M.A. (Social Work) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1986.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Newcastle, 2000. / Faculty of Education. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 243-286). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis PlanA (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references.

As the need for community care increases, complete and up-to-date information about organizational structure is crucial to making appropriate decisions about the expansion of adult day services. The absence of uniform national policies results in states and communities being relegated to balancing limited funds with the demand for adult day services, and in many areas, the lack of adult day care centers altogether. This study provides an overview of the types of state reimbursement, the availability of different funding sources, and the utilization of the sources in various states.

An interactional model of the socialization process was used to investigate how children develop social competence in the day care center. Socialization is a multimodal process through which messages about how to behave in socially appropriate ways are communicated to children through several modes of communication. The interactional model describes one mode of socialization--the socialization event. Socialization events are interpersonal interactions in which the appropriateness of one or more interactants is explicitly discussed. During such events, socialization agents call upon their repertoires of interactional strategies and linguistic routines to accomplish culturally defined goals of socialization. Over six hundred socialization events were recorded in two day care centers which served different ethnic groups. Research with Anglo and Mexican-American populations revealed that cultural values and educational philosophies affected the way social interaction was organized and the types of socialization events found in the day care centers. Statistical analyses of the socialization events recorded in the two centers revealed significant differences in the ways the socialization process was organized in them. In both centers, there were gender differences in the socialization of individual children. At the Anglo center, emphasis was placed on the socialization of individual boys, while socialization in the Mexican-American center was concerned primarily with groups of children. Differences in the behavior of the teachers at the two centers during socialization events were found to be related to their ethnic background and philosophies of education. Contextual variation in socialization events was also found in the two centers. At the Mexican-American center, significant differences were found in socialization during academic and non-academic contexts. In the Anglo center, contextual variation was attributed to differences in the size of the group of children involved in the activity and the participant structure used to organize interaction during the activity. The results of these analyses indicated that the interactional model of socialization offers insight into both intracultural and cross-cultural variation in the socialization process.

The confluence of several social phenomena in public two-year colleges provided the basis for this study. These phenomena included (1) rapid expansion of community and junior colleges; (2) increased participation of women in higher education and the labor force; and (3) growing interest in early-childhood education on the part of parents, educators, and government officials. A review of the literature revealed that there had been no previous, large-scale study to assess the extent to which public two-year colleges nationwide have (1) created postsecondary curricular offerings in early-childhood education and (2) established early-childhood and child day-care education services for students and others in the community. A questionnaire mailed to a ten-percent sample of public two-year colleges in the fifty states and to all American Indian tribally controlled colleges yielded a response rate of 76 percent. Major findings included the following: (1) Seventy percent of sample colleges offer early-childhood education courses, 38 percent offer certificates, 50 percent offer associate degrees, and 38 percent offer early-childhood/child day-care education services. (2) Among the American Indian colleges responding, all of which are relatively new and are still developing, 62 percent offer early-childhood education courses, 31 percent offer certificates, 31 percent offer associate degrees, and 31 percent offer early-childhood/child day-care education services. (3) In 94 percent of the sample and in all Indian colleges with early-childhood education certificate programs, credits earned for those certificates can be applied to associate degrees. In 88 percent of sample colleges and in all Indian colleges with early-childhood education degree programs, credits earned for those degrees can be transferred to baccalaureate programs in neighboring colleges. Other topics addressed in the findings, conclusions, and recommendations include (1) plans for future offerings, (2) factors influencing the development and design of offerings, (3) recruitment and matriculation, (4) employment services and career development opportunities, (5) staffing, and (6) financing of early-childhood education programs and services in public two-year colleges. Results of the study can be useful in policy formulation and in the development, implementation, and evaluation of programs and services in both higher education and early-childhood education.