Temperament theory and congregation studies: different types for different services?

Temperament theory and psychological type theory provide a tool for assessing and interpreting the profile of church congregations. In this study the profiles of the three congregations (Ns = 43, 110, 43) at one Anglican church (given the pseudonym of Holy Trinity Church) are situated against the normative profile generated by the congregations at 140 Anglican churches (N = 3302). The data demonstrate that normative profile attracts a high proportion of the Epimethean Temperament at 72%. The two morning services at Holy Trinity Church replicated the profile at 65% and 74%. The evening service, however, attracted a significantly lower proportion of the Epimethean Temperament (47%) with a corresponding significantly higher proportion of the Apollonian Temperament. These findings support the view that individual churches are able to offer diverse provisions that generate congregations with distinctively different psychological profiles

The psychological type profile of Christians participating in fellowship groups or in small study groups: Insights from the Australian National Church Life Survey

The Australian National Church Life Survey draws on psychological type theory to facilitate insights into the connection between individual psychological profiles and preferences for different religious expressions. Drawing on data provided by 2355 participants in the 2006 congregation survey, this analysis profiles those members of church congregations who are drawn to participation in small prayer, discussion or Bible study groups, or to participation in fellowship and social groups. The key findings are that extraverts and feeling types are over-represented in the fellowship and social groups and that intuitive types are over-represented in small prayer, discussion or Bible study groups

Learning as becoming in vocational education and training: class, gender and the role of vocational habitus

Official accounts of learning in vocational education and training emphasise the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge to foster behavioural competence in the workplace. However, such accounts fail to acknowledge the relationship between learning and identity. Drawing on detailed case studies of three vocational courses – in childcare, healthcare and engineering – in English further education colleges, within the project Transforming Learning Cultures in Further Education, it is argued that learning is a process of becoming. Learning cultures and the vocational cultures in which they are steeped transform those who enter them. The authors develop the concept of ‘vocational habitus’ to explain a central aspect of students' experience, as they have to orient to a particular set of dispositions – both idealised and realised. Predispositions related to gender, family background and specific locations within the working class are necessary, but not sufficient for effective learning. Vocational habitus reinforces and develops these in line with demands of the workplace, although it may reproduce social inequalities at the same time. Vocational habitus involves developing not only a ‘sense’ of how to be, but also ‘sensibility’: requisite feelings and morals, and the capacity for emotional labour