Browsing by Subject "Life Purpose"

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    Educating the Youth to Develop Life Purpose: an Eco-systemic Approach
    (Universidad de Murcia. Servicio de Publicaciones, 2023) Moran, Seana
    Life purpose is an internal representation of a personally meaningful, prosocial contribution the person intends to engage with over their life span. Individuals’ purposes interact within a social-cultural eco-system by directing individuals’ perceptions toward situational resour-ces (including others’ purposes) that can help enact their purpose. Education can encourage students to explore their purposes within and beyond the classroom. This paper describes a case study of a class offered six times using three different ecological “niches”: (1) conceptual understanding eco-niche focused on learning the concept and its relationships to other concepts; (2) resources-application eco-niche focused on reconceiving aspects of the concept as intellectual instruments to apply to real-life cases, including students themselves; (3) iterative practice eco-niche focused on implementing purposes within various contexts and interpreting feedback from those contexts. Using a feedback loop model to interpret how each eco-niche favours a different starting point and development trajectory through Damon’s (2008) four dimensions of purpose, this eco-niche comparison (a) emphasizes how “high impact” educational experiences focus not on the students’ improvements but rather on the improvements of communities as a result of students’ enacting their purpose through their contributions, and (b) offers insights for teachers to infuse purpose development opportunities in their classes.