This report describes a year-long practitioner-research study documenting the challenges and successes of a first grade teacher’s attempt to increase her students’ sense of agency in the classroom. Through the insight gained from my classes in graduate school, I decided to alter my practices into a more child-centered approach. Throughout the 2011-2012 school year, I have documented the reactions to these changes in my students and myself. I have altered my practice in three main areas. These areas include: implementing a project-approach time period in the classroom schedule entitled, “Discovery Time;” taking a supporting role (as opposed to a directing role) in peer-to-peer conflicts that occur in the classroom; and providing students with more of a voice when learning new concepts which enables them to teach each other more than I teach them. Each of these three areas has required me to give up a substantial amount of control in the classroom and reallocate this control to my students in order to allow them more ownership and direction in their own learning and development. This, in turn, has given my students a greater sense of agency in our classroom. / text

This experiment investigated the motivational effect of task instrumentality in a group of 8th grade students (N = 92). It investigated whether telling students that memory skills were instrumental could produce motivational effect. With reference to the self-determination theory, it was hypothesized that the original level of motivation would serve as the moderator of the effect of instrumentality on the change in motivation. It was believed that instrumentality would have more impact on students with low level of motivation at the first place; while the impact of instrumentality would be less on students with high level of motivation at the first place. The experiment was successful in the manipulation of instrumentality of memory skill. There was an increase in students’ introjection after the intervention. The main effects showed that the teaching session was effective in reducing students’ external regulation. Marginal significant main effect was found in the experimental group, where they had higher identification to the mnemonic session compared to the control group. Regarding the moderation effect, there was no significant moderation effect of original motivation level on the relation between task instrumentality and the change in motivation level. Implications of these findings on education were discussed. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

No description available.

Autonomy is defined as the subjective experience of congruence between one’s basic values and behavior. Research guided by SDT has focused on the socializing conditions that either foster or undermine the individual’s autonomy at the expense of considering the individual’s capacity to function autonomously by actively and purposively shaping his or her social ecology. The present research adopted a social-ecological approach to the problem of human autonomy, wherein people are presumed to strive for autonomy by relying on their traits and abilities to extract what they need from the social environment. After completing a range of individual difference measures, first-year female undergraduates engaged in a leaderless group discussion task and provided round-robin ratings of their group-members’ social power; self-reported autonomy satisfaction was also assessed. Findings revealed that the personality trait Openness to Experience held predictive relations to social power attainment and, through this association, was positively related to autonomy satisfaction.

No description available.

Technological neutrality in law is, roughly, the idea that law should not pick technological winners and losers, that law should neither help nor hinder particular types of technological aItefacts. It has become an increasingly recognized principle in the international stage, adopted by courts, legislatures, governmental and inter-governmental organizations alike. The grounds on which the principle has been adopted, however, are yet to see more in-depth articulation. This thesis takes up the task of more rigorously questioning whether technological neutrality is a sound principle for law and policy making in the information age. It does so by asking both whether technological neutrality makes sense internally, as a coherent proposition of the institutional normative order, and externally, as an unsuspected manifestation of the much more established, if contested, idea of political neutrality. Internally, the thesis questions: i) the ability of the principle to itself enable law to survive technological change; ii) the coherence of excluding reasons concerning dimensions of technological altefacts beyond the utilitarian functions of these from incorporation by law; iii) the soundness of transforming an idea of vagueness into a general principle for law and policy making in the information age; iv) the extent to which technological neutrality fUlther exacerbates the already problematic idea of instrumentalism in law. Externally, after demonstrating the political contours of technological neutrality, the thesis questions: i) whether technological neutrality would be able to survive the challenges that have been levelled at political neutrality by authors of diverse theoretical affiliations; and ii) whether the normative articulation of new forms of authority in the background culture of the information environment calls on the state to protect personal autonomy in ways thl1t are incompatible with the exclusionary methodology of political neutrality. Technological neutrality, the thesis demonstrates, does not live up to these or other challenges that the thesis introduces.

This thesis examines the strategy employed by the Catalan nationalist movement in the late 1980s and 1990s to secure a greater role for sub-national authorities in the process of European integration. It includes an analysis of the relationship of the Generalitat, the government of the Spanish autonomous community of Catalonia, and particularly, Convergencia i Unio, the centre-right Catalan party in power since 1980, with the various actors and institutions central to the process of European integration. Thus, the Catalan nationalist movement has pursued a dual strategy to consolidate its participation in the process of European integration based on the one hand on a co-operative regionalist strategy and on the other, a bilateral nationalist strategy. A close examination of this dual strategy would suggest that there is a clear disenchantment among Catalan nationalists with the concept of "Europe of the Regions" and with the EU-wide efforts in the 1990s to secure a greater role for sub-national authorities.

No description available.

Objective: The primary goal of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and adolescent autonomy. Adolescents and their parent reported on lhree types of autonomy; renective autonomy, reactive autonomy, and functional independence. Adolescent cognitive skills, reading ability, and affective states, along with parent perceptions of !.he adolescents' executive functioning and parent-related stress were assessed in an attempt to elucidate the mechanisms through which TBI and autonomy interact. Participants and Methods: Participants included 20 adolescents, 12 to 19 years of age, with a history ofTS! and 19 age· and gender·matched adolescents wilh no history of TBI. Each adolescent was accompanied by one parent who completed parental reports while the adolescent underwent testing and completed questionnaires. Adolescents were screened for cognitive functioning and reading ability using subtests ofthe Reynolds Intellectual Assessment Scale (RIAS) and the Wide Range Achievement Test _ 4th Edition (WRAT4). Adolescents then completed questionnaires to assess depression (Beck Depression Inventory - 2nd Edition, SOl-TO and anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory, BAI). Lastly but most importantly. the adolescents completed questionnaires to assess reflective autonomy using a modified version of the Ryff Psychological Well Being Scale, and reactive autonomy (Adjectives Checklist, ACL). Meanwhile, parents completed a brief demographics questionnaire, a report of their adolescent's functional independence (Adaptive Behavior Assessment System II. ABAS-IO. executive functioning (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning, BRIEF), and parenting-related stress (Stress Index for Parents of Adolescents, SlPA). Results: Significant group differences were noted on measures of reflective autonomy, but not on reactive aUlonomy. A history ofTBI was also influential in parent ratings of functional independence and executive functioning, but not levels of parent stress. The adolescents with TBI did not repon higher levels of depression or anxiety. Within the TBI group, significant correlations were found between parent ratings of adolescent functional independence and executive functioning, yet no correlations were found between adolescent and parent reports of autonomy, adolescent reports of autonomy and affect, or between parent ratings of adolescent functional independence/executive functioning and parent stress levels. Conclusions: These findings provide some indication of a potential relationship between TBI and both self-repons and parent repons of autonomy. Adolescent's with a history of TBI in this sample felt less in control of their decision making process regarding actions/behaviors, and were viewed by their parents as are less functionally independent. These findings do not provide any indication of a potential relationship between TBI and an adolescent's ability to resist external innuence. However, the number of participants was limited and there were several other factors which complicate the interpretation of this lack of difference between adolescents with and without TBI. Clearly. further investigation of this phenomenon is warranted, yet these findings suggest that clinicians working with adolescents with brain injury might benefit by considering both internal and external perceptions of autonomy in treatment implementation. / Graduate

This thesis examines in detail the operation of a planning gain policy in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets between 1971 and 1983, using data obtained from records held at the Borough and observations of the practice. The practice of planning gain is set into the broader context of planning and the still broader social and political context. The existing literature and definitions of planning gain are critically examined in the light of a theoretical framework which concerns itself with the identification of power and politics within the planning process. The responses made to the practice of planning gain by the Department of the Environment, planning inspectors and the courts are explained and critically analysed to indicate the lack of articulated opposition. The use of planning agreements as a mechanism for the enforcement of planning gain is also examined. Section 52 of the Town and Country Planning Act is analysed, together with the available case law. The use of these agreements in Tower Hamlets is discussed in detail. The schemes examined at Tower Hamlets are presented in full to provide an overall view of the operation of a planning gain policy. Details include the effect of negotiation on the content of schemes and problems of implementation. Comparative material is provided covering the operation of a planning gain system which has legislative recognition in Sydney, Australia. This part of the thesis is used to illustrate the continued existence of negotiation for planning gain and of the restrictive responses to the autonomy of local government.