What is it about?
This interview-based qualitative case study grounded in Weberian (1947; 1994; 2011) concepts of sociological theory and Vygotskyan (1978; 1987) socio-cultural constructivism was approved by the IRB with the waiver of the signed consent for identity protection of participants. The subjects in the larger project were scholars at American public universities. The sample was purposefully formed and included representatives of Americans of international descent, people of color and low socio-economic status communities, and first generation in college students. Recruitment occurred confidentially via conversations with the Principal Investigator, aka the author of this chapter. This project aimed to further research the problems connected with the distribution of power and its overuse in academic environments, legitimate, but oppressing, thus unwanted domination and the effects from the above on the vulnerable populations in educational settings. Unstructured interviews were the major research instrument. The collected data were coded via Miles and Huberman (1984) memoing and Saldaña’s (2012) thematic coding. Upon completion of the data analysis, this research found a steadily recurring pattern: the participants who had experienced mistreatment and abuse in the academic settings chose to not engage in the search for justice due to their prior personal and observed negative experiences, where search for justice resulted in highly negative outcomes, i.e., worthening of the state of things. As the result, the participants gained learned helplessness. This current chapter focuses on the case of one participant, a female college student from Central Asia.
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Why is it important?
It is highly significant to realize the possibility of a large number of silenced cases of mistreatment and abuse in academe. So, it is extremely important to recognize that letting a victim die silently in the torturous agony of a deep psychological, emotional, or physical pain from abuse is as much a crime as the one caused by a physical assault, which, even if not uncovered, remains by its nature a violent crime.
Perspectives
Behaving similarly to primates within a simian troop, abusers form hierarchically organized cliques and attempt to involve more of their peers or colleagues to join in and reinforce their oppressive practices (Haun et al., 2014). Subsequently, the above snow-ball process results in involvement of the former indifferent or passive bystanders. Unvoluntary or allegedly, the latter begin copying the behaviors of the dominating power-seekers (e.g., Cappadocia, 2012; Fischer et al., 2011; Haun et al., 2014).
Dr. Olga Gould-Yakovleva
SUNY Alumna, Independent Researcher,
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ”Die Silently!”: A Qualitative Case Study on Mistreatment, Abuse, and Subsequently Gained Learned Helplessness in Academe, August 2025, Proud Pen Limited,
DOI: 10.51432/978-1-914266-12-6-2.
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