The relationship between Psychology and Theology has become an issue of increasing concern in recent years for the Christian community. With the growing complexities of cultural differences, the moral decline of society and its drift away from a Christian worldview, the pastoral ministry seems to be as challenging as ever. The problem about the relationship between theology and psychology is that there is growing confusion in today's Christian community about the best way to help people overcome their personal problems of living. In this regard some scholars believe that Christians should only submit to Biblical counselling, while others support psychotherapy, as long as it is integrated with Biblical principles and has a firm Scriptural foundation. In researching the literature on the subject, it was found that various theoretical models have been defined and described as attempts to scientifically justify the union of the above mentioned two points of view. In this thesis the viewpoints of four prominent groups of scholars about the subject are described and analysed in order to determine to what extent will it be possible to identify common denominators amongst their different models and to eventually establish if it is possible to formulate a synthesis about the commonalities so defined. The integration models of the following four prominent groups of authors about the subject were analysed: (1) Larry Crabb (1977); (2) William T. Kirwan (1993), (3) John D. 2 Carter & Bruce Narramore (1979) and (4) Eric L. Johnson & Stanton L. Jones, eds., (2000). These scholar's contributions were chosen for analysis because, from the research about the subject, it was found that these 4 groups of authors made some of the most significant scientific contributions about the integration of theology with psychology. Before attempting to formulate a pastoral paradigm out of a synthesis of the contributions of the aforementioned scholars, it was fundamentally important to distinguish between the 3 prominent views of man. Some scholars argue that man is a monistic being, while others defend a dichotomous view of man as consisting of a body and a soul. A third significant view describes man as consisting of three significant parts, namely a body, a soul and a spirit. In this thesis it was argued that the trichotomous view of man was the most correct way of defining the fundamental composition of man. According to the researcher an understanding of the trichotomous nature of man is important as it serves as a theological basis for pastoral counselling in order to clearly communicate the precise truths of the believer's union with Christ. In the last part of the thesis a practical pastoral paradigm was proposed based on the trichotomous view of man in which psychology and theology can be harmoniously integrated by means of a meta-systemic approach. The first phase of the paradigm focused on a model within which Psychotherapy can be applied while the second phase described Spirituotherapy as a model within which pastoral counselling can be applied. / Thesis (Ph.D. (Pastoral))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.

This ethnographic study explores the experiences of Ivorian journalists in the context of the 2002-2009 crisis in Abidjan, the economic capital city of Côte d’Ivoire. I present material on the political affiliations of newspapers, the structure of the news industry, the attitudes of journalists, and certain aspects regarding the reception and dissemination of media texts in the streets of Abidjan. My interests lie in analysing the origins and the impacts of the accusations to which journalists of the written press are being subjected concerning their role in the Ivorian conflict. I explore how the crisis has been constructed and construed by and through media agents. I focus on the reflexive moments of journalists and on what their metadiscourses reveal about the context of news production in Côte d’Ivoire. Data was collected through participant-observation and interviews over 18 months of fieldwork in 2003, 2004-2005 and 2006 mainly in three newsrooms in Abidjan. This dissertation questions the emphasis placed upon the role of media in African conflicts, which I term the Rwandan paradigm. The Rwandan paradigm is the reductionist notion that mass media indoctrination plays a decisive role in mobilizing African audiences to commit acts of communal violence. Ultimately, I suggest two avenues to broaden our understanding of the intersection between communication and conflict: 1) a recognition of the complex agency of media producers and their audience; 2) an exploration of alternative media and public spaces.

Environmental attitudes are shaped by a variety of factors including our educational history, cultural background, childhood and life experiences, and past and current interactions with nature. This research set out to examine attitudes toward the environment in an understudied but growing segment of the Canadian population, homeschoolers. The purposes of this study were to investigate whether environmental attitudes in Canadian homeschoolers differ from those of people involved with public school and to acquire a greater understanding of the factors that affect the development of these attitudes. The mixed method, follow-up explanatory research design utilized the New Ecological Paradigm Scale and the Connectedness to Nature Scale in an internet survey. The survey was sent to homeschooling and parent groups across Canada. Subsequently, interviews were conducted with a subsample of respondents. The results of the survey showed that demographic variables were not significantly related to environmental attitude scores with the exception of locale and religion. Urban respondents had slightly stronger environmental attitudes than rural respondents. The confluence of homeschooling and religiosity emerged as the key factor influencing environmental attitudes. There was no significant difference between environmental attitudes of homeschoolers and public schoolers until importance of religion was taken into account. As measured by the scales, religious homeschoolers exhibited the weakest environmental attitudes, public schoolers were in the middle, and not-as-religious homeschoolers had the strongest environmental attitudes. The qualitative data supported these results, with religious homeschoolers expressing weaker iv environmental attitudes, particularly in terms of climate change and the need for a more sustainable lifestyle. Religious homeschooling respondents favoured a more structured back to basics style of schooling which also correlated with lower environmental attitude scores. Unstructured homeschooling respondents tended to choose a child-centred philosophy of education which was correlated with stronger environmental attitudes. During the interviews, respondents were asked to reflect on what in their lives had influenced their attitudes toward the environment. Consistent with other literature, unstructured outdoor time as a child remained the most significant factor, cited by a majority of respondents. Other important factors included religion, parents, school, teachers, TV/media, economic necessity, and negative experiences with environmental pollution. The results of this study highlight the importance of considering variables associated with religion when exploring the development or level of environmental attitudes or when conducting a study of homeschooling. Religious beliefs are complex and highly personal in some cases, as is their corresponding influence on environmental concern. Potential exists for environmental concern and action from a group of spiritual people with strong community bonds and often political involvement. The key may be finding common ground and learning to communicate, while resisting expectations of complete agreement. This dissertation showed that stepping outside of the educational system does not necessarily have a direct impact on environmental attitudes, as they are mediated by a complex array of variables. Homeschooling may not directly generate a different level of environmental attitudes than public school; however, religious v homeschoolers definitely have a different set of attitudes toward the environment that deserve further in-depth study.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Darbe aptariama kvalifikacijos samprata, kvalifikacijos tobulinimo aspektai, mokymosi visą gyvenimą nuostatos kontekste. Baigiamojo darbo tikslas – atskleisti muzikos mokytojų požiūrį į kvalifikacijos tobulinimą. Darbo tikslui pasiekti iškelti šie uždaviniai: pateikti mokytojo kvalifikacijos apibrėžtį, apžvelgti kvalifikacijos tobulinimo procesą, išskirti muzikos mokytojo profesijos kompetencijas, atlikti tyrimą, siekiant ištirti muzikos mokytojų požiūrį į kvalifikacijos tobulinimo procesą ir apibendrinti tyrimo duomenis. Tyrimo objektas – muzikos mokytojų kvalifikacijos tobulinimas. Tyrimas atliktas dvylikoje Šiaulių miesto mokyklų. Anketinės apklausos metodu, buvo siekta išsiaiškinti muzikos mokytojų požiūrį į kvalifikacijos tobulinimą. Išanalizavus mokslinę literatūrą galima daryti išvadą, kad, kvalifikacija tai mokytojo turimų kompetencijų, reikalingų mokiniams ugdyti, visuma. Kvalifikacijos tobulinimas Lietuvoje vykdomas pagal neformaliojo švietimo kvalifikacijos tobulinimo programas ir savišvietos būdu. Kvalifikacijos tobulinimo tikslas – skatinti muzikos mokytojus plėsti savo kompetencijas. Lietuvoje yra išskiriamos šios kvalifikacijos tobulinimo formos: paskaita, edukacinė išvyka, konferencija, kursai, seminaras, stažuotė. Mokytojo profesijos kompetencijos apraše (2007) išskiriamos bendrakultūrinės, profesinės, bendrosios, specialiosios kompetencijos. Muzikos mokytojo svarbiausios kompetencijos yra gebėti organizuoti muzikinę veiklą bei išmanyti muzikinę kalbą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The paper discusses the concept of qualification, training aspects in context of lifelong learning. Aim of the final paper: to reveal the music teachers' attitudes towards professional development. To achieve the aim the following tasks were set: to provide definition of teacher’s qualification, to overview the training process, to list the music teacher’s professional competencies to carry out a study on music teachers' attitudes to the training process, and to summarizes the data. The object of investigation: the music teachers’ training. The study was conducted in twelve schools of Siauliai City. Questionnaire survey method was intended to find music teachers' attitudes towards professional development. The analysis of the scientific literature led to the following conclusions: qualification is the teacher’s knowledge and skill assessment degree. In Lithuania qualification training is conducted by non-formal education programs and informally. The training goal is to encourage music teachers to expand their competencies. In Lithuania the following training forms are distinguished: lecture, educational outing, conference, course, seminar, internship. Teacher professional competence inventory (2007) distinguishes between general cultural, professional, general, special competence. Music teacher's key competences are the ability to organize and develop musical language.

Summary The Changing Paradigm of an Academic Youth’s Life Style in a Changing Society Lota Bobrova The aim of the research – is to survey Siauliai university students’ life style formation peculiarities on the aspect of their age and gender, and also to anticipate its possibilities of transformation in a changing society. In order to reach this aim, the questionnaire was made and students’ physiological needs and factors to their living style were explored. Also we have stated students’ attitude towards their health, and we analyzed the expression of their physical activity, that undoubtedly have influence for physical development. The students’ life orientations, expectations and decisions were also determined. The students’ personal life style changes influenced by today’s challenges were explored as well. Thus the data of the research lets us state that the students’ life style is mostly influenced by those psychosocial needs as: professional activity and ability to complete it well, good health, career and acknowledgment, self realization in a meaningful activity, reaching goals, self respect. However, the negative influence to students’ health has such factors as: the disharmony of physical and psychic load, physical inactivity, smoking, alcohol, irrational day schedule, material problems and incompletely developed need of health care and its strengthening. It was settled that there are two factor groups that influence students’ physical development. These are... [to full text]

Purpose: To investigate the effects of speaker age, speaker gender, semantic context, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and a listener’s hearing status on speech recognition and listening effort in older adults. We examined the hypothesis that older adults would recognize less speech and exert greater listening effort when listening to the speech of younger versus older adult speakers. Method: Speech stimuli were recorded from 12 adult speakers classified as “younger” (three males and three females aged 18-31 years) and “older” (three males and three females aged 69-89) respectively. A computer-based subjective rating was conducted to confirm that the speakers were representative of younger and older speakers. Listeners included 20 older adults (aged 65 years and above), who were divided into two age-matched groups with and without hearing loss. All listening and speaking participants in the study were native speakers of New Zealand English. A dual-task paradigm was used to measure speech recognition and listening effort; the primary task involved recognition of target words in sentences containing either high or low contextual cues, while the secondary task required listeners to memorise the target words for later recall, following a set number of sentences. Listening tasks were performed with a variety of listening conditions (quiet, +5 dB SNR and 0dB SNR). Results: There were no overall differences in speech recognition scores or word recall scores for the 20 older listeners, when listening to the speech of the younger versus older speakers. However, differential effects of speaker group were observed in the two semantic context conditions (high versus low context). Older male speakers were the easiest to understand when semantic context was low; however, for sentences with high semantic context, the older male group were the most difficult to understand. Word recall scores were also significantly higher in the most challenging listening condition (low semantic context, 0 dB SNR), when the speaker was an older male. Conclusion: Differential effects of speaker group were observed in the two semantic context conditions (high versus low context) suggesting that different speech cues were used by listeners, as the level of context varied. The findings provide further evidence that, in challenging listening conditions, older listeners are able to use a wide range of cues, such as prosodic features and semantic context to compensate for a degraded signal. The availability of these cues depends on characteristics of the speaker, such as rate of speech and prosody, as well as characteristics of the listener and the listening environment. .

There continues to be doubt regarding the validity of laboratory aggression paradigms. This paper provides an investigation of the construct validity of one prominent aggression task, the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP), within a Multitrait Multimethod Matrix (MTMM) methodology. Participants consisted of 151 male undergraduate psychology students with a median age of 19 years old (M=19.45, SD = 2.03). Participants completed self-report and behavioral measures of aggression, impulsivity, and pro-social behavior which were analyzed using a Correlated Trait – Correlated Method Confirmatory Factor Analysis model. Results supported the construct validity of the MTMM model and the TAP. This study provides one of the only a priori tests of construct validity for the TAP and provides a basis for additional validation studies using this methodology.

First year college student retention is important to colleges and universities nationwide (Bean, 2005). Most of the research on retention focuses on self-report data collected from students after they withdraw from the institution. The present study focuses, instead, on student stories about school, as well as at and about “home” during their first semester. The experiences of students who transition from high school to college are sometimes likened to those of individuals who enter a new culture for the first time. Thus, this dissertation is grounded in cross-cultural adaptation theory (Kim, 1988, 2001), which posits that successful adaptation occurs via a stress-adaption-growth dynamic and a gradual process of acculturation toward the new environment and simultaneous deculturation from the previous environment. Stories—in the form of in-class free writing assignments—were collected from 264 first-year college students three times during their first semester. These assignments were designed to capture students’ perceptions about their experiences and interactions at school, as well as their experiences and messages to, from, and about “home” as they evolved over the course of the semester. A thematic analysis revealed the majority of stories about events at school were negative and an overwhelming majority of the stories about events at home were positive. A longitudinal comparative analysis revealed no decrease in the percentage of negative stories about experiences and interactions at or about school. Moreover, stories focused on positive school related experiences decreased over time while stories about positive experiences at or about home gradually increased over the course of the semester. For students who did not enroll for spring semester, the results were similar but more dramatic. A large percentage of non-returners were female, about half were first generation college students, and a majority reported “home” as less than 100 miles from the university. More research ought to focus on what goes on during a student’s first year of college to better understand reasons for withdrawing. In doing so, college and university professionals will be able to work more effectively with high school officials, parents, and students to achieve success once they graduate from high school.

The teaching of the gifted has been a core part of education itself sice it was first formalised, however despite these years of experience the academic community are no closer to understanding or recommending best practice to the thousands of teachers who deal with the challenges associated with gifted and talented education on a daily basis. This study hopes to understand teachers attitudes towards these types of children as well as those children who fall into the doubly exceptional category through qualitative semi structured interviews and focus groups. The resuls showed that while participants held positives attitudes to both types of students under study they were largly unsure as to effectively educate these children and felt that proper government and global guidelines as well as teacher training could overcome these issues.