| In a world that changes every day, individuals who assist others with change, support change, and create strategies for change, herein referred to as change agents, play an important role in society. The California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP), and Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center are accredited graduate schools with psychology programs that have a distinct way of defining transpersonal education that results in the development of highly individual change agents. By employing thematic analysis, involving semistructured interviews of 24 alumni of these programs (100% living in the United States), 8 alumni from each of the three schools, this dissertation proposed to answer the question: How do graduate institutions who utilize transpersonal concepts inform the development of change agents? Participants were asked what aided and what obstructed their professional development. Data was viewed and analyzed as one whole group and then later separated and analyzed by individual school. Findings indicate transpersonal graduate programs inform the development of their students by facilitating these learners in a personal change process which they reported later using within their professions. Based upon participant reports, a personal change process is a transformation of the self or how one observes, understands, and knows oneself. It is an increase in personal and social awareness. Furthermore, this personal change process occurs through experience, not just lecture oration, but through a broad curriculum including inquiry and emotional, physical, transpersonal experiences enabled by faculty, other students, and the school community at large. This research provided detailed data regarding these various transpersonal learning technologies (body psychology, emotional, experiential, relational, and, specifically, transpersonal learning). Some future studies: delineate the parameters of the personal change process, quantitative research to gather specific data regarding themes, research involving psychology graduate programs that are not philosophically and experientially transpersonal. |
