Browsing by Subject "phenomenology"

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Antidepressant Use Amongst College Students: Findings of a Phenomenological Study
(University of Minnesota, College of Pharmacy, 2012-07) Singh, Reshmi L.; Schommer, Jon C.; Worley, Marcia M.; Peden-McAlpine, Cynthia
Background: Depression among college students is an escalating problem and could have serious consequences such as suicide. There has been an increase in use of antidepressants on college campuses in United States. However, an in depth understanding of this phenomenon from the college student’s perspective is lacking in the literature. Objective: This study examined college students’ experiences and treatment decision making during their depression treatment. Methods: A longitudinal, phenomenological research methodology was completed. The participants were nine students who were taking antidepressants for diagnosis of depression. Recruitment was done via brochures placed at University bulletin boards, and a mental health clinic. Three audio taped, unstructured interviews were conducted with each participant over four months. The central question asked was: What has the experience of treating depression been for you? Analysis of text was done using Van Manen’s lifeworld existentials of lived body, lived time, lived relation and lived space as the organizing framework. Results: Thirteen themes were identified within the four lifeworlds. The results showed that lived relation with providers was important for college students’ decision to both initiate and continue antidepressant use. Students’ role was defined in conjunction with provider’s role by them as wanting to be a ‘player’ in their treatment decisions and needing to be ‘acknowledged’ as such by their providers. Conclusions: Overall, the underlying essential theme
Early Marriage In Indonesia: Exploring the Lived Experiences of Families of Early Marriage Women
(2020-05) Yunizar, Cahya
Early marriage prevalence in Indonesia is the second-highest in Southeast Asia. Despite the fact that married at an early age can bring a lot of disadvantages to women, it still emerges in some areas in Indonesia, especially in rural areas. The aim of this study is to explore the meaning of marriage in the eyes of women who were married at an early age. The research was conducted in Sumbermalang, Situbondo, East Java, Indonesia, focusing on the Madurese ethnic community. A phenomenological approach was used to explore the lived experiences of early married Madurese women. Thirty Madurese women, aged 18-45, participated in a 30-60 minutes semi-structured interview in the Indonesian national language. The data were transcribed and analyzed based on the content analysis technique. The results showed that young women decide to get married for reasons such as love, arranged married, economic benefits, and community pressure. Some social norms and values reported include sexual purity, the importance of marriage, and gender inequality. These social norms and values tend to make early marriage practice exist through generations. Lastly, the study found that women who married early tend to drop out of school, bear children early, experience mood swings, and forced to mature quickly. Some implications and future research directions are also discussed.
The Elephant in the Room: Humanizing the International Higher Education Practitioner-Faculty Relationship
(2024-05) Pattison, Sarah
This study explores how International Higher Education (IHE) practitioners at public universities in the United States perceive interactions with those in the faculty role when working to achieve internationalization aims. Additionally, this study explores the insights these practitioners have for developing and sustaining generative relationships with those in the faculty role. The findings of this study demonstrate that IHE practitioner-faculty relationships are essential to the advancement of the field yet are stymied by hierarchy and elitism in higher education. To assist the IHE practitioner-faculty relationship, this study provides recommendations for (1) empowering and developing IHE practitioners, (2) emboldening constructive behavioral choices, (3) fostering cooperative cultural values, and (4) establishing egalitarian structures. This study also suggests that to enhance internationalization efforts, leaders at institutions of higher education should (1) become aware of the negative impacts of hierarchical power structures on IHE practitioner-faculty interactions, (2) make elitism and hierarchy discussable at their institution, (3) acknowledge that IHE practitioners are not responsible for faculty engagement in internationalization, (4) enlist IHE practitioners and faculty in collaborative efforts to advance internationalization goals, and (5) recognize that generative IHE practitioner-faculty relationships are a likely site for the emergence of new IHE concepts and practices.
Exploring Female Leader Development: Women and Leadership in the Minnesota Army National Guard
(2015-08) Manke, Amber
The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore how female military officers describe their personal experiences and perceive their professional development in a male dominated organization. A phenomenological research method was most appropriate for this research study to capture the lived experiences of female leaders from their individual perspectives based on their service in the military. Nine female commissioned officers were interviewed from the Minnesota Army National Guard in the military ranks of captain, major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel. Three themes emerged from the study that expand and enrich the understanding of the lived experience of female commissioned officers in the Minnesota Army National Guard. Within the three major themes there were several sub-themes. The three major themes: (1) personal and professional relationships, (2) leadership strategies, and (3) operational experience and assignments. The themes revealed the multifaceted dimensions of female officers and their experience with leader development. The findings suggest a stronger need for leader development programs in the military. The study confirmed mentoring future leaders and providing a leader development program is important to the development of leaders in today's military. These findings provide a baseline for future research in the area of leader development for women in the military.
Partially Composite Supersymmetry
(2020-07) Miller, Andrew
This dissertation presents the model of partially composite supersymmetry, constructed in a slice of five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime. The Higgs fields are localized on the ultraviolet brane, while supersymmetry is broken on the infrared brane. The remainder of the field content of the minimal supersymmetric standard model is embedded into the five-dimensional bulk. The localizations of the bulk fields that are responsible for generating the fermion mass hierarchy simultaneously cause the first- and second-generation sfermions to be split from the lighter gauginos and third-generation sfermions. The sfermion mass scale is constrained by the observed 125 GeV Higgs boson, leading to stop masses and gauginos around 10 to 100 TeV and the first two generation sfermion masses around 100 to 1000 TeV. This gives rise to a splitlike supersymmetric model that explains the fermion mass hierarchy while simultaneously predicting an inverted sfermion mass spectrum consistent with direct-detection and flavor constraints. The lightest supersymmetric particle is a gravitino, in the keV to TeV range, which can play the role of dark matter. According to the AdS/CFT correspondence, this model has a dual description as a four-dimensional strongly coupled theory of supersymmetric partial compositeness.
A Phenomenological Exploration of the Hegemonic Insider-Outsider in Teacher Education
(2021-06) Hong, Younkyung
Social justice-oriented teacher education is a way for prospective teachers to learn and practice taking critical perspectives and use reflection for their future teaching practice (McDonald & Zeichner, 2009). Despite preservice teachers’ interest and effort in engaging with racially and culturally just educational work, their approaches often result in (re)producing the marginalization of people of color and/or people from non-dominant backgrounds (Leonardo, 2013). Meanwhile, studies have addressed how preservice teachers feel when they are forced to engage in anti-racist work when they have little space to reconcile the dilemmas they may experience during their journeys to becoming critical educators (Mason, 2016; Philip & Zavala, 2016). In this dissertation research, I seek ways to support preservice teachers’ engagement with the topics and practices related to race, racism, and cultural diversity. This work is grounded in the understanding that various axes and dimensions of power relations deeply inform teacher practice (Asher, 2007) and assumes that future teachers must learn how to navigate various forms of domination and exclusion in society. The four main areas of scholarship are in the foreground of this study: (Critical) Whiteness Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Feminist Theory, and Intersectionality Theory. In terms of research methodology, based on Vagle’s (2018) post-intentional phenomenology, I suggest intercultural post-intentional phenomenology by claiming the necessity of intercultural inquiry because Western/Eurocentric approaches tend to prevent researchers from more fully understanding different cultural aspects involved in educational phenomena (Hong, 2019). This methodological development builds on Lau’s (2016) intercultural phenomenological understanding, which challenges the Eurocentric tradition and tendency of phenomenology and promotes an intercultural and/or decolonizing phenomenological approach. This dissertation captures some of the tentative productions and manifestations of the phenomenon of the hegemonic insider-outsider in a teacher education course. My analysis shows how the hegemonic insider-outsider is produced as individual preservice teachers navigate various forms and levels of relationships, dominant discourses, oppressions, and marginalization. This study finds that the phenomenon of the hegemonic insider-outsider is constructed in multiple ways and levels as it is produced at the intersections of individual students’ positionalities, social systems, and structures.
Rereading and Rewriting Teachers’ Stories of Felt Impossibilities
(2020-10) Boehm-Turner, Abigail
Student teaching is a pivotal time period, as future teachers construct their new identities, trying to mesh their own ideals for who they want to be in the classroom with the ways schools and classrooms are run, and the ways in which teachers are constructed by others. Life experiences and embodied knowledges come into conflict with idealistic and program-based ideas of social justice (Britzman, 2003; Lortie, 1975). Even future teachers who are oriented toward change and social justice often end up embodying the very notions of teaching they had hoped to push against (Britzman, 2003; hooks, 1994) Drawing on post-intentional phenomenology (Vagle, 2018) and narrative inquiry (Barone, 2007; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007; Huber et al, 2013), this study investigated a phenomenon I call felt impossibilities in becoming teachers who aspire to be antiracist, anti-oppressive, social justice-oriented educators. I define felt impossibilities as a crisis of identity or an identity paradox, in which teachers feel that they cannot enact the values they hold, for all of the reasons--institutional, structural, emotional, and embodied. The dissertation is organized around stories of teaching: my own and one of my participants, both of us cis-gender, white, middle class women. I reread our stories through one another, as well as through Thandeka’s (1999) theory of white shame, Yoon’s (2012) theory of whiteness-at-work, and Mazzei’s (2011) theory of desiring silence to see what our feelings of impossibility produce and provoke.I argue that we must attend to the silences--in teacher education, in our teacher actions, and in the stories we tell--to combat the harmful effects of white supremacy in our schools. Inspired by adrienne maree brown’s (2017) Emergent Strategy, I also suggest that rewriting our stories may help us flip the script, to see felt impossibilities as a way into productive change, rather than just a place of “stuckness.”
Student Leadership in Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study Examining the Experiences of Hmong Student Leaders in Higher Education
(2014-08) Yang, Dang
This thesis is a phenomenological investigation of the lived experiences of six Hmong student leaders enrolled in a public four-year institution of higher education. Specifically, the study examined student leadership development among this population of students and sought to determine patterns of responses in their leadership experiences. Using Braun and Clark's (2006) Thematic Analysis to examine the data, four patterns emerged. First, the participants discussed the importance of developing key skills. Second, participants discussed the ways in which their leadership experiences contributed to their feelings of belonging and community development on campus. Third, participants discussed their experiences navigating multiple identities and social roles. Fourth, participants discussed the ways in which they used their leadership experiences as a means to facilitate social action leading to equitable outcomes. The findings also strongly suggested that race and ethnicity was a significant factor in the participants' student leadership development.
"This Isn't a Sentence in a History Book": How Power-Relations Take Shape for Students with Historically Marginalized Identities in History Classrooms
(2016-08) Oto, Ryan
This post-intentional phenomenological study explores the problem of students with historically marginalized identities in terms of race, gender, and sexuality, being able to exist as they identify within the history classroom. The research question is as follows: How do power-relations take shape within history classrooms through the lived experiences of students with historically marginalized identities? Interviews with three students that self-identified with historically marginalized groups were conducted using post-intentional phenomenological methods. Applying theory from Foucault (1977, 1980, 1990a, 1990b), Omi and Winant (2015), and the author’s self-reflexive position, the interviews were analyzed and narratives constructed. The results suggest that the students live postcolonial lives that are challenged by normative forces from their relations to societal institutions of school and content. Students attempted to affirm and protect their identity projects by creating homeplaces. The author concludes by considering the importance that students’ identity projects play in the development of classroom safety.
Transforming the Transformation: A post-intentional phenomenological exploration of Montessori teachers engaging in anti-bias and anti-racist teacher self-reflection
(2018-06) Christensen, Olivia
Montessori teachers often enter the teaching field with a strong sense of a Montessori social identity developed through their transformational teacher education experience (AMI, 2018a; Malm, 2004), uniting them around a shared knowledge and belief system (Fairclough, 1992, 2003). While a social identity can connect individuals and provide security and purpose, it can also limit beliefs and behaviors by producing a prescribed way of being (Foucault, 2010). Research (e.g., Sumison, 2002) has shown that when teachers are confronted with instances that challenge their teacher identity and social practice (Fairclough, 1992), they may experience dilemmas and uncertainty (Cuban, 1992; Lampert, 1985) that call their self and social identification as a teacher into question. This post-intentional phenomenological study is an attempt to better understand what is produced and provoked (Vagle, 2018) when Montessori teachers engage in anti-bias and anti-racist (ABAR) teacher self-reflection, a critical first step to implementing antiracist teaching practices in an early childhood classroom (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010). Specifically, I explored what is produced and provoked in the Montessori self and social identity as teachers consider ways of being a teacher that possibly differ with the Montessori teacher way of being. Six Montessori early childhood teachers participated in three workshops on ABAR self-reflection which I developed and facilitated over the course of three and a half months. Participant experiences, including my own, and additional phenomenological material (e.g., Montessori's writing, current initiatives in the Montessori social world) offered important insight into the life and evolution of the phenomenon. To guide analysis, I used Jackson and Mazzei's (2012) thinking with theory and Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) notion of the rhizome to conceptualize the life and growth of the phenomenon. Findings revealed elements of the Montessori social identity that provide meaning and purpose for teachers working towards dismantling oppression as well as limitations in the form of a regime of truth (Foucault, 1977/2010) that can challenge the development of a dialogic identity. Implications suggest recommendations for Montessori teacher education programs including strategies of incorporating ABAR reflective practices into Montessori teacher development, reevaluating the words and position of an adored leader for relevance as society evolves, and encouraging social activism by disrupting the notion of objectivity and neutrality in teaching.
What War Does to a Survivor’s Sense of Time: The Spatiotemporal Self After Violence in Tajikistan
(2020-08) Lynch, Damon
War is so forceful it often seems recent to its survivors regardless of when it occurred. The violent past is alive and lies in front. To understand why I develop a new paradigm called the spatiotemporal self. Although my research is about time and war, my intention is that this paradigm will be of general interest to the social sciences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily in the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan, this interdisciplinary research examines experiences of a civil war that occurred 20 years before and a one-day battle that occurred during the fieldwork. The spatiotemporal self is a theoretically novel alliance of time and self, brought together by visual perspectives intrinsic to both. Time is conceived of using spatial construals of time — temporal span (T-span), sequence time (S-time), and most importantly, the internal and external variants of deictic time (D-time). The self is conceived of as having four levels that emerged in evolution, from oldest to newest: the protoself, core self, minimal self, and narrative self. The first three levels combine to use a pre-reflective mode of self-consciousness that emphasizes a phenomenological, experiential processing of events; these three levels use a first-person visual perspective of the self. The narrative self level uses a reflective mode of self-consciousness that emphasizes the conceptual meaning of events in the context of broader life and society; this level uses a third-person visual perspective of the self. Because the spatiotemporal self is an alliance of cognitive processes, at the cognitive level it is a human universal. Ethnographic respondents were asked which visual perspective of the self they used to recall events important to them from the violent past. A first-person visual perspective of the self predominated in which respondents focused primarily on their experience of an event’s concrete details, with a tight focus on the time of the event. Internal D-time was indicated by the past being alive and in front. Respondents were also asked to switch visual perspectives to use the third-person visual perspective, so they could see themselves in the same event from an external perspective using their mind’s eye. Respondents then discussed the event using external D-time and S-time, focusing on the event’s conceptual meaning for self and society. Respondents’ phenomenological accounts of the past exhibited a complex, multilayered temporal structure. On the one hand, respondents layered time in them conceptually, differentiating past from present. On the other hand, they flattened time in them phenomenologically, almost erasing distinctions between past and present. Both ways of knowing the phenomenological past were equally practical to the respondent, despite appearing analytically incongruous. Moreover, attributions of what happened to respondents in their phenomenological accounts were made under the rubric of the minimal self, despite being articulated by the narrative self. Finally, some phenomenological accounts of the past were symbolic, embedding a generative, conceptual message. A tentative finding is that the presence of temporal layers and generative elements in phenomenological accounts suggests that internal thought might contain generative constructs independent of linguistic expression.
Women Who Love Women in Jamaica
(2016-08) Martin-Kerr, Keitha-Gail
Jamaica, known to its locals as the land of milk and honey, is also perceived as the most homonegative country in the world. Even though there is no research substantiating this claim, it is still a largely held belief by many people. The purpose of this study is to initiate a line of inquiry into the lives of women-who-love-women, a topic that is often neglected and silenced in Jamaica for a variety of reasons. The current study explores the lived experiences of women-who-love-women in Jamaica. Specifically, it investigates the phenomenon of homonegativity on the lives of women-who-love-women. Using post-intentional phenomenology as a methodological framework, I examined data from four self-identified Jamaican women-who-love-women to better understand the nuances and complexities of their daily lives. Post-intentional phenomenology allowed me to look at glimpses in the lives of these women to see slithers of the tentative manifestations of their lives. Data collection tools included written memories, interviews, participants’ reflections on two Jamaican dancehall songs, and my post-reflexive journal entries. I discovered tentative manifestations into the lives of these women that revealed how they operate daily with care, hope, fear, and a multitude of productive tension-filled emotions in a land permeated with homonegative attitudes. I analyzed data using Thinking with theory, a framework designed by Jackson and Mazzei (2012) that assumes data is partial, incomplete, and always being re-told and re-remembered. Thinking with theory allowed me to plug theoretical concepts into the data to see what new understandings could be produced. I also inserted the data into the theoretical concepts to garner varying interpretations. I ‘plugged in’ Ahmed (2006), Bulter (1990), and Lorde’s (2012) concepts of orientation, performativity, and the erotic as power to open up the phenomenon that I studied. This allowed me to explore varying perspectives of the lived experiences of women-who-love-women in Jamaica to see glimpses of their lives in its multiple, partial, and fleeting ways. This study has implications for policy makers, teaching, and learning.

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