The Way Back Home: Self-Authorship, Home, and Intergenerational Bonds in Arabic YA Novels of Return

This article deals with award-winning Arabic YA novels The Bamboo Stalk by Saud Alsanousi, and Cappuccino by Fatima Sharafeddine, appropriating Marcia Baxter Magolda's term ‘self-authorship’ to trace the role of transnational migration in young adult cognitive growth. The novels twin maturity with increased ambiguity around national affiliation, and this article demonstrates how intergenerational bonds are challenged, rearranged, and maintained by the protagonists as they struggle for their personal rights within a patriarchal system.

Authenticity, Self-Actualizing, and Self-Authorship

The transformative self aims toward authenticity and self-actualizing, which this chapter addresses from a developmental perspective. Two forms of authenticity are distinguished. Essentialist authenticity defines the true self as solely a matter of self-discovery and being true to one’s inborn traits or perceived soul. Existentialist authenticity also values self-discovery but emphasizes self-invention and being true to one’s values. Essentialist authenticity does not necessitate moral concerns, but existentialist authenticity does. The chapter argues that authenticity emerges not only via the matching principle of authenticity (matching actions with some true self) but also via the poiesis principle (the humane, self-making processes and perspectivity of a quiet ego). Youthful authenticity emphasizes independence and identity consolidation, whereas mature authenticity emphasizes interdependent self-actualizing. The chapter then examines self-actualization as maturely authentic self-understanding. Finally, the chapter reframes Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to correct common oversimplifications of belongingness and esteem in light of the developing, transformative self.

Stages of Transformative Self-Authorship

This chapter focuses on the development of narrative structure. The chapter first summarizes basic principles of structural–developmental theories of self. The stages mark increasing degrees of structural complexity and coherence (i.e., value perspectivity) in one’s narrative identity. At each successive stage, the individual is better able to differentiate and integrate perspectives on the self and others. Coupled with themes of eudaimonic growth, these stages also mark the development of wisdom. The stages of self-authorship are pre-authorship, impulsive, egoist, groupish, independent, constructivist, organismic, dynamic, integrative, and post-integrative. Unlike previous stage models, this model emphasizes stages of transformative self-authorship—that is, how the idea of growth is interpreted at each stage with greater complexity and coherence. The chapter also explains how the person of each stage interprets the thinking of previous stages and more advanced stages.

I Will Not Stand in My Way

Background: The impostor phenomenon (IP) describes a condition in which one has a feeling of intellectual phoniness, leaving one to doubt their ability to succeed. Research states that in particular, female STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) college students in male-dominated programs, such as engineering and computer science, are affected by such feelings. IP has shown consequences for female students' retention, feeling of belonging, and success, which contribute to STEM gender inequities. Recently it has been stated that strengthening the student's sense of self individually through mindfulness might be another avenue of support. Purpose: Using self-authorship theory, and with that taking into account science identity development, the purpose is to explore and interpret the effects of mindfulness on female STEM graduate students' experience with IP in computer science and engineering and their advancement on the self-authorship trajectory. Methods: Ten graduate and doctoral students participated in this exploratory, mixed-methods study, by completing an eight-week, self-led mindfulness program. The participants completed three semi-structured interviews, and weekly journals entries, including drawings. Four surveys were administered pre- and post-intervention. Results: A Mindfulness Foundation was developed that supported the participants in internalizing mechanisms to deal with IP. Mindfulness also strengthened the participants' sense of self-authorship and a correlation of mindfulness, IP and self-authorship was identified. Conclusion: The study emphasizes the importance of incorporating mindfulness into STEM graduate education due to its multifaceted impacts. Further underlined is the importance of giving female STEM graduate students the opportunity to uncover their impostor feelings, explore their science identity, and grow self-authorship for professional success and well-being.

Delivering What We PROMISED: Outcomes of a Coaching and Leadership Fellowship for Mentors of Underrepresented Mentees

Research demonstrates that mentorship can significantly improve career success, career satisfaction, and persistence for underrepresented (UR) minority faculty. However, many UR faculty members do not receive the mentorship they need, nor do mentors always possess the range of skills required to guide UR mentees through the unique challenges they face. We developed a 1-year fellowship training program, PROMISED, designed to help mentors promote career self-authorship and leadership among their UR mentees. PROMISED fellows participated in a two-day in-person training to develop career coaching skills, followed by a series of one-month leadership training/mentoring modules. We assessed mentors’ skills at the start and completion of the program. We found that PROMISED fellows reported an increase in perceived skill level in nearly every training topic, with “addressing diversity” demonstrating the most significant change. These results provide evidence that career coaching and leadership training offer an effective supplement to traditional mentor training and that mentors can incorporate these skills effectively into their mentoring practice. Taken together, we believe our data suggest that a program designed to train mentors in coaching and leadership can enhance career satisfaction, persistence, and retention of their UR mentees.

Curating #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing]: gendered authorship in the ‘contact zone’ of Delhi’s digital and urban margins

This paper examines the curation of a month-long public exhibition titled #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] in one of New Delhi’s busiest metro stations, as a form of self-authorship by young women from its digital and urban margins. #AanaJaana [#ComingGoing] is a metaphor for journeys, communications, connections, associations, interceptions, social networks and individual/collective behaviours, that is curated as women ‘see’ and ‘speak’ with/through their mobile phones. Using Marie Louise Pratt’s notion of ‘contact zone’, we examine #AanaJaana as a space of encounters that emerges by visually ‘composing-with’ as well as ‘learning-with’ the realities and constraints of space, technology and power. Based on self-authorship over a period of 6 months within a ‘safe space’ of a WhatsApp group of young women living in the urban margins, we draw attention to #AanaJaana as a set of crosscutting networks of power dynamics over women’s bodies across the home, mobile phone and the city. #AanaJaana refers to how young women in the margins negotiate the ‘freedoms’ of moving (aana) in online space with the ‘dangers’ of going out (jaana) into the city, or the restrictions of entering (aana) online space with the freedom of leaving (jaana) home. We argue first, that #AanaJaana is a space of confinement because of the infrastructural paralysis in the peripheries. Second that it is also at the same time translocally produced by referencing several textual, digital and material spaces of self-realisation. Finally, we argue that #AanaJaana is a space of intertextuality through encounters between emojis, shorthand, voice notes on the mobile phone, with parody and dark humour of their gendered experiences that can transform shame, humiliation and fear into reflection, resistance and agency. The paper concludes that as a polycentric practice, #AanaJaana offers an appropriate metaphor to expand the ‘contact zone’ in order to decolonise gendered knowledge and power across digital-analogue margins.

Moral judgement development during medical student clinical training

Background Whereas experience and cognitive maturity drives moral judgement development in most young adults, medical students show slowing, regression, or segmentation in moral development during their clinical years of training. The aim of this study was to explore the moral development of medical students during clinical training. Methods A cross-sectional sample of medical students from three clinical years of training were interviewed in groups or individually at an Australian medical school in 2018. Thematic analysis identified three themes which were then mapped against the stages and dimensions of Self-authorship Theory. Results Thirty five medical students from years 3–5 participated in 11 interviews and 6 focus groups. Students shared the impacts of their clinical experiences as they identified with their seniors and increasingly understood the clinical context. Their accounts revealed themes of early confusion followed by defensiveness characterised by desensitization and justification. As students approached graduation, some were planning how they would make moral choices in their future practice. These themes were mapped to the stages of self-authorship: External Formulas, Crossroads and Self-authorship. Conclusions Medical students recognise, reconcile and understand moral decisions within clinical settings to successfully reach or approach self-authorship. Curriculum and support during clinical training should match and support this progress.