Pragmatic Utility: Using Analytical Questions to Explore the Concept of Ethical Sensitivity

2006 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 191-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Weaver ◽  
Janice M. Morse

Ethical sensitivity is the means and capacity through which professionals strive to understand and compassionately respond to those in their care. As a transdisciplinary concept, ethical sensitivity can facilitate knowledge development across disciplines. To clarify and reduce ambiguities, the concept of ethical sensitivity was analyzed using the pragmatic utility method. With this method, the investigator uses analytical questions arising from in-depth understanding of the literature to synthesize data, to push beyond the limits of isolated findings and individual disciplines, to identify shared knowledge, and to provide new insights, lines of questioning, and direction. In this article, the role, technique, results, advantages, and limitations of the pragmatic utility method are elucidated. Characteristics of ethical sensitivity are its (a) preconditions of suffering and vulnerability cues, uncertainty, relationships characterized by receptivity and responsiveness, and courage; (b) attributes of moral perception, affectivity, and dividing loyalties; and (c) outcomes of client comfort and well-being, professional learning and self-transcendence, and integrity-preserving compromise. Use of the pragmatic utility method enhanced comprehension, meaning, relevance, and dimensions of the concept of ethical sensitivity as conveyed in the academic literature of selected professional disciplines.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele Anne ◽  
Steve M. J. Janssen

Cultural Life Scripts (CLS) are shared knowledge about personal events expected to be experienced by individuals within a society, and used as a framework for life story narration. Differences in CLS for individuals with depression and trauma, and their relations to anxiety, stress, and well-being, have not been investigated. Malaysian participants (N = 120) described and rated seven significant events most likely to be experienced by a prototypical infant from their culture, and seven significant events they had experienced or expected to experience in their own life. Participants then answered questionnaires about depression and trauma symptoms and about anxiety, stress, and well-being. The subclinical depression group listed less typical CLS events, whereas the subclinical PTSD group listed less positive individual life story events. The findings indicate that, although individuals with depression and trauma possess knowledge of the CLS, there may be small differences in the cognitive processing of CLS and individual life story events.


Author(s):  
Valerie L. Vaccaro

This chapter reviews multidisciplinary research from the fields of consumer behavior, humanistic and positive psychology, music education, and other areas to develop a new Transcendent Model of Motivation for Music Making. One’s “extended self” identity can be defined partly by possessions and mastery over objects, and objects can “complete” the self. Music making involves a person’s investment of “psychic energy,” including attention, time, learning, and efforts, and is a creative path which can lead to peak experiences and flow. Music making can help satisfy social needs, achieve self-actualization, experience self-transcendence, enhance well-being, strengthen spirituality, and improve the quality of life.


Author(s):  
Brianne H. Roos ◽  
Carey C. Borkoski

Purpose The purpose of this review article is to examine the well-being of faculty in higher education. Success in academia depends on productivity in research, teaching, and service to the university, and the workload model that excludes attention to the welfare of faculty members themselves contributes to stress and burnout. Importantly, student success and well-being is influenced largely by their faculty members, whose ability to inspire and lead depends on their own well-being. This review article underscores the importance of attending to the well-being of the people behind the productivity in higher education. Method This study is a narrative review of the literature about faculty well-being in higher education. The history of well-being in the workplace and academia, concepts of stress and well-being in higher education faculty, and evidence-based strategies to promote and cultivate faculty well-being were explored in the literature using electronic sources. Conclusions Faculty feel overburdened and pressured to work constantly to meet the demands of academia, and they strive for work–life balance. Faculty report stress and burnout related to excessively high expectations, financial pressures to obtain research funding, limited time to manage their workload, and a belief that individual progress is never sufficient. Faculty well-being is important for the individual and in support of scholarship and student outcomes. This article concludes with strategies to improve faculty well-being that incorporate an intentional focus on faculty members themselves, prioritize a community of well-being, and implement continuous high-quality professional learning.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Yu Hin Lam ◽  
Sujay Sabnis ◽  
Maria Migueliz Valcarlos ◽  
Jennifer R. Wolgemuth

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1242
Author(s):  
Victor Bueno Sellin ◽  
Tania Pereira Christopoulos

The world is undergoing an accelerated urbanization process marked by social and environmental imbalances. In this context, urban and periurban agriculture (UPA) emerges as an alternative to sustainable urbanization mainly due to its contribution to food security, reduction of environmental impact, revitalization of urban areas, integration of households and physical and psychological well-being increasing. The purpose of this paper is to understand how academic literature deals with urban and periurban agriculture. For that, a scoping / mapping literature review was carried out and its results were presented after identification of relevant scientific studies on UPA, its main aspects, ways in which the term has been defined; and discussion about themes from the selected articles. After this review, the conclusions are: the scientific production on the subject is undergoing high growth rates in recent years; the relationship between UPA and urban dynamics is more important for the definition of UPA than the location of agriculture; and that the aspects that authors found most interesting are: concept and panorama, urban planning and governance, quantitative potential, environment, risk of contamination and techniques and productivity.


2022 ◽  
pp. 074391562210761
Author(s):  
Martin Eisend ◽  
Farid Tarrahi

Persuasion knowledge development leads to better coping with marketplace persuasion, better consumer decision-making, and adds to consumer well-being. While significant knowledge exists on the impact that individual factors (e.g., age) and cues (e.g., sponsorship disclosure messages) have on consumers’ persuasion knowledge development, little is known about the influence of marketer actions, such as advertising spending. This is surprising, as marketer activities provide a major source of information for consumers’ persuasion knowledge learning and practice and can theoretically either support or hinder persuasion knowledge development. We develop several explanations for various types of relationships between advertising spending and persuasion knowledge and test these relationships by means of a meta-analysis of the persuasion knowledge literature based on 140 papers with 162 distinctive datasets that address persuasion knowledge measurements. We find that increasing advertising spending also increases consumers’ persuasion knowledge. The relationship follows an inverted-U curve, and, at a certain level of advertising spending, persuasion knowledge begins to decrease. The findings have theoretical and societal implications and, depending on the level of advertising investment, policy implications with the ultimate aim of ensuring consumer well-being and protecting consumer groups with low levels of persuasion knowledge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 19-34
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Cloninger ◽  
Alexandre Granjard ◽  
Nigel Lester ◽  
Erik Lindskär ◽  
Patricia Rosenberg ◽  
...  

Background: Migration is one of the major challenges of the 21st century with many refugees being victims of torture and experiencing war and the collapse of their society. Sweden, for example, received about 169,520 refugees during 2015 and 20–30% of them were estimated to suffer from mental illness. Nevertheless, research shows that about 66.40% of refugees never reveal their traumatic experiences to a doctor and a majority refuse psychiatric help. Hence, we need innovative methods to promote the physical, mental, and social health of refugees. Objective: We examined the effects of Anthropedia’s Well-Being Coaching (i.e., a biopsychosocial approach to coaching) and Well-Being Spa (i.e., modern version of age-old Spa interventions) on the personality and health of a sample of refugees living in Sweden. Methodology: Participants were recruited as part of a health and employment project in Blekinge, Sweden. A total of 70 Syrian refugees were randomly assigned to a six-month intervention comprising either Well-Being Coaching, or Well-Being Spa, or both (i.e., Mind–Body). The participants reported personality (temperament and character), well-being (positive and negative affect, life satisfaction, and harmony in life), and ill-being (defeat and entrapment, and anxiety and depression) at the beginning and at the end of the six-month intervention period. Results: Participants assigned to the Well-Being Coaching intervention showed increases in self-directedness (Cohen’s d = 0.84), cooperativeness (Cohen’s d = 0.36), positive affect (Cohen’s d = 0.43), and life satisfaction (Cohen’s d = 0.56), and decreases in both negative affect (Cohen’s d = 0.38) and defeat (Cohen’s d = 0.89). Participants assigned to the Well-Being Spa intervention showed decreases in harm avoidance (Cohen’s d = 0.55), reward dependence (Cohen’s d = 0.69), negative affect (Cohen’s d = 0.82), anxiety (Cohen’s d = 0.53), defeat (Cohen’s d = 0.34), and external entrapment (Cohen’s d = 0.42). Participants assigned to the Mind–Body intervention showed significant decreases in harm avoidance (Cohen’s d = 0.47), anxiety (Cohen’s d = 0.61), depression (Cohen’s d = 0.34), defeat (Cohen’s d = 0.56), external entrapment (Cohen’s d = 0.44), and internal entrapment (Cohen’s d = 0.79) and increases in persistence (Cohen’s d = 0.27), self-directedness (Cohen’s d = 0.28), cooperativeness (Cohen’s d = 0.43), self-transcendence (Cohen’s d = 0.51), positive affect (Cohen’s d = 0.42), and harmony in life (Cohen’s d = 0.36). Conclusions: The results of the present study suggest that Well-Being Coaching strengthens refugees’ character, while the Well-Being Spa treatments reduced participants’ tendency to worry and anxiety. Finally, the combination of these two interventions seems to promote the development of health-related traits, reduce ill-health, and stress, and increase well-being in a wider biopsychosocial perspective.


Author(s):  
Ron Blonder ◽  
Ruth Waldman

The authors analyze chemistry teachers' discourse in a WhatsApp group. This online communication platform is used for continually studying the communication behavior of leading chemistry teachers who are members of a professional learning community (PLC). They describe the network of chemistry teachers' PLC in Israel, which provides the context for the study. WhatsApp enables sustained ongoing, intensive interaction, and sharing of knowledge that is practical, directly related to the members' needs, and is participant driven and constructivist in nature. A theoretical perspective of teachers' knowledge and professional development (PD) was developed in 2015 by Gess-Newsome, which was applied to examine the mechanism underlying teachers' knowledge development.


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