Affective Social Neurobiology and Student Formation in Christian Higher Education Institutions: A Transdisciplinary Multimethod Study

Abstract

This multimethod study utilizes methods of grounded qualitative meta-analysis and transdisciplinary textual analysis to examine the extent to which the phenomenon of student spiritual formation at Christian higher education institutions reflects the growing body of literature on human development from the field of affective social neurobiology. The meta-analysis was based on four previously conducted qualitative studies of student spiritual formation at Christian higher education institutions. Each study was individually analyzed utilizing standard grounded theory processes of open, axial, and selective coding. The results of each were then combined for a grounded qualitative meta-analysis across the primary studies to produce hypotheses about the phenomenon of student spiritual formation derived from the data. These hypotheses were then read in light of affective social neurobiological research utilizing a transdisciplinary methodology. The thesis concludes with implications of the findings, application for those facilitating spiritual formation processes, and directions for future research.