No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

M.Ed. / The HIV and AIDS pandemic is changing the nature of the traditional family structure, particularly in South Africa, where the number of child-headed families is escalating and more teenagers are forced to head the home. These teenagers, are traumatised: many have suffered multiple losses (a father, mother, siblings), not to mention the possible additional losses of schooling, their hope for the future and their remaining childhoods. Hope is unlikely to emerge in teenagers left to fend for themselves and their siblings. Therefore, an approach that is both Afrocentric and ecosystemic needs to be adopted in building support structures to instil the possibility of hope in their lives. Hope, as a protective phenomenon, builds resiliency empowering teenagers heading a home to rise above their harsh circumstances. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore and describe the essence of hope in the lived experiences of teenagers heading an AIDS-orphaned home in order to make recommendations for support within the emerging inclusive educational system in South Africa. A qualitative study with a phenomenological research design was used with three teenagers from a Non-Governmental Organisation which assists child-headed households in Soweto, Gauteng. The participants were purposefully selected as hopeful — teenagers who had managed to stay in school, despite their circumstances, as a way of securing a brighter future. Data was collected through two in-depth interviews with the teenagers and included writing and drawing exercises. A story thickening the counterplot of hope in their lives, which are filled with the challenges of orphanhood, was written for each of the teenagers. The coconstructed stories were then used as data for analysis to write their descriptions of hope. Textual, structural and textual-structural descriptions of hope were written June 2008 based on the four processes of epoche, phenomenological reduction, imaginative variation and synthesis. The findings generated from their stories of hope indicate that the "hopeful self" is socially constructed evolving in the spaces between people and in the interaction iii of the person with his/her environment. Some of the findings suggest that hope emerges in the context of opportunities, support and education, and needs the African spirit of "ubuntu" to sustain it. School in particular, was seen as a way to future success. On the basis of these findings, a social constructionist model for nurturing the hopeful self was recommended to help professionals in their thinking and planning of psychological support programmes for all children and teenagers identified as vulnerable. The model embraces ecosystemic thinking and envisages the hopeful self as being nurtured in three nested domains of support: the emerging inclusive education system; a network of care under the facilitation of educational psychologists based in the District Based Support Teams; and a psychological support system that has not as yet been implemented in the care children orphaned by AIDS. Psychological support is seen as crucial to ensure the emotional well-being of teenagers at risk who who are faced with the reality of heading a home at such an early age as a result of the AIDS pandemic

No description available.

A comparison of Lower Grade and Higher Grade pupils with regard to intelligence, self-concept and adjustment. 29 Lower and 29 Higher grade pupils in Stds 8 and 9 at a Jewish community day school were compared with regard to their I Q scores, self-concepts and adjustment level. These variables were measured on the following tests: The NSAGT; the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and the PHSF Relations Questionnaire. The data from the two groups were compared by means of a t-test for small samples and the results demonstrated a significant difference (p≤0,01) for I Q scores and for self-concept but did not reveal a significant difference on most of the 12 sub-scales of the PHSF Relations Questionnaire. As regards the latter, a significant difference (p<0,05) was obtained on the sub-scale Sociability - S for female pupils and a significant difference was obtained on sub-scales Self-Confidence (p≤0,01) and Formal Relations (p≤0,05) for male pupils. The significant difference in I Q scores can be partially understood in terms of the selection criteria for admission to the Lower Grade class. The significant difference in self-concept can be attributed to the difference on the Intellectual and School Status sub-category. The lack of significant differences on the other sub-scales suggest that factors other than academic achievement are important in terms of self-concept formation for example:- class structure; membership of peer groups; extra-mural activities and family relationships. The lack of significant difference between Lower and Higher Grade pupils in the area of ,adjustment can perhaps be explained in terms of the Lower Grade pupils' relatively high scores on other sub-categories of the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale i.e. it was only as regards intellectual status that the Lower Grade perceived themselves as less able.

No description available.

D.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology) / Assertiveness, a specific social skill is traced back to its roots in Salter's 1949 Pavlovian model. The impression is gained that the growing interest in assertiveness may be a reaction to the post-Sputnik era of increasing violence and acts of terrorism. In South Africa assertiveness training has particular relevance, as a state of emergency was -declared by the State President in the middle of 1985. It is fitting that assertiveness training be done with black adolescents as in the African communities there is concern about the estrangement of parents and their children which has contributed to the school unrest that has had such wide repercussions. An empirical study of 32 matched pairs of black South African pupils in their 11th year of schooling was undertaken in 1985 following a pilot study in 1984. The experimental groups were given assertiveness training while the control groups were engaged in other activities. The hypotheses examined were that if aggressive and submissive South African black adolescents were exposed to assertiveness training their levels of aggression and submission would be reduced, assertiveness would be increased, anxiety would be reduced and self-esteem enhanced. Evidence is adduced to indicate partial support for the hypotheses and this is discussed.

No description available.

The present study examined the effects of physical disability in fathers on the development and adjustment of their children. There is little empirically based information about the influence of physical characteristics of parents on children, but speculative articles have described many deleterious effects of being raised by a physically handicapped parent. These hypothesized relations between parental disability and child adjustment were tested. Two groups of adult children selected through the Veterans Administration Spinal Cord Injury system were studied: (a) Disabled Parent (DP)--17 male and 28 female children, mean age 21.6, who were raised by a spinal cord injured father from a mean age of 1.31, and (b) Comparison (C)--15 male and 21 female children, mean age 23.8, with nondisabled fathers. The two groups were matched on father's age, education level, state of residence, and disposable family income. Children had lived with both parents until age 15, and their fathers were veterans. Subjects completed a battery of tests: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), Bem Sex Role Inventory, Body-Cathexis scale, Parent-Child Relations Questionnaire II (PCR), and Buck-Hohmann questionnaire (designed specifically for this study). The results did not support any of the hypothesized relations between parental disability status and child adjustment. DP and C children scored within the normal range on the MMPI and 16PF. The only significant difference which emerged was that DP children tended to be more cautious in emotional expression than did C subjects. The DP and C groups did not differ in body image or sex role orientation. On the Rokeach Value Survey, DP children ranked national security, a world at peace, clean, obedient, and responsible higher than did C children. C children valued being logical more than DP children. As perceived by the children, DP and C fathers did not differ significantly in the degree to which they were loving or rejecting, casual or demanding (PCR). On the Buck-Hohmann questionnaire, there was no evidence that disabled fathers excluded themselves from discipline and childrearing aspects of parenthood or that disabled fathers lose control over their children. DP children were found to hold significantly more positive attitudes toward their fathers than were C children. There were no effects on children's health patterns or interpersonal relations as a function of the father's disability status. DP children expressed more interest and participation in athletics than did C children. It was concluded that parental disability does not pose a severe threat to child adjustment. Children with spinal cord injured fathers appeared to be well-adjusted, emotionally stable persons who highly regarded their fathers. Limitations of the study and implications for rehabilitation programs, adoption and court custody decisions, and future research were discussed.