TITLE The Shaming Game: The Role of Shame and Shaming Rituals in Education and Development.

This paper examines the phenomena of shame and shaming from both psychological and sociocultural perspectives. Shame is generally viewed as a private, self-conscious experience in which individuals feel that a weakness or vulnerability has been exposed not only to others but also to themselves leaving them feeling deficient and humiliated. Shaming is considered to be the social process by which shame is induced intentionally or unintentionally in others. Although not all shame experiences are induced by others nor indeed are public, it is argued that social institutions such as schools play a role in perpetuating and condoning shaming rituals justified as encouraging self-conscious moral attributes in individuals. What remains unexplored are the unconscious dynamics of shaming experiences both at an individual and collective level and how these interrelate. This paper explores some preliminary case study data on teachers ' experiences of shame and shaming in educational practice. Results indicate that there is some evidence that teachers may use shaming rituals systematically as pedagogical or regulatory mechanisms. Given the clinical evidence that shame and shame-induced experiences do not necessarily produce the intended adaptive outcomes and are more often associated with negative psychological symptoms, careful self-examination both at individual and system levels within education is needed. (Contains 54 references.) (GCP) * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document.