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Prologue to an Experiment in Higher Education: Mentoring Psychospiritual Maturation, Breaking Humanity’s Chain of Pain

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A Person-Centered Approach to Psychospiritual Maturation

Abstract

Over the last three decades, higher education has challenged itself to cultivate campus cultures of health, social justice, and peace. Since Ernest Boyer ’s seminal research, it has become evident that many students experience psychological distress, behavioral dysregulation, and lack of community, factors that undermine their well-being, academic success, and a positive campus culture. But efforts to rectify these issues have had limited success. This book offers an explanation from the perspective of humanistic psychology: higher education has not recognized student needs for person-centered learning that facilitates psychospiritual maturation during young adulthood. This book describes a curriculum that I have developed, Know Your Self. The curriculum mentors a person-centered approach to psychospiritual maturation that helps students address these problematic issues. The book also presents research demonstrating the effectiveness of this curriculum. Student Life professionals will find this curriculum relevant to co-curricular work with students. However, psychospiritual development must become a core element of academic activity, taught by engaged faculty, if we hope to transform our campuses into model cultures of health, social justice, and peace.

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    Jared D. Kass

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Kass, J.D. (2017). Prologue to an Experiment in Higher Education: Mentoring Psychospiritual Maturation, Breaking Humanity’s Chain of Pain . In: A Person-Centered Approach to Psychospiritual Maturation . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57919-1_1

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