SPIRITUALITY AMONG THE PROFESSORIATE AT A PRIVATE UNIVERSITY IN LIMA, PERU ESPIRITUALIDAD ENTRE EL PROFESORADO EN UNA UNIVERSIDAD PRIVADA EN LIMA, PERÚ

This study examined the professoriate view of spirituality at a private university in Lima, Peru. A two-phase, sequential mixed method was used. Two hundred forty professors completed Paloutzian and Ellison’s (1982) Spiritual Well-Being Scale (SWBS) for the quantitative phase. Five research questions exploring the professors’ gender, general area of teaching (humanities vs. sciences), highest university degree earned, age, and total years of university teaching experience were analyzed to determine if any significant differences existed within those variables. Two non-parametric tests were used: the Mann-Whitney U test and the Kruskal-Wallis Test. It was discovered only gender showed a significant difference. Five surveyed professors participated in the focus group phase exploring significant gender difference on the spiritual well-being scores. Five questions explored this difference between males and females. Four themes emerged: gender role enculturation, biological motherhood, stress, and internal strength.


INTRODUCTION
Most modern educational systems worldwide were founded on two guiding principles: the first was the intellectual culture of the Enlightenment and the second was the economic circumstances of the Industrial Revolution (Robinson, 2010).The Enlightenment's intellectual model of the mind was logical, objective, and firmly entrenched in Cartesian scientific skepticism.
A number of researchers have pointed out that the current academic environment in higher education has overlooked the spiritual in favor of the more traditionally acceptable academic qualities mentioned above.Abu-Febiri (2011) argued that "this privileging of rational and objective knowledge, skills and attitude set and the denial or rejection of emotions, morals, and spirit has been the fundamental operating principle of formal education" (p.47).Yihong (2002) stated that the "fragmentation of knowledge and alienation of people is the general picture you see in the academic world" (p.4).Incorporating spirituality into teaching has gone against over 200 years of educational institutionalization of the positivistic model.Speaking up can cause stress and value conflicts; many educators have feared for their jobs and thus have kept their spirituality and spiritual practices out of sight at work (Churchman, 2006;Winefield, Gillespie, Stough, Dua, Hapuarachchi, & Boyd, 2003).
According to Lindholm and Astin (2008), "From a research standpoint, with few exceptions (see Astin & Astin, 1999;Braskamp, 2003), the empirical research on spirituality that has been conducted in higher education institutions has focused primarily on students, ignoring completely the experiences, attitudes, expectations, and behaviors of faculty" (p.201).
For this reason, the faculty voice regarding spirituality in the academic workplace was the problem to be explored.The purpose of this study was to examine the professoriate view of spirituality at a private university in Lima, Peru.
The significance of this study was to offer a distinct perspective on spirituality in academia and fill a literature gap because little research in this area has been done in South America.The first area to explore is the development of spirituality, which for the sake of brevity will be limited to the twentieth century even though it is understood that its scope is much greater.Shahjahan (2010) explained that "the word 'spirituality' emerged un grupo de enfoque y participaron cinco profesores para explorar la diferencia de género.La diferencia entre hombres y mujeres se exploraron mediante cinco preguntas y emergieron cuatro temas: enculturación de género, maternidad biológica, estrés y fuerza interna.
in 17 th century European culture and originated from the Latin word spiritualitas-meaning the breath of life" (p.475).In the second half of the twentieth century, the construct of spirituality displayed two main characteristics: the Romantic Movement's rejection of materialism and institutional forms of religion, and the emergence of psychology as a science that promoted a nonreligious conception of spirituality (Carrette & King, 2005).These authors argued that "this changing view of spirituality in modern capitalistic societies led many traditions, including Christianity, to demythologize by replacing the older cosmological and disciplinary language with the interiorized and psychologically inflected language of spirituality" (p.43).
As the twentieth century progressed, American psychology movements (e.g., the views of William James and the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow) further distanced spirituality from religion (Shahjahan, 2010).Maslow's language facilitated a "clear break between 'spirituality' and its institutional moorings, opening the space for 'spirituality' to be seen as secular rather than uniquely as a religious phenomenon" (Carrette & King, 2005, p. 75).It has also been pointed out that there is a binary opposition between spirituality and religion (viewing religion as 'bad' and spirituality as 'good') that permeates spirituality literature (Carrette & King, 2005;Miller, 2007).Shahjahan (2010) argued that "such a binary conception ignores the fact that both religion and spirituality are socially constructed terms that vary, depending on their social and historical context" (p.478).
A second major shift in the construct of spirituality occurred in the 1980s; this was the period that saw spirituality move toward the privatization of religion and become a consumer product (Carrette & King, 2005).
In her analysis of New Age spiritual thinkers, Rindfleish (2005) found that these New Age authors "align themselves with consumptive behavior by secularizing, homogenizing and over-simplifying scientific, social scientific and traditional religious discourse and practices into 'social products' for consumption " (p. 343).
The second area to explore is the conceptual ambiguity of the construct of spirituality.Three challenges to defining spirituality will be discussed.One challenge to defining spirituality is its metaphysical nature.Griffin (1988) stated that "spirituality also alludes to the otherworldly or metaphysical realms" (p. 1).One cannot touch or observe spirituality; it is not part of the material world that can be measured and labeled by empirical scientific methods.Beringer (2000) wrote: "Even if religion is rejected in delineating spirituality, this must not be coterminous with rejecting the metaphysical" (p.159).A second challenge to defining spirituality is its two metacharacteristics (Izak, 2009).First, its openness means there are so many possible definitions of spirituality, it is almost impossible to refine the term down to one sufficiently narrow yet all-encompassing working definition (Astin, 2004;de Jager Meezenbroek, Garssen, van den Berg, van Dierendonck, Visser, & Schaufeli, 2012;Izak, 2009).Second, the very undefinable nature of spirituality makes it a very indefinite notion.This indefiniteness of spirituality was Izak's (2009) second meta-characteristic of spirituality.A third challenge to defining spirituality is its meaning is not static, but rather dynamic (Estanek, 2006;Izak, 2009;Mahoney & Graci, 1999).For example, Estanek Because of these challenges, the researcher cautiously decided to approach spirituality not as a definition, but rather as a description for understanding professoriate spirituality.Because of its broad scope, Astin's (2004)   Pina e Cunha, 2008).Third, some research has suggested that spirituality can cause negative effects on employees.Some accounts in the literature have found that the introduction of spirituality in the workplace can be a disturbance (Smith, 1996); a source of pathologic behavior (Forray & Stork, 2002); a disciplinary, patriarchal influence on employees (Nadesan, 1999); or cause mental isolation of workers in a spiritualized organization (Pratt, 2000).Fourth, The fourth area to explore is spirituality in the academic work setting, or spirituality in academia (SIA).This section will explore the negative and positive arguments for SIA in the literature.

There were five quantitative and one
qualitative research questions for this study of professoriate spirituality.Even though the research questions were chosen arbitrarily, they were crafted only after a review of the literature and discussing spirituality, spirituality at work, and spirituality in academia with a number of professors.The quantitative research questions were: • Is there a significant difference in the scores between male and female professors?• Is there a significant difference in the scores between professors in the humanities and professors in the sciences?
• Is there a significant difference in the scores between professors with bachelor's and professors with master's degrees?
• Is there a significant difference among the scores of professors in various age groups?
• Is there a significant difference among the scores of professors with various years of teaching experience?
The qualitative research question was: • How does the professoriate view spirituality at a private university in Lima, Peru?

METHOD Research Design
The research design for this phenomenological study was a two-phase, sequential mixed method.The first phase was quantitative and data were gathered using a quantitative survey instrument.The second phase was qualitative and data were gathered using participant responses from a focus group.A sequential explanatory strategy was appropriate for this study for two reasons.First, Beringer (2000) warned about the difficulty of using traditional empirical scientific methods on the metaphysical construct of spirituality.

He argued that "scientific skepticism about
what is essentially a metaphysical phenomenon together with limited and limiting methods of scientific inquiry" (p.158) called for a multifaceted approach to its study.Second, Giacalone and Jurkiewicz (2003) reported the use of only quantitative data collection methods in spirituality research could limit the depth and quality of results.

Selection of Participants
The target population for this study included all full and part-time faculty participants with 1 to 4.9 years of experience (35%); 59 participants with 5 to 9.9 years of experience (24.58%), and 97 participants with 10 to 40 years of experience (40.42%).
The mean number of years of post-secondary teaching experience was 9.46.

Qualitative Sampling Procedures
The focus group participants were purposefully chosen from the participants who completed the quantitative survey instrument.If a professor was willing to participate in the focus group, the professor wrote his or her university e-mail address in the space provided at the bottom of the survey instrument cover page.
Sixty-two of the 240 participants (25.8%) wrote their e-mail address on the cover page of the survey instrument.One of the 62 volunteers was eliminated because there was conflict of interest; it was the professor who became the statistics consultant.willing to volunteer for the focus group.The second page was the SWBS.The third page was the informed consent letter that had to be signed by the participant.

Focus group protocol. The Focus
Group Protocol was designed around any unusual, surprising, or unexpected results; it was designed to explore and inform these results.The only surprise in the quantitative analyses was one independent variable (gender) that showed a statistically significant difference on the SWB scores.As a result of this finding, the purpose of the Focus Group Protocol was to explore the differences between the SWB scores based on gender.
To examine the gender differences of the SWB scores, a frequency distribution of the male and female scores was generated.
With the frequency distribution created, two criteria were used to look for items that could be used as topics for the Focus Group Protocol.The first criterion was to assume that if at least 66+ percent of a gender group responded in the same direction, it constituted a perception of that group.This A review of the distribution frequencies revealed nine items from the SWBS that met at least one or both of these criteria.
• Item 1: I do not find much satisfaction in private prayer with God • Item 3: I believe that God loves me and cares about me The researcher translated the Focus Group Protocol in English to Spanish and he asked three colleagues whose native language is Spanish to check the translation for grammar errors and comprehensibility.
Next, the Focus Group Protocol was pilot tested with two survey participants (one female and one male) who did not volunteer for the focus group.Spanish was the language used to conduct the pilot test (and the focus group).The participants responded to the questions, suggested follow-up questions, and critiqued the researcher's performance as a focus group moderator.The pilot test of the Focus Group Protocol lasted 40 minutes.
[ The analyses were designed to develop themes from the answers given to the first three focus group questions.A theme was defined as repeated thoughts that a minimum of two participants shared.In addition, these repeated thoughts needed to be about why the focus group participants believed the women from the SWBS survey had feelings about the survey items that differed from the men's.
The researcher developed themes one focus group question at a time.He read and re-read a focus group question's participant responses, took notes, and highlighted repeated thoughts that were directly related to why the There were five quantitative research questions generated from five independent variables.These variables were: 1) gender, 2) general area of teaching, 3) highest university degree earned, 4) age, and 5) total years of postsecondary teaching experience.After the initial SWB scores were analyzed for normal distribution, it was determined that the statistical analyses had to be done using non-parametric tests as the assumptions for using parametric tests were not met.Accordingly, the data were analyzed using one of the following non-parametric tests: a Mann-Whitney U test or a Kruskal-Wallis test.An alpha level of (α = .05)was used for this study.

Quantitative Results
Using the Spiritual Well-Being (SWB) scores from the survey instrument, a Cronbach's coefficient alpha was calculated to estimate the SWBS's reliability.The internal consistency coefficient was .92(SWB), which in a general sense means the participant answers to the 20 items on the SWBS demonstrated sufficiently high reliability and internal consistency.Even though the RWB and EWB scores were not used individually in the analyses of this study, they are worth noting.The internal consistency coefficients for these were .96(RWB) and .81(EWB).These data add to the literature because no reliability data for the SWBS were found for professors in Latin America.
Research question 1 (RQ1).This research question explored if the professors' gender had an effect on the spiritual well-being scores.The mean, standard deviation, and range for female professors were 100.68,15.930, and 65 (from 55 to 120), respectively.The mean, standard deviation, and range for male professors were 93, 20.236, and 95 (from 25 to 120), respectively.The Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the data related to RQ1.The results were significant at the .05level (see Table 1).In a general sense, with a significance level of 5%, there is a difference in the scores between male and female professors.

Research question 2. This research
question explored if the professors' area of teaching (i.e., the humanities or the sciences) had an effect on the spiritual well-being scores.
The mean, standard deviation, and range for professors in the humanities were 95.33, 19.580, and 95 (from 25 to 120), respectively.The mean, standard deviation, and range for professors in the sciences were 98.46, 17.291, and 64 (from 56 to 120), respectively.The Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the data related to RQ2.The results were not significant at the .05level (see Table 2).In a general sense, with a significance level of 5%, there is not a difference in the scores between professors in the humanities and professors in the sciences.to analyze the data related to RQ4.The results

Table 1 Mann-Whitney U Test for Differences Based on Gender
were not significant at the .05level (see Table 4).In a general sense, with a significance level of 5%, there is not a difference among scores of professors in various age groups.5).In a general sense, with a significance level of 5%, there is not a difference among the scores of professors with various years of teaching experience.

Qualitative Results
The analyses were designed to develop themes from the answers given to the first three focus group questions.The construct of theme for this study was defined previously.approximately twice as many words as did the males (i.e., a ratio of 1.99:1), which is the third largest difference of the Focus Group Questions.
Gender role enculturation.Rider (2005) defined gender roles as "culturally prescribed behaviors and traits that dictate how males and females should act" (p.21).Kim and Abreu (2001)  Near the end of the discussion on focus group question 1, FP2 reminded the researcher that there were "also educational/childrearing factors" that might have helped explain why women felt they had a more personally meaningful relationship with God than men.
Biological motherhood.Both female participants were mothers.They talked about how becoming a mother might affect why women had different feelings toward the personal meaningfulness of their relationship with God as compared to men.FP1 stated that: God helps them feel 'not as lonely'?
Four of five participants shared thoughts in response to this question.Using the definition of theme given above, no themes were evident.
There was no theme because there was no commonality in the comments focused on the question asked.Such commonality as there was, all focused on other non-question issues.The females and males spoke approximately the same number of words (i.e., a ratio of 1.08:1), which is the smallest difference of the Focus Group Questions.
Focus group question 3. The third Focus Group question was designed around item 16 of the SWBS survey: I feel that life is full of conflict and unhappiness.Focus Group Question 3 was: If we assume that at least a 15 percentage point difference in female and male responses is large enough to explore, why do you think more women disagree that life is full of conflict and unhappiness than men do?
All five participants shared thoughts in response to this question.Using the definition of theme given above, two themes seemed evident: Stress and Internal Strength.It is interesting to note that Stress was an exclusively male theme and Internal Strength was an exclusively female theme.The females spoke more than four times as many words as did the males (i.e., a ratio of 4.42:1), which is the largest difference of the Focus Group Questions.

Stress. All the male participants
mentioned stress in their brief responses.As soon as the question was asked, MP2 started the responses stating: Ah, well, maybe speaking of, it is has to do with social patterns.Sometimes, eh, men tend to have more responsibility, you know?It may not be true but they may think they have more responsibilities.So this implies perhaps some things won't turn out as planned, being or not a moment of stress for them.I see it like this; I believe there are studies, both psychological and physiological; women's tolerance to frustration is higher than men's.It could also be for this type of associated factor that identifies, like somebody said, how much conflict and unhappiness they still believe is their responsibility and this creates high levels of stress.
MP3 joined in saying, "Seeing high levels of stress also surprised me and maybe the men didn't understand the question."[General laughter all around] There are two points about the responses of the males that are worth mentioning.First, it could be argued that MP1's comment relates to the following theme because having a higher tolerance to frustration could be understood as an internal strength.
Second, MP3's comment about the males not understanding the question could have merit because the males said very little after this, leaving the females to do the majority of the talking during Focus Group Question 3.

DISCUSSION
There was a significant difference between female and male professors as evidenced by scores on the Spiritual Well-Being Scale.A focus group, in which three males and two females participated, was used to explore these gender differences.Four themes emerged from the focus group participant answers that could help in exploring these gender differences.(Mahalik & Lagan, 2001).
Citing the results of these authors, Simpson, Cloud, Newman and Fuqua (2008)

CONCLUSIONS
There are two conclusions based on the results of this study.First, it can be concluded there was a significant difference between female and male professors as evidenced by scores on the Spiritual Well-Being Scale.A focus group, in which three males and two females participated, was used to explore these gender differences.Four themes emerged from the focus group participant answers that could help in exploring these gender differences.It would be of value to make cross-cultural comparisons of how and whether gender affects the sexes' perceived socio-gender norms for exploring and expressing personal spirituality.
Ninth, a study ought to be conducted which is designed to explore the differences in the In other words, a validity issue is Astin's (2004) [

Four
areas in the literature emerged that shed light on the challenge of studying spirituality in the academic workplace, or spirituality in academia (SIA): (a) the development of spirituality in the twentieth century, (b) the conceptual ambiguity of the construct of spirituality, (c) the modern spirituality at work (SAW) or workplace spirituality (WS) movement, and (d) the recent burgeoning research area of SIA, which is a branch of SAW/WS.

(
2006) did a qualitative literature review of spirituality to find out in what direction its definition was heading.She discovered that "the new literature on spirituality can be considered a new discourse, and that no one [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 definition of spirituality informs this emerging discourse" (p.272).
that everyone-regardless of their belief systems-can find some personal value and educational relevance in the concept.(p. 1) The third area to explore is the rise of the modern spirituality at work (SAW) or workplace spirituality (WS) movement.Starting in the 2000s, Ashmos and Duchon (2000) described workplace spirituality as "the recognition that employees have an inner life that nourishes and is nourished by meaningful work that takes place in the context of community" (p.137).The key tenets here are inner life, meaningful work, and a sense of community.Charoensukmongkol, Daniel, and Chatelain-Jardon (2013) explained that these three factors "have been deployed extensively by previous studies to measure spirituality in the workplace" (p.4).In addition, Hayden, Barbuto, and Goertzen (2008) advocated Ashmos and Duchon's workplace spirituality description because it comes close to being a usable definition.There are mixed reports in the literature concerning SAW/WS.Negative arguments will be examined first followed by positive ones.The first negative argument some authors have claimed is that SAW/WS has faced an uphill battle for legitimacy in the business world because modern organizations function in accordance to Cartesian-Newtonian systems (Gotsis & Kortezi, 2008).Second, some researchers have called into question the scientific rigor of previous positive spirituality at work research, calling it highly hypothetical (Giacalone, Krahnke, & Jurkiewicz, 2003) and marked by scarcity of empirical results (Rego & [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 studied the importance of meaning and spirituality in the lives of 70 professors.In interviews, the faculty members stated they were eager to discuss meaning, purpose, and spirituality, but unwritten institutional barriers prevented them from doing it.A third negative argument against SIA is some academics considered it challenging to introduce spirituality in the classroom.Kirsch (2009) worried "exploring spirituality in the classroom can easily turn into an antiintellectual enterprise that defies analysis, critique, and debate-the exact opposite of what higher education sets out to do" (p.W3).A fifth negative argument against SIA is economics based.Churchman (2006) argued academics ideally saw universities as places of high moral standards, but easily became discouraged with their daily work routines because the institutions focused more on profit-making and competition instead of on what gave them meaning in life.There are a number of arguments in the literature in favor of SIA.One positive argument for SIA is it has become more mainstream.By the early 1990s, spirituality was starting to become a central topic at many education conferences(Estanek, 2006).Zajonc (2003) also recognized spirituality in academia becoming more mainstream stating: "With increasing frequency they [faculty, staff, and academic administrators] are speaking openly about their interest in the contemplative and spiritual dimensions of higher education and are taking steps to explore ways to integrate them sensibly into their work" (para.5).A second positive argument for SIA is more studies have been conducted focusing on how student/professor relationships are affected by spirituality.Riley (2010) stated research into [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 academic spirituality "is an emerging area of research and literature, especially with regard to such themes as life purpose, meaning, and authenticity and their role in the lives of both students and faculty" (p.16).Other research (e.g., Lindholm, Astin, & Astin, 2005) has shown faculty who self-identify as spiritual were more likely to embrace student-centered approaches to undergraduate teaching.A third positive argument for SIA is that an important body of literature has emerged (see Astin & Astin, 1999; Chickering, Dalton & Stamm, 2006; Denton & of well-being, and is especially sensitive to lack of well-being.SWB, RWB, and EWB are correlated positively with a positive self-concept, sense of purpose in life, physical health, and emotional adjustment.(p.4) Because the SWBS has been extensively used on other adult populations to measure general spiritual well-being, its use with an adult population in this study seemed germane.For this study, the researcher used the Spanish version of the SWBS as part of a threepage survey packet in Spanish.The first page was a cover letter briefly explaining the nature of the study into professoriate spiritualitythat did not view religion and spirituality as coterminous-asking for five items of biographical information that were used to formulate the quantitative research questions, and providing an area for the professors to write down an email address if they were possibly [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 is known as the C. Robert Pace 66+ Rule (National Survey of Student Engagement, 2011).The second criterion was at least a 15-point difference between the genders in the frequency distribution percentages.An item was explored as a possible source of a focus group question if at least one of the criteria was met.

•
Item 7: I have a personally meaningful relationship with God • Item 9: I do not get much personal strength and support from my God • Item 13: I do not have a personally satisfying relationship with God • Item 15: My relationship with God helps me not to feel lonely • Item 16: I feel that life is full of conflict and unhappiness • Item 17: I feel most fulfilled when I am in close communion with God • Item 19: My relation to God contributes to my well-being After further review, five of the nine items were eliminated due to redundancies and being less aligned to Astin's (2004) description of spirituality.A fifth question about the professors' understanding of spirituality in academia was added to the Focus Group Protocol because Lindholm and Astin (2008) stated that "qualitative followup research that is aimed at understanding how faculty view their spirituality's role in interactions with students and colleagues would be especially useful" (p.202).
RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 PROCEDURES There were quantitative data collection procedures.The three-page survey instrument packet was folded and stuffed into a white envelope.While handing out the surveys, the researcher introduced himself, mentioned the survey was for doctoral research, requested the professors complete the survey within a few days, and explained the survey turn-in procedure.The secretaries of the teachers' lounge were made available to collect the completed surveys.There were qualitative data collection procedures.The focus group was held in a small meeting room on the main campus.Tables were set up in a circle and the audio recording device was placed in the center.This table arrangement allowed each participant to be equally close to the recording device and it allowed face-to-face communication.When five of six participants had arrived 20 minutes after the scheduled start-up time, the researcher decided it was time to begin.This left two female and three male focus group participants.The researcher acted as the moderator.The focus group lasted just over 70 minutes.was the translation from Spanish to English and simultaneous transcription of the data from the focus group audio file.A native speaker of Spanish helped translate and transcribe to English the 70-minute audio file.To increase the credibility and trustworthiness of the transcription, the researcher asked an independent translator to verify the quality of the transcription.The translator commented, "Last night I listened to the audio while reading the transcript.I can say that the translation is mostly accurate and faithful to the original.There are some nuances of oral Spanish that have been neutralized, but I think none of these have led to false or counter meanings" (Villanueva, personal communication, December 2, 2014).Question 4 on the Focus Group Protocol had too many comments from the moderator that may be construed as leading the participants.Question 5 on the Focus Group Protocol had several examples provided by the moderator.In an abundance of caution, focus group questions 4 and 5's transcript data were not included in the analyses to prevent any criticism of researcher bias.

[
RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 focus group participants believed the women from the SWBS survey had thoughts about the survey items that differed from the men's.The researcher looked for key repeating words and phrases.From these, the researcher created the final theme names that reflected the essence of the participants' responses.
question 5.This research question explored if the professors' years of university teaching experience had an effect on the spiritual well-being scores.The mean, standard deviation, and range for low experience professors (1 to 4.9 years) were 93.52, 20.177, and 95 (from 25 to 120), respectively.The mean, standard deviation, and range for medium experience professors (5 to 9.9 years) were 97.73, 17.997, and 64 (from 56 to 120), respectively.The mean, standard deviation, and range for high experience professors (10 to 40 years) were 98.63, 17.587, and 80 (from 40 to 120), respectively.The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to analyze the data related to RQ5.The results were not significant at the .05level (see Table

Focus group question 1 .
The first Focus Group Protocol question was designed around item 7 of the SWBS survey: I have a personally meaningful relationship with God.Focus Group Question 1 was: If we assume that at least a 15 percentage point difference in female and male responses is large enough to explore, why do you think more women feel they have a personally meaningful relationship with God than men?Four of five participants shared thoughts in response to this question.Using the definition of theme given above, two themes seemed evident: Gender Role Enculturation and Biological Motherhood.The females spoke defined enculturation as "a process of socialization (or re-socialization) into and maintenance of the heritage culture norms" (p.399).Male Participant 1 (MP1) expressed thoughts that were categorized under the theme of Gender Role Enculturation.He stated: I believe there is a cultural tradition that associates women also, you know, I believe unconsciously associates women more with God and religion than men.Men (pause) I don't know if I'm right or wrong.Machismo might have something to do with it too.There are still traces of machismo in our society.Female Participant 1 (FP1) concurred with MP1 about it being cultural and added further information about how children are raised in her culture: I believe it's cultural and how we have been educated (pause).Then it comes from the education and how different roles are assigned to a person.I am a woman because logically, I was born a woman biologically.I was born a woman so I was educated distinctly as compared to my brother, right?My brother got a bigger piece of chicken and I got a smaller one.I was born into this and saw it as normal.
stated that "Based on these findings they suggested the masculine gender role may restrict men from living more 'authentic lives'" (p.43).In this study, it appears this attitude was evident in the participant responses in the Gender Role Enculturation Theme, especially when one male participant mentioned how the gender difference in spirituality might be due to his culture's prevailing machismo.In a qualitative research study that interviewed almost 50 Orthodox Jewish men and women about their personal spirituality,Sands, Robyn and Rivka (2007) found that "Both men and women talked about their spirituality and community, but the women embraced the terms whereas the men endorsed the concepts but were uncomfortable with the terms" (p.539).As evidenced by the greater number of words spoken by the women during the focus group compared to the men, coupled with the moderator's observations of the participants' comfort levels during the focus group, the same might hold true for this study's results.Finally, in an empirical study of 3,680 college students that examined gender differences on 13 spiritual characteristics, Bryant (2007) discovered that "…women scored higher than men did on dimensions related to spirituality, spiritual quest, and self-rated spiritual/religious growth" (p.840).Likewise, the female survey participants in this study also showed statistically significant higher scores on their spiritual well-being (SWB) scores than did the males.In contrast, other studies have not found gender-based distinctions concerning personal spirituality.In their empirical study of 190 Christian adults focusing on sex and gender differences in religiousness and spirituality, Simpson et al. (2008) discovered the following: "The current findings indicate men and women, as well as masculine, feminine, and androgynous types are capable of being aware of a personal relationship with God" (p.51).In fact, regardless of sex/gender, humans may be hardwired to be spiritual or have a connection to the Transcendent.For example, brain imaging in a study by Newberg, D'Aquili and Rause (2001) suggested, Evidence of a neurological process that has evolved to allow us humans to transcend material existence and acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 of as an absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is.(p.9) Finally, Simpson et al. (2008) make a valid point saying, Such potentially equal engagement could decrease the marginalization of men as 'less spiritual' or 'less religious' by shifting the emphasis away from gender differences and toward the general relational nature of humanity and facilitate a deeper spiritual formation for everyone in the community.(p.51) number of words spoken by females and males in focus groups.Does a difference in the number of words spoken by males and females happen in all focus groups?On a larger scale, would the same difference in the number of words spoken by females and males during focus groups be evidenced cross-culturally?Limitations There were four limitations to this study of professoriate spirituality at a private university in Lima, Peru.The first limitation was the subjective nature of spirituality.Quantitative data were not enough to examine spirituality because spirituality is not a topic easily understood solely through statistics.The second limitation was the lack of an appropriate quantitative instrument to measure professoriate spirituality.In the limited time the researcher had, the SWBS was chosen over some other possible survey candidates.An obvious weakness to this study is the SWBSor any other available survey that measures spirituality (see de Jager Meezenbroek et al., 2012, for a review and comparative analysis of current spirituality questionnaires)-does not specifically measure professoriate spirituality.
RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 description of spirituality used as the construct for this study was perhaps not being accurately measured by the survey instrument employed.The quality of the data collected from the focus group was the third limitation.The researcher explored any unusual, surprising, or unexpected survey results in a 70-minute long focus group.The limited amount of time, the development of the focus group discussion questions, researcher bias, and the researcher's moderation of the focus group could have limited the quality of data collection.In an abundance of caution, two out of five focus group questions were not included in the qualitative data analyses due to this limitation's concerns.The study taking place at a private university in Lima, Peru represented the fourth limitation.There were limitations on the transferability to public universities and to universities that were not in a Spanish-speaking culture.Significance of the Study There are four areas of significance for this study.One, this study offered a distinct perspective on spirituality in academia.Two, this study has opened doors to the spirituality in academia movement in South America.Three, considering how technology is changing the landscape of higher education (i.e., on-line learning, mobile learning, game-based learning, and Massive Open On-line Courses or MOOCs,), this study reminds us that we must prepare for these new realities without neglecting the fundamental tenets of workplace spirituality: inner life, meaningful work, and building a sense of community.It will be vital to remind professors their work is just as meaningful even though they may not be standing in front of a room full of students.Finally, the overarching future significance of this study could be summed up by Burke (2014) when he stated that "Haywood asserts, and rightly so, that within the framework of 21 st century learning we must face up to the existential human condition and offer an inclusive set of values and ideas that embody intercultural awareness and spirituality" (p.47).[RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 Sample Size Calculator to generate a Confidence Interval of 5.76 and a Confidence Level of 95%.
members, with at least one year of postsecondary teaching experience at the university, who would be teaching there in 2015 and/or beyond.Because only access to the main campus was granted, the accessible population was limited to 1,410 full and partrepresented 17.02% of the accessible population of 1,410 professors on the main campus.Using this final sample size, the researcher utilized the [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 The internal consistency coefficients ranged from .89 to .94 (SWB), .82 to .94 (RWB), and .78 to .86 (EWB).
received and entered into the quantitative data set.Using these focus group numbers, the researcher used an online random number generator to create two lists for contacting [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: 2223 -2516 Well-Being Scale (SWBS).It was designed in the late 1970s by Paloutzian and Ellison (1982).The items are laid out in a modified Likert scale ranging from Strongly Disagree (numerical value of 1) to Strongly Agree (numerical value of 6) with no middle value.The items are equally phrased in positive and negative terms to reduce "response set bias" (D'Costa, 1995, p. 984).The survey generates three scores (Spiritual Well-Being or SWB, Religious Well-Being or RWB, and Existential Well-Being or EWB) that can be used for statistical analyses, but only one of the three scores was used in this study; i.e., the overall measure of the perception of the spiritual quality of life (SWB) that is generated from the total of 20 items.and Ellison (1991) stated these numbers show that "there is sufficiently high reliability and internal consistency" (p.57).These authors reported the index of internal consistency and coefficient alpha also showed high reliability across seven samples.Research has shown that the items cluster as expected, into the RWB and EWB subscales.Research has also shown that the SWBS is a good general indicator

Table 5
Kruskal-Wallis Test for Differences in Years of Teaching Experience [RIDU]: Revista Digital de Investigación en Docencia Universitaria Dic.2015 -Año 9 -Nro.2| LIMA (PERÚ) ISSN: Being Scale was adequate for this study, perhaps making two modifications could result in different findings in other studies of spirituality in academia.As the first modification, the word "God" should be removed to eliminate confusion between the constructs of religion and spirituality.As the second modification, words like 'meta-physical' and 'transcendent' ought to be included to promote a deeper exploration of personal spirituality.Eighth, a study ought to be conducted which focuses on how gender roles influence personal spirituality of both sexes.