No description available.

In this study the overall aim is to find conditions for greater inclusion of pupils with SEN in X county by investigating teachers' attitudes and views on inclusion. What are the variables that may affect teachers' attitudes towards inclusion. The variables that will be studied include gender, workexperience, what age of students teachers work with and teachers' subjectknowledge. It is based on a system theory perspective with a pragmatic approach to explore how groups of activities involving or affecting each other. It is a quantitative study with a surveys selected as the method. Since I want to see how teachers might be influenced by their context and the variables above I use a system theory perspective. Before the questionnaire study was sent out to respondents, a little pilot study before was done.The overall results indicate that a majority of the teachers are positive towards inclusion, but when it comes to the will and desire to work inclusive they are more negative. The different variables affect teachers' attitudes to some extent, some affecting teachers in a positive direction and some in a negative direction.

Summary: An Elders View Ka hoki ano waku korero nei na i runga i nga raputanga i haramai tatou ko te iwi whenua e korerotia ai tona korero i haramai i Hawaikiroa i Hawaikinui i Hawaiki pamamao. Kei hea tenei wahi? Ka rapu te matauranga. I haramai tatou no tehea wahi? Kare kau i kitea e ratou. E kore e kitea. E kore e kitea e ratau na te mea ko taua i haere wairua mai ka hoki wairua taua. I now return to what has been said that we the original people came to this land from Long Hawaiki, from the Great Hawaiki, and from Distant Hawaiki. Where are these places? The learned have searched. From which place did we come from? They will never find it because we came in spirit and we return in spirit. (Chapter 2). A Pakeha View I tell the story as I see it and people can read my material if they wish to but if they don�t then that is their problem. The trouble with New Zealanders is that they do not care about archaeology. The Maoris are the worst offenders. Their attitude is one of indifference, they couldn�t care less. When I have excavated on Maori land I have contacted the Maori organisations concerned and I have invited them to come along and observe what is being done because after all it is their history that I am digging up. However the decision is not really for the Maori to decide when I am working on Pakeha land, and anyway the land does not belong to the Maori, it belongs to all. I admit that I am sorry that archaeologists destroy sites but they do record them in their books. (Chapter 6)--Preface.

Most stereotypes of youth depict them as problematic. Yet, the effects of those representations on behaviour are not understood. The nine studies conducted for this thesis investigated stereotypic beliefs about youth. This thesis aimed to specify the range of stereotypic beliefs about youth, the sources of those beliefs, and the consequences of those beliefs for adults' and young people's behaviour. Chapter 1 reviews the stereotype literature and provides information about our current understanding of stereotypic beliefs about youth. It also highlights the limitations of existing research and presents the rationale for this program of research. Chapter 2 presents studies 1 to 4, which explored the breadth in the content of four sets of stereotypic beliefs about youth. Study 1 investigated adults' knowledge of the cultural stereotype of youth and Study 2A specified adults' personal beliefs about youth. Adults' knowledge of the cultural stereotype was shown to consist of very negative content, although their personal beliefs were both positive and negative in content. Study 3A compared young people's perceptions of adults' beliefs about youth with their personal beliefs about youth. Young people's perceptions of adults' beliefs were found to be extremely negative, and to be comparable with that identified as adults??? knowledge of the cultural stereotype of youth in Study 1. In contrast, young people???s personal beliefs about youth were found to be more positive. Study 4 investigated the extent to which adults and young people hold multiple stereotypes of youth. Adults and young people formed six conceptually similar subtypes of youth. They were labelled as ???yuppies???, ???lives for today and forget the consequences???, ???depressed???, ???problem kids???, ???active???, and ???conventional???. The ???problem kids??? subtype was the most salient; it had the greatest number of descriptors assigned to it and the greatest agreement across groups regarding the constellation of traits and behaviours comprising it. Studies 2B and 3B, also presented in Chapter 2, were carried out to develop two valid and reliable measures of stereotypic beliefs about youth. In Study 2B, the 20-item Beliefs about Adolescence Scale was developed to assess adults' personal beliefs about youth. Study 3B developed the 26-item Adolescents??? Perceptions of Adults??? Beliefs Scale to assess young people???s perceptions of adults??? beliefs about them. Both measures were shown to be internally consistent and to have good test-retest reliability. The Beliefs about Adolescence Scale also demonstrated good convergent validity. Chapter 3 presents studies 5 and 6, which examined the media as a possible source of stereotypic beliefs about youth. Study 5 investigated media representations of youth as they appear in newspaper reports. Study 6 aimed to establish an empirical association between those representations and stereotypic beliefs about youth. In Study 5, newspaper reports of young people were found to be largely negative; the 'problem kids' stereotype was afforded the most news space. In Study 6, newspaper readership was shown to be predictive of stereotypic beliefs about youth. Further, stereotypic beliefs were found to discriminate between readers of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. Chapter 4 presents Studies 7 and 8, which focused on the consequences of stereotypic beliefs about youth for evaluations and behaviour. Study 7 investigated the extent to which beliefs that young people are problematic affect adults' evaluations of young people. Subjects who were presented with sentences that described irresponsible and disrespectful behaviours later judged a youth target as more irresponsible and disrespectful than subjects who were presented with sentences that described neutral behaviours. Study 8 investigated whether beliefs that young people are problematic can result in self-fulfilling prophecies. Subjects were exposed to faces of male teenagers or adults and were then paired with partners who had been exposed to faces of male adults. Each pair of subjects played a word-guessing game and their interaction was recorded. Judges who were blind to the experimental hypotheses listened to the recordings and rated each participant for the degree of rudeness that was displayed. Subjects who had been exposed to the teenage faces were rated as ruder than those who had been exposed to adult faces. Moreover, those who interacted with subjects who had been exposed to teenage faces were rated as ruder than those who interacted with subjects who had been exposed to adult faces. In that way, stereotypic beliefs about youth were shown to produce self-fulfilling prophecies. Chapter 5 presents Study 9. Its focus was on young people's perceptions of adults' beliefs about them. It examined the way those beliefs influence young people's engagement in problem behaviour, in interaction with established correlates of problem behaviour. This was explored via the testing of a structural model of problem behaviour. The findings provided partial support for the model, and the model accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in problem behaviour. Young people's perceptions of adults' beliefs about them made an important contribution to the explanation of problem behaviour involvement. Subsidiary analyses determined that young people's perceptions that adults believe them to engage in problem behaviour was the 'active ingredient' of that construct. Chapter 6 presents the general discussion of the findings from this program of research. It also outlines their theoretical and practical implications, and points to specific research that is needed to add to the findings of this thesis. The findings emphasise the important influences of stereotypic beliefs about youth on adults' and young people's behaviour. Recommendations are made for improving adult-youth relations and preventing adolescent problem behaviour. In particular, the media and adult members of the community need to recognise the role that they play in the causation of adolescent problem behaviour. The media have a responsibility to disseminate accurate and balanced information about young people and youth-related issues. In addition, interventions aimed at reducing adolescent problem behaviour need to incorporate a community-based component that seeks to promote positive adult-youth relations within the wider community.

Bibliography: leaves 251-260. / xi, 260 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / This thesis explores the prison experiences of female and male prisoners. The study aims to record and analyse the ways in which prisoners represent their experiences behind the wall (abstract) / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Social Inquiry, 1999

My research explores the lived experience of envy amongst psychotherapists and between psychotherapists in a psychotherapeutic community in New Zealand. It focuses on bringing the experience of envy out of hiddenness and into language.It then explores the understandings and the possibilities of meanings that these experiences have. Previous literature on envy has for the most part discussed the clients' envy for the psychotherapist, and very little has been written about the therapists' envy for the client. My research turns the focus to the psychotherapist as it looks at their envy for each other.As I was interested in the therapists' lived experiences of envy, I chose hermeneutic phenomenology as the methodology to explore these. I drew on the philosophical underpinnings offered by Heidegger, Gadamer and van Manen.What arose from my in-depth conversations with psychotherapists is that while envy is an experienced phenomenon that is for the most part not spoken, the powerful feelings that it evokes have great impact on both those who envy and those who are envied. Envy showed up as arising in a relational context, with perception, time and anxiety as contextual determinants. These, along with the findings of the lived experience of envy as a binding between self and other, as threatening to self and other and as a means of connecting with self and other, are some of the essential points discussed in my thesis.This study provides a starting point for a further exploration of the experience of envy amongst psychotherapists as well as envy's impact on who we are in ourselves and how we are with each other, both personally and professionally.

This study explored the relationship between attributional style and the performance of front line service staff in a call centre environment. Attributional style was evaluated using a well recognised method (Seligman's Attributional Style Questionnaire). This was the first time that the Seligman's Attributional Style Questionnaire (SASQ) has been used in a New Zealand context. Performance was calculated using five independent measures. These measures have been used for several years by the company at the centre of our study as an objective measure of Call Centre Representative (CCR) performance. The association between attributional style and performance was then examined using a combination of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and co relational analysis. People have different ways of reacting to adversity such as failure, rejection or a high-pressure situation. The ability to succeed is closely tied to the ability to handle adversity (DeCarlo et al., 1997; Seligman & Schulman, 1986; Boone, 2000). Research has supported the common sense view that optimistic beliefs can be self-fulfilling prophecies (Sujan, 1999a; Porter, 2000; Furnham et al., 1994). Hundreds of studies have revealed the benefits of optimism such as increased motivation, superior achievement (in various areas e.g. work, school and sports), elevated mood and well-being, and better physical health (Seligman et al., 1990; Seligman et al., 1986). Furthermore, individuals can learn to reduce negative ways of thinking and become more optimistic when it is appropriate (Satterfield et al., 1997; Eronen et al., 1999; Bohart, 2002).Call centres are not new phenomena, however they have become a growth industry in the private and public sector over the last decade (Creagh, 1998). The following definition of call centres was used by Gilmore and Moreland; "A physical or virtual operation within an organisation in which a managed group of people spend most of their time doing business by telephone, usually working in a computer-automated environment." (2000, pg 4)Due to the size and the complexity of tasks undertaken within call centres, there is a growing need for empirical findings to broaden understanding of how to best manage call centres and how to optimise the utilisation of human capital (Feinberg et al, 2000).This cross-sectional study assesses the performance of Call Centre Representatives (CCRs) in a New Zealand based call centre and explores whether there is an association with the Seligman's Attributional Style Questionnaire (SASQ).It was found that the performance measure for soft skills varied significantly when ranked by a measure of optimism. The performance measures considered in this study focus mainly on technical competency and task efficiency, and were therefore not well explained by attributional style. Future research should investigate pre-testing for soft skills at recruitment, interventionist training on attitude and whether that translates into improved soft skill performance, and the reassessment of current call centre performance measurements.

Due to the ageing population, an increasing number of older workers form the labour force. Unfortunately discriminatory practices against older workers are well documented and the antecedents of such discrimination are assumed to be negative attitudes towards older workers. No previous research has investigated implicit attitudes towards older workers or their behavioural consequences. Accordingly, the present research aimed to investigate both implicit and explicit attitudes towards older workers, and their predictive utility in an employment-related context. In addition, attitude malleability and the role it may play in the attitude-behaviour relationship was investigated. This thesis reports findings from 5 studies, a pilot study and 4 main studies. The pilot study determined that the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A.G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) was to be used in the main studies. The 4 main studies investigated implicit attitudes, and the malleability of such attitudes towards older, relative to younger, workers. The malleability of attitudes was investigated with a mental imagery intervention where the experimental group participants were asked to imagine and describe respected and valued older workers in their surroundings. The control group participants were asked to imagine holiday destinations they would like to visit. In general, it was expected that negative implicit and explicit attitudes would be found towards older workers but that such bias could be alleviated with a mental imagery intervention. In all studies, negative implicit attitudes against older workers were found and such attitudes were relatively uninfluenced by the mental imagery manipulation. Three studies included explicit measures of attitudes. Although some variation was found between the studies and the measures used, overall positive attitudes towards older and younger workers were found. The mental imagery manipulation was also found to influence the explicit attitudes to a greater degree than implicit attitudes. The final study investigated the relationship between attitudes and behaviour. Specifically, both implicit and explicit attitudes’ relationships with spontaneous and controlled-type behaviours towards an older and a younger target were examined. Overall, some evidence for youth-bias in the participants’ behaviour was found, as well as evidence for the relationship between explicit attitudes and spontaneous behaviours. Implicit attitudes were largely unrelated to behaviour. In general, the mental imagery intervention did not impact the attitude-behaviour relationship. Implications for older workers are discussed, as well as educational methods for reducing discrimination older workers face in employment.

Thesis (B.A. Hons. 1977) from the Department of Psychology, University of Adelaide.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 97 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-97). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center