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Below are a variety of research projects that are being carried out, some by the Integral Research Center, others by affiliated researchers, partner research institutions, and independent researchers that IRC is pleased to promote.
Integral Transformative Education Assessment for Curriculum researcH
The Integral Research Center is in the process of designing and launching an ambitious longitudinal study using methods from all eight zones of Integral Methodological Pluralism to assess the transformative effects of integral education. We are working with Theo Dawson of Developmental Testing Service and Susanne Cook-Greuter of Cook-Greuter and Associates to help us with this exciting project.
Lots of innovative programs (both mainstream and alternative) highlight how transformative their educational programs are for their students. We don't doubt their claims; in fact we feel the same way about our online program in Integral Theory. However, we want to really find out "In what ways do our students transform?" Do they, over the course of three years of coursework, actually demonstrate some vertical stage development (e.g., exiting Kegan's third order and stabilizing fourth order) or is it just horizontal development (e.g., increased access to emotional content). And even if it is just horizontal development, what aspects are developing? In short, we don't only want to tell everyone about how transformative this program is, we also want to demonstrate the exact ways it is transformative. We plan on using the results of this ongoing study to improve the developmental potential of our curriculum. So we will be adjusting our program making it even more conducive to psychological transformation and growth. [More details on the iTeach Project]
David Zeitler, MA (John F. Kennedy University): Who Are We?
As a growing community, the world of all things “Integral” shows no signs of slowing. But who are we? Following the cultural revolutions of the late 1960’s, and the advent of extensive electronics-based interactions in the late 1990’s, it is seductive to think that a new-age has arrived. Yet the modern West lives with a panoply of dissociated micro-cultures. The present study aims to discover who this emerging Integral Culture is composed of, and if there are any signs of it being more of a disparate collection, or of a genuine culture with shared values. The instrument being used relies heavily on that of Imants Baruss. Dr. Baruss used this instrument for a similar purpose ten years ago, when the “Towards a Science of Consciousness” conference series began in Tucson, AZ at the University of Arizona. A second goal, therefore, will be to compare participants at these two related events – the Tucson Consciousness series, and the Integral Theory Conference at John F. Kennedy University. Finally, a comparison will be made with Paul Ray’s work on his hypothesized “Cultural Creatives.”
Joel Kreisberg, DC, MA (John F. Kennedy University): Integral Research into the Meaning of Healing
An integral approach to medicine and healthcare includes both pathogenic and salutogenic (health creating) perspectives. What are the characteristics of healing? How do we understand healing from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person perspectives? This ongoing integral research project starts with the premise that meaning, (along with manageability and comprehensibility), is an essential attribute for healing, using a mixed methodological approach, to better understand the phenomenon of healing. [More details]
Gail Hochachka, MA (John F. Kennedy University):
Case Studies on an Integral Approach to International Development
An Integral Research project on drawing on various lines of inquiry from six zones, to explore how the interior and exterior dimensions of change are engaged by international development organizations. Specifically, the central research question was: How is interiority integrated into international development approaches? With a secondary question: To what extent and how was Integral Theory used in this regard?
Developing Capacity and Community Well-being: Action Research on an Integral Capacity Development Approach in the Mapacho River Watershed, Peru
This research project inquires into what process-framework, including criteria and indicators, should be used to assess the effectiveness of integral capacity development. This type of research-based assessment is useful and necessary to anchor claims of effectiveness with actual quantitative and qualitative data. Drishti-Centre for Integral Action is partnering with a Canadian organization, One Sky, and a Peruvian organization, Asociación para la Conservación de la Cuena Amazonica (Amazon Conservation Association, or ACCA). ACCA and One Sky are currently working with an integral capacity building approach to improve effectiveness in Amazon rainforest conservation.
Developmental Testing Service, LLC
The Developmental Testing Service, LLC, is involved in a number of research projects that may be of interest to the integral community, including the aforementioned partnership with the IntegralResearchCenter to study the development of concepts central to integral theory.
- Since 2002, we have been studying and documenting the life-span development of several skills important to leadership, including reflective judgment, evaluative reasoning about leadership, ethical reasoning, and managerial decision making.
- We are working with faculty at the University of Australia to develop and test a set of online assessments focused on social perspective taking in leadership contexts from a "self-in-relationships" viewpoint.
- This fall, we will be working with Lynn Feldman, who is planning to use the LLRA (Lectical Leadership Reasoning Assessment) to evaluate student learning in her social activism course.
- If funding is approved, this fall we will begin work on a longitudinal study with Dr. Mike Hogan, examining the growth of reflective judgment skills in college students.
- We are helping Dr. Sharon Solloway with her mindfulness research by hosting the Solloway Mindfulness Survey, which is offered free of charge on our web site. We're building an interface that will allow teachers to use the SMS as an assessment of students' progress toward intentional attention.
- Through DiscoTest.org, we are collaborating with several academics and teachers to conduct research into the development of science concepts, ethical reasoning, and reflective judgment in 4 to 18-year-olds, and translate findings into high quality developmental assessments focused on students' ability to reason with the ideas and concepts they learn in school.
Terri O'Fallon, Ph.D. (Pacific Integral):
Generating Transformative Change Research Project
This is our fifth year of providing an Integral program that develops leaders prepared to generate transformative change in human systems. In this program ten to twenty participants learn together in an 18-month program, a variety of integrated approaches that fit within the Integral Frame. In order to adequately equip our participants we feel it is relevant for them to experience a transformative change inside of a human system as they are learning about how to lead such a change. Thus part of our engagement is to do research which documents the changes that the participants and the cohorts make as they travel through the program. [More details]
Research on Developmental Levels
Pacific Integral intends to begin a new research project to further refine the last two levels of development researched by Susanne Cook-Greuter, with her support. We are in the process of developing a website where the participants will be able to take the Leadership Map online anonymously, allowing the scorer to score all of stem 1 together, stem 2 together (etc) supporting the reduction of scorer bias. The intention is to do a grounded research project that will support the refinement of Construct Aware and Unitive levels of development.
Andre Marquis, Ph.D. (University of Rochester): Integral Psychotherapists' Treatment-Matching Decisions
Perhaps the most critical decision psychotherapists need to make in their everyday practice is which of the many available interventions and change processes they should use with a given patient; yet theoretically sound and empirically demonstrated guidelines to guide these decisions are often unavailable, which in turn reduces the effectiveness of the treatment and the future well-being of the patient. The proposed project aims at addressing this problem by using new conceptual and practical tools offered by Integral Psychotherapy – a recent application of Wilber’s Integral Theory to the field of psychotherapy. While integral psychotherapy has the potential to offer a comprehensive and theoretically-based approach to therapists’ treatment-matching decisions, no empirical research is available to date on how expert “integral” therapists actually use integral theory principles and tools to make these decisions, nor on the outcomes and, therefore, the effectiveness of these decisions. [Full abstract and research plan]
Elliott Ingersoll, Ph.D. (Cleveland State University):
Ego Development and Spiritual Maturity
This project is examining relationships between level of ego development and sub-scale patterns on the Spiritual Wellness Inventory -SWI (Ingersoll, 1995). The Spiritual Wellness Inventory appears more to be a measure of spiritual maturity so we are seeking to confirm the curvinlinear relationship between conformity and ego identity in the responses to the SWI.
Ego Development and Clinical Estimates
This study is providing 30-minute tapes of counseling sessions with clients who have taken the SCTi to those trained by Susann Cook-Greuter in scoring the SCTi. The hypothesis is basically whether or not trained raters can accurately identify a client' s level of ego development by listening to the way they use language in these 30-minute clips from counseling sessions. If the raters can do this accurately, this will strengthen the notion that clinicians trained in ego development can "ballpark" or "guesstimate" a client's level of ego development by listening to them.
Ego Development and Public Safety Officers and Convicted Felons
This project is collecting norms on ego development and the NEO-FFI for candidates to 3 area police academies. These subjects will be followed longitudinally to see if any relationship exists between later ego identity and likelihood of promotion. The theory would predict that police officers with early conventional ego identity would be more likely to do things "by the book" and less likely to self-nominate for promotion in the field which requires "thinking on your feet." We are also collecting data from samples of convicted felons to get a sense of the variance in this population. We are beginning with two populations those convicted of violent felonies and those convicted of non-violent felonies.
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