Committee Chair

Watson, Paul J.

Committee Member

Silver, Christopher; Hood, Ralph W., Jr., 1942-

Department

Dept. of Psychology

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Researchers in the field of applied developmental science are pursuing effective, cross-fluent relationships between scientists, policy-makers, and practitioners as they co-influence individuals across lifetimes (Lerner, Wertlieb, and Jacobs, 2003). Practitioners in religious communities continue to grapple with their unique spins and takes (Taylor, 2007) regarding transcendence in a culture which is increasingly vested in the natural order rather than the supernatural. Christian efforts regarding spiritual formation tend to focus on acceptance of the local religious community as a necessary end to a process known as confirmation (Osmer and Douglass, 2018). The present study seeks to statistically validate a construct of spiritual formation proposed in popular literature that is focused on the individual—rather than a specific religious context—in order to frame new pedagogical methods concentrated first on the individual’s experience. To that end, a new scale which builds on McLaren’s (2011) construct of four spiritual seasons—Simplicity, Complexity, Perplexity, and Harmony, was piloted in the spring semester of 2018 with general psychology students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Data analysis tests the hypothesis that the scale addresses four distinct factors. Future areas of research will examine the validity of the scale against other known measures of various types of individual development in education, identity, and creative processes.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

5-2019

Subject

Spirituality -- Research; Religion and the social sciences

Keyword

Spirituality; Christianity; Spiritual formation; Transcendence

Discipline

Psychology

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

x, 100 leaves

Language

English

Rights

https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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Psychology Commons

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