Home: Taos/Tilburg PhD Program: Past and Present Dissertation Projects

Past and Present Dissertation Projects

Completed Dissertations

»» Peggy Penn (2008)
My dissertation is called, Joined Imaginations. In the mid-nineties, my late colleague, Marilyn Frankfurt, and I were investigating what language is and what it does and had already begun a project on language and writing. We had read and studied Mikhail Bakhtin and were intrigued by his idea of "dialogism in therapy". In conversation, the words we say to others, the effect our words have on each other is how Bakhtin claims we author ourselves in conversation with others. Through Bakhtin's eyes we looked at language from a completely different perspective, and though we still thought of language as an experience generating the need for a reply, that was not all it did. When we could finally put our experience into words, it came out like this: with all of our new understanding of inner and outer dialogue, coupled with my understanding of subtext, an idea I learned long ago from working in the theatre, we began to see our work with clients as though we were creating a text. We were building a new story constructed by all of us together. Since we were also specializing in using writing in our practice, the actual creation of the text could be understood as a "participant text". Something we were all doing together. All of the writing is done by the client but from new and appreciative views so that in fact the way one is living one's relational life changes. The result was a "kind of" literature.
We have observed repeatedly, that in the act of writing, meanings that have been ignored or have remained unspoken are invited into the relational field by way of the text. Words cross or bump up against one another when captured in writing, cracking open and revealing other words that may evoke experiences of self with others.
I hope it is clear that in writing in conversation and therapy in particular, especially when we discover new voices – it is an invention of more than one self. We call that "narrative multiplicity". So if we are eager to have a new story or a new voice is needed in the story we invite our clients to write a letter and try out how their particular letter might elicit that new voice.

»» Marvin Shaub (April 2008) Dissertation Title: TRANSITIONS IN ACCULTURATION: The Psycho-Social Adjustments of American Immigrants.
A qualitative dissertation discussing adjustments of American immigrants from the viewpoint of development of acculturation as a social process. Four phases are constructed---mono-cultural, bi-cultural, hybrid cultural and post cultural. Illustrative material is developed through interviews with immigrants from Hispanic, Muslim, Japanese and other cultures. Relevant theory is reviewed, culminating with an integrative overall model by John Berry. My own interpretive framework ACES is presented and discussed. Examples from my own life experience show how post cultural orientation can be developed either aided by modern information technology or separately. The Ether-World, an endogenous condition of relationship to technology, is introduced.
Abstract of this dissertation: Abstract
TOC of this dissertation: TOC
Dissertation: Dissertation

»» Doug Shadel and Karla Pak (2007) Dissertation title: The Psychology of Consumer Fraud.

Doug Shadel and Karla Pak worked together on this research project. The dissertation studies financial exploitation of older consumers through the lens of social construction by scrutinizing the relationship between the sender of the message (con man) and the receiver of the message (victim) and by studying the differences between victims and non-victims. This inquiry asked two questions:

1. What kinds of dialogue tactics do con men use to construct a social environment that causes victims to turn over their money to con men?
2. How do victims of investment and lottery fraud, the two biggest kinds of fraud impacting older consumers, differ psychologically, demographically and experientially from non-victims?

To address the first question, the dissertation analyzed hundreds of undercover audiotapes secured by 12 different law enforcement agencies. Dialogue tactics used in this interaction between the con man and the victim was coded and logged to determine which appear most frequently and to identify the variety of tactics employed in particular fraud schemes. The analysis revealed the forces at work that shape the relationship between the con and the victim in order to develop better tools in the marketplace to warn consumers how to avoid fraud.

To address the second question, an extensive survey instrument was administered to over 300 individuals, roughly half of whom had been victimized by investment or lottery fraud and the other half of whom have not been victimized at all. The survey results were analyzed to determine how victims differ from non-victims on a range of important psychological and experiential questions. It is hoped that such data can move us in the direction of developing some kind of early warning system for friends and family members of potential victims to protect them from future exploitation.
Abstract of this Dissertation
Complete Dissertation
Dissertation TOC

»» Sandra Cottingham (2007) is a Special Education consultant in the School District of Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Surrey is B.C.'s largest and fastest growing school district, with 65,000 students and 4100 teachers. Now a specialist for low incidence special needs students (those with moderate to severe physical and developmental disabilities) in the high school setting, she has twenty years of teaching experience in regular and special education high school classrooms.

Her dissertation interest is in the topic of "inclusive schools". Although inclusion has been mandated by government and has become common language found at every level of school planning, it remains at the conceptual stage. In fact, the prerequisites for successful educational integration of students with disabilities are so frequently ignored that the very principle of inclusion has become threatened. The call for social change in education on the issue of inclusion is at a critical juncture.

Applying the principles of social constructionist theory and Appreciative Inquiry, the primary purpose of her project is to create a model for educational institutions and other
organizations to move ideas from concept to positive action - to salvage, rethink and retool important principles which reflect core values, but which are incongruent with entrenched organizational practice. Her action research will facilitate a move from the present Ministerial mandate of inclusion to democratic dialogue amongst stakeholders, and ultimately to a reconstructed notion of "inclusion" owned by all.
Dissertation Table of Contents
Dissertation Summary
Dissertation Foreword
Dissertation Chapters 1-6
Dissertation Appendix

»» Myra Virgil (2006) This inquiry invites participants to reflect upon how their fundamental belief systems, as influenced by their experiences as, and with, members of different racial groups, genders and social class constructs for example, impact their working relationships and decision-making practices. The cross-disciplinary participants' "stories" on how aspects of identity, both their own and others, mediate between the organization's fundamental philosophies and how people in the organization relate, function and task on a daily basis. The participant's stories reflect not only their own identities, but of the individual in relation to other organizational participants within the co-constructed and shared system factors that are alive in all organizations.
Dissertation Summary
Dissertation Table of Contents
Dissertation

»» Liesbeth Gerritsen (2006) In this thesis Liesbeth Gerritsen explores the role of metaphor in the public and private realms of organizational life. Metaphors that appear in group settings are compared and contrasted with metaphors that are used by individuals privately to describe the organization. She examines how people's private metaphors of the organization relate to metaphors used by members in a group context. Are people's private metaphors embedded within the group metaphors? Do group metaphors intersect with the private domain? This discussion is framed against the backdrop of six traditional, dominant assertions on metaphor in organizations found in the literature. A highlight of this discussion is an examination of metaphors as discursive implements used pragmatically to perform certain functions in conversations.

Liesbeth currently works as a mental health disaster planner. Her previous job focused on community-base mental health and addiction crisis intervention. She plans to take her interest in metaphor and the organization into international development work, with an emphasis on conflict reduction and mitigation practices.
Dissertation Table of Contents
Dissertation

»» Bella Borwick (2005) Dissertation title: A Hidden Child: Identity and Reconstructed Self: A Quest for Transparency in Psychotherapy. Her dissertation examines the role of the therapist in couple's therapy and the influence that this temporary third person brings to bear in the construction of this triad. Therapists, a surprisingly neglected group in the copious literature on couple's therapy, bring into the relationship the representation of an additional system with a set of values, life experiences, opinions and notions that give additional meaning and understanding of what it is to be a couple. The way in which this authority may direct the outcome of the therapy is examined through in-depth interviews.

»» Arne Vestegaard (2005) is an independent organizational psychologist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. His PhD. project is an exploration of project management processes in projects under high complexity, change and unpredictability based on the concept of the reflective practitioner. Focus is on collective sense-making, management of meaning and building of trustful relations in and around projects.
Dissertation Table of Contents
Dissertation

»» Jane Seiling (2005) Dissertation title: Moving from Individual to Constructive Accountability
Executive Summary: A qualitative study with standardized questions (yet flexible) was undertaken to identify (1) what accountability currently looks like in organizations today, (2) introduce the concept of constructive accountability (CA) into the thinking of top organizational members, (3) identify the interviewees' sense of the concept's usefulness in the organizational context, and (4) request the interviewees input on how CA could be introduced into today's organizations. The process included face-to-face and telephone conversations with twelve currently in a managerial role and two former managerial members of twelve organizations. The outcome suggested that, although some organizations are actively and purposely accepting the concepts of participation and collaboration (and many are not), accountability remains in a traditional mode. According to the interviewees, accountability is most often experienced as demeaning, punitive and "something they do not want to do." Accountability has not moved into the paradigm of member involvement and the movement of decisioning lower in organizations. CA was acknowledged as "a new way to look at accountability," useful, and preferred -- yet how to get to being a CA organization was a dilemma for these executives. One organization offered a model for moving toward CA in organizations.

Jane Galloway Seiling is a consultant, writer, and speaker in the area of labor-management relationships. The founder of Business Performance Group in Lima, Ohio, she is an associate of The Taos Institute and chief editor for the Taos Institute Focus Book series. In addition, she is an associate of Kodiak Consulting in Dallas, Texas, and Asia-Pacific Cities Forum in Warren, New Jersey.
Dissertation Table of Contents
Dissertation, select chapters

Dissertation to be posted soon.

»» Franklin Olson (2003) works in counseling and program development for a 6,000 member Methodist church in Houston. As he describes his dissertation, "It explores the role of archetypal symbol and myth in developing relational collaborations in a diverse community using qualitative action research. Social constructionist and appreciative inquiry methodology is used to bridge between various religious, ethnic, and economic groups to build relationships and social capital through identification of common archetypal themes and then acting on those themes through community action.

The central theoretical focus of the project is the proposition that meaning is not only constructed through inter-subjective referential realities (Rijsman, 1977) but also through inter-objective projected meanings onto archetypal symbols. The inter-subjective meanings to observers of archetypal symbols often lacks consensus of meaning between individuals and groups. This diversity of belief by persons can cause problems of co-ordination and can impede understanding and trust among observers and practitioners but also can result in believers and non-believers avoiding discussion of personal understandings of the symbol. From a positive view, archetypal symbols, because of some internal shared belief, can be the means by which persons suspend differences of the other and the associated symbol and coalesce around the symbol."
Summary of this dissertation: olson_summary.pdf
Study statement of this dissertation: olson_study.pdf
Dissertation definitions: olson_defs.pdf

»» Madelyn Blair (2001) Dissertation title: A Conversation on Gender - Women and Men Working in International Organizations: Using Research as a Catalyst to Address the Issues of Women.
Summary of this dissertation: blair_summary.pdf
Table of contents of this dissertation: blair_toc.pdf
Madelyn Blair's website: www.pelerei.com

Current Program Candidates

Ginny's dissertation focus began seventeen years ago when she and two colleagues met around her kitchen table to discuss the challenges they faced as women leaders. They formed a 'practice lab' to apply, in both life and work, emerging principles in the fields of social construction, leadership, women's studies and organization behavior. From their experiences, they formed a non-profit, network organization in 1997 called the Center for Emerging Leadership (CEL). CEL provides an annual learning program for women leaders called the Women's Leadership Community which has involved more than a hundred women. CEL has also produced a book of women's leadership stories, formed a monthly learning circle for alumnae and sponsored a variety of workshops and conferences for women leaders.

The organization has been governed by a voluntary board of alumnae and other friends of the program who set annual objectives, oversees programs and projects, recruit help on key projects, develop shared meaning and language, and oversee the health and sustainability concerns of the network. In addition, the annual entry program is overseen by a group of six facilitators who have developed or trained in the program's design, principles and practices.

Ginny's dissertation will be an in-depth examination of this leadership network, using both case study and autobiographical ethnography methodologies, to better understand: How did they create an ongoing community of practice from this small informal learning trio? How has this largely voluntary network been able to maintain and thrive for over a decade? What has been learned regarding the governance of a network organization? And, what has been the benefit for participating women leaders?
Ginny Belden-Charles is a consultant with Waterline Consulting, St. Paul, MN. She is also an adjunct faculty for Pepperdine's Master's Program in Organization Development where she serves as a coach advisor for cohort learning groups. Ginny has worked as an organization development consultant and facilitator for more than 25 years. Her special interest is in facilitating learning groups and networks that address personal insight and mindset shift as a basis for strategic change.

»»Kristina Barjovic Car

Working title of dissertation: Social construction of autonomy in Transactional analysis tradition

The focus of the study will be on elaboration of certain Transactional analysis (TA) ideas with the constructionist sensitivity. In this dissertation some TA grounding concepts will be put in the questions for the purpose of rethinking its pragmatic and contextual validity. The social constructionist presumption is that the meaning attached to the certain ideas, such as the constricting narrative or life script and the idea of the personal independence, is neither directly derived from the individual mental representation of the concepts, nor from the dominant theoretical explanations. The context of the research would be couple counseling discourse in the perspective of contemporary Serbian partnership styles. The main objective is to learn on the potential of TA oriented psychotherapy to provide the context for the clients to create their own treatment goals, new identities, meanings or life options. 

In order to explore that subject and answer the research questions, two methodological lines will be followed. One fragment of the study will be to deconstruct denotation of the concept of autonomy in the tradition of humanistic psychotherapy, and the concept of script cure in the discourse of TA. The other segment of research will be based on interpretative analysis of data collected through interviews for the purpose of exploring and identifying local connotative meanings and pragmatic value of mentioned theoretical concepts. Sample will include four couples. Two of them had experience with the TA group therapy for couples. Besides that, all four of them have fairly similar background. The dissertation will integrate the reflexive account with the intention to contextualize and relativize the stated observations regarding interviewees.

Possibly, findings and conclusions of this work could become a base for the revision of the concept “script cure” from the position of postmodern therapy. The reconsideration will have focus on overcoming the implied antagonism between those two theoretical models, model of autonomy and a model of life script.
Kristina works as an associate lecturer at the Faculty for Media and Communication on the course Psychology of Communication. She is also an initiator and a project coordinator of the Counseling department established at Belgrade Youth Cultural Center. The launch of this program, as a long term project, has been an answer to a recognized need for the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in Serbia through mobilization of community resources for the actions that will affirm the culture of prevention. 

»» Kathleen Clark The subject of my dissertation is the use of collaborative law in medical error/mistake situations. Collaborative law is a non-litigation process which seeks to bring compassion, admission of error, when appropriate, conversations, and forgiveness to situations in which medical error or an adverse event has taken place. At the present time, collaborative law in medical error situations has not proven effective due, in part, to fear and mistrust among the stakeholders necessary to the process.

At the present time, I am scheduling and structuring dialogues around the country, the first of which will be held in San Diego this fall, among the necessary stakeholders, including plaintiffs' medical malpractice attorneys, defense medical malpractice attorneys, risk managers, physicians' and hospitals' insurers, ombudspersons, medical ethicists, physicians, and patient advocates. The dialogue is intended to give all stakeholders both the opportunity to talk about what is working in their individual fields and to listen to other stakeholders about their successes and concerns in cases involving medical error. The goals are to create a shift in thinking about the collaborative law process and to begin to create community among the various stakeholders necessary to this process.

»»Karen Dawson

A Leadership Development Program as Agent of Social Change

Karen Dawson is a leadership development consultant and executive coach working with a variety of organizations committed to growing their leadership capacity. Karen helps design and deliver programs that support people from all levels of organizations to become better leaders. 

After attending Ken and Mary Gergen’s Introduction to Social Construction Workshop in May of 2006, Karen became aware of how social constructionist thoughts, theories, and ideas appeal to her – she had never even heard the phrase “social constructionist” before, but quickly realized that the stance of social constructionist researchers and teachers was closely aligned with her own perspective. Upon hearing and reading phrases such as, “we construct the world” (Gergen & Gergen, 2004), “it is through relationships that rationality is created, goals become important, and one feels worthy or not” (Anderson et al., 2006), and “nothing is real unless people agree that it is” (Gergen & Gergen, 2004), Karen realized she had been teaching, working, and parenting from a social constructionist position without having language for it.

For Karen, working within organizations over the past seven years has been fulfilling, and it also pays the bills. Many people spend a lot of their lives working within organizations, and Karen has always hoped that by contributing her ideas in organizational contexts she is helping make her small part of the planet a better place. She really wonders if she is. Her enrollment in the Taos Institute PhD program is motivated by the question, “What difference is my work making in the world?” It is this question that motivated application to the Taos program, and now Karen is working towards refining and clarifying a research question to guide her dissertation. She is curious about possible social change that connects with and stretches beyond the organizational context in which leadership development programs take place.

In Karen’s experience, many leadership development program participants connect their learning to their personal lives. Informally, through email and follow up conversations, stories of personal life transformation come back to Karen. She is fascinated by one specific program in particular, in which she has been facilitating for five years. With humble beginnings as a “grassroots initiative” run on a shoestring budget within a large public service organization, this leadership development program (subtitled “Leadership from the File Room to the Board Room”) has included hundreds of employees from all levels of the organizational hierarchy. Karen’s dissertation will invite the sharing of participants’ experiences and explore what differences (in thoughts, questions, and ideas) are evoked by their participation in this program.

With the support of her academic supervisor, Sally St. George, Karen will create a research design that is both grounded in established method and tailored to the purpose and context of this study, adding value to both the organization and its members. Supporting Karen’s design is a passage from The Appreciative Organization (Anderson et al.), “In appreciating others’ words and actions, so do we increase value within our relationships, the organization, and the world” (2006, p. 11).

»» Janice DeFehr is one of 185 therapists in an urban, publicly funded Canadian community health centre where volunteers have vastly outnumbered paid staff since the centre's beginnings several decades ago. A long term practitioner within the clinic's Post-Trauma program, Janice has come to anchor her work in an approach known as Postmodern, Collaborative (Anderson, 1997) - an unscripted, dialogical way of being with that extends beyond professional practice to encompass all of life.

Janice's dissertation focus emerges in the dissonance she finds between published discussion of therapist experience as depleting and vicariously traumatizing, and her own 'lived experience' of practice. Drawn to Anderson's descriptions of dialogue as inherently generative, transforming, and mutually influencing, she invites twelve carefully chosen therapist-colleagues from five different countries to join her in a two-part set of dialogues responding to the following question: How could you describe your practice as generative and transforming for yourself? Eight distinct layers of dialogue emerge, intertwine, and 'play-out' in this project.

Deeply influenced by the philosophical premises and interactions of 'everyday' practice, this dissertation is shared inquiry, a sequential event, a collaborative effort with practitioners, a reflexive attempt to notice and bring into language those generative details of practice often assumed but not commonly spoken. This dissertation aims to generate multi-voiced, practical, embodied, relationally-responsive understandings from within the dynamic movement of conversational processes, utilizing a social poetics 'set of methods' (Katz & Shotter, 1996) to focus, enrich and extend this dialogue-between-dialogues throughout the full duration of the project.

Diverging from many of the expected features of qualitative research, this dissertation is not driven by a pre-set method; it avoids the genre of 'interview'; it produces no data analysis identifying themes, patterns, essences or regularities and does not attempt the making of a static research "product" (Gergen and Gergen, 2000) or "artificial device" (Garfinkel, 2006) such as a model, framework, codification, theory, re-presentation, or complete system of any kind.

The project is still emerging; to visit the dissertation blog, please note the following address: http://researchdialogues.blogspot.com .

»» Christine Dennstedt is currently working as a Family Therapist in a co-ed residential substance misuse program for young persons in Vancouver, BC. She has been working collaboratively alongside young people and women for the past 10 years in a variety of settings. Many of the young people with whom Christine works struggle with problems that threaten both themselves and their helpers due to their complexity. When a client struggles with substance misuse, self-harm, past trauma and disordered eating practices, it can be daunting to navigate a path to freedom. Chris is interested in exploring ways to disentangle challenging problems by working collaboratively with clients to construct new meaning. Her concern centers on how to co-construct generative forms of meaning and action that move clients beyond an understanding of their problems as "a way of coping" or as "a real, fundamental problem/flaw within the person" and in exploring aspects of a conversation and question-asking that are liberatory vs. problem-furthering. This focus includes shifting clients' positioning and/or thinking in relation to the problem and in supporting clients in developing 'counter practices'. Christine will draw upon the work of Johnella Bird's relational externalizing practices, Vikki Reynold's ideas of safe-enough and group work practices, Allan Wade's resistance ideas, Bessel van der Kolk's work on psychological trauma, as well as the ideas of Sheila McNamee, Kenneth Gergen, Stephen Madigan, Harold Goolishian, and Karl Tomm.

»»Jeff Fifield

Working title: Exploring Appreciative Pedagogy: Ingredients, Instances, and Practices throughout a School

 What is going right? Over the last several years, I have been witness to a school that appears to be doing things in such a way that its learning community is enthused and proud. The indicators and evidence for such complimentary praise come from the students, parents, teachers and even the accreditation association. Natural curiosity prompts me to ask Why? How is this magic created and sustained? What are the real functional pieces to make it so?

As I have seen the school develop this spirit or identity, I believe that something special has been created. The creation has been and continues to be dynamic with the various stakeholders contributing. Now what has been the guiding set of principles or values to unify, guide and direct such a creation? As my own professional interests and curiosity lead me, I have come across Appreciative Inquiry and marvel at what I consider to be Appreciative Inquiry (as I understand it) in action at the school. What synchronicity in terms of theory and application – and it wasn’t planned that way! Subsequent thinking and reasoning then prompts the question - Might this be an appreciative school which subscribes to a set of guiding principles? And if so, what are they?

I am interested in conducting a case study to look at what might possibly be defined and coined as appreciative pedagogy through the various appreciative sets of lenses in the educational context. The lens through which I would look to examine the school would be through appreciative organizational cultures, appreciative leadership, appreciative intelligence and appreciative pedagogy as described in the current literature. In congruent constructionist fashion, I propose to do this through use of an appreciative inquiry methodology. I am hoping to be able to identify and describe a set of possible educational practices that, though they reach across various disciplines, may be integrated/connected in order to provide for a possible scheme of appreciative pedagogy which extends throughout a school rather than existing in isolated practices.

»» Roosevelt Finlayson and Michael Diggiss are working together on A STUDY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FESTIVAL IN THE WORKPLACE CONCEPT.

The purpose of their research is to study "festivals" to understand their transformational essence and apply this knowledge in the workplace to develop a model of a positive, productive and fulfilling workplace culture.

The idea of the Festival in the Workplace was first conceptualized in1997 to answer the question, "Why is it that many workers in countries such as The Bahamas, Trinidad and Brazil, are observed to be going at half or less of the expected pace at work, yet these same persons become involved in preparations for their annual festival and are transformed into creative, passionate, focused and productive workers who experience great joy and fulfillment in their festival work?"

Festival in the Workplace (FITW) is a transformation process designed to ignite the creative spirit and stimulate the development of a new organizational culture. This culture is characterized by joy, freedom of expression and freedom to be your "true" self, creativity, shared purpose and vision, collaboration, high performance, meaningful and fulfilling work, ongoing learning and a sense of community.

FITW is both an ongoing process and a series of festival events.

There are two basic objectives of this research:

CONDUCT:

1. An overview of the festivals of the Caribbean and the Americas focusing on their socio-cultural and economic impact.
2. An in depth study of the Junkanoo Festival of The Bahamas and the Carnivals of Trinidad and Brazil. The aim of this study would be to understand the essential characteristics of festivals that can collectively serve as a catalyst for personal and organizational transformation.

DOCUMENT:

1. The development of the basic concept and the design of a process of transformation that has applications for individuals, the workplace and schools.
2. The piloting of the process in the following organizations; a hotel, financial institution, hospital, government agency and school (in The Bahamas).
3. Highlight the lessons learned from the pilots and their implications for businesses, government agencies, and schools. It is expected that a model of a new workplace culture will emerge from the lessons learned from the pilots.

»»Vicki Hammel 

Appreciative Philosophy:  The Emerging Context and the Transformative Power of Co-creation

Appreciative Inquiry, positive psychology, the movement toward strength based processes in business, new insights into leadership, and the application of broader notions of intelligence are early indications of a paradigm shift grounded in social constructionist theories.  This dissertation will examine the emergence of Appreciative Philosophy as the context for the affirmative, post-modern stance in the social sciences.  Appreciative Philosophy is an ongoing co-creation by a community of practitioners, who are using Appreciative Inquiry, and other strength based processes in their work. In the Appreciative Inquiry process, co-creation refers to the social construction of meaningful outcomes through dialogue among representative stakeholders. This paper will posit “appreciative theology”.  Western Judeo-Christian religious understanding and experience has been lodged in the philosophies of Plato, and Aristotle, both being primarily concerned with the deficits of human beings, and the world.  Appreciative Philosophy shifts the view toward the strengths and positive qualities of “being.” Through the lens of Appreciative Philosophy, appreciative theology reveals Co-Creation emerging as the collaborative Divine/Human life-giving energy that catalyzes and powers transformation.  The paper will posit an “appreciative theology” that is grounded in Appreciative Philosophy, and in particular, examine how Co-creation impacts the areas of sustainability and leadership. 

The research method to affirm and define an emerging Appreciative Philosophy will be to develop an appreciative set of questions, which the shared learning and dialogue of the AI Commons and the AI list serve, will answer.  Not as conscious questions and answers formally asked of users of the AI Commons and list serve, rather the questions will be used to narrow the field, and the answers will derive from an examination of experience and conversation among users, unfettered by the boundaries and expectations of the questions.  The same set of questions will be asked of the AI Commons archives, for the years 2006, and 2007.

Once Appreciative Philosophy is established, the emergent appreciative theology will be articulated as a new way to understand Co-Creation as a shared endeavor of the Divine and Human Beings, and will be applied to further the discussion of sustainability and leadership.

»» Lorraine Hedtke is interested in conversations that impact upon grief when they are constructed using a postmodern and appreciative approach. Her doctoral research takes up this interest and is entitled, "The value for spouses of remembering conversations before and after death". The aim of this study will be to investigate how death and grief are constructed in relationship between spouses and how these constructions are affected by participation in re-membering conversations. This emphasis on re-membering, rather than forgetting, is a sharp departure from conversations about death and grief that have been guided by the dominant discourse of the medical model. Dominant conversations about grief have most often stressed "letting go" and "moving on" as relational goals for loved ones after the death of a spouse. These ideas dislocate relationship in unnecessary ways. Conversations that have fostered "closure" have been embedded in a modernist agenda that values reality and expedient grief rather than exploring constructionist possibilities. By contrast, re-membering encourages the continuing vitality of relationship in storied form, even after the death of a spouse or partner.

The postmodern perspective allows us to take advantage in some fresh ways of the new perspectives in thinking about identity, death and grief. Re-membering conversations serve this purpose. Re-membering conversations are deliberate acts of identity construction that draw upon the postmodern theoretical position. They involve the reincorporation of the membership of the dead person in the ongoing identity and community of the living. It is an active process of calling forth a person's stories, recollections, connections and in fact, their membership, in a restorative way. It is a creative process that develops the life narrative of the living through a process of interaction with the dead.

The study will utilize taped conversations with spouse and partners where one person is dying. Conversations will take place both before and after death in hopes of gaining a better understanding of what is helpful to re-member of our deceased loved ones as a map to navigate through the terrain of death. It is Lorraine's hope that this study will offer practitioners who work with people who are dying as well as people who are living with grief an innovative approach that supports the continuation of the best possible aspects of relationship. Lorraine lives in Southern California and works as a Bereavement Services Manager for VITAS Innovative Hospice Care.

»» Jacqueline Ibrahim - Dissertation working title: The Influence of Appreciative Inquiry as used in Social Innovation

Abstract: This qualitative study examines the influence of Appreciative Inquiry as a strengths-based model on a social innovation project in the San Diego/Tijuana Region. The study seeks to reveal invariant themes through thematic analysis involving participants of AiPhilanthropy's work in this arena. Participants will be selected through convenience and snowball sampling, as well as a process of theoretical saturation. Data collection through interviews will be coded into qualitative software and organized into themes. The study will examine if there are any underlying themes as described by the participants. This researcher is interested in exploring the impact of the strengths-based methodology of Appreciative Inquiry on individuals, organizations and whole systems. The participant group will be individuals who have participated in the work of AiPhilanthropy for Positive Change in this social innovation project.

This researcher co-founded the nonprofit alliance, AiPhilanthropy for Positive Change, whose mission it is to energize Philanthropy (all gifts of talent, time and treasure) to build community by engaging in appreciative inquiry and other generative practices that build civil society, social capital and confidence. It is the premise of AiPhilanthropy that clients explore, visualize, articulate and act to co-create their own best futures. AiPhilanthropy uses positive, appreciative methodology in an attempt to bring forth results that transform the organizations and communities it serves. The alliance has worked with several systems since its inception in November of 2003. This researcher would like to engage in a study that explores, through qualitative interviews what influence or impact, if any, the intervention by AiPhilanthropy had on participants as an 1) individual, 2) organizational, and/or 3) system level. The research will be conducted through qualitative interviews in response to the above research question. The process will use convenience sampling of individuals that have participated in AiPhilanthropy's intervention.

Jacquie is an international consultant that works with private enterprise, universities, and governments. She travels extensively to work with stakeholders in the use of pioneering and world-renowned economics tools as well as strategic and leadership development in international business. Jacquie is also Chief Operating Officer of Sunset Coast Capital and adjunct faculty at several universities. She speaks at programs sponsored by the Executive Education departments of Wharton, UC Berkeley, and UCSD. Jacquie is the co-founder of AiPhilanthropy for Positive Change, a nonprofit alliance that works extensively in the area of social innovation, breakthrough change, and sustainable organizational performance.

»» Jody Jacobson is an organizational development consultant based in Madison, Wisconsin. Before embarking on her life's dream of becoming an OD consultant, she worked as a manager, planner, and analyst in public and private universities, an agency of the US Federal government, and for a shorter time in private industry, so has experienced life in a number of different professional environments. Her doctoral research is inspired by everything she has experienced in her life so far and by her synaesthetic way of learning and knowing. In the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach it is said that "words create worlds." Her research builds on that appreciative construction of language and takes it a step further into the visual realm of synaesthetics, where "a picture is worth a thousand words." She will explore the impact of guided visualization on social constructions of organization. The most commonly held visual construction of organization is the hierarchical line and box diagram, typically the first picture a potential employee or consultant sees of an organization. Some of the messages imprinted from these visual representations are: (1) who has power and who does not, (2) how many layers of management there are, (3) how formally the organization is structured, (4) if it is organized around functions or processes, and (5) how hierarchical it may be. Most often drawn to check off a box required by Personnel, these static, hierarchical images of organization disclose little about the multi-dimensional dance of relationships, values, and aspirations continuously defining and redefining organizations. Using guided visualization and appreciative questions, she will take participants on guided "aerial tours" of their organizations and will later examine the impact those synaesthetic experiences have on their constructions of organization.

»» Frank Kashner - A "TOP" Action Research Project

Ignacio Martin-Baro said, "No knowledge can be true if it has not attached itself to the task of transforming reality, but the transformative process requires an involvement in the process of transforming human relationships."

On May 1, 2007, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts , the largest insurer in the state, announced that they will adopt a measurement system called the Treatment Outcomes Package (TOP). The TOP asks 58 questions about "symptoms, ability-to-function, and quality-of-life". Therapist reactions include agreement, passive acceptance, hesitation and doubt, and outrage and opposition.
As a therapist affected by the TOP initiative and controversy, I am provided an opportunity to examine and possibly have an effect on current "therapeutic realities" (the title of a book by Ken Gergen). I am interested in exploring social change and power in and through this context. By engaging in the ongoing dialog, including possible forms of social action, I might be able to fulfill Martin-Baro's requirements for the acquisition of knowledge.

Question: What is the power of this insurance company in relation to their clients and therapists as discovered through dialog and social action?
I would like my research to reflect the values of Bent Flyvbjerg, Professor of Planning at Aalborg University, who wants to "make social science matter" by contributing to social change; Harlene Anderson, who espouses "a mutual search to understand"; Ken Gergen, who asks, how can we exit from "the cycle of infirmity" and "the requirement for deficit diagnosis"; and Tom Andersen who asked, "How can the standstill system and we make a meaningful conversation together?"

My research website is at www.notthetop.net

»»Kara Kaufman teaches history at Salem State College in Massachusetts; however, is she a historian? What is history? Who are historians? Why has there been a racial and gender imbalance in the field’s history? What is it like for a woman or person of color to be a historian? What do historians do? What should they do? How do/should they write about and profess the past? Is there such a thing as “pure” history, or is the field innately interdisciplinary? Should historians introduce other disciplines’ ideas into the field? Why do most students dread history class?

Through a social construction/post-modern lens, Kara will attempt to discover the multiple ways of thinking about the above questions and those like it. She is currently reading about how academics have created an identity for historians in the past century, and will have conversations with her colleagues in the history department in order to glean insights from present historians.  She ultimately hopes to add her voice to the ever-evolving identity of the historical field.

»»Ronit Kurz has been practicing as an Organizational Psychologist for over 20 years. Her strongest interest, for a long period of time, has been the opportunity, will and journey of individuals to grow and develop as human beings at all levels – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually

Organizations in the 21st century are faced with extreme challenges and they need the best from their employees – their involvement, their minds, their creativity, and their extra effort. Employees are the best, and perhaps the only, engine for organizational survival and growth. Unleashing human potential can be beneficial for both the individual and the organization. In addition, in the last few years, the role of organizations in society has received more attention and relevance. It is imperative that organizations see their employees, first and foremost, within the context of their social responsibility. Organizations can be a strong vehicle for creating a society that supports the development and growth of people and assists society to reach a new social contract.

The purpose of this research is to inquire into the possibility of organizations serving as social agents in the area of personal development and growth, while at the same time benefiting from this by utilizing their employees abilities, energies and creativity to the full extent.

The research questions are:
-  What type of personal development is possible in organizations?
-  How the "unleashing of potential" may happen?-
- What is the "new organization" that enables such growth? Which parameters define it?
- What is the connection between unleashing personal potential and organizational success?
- What is the role of leaders and managers in creating this?
- What is the role of employees in creating this?
- What is the role of the consultant in supporting this?

The research will include a 360 degrees inquiry, through narrative interviews with senior mangers, first level managers and employees. The research will attempt to reach an integration of several theories and approaches into one comprehensive framework that "speaks one language" and can be feasible to managers and consultants.

»» Steve Lawler is an interim manager, an Episcopal priest and an independent consultant living in St Louis. His client list includes Monsanto, the St Louis-Post Dispatch and the Danforth Foundation as well as organizations, churches and companies throughout the US and in Europe. He is currently Interim Director of The Educational Center and Interim Rector of St. Stephen's Church in Ferguson Missouri. His research area is leadership. His project for the dissertation is the analysis of historical notions of leadership in the tradition of OD (Organizational Development) and the framing of leadership and leadership practices from a social constructionist perspective. This research involves case material from four current client systems.

»» Rodney L. Merrill
Working Title: Personifying the World: A Social Study of Personal Narrative Writing Practices

My enduring passions continue to be social studies and creative writing. It seems only fitting that I want to bring them together in a practice-grounded research dissertation on the social construction of personal writing practice. Personal writing is normally studied by English and humanities scholars and sometimes by educational psychologists. I want to explore personal essay writing in social constructionist terms that might contribute to understanding writing practice as a social/relational process. I have completed Phase 1of the project comprised of recruiting responses to a series of open-ended "pilot interview" questions. I called this an "interview" because I didn't want the feel or implications of a questionnaire. Each interview item integrated multiple related questions meant to open up the conversational space through expansion and clarification. Participants were not expected to answer every question but to feel free to roam where the conversation took them. Communicants were told that the questions were "guideposts but not fenceposts."

After working with the responses, I've decided to continue mining the same vein but to expand the number of participants and to adopt a more interactional format. This format risks that busy participants may not follow through. I plan to use multiple means of communication, including e-mail, interactive blog space and instant messenger. Others may emerge. Offering multiple avenues should encourage participants to use the medium most comfortable for them at times most convenient to them, although I am privileging written communication. Aural/oral contact will be available on request.
My rationale is that verbatim transcripts of oral interviews are stilted, incomplete, and to some degree incoherent in print. They meander. They start off in some direction, drop off mid-sentence and careen in another direction. While there is nothing "wrong" with that, the results make for a boring read. I, as researcher/reporter, am compelled by consideration for the reader to re-present the spoken words in some way – to organize them, improve upon them, make them "sound better" or more like what "they meant to say." I must manipulate and translate. And that makes the resulting transcript more what I say they said than what they said. (I had the uneasy feeling while reading transcripts of interviews that the "shared feelings" expressed by the researcher were more "mind reading" and wishful thinking.) This being the case, I would be ethically obliged to discredit my own research because I am, in fact, conforming interviewee words to my "way of thinking" and my way of saying the world – because to translate is to transform.

Whatever else one may say, written responses are in the writer's voice, not mine. I can present what the writer says exactly as it was written. I do not need to act as an intermediary to misread or impose nuances and nonverbal cues where they don't exist. The purpose of this study is to explore how writers of personal narrative go about doing what they do (writing) by asking them to write about their writing process. I hope that the reflective and reflexive process a writer generates while writing about how they go about writing will bring them closer to the lived experience of personal writing than possible when simply talking about it. The idea behind this research design is for participants to become research collaborators rather than research subjects. The research is not designed to study the writers as specimens of some kind but for them to explore personal narrative writing practices through dialog – with me and with each other.

»» Bonnie Milne is currently an instructor in the School of Business at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. She spent five years teaching at a local college in the United Arab Emirates where she learned the personal and social benefits, not to mention the joy, of work life balance.

She is focusing on the creation of a model for increasing work life balance that will:

• foster discussion about the importance of work life balance
• assist individuals and groups to identify ways to increase work life balance
• increase the opportunity for individuals to become more involved in their communities

Her starting point is to conduct appreciative interviews with colleagues, students, graduates and their employers to learn how they define work life balance. In the course of the interviews she will identify techniques that individuals use and support systems that enable them to take part in the activities in their lives that are important to them. She will also determine how the interviewees contribute to their community when they have balance in their lives.

Bonnie sees work life balance one of the pivot points for social change. Her observation is that when people have time outside of their work and home duties, they become involved in their communities, contributing in their areas of interest and expertise, building a stronger, more caring community. This contribution often extends beyond their local community to the national and international community leading to large scale social change. Creating a model that can be used by individuals, educational institutes and business to increase work life balance has the potential to create an avenue for increasing positive social change.

»» Ellen Murphy The field of school psychology is united around the conversation of finding what gets in the way of kids learning, within the structure of our present delivery system. As a profession we primarily look at the child, his/her behavior, cognitive abilities and performance within this context, try to determine the problem, and then attempt to remediate within this existing structure. Traditionally the child's abilities and behaviors are measured and potentially diagnosed based on standards and norms for behaviors of typical children in their respective age ranges. The dominant conversation is one of looking for intra-personal psychological processes and/or cognitive deficits that get in the way of inputting, integrating, and expressing information within a systematic structure of knowledge exchange. It is a conversation that is deeply rooted in the history and traditions of diagnostic language, focusing in, on the individual mind. It has been, and continues to be, largely a "describe and explain" discourse.

In the dominant discourse and historic traditions of this field the relational components have rarely been a point of focus. Yet there is ample empirical research that clearly identifies the child/teacher relationship as a major component in the success of the learning experience in the school environment.

Ellen will take a closer look at the relational components of learning, one of which would be to include and assess the relational resources a child has access to and explore the impact this might have on a child's experience of success, competence, engagement and motivation. Another area of specific interest would be to look at the relational process of the teacher/student from the viewpoint of transformational dialogue as described by John Stewart and Karen Zediker. In this broader context and discourse, she will explore whether additional offers and options for action are created for struggling children in the learning environment.

The goal of this dissertation is to look at these two very different discourses communities to see if they can make meaning together in a way that can lead to more promising results for children.

Questions that will be explored in the dissertation are:

• How does this difference of discourse regarding children, change outcomes?
• Is there a dialogue which can lead to more promising results?
• How do you bring the polarized discourse communities together?
• How do you create a transformative dialogue within these two incommensurate discourse communities to continue the conversation and bridge the tools of each to make meaningful contributions to the lives children?

»» Rev. Elaine Beth Peresluha Managing change is the one of the most stressful issues for individuals and institutions. The amount of energy expended in managing change and its physical, emotional and spiritual challenges often depletes vital resources necessary for personal and institutional growth. My Ph.D. project will define the relationship between positive management of change and institutional development with particular focus on the pastoral church to program church transition. Presently, there are few resources available on this aspect of institutional development. It is a difficult phase, acknowledged frequently in strategic planning and institutional growth literature as one of the most challenging transition for churches and ministers. Most frequently, literature describes the symptoms of this growth phase and what needs to be managed, without offering effective recommendations on how to do that. I will research the individual and institutional changes that accompany church growth from a pastor- centered institution to a program centered institution. I will apply the principles of social construction theory and appreciative inquiry in developing a model to be used by churches to move through this difficult congregational transition more effectively. Specifically, I will examine individual and institutional resistance to change, how growth affects welcoming and integrating members, budget and finance issues, pastoral care, ministerial relations, institutional identity and community/public relations. I will demonstrate how the effective management of change can expand personal and institutional resources and improve the allocation of those resources, resulting in sustained growth, spiritual, social and institutional, in churches. Vital, effective churches can offer greater stewardship, compassion, justice, advocacy and inspiration to the communities they serve.

»»Ottar Ness works as a family therapist at Trondheim Family Counselling Service in Norway. He is doing his PhD-research on how therapists interpret their learning experiences through using Johnella Bird's conversational practices from training exercises, reviews of videotaped practice, and client comments.

The working title for the dissertation is: Therapeutic conversations beyond the binary; about a collaborative learning project based on shared learning experiences.

The purposes of this project are:

   1. Understanding therapist's learning experiences as they develop new conversational practices with clients at Trondheim Family Counselling Service. Specifically, learning the use of Johnella Bird's conversational practices from instruction and reading, self-monitored practice (including videotapes of practice) and group feedback meant to enhance competence in couple therapy.
   2. Developing competence in Johnella Bird’s conversational practices for therapeutic conversations at Trondheim Family Counselling Service for couple therapy, also through the use of client feedback. The learning experiences will be summarized in ways useful to therapists and therapist educators. 

The proposed research will combine collaborative action research, comprehensive process analysis for data collection and grounded theory analyses as for data analysis.

»» Margaret Rahn is at the beginning stages of her doctoral work. She is working to make a study, via an introductory literature review, of three fields including dialogue, leadership and organizational change, and appreciative inquiry and social constructionism. Then, I will interview organization leaders who employ dialogue effectively within their organizations. Via their stories I hope to gain insight into how dialogue and social constructionism is at work within organizations to effectively support relationship building, change, growth and creativity. My goal is to identify common elements and complementary connections among the four sources.

»» Vikki Reynolds This dissertation will explore the question of how therapists can work within contexts of social injustice, marginalization, and trauma in ways that are congruent with their ethics, and how they can collectively experience sustainability and transformation in that work across time. This dissertation is informed by both therapeutic and activist work alongside survivors of torture and political violence, youth who struggle with substance misuse and exploitation in their lives, and supervision and instruction of therapists who engage in this work.

In contexts characterized by failures of justice, how can we as therapists and community workers keep the spirit of social justice alive in our work? By connecting through practices of solidarity in an ethic of social justice that honours resistance to practices that replicate dominance. I call this path doing justice and the responsibility that comes from a commitment to it an ethic of resistance. This ethic is a response to the ways in which we as therapists can inadvertently replicate dominance and of oppression in our work despite our best efforts to avoid such practices and to live and work by our commitments to social justice.

This dissertation will present a process I call a supervision of solidarity, an approach to supervision that is informed by a philosophy of solidarity, and human rights activism. My understandings of solidarity derive from activist practices of finding points of connection across differences, and weaving together practices of resisting oppression and promoting social justice. This spirit of solidarity has been well articulated by an Aboriginal elder addressing a white person at an Aboriginal land-rights action: "If you are here to save me you can leave now, but if your liberation is tied to mine, you are welcome at my fire."

Of particular interest for me is the creation of a witnessing form of reflecting group work that serves as a community of concern, from which the individuation and isolation of the therapist can be resisted. I believe that we need to do this work together. Invitations to practices of collective accountability help move therapists from individual guilt to communal responses that address structural contexts of inequity, and offer solidarity.

In particular, I will track supervision of solidarity-witnessing groups in order to illustrate various witnessing structures and kinds of community-making dialogues, the amplification of the therapist's holding of relational ethics, practices that build solidarity and collective accountability, and stories that embody sustainability and transformation. The text will draw on edited transcripts, annotations, stories, and reflections from the solidarity group members for illustration.

These practices of solidarity are informed by the liberation psychology of Ignatio Martin Baro, the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, and the analysis of related activist cultures as articulated by Richard Day and Arundhati Roy. This work is inspired by the writings of Kenneth Gergen, John Shotter, Tom Andersen, Stephen Madigan, and David Epston, and by the therapeutic supervision of Heather Elliott and Colin Sanders.

»»Lynne V. Rosen and Eve Brandstein - The Parent-Teen Project: Meeting at the Crossroads: Exchanging Wisdom and Gifts

Purpose of this project: The culture does not make space for teens and parents to explore the different stages of life they inhabit in a way that allows them to talk across differences and explore more fluid ways of being in relationship. Our hope is that by making discourses regarding western conceptualizations of teens and parents visible and by bringing forward more richly described stories of teen and parent experiences, alternative discourses and ways of moving forward together may unfold. We hope to explore the effects of consumerism, individualism, fear-mongering and negative stereotypes on parent teen relationships.

We are curious about the following: How can teens and parents talk across differences in fluid ways? How can they listen and hear each other differently? How can the circulation of wisdom and gifts be given a more central role in a family’s communal practice? How do we create space to honor community given the power relations between teens and parents? How does responsibility and creativity get enacted in ways that invite excitement and movement?

Our intention is to bring together a group of middle class parents and teens from the greater Los Angeles area to participate in a Feminist Action Research Project for one year. We hope to co-construct new discourses, language, and practices that honor parent and teen experiences, circulate their wisdom and gifts and generate new ways of being in relationship.

In addition to their dissertation, Lynne and Eve will be making a documentary film.

Lynne V. Rosen is the co-founder of Narrative Solutions, an organization that brings the tenets of Social Constructionism, Narrative Therapy, Appreciative Inquiry and the Public Conversation Project into the therapeutic consulting room with individuals, couples, families and organizations. Previously, she was Core Faculty and Director of the Postmodern Therapy Training Program at Phillips Graduate Institute in Encino, CA. She is the co-founder of Women’s Project Los Angeles (WPLA), a community-based project that focuses on using innovative forms of dialogue in order to bring forward new perspectives and change. Website: NarrativeSolutions.com

Eve Brandstein is a therapist, educator, filmmaker, writer and workshop facilitator. She was the Resource Associate and Training Coordinator with Teen Line, a peer teen crisis hotline at Cedars Sinai Hospital. Eve maintains a private practice where she facilitates creative writing groups, inspired by Narrative Therapy practices, and also works with individuals, couples and families. She is a published author and has written, directed and produced film, television and theatre productions. Website: ebrandsteinproductions.com

»» Shayamal Kumar Saha works as Program Specialist for Community Leadership and Organizational Development at the Regional Center for Asia of International Institute of Rural reconstruction –located in Philippines . Since 1984 starting from his native village in Bangladesh Shayamal advocates promotion of self-help as an approach to peoples own development. His 20 years of practice-based learning journey with the communities and development practitioners makes him realized that facilitators of self-help promotion require better ways to include and foster political, psychological, relational, cultural and epistemological properties in participatory action and learning processes; which is not imposed by top-down standard views but its own ways of flourishing from below. He is working on a study "Replacing Negation With Appreciation Promotion of Self-Help in Development: Participatory Praxis Beyond Problem Centered Approach". The purpose of the research is to generate learning and to create actions at the community around following questions:  

Being co-genetic and co-supportive with each other how differently 'objective knowledge premises and problem solving method'and 'social construction premises and appreciative inquiry method' contributes to create impacts on both inclusion and alienation of political, psychological, relational, cultural and epistemological properties in participatory action and learning processes in communities engaged in daily life struggle to meet basic human needs?

In order to generate practical understandings and action the research project is undertaken in two barangays (a barangay is a village and lowest tier of local government body in Philippines ). In collaboration with a group of community-selected local facilitators ( volunteers) each of the barangay councils applies yearly basis Participatory Planning Monitoring Evaluation Learning (PPMEL) process through people's organizations called Purok (clan and kinship based neighborhood community) Officers' Organization. One barangay applies PPMEL within problem solving method while another within the 4-D cycle of appreciative inquiry. Continuous learning generates trough PPMEL processes instituted at each of the people's organization and local government council which is supplemented by monthly reflection and learning meetings of barangay self-help facilitators team (community selected volunteers), inter-purok sharing and reflection, semi structured discussion sessions and workshop with different stakeholders groups, mid year multi-stakeholders reflection workshops in each of the barangays, year-end participatory impact evaluation workshops. These systems and applicable tools for facilitating action and learning are designed jointly with the community facilitators, local government officials and people's organization representatives. Shayamal's dissertation interest is connected to expand understanding among development and social change practitioners / organizations about effective ways of fostering people's self-development processes.

»» Marvin Shaub is a semi-retired businessman. His active career spanned over 40 years after graduation from The Harvard Business School. He has lived and done an extensive amount of work in Europe and the Orient as an expatriate American as well as dealing with international and domestic issues from an American base. For the last 18 years he ran a consulting and venture firm in Princeton, NJ, USA specializing in The US Hispanic Market.

His dissertation is entitled (tentatively) The Changing Anatomy of Psycho-Social Acculturation: From Melting Pot to Bi-cultural Personality. Here is a brief summary:

In 1965 the US Immigration law was revised, producing a significant change in the volume and nature of immigrant flows to this country. Most immigrants prior to that time came from Europe and tended to think of The United States as a place where they could form a new identity---English voiced and embodying a set of homogenized American values. The process of acculturation or adjustment to this new milieu came to be known as The Great American Melting Pot.

Subsequent to 1965 the situation changed drastically and the source of most immigrants became either Latin America or the Orient. These immigrants differed substantially from their predecessors from Europe---in terms of the kinds of initial socialization processes that had formed them but also how they expected to develop subsequent to their emigration to the US. Rather than going through The Great American Melting Pot experience they tended to hold onto their original ethnic identities, while developing an American identity along side. These more recent immigrants tended to develop a Bi-cultural personality -- one in which they could move back and forth seamlessly between languages and cultures as the situation required.

Acculturation has been studied in one way or another for about 70 years. Two major issues have concerned scholars involved in this field: (1) Does acculturation mainly affect the newcomer group as opposed to having significant effects on the host society as well? and (2) Is acculturation a uni-dimensional or orthogonal construct? In other words, is the acculturation process one of substituting one behavioural and value system for another, as in a zero-sum game?

The dissertation first provides a quantitative background set by detailing the nature of the changes in the US immigrant flows. Then the differences between The Melting Pot type of acculturative experience and that involved in producing The Bi-cultural Personality are examined. There is a review presented of the scholarly literature on acculturation, showing how the theoretical basis for study changed in accord with changes in the aggregate of individuals being studied.

The work of Professor John Berry, a prominent cross-cultural psychologist from Canada who is believed to have the best grasp of the significant acculturation issues, is detailed and reviewed. Berry's work culminated in a model of acculturation strategies that shows how the factors from the two major issues in the field play out in reality. His model places an acculturating immigrant into one of 4 broad quadrants, depending primarily on where the person fits in terms of wanting to maintain his original culture, adopt American culture, both or neither.

After showing how the Berry model applies to US Hispanic immigrant society the dissertation develops an original interpretive framework for those in Berry's Integrative quadrant (containing people who want to develop bi-culturally). The framework, called A.C.E.S. (an acronym for the factors of Anchoring, Continuity, Enjoyment and Socio-cultural barriers to integration), is detailed and a way of visually charting an individual's position in integrative space is presented. This essentially brings the Berry model down to the level of the individual bi-cultural person, shows where he/she is and suggests what pressures are present in the situation for movement to a different part of the integrative space.

A number of bi-cultural immigrant individuals from widely diverse original cultures---Hispanic, Japanese and Muslim---and some of their children are interviewed and the conclusion suggested that the processes leading to Bi-culturalism are similar across original cultures. Finally, the applicability of A.C.E.S. to societies outside the US is examined.

»» Margery Shelton is a social worker in private psychotherapy practice.  Through March 2008 she is the Clinical Director of the Southern California Counseling Center in Los Angeles, CA.  She was the Director of Clinical Training Programs at the California Family Counseling Center in the Phillips Graduate Institute in Encino, CA.  In both capacities she administered and designed psychotherapy programs and administered, designed and taught in training programs for entry level therapists.  She has presented and trained in settings throughout California, the U. S. Poland and New Zealand.  She is very interested in change processes in large systems as well as small.  

The working title for her dissertation is “The Tension Between Collaboration and Hierarchy in Collaborative Leadership”.  When a leader assumes a collaborative stance, what are the forces that support that?  What are there forces that pull her to a more hierarchical position?  Are authority and collaboration mutually exclusive?  What organizational values and practices support collaborative positions with a leader?  What organizational values and practices support hierarchical positions with a leader? The dissertation will examine elements of feminism, collaborative theory, dialogue, Buddhism and practices of tai chi, meditation and psychotherapy.

Margery is at a very early stage of study and expects many refinements.

»» Rick Strycker is the Director of Research and Development for JMJ Associates, a management consulting company based in Austin, Texas. JMJ specializes in high performance technologies, with an emphasis in transformational learning. He writes, "The aim of the thesis is to develop a reconstructive postmodern model of leadership, a stage of leadership that is distinguished by its relational, constructivist, developmental and integrative epistemology. The two primary objectives of the thesis are to: 1. Clearly distinguish this stage of leadership from prior stages, 2. Explore and critically evaluate approaches to developing competency in this leadership style."

»» Siva Subramanien is a semi-retired senior Public Service Manager who served during most of his career in the Health and Education sectors. He is now the Adviser to the Vice-President of the Republic of Mauritius.
The title of his PhD dissertation is "Rethinking the Well-being and Quality of Life of the Elderly in Mauritius."
Mauritius, a small island located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, has a population of 1.2 million people. Some 60 years back, experts predicted a population explosion with tragic consequences for the country. Contrary to such prediction, Mauritius is now known for its most successful population program, which has perfectly stabilized its population growth. However, as is the case for most developed or emerging countries, it is at present facing the problem of an ageing population.

This gives rise to various issues regarding the physical, psychological and social well-being of the growing number of elderly in the country. Through the lens of social constructionism and using the principles of appreciative inquiry, Siva proposes to identify and study these issues, with a view to proposing a novel line of action conducive to increased well-being and better quality of life for the elderly in Mauritius.

»» Lisa Sydow has been practicing solution focused therapy for the past 10 years. For her dissertation, she is doing research in the areas of career development and life meaning for adolescent girls and the value of cross generational dialogue/story telling as a means to developing life direction. She is utilizing Appreciative Inquiry as a resource for designing questions for interviews and will also be incorporating a Participatory Action Research model.

»» Ezequiel Szafir is a consultant with McKinsey & Company, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His thesis treats, "Implications for individuals of changes in work-organizations." The main findings will be translated into a framework to apply in business environments. The thesis will describe in detail a methodology to assess change readiness and feasibility of change in work-organizations, as well as a series of identified levers translated into business terms.

»» Yosef Tal and Itzchak Lichtenfeld are currently managing EILAT Ltd., a consulting firm in Israel that specializes in Risk Management in various sectors, especially HealthCare. The working title of their thesis is, Transferring the Aviation Accident Prevention model to Ambulatory HealthCare Organization. "The central goal of the thesis is to analyze the Risk Management Model of Maccabi Health Services (The second largest ambulatory healthcare organization in Israel), based on the principles derived from the Aviation Risk Management model, and to asses whether the model is applicable to other healthcare organizations. Further, the thesis will evaluate the Maccabi project and to formalize lesson learned from transferring a model from one content world to another, sharing some common characteristics.

The thesis addresses such issues as:

• Accident prevention, Risk management, Quality improvement -Models, concepts and implementation.
• The environment of an Aviation organization
• The environment of an Ambulatory HealthCare Organization
• Comparison between Aviation and HealthCare
• Transferring concepts and models from one content area to another and from one organization to another.

»» Aileen Tierney is a systemic psychotherapist, in the Clanwilliam Institute, Dublin where she has a clinical practice and is involved in both teaching and clinical supervision of students on the postgraduate training programmes in systemic family therapy. She has been involved with disability organisations for many years. In her research thesis she is broadly interested in exploring the social construction of disability.

The current working title of the thesis is: -The social construction of disability - An exploration of the impact of therapists constructs of disability on their therapy conversations, with clients, who live with a label of disability.

The broad area of interest for this dissertation relates to the area of the social construction of disability. It is hoped to address how the ways in which we as a society, and in particular as a community of therapists construe disability and how those constructions impact on the ways we engage in therapy conversations with people who are labelled disabled. Particular attention will focus on the space between disabled and non disabled and the possibilities of simultaneously existing in both domains. It will also address how by categorising people in certain ways we cuts off possibilities in both the acknowledging of and creation of different lived experiences. The main focus of the dissertation will be on how therapist's constructs of disability, which are socially determined, impact on the types of conversations they have with clients who are labelled as disabled. Consideration will be given to the binary distinctions of ability/ dis- abilty, silence and voice. A qualitative approach to data collection will be used and interview candidates will be family therapists and their clients. The inquiry invites both the therapist and clients to consider how their meaning making in relation to the construct disability shapes the therapy conversations and what discourses are brought forth and silenced in the process.

« Back to Taos/Tilburg PhD Program