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It’s the way I tell them. A Personal Construct Psychology method for analysing narratives.
Get PDFQualitative research methods aim to produce some form of narrative for analysis and many alternative forms of narrative analysis exist, mostly informed by social constructionist perspectives. This creates a dilemma for personal constructivist researchers, who now have access to a plethora of methods for understanding and intervening in people’s sensemaking processes but are faced with a distinct absence of a uniquely personal constructivist method for analysing the emerging narratives. This paper aims to outline a Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) (Kelly, 1955) view of the person as an agentic being and provide a contextualised, step by step guide for analysing personal narratives from a Kellian perspective that encompasses identification and analysis of constructs, metaphors, roles, implicit beliefs and emotions. Kelly advocated working with the ‘whole’ person by credulously exploring their lived reality through the entirety of their emotions, cognitions and behaviours, which goes beyond an extraction of narrative themes or phenomenological interpretations contained in the realm of the person’s known world. In PCP, language is regarded as symbolic, contextual, performative, and incomplete but, unlike social constructionist approaches, the focus favours the identification and explanation of internal identity processes, social cognitions, and personal meanings, rather than how language is utilised externally as a cultural tool. By articulating an explicit process, we aim to improve the accessibility of PCP as a full research process and overcome the current limitations posed by utilising qualitative analytical methods drawn from alternative epistemologies
A corpus-led, critical, examination of the lexis and processes concerned with the linguistic construction of judicially defined ‘privacy’
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Odontocetes (‘Toothed Whales’): Cognitive Science and Moral Standing – Are Dolphins Persons?
Get PDFOdontocetes, or ‘toothed whales’, have a complex brain structure and possess rationality, self-awareness, sociability and culture. Cognitive science and modern theories of personhood challenge the notion that humans alone are moral persons. This paper reviews evidence from the cognitive science literature relevant to moral personhood in bottlenose dolphins, orcas, and beluga whales. It applies theories of personhood of Peter Singer, David DeGrazia, and Steven Wise, and finds that odontocetes fulfil criteria to be granted at least borderline personhood. The legal implications of attributingpersonhood to dolphins remains uncertain. Recognition of dolphin personhood may lead to fundamental legal rights against capture, captivity, and killing; alternatively, the courts may continue to restrict legal personhood and associated protections to human beings. Finally, despite the major influence of personhood on morality and law in the West, the biologically more widespread quality of sentience is sufficient for greater moral considerability and legal protections for nonhuman species
A Meta-Analytical Review of the Impact of Mindfulness on Creativity: Framing Current Lines of Research and Defining Moderator Variables.
Get PDFFindings relating to the impact of mindfulness interventions on creative performance remain inconsistent, perhaps because of discrepancies between study designs, including variability in the length of mindfulness interventions, the absence of control groups or the tendencies to explore creativity as one unitary construct. To derive a clearer understanding of the impact that mindfulness interventions may exert on creative performance, two meta-analytical reviews were conducted, drawing respectively on studies using a control group design (n = 20) and studies using a pretest–posttest design (n = 17). A positive effect was identified between mindfulness and creativity, both for control group designs (d = 0.42, 95% CIs [0.29, 0.54]) and pretest–posttest designs (d = 0.59, 95% CIs [0.38, 0.81]). Subgroup analysis revealed that intervention length, creativity task (i.e., divergent vs. convergent thinking tasks) and control group type, were significant moderators for control group studies, whereas only intervention length was a significant moderator for pretest–posttest studies. Overall, the findings support the use of mindfulness as a tool to enhance creative performance, with more advantageous outcomes for convergent as opposed to divergent thinking tasks. We discuss the implications of study design and intervention length as key factors of relevance to future research aimed at advancing theoretical accounts of the relationship between mindfulness and creativity.</p
Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, Hegelian Aufhebung, and the culture of reparation
Get PDFThis article argues that within Paul Gilroy’s notion of the ‘changing same’ and his more famous articulation of the ‘Black Atlantic’ there is a culture, an education, that can be retrieved by way of recent re-readings of the Hegelian Aufhebung by Gillian Rose and Nigel Tubbs. The piece begins with an exploration of these ideas in Gilroy’s work, noting in particular the ways in which they speak of both complicity in, and moving beyond, eternal repetitions and reproductions of existing power relations and existing notions of identity. This is then taken to Rose’s Hegelian critique of identity and of the postmodern critiques of identity. Finally, these two contributions are reworked as cultures in a logic of education found in Tubbs. This commends reading the changing same and the Black Atlantic as self-educating and re-forming experiences, expressing the deeper significance of current culture wars, including as a lived experience of the tensions constituting the challenge presented by the idea of reparation
A spiritual journey of trust during multiple childbirth by caesarean section
Get PDFThis autoethnographic study explores the author’s caesarean section experience to evidence spirituality and trust associated with a multiple childbirth through a caesarean section. The reflective account also indicates how spirituality can influence trust during and post childbirth. By appreciating and further understanding the broader notions of spiritual health surrounding childbirth practice, connected heath care and trusted relationships between midwives and other healthcare providers could further promote woman-centred care and reciprocal relationships. Together with the narratives of women’s spiritual experiences of their childbirth in health research and training programmes a synergy between spirituality and trust can be integrated that support meaning making about childbirth