The present study aims to predict which individual factors may influence strategy-choices in wayfinding situations, specifically when participants are faced with ambiguous instructions in unfamiliar environments. Individual differences were measured with self-report forms of the Big Five personality traits and the Santa Barbara sense of direction scale (SBSOD). The study was conducted in a web-based survey format with a n=104 (65 female, and 39 male). A regression analysis concluded that the trait conscientiousness was the only factor that had predictive value in determining choice of strategy. SBSOD had some predictive values towards strategy-choice, but needs further investigation before any general conclusion can be drawn. Future studies should focus on a more goal-oriented task with more realistic stimulus. / Föreliggande studie har undersökt vilka individuella faktorer som kan påverka val av strategi i olika navigations-scenarion, specifikt när deltagare möts av oklara instruktioner i obekanta miljöer. Individuella skillnader mättes med själv-utvärdering av Big Five personlighetsdrag och Santa Barbara sense of direction scale (SBSOD). Studien utfördes i ett web-baserat enkätformat med ett deltagarantal på totalt 104 (65 kvinnor och 39 män). En regressionsanalys fastslog att personlighetsdraget samvetsgrannhet var den enda faktorn som kunde predicera strategival. SBSOD hade viss produktionskraft mot strategival, med detta behöver utforskas mer innan några generella slutsatser kan dras. Framtida studier bör fokusera på en mer målinriktad uppgift med mer naturtrogna stimuli.

Situated within the current landscape of loneliness and isolation facing today's youth, this research describes a place-based and crafts-based arts curriculum for elementary students in the Salt Lake area. It uses curriculum as an investigative tool to explore the relationships between crafts, place, making, community and belonging. The curriculum itself incorporates place-based activities including hikes, urban walks, and plein air making while looking at the lives and works of local Salt Lake maker-artists Pilar Pobil, Jann Haworth, and Ben Behunin. It also delves into a wide array of craft arts and making including: decorative frame painting, embroidery, quilting, pottery, rubbings, reupholstery, monoprinting, dry felting, tile-making, wheat-pasting, staged photography, and mural-making. Implementation of the curriculum and further study of how these topics may relate to fostering community and belonging are recommended.

Das Gefühl der Kontrolle über die eigenen körperlichen Handlungen, und dadurch über die externe Umwelt ist einer der Grundpfeiler unserer menschlichen Existenz. Dieser fundamentale Aspekt der Identität ist bekannt als ‘Sense of Agency’ (SoA). Innerhalb der Neurowissenschaften begann die intensive Untersuchung dieses faszinierenden Konzepts erst innerhalb der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte. Das vorliegende Forschungsprojekt befasst sich mit zwei zentralen Aspekten des Sense of Agency. Zum einen wurden die zwei zugrundeliegenden neurokognitiven Mechanismen ‘Vorhersage’ und ‘Retrospektive Inferenz’ untersucht. Zum anderen wurde die Zuschreibung von Agency bei weiteren Ko-Akteuren, mit denen eine gemeinsame Aufgabe bewältigt werden musste untersucht. Das durchgeführte Forschungsprojekt trägt somit zu einem tieferen Verständnis menschlicher Agency auf individueller Ebene und im sozialen Kontext bei. Außerdem liefert es Implikationen für die Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion und die Verbesserung zukünftiger Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstellen. / The seamless feeling of control over one’s own bodily actions, and through them, over the external environment is one of the cornerstones of our existence as human beings. This fundamental aspect of personal identity has been termed the sense of agency (SoA). It is only within the last two decades that this intriguing concept has begun to be intensively studied in the cognitive neurosciences. In the current research project we addressed two central aspects of the sense of agency. First, we investigated its underlying neurocognitive mechanisms: prediction and retrospective inference. Second, we looked into the attribution of agency to other co-actors when cooperating in a joint task. Overall, the current research project has made a step towards a better and deeper understanding of human agency in the individual as well as the social contexts. Additionally, the findings presented in this work inform the field of human-computerinteraction and contribute to the improvement of future interface designs.

Many rural village schools have closed over the years, both in Sweden and internationally, because of urbanisation, centralisation and the quest for efficiency. This study shows the impact of two school closures in the rural area of Ydre, south-east Sweden, and describes the reactions of children and families concerned. The aim is to analyse what rural village schools mean for everyday life and how such meaning is based on time-spatial everyday stories. How the children and families view the school closures emerges in the time-geographic perspective, on their own terms, given their opportunity to demonstrate how they use different time-space components. This was studied by interviewing and sketching mental maps with 28 pupils of various ages, and by interviewing and drawing up weekly time schedules with 12 families. This also enabled the analyses to be extended, using the time-geographic conceptual framework, and in particular the interplay between structural changes and individuals’ day-to-day lives, and the interconnections between school and private life, to be clarified. One conclusion is that a school is no mere teaching venue. It is also a key meeting place for children, part of community life and a space for social networking and daily decision-making: a local community hub for the children and their parents alike. When a local school closes and the pupils need to travel further for schooling elsewhere, it affects their travel and activity patterns and social networks. Children’s drawings express their perceptions of place, time and distance. This study shows that the locations where children spend time and have their social networks, as well as how and how often they travel on particular routes, are crucial for their assessment of distance, both temporal and spatial. Describing the value of the closure-threatened school, parents express concern about their local village. They stress the importance of the village school, which they regard as excellent, unique and a resource for the family, but also for the community as a whole. Thereby, they highlight their hope that their community will be attractive to visitors, and also to themselves, the residents. The threats of closure upset them and provoke discussions on how to sustain a living countryside. Studies of children’s and families’ experience of school closures pinpoint the complexity of rural life and show it in a more human-centred, everyday light. Since children are absent from the municipal closure procedure, views of children’s participation are also discussed.

The following research project is split into two phases and concludes with a synthesis of both phases. The overarching aim of the research project is to explore how mainstream schools can best work with alternative providers to make collective provision for those identified as having Behavioural, Emotional and Social Difficulties. In the first phase, a realistic evaluation methodology (Pawson & Tilley, 1997) is adopted and semi structured interviews are used to explore the experiences of staff in relation to pupils on a shared placement. A provisional theory is then developed to explain the outcomes of the shared placement arrangement. The second phase of the research involves gathering the views and perceptions of the pupils and also utilises the realistic evaluation approach. The aim of this phase is to refine and update the provisional theory developed in Phase 1. This study adopts a mixed methods approach, utilising semi-structured interviews with the pupils. A quantitative element is introduced through a closer examination of the relationship between pupils’ sense of school belonging and the success, or otherwise of the shared placement. Throughout both phases of the research, there is a focus on discovering how a shared placement affects the pupil and what the outcomes of this arrangement are. The project is also heavily focused on identifying the contextual conditions that either facilitate or inhibit positive outcomes occurring. The findings of the research indicate that shared placements can lead to a variety of outcomes for pupils. When it works well, pupils become more engaged with their education and this has a positive impact on their behaviour and emotional development. However, it is also clear that shared placements can result in undesirable outcomes including further disengagement from the mainstream school. When outcomes were positive, the shared placement increased pupils’ self-efficacy, aspirations and facilitated achievement. These factors were supported by valuing pupil voice, excellent partnership working between settings and the schools willingness to include children with complex needs. This research also highlights that a greater sense of belonging to the mainstream school is associated with an increased likelihood of positive outcomes occurring. This project has explored an area which has been largely neglected in previous research. The theories developed have a variety of implications for Educational Psychologists as well as wider implications, and these are discussed in the final section. Figure 1 presents a visual overview of the research project.

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This study was conducted in South Africa among a total of 86 South African adolescents. The aim of this study was to investigate self-perceived health among youths from two different socio-economic groups in South Africa, what they believe promote their health and what views they have on school health education. The study used a mixed method approach consisting of quantitative questionnaires and qualitative interviews. The study draws Aaron Antonovsky’s theory of health, the salutogenic perspective and the sense of coherence theory. In addition, Antonovsky’s 29-item orientation to life questionnaire formed the quantitative part of the study. The main findings of this study is that higher socio-economic status does not necessarily correlate with higher SOC. Family and supportive people had the greatest affect on the adolescents’ ability to cope with stressors and are therefore the main health promoting factors. Finally, health education and the subject Life Orientation, as well as the school as an institution, are health-promoting factors and have in different ways influenced the participants’ views on health.

Humans are relational beings, as they are constantly in interaction with others and with their environment. In schools, learners spend at least nine years of their lives in formal schooling, and the relationships they have with their teachers are bound to have an impact on their self-configuration. According to the Field theory, the Bioecological theory and the Dialogical theory of self, which were used as theoretical frameworks for this study, individuals’ self-configuration is impacted by their environment, experiences and interactions with others. The focus of this study was on Grade 7 learners’ self-configuration experiences within the teacher-learner relationship. Grade 7 learners are at the beginning of the adolescent phase, which is characterised by many changes, transitions, challenges and uncertainties. One of these transitions is the forthcoming transition from primary school to high school and a healthy self-configuration could assist learners to adapt to these changes in a positive manner. The research was qualitative in nature and made use of the case study method. This allowed the researcher to use data gathering approaches through which the subjective experiences of the participants could be explored. Twelve participants volunteered to take part in this study, and data was gathered by means of individual interviews as well as group discussions. All interviews and group discussions were voice and video recorded, where after they were transcribed and analysed by means of thematic analysis. The analysis allowed for data to be organised into meaningful themes. It was found that learners’ experiences of relationships with teachers are both positive and negative. Self-regulation in learners takes place through encouragement and disapproval from teachers, as well as through lessons learnt from teachers and from past experiences. Further studies around self-configuration and teacher-learner relationships are recommended, in order to make teachers more aware of the importance of the teacher-learner relationship, and also to determine what the obstacles are in developing supportive and caring teacher-learner relationships. By highlighting the importance, and by determining the obstacles, more meaningful teacher-learner relationships could be encouraged and developed in order to enhance learners’ self-configuration experiences. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Challenging behaviour poses problems for teachers globally and yet very little research has been done with regard to the teacher-learner relationship and what challenging behaviour does to the teacher. The goal of this study was to explore teachers’ experiences of challenging behaviour within their relationships with learners that display challenging behaviour regarding teacher’s self-configuration. A qualitative approach was pursued in the form of an interpretive descriptive design in order to gain a better understanding of the teachers’ self-configuration experiences. For the purpose of this study the field theory was used as the theoretical framework, viewing teachers in their environment, specifically focusing on the teacher-learner relationship. A total of 12 teachers were purposefully selected from a school in Observatory, Johannesburg. The data were collected through in-depth interviews. Additionally, incomplete sentences were used to enrich data and to enhance trustworthiness. Triangulation was ensured by using two data collection methods to increase the credibility and validity of the results. The interviews and incomplete sentences were recorded via audio recording equipment. The recordings were then transcribed in order to identify emerging themes and subthemes. Thematic analysis was used once the data had been transcribed in order to gain meaningful information. This study revealed teachers’ self-configuration experiences in their relationships with learners with challenging behaviour and experienced their relationships with these children as a foundation for self-configuration. Teachers’ self-configuration is embedded in their different selves at school and their love and passion for teaching are reduced due to negative emotions. Experiences within the relationship escalate to the home environment and challenging behaviour causes stress for teachers. Teachers viewed challenging behaviour as behaviour that is an internal challenge for the learner, but also behaviour that is directed externally towards the teacher and other learners. Trust and respect, class size, individual attention and communication were identified elements contributing to self-configuration within the teacher-learner relationship. This study showed the importance of relationships in the school context and specifically focused on teachers’ self-configuration. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Humans are relational beings, as they are constantly in interaction with others and with their environment. In schools, learners spend at least nine years of their lives in formal schooling, and the relationships they have with their teachers are bound to have an impact on their self-configuration. According to the Field theory, the Bioecological theory and the Dialogical theory of self, which were used as theoretical frameworks for this study, individuals’ self-configuration is impacted by their environment, experiences and interactions with others. The focus of this study was on Grade 7 learners’ self-configuration experiences within the teacher-learner relationship. Grade 7 learners are at the beginning of the adolescent phase, which is characterised by many changes, transitions, challenges and uncertainties. One of these transitions is the forthcoming transition from primary school to high school and a healthy self-configuration could assist learners to adapt to these changes in a positive manner. The research was qualitative in nature and made use of the case study method. This allowed the researcher to use data gathering approaches through which the subjective experiences of the participants could be explored. Twelve participants volunteered to take part in this study, and data was gathered by means of individual interviews as well as group discussions. All interviews and group discussions were voice and video recorded, where after they were transcribed and analysed by means of thematic analysis. The analysis allowed for data to be organised into meaningful themes. It was found that learners’ experiences of relationships with teachers are both positive and negative. Self-regulation in learners takes place through encouragement and disapproval from teachers, as well as through lessons learnt from teachers and from past experiences. Further studies around self-configuration and teacher-learner relationships are recommended, in order to make teachers more aware of the importance of the teacher-learner relationship, and also to determine what the obstacles are in developing supportive and caring teacher-learner relationships. By highlighting the importance, and by determining the obstacles, more meaningful teacher-learner relationships could be encouraged and developed in order to enhance learners’ self-configuration experiences. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015