The purpose of this study was to implement and assess the efficacy of a novel social skills intervention (First Friends; Graham, 2000, 2006) on improving social cognitive skills, social behaviours, and executive functions in an early childhood population of children from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Early school years are a critical developmental period to intervene to facilitate social competency and reduce problem behaviours. Children from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds are at-risk as many suffer from behavioural problems and begin school without the social maturity and behavioural regulation skills needed to succeed in an academic environment. First Friends is an 8-week preventive intervention designed to promote critical areas of social-emotional development including problem solving, conflict resolution, planning, identification of emotions, empathy, assertiveness, anger management, verbal communication, creativity and cooperation. In addition to examining intervention effects, another goal for this study was to examine the mediational role of improvements in different latent EF components (i.e., working memory, inhibition, set-shifting/mental flexibility) on intervention outcomes. Executive functions (EF) have been linked to social-emotional competence. The First Friends program teaches social skills that are suggested to require EF to learn, as well as implement, during social interactions. The social skills taught and practiced also utilize overlapping brain pathways. Therefore, the First Friends intervention was hypothesized to impact both social-emotional functions and EF, given that 1) EF appears to be required in learning and developing several social and emotional skills, and 2) brain pathways utilized in carrying out these functions overlap. Eighty-seven kindergarten children (41 controls, M = 5.42 years; 46 intervention, M = 5.40 years) from socio-economically disadvantaged areas of the Greater Victoria region in B.C. participated in this study. Children's EF and social-emotional and social-cognitive skills were assessed and their social skills and behaviours were rated by parents, teachers, and observers before and after the intervention. Results provided support for the efficacy of the intervention with children who participated in the intervention demonstrating significantly stronger socio-emotional and social cognitive abilities, more prosocial behaviours, and less negative behaviours compared to a control group. Parent and teacher reports did not reveal significant changes. In addition, significant intervention effects on working memory and set-shifting/mental flexibility were found. Contrary to hypotheses, intervention effects were not revealed for inhibition. In addition, none of the EF latent constructs were found to mediate intervention outcomes. Overall, the First Friends program shows promise with regard to improving both social and executive functioning skills, and continued research and implementation with this program is warranted. These findings highlight the importance of not only assessing for social outcomes, but also examining the development of other cognitive processes that appear to be involved in social development. The results of this study can facilitate understanding of the scope of social intervention outcomes on cognitive processes and guide the selection and implementation of effective prevention programs with early childhood populations in the future. / Graduate

Little attention has been paid to how kindergarten principals in Hong Kong enact their leadership and how their leadership is related to the gender of the principals and to the culture of the society. This study therefore aimed to document and explore how two kindergarten principals in Hong Kong conducted their leadership in respect of what they did, why they did so, and how they experienced their leadership, with a view to understanding the leadership conduct of these principals and to shedding light on the issues of women and the role of culture in school leadership. Both participants were female. One of the leaders was the principal of a non profit-making kindergarten which had joined the government's subsidy scheme, and the other was a principal of a profit-making kindergarten that had not joined the scheme. A series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principals along with observations of what they did on specific days as well as an analysis of documents the principals used in their work. Rich and thick data were obtained regarding what these principals did in leading staff to offer an education to children, and the beliefs, values and motives underlying their leadership. Both principals exercised strong and direct control over what to teach children, how teachers engaged in their teaching, and the activities designed to promote the kindergartens to the public to recruit children. They did so because of their beliefs about the importance of these matters for defining the kind of education to offer to children, their determination to lead well, and their perception of staff being insufficiently competent and motivated. Both exerted much less control on matters perceived as less important to enhancing the survival of the kindergartens. One of the principals was concerned about adverse effects of how staff viewed her leadership, which arose from the strong control she exercised. In light of her perception of the propriety of caring behaviour towards others in a kindergarten, she exhibited caring and teamwork behaviour aimed partly at minimising the adverse effects of her strong control. The other principal was not concerned about negative effects on staff of the strong and direct control she exercised, but still demonstrated a range of behaviour, including caring and teamwork behavior, to motivate staff to perform. The findings show that these leaders considered a host of factors in enacting their leadership, and thus suggest that current theorizing of women in leadership needs to capture an extended range of complex factors that may influence how female leaders conduct and experience their leadership. In addition, the findings add to current theorizing about the motives underlying the enactment of leadership, in that control was enacted to conform to cultural expectations and to ensure adequate staff performance, while caring was enacted to minimize the adverse effects on staff of control or as means to motivate staff. The findings also show that the two leaders made active use of culture to influence staff, and experienced tensions coming from competing cultural values and norms. These are aspects that have not been addressed by current theorizing of the role of culture in school leadership.

As a practising classroom teacher with an academic interest in literacy acquisition, I was aware of the complex nature of literacy and the controversial debates around the teaching and learning of literacy. Having frequently witnessed and been intrigued by the idiosyncratic intricacies of literacy learning in my teaching and parenting, I was drawn towards theorists and educators who recognise literacy as a complex social practice. As classroom teacher and researcher, I set out with the broad aim of exploring sociocultural factors influencing the literacy development of students in the class I was teaching at the time. Using a qualitative research paradigm, data collection began at the beginning of the school year and proceeded until the end of the final term. Data collection techniques included participant observation, field notes, video and audio recordings, questionnaires, structured and unstructured interviews and artefact collection. Initial analysis examined the data to identify factors that appeared to influence literacy development. As analysis proceeded, I became aware of intertextual incidents in the data. Intertextuality was first defined by Kristeva (1967) and describes the process of interpreting one text by means of a previously composed text. The presence of intertextual events in this study and the implications they have for literacy teaching and learning, precipitated the eventual focus for the study, namely, intertextuality. An exploration of the theory of intertextuality, its significance to literacy, analysis of intertextuality in this classroom data and the implications for literacy teaching in the kindergarten classroom became the central focus of the study. The study involved transcribing the intertextual incidents from the data and categorising them across three domains. The research has led to significant theoretical progress in understanding intertextuality and amongst other things has suggested a framework for describing intertextual incidents The final stage of the study also involved drawing together four themes from the literature on intertextuality with transcript examples from the kindergarten study. This conclusive paper indicates the application of independent critical ability in synthesising the new data with the complex body of literature surrounding intertextuality. / Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--School of Education. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2006. / "A dissertation in urban leadership and policy studies in education and education." Advisor: Stuart A. McAninch. Typescript. Vita. Title from "catalog record" of the print edition Description based on contents viewed Oct. 31, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 270-281). Online version of the print edition.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Tulsa, 1990. / Bibliography: leaves 79-86.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Teacher Education, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on March 31, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 133-138). Also issued in print.

Research paper (M.A.) -- Cardinal Stritch College -- Milwaukee, 1970. / A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education (Reading Specialist). Includes bibliographical references (p.26-27).

Research paper (M.A.)--Cardinal Stritch College--Milwaukee, 1969. / A research paper submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Education (Reading Specialist). Includes bibliographical references (44-47).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A. (Communication Disorders))--Mahidol University, 1982.