The purpose of this study was to investigate, with or without prompts, students’ small group discussions of their solutions to mathematical problems and to determine the extent to which the students demonstrate mathematical power. Mathematical power was defined in terms of student assessment standards (SAS) and their integration. SAS, each of which has associated with it categories of mathematical activities, comprise communication, problem solving, mathematical concepts, mathematical procedures, and mathematical disposition. Other insights perceived to be important from the discussions were also documented. Grade 9 students of the regular school program were used for the study. There were 18 students in the class but only one group of students comprising 2 females and 2 males was the focus of the study. They responded to mathematical problems individually for 20 minutes and then used 40 minutes to discuss, in groups, their solutions to the problems. Also, they responded to questionnaire items. The group discussions were video recorded and analyzed. Data were collected on 7 different occasions using 7 different problems over a period of 3 months. - Results of the study indicate that students demonstrated mathematical power to the extent that at least one category of the mathematical activities associated with each SAS was reflected by the small group discussions of students’ solutions to mathematical problems. Other results indicate that combining students written scripts with students’ talk provides a better insight into the things about which students are talking. Also, monitoring students and providing them with prompts while they work in groups is useful in helping them accomplish tasks in which they are engaged. Finally, when students work in groups, they can shift their viewpoints consensually or conceptually to align their viewpoints with majority viewpoints.

This study investigated how a therapist and clients created couple change over the course of 15 sessions of Experiential Systemic Therapy (ExST) for the marital treatment of alcohol dependency. The aim of this research was to explore how change occurred during a single case of successful ExST and to refine and expand ExST theory. ExST has been shown to be an effective treatment for couple recovery from alcohol dependence yet little research has focused on how change occurs in ExST. The case selected for analysis was an exemplar of successful ExST couples therapy. The case met several criteria for success including therapist and client satisfaction with therapy, the cessation of alcoholic drinking, increased marital satisfaction at posttest and follow-up periods, and evidence of in-session couple change. Two therapy episodes containing relational novelty (couple change) were analyzed using the Comprehensive Discourse Analysis procedure. The results of this study highlighted the existence of a subtype of relational novelty called syncretic relational novelty. Syncretic change refers to the generation of intimacy by therapist and couple where initially there existed disparate beliefs and behaviour that isolated system members. The study found that the couple’s distance oriented beliefs and practices were reconciled and intimacy was enhanced through the employment of intense experiential activities and the provision of a collaborative therapeutic atmosphere. These two activities fostered increased couple intimacy by encouraging clients to engage one another through self disclosure, empathy, shared vulnerability, increased cooperation and greater personal awareness. Couple intimacy was fostered during experiential activity through a carefully paced intensification of clients’ thoughts, feelings and physical sensations. In addition, intimacy was facilitated by the therapist when she accepted clients’ experiences and adopted clients’ language styles. As well as working collaboratively, the therapist acted as a therapeutic guide interceding during harmful spousal interactions, altering the therapy agenda at client request, promoting joint decision-making and valuing marginalized client experience. Recommendations based on these findings were made for the refinement and expansion of ExST theory.

Two studies were performed to provide insight into the causes and effects of client noncompliance to behavioral treatments. An Analogue Study was performed in which undergraduate participants were taught about progressive muscle relaxation. Participants were randomly assigned to either a directive condition (which placed an emphasis on describing relaxation as an expert would) or a supportive condition (which emphasized incorporating relaxation into the person's daily life). Results indicated that participants in the supportive condition reported higher levels of enjoyment, satisfaction, and homework compliance than participants in the directive condition, but did not display significantly different levels of intrasession noncompliance. As well, a Clinical Study served as a naturalistic study involving six therapist-mother pairs where the mother was presenting with parenting difficulty and worked with the therapist during six sessions of behavioral parent training. This study surprisingly found that mothers were more likely to show noncompliance immediately following therapist supportive behavior than after directive behavior, but that overall levels of directive behavior resulted in less homework completion, and that overall levels of supportive therapist behavior corresponded with higher client satisfaction and lower overall levels of intra-session noncompliance. As well, therapists were more likely to respond to client noncompliance with supportive rather than directive behavior. Reconciliation of these results with previous research was discussed, along with limitations to these studies and potential areas for future research.

Violent and aggressive behavior is a subset of antisocial behavior that is of particular concern to the criminal justice system and to the general public. A challenge facing mental health professionals and the criminal justice system is to assess—with a reasonable degree of accuracy—the likelihood that a young offender will recidivate and to arrange appropriate interventions. Because of its psychometric properties and high predictive validity, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is being incorporated into risk assessment batteries for use with adults. The purpose of the study was to extend the risk paradigm to adolescent offenders, investigating the predictive validity of the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) from adolescence to adulthood. Subjects were 157 admissions, ages 12-18, referred to Youth Court Services for psychological or psychiatric assessment. Archival data were used to complete retrospectively the PCL:YV and to code criminal history and demographic data on each of the subjects. Follow-up criminal record data were collected, with an average follow-up time of ten years. Over the follow-up period psychopaths demonstrated a greater risk for committing violent offences than nonpsychopaths. They committed violent offences at a higher rate, earlier following their release from custody, and were more likely to escape from custody than nonpsychopaths. Further, results indicate that PCL:YV score, a difference in performance - verbal intellectual functioning (P > V Index), and history of self-harm contributed significantly to the prediction of violent outcome, over and above the contribution of a combination of criminal-history and demographic variables. Finally, background and demographic characteristics were compared between violent and nonviolent psychopaths. Findings are discussed in the context of current conceptualizations of psychopathy and adolescent antisocial behavior.

The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning of change through therapeutic enactment in psychodrama. Existential and hermeneutic phenomenology conducted from the perspective of a dialectic between storied narrative and thematic analysis was used to investigate the essential meaning of the experience. Eight co-researchers who had experienced significant change through therapeutic enactment in psychodrama were interviewed in depth. Transcripts from these interviews were transposed into narrative form in order to straighten the story of change through enactment in a before, during, and after sequence. These eight individual narratives were validated by the co-researchers. An independent reviewer checked each narrative against the original transcript, video tapes of the enactments, and comments of each co-researcher for trustworthiness. Each validated narrative provided a rich description of the lived experience of change through therapeutic enactment. In addition, fifty-nine (59) essential themes were formulated from the individual narratives: Fourteen (14) in the planning stage, twenty-four (24) in the enactive stage, and twenty-one (21) in the reflective, or integrative stage, of the enactment process. These themes were then woven into a common story representing the pattern and meaning of change through therapeutic enactment for this group of co-researchers. Finally, notations made during the transposing of the transcripts into personal narratives, formulation of the essential themes, and construction of the common story were used to develop a theoretical story of change through therapeutic enactment, as a final level of hermeneutic interpretation. This theoretical story was then presented in summary form as a thematic sequence of multi-modal change processes representing a model of change through therapeutic enactment. The results of this study suggested numerous theoretical and technical implications. Foremost among theoretical implications was the suggestion that Tomkins (1992) script theory of affect may best illuminate the effects and processes of psychodrama and enactment. This study also had implications for interactional theories of development, contemporary psychoanalytic theories of interpersonal functioning, theories of moral development, theories of dream functioning, and ethological theories of myth and ritual. The results of this study also suggested a number of additional qualitative and comparative outcome studies for future research.

No description available.

This case study examines the educational needs of students attending two social affairs schools in Quebec. The aim was to determine why these youths continue to do poorly academically and why they fail to thrive once they leave the child welfare system, as described in the literature. Individual and environmental factors that hinder academic progress were investigated ethnographically. The chronic under-achievement characteristic of youths attending the social affairs schools appears to be due to a number of individual factors such as frequent school changes as well as to the mental health model that guides the social affairs schools. This model views educational difficulties to be secondary to psycho-social familial problems. As a result, appropriate educational assessments are not conducted and little attention is given to remediating learning difficulties that may prevent successful reintegration of students into regular schools and often exacerbate family dysfunction.

Through the lenses of critical pedagogy, cognitive psychology, marketing, curriculum development, traditional and informal education, and Black education, how one centre constructed and implemented critical edutainment is reviewed and scrutinized. The ethnographic study took place in a hyperreal (Baudrillard) setting using a bricolage of research methods: Seidman's 3-part interview protocol with workers and administrators; McMillan's focus group interview process with 9-12 year olds; participant-observation; field and reflective notes; and artefacts from external sources such as television broadcasts, newspapers, and official documents to gather and analyse data. In spite of its noble intentions, Gramsci's hegemony was witnessed and maintained through the centre's structure and organisation hence causing stress on the workers. Although the children and adults approved of the teaching and disciplinary acts, close regulation of their actions was done. Critical edutainment employs Vygotsky's zone of proximal development as it acknowledges the indigenous knowledges of adults and children and asks them to co-construct a curriculum that is cognitively, affectively, and socially relevant. It shows how curriculum construction, teamwork, accountability, and lessons learned from Black educators can be used to make a viable critical edutainment site that incites learning and fun.

Questionnaires were constructed to measure dieter's beliefs in their abilities to (1) adhere to a diet in eating situations, (2) perform various dieting behaviors, and (3) reach their dieting goals. The three questionnaires were called the Situation-, Behavior-, and Goal-Based Dieting Self-Efficacy Scales. / Preliminary work examined the reliability of the three scales. The Situtation-Based scale demonstrated a high level of test-retest reliability over a two to four week period in the two college samples. Examination of scale intercorrelations in the clinical sample indicated that the scales were correlated at only a low level, suggesting that the scales measure different aspects of the construct of dieting self-efficacy. / Results of the laboratory studies demonstrated that the Situation-Based scale was a significant predictor of how much dieters ate in response to two different types of challenges to their diets, high calorie preloads and a depressed mood induction. / The ability of the three scales to predict weight changes was examined in the clinical sample. Only the Goal-Based scale was found to predict weight change. / In summary, the present study adds to the body of literature supporting goal-based dieting self-efficacy as a significant predictor of weight change during dieting attempts. Suggestions were offered about ways to apply this finding to clinical practice, in the areas of patient selection and treatment prescription. / The present research was limited in the following ways. The laboratory studies were limited by the narrow range of subjects, and the artificiality of the eating situation. Future research should extend this finding with other populations, as well as methodologies for examining the relation between dieting self-efficacy and eating in real-life situations. The clinical study was limited by the absence of a follow-up assessment. Future research must examine the ability of dieting self-efficacy to predict weight change over longer periods of time. Finally, suggestions were made concerning the importance of future research attempting to clarify the construct of dieting self-efficacy, particularly research aimed at determining the relation between responses to these questionnaires and the actual cognitive processes engaged in by dieters in eating situations, and over the course of their weight control efforts. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Dissertation submitted to the faculty of Health Sciences at the Durban University of Technology in partial compliance with the requirements for a Master's Degree in Technology: Chiropractic, 2007. / The objectives of this study were: To determine how the frequency of manual work contributes to low back pain in nurses in state versus private hospitals in the Durban area. To determine how the frequency of manual work contributes to low back pain in nurses in state versus private hospitals in the Durban area. Hospital nurses have a high prevalence of low back pain (LBP) (Smedley et al., 2003). It has been found that nursing personnel ranked fifth in occupations claiming worker compensation for low back injuries (Owen and Garg, 1994). A number of studies have also indicated a strong association between musculoskeletal disorders and work related factors (Maul, 2002). An epidemiological study by Smedley et al (1997) has suggested that repetitive lifting, frequent bending and twisting play a role in the development of LBP, and that heavy physical workload has played a major role in the development of LBP in nurses. LBP is therefore a serious problem in the nursing field with a relatively high prevalence worldwide. It causes increased absenteeism from work and could impact on patient care. This study was a survey, which was quantitative in nature. Data was collected by means of a questionnaire. The questionnaires were handed out in randomly selected hospitals in the Durban Metropolitan area. The names of all state and private hospitals in the Durban Metropolitan area were put into two boxes and three names were picked from each box. A letter requesting permission to carry out this research was sent out to each hospital and a positive response was received from one state hospital, R.K Khan Hospital and two private hospitals, Westville and Entabeni hospitals. Questionnaires were handed out to the nurses by the researcher, as requested by the hospitals, and collected at a later time by the researcher. Questionnaires were handed out at each ward in the hospitals to nurses who met the criteria for the study and agreed to participate in this study. Questionnaires were also handed out to nurses in the nurses lounge during lunch breaks. The questionnaire was developed as combination of; a pre-validated questionnaire made available by Yip (2001), questions on socio-demographic data, work history, patient handling activities and LBP. The compiled questionnaire was tested for face and construct validity through a focus group, and piloted before being used in the study. A total of 500 questionnaires were handed, 250 to state hospitals and 250 to private hospitals. Participants consisted of nurses (registered, enrolled and student) between the ages of 18 and 45 years, both male and female. Nurses from all hospital wards were allowed to participate in this study. A total of 124 questionnaires were received back, ( 50 from private hospitals and 74 from the state hospital), from the nurses in all the hospitals. Data was then collected from these questionnaires and was analysed using the statistical package SPSS version 13 (SPSS Inc. Chicago, Illinois, USA). A p value of <0.05 was considered as significant. The data collected from the questionnaires was analysed and the results obtained were as follows: The prevalence of work related LBP in this study was 59.7%. Of the 74 nurses with LBP, only 7 (9.5%) reported having LBP before working as a nurse. 35.1% of participants reported that they experienced pain on a daily basis while 62.2% described their LBP as moderate and 27% described their pain as severe. The median duration of LBP was 3.5hours per episode. Of all the participants in this study, 64,9% had needed bed rest due to their LBP with 43.2% having taken sick leave from work for LBP. Back pain in nurses has been found to be a major cause of days lost due to sickness (French et al., 1997). The majority of nurses (93.2%) reported lifting to be the cause of their LBP, standing and bending were also found to be important causes. Low Back injury was reported in 31.1% of participants with up to 51.4% receiving treatment for their injuries, the main choice of treatment was from a hospital or General practitioner. With regards to the frequency of manual work on LBP, there was found to be a slight tendency toward LBP with more frequent manual activity, however this was viii found to be non significant. In those respondents with LBP, the activity associated with the most intense LBP was carrying or lifting patients. Time spent; standing, holding up hands and bending were found to be higher in the group which reported LBP. Having 1-2 children was also associated with increased LBP. The prevalence of LBP was found to be higher in the state hospital (67.6%) than in the private hospitals (48%). The aim of this study was to determine the association between frequency and intensity of manual work on LBP in nurses. The results showed that frequently performed manual activities were associated with LBP but not significantly. In terms of intensity of manual work, carrying or lifting patients was found to be most associated with LBP, standing and bending were also significantly associated with LBP. This study also aimed to determine any difference in LBP between state and private hospitals and a significant difference in LBP prevalence was noted between state and private hospitals. The findings of this study suggest that LBP is a common problem among hospital nurses. The results of this study were also found to be within the same prevalence rates of international studies, which ranged from 35.9% in New Zealand to 66.8% in the Netherlands (Nelson et al., 2003). As was found in the literature (French et al., 1997 and Smedley et al., 1997), lifting was reported to be a major cause of LBP.