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Pastaraisiais metais tapatumas apibrėžiamas kaip dinamiška save apibrėžianti sistema, besiformuojanti santykiuose, kurios pagrindas yra emocijos. O tapatumo formavimasis – tai intrapsichinių pasikeitimų paauglystėje visuma – atsiskyrimo ir individuacijos procesas, patyrimų integracija bei ego tęstinumo įtvirtinimas. Todėl siekiant suprasti, kaip sunkumai artimuose santykiuose susiję su tapatumo išgyvenimu paauglystėje, buvo atliktas kokybinis tyrimas, naudojant biografinio pasakojimo interpretacinį metodą. Metodika. Tyrime dalyvavo šeši (3 merginos ir 3 vaikinai) 15-16 metų paaugliai, gyvenantys globos namuose. Naudoti metodai: biografinio pasakojimo interpretacinis metodas, dokumentų analizė ir trauminių įvykių anketa. Rezultatai. Tyrimo rezultatų turinio interpretacinė analizė atskleidė tris tapatumo išgyvenimo tipus: tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas vidiniu konfliktu: konfrontacija su siekiant įrodyt savo vertę; tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas idealizacija ir nuvertinimu: fantazijos ir svajonės – kaip būdas atlaikyti realybę ir tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas fragmentacija: izoliuotas subjektyvumas. Šiame darbe keliamos hipotezės, kad skirtingi biografinio pasakojimo tipai atskleidžia skirtingą tapatumo formavimosi paauglystėje dinamiką. Taip pat patvirtinama artimų ir ilgalaikių santykių svarba tapatumo išgyvenimo ir trauminio patyrimo įveikos procese. / Nowadays identity is defined as rooted in emotion, emerging in relationship and developing as dynamic, self-organizing system. And identity formation is a intrapsychic changes during adolescence: separation individuation process, experience integration and establishment of ego continuity. It is necessary to use new methods for identity evaluation in order to understand it’s development in relational context. Qualitative research: biographical narrative interpretative analysis, was made to understand identity formation in adolescence who live in foster care. Method: six, 15-16 years old teenagers (3 girls, 3 boys) participated in research. Biographical narrative interpretative method was used to collect and interpret data, additional methods: document analysis and traumatic events questionnaire. Results: data analysis revealed three types of identity experience: identity experience based on inner conflict: fight as way to survive; identity experience based on idealization and devaluation: fantasy– the way which helps to deal with reality and identity experience based on fragmentation: isolated subjectivity. It is hypothesized that different types of told life stories are connected with different dynamic of identity experience in adolescence. It is confirmed importance of close and long lasting relationship in a process of coping with traumatic experience.

Pastaraisiais metais tapatumas apibrėžiamas kaip dinamiška save apibrėžianti sistema, besiformuojanti santykiuose, kurios pagrindas yra emocijos. O tapatumo formavimasis – tai intrapsichinių pasikeitimų paauglystėje visuma – atsiskyrimo ir individuacijos procesas, patyrimų integracija bei ego tęstinumo įtvirtinimas. Todėl siekiant suprasti, kaip sunkumai artimuose santykiuose susiję su tapatumo išgyvenimu paauglystėje, buvo atliktas kokybinis tyrimas, naudojant biografinio pasakojimo interpretacinį metodą. Metodika. Tyrime dalyvavo šeši (3 merginos ir 3 vaikinai) 15-16 metų paaugliai, gyvenantys globos namuose. Naudoti metodai: biografinio pasakojimo interpretacinis metodas, dokumentų analizė ir trauminių įvykių anketa. Rezultatai. Tyrimo rezultatų turinio interpretacinė analizė atskleidė tris tapatumo išgyvenimo tipus: tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas vidiniu konfliktu: konfrontacija su siekiant įrodyt savo vertę; tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas idealizacija ir nuvertinimu: fantazijos ir svajonės – kaip būdas atlaikyti realybę ir tapatumo išgyvenimas pagrįstas fragmentacija: izoliuotas subjektyvumas. Šiame darbe keliamos hipotezės, kad skirtingi biografinio pasakojimo tipai atskleidžia skirtingą tapatumo formavimosi paauglystėje dinamiką. Taip pat patvirtinama artimų ir ilgalaikių santykių svarba tapatumo išgyvenimo ir trauminio patyrimo įveikos procese. / Nowadays identity is defined as rooted in emotion, emerging in relationship and developing as dynamic, self-organizing system. And identity formation is a intrapsychic changes during adolescence: separation individuation process, experience integration and establishment of ego continuity. It is necessary to use new methods for identity evaluation in order to understand it’s development in relational context. Qualitative research: biographical narrative interpretative analysis, was made to understand identity formation in adolescence who live in foster care. Method: six, 15-16 years old teenagers (3 girls, 3 boys) participated in research. Biographical narrative interpretative method was used to collect and interpret data, additional methods: document analysis and traumatic events questionnaire. Results: data analysis revealed three types of identity experience: identity experience based on inner conflict: fight as way to survive; identity experience based on idealization and devaluation: fantasy– the way which helps to deal with reality and identity experience based on fragmentation: isolated subjectivity. It is hypothesized that different types of told life stories are connected with different dynamic of identity experience in adolescence. It is confirmed importance of close and long lasting relationship in a process of coping with traumatic experience.

Ontario Place in Toronto has a long legacy of unfulfilled plans, conflicting interests and missed opportunities. Its evolution is punctuated by myriad socio-cultural, political and economic shifts. Landscape biography, an empirical research strategy, is used to capture the diversity, complexity and the transformational character of this landmark site through archival research and oral histories over five phases of development. With origins in cultural geography and social anthropology, landscape biography is a compelling analytic tool to study the evolutionary dynamics of landscape change. Ontario Place is closely examined within the broader context of Toronto’s post-industrial waterfront to highlight and explain contingent moments in this cultural landscape’s historical trajectory. Findings reveal that Ontario Place, like waterfront itself, is the aftermath of political indifference and short-term expediency multiplied over several years. A road-map is created to visualize long-term evolutionary cause-and-effect relationships and a framework is developed to provide guidance for future transformations of this public asset based on historically grounded research.

Relying on the standard conventions and techniques of life-history methodology in the Social Sciences, this study explores the professional or career histories of selected women principals in the EThekwini region. The study examines the relationship between gender and self-portrayal on the one hand, and gender and school leadership, on the other hand. Thus the central focus of the study is on the different ways in which women principals define themselves and are defined by others, especially their colleagues and the communities served by their schools. The study also looks at the ways in which key management structures such as School Management Teams (SMTs) and School Governing Bodies (SGBs) deal with the issues relating to gender equality in school leadership, management and governance. The dissertation also tackles the· complex relationship between private (personal) and professional identities and how these are constructed and continually re-constructed within the context of school management and leadership. The study is recognizably qualitative in orientation and therefore does not set out to formulate general principles about gender and school management. Instead the intention is to gain some insight into the relatively unique lives of individual women managers in education. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.

This study explored the lives of ten school leavers who were in the special class at the school in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal. The intention of the research was to gain insight into the schooling experiences of ten schools leavers, and to examine the factors that impact on these particular life outcomes. A life story approach was utilised in this qualitative case study of the ten individuals. Interviews were conducted with the school leavers and parents or significant family member. The findings in this study if embedded within the social rights discourse reveal that for many of the learners systemic barriers within the schooling system served as barriers to positive life outcomes. The ten learners experienced various exclusionary pressures in their schooling years that have negatively impacted on their life outcomes. The school leavers face complex barriers that make it virtually impossible for them to achieve independence and full participation in society. These include no job opportunities, lack of any work skills, low levels of schooling, dependence on sheltered employment with low levels of income, dependence on the government social welfare grant, poor self-esteem. The findings further revealed that these learners might be vulnerable to social and emotional risk factors. The study suggests that there is a need for further research on school leavers from special class provision in the context of Education White paper 6: Building an Inclusive Education and Training System, (Department of Education, 2001) so that their needs can be given priority in the implementation process that is currently underway in the country. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

A cancer diagnosis often causes biographical disruption in the lives of young adult (i.e., 18-39; YA) survivors and their close social network members (i.e., familial, plutonic, or romantic relational partners with whom the survivor has a salient relationship; SNM). In order to integrate their illness into their lives, normatively regain balance and equilibrium, and achieve a “new normal” following a cancer diagnosis, YA survivors and their close SNMs must work to reconstruct their biographies by engaging in tangible interpersonal communication processes often used to initiate and maintain relationships. However, YA cancer survivors report facing social struggles due to the biographical disruption of their illness across the trajectory of diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship. To learn more about their unique social experience of cancer, I conducted private, open-ended narrative interviews with 20 YA survivor-close SNM dyads, 1 YA survivor-SNM close triad, and 10 individual YA survivors (N = 51). I used thematic narrative analysis to determine how and why YA cancer survivors and their close SNMs communicate social support messages with romantic partners, family, friends, peers, and one another. By examining the narratives of YA survivors, their close SNMs, and the dyad itself, this dissertation explores the interpersonal communication processes used to initiate and maintain relationships across the illness trajectory by focusing on the barriers and facilitators these individuals experience in the communication of social support. Through their individual narrative accounts, YA survivors explained why and how they perceived various support attempts from others to be positive or negative, and their close SNMs detailed their attempts to navigate the YA’s larger support network and assume the duties inherent in their newly-adopted “top supporter” role. In addition, reports from YAs and their SNMs revealed that they often engaged in mutual pretense, a unique and often unsustainable form of support that occurred between YA survivors and their close SNMs involving topic avoidance and emotional management. Implications for the advancement of interpersonal communication theory and for practical intervention targeting YA patients and survivors, their close SNMs, and medical practitioners are also discussed.

This thesis deals with the career choices of young adults (ages 18 through 40) with mobility impairments and the experiences they had throughout their career-selection process. The purpose of the study was: To find the inhibitory and furthering factors of the career choices of people with mobility impairments from their own perspective, with a special focus on how various factors affected the process over time. The method for collecting the results of this study was biographical interviews. The main theories of the study were Sense of Coherence, Self-efficacy, Learned Helplessness, Social Role Valorization and The Four Rooms of Change. The results show that mobility impairment affects career choices and that the effect is more often inhibitory than it is furthering. Structural factors, such as how the respondents are treated by other people, as well as rules and material barriers (stairs, mal-functioning elevators, etc.) are found to be more limiting than the body itself. Being over-protected is a main inhibitory factor which can contribute strongly to low self-efficacy and drainage of self-image for the respondents.  The goal of the respondents is to obtain independence and a job based on their own terms, and not a social care career. This goal was found to form a vital resistance resource versus adversity and obstacles. The respondents consider themselves to be overprotected by society (by parents, teachers, career counsellors, employment officers, etc.) in relation to their career choices, and they would like not to be. / <p>Forskningsfinansiärer: Torsten Söderbergs Stiftelse och Ragnar Söderbergs Stiftelse</p>

The role of a school principal is complex and multidimensional, and is pivotal to the success of an educational institution. It is widely recognised by researchers that the effectiveness of a principal depends on his or her ability to be a strategic thinker, create and share knowledge, build relationships, be flexible, embrace a sense of efficacy and nurture the development of organisational capacity. Through a self-reflexive, autoethnographic methodology I examine my ‘self’ as the person in the principal’s office within the unique socio-cultural context of a rural school for the Deaf. Through a process of narrative inquiry and reflective analysis, I explore the first steps in my leadership journey, my engagement with instructional leadership in all its complexity, and my quest for quality outcomes for Deaf learners. This autoethnography raised multiple levels of consciousness about my identity, my lived experiences as a school leader and the school as an institution. Through the interrogation of my leadership enactments key themes have emerged that have implications for the professional development of school leaders. I came to understand that my identity as a leader evolves continuously and that my leadership practices are negotiated and renegotiated in context. Thus, my identity as a leader is situated and produced simultaneously in many different contexts, events, and by different agents for diverse purposes My study highlights that leadership is not merely the act of an individual but is embedded in a complex, unpredictable, non-linear interplay of various interacting influences. Leaders are social actors who need to be able to examine critically their own subjectivities, subject positions and the discourses that shape their actions. Leadership is the site for continuous, ongoing processes of learning, and organisations have the potential to be dynamic, interactive and adaptive systems, reinforcing the notion of the enabling leader. Therefore, leadership development programmes should enable leaders to understand that their actions and practice are socially and culturally situated, and that schools are complex dynamic, adaptive systems. / Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2013.

The present analogue study compared the effects of 2 theoretically divergent Life Review group psychotherapies on aspects of late life adjustment and development. Thirty-six adult non-patients, ages 65 years and older, from the Muncie - Delaware County vicinity, were randomly selected from an available subject pool of screened volunteer respondents and randomly assigned to one of three analogue treatment conditions with two groups for each treatment condition. These three treatment conditions were the structured reminiscence life review group (SRLR), the Gestalt life review group (GLR) and a Wait List control group (WLC). Demographic, mental status, and Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADL) data were obtained from initial respondents by telephone interview and followed by written completion of the Symptom Checklist (SCL 90-R). The differential effects of treatment were measured by pre and post testing on four dependent variables: (1) depression, (2) congruence, (3) helplessness, and (4) ego integrity.Results indicated that neither of the two life review group psychotherapy treatments had any statistically significant effect upon the dependent variables. In a post hoc exploratory analysis, evidence emerged which suggested that the participants in the GLR treatment condition may have shown significant improvement on several state mental health variables. The dimensions of improvement for participants in the GLR were Interpersonal Sensitivity, Hostility, Depression, and Positive Symptom report as measured by the SCL 90-R. This contrasted with those in both the SRLR or WLC condition for whom no improvement was shown. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services