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While a number of scholars have observed that the contemporary self has to negotiate a “push and pull” between autonomy and a desire for community (Austin & Gagne, 2008; Bauman, 2001a, p. 60; Coles, 2008; Giddens, 2003, p. 46, the struggle between the “self” and “others” that is at the heart of symbolic interactionist (SI) understandings of the self is often missing from sociological discussion on the “making of the self” (Coles, 2008, p. 21; Holstein & Gubrium, 2000), and the current chapter contributes to this literature.

To gain insight into “the making of the self,” in-depth life history interviews were conducted with 23 former members of new religious movements (NRMs) specific to their construction of self. Interview data was analyzed for variations in the ways in which individuals describe their construction of self. To make sense of these variations, SI understandings of the self are applied.

Analysis indicates that the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction is a continuum. From an SI perspective the self is conceptualized as to varying degrees informed by both the personal and the social. These two “domains” of the self are interrelated or connected through an ongoing process of reflexivity that links internal experiences and external feedback. From this perspective, “healthy” selves reflexively balance a sense of personal uniqueness against a sense of belonging and social connectedness. While a reflexive balance between the “self” and “others” is optimal, not everyone negotiates this balance successfully, and the extent to which individuals are informed by the social versus the personal in their self-construction varies and can be conceptualized as on a continuum between autonomy and social connectedness. The current findings suggest that where individuals are positioned on this continuum is dependent on the availability of cultural and personal resources from which individuals can construct selves, in particular in childhood. Those participants who described themselves as highly dependent on others report childhood histories of control, whereas those who described themselves as disconnected from others report histories of abuse and neglect.

The problems of relying on retrospective accounts of former members should be noted as such accounts are interpretive and influenced by the respondents’ present situation. However, despite their retrospective and constructionist nature, life history narratives provide meaningful insights into the actual process of self and identity construction. The analysis of retrospective accounts is a commonly recommended and chosen method for the study of the self (Davidman & Greil, 2007; Diniz-Pereira, 2008).

The current findings suggest that significant differences may exist in the way in which individuals construct and narrate their sense of self, in particular in regards to the way in which they experience and negotiate contemporary tensions between social connectedness and individuality. In particular, the findings highlight the importance of childhood environments for the construction of “healthy” selves that can negotiate contemporary demands of autonomy as well as social connectedness.

The current chapter outlines the process through which New Religious Movement (NRM) membership is conceptualized as facilitating the development of increased reflexivity, in particular the development of an increased ability to connect to others. Based on the narratives of a subsample of 11 former members of NRMs for whom membership signified a desire for an increased ability to emotionally connect to others, a number of factors that are understood as having facilitated or inhibited this type of change were identified and are discussed. The findings extend previous theorizing of NRM as facilitating changes in the behaviors and beliefs of their members, and conceptualizes NRMs as possible avenues through which self-change at an emotional level can occur.

The landscape of adult social care, and in particular of adult safeguarding, has shifted considerably over the last decade. Alongside policy changes in the responses to adult abuse, there have been shifts in professional and public understanding of what falls within the remit of this area of work. This results, arguably, in differing understandings of how adult safeguarding is constructed and understood. Given the increasing emphasis on multi-agency inter-professional collaboration, service user involvement and lay advocacy, it is important to consider and reflect on how both professionals and lay people understand this area of work. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study employed Augusto Boal’s model of Forum Theatre to explore how a variety of professional and lay groups understood, related to and engaged with how the Care Act 2014 defines and describes “adult safeguarding”.

Lay participants responded to the scenario in a variety of ways, upholding the construct validity of “adult safeguarding” and the authority of the social worker. Social care and health practitioners sought orderly, professionalised and sometimes ritualistic solutions to the “adult safeguarding” scenario presented, seeking carefully to structure and to manage lay involvement. Inter-professional collaboration was often problematic. The role of lay advocates was regarded ambiguously and ambivalently.

This paper offers a number of practice and research recommendations. Safeguarding practitioners could benefit from more effective and reflexive inter-professional collaboration. Both practitioners and service users could benefit from the more thoughtful deployment of the lay advocates encouraged within the Care Act 2014 and associated guidance.

The purpose of this study, nested within a broader study about higher education leadership, was to generate knowledge about the ways in which doctoral education prepared people for leadership roles in postsecondary institutions within the USA. At colleges and universities, there is an interest in ensuring diverse leadership teams and welcoming campus environments. Yet, the research demonstrates challenges for and underrepresentation among higher education leaders. One point of intervention is doctoral programs in higher education and related fields, given the professional socialization, identity formation and knowledge acquisition that occurs through the doctoral journey.

By conducting interviews with women who hold doctorates in the field of higher education and who took on new leadership roles at postsecondary institutions in the USA during the global health pandemic, the authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development.

The authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development. Based on those findings, the authors offer initial propositions about how doctoral programs might support the development of equity-minded leaders in higher education, which should be tested and refined through further research, theory development and application to practice.

This paper contributes by providing a focus on the ways in which doctoral programs can equitably train and develop equity-minded leaders for a range of career goals including but not limited to academic appointments in higher education.

We introduce this volume featuring the work of C. L. Clarke and D. A. Hutchinson with references to existing literature addressing complexities of teacher knowledge development. Drawing from their metaphor of the muskeg, we write about ways in which notions of teacher knowledge intersect with prior personal and professional experiences across time, place, and social interaction. Clarke and Hutchinson write about ways in which identities that they view as having developed at the edges of their communities have contributed to shaping their sense of professional and personal identity in profound ways. They examine the potential impact of these experiences in: shaping their research and the building of research relationships with their participants using a narrative inquiry approach; and developing ways in which the use of poetic expression and word images enriched their understanding of the development of teacher identity and knowledge and informed their curriculum making. A chapter written by their dissertation supervisor offers further insight into ways in which their use of a narrative inquiry approach shaped their research work and writing, and offered a unique glimpse into their research phenomenon. We position this work in relation to existing research in the area of teacher knowledge and highlight ways in which this work contributes to knowledge in the area, as well as contributing to ideas about how narrative inquiry methodology has informed the examination of their research phenomenon.

People with an intellectual disability are much more likely to be sexually violated and the violation is less likely to be reported. Despite this being high-lighted at least 3 decades ago and improvements in both safeguarding and national reporting processes, under-reporting remains a problem. This paper explored under-reporting alongside prevention possibilities using safeguarding alerts raised in a Community Learning Disability Team within a UK NHS trust.

Using a combination of authentic but anonymised case vignettes and descriptive data drawn from the safeguarding team, under-reporting was examined through the lens of an ecological model. Safeguarding alerts raised in a particular year were compared with the number expected if all (estimated) cases of abuse were disclosed and reported.

Only 4.4 per cent of expected abuse cases were reported to the team, which is lower than the reporting level the authors had expected from the literature. There is evidence in the literature of the under-reporting of sexual assault for all kinds of people. Arguably, the implications of under-reporting for PwID are even more traumatic.

Constraints included the lack of standardisation in data collection within the statutory services that report to the Birmingham Safeguarding Adults Board. One key recommendation is that the national provider of data for the NHS in the UK requires more complex and standardised audit information that would allow each local authority to benchmark their practice against a higher protection standard. Another recommendation is that compliance to quality standards sits within a comprehensive strategy.

This paper explored the extent to which the previously documented under-reporting concern remains an issue. Certainly eye-balling safeguarding compliance data in the NHS organisation we worked in led us to a concern that reporting might be even lower than implied in the literature. This together with a renewed spot-light on sexual violence (e.g, NHS England, 2018) led us to decide that it was timely to re-examine the problem.