Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-42)

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<p> This study compares developmental assets, restorative practices, and conflict resolution to determine how each of these approaches to working with students relates to various elements of school counseling and the four major components of school counseling programs contained in The American School Counseling Association&rsquo;s National Model. Existing literature on Developmental Assets, Restorative Practices, and Conflict Resolution was reviewed to examine the logistics of each of the models as well as to explore the benefits and limitations of using these processes to improve student outcomes within the realms of academic, personal, and social development. This thesis provides a platform for explaining how various strategies used within Developmental Assets, Restorative Practices, and Conflict Resolution can enable school guidance counselors to utilize evidenced-based practices in their school counseling programs to better serve the schools and the students with whom they work. </p>

<p>For over seventeen years, I have dedicated my life as both a teacher and an administrator to serving our children, especially our children of color and those of lower socio-economic status. I have lived and felt the successes of our children and teachers as well as the pain of public education. I have striven to be an authentic leader, keeping our children at the forefront of why we do what we must in order to provide ALL of them with equitable access to a quality education and opportunities. This has come at a heavy cost to me both professionally and personally. </p><p> During a &ldquo;time out&rdquo; in my career, this dissertation granted me an opportunity to reflect and analyze who I have been, who I am, and who I might become. More specifically, it allowed me to take a look at certain life stories of my past, and thus to better understand my professional experiences so that I may work towards becoming a more effective and authentic leader. </p><p> This study used an autobiographical framework with a qualitative design to analyze my life-stories and thus address the following questions: &bull; What meanings am I taking away from my life stories? &bull; How do my life-stories help my development as an authentic leader? &bull; How has the notion of authentic leadership helped me understand what has happened to me professionally thus far? &bull; What influence will this process have on who I might become? &bull; Can this strategy help others develop into authentic leaders? </p><p> The study notes the importance of personal growth for professional growth and argues that being true to oneself does not necessarily lead to authentic leader development. Authentic leader development requires individual, systematic, and routine reflection on selected life-stories and an external catalyst to promote the discovery of deeper meaning in both the leader and his/her followers. </p>

<p> The purpose of this grant proposal project was to develop and identify funding for the implementation of a school-based teen dating violence prevention program for adolescents in the southeast Los Angeles, California area. Peace Over Violence was the host agency for this program and is located in Los Angeles, California. Through the review of the literature on the history, prevalence, risk factors, and the existing interventions for adolescents, the grant writer proposed and designed a school-based teen dating violence prevention program. Additionally, the grant writer explored potential public and private funding sources, which resulted in the selection of the California Endowment Foundation as the funding source due to having the most compatible goals and objectives of this program. The actual submission and/or funding of this grant were not required for the successful completion of this academic project. </p>

<p>An individual's financial position of dependence or independence can impact a person's state of psychological well-being and his/her level of functioning in society. Being financially independent can provide a sense of security and empower an individual to increase their quality of life. However, being financially dependent on others can create a hardship of fear and uncertainty about how to feed one's family or pay the rent. A number of published studies (Kruttschnitt, 1982; Natalier, 2007; Powles, 1991; Rogers, 2004; Schneider, 2000; Strube & Barbour, 1983) have been performed for specific topics related to financial dependency; however, the various developmental stages people experience when they are financially independent or financially dependent has not yet been researched or characterized. The goals of this study are: 1) to examine and identify the developmental stages of financial dependence and independence that individuals experience over the life span, and 2) to determine the benefits and challenges people encounter as a result of experiencing each of these stages of financial dependence and independence. Gaining a greater understanding of the common experiences people have in each of these states of financial dependence and independence will enable psychology and sociology professionals to better recognize the needs and concerns of their clients.

<p> The research investigates the intersection of personality and motivation, and specifically, the predictive relationship between factors of the five-factor model of personality and the categories of the Assessment of Individual Motives-Questionnaire motivation model. Although significant research into multi-trait personality models exists, there is significantly less research into multi-trait motivation models and little research into how multi-trait models in these two fields intersect. No research exists within this field for human resource professionals. A canonical correlation analysis was chosen to properly represent all potential between-factor effects of the two variable sets. The resulting data met all assumptions and showed statistical significance. The results showed significance for the overall canonical correlation between the predictor and the outcome variables and showed that there were three statistically significant canonical functions between the two sets of variables. Four personality variables and three motivation variables met the statistical cutoff showing contribution to the canonical correlation. These results showed that the personality factors of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness negatively predicted the motivation category of Competitive. The personality factor of Extraversion predicted the motivation category of Cooperative, and the personality factor of Openness predicted the motivation category of Integrity of Self. These results suggest an opportunity for further investigation into the relationships between Openness and Integrity of Self, and between Conscientiousness and Competitive. Also, more canonical correlation research into this field may help understanding these complex relationships. Finally, extending this research to the public could provide a better understanding of personality and motivation outside the workplace.</p><p>

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study attempts to demonstrate the process of diminishing egocentricity, which appears to be central to the individual's evolving capacity to be in relation to the other, in the developing early-to-middle adolescent. It examines the widely accepted developmental theories that view egocentrism and cognitive maturation as being functions of subject-object differentiation. While egocentrism is acknowledged among developmental psychologists to occur, this study attempts to describe the still unarticulated understanding of the change process of diminishing egocentricity, its particular constitutive parts, their nature and function. As the field of developmental psychology has been by itself insufficient to the task of illuminating these processes, a psycho-philosophical mixed study is undertaken in a secondary analysis of A.C. Petersen's (1998) Adolescent Mental Health Study, 1978-1990 longitudinal data collected on early adolescents and followed-up in late adolescence and early adulthood. Existential phenomenology and G.W.F. Hegel's (1977) dialectical method inform the study's theoretical reframing of the problem of diminishing egocentricity in early-to-middle adolescence. The study utilizes CAQDAS, close reading method, grounded theory, and hermeneutical analysis to examine the narrative responses of 45 subjects to Petersen's (1998) study's Self-Image Questionnaire for Young Adolescents (SIQYA) in the qualitative analysis. The quantitative portion of the study makes use of Individual Growth Modeling (IGM) to analyze Petersen's (1998) full sample of SIQY A respondents as confirmation or refutation of the qualitative analysis. In addition to successfully arriving at a phenomenology of diminishing egocentricity that demonstrates the importance of a more authentic and integrated dialectical methodology than previously used in developmental research, the study's findings promote a critical retooling of concepts believed to be essential to our understanding of cognitive development generally and shown here to be relevant to diminishing egocentricity in particular, including abstract and concrete thinking qualities/capacities, object permanency, object relations, and subject-object-differentiation. The reframing of the current youth crisis in this more fully developed and unified theoretical (psychological/philosophical) system suggests that a greater emphasis on distinctively social experiential education/opportunities and skills-based activities in schools and therapeutic settings may provide one course for meaningful corrective action. Further study to create an integrated approach to experiential opportunities that promote social cognition is recommended. / 2031-01-02

Before infants speak their first word, they already produce a large variety of sounds. Whilst the developmental process that leads to speech production is very well documented, little attention is given to how non-linguistic sounds function in the child's everyday environment and whether they show acoustic consistencies similar to those found in the calls of non-human primates. This thesis investigated whether human infants between 11 and 18 months have “calls”. The first study observed 22 infants in their everyday nursery environment in Scotland and identified a number of contexts in which infants produced vocal behaviour. Vocalisations in five of these contexts, giving, declarative pointing, food requests, protests and action requests, were then subjected to an acoustic analysis. Results of the discriminant analysis suggest that four categories of vocal behaviour can be distinguished on the basis of their acoustic properties alone. To investigate whether these calls are part of a universal human repertoire, we conducted a cross-cultural comparison of the acoustic properties of vocal behaviour showed that, despite a slightly higher level of variation; four categories of calls could still be discriminated above chance level. This suggests that human infants possess calls with rather fixed acoustic properties as part of their vocal repertoire in addition to other, more flexible vocal behaviours. In order to assess whether listeners can gain information from these calls, we conducted a playback study with parents, experienced and inexperienced participants. Results show that all participants can categorise all vocalisations above chance level. Parents were the only participants that showed significantly better scores in correctly classifying vocalisations recorded in Scotland over those recorded in Uganda. Overall, the studies demonstrated that infants, as part of their vocal repertoire, produce some classes of calls that have constant acoustic properties across infants from different cultures, and contain information about the infant's activities that can be picked up by a listener.

abstract: Understanding sources of knowledge (e.g., seeing leads to knowing) is an important ability in young children’s theory of mind development. The research presented here measured if children were better at reporting their own versus another person’s knowledge states, which would indicate the presence of introspection. Children had to report when the person (self or other) had knowledge or ignorance after looking into one box and not looking into another box. In Study 1 (N = 66), 3- and 4-year-olds found the other-version of the task harder than the self-version whereas 5-year-olds performed near ceiling on both versions. This effect replicated in Study 2 (N = 43), which included familiarization trials to make sure children understood the question format. This finding is in support of the presence of introspection in preschool-aged children. In the same studies, children also showed evidence for theorizing about their own and others knowledge states in a guessing task (Study 1) and in true and false belief tasks (Study 2). These findings together indicate both introspection and theorizing are present during young children's theory of mind development. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015