The aim of the research undertaken was to answer the question “How do insights during Inclusive Learning Support Programme (ILSP) meetings between parents and teachers of children with Down syndrome (DS) inform mutual attainment of each groups' expectations?” Inclusive Education (IE) for the learner with DS was introduced informally during the early 1990s in South Africa within a few local schools in Pretoria. Transcribed interviews and observations were used from a sample of teachers and parents of children with DS conducted by the ILSP coordinator to collect data. They were analysed using Herman’s and Herman’s- Konopka's (2010) dialogical self theory, positioning theory and pronoun grammar analysis. Results showed there are two opposing tensions in education. One is a need for stability. This is offset by the dynamic nature of education practice with its many actors - learners, teachers, managerial and supervisory staff, support staff, institutions and government departments. Every actor interprets education according to their goals, subjective beliefs and understanding of what the education process is occupying a dominant position but working from a shadow position. IE brings its own set of tensions to the actors in education. Policy documents from government, as interpreted in schools in South Africa, express the need for stability in education. The study was limited to the constraints of the academic format. More accessible versions of the findings and recommendations can be developed in papers. For ILSP coordinators practically to have a promoter position in the dialogue between teachers and parents there is a need for them to become acutely aware of the positions they adopt in dialogue in themselves and with reference to others. The study has offered a new way of interpreting the expectations of both parties in the ILSP meetings and rendering a solution to the often frustrating outcomes. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of changes that take place in surviving HIVpositive spouses’ explanations of themselves in relation to their acquired positive status, and in relation to the role that forgiveness may play, all through Hermans’ theory of dialogical self in the self-identity reconstruction process. The interpretive qualitative paradigm was used, along with a phenomenological research design. Research was carried out in a rural area of Gwanda South Constituency in Zimbabwe. Homogenous purposive sampling was used to select five HIVpositive widows and five HIV-positive widowers. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were used and thematic, narrative and interpretive phenomenological analyses were employed to analyse the data. The results showed that the surviving HIV-positive spouses faced a plethora of challenges following the deaths of their partners. Identified key relations to the reconstruction of a new self were found to be: a good knowledge of HIV; being at peace with the past self; forgiveness of self; and reconciliation with what has happened. These were found to be good ingredients for quick recovery and self-identity reconstruction. Significant others play an important role in self-identity reconstruction as they offer an environment that is supportive of HIV disclosure, thereby reducing the occurrence of stigma and discrimination. The study recommends that HIV activists and all education systems that are involved in the HIV campaigns in Gwanda South Constituency incorporate teachings about and awareness of forgiveness, reconciliation, stigma and discrimination at all levels of their education efforts and campaigns. / Psychology / D. Litt. et Phil. (Psychology)

No description available.

This thesis is a transdisciplinary study of leading South African Marxist intellectual, political activist and sociologist of language Neville Edward Alexander’s written work in English. It is an attempt to explore the “dialogical narratives” as a proposition in my assessment of his work and it is also a description of a method he employs to arrive at his own political and literary compositions. In tracking his formation as a political subject and an activist, Alexander’s and other writers’ interpretations of his meetings with and his stories about people are explored. His writings cover the spectrum of politics, education and language, and he employed a political economy approach in all his written expositions. The study argues that he had an exceptional ability to “argue against himself” because he was a dialectical reasoner and because he embraced the political and sociological toolkit of historical materialism as the philosophical matrix of his work. / History / D.Lit et Phil. (History)

This dissertation is a report on research into the development and evaluation of a career assessment and counselling procedure that falls under the aegis of the constructivist, narrative approach: My Career Chapter: A Dialogical Autobiography. My Career Chapter enables an individual to construct a holistic understanding of his or her career. The procedure facilitates an individual writing and reflecting on an autobiographical account of his or her career that is contextualised amidst systems of career influences. The resulting autobiographical text can be used in career counselling, including co-constructive dialogue between client and counsellor. The literature underpinning the research project is described with a wide-ranging discussion of issues that critically pertain to the research endeavour and essentially provide a primary base for the work. Two theoretical frameworks that exemplify constructivism in vocational psychology underpin the research: the Systems Theory Framework and the Theory of Career Construction. From the base of those two theoretical frameworks, narrative career counselling is explicated and exemplars are described. The Theory of Dialogical Self is introduced to inform the design of My Career Chapter and, ultimately, the theory and practice of narrative career counselling. The research is predominantly positioned within a paradigm of constructivism/interpretivism and the results of the studies are collectively interpreted accordingly; but postpositivism and critical ideological paradigms are present in a secondary form due to the mixture of research methods used in the project as a whole. Six empirical studies investigate the experience of My Career Chapter from the perspective of the developer, the counsellor-user, and the client-user; each explicated with two studies respectively. Research methods include autoethnography for the developer's experience, interpretative phenomenological analysis and focus group for the counsellor-users' experience, and quasi-experiment and interpretative phenomenological analysis for the client-users' experience. The studies of the developer's experience of My Career Chapter comprehensively explicate how and why the procedure was developed and emphasise the importance of reflexive science and practice. Crucially, the autoethnographies revealed a nexus of theory-practice-person which underpins the production of My Career Chapter, and critically influences the entire research project. The studies involving counsellor-users affirmed My Career Chapter's alignment with recommendations for the development and application of qualitative career assessment and counselling procedures. These studies also raised questions pertaining to the characteristics of client-users that may mediate the efficacy of the procedure (e.g., age, language ability). Studies of client-users firstly support the conclusion that My Career Chapter is a safe career assessment and counselling procedure, with minimal attendant risk of inducing psychological harm or distress. The procedure was experienced as being helpful as a tool for personal reflection, through its theoretically-derived processes of facilitating clients writing, reading, and hearing and talking their autobiographical manuscripts through in the interpretation phase. There are four dimensions of significance associated with this research project. Firstly, the divide between theory and practice has indeed been much lamented in vocational psychology and counselling psychology. Thus, the overall significance of the research reported upon in this dissertation is significant because it attempts to bring theory and practice together through a reflexive and theoretically informed research process into a career assessment and counselling procedure. Secondly, the research and development process produced a new career assessment and counselling product which will add to the limited range of techniques that fall under the aegis of constructivist career assessment and counselling broadly, and the narrative approach specifically. My Career Chapter complements other procedures. Thirdly, two of the research methods used in the project (viz., autoethnography and interpretative phenomenological analysis) demonstrated their potential as additional qualitative methods for research within vocational psychology. Finally, the research process has enabled the articulation of the Theory of Dialogical Self—from another branch of psychology—into the extant corpus of literature on career development theory and practice.

This thesis is a transdisciplinary study of leading South African Marxist intellectual, political activist and sociologist of language Neville Edward Alexander’s written work in English. It is an attempt to explore the “dialogical narratives” as a proposition in my assessment of his work and it is also a description of a method he employs to arrive at his own political and literary compositions. In tracking his formation as a political subject and an activist, Alexander’s and other writers’ interpretations of his meetings with and his stories about people are explored. His writings cover the spectrum of politics, education and language, and he employed a political economy approach in all his written expositions. The study argues that he had an exceptional ability to “argue against himself” because he was a dialectical reasoner and because he embraced the political and sociological toolkit of historical materialism as the philosophical matrix of his work. / History / D.Lit et Phil. (History)

Cette étude doctorale présente une analyse des identités musulmanes et de leurs multiples compréhensions dans un contexte d’immigration, de globalisation et de multiculturalisme en Finlande et au Québec, Canada. Elle porte sur les auto-identifications d’étudiantes universitaires issues de l’immigration qui ont un attachement personnel à l’identité musulmane – cette identité peut être considérée, entre autres, comme religieuse, culturelle ou faisant partie de l’héritage familial. Ainsi, elle peut être vécue comme acquise, choisie, adorée, mais aussi imposée, rejetée ou ignorée. Étant donné que dans plusieurs contextes européens et nord-américains l’identité musulmane est devenue « le symbole de l’Autre », les rapports de pouvoir locaux et globaux sont mis en relief dans notre étude. Nous supposons que quelle que soit la manière dont les participantes s’identifient comme musulmanes, elles ne peuvent pas échapper aux hiérarchies de pouvoir discriminatoires qui participent à la définition de leur « groupe ». Notre thèse interdisciplinaire est au croisement des disciplines des sciences des religions, de l’approche discursive de l’identité et des études critiques sur le multiculturalisme et sur les rapports de pouvoir. Nous appuyant sur un corpus de 30 entrevues effectuées en milieu universitaire à Helsinki, à Turku et à Montréal, nous proposons d’analyser les identités musulmanes des participantes dans le cadre méthodologique et théorique de la théorie du soi dialogique et des pragmatiques discursives à partir d’une conception d’un sujet hétérogène et multivocal. Ce cadre nous permet de cerner l’identité comme négociée et instable qui est, en même temps, à la recherche d’une certaine cohérence. L’objectif de notre recherche est de proposer une nouvelle analyse des identités musulmanes à partir des interactions complexes entre les identifications, les désidentifications et les confusions en tant que « types de négociation » identitaires. Ces négociations s’ancrent dans différents contextes discursifs : elles se réalisent à partir des rapports de pouvoir globaux et locaux, de divers repères spatiaux et temporels ainsi que de multiples positions et voix du soi et des autres, auxquels nous nous intéressons. Ainsi, les résultats de notre recherche confirment la complexité de la construction identitaire musulmane. Ils reflètent des manières multiples de considérer cette identité comme contextuellement construite et négociée en relation avec l’altérité et avec plusieurs points d’identifications saillants. Notre recherche contribue donc à dépasser certaines simplifications des définitions de l’identité musulmane : elle propose des moyens de s’éloigner de certaines tendances actuelles théoriques qui ne soulignent pas suffisamment la multiplicité qui caractérise la construction de cette identité. / In this doctoral research project I explore the multiplicity of Muslim identity construction in Finland and the province of Quebec, Canada, within the context of immigration, globalization, and multiculturalism. My interest lies in the Muslim self-identifications of female students who have an immigrant background. They can define their Muslim identities in many different ways: as religious, cultural, part of family heritage, and so forth. Thus, these identities can be experienced as given, chosen, or admired, but also imposed, rejected or ignored. As Muslim identity has become “the symbol of the Other” in many European and North American societies, the global and local power relations are also prominent in my research. I assume that in whatever ways the participants identify themselves as Muslims, they cannot wholly escape discriminatory power hierarchies which participates in shaping the definition of their “group”. My interdisciplinary thesis situates itself in the field of religious studies. It engages with a discursive approach to identity and with a critical approach to multiculturalism and power relations. The analysis draws on a corpus of thirty (30) qualitative and semi-structured interviews conducted in university contexts in Helsinki, Turku and Montreal. Dialogical Self Theory and Discursive Pragmatics are used to explore Muslim identities, as these theories draw upon heterogeneous and multivocal subject positions. This framework allows me to conceptualize identity as something negotiated and unstable, but which, at the same time, aims at a certain degree of coherence. In my analysis I propose new ways to analyse Muslim identities by considering the complex interplay of identifications, disidentifications, and confusions as “types” of identity negotiation. I observe the multiple ways these types of negotiations are acted out in various discursive contexts and the ways they are anchored in local and global power relations. I draw especially attention to diverse temporal and spatial reference points and to multiple positions and voices of the self and others. The results of my research confirm the complexity of Muslim identity construction, as they reflect a variety of ways these identities can be contextually negotiated through the self and the other. As such, my research contributes to overcoming some simplifications of the definitions of Muslim identities: it proposes an alternative way to study Muslim identity construction beyond certain theoretical tendencies treating these identities without being able to fully highlight the complexity and the multiplicity that characterises them. / Tutkin väitöskirjassani muslimi-identiteetin monimuotoisuutta monikulttuurisuuden, globalisaation ja maahanmuuton kontekstissa Suomessa ja Québecin provinssissa Kanadassa. Keskityn tutkimukseeni osallistuneiden naispuolisten maahanmuuttajataustaisten korkeakouluopiskelijoiden tapoihin, joilla he määrittelevät itsensä muslimina: he saattavat kokea muslimi-identiteettinsä uskonnollisina, kulttuurisina tai hyväksyttynä osana perheen perintöä. Toisin sanoen heidän muslimi-identiteettinsä voivat olla ennalta annettuja, itse valittuja tai ihannoituja, mutta myös ulkoapäin pakotettuja, torjuttuja tai ignoroituja. Koska muslimi-identiteetistä on tullut ”toiseuden symboli” monessa Euroopan ja Pohjois-Amerikan maassa, myös globaalit ja paikalliset valtasuhteet ovat tutkimukseni keskiössä. Lähtokohtani on, että osallistujat eivät voi täysin välttää syrjiviä valtahierarkioita, jotka osallistuvat heidän “ryhmänsä” määrittelemiseen. Ja tämä huolimatta painoarvosta, jonka he muslimi-identiteetilleen antavat. Tutkimukseni on monitieteellinen ja laadullinen. Se sijoittuu uskontotieteen kenttään. Taustateorioinani käytän diskursiivista lähestymistapaa identiteettiin ja kriittistä lähestymistapa monikulttuurisuuteen sekä valtasuhteisiin. Pääaineistoni koostuu 30 puolistrukturoidusta haastattelusta, jotka on toteutettu yliopistoympäristössä Helsingissä, Turussa ja Montrealissa. Analysoin muslimi-identiteettiä dialogisen itsen (Dialogical Self Theory) ja pragmaattis-diskursiivisesta teoreettis-metodologisesta viitekehyksestä, joka perustuu heterogeenisten subjektipaikkojen moniääniseen ja monipaikkaiseen tarkasteluun. Kyseinen teoreettis-metodologinen viitekehys auttaa minua lähestymään identiteettiä epävakaana ja neuvoteltuna, mutta myös voimana, joka pyrkii luomaan jatkuvuutta. Tutkimukseni tarkoituksena on kehittää uusi lähestymistapa muslimi-identiteetin analysoimiseen useiden erilaisten samaistumisen ja epäsamaistumisen tapojen sekä hämmentyneiden positioiden kautta. Nämä identiteetin ”neuvottelutyypit” rakentuvat useissa eri diskursiivisissa konteksteissa ja ajan ja paikan kiinnekohdissa. Ne kiinnittyvät täten globaaleihin ja paikallisiin valtasuhteisiin sekä itsen ja toisten positioihin ja ääniin. Tutkimukseni tulokset vahvistivat käsitystä muslimi-identiteetin monimuotoisuudesta ja useista erilaisista tavoista, joilla sitä voidaan rakentaa eri diskursiivisissa konteksteissa itsen ja toiseuden kautta. Tulokset edesauttavat kyseenalaistamaan muslimi-identiteetin osittain yksinkertaisia yleisiä määritelmiä sekä nykyajan teoreettisia lähestymistapoja, jotka eivät aina kykene tuomaan esiin sen moninaisuutta.

The fields of psychology and rhetoric share the goal of improving human mental health and behavior through persuasion. This thesis traces the history of rhetoric and psychology theory, focusing on the parallel theories of Nienkamp's internal rhetoric and Herman's dialogical self. Both theories model the human mind as having multiple psyches that actively interact to interpret human experience and project human behavior. I conclude with a case study of anorexic patients using ethos, pathos, and logos in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), arguing that principles of rhetoric can help patients with mental disorders cognitively realign their thinking more effectively than drug treatments can.

This thesis presents an argument for the use of dialogic halaqah to develop the personal autonomy of young Muslims in twenty-first century Britain. It begins by developing a theoretical grounding for Islamic conceptualisations of personal autonomy and dialogic pedagogy. In doing so, it aims to generate dialogue between Islamic and ‘western’ educational traditions, and to clarify the theoretical foundation of halaqah, a traditional Islamic oral pedagogy, that has been adapted to meet the educational needs of Muslim children in contemporary Britain. Dialogic halaqah is daily practice in two independent British Muslim faith-schools, providing a safe space for young Muslims to cumulatively explore challenging issues, in order to facilitate the development of selfhood, hybrid identity and personal autonomy, theorised as shakhsiyah Islamiyah. This thesis examines the relationship between thought, language, and the development of personal autonomy in neo-Ghazalian, Vygotskian and Bakhtinian traditions, and suggests the possibility of understanding shakhsiyah Islamiyah as a dialogical Muslim-self. This theoretical work underpins an empirical study of data generated through dialogic halaqah held with groups of schoolchildren and young people. Using established analytic schemes, data from these sessions are subjected to both thematic and dialogue analyses. Emergent themes relating to autonomy and choice, independent and critical thinking, navigating authority, peer pressure, and choosing to be Muslim are explored. Themes related to halaqah as dialogic pedagogy, whether and how it supports the development of agency, resilience and independent thinking, and teacher and learner roles in halaqah, are examined. Moreover, findings from dialogue analysis, which evaluates the quality of educational dialogue generated within halaqah, that is, participants’ capacity to engage in dialogue with each other, as well as with an imagined secular other, are presented. The quality of the dialogic interactions is evaluated, as is evidence of individual participant’s autonomy in their communicative actions.