Understanding the Emotional Systems in Schools

There is a hidden dynamic in schools that is potent, pervasive, and impacts all aspects of a school’s function. This dynamic exists among those within a school and has the power to propel or thwart improvement efforts, include or exclude new staff members, and be a help or hindrance to the mental well-being of our educators. Revealing this hidden world and understanding its impact is key to moving schools forward. What follows are examples of how our school used a conceptual framework known as Resilient Leadership, based on Bowen Family Systems Theory, to help our team better understand this hidden world as we moved forward. Our school needed a framework to help everyone navigate the emotional tumult that inevitability occurs through the process of improvement.

A Systemic Conceptualization of Intimate Partner Violence: Attachment and Differentiation

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a national public health concern that is often conceptualized individually. This article provides a systemic understanding of IPV through the separate and combined lens of Bowen family systems and Attachment Theories. A brief individual overview and application to IPV is provided for each theory, followed by a conceptual integration and then an application of the two theories combined to a case example.

Television and Family Unity in South – South Nigeria

Television plays important role in the family. It serves as source of information, entertainment, cultural propagation, among other functions. It brings family members together and serves as a catalyst for family unity. However, there is the argument that television viewership could also have negative influence on family unity and values. The study therefore investigated the influence of Television viewing on family unity and values in Southern Nigeria. The study adopted the Behavior Imitation, Linkage and Bowen Family Systems theories. The study used survey and questionnaire as method and instrument respectively. The respondents were chosen through a multi-stage sampling process. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results show that majority of the respondents do not watch television together with other family members at home. Also, watching of television is found to have negative influence on family unity and values. The study recommends that family members should watch television together at home; and avoid adopting negative values they watch on television.

The Religious and Spiritual Dimensions of Bowen Family Therapy

The topic of spirituality stands out in recent years as being heavily addressed in the field of psychological counseling and guidance. A similar picture also stands out when looked at from the angle of family therapies. When looking at studies made in the field of family therapy, studies addressing the aspect of family spirituality are seen to continue increasing. Bowen’s Family Systems Theory is one of these approaches. Bowen Family Theory handles the family as a system and attempts to solve the individuals’ problems by considering the environment within which they are found. The individual’s surroundings contain many situations, from family to culture, siblings to religious beliefs, from traditions to customs, and from relationships to spirituality. According to Bowen, spirituality is the reflection of the topic of God in relationships, and located foremost within the theory, a spiritual aspect is found in all important concepts, including ego differentiation and triangulations. Encountering religious and spiritual elements is possible in many of the concepts of Bowen Family Systems. This study handles the perspective of spirituality in the Bowen Family Systems Theory as one of the theories of family systems and the place of spirituality within Bowen Family Systems. In this context, first the Bowen Family Systems Theory is briefly introduced, then the study attempts to explain the spiritual dimension of the theory in light of some of its basic concepts. In addition, the Bowen approach is addressed from the Islamic perspective, and a case sample has been presented related to the intervention methods that can be used in this situation.