Birth, Death and Survival: an Arendtian analysis of pre-service teacher identity on the PGCE route

This research focuses on the identity development of pre-service teachers on a one-year, university-based teacher education route (PGCE) in England. In the English education system, concerns have been raised about many aspects impacting pre-service teachers during their PGCE and beyond: a neoliberal, market-driven education system; high levels of performativity and accountability within the teaching profession, and the lack of attention to the process of identity formation within teacher education. This study is significant in that it provides a rationale for pre-service teacher identity formation to be considered in its own right. By bringing an Arendtian framework to the research, it offers pre-service teachers an opportunity to think about themselves, and the influences that act upon their professional identity, in a new way. As a result of this research, it is intended that pre-service teachers will be better able to deal with the challenges that face them as beginning teachers, and that teacher education will embed identity development as an evolving process in their programmes. This study is situated within a theoretically enriched empirical approach. The methodology was driven using Arendtian theory, specifically the use of Arendt’s ‘conditions’ related to the concepts of birth, death, survival, worldliness, plurality and self-development. This qualitative research gathered data from three PGCE pre-service teachers as they ‘became’ teachers. Over the period of their PGCE year, this included an online introductory life story to gather insights into their awareness of a teacher identity, a face-to-face semi-structured interview to explore pre-service teachers’ awareness of their developing teacher identity, and a critical incident interview, reflecting on the key episodes that impacted on how they viewed themselves as teachers. The data was analysed using Arendt’s ‘conditions’, and presented as the story of three pre-service teachers. The outcomes of this study are that pre-service teachers felt that the research methodology allowed them to become more aware of, and interrogate, their identity; the Arendtian framework was an ‘identifier’ that denoted the depth of emotion, the impact of events faced during their teaching experience, and how they successfully resolved these issues. Arendt’s ‘conditions’ were interpreted slightly differently by each pre-service teacher but, combined with the critical incident timeline, acted as a driver for an emergent, dialogical and relational approach to pre-service teacher identity

A general temporal data model and the structured population event history register

At this time there are 37 demographic surveillance system sites active in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Central America, and this number is growing continuously. These sites and other longitudinal population and health research projects generate large quantities of complex temporal data in order to describe, explain and investigate the event histories of individuals and the populations they constitute. This article presents possible solutions to some of the key data management challenges associated with those data. The fundamental components of a temporal system are identified and both they and their relationships to each other are given simple, standardized definitions. Further, a metadata framework is proposed to endow this abstract generalization with specific meaning and to bind the definitions of the data to the data themselves. The result is a temporal data model that is generalized, conceptually tractable, and inherently contains a full description of the primary data it organizes. Individual databases utilizing this temporal data model can be customized to suit the needs of their operators without modifying the underlying design of the database or sacrificing the potential to transparently share compatible subsets of their data with other similar databases. A practical working relational database design based on this general temporal data model is presented and demonstrated. This work has arisen out of experience with demographic surveillance in the developing world, and although the challenges and their solutions are more general, the discussion is organized around applications in demographic surveillance. An appendix contains detailed examples and working prototype databases that implement the examples discussed in the text.data, data model, database, DSS, event, influence, longitudinal, metadata, methods, population register, relational, SPEHR, state, surveillance, temporal

Mapping Big Data into Knowledge Space with Cognitive Cyber-Infrastructure

Big data research has attracted great attention in science, technology, industry and society. It is developing with the evolving scientific paradigm, the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformational innovation of technologies. However, its nature and fundamental challenge have not been recognized, and its own methodology has not been formed. This paper explores and answers the following questions: What is big data? What are the basic methods for representing, managing and analyzing big data? What is the relationship between big data and knowledge? Can we find a mapping from big data into knowledge space? What kind of infrastructure is required to support not only big data management and analysis but also knowledge discovery, sharing and management? What is the relationship between big data and science paradigm? What is the nature and fundamental challenge of big data computing? A multi-dimensional perspective is presented toward a methodology of big data computing.Comment: 59 page

“I Am One of Those Women:” Exploring Testimonial Performances of Stillbirth in/as Intervention, Support and Advocacy

abstract: The stillbirth of a wanted baby is a devastating and life altering experience that happens more than 26,000 times each year in the United States, but the impacts and implications of this loss on families is rarely discussed in public spaces. While another kind of pregnancy ending, abortion, dominates political discourse about reproduction, the absence of talk about stillbirth prevention or support in those same contexts is worthy of further investigation. This project explores stillbirth as a communication phenomenon and draws upon narrative, performance and rhetorical articulations of testimony to extend our understanding of how narratives of stillbirth circulate in current conditions of discourse. A model for viewing how dominant and counter narratives circulate is explained (Narrative Loop Model) and a new model for illuminating the unique functions of testimony is given (Testimonial Loop Model). This dissertation employs performance and rhetorical methods to explore testimonies of stillbirth, both naturally occurring and solicited through interviews, in order to create several performance texts that put pregnancy-ending narratives in conversation with each other on stage. Analysis of the performance text and choices, as well as reflection on the embodied performance experience and member checking, yielded several findings. The discovery of somatic sentience and its influence on performance ethnography is discussed. Themes of relationality and temporality were found in the performance of testimonies of stillbirth. The implications of these findings add to the communication discipline’s understanding of how and why stillbirth testimony may circulate, its impact on conditions of discourse for pregnancy ending and its potential use as/in intervention, support, and advocacy. Ethical considerations and limitations are addressed.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Communication Studies 201

The Inhuman Overhang: On Differential Heterogenesis and Multi-Scalar Modeling

As a philosophical paradigm, differential heterogenesis offers us a novel descriptive vantage with which to inscribe Deleuze’s virtuality within the terrain of “differential becoming,” conjugating “pure saliences” so as to parse economies, microhistories, insurgencies, and epistemological evolutionary processes that can be conceived of independently from their representational form. Unlike Gestalt theory’s oppositional constructions, the advantage of this aperture is that it posits a dynamic context to both media and its analysis, rendering them functionally tractable and set in relation to other objects, rather than as sedentary identities. Surveying the genealogy of differential heterogenesis with particular interest in the legacy of Lautman’s dialectic, I make the case for a reading of the Deleuzean virtual that departs from an event-oriented approach, galvanizing Sarti and Citti’s dynamic a priori vis-à-vis Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. Specifically, I posit differential heterogenesis as frame with which to examine our contemporaneous epistemic shift as it relates to multi-scalar computational modeling while paying particular attention to neuro-inferential modes of inductive learning and homologous cognitive architecture. Carving a bricolage between Mark Wilson’s work on the “greediness of scales” and Deleuze’s “scales of reality”, this project threads between static ecologies and active externalism vis-à-vis endocentric frames of reference and syntactical scaffolding

Relational Pastoral Care and Counseling: A Practical Theological Exploration of Relational Spirituality and Grief

What is the relationship between relational spirituality and grief? This dissertation pursues this question by employing a practical theological method for practitioners of pastoral care and counseling when tending to unique grief experiences. Grief is understood in terms of contemporary bereavement science. Relational spirituality is developed as an interdisciplinary, interpretive lens with the capacity to describe how individuals relate to the sacred in light of four dimensions: human-human, human-God, God-human, and inner Trinitarian. The outworking of these dimensions suggests a relational approach to interdisciplinary dialogue. Applying relational spirituality to individuals’ unique grief experiences produces a process of care for tending to grief experiences. This exemplifies how relational spirituality is an explicitly relational, interdisciplinary paradigm that creates transformational dialogue applicable to a breadth of human needs. Chapter One tends to the complexity of integrating contemporary bereavement science with pastoral care and counseling by describing how this dissertation is guided by Richard Osmer’s four tasks of practical theology: descriptive-empirical, interpretive, normative, and pragmatic. Also, the Chalcedonian Pattern of Logic is extended in order to propose a relational approach to interdisciplinary dialogue. Chapter Two represents the interpretive task, as it is based on psychological literature that describes the history and trends in grief research, highlighting resilience as the hallmark of contemporary bereavements science. Chapters Three and Four engage in the normative task by developing relational spirituality in each of its four dimensions. Concepts used to develop these include attachment theory, interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), analogia spiritus, imago Dei, Trinitarian relationality, and the immanent-economic distinction. Each of these concepts highlights normative relational patterns that lead to thriving in human life, particularly in light of specific virtues. Normativity is also suggested in terms of what it is not, namely suffering. The descriptive-empirical task occurs in Chapters Five and Six, which includes an in-depth, qualitative exploration of individuals’ unique grief experiences. Chapter Seven concludes the dissertation with a thorough explanation of research findings and development of pragmatic guidelines, as described in the process of care. It is hoped that relational spirituality not only serves practitioners with a descriptive paradigm to creatively elicit dialogue and co-create life-giving narratives with others and God

An examination of the process of role change at end of life in a contemporary, regional Australian context

Daniel Lowrie examined the process of role change at end of life in contemporary Australia. He identified problems with role confusion and role relations mismatch, particularly during the protracted middle phase of dying. His findings highlight the need for better support for dying persons and their caregivers during this time

Psycho-spiritual counselling to enhance resiliency as transformative education: An auto/ethnographic inquiry of the interface between spirituality and positive psychology

This thesis attempts to capture my lived experiences of psychospiritual counselling and to describe how my research journey has shaped me personally and professionally. As a priest engaged in psychospiritual counselling internationally for nearly three decades in diverse settings, I attempt to seek further clarity and make sense of my rich experiences in this research. Therefore, I endeavoured to investigate if and how building resiliency through psychospiritual counselling can be comprehended as transformative education. Experientially speaking, as a priest and psychospiritual counsellor, I recognised that people leaned on their moral vulnerabilities and were blinded to spirituality as a source of inner completeness and the development of their resilience as transformative education. My literature review thus aimed to broaden my comprehension of psychospiritual counselling as transformative learning that builds resiliency for therapists and clients. My three research questions attempted to answer how psychospiritual counselling is considered, the role of psychospiritual counsellors, and the strategies they utilise to enhance resilience as transformative education. I strived at resilience enhancement as transformative education by developing an integrative approach to psychospiritual counselling that combined positive psychology and spirituality. My doctoral thesis is an auto/ethnographic design, and its philosophical foundations are interpretivism and critical constructivism. My data analysis of the four case studies revealed how participants’ personal experiences within their socio-cultural worlds, multiparadigmatic viewpoints, and theoretical frameworks shaped and reconceptualised their constructs and practice of psychospiritual counselling as integrative, transformative, and self-transcending that enhanced their clients’ resilience. An essential suggestion for future research is to investigate if this research could apply to psychospiritual counsellors of other faith traditions and their understanding of spirituality as transformative learning that improves resiliency. Lastly, I examined how this research impacted not only my understanding of transformative learning but how it has transformed me

Me, myself and I: identity and meaning in the lives of vulnerable young people

Questions relating to identity and meaning are fundamental questions of life. As such, they have been the subject of study by scholars across a diverse range of disciplines, including psychology, theology, sociology and philosophy, throughout history. Despite this diversity, scholars agree that identity and meaning are inter-related issues which are central to the lives of human beings.It is widely accepted within the literature that adolescence is a critical period for the development of identity and meaning, and that these concepts may become even more pertinent to young people when they are confronted with persistent challenges or periods of uncertainty. However, our knowledge of how vulnerable young people perceive and experience ‘identity and meaning’ in their lives remains less clear.This research study, funded by the Institute for Catholic Identity and Mission, Australian Catholic University (ACU ), and conducted by the Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) aimed to further our understanding of this area by exploring the following questions: What is the role and potency of identity and meaning in the lives of vulnerable young people? What are the implications of this for the way that we support vulnerable young people? The study adopted a participatory and qualitative approach and was conducted throughout 2012. Twenty four young people participated in in-depth one-on-one interviews about their lives

Women and work-life balance: a phenomenological qualitative analysis of identity, relational style, adaptive style, and drive and motivation, and the role of faith from the narrative life-story framework

The purpose of this study is to review the literature regarding the plurality of roles of women, including work-life balance issues. The purpose of this study is also to share insights regarding the role of faith in women\u27s identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style. This phenomenological study used the narrative life-course framework to gain understanding of eleven women\u27s lives as they seek balance in work and life. Four themes were selected based on a previous study by Giele, and include identity, relational style, drive and motivation, and adaptive style. The findings indicate that for those who value faith as an element in their lives, they connect faith to their work, viewing it as part of God\u27s purpose for their lives and derive meaning from that work. They also value professional and personal relationships that reflected their own faith and values as part of their coping strategies