Embodied Experience in Educational Practice and Research

The intention of this article is to make an educational analysis of Merleau-Ponty??s theory of experience in order to see what it implicates for educational practice as well as educational research. In this way, we can attain an understanding what embodied experience might mean both in schools and other educational settings and in researching educational activities. The analysis will take its point of departure in Merleau-Ponty??s analysis and criticism of empiricist and neokantian theories of experience. This will be followed up by an introduction of some central concepts in Merleau-Ponty??s own understanding of experience with emphasis on their relevance for educational analysis. This way of presenting the theory of embodied experience has the advantage of being able to indicate the difference it makes in the field of theories of experience.     

Dissociative Experiences and Trauma Exposure Among Newly Arrived and Settled Young War Refugees

War-traumatized refugee adolescents are a vulnerable and understudied group. This study of two different groups of war-traumatized youth (N = 77) resettled in Sweden (newly arrived refugee adolescents, n = 42, 13–19 years, and settled students with childhood war experiences, n = 35, 11–18 years) evaluated their war experiences, refugee journey, general trauma exposure, posttraumatic stress symptoms, and dissociative experiences. Both groups had experienced many traumas and a substantial proportion reported levels consistent with posttraumatic stress (71% in the newly arrived group and 34% among the settled students) and dissociation (36% and 23%, respectively). The study also provides information about the type of adverse events experienced by war-refugee adolescents, including their own subjective appraisals of the worst events. The results show that the extent of trauma exposure and posttraumatic and dissociative symptomatology among refugee adolescents are considerable even after a period of resettlement, a finding that has educational, clinical, and social implications.     

Incremental View on Intelligence and High Intrinsic Motivation Increase Working Memory Training Compliance

Working memory (WM) training is demanding both regarding time and cognitive endurance. Many participants who could benefit from completing the training lose their motivation to do so. Hence, it is valuable to address compliance with the training protocol from a motivational angle. Studies have shown that subjective views on intelligence influence motivation, where individuals believing that intelligence can increase with training, that is, an incremental mind‐set, tend to try harder after setbacks and that high‐intrinsic motivation relates to higher academic performance. We used questionnaires to measure the extent to which mind‐set and intrinsic motivation influenced compliance to complete a WM training program of a minimum of 20 sessions of WM training. Only 53 out of 112 recruited participants, (13 years old (SD = .61)) completed the training. Our results showed that mind‐set and motivation significantly predicted compliance to training, with high motivation and incremental mind‐set being associated with more completed sessions.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mothers' representations of caregiving and their adult children's representations of attachment: intergenerational concordance and relations to beliefs about mothering

Mothers (N= 35) and their adult children completed questionnaires and were interviewed in order to examine relationships between mothers' caregiving representations and their adult children's attachment representations, and relationships between attachment/caregiving representations and beliefs about mothering. Mothers' and their children's accounts of and present thinking about their past relationship were highly similar, indicating that the two parts develop concordant states of mind regarding their relationship. In contrast, there was no relationship between mothers' and their adult children's beliefs about mothering, suggesting that such beliefs are not simply passed on from generation to generation within families. Attachment/caregiving classification interacted with generation in influencing a belief that biological facts determine maternal behavior, young adults with preoccupied attachment being particularly prone to reject this idea. Attachment/caregiving classification also had a significant effect on participants' tendency to adhere to an idealized conception of mothering, this tendency being associated with a dismissive attachment/caregiving representation.     

Are Religions for Sale? Evidence from the Swedish Church Revolt Over Same‐Sex Marriage

Religious leaders sometimes condemn progressive social norms. This article revisits David Hume's hypothesis that secular states can “bribe” churches into adopting less strict religious doctrines. The hypothesis is difficult to test due to reverse causality: more liberal theologies may attract more political support in the first place. The empirical strategy used to circumvent this problem focuses on a theological conflict over same‐sex marriage within the Church of Sweden and takes advantage of political regulations that effectively make some parishes shareholders of the church's state‐protected property. The shares used for statistical identification are tied to property rights assigned more than 300 years ago, and they cannot be sold, traded, or amended by the individual parishes. The results show that priests in shareholding parishes are less likely to publicly oppose same‐sex marriage. The impact of political protection is stronger in parishes with more conservative members. The results are consistent with a model of clerical opportunism, in which income protection makes priests less likely to pander to the stricter followers.     

Young children's representations of peers' distress: associations to children's social functioning and acceptance of distressed peers

Children's mental representations of situations involving another child's distress were examined in two studies. Study 1 examined 3- to 7-year-old children's (n= 44) ideas about what victims and bystanders would think, feel and do in hypothetical situations. In Study 2, 7- to 8-year-olds (n= 40) described their own cognitive response to situations in which they were confronted with another's distress. In both studies, representational bias was examined in relation to children's display of prosocial and aggressive behavior and in relation to their acceptance of distressed peers. Although not entirely consistent, findings indicate that three types of representational biases are associated with low levels of considerate behavior and with relatively low acceptance of distressed peers: (a) mentally representing the victim's problem without giving thought to its implications for the victim, (b) significantly reducing the emotional significance of the problem and (c) exaggerating negative aspects of the problem.     

Assessing children's statements: the impact of a repeated experience on CBCA and RM ratings

This study examined the extent to which the Criteria‐based Content Analysis (CBCA) technique and the Reality Monitoring (RM) technique were affected by the number of times children had experienced or imagined an event. Children (age 10–13, N =87 ) participated in an experiment where half the sample experienced a health examination (either one or four times), and the other half imagined (either one or four times) that they took part in a health examination. One week after the final occasion, the children were interviewed. The results showed that RM was sensitive to both the authenticity of the statements (increased presence of the criteria for real events) and whether the event had been repeatedly experienced/imagined (increased presence of the criteria for the repeated actions). The CBCA did not successfully distinguish the real from the imagined. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.