Face experiences are discussed in light of eight major themes: body, triggers, becoming, face concepts, strategies, emotions, servant-leadership, and the church. Findings from the study help build a servant-leadership and face management model, which can offer an anchored approach for clergy and pastoral counselors to address face and shame and to develop therapeutic interventions

South African universities and human development : Towards a theorisation and operationalisation of professional capabilities for poverty reduction

This paper reports on a research project investigating the role of universities in South Africa in contributing to poverty reduction through the quality of their professional education programmes. The focus here is on theorising and the early operationalisation of multi-layered, multi-dimensional transformation based on ideas from Amartya Sen's capability approach. Key features of a professionalism oriented to public service, which in South Africa must mean the needs and lives of the poor, are outlined. These features include: the demand from justice; the expansion of the comprehensive capabilities both of the poor and professional capability formation to be able to act in ‘pro-poor’ ways; and, praxis pedagogies which shape this connected process. This theorisation is then tentatively operationalised in a process of selecting transformation dimensions

Exploring reasons why Australian senior secondary students do not enrol in higher-level mathematics courses

In this research paper, I present the reasons why senior secondary students elect not to enrol in a higher mathematics course. All Year 11 and Year 12 mathematics students within Western Australian secondary schools were invited to participate in an online survey comprised chiefly of qualitative items. The key reasons espoused by students include an expressed dissatisfaction with mathematics, the opinion that there are other more viable courses of study to pursue, and that the Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranking (ATAR) can be maximised by taking a lower mathematics course. In addition, student testimony suggests that there are few incentives offered for undertaking a higher mathematics course

Celebrating Womanhood: How better menstrual hygiene management is the path to better health, dignity and business

On International Women's Day in 2013, Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Councilheld Celebrating Womanhood: Menstrual Hygiene Management, a unique event that brought together a wide and deep range of participants to focus on issues related to menstruation. The event provided a chance to forge new connections and to make the "unspeakable" topic speakable. As the report describes, menstruation is still a taboo issue and has been neglected within WASH and in the field of human rights, but research and promising approaches and partnerships are already underway

The Poor and Marginalized Among Us: Contingent Faculty in Jesuit Universities

Faculty of institutions of higher learning have an opportunity to discuss, debate,and discern how to create workplaces that are just and inclusive.As members of Jesuit institutions, wehave a moral obligation to do so. How, then, can Jesuit universities justify the poor treatment of contingent faculty, who are now a majority not just in our institutions but in the country as a whole? Tenure-track employment is a fading tradition in universities throughout the United States. The data also show that non-tenure-track faculty, particularly the growing number of part-time adjunct faculty, constitute a population of marginalized, often poor,employees working alongside more privileged colleagues. Furthermore, the data show that the burden of inequality falls more heavily on women and people of color. How do Jesuit values and the mission statements of Jesuit universities guide us in this situation? How do Catholic social teaching principles help us to see and articulate the current situation more clearly, and find a path to more just and equitable employment in Jesuit higher education

Poetic sensibilities, humanities, and wonder: Toward an e/affective sociology of sport

In the academy that we often call the “sociology of sport,” rarely do we allow for the existence of poets or even of poetic sensibilities. This may seem to be a strange comment, given that NASSS particularly, and the sociology of sport more generally, are seen as stemming from a proud and mostly-honored tradition of the “social sciences.” In this case, the emphasis is on “sciences”—as opposed to more humanities-oriented discussions of the social.2 I plan, initially, to provide a contextualization of how I see we have come to where we are at, so please bear with me through my rehistoricizing, or story-making, of the sociology of sport—for, in my worldview, it is all story-making

Understanding Open Defecation in the Age of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: Agency, Accountability, and Anger in Rural Bihar.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, India's flagship sanitation intervention, set out to end open defecation by October 2019. While the program improved toilet coverage nationally, large regional disparities in construction and use remain. Our study used ethnographic methods to explore perspectives on open defecation and latrine use, and the socio-economic and political reasons for these perspectives, in rural Bihar. We draw on insights from social epidemiology and political ecology to explore the structural determinants of latrine ownership and use. Though researchers have often pointed to rural residents' preference for open defecation, we found that people were aware of its many risks. We also found that (i) while sanitation research and "behavior change" campaigns often conflate the reluctance to adopt latrines with a preference for open defecation, this is an erroneous conflation; (ii) a subsidy can help (some) households to construct latrines but the amount of the subsidy and the manner of its disbursement are key to its usefulness; and (iii) widespread resentment towards what many rural residents view as a development bias against rural areas reinforces distrust towards the government overall and its Swachh Bharat Abhiyan-funded latrines in particular. These social-structural explanations for the slow uptake of sanitation in rural Bihar (and potentially elsewhere) deserve more attention in sanitation research and promotion efforts

Emotions in engineering education

Contrary to common stereotypes, engineering education and practice are not purely rational activities. Emotions, just like cognition, play important roles in teaching, learning, and professional practice. Today, there is a nascent body of research exploring emotions in engineering education (EEE). However, much of the existing research does not adequately theorize emotions, and the range of theories and methods used is still relatively narrow. With this chapter, we hope to inspire more investigators to conduct EEE research and to explore currently underutilized theories, methods, and research foci. This chapter introduces the reader to the multidisciplinary field of emotion research, then focus specifically on EEE research. It describes different disciplinary and theoretical perspectives on emotions, as well as methods and methodologies for EEE research. Finally, the chapter covers dominant themes in the existing EEE literature, outlines important and promising areas for future research, and provides advice for researchers and doctoral students who plan to pursue EEE research

Unpacking Professional Shame: Patterns of White Male Engineering Students Living in and out of Threats to their Identities

Background Although prior research has provided robust descriptions of engineering students\u27 identity development, a gap in the literature exists related to students\u27 emotional experiences of shame, which undergird the socially constructed expectations of their professional formation. Purpose We examined the lived experiences of professional shame among White male engineering students in the United States. We conceptualize professional shame to be a painful emotional state that occurs when one perceives they have failed to meet socially constructed expectations or standards that are relevant to their identity in a professional domain. Method We conducted unstructured interviews with nine White male engineering students from both a research‐focused institution and a teaching‐focused institution. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis to examine the interview transcripts. Results The findings demonstrated four themes related to how participants experienced professional shame. First, they negotiated their global, or holistic, identities in the engineering domain. Second, they experienced threats to their identities within professional contexts. Third, participants responded to threats in ways that gave prominence to the standards they perceived themselves to have failed. Finally, they repaired their identities through reframing shame experiences and seeking social connection. Conclusions The findings demonstrate that the professional shame phenomenon is interwoven with professional identity development. In experiencing professional shame, White male students might reproduce the shame experience for themselves and others. This finding has important implications for the standards against which members from underrepresented groups may compare themselves and provides insight into the social construction of engineering cultures by dominant groups