Writing therapy in brief workplace counselling: Collaborative writing as inquiry

The purpose of this collaborative research was to reflect on one client's experience of using writing therapy during brief workplace counselling. The client/co‐researcher used expressive and creative writing between counselling sessions, the benefits of which are reported. A brief review of the literature on writing therapy is provided. The focus of the study is on investigating the process of writing therapy from the client's point of view. The epistemological assumptions and research methods are influenced by narrative inquiry. Feminist values inform both the therapeutic practice and research.     

关于中小学数学教师对教学问题认知的调查分析

本研究主要采用问卷调查的方法,对中小学教师的教学问题意识及其影响因素进行了初步探讨。被试者为来自不同类型中小学校的数学教师共175名。结果表明:(1)中小学教师意识到的教学问题主要属于"教学技巧"或"胜任教学"层面的问题,此外教师意识到的属于教学条件、教学管理和教学评估方面的问题比较突出;(2)从整体上看,中小学教师的教学问题意识不强;(3)教师的条件性知识和实践性知识对其教学问题意识的强度有显著的预测作用。     

The shaping of masculinity: Revisioning boys turning away from their mothers to construct male gender identity

This paper offers an understanding of the nature of the internalization processes involved in the shaping of male gender identity founded on the boy's unique struggles in separating from his mother. The underpinning for the initial development of a sense of masculinity is reconsidered as the author questions the widely held idea of Greenson and Stoller that a boy normatively has to 'dis-identify' from his mother to create his gender identity. Import rather is placed on the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mother's (and father's) pre-oedipal and oedipal relationship with their little boy in order better to understand the nature of the boy's unique identifications and subsequent sense of masculinity. Both the security of the boy's attachment to his mother, in providing the foundation for a transitional turning to an 'other', and the mother's capacity to reflect upon and recognize her own, as well as the father's and her son's, subjectivity and maleness, are crucial in comprehending boys' 'attachment-individuation' process. Likewise, the unconscious paternal and maternal imagos and identifications of both the boy's mother and father, as well as the father's pre-oedipal relationship with his little boy and the boy's mother, are extremely significant in shaping a son's gender identity. The author argues that these early maternal (and paternal) identifications live on in every male and continue to impact the sense of maleness in a dialectical interplay throughout the life span. A maturing gender identity develops from integrating these early, pre-oedipal maternal identifications that no longer need be repudiated nor defensively organized as polarized gender splitting.     

A Contextual Approach to Political Theory

This article explores the advantages of using a range of actual cases in doing political theory. This sort of approach clarifies what is at stake in alternative theoretical formulations, draws attention to the wisdom that may be embedded in existing practices, and encourages theorists to confront challenges they might otherwise overlook and to think through the implications of their accounts more fully.     

Influence of maternal reflective functioning on mothers’ and children's weight: A follow-up study

Based on cross-sectional research linking poor reflective functionining (RF) to eating disorders, the current follow-up study tested whether maternal RF would explain the variance of mothers’ and children's weight beyond the effects of maternal emotional dysregulation. During pregnancy (Time 1 [T1]), 51 women were administered the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) and interviewed using the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). Seven months after delivery (Time 2 [T2]), mother–baby dyads who remained in the study (n = 44) were videotaped (Feeding Scale) during their feeding interaction. Last (Time 3 [T3]), the weight of the 34 children who were still in the study was collected at 3 years of age. Maternal AAI-RF at T1 did not correlate with the DERS at T1 nor with the quality of the feeding interacions at T2. However, it correlated, significantly, with maternal body mass index (BMI) at T1, r = −.298, P = .034, and marginally significantly with baby's BMI at T3, r = −.296, P = .089. Moreover, multiple regression models showed a trend indicating that maternal AAI-RF might explain the variance of mothers’ and children's weight beyond the effects of maternal emotional dysregulation. These findings suggest that working on maternal mentalization might contribute to helping prevent childhood obesity from pregnancy.     

Early reflections on becoming a therapist: Development of reflective practice in clinical training programmes in an Australian context

The development of competent counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists depends upon not only the clinical competencies, but also the development of the person as the psychotherapist. This qualitative study investigated the experiences of twenty provisional psychologists enrolled in a university‐based clinical psychology training programme. Participants were requested to write reflective essays describing their experiences in relation to their first year of training. Utilising an interpretative phenomenological approach methodology, three superordinate themes were identified: beginning awareness and internalisation of the role of the therapist, therapy as an inter‐subjective experience, and personal transformation. Themes encompassed a range of key areas identified by trainee therapists as central to their development as reflective practitioners. Findings from this study may contribute to the small but growing literature base explicating the early lived experience of being a therapist working from an integrative framework. The findings contribute to our knowledge of the critical elements involved in fostering the theoretical, practical and reflective processes involved in becoming a competent therapist.     

PATERNAL AND MATERNAL REFLECTIVE FUNCTIONING IN THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN PEEL CHILD HEALTH STUDY

While past research on the care of infants has been mostly with mothers, in recent times there has been a renewed attention to the father–infant relationship. This study examined differences between mother and father parental reflective functioning (PRF) or parental mentalizing; that is, the parental capacity to reason about their own and their children's behaviors by taking into consideration intentional mental states. Data were collected from 120 couples with a 1‐year‐old child who were participants in the West Australian Peel Child Health Study. Parental mentalizing was assessed using the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ; Luyten, Mayes, Nijssens, & Fonagy, 2017 ). Results showed that mother and father mentalizing with their children was independent and that mothers scored slightly higher levels of mentalizing than did fathers. Paternal mentalizing was weakly associated with family income and father education, and was more strongly associated with family functioning than with maternal mentalizing. Implications for theorizing on PRF and fatherhood more generally are discussed.     

Can holding a stick improve listening at work? The effect of Listening Circles on employees’ emotions and cognitions

The Listening Circle is a method for improving listening in organizations. It involves people sitting in a circle where only one talks at a time. Talking turns are signalled by a talking object. Although there are several reports regarding the effectiveness of the Listening Circle, most are based on case studies, or confounded with another intervention, and do not use theory to predict the listening-induced outcomes. We predicted that perceiving good listening decreases employees’ social anxiety, which allows them to engage in deeper introspection, as reflected by increased self-awareness. This increased self-awareness enables an acknowledgement of the pros and cons of various work-related attitudes and can lead to attitudes that are objectively more ambivalent and less extreme. Further, we hypothesized that experiencing good listening will enable speakers to accept their contradictions without the evaluative conflict usually associated with it (subjective-attitude ambivalence). In three quasi-experiments (Ns = 31, 66 and 83), we compared the effects of a Listening Circle workshop to a self-enhancement workshop (Studies 1 and 2), to a conflict management workshop (Study 2) and to employees who did not receive any training (Study 3), and found consistent support for the hypotheses. Our results suggest that the Listening Circle is an effective intervention that can benefit organizations.     

‘Making’ as a catalyst for reflective practice

Within the research and teaching program of maker pedagogy(TM), this study analyzes how teacher candidates construct knowledge about teaching and teaching with technology. The study applies an experiential-intuitive framework of reflective practice and takes cues from critical thinking to analyze the participants’ interactions in a maker pedagogy lab. Schön’s conception of reflection drove the data collection and analysis of participants who were asked to reflect on their experiences gained in the maker pedagogy lab. The researchers argue that the maker pedagogy lab provides participants with a way to understand their teaching practice. The results demonstrate that the maker projects enabled teacher candidates to engage in exploratory and hypothetical talk about how they are thinking about teaching and learning, particularly with technology. Furthermore, the researchers uncovered that teacher candidates’ prior knowledge and frames of reference affect their making experiences and their developing identities as science and technology teachers.