The third-space professional: a reflective case study on maintaining relationships within a complex higher education institution

This paper showcases the work of Third Space professionals in a complex higher education (HE) setting, and specifically its impact on the building of trust relationships and innovative approaches. It makes use of a case-study methodological approach, reflecting on the experiences of various stakeholders within pilot phases. The findings reveal challenges related to maintaining trust relationships, which can be threatened by technicist approaches. The reflective case study explores an innovative live-streaming project and the related pedagogical approaches by Instructional Design experts, as Third Space professionals, who have carved out a critical space within a HE setting. This investigation, and its related lessons, highlights that learning-and-teaching aspects, training and support, reconciliation of trust relationships, can be applied to Third Space professionals in other HE institutions.     

Circumplex of identity formation modes: A proposal for the integration of identity constructs developed in the Erikson–Marcia tradition

The paper presents the Circumplex of Identity Formation Modes, which is designed to integrate the various concepts describing identity formation in the Erikson–Marcia tradition. The theoretical foundations of the model were formulated based on (1) analysis of the definitions of constructs currently used in the literature on identity development, (2) redefinition of exploration and commitment (basic constructs proposed by Marcia to describe identity formation), and (3) the relationship between identity constructs and personality metatraits. The new model incorporates circumplex structure from other personality models and distinguishes eight modes of identity formation: Exploration, Consolidation, Socialization, Normativity, Petrification, Diffusion, Defiance, and Moratorivity. In this way, our proposal resolves problems inherent in the theory of identity formation offering a synthesis of models developed in the Erikson–Marcia tradition.     

The Epistemic Status of Evolutionary Theory

The theory of evolution continues to be a bone of contention among certain groups of theistic believers. This paper aims to bring some light to the debate about it, by introducing a framework for epistemic appraisal which can provide a realistic and sober assessment of the epistemic credentials of the various parts of evolutionary theory. The upshot is a more nuanced epistemic appraisal of the theory of evolution, which shows that there are significant differences in epistemic standing between its various parts. Any serious conversation about the theory of evolution ought to reflect these facts.     

Brain activation upon ideal-body media exposure and peer feedback in late adolescent girls

Media’s prevailing thin-body ideal plays a vital role in adolescent girls’ body image development, but the co-occurring impact of peer feedback is understudied. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test media imagery and peer feedback combinations on neural activity related to thin-body ideals. Twenty-four healthy female late adolescents rated precategorized body sizes of bikini models (too thin or normal), directly followed by ostensible peer feedback (too thin or normal). Consistent with prior studies on social feedback processing, results showed increased brain activity in the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC)/anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and bilateral insula in incongruent situations: when participants rated media models’ body size as normal while peer feedback indicated the models as too thin (or vice versa). This effect was stronger for girls with lower self-esteem. A subsequent behavioral study (N = 34 female late adolescents, separate sample) demonstrated that participants changed behavior in the direction of the peer feedback: precategorized normal sized models were rated as too thin more often after receiving too thin peer feedback. This suggests that the neural responses upon peer feedback may influence subsequent choice. Our results show that media-by-peer interactions have pronounced effects on girls’ body ideals.     

Individual classification of elementary school children’s physical activity: A time-efficient,group-based approach to reference measurements

The objective measurement of physical activity using accelerometers is becoming increasingly popular. There is little consensus, however, about how to analyze acceleration data. One promising approach is the use of reference measurements in which the subjects conduct specific activities. This makes it possible to identify data patterns that indicate these activities for each subject. The drawback of this approach is its rather high cost, in terms of both time and money. We propose a new approach in which a group of children conduct the reference measurements at the same time. We trained support vector machine models on the accelerometer data of 70 children (ages 8–11 years) to predict their activities during those reference measurements. We correctly classified activities with an accuracy of 96.9 % when fitting the individual models for each subject, and 87.5 % when fitting general models for all subjects. The obtained accuracies were comparable to results reported in previous reference measurement studies, in which each subject was measured individually. They were higher than the accuracies obtained by the traditional approach, which transfers accelerometer data to counts and classifies those on the basis of predefined cut points. We concluded that our approach can yield a valuable contribution, particularly to studies with larger samples.     

Enacting musical emotions. sense-making,dynamic systems,and the embodied mind

The subject of musical emotions has emerged only recently as a major area of research. While much work in this area offers fascinating insights to musicological research, assumptions about the nature of emotional experience seem to remain committed to appraisal, representations, and a rule-based or information-processing model of cognition. Over the past three decades alternative ‘embodied’ and ‘enactive’ models of mind have challenged this approach by emphasising the self-organising aspects of cognition, often describing it as an ongoing process of dynamic interactivity between an organism and its environment. More recently, this perspective has been applied to the study of emotion in general, opening up interesting new possibilities for theory and research. This new approach, however, has received rather limited attention in musical contexts. With this in mind, we critically review the history of music and emotion studies, arguing that many existing theories offer only limited views of what musical-emotional experience entails. We then attempt to provide preliminary grounding for an alternative perspective on music and emotion based on the enactive/dynamic systems approach to the study of mind.     

The Experience in Personal Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS.pers): Development and Psychometric Properties

This study presents the theoretical background, development, and psychometric properties of the German and English versions of the Experience in Personal Social Systems Questionnaire (EXIS.pers). It assesses how the members of a personal social system experience their situation within that system. It is designed as a research tool for interventions in which only one member of the system participates (e.g., Family Constellation Seminars). The EXIS.pers was created to measure change on the individual level relating to one's own important personal social system. In Study 1, we used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for latent variable identification of the original German EXIS.pers (n = 179). In Studies 2 and 3, we used confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the dimensionality of the German (n = 634) and English (n = 310) EXIS.pers. Internal consistencies and cross‐cultural structural equivalence were assessed. EFA indicated that a four‐factor model provided best fit for the German EXIS.pers. For both the German and English EXIS.pers, CFA provided the best fit for a five‐factor bi‐level model that included a general factor (Experience In Personal Social Systems) and four dimensions (Belonging, Autonomy, Accord, Confidence). Good internal consistencies, external associations, and cross‐cultural structural equivalence were demonstrated. This study provides first evidence for the German and English EXIS.pers as an economical and reliable measure of an individual's experience within his or her personal social systems.     

Bureaucracy and creativity: do they make companionable bedfellows?

This essay will look at the benefits and weaknesses of the increasingly bureaucratic nature of training structures and processes in the training of Jungian psychotherapists and analysts. The author will draw on her experiences during two different periods of time as Director of Training at the Society of Analytical Psychology in London with observations on and discussion about some of the changes that have evolved. By way of contrast, she will offer some comparisons with developments in the training of Jungian analysts in countries with little or no legacy of an analytic culture. Here, there is a need to professionalize training in Jungian analysis but the attendant growth of bureaucracy can easily come to echo the politics of non‐democratic regimes.