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It has become increasingly apparent that the topic of marital conflict has been given “special status” within the published literature on issues of marriage (Bradbury, Rogge, & Lawrence, 2001; Fincham, 2003). The question has been raised as to whether or not there are other constructs that deserve comparable attention. The present study argues for a closer look at an additional emerging construct, emotional intimacy, and its role in couples’ relationships. Much of the literature on overt conflict and emotional intimacy fails to make an adequate distinction between these two constructs. The present study proposed to derive two factor scales from the Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Revised, Disaffection and Disharmony. Basic psychometric properties of these scales were examined using multiple data sets. Implications were examined for understanding underlying components of relationship distress in both community and clinic couples, and results provided support for the use of the revised factor scales in both clinical and research applications.

The changing relationship of Americans to their churches has been documented but has not been explained. This is a narrative qualitative research inquiry for the purpose of exploring the perspectives of members of Southern Baptist churches who experienced disaffection as a result of marginalization within the church as they practiced their religious faith. Using Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the microaggressions literature, this study described negative interactions and explained the group processes that marginalize church members and motivate their disaffection from the church. The narratives of this study extend the literature on negative interactions in the religious community, describing and examining antecedents and consequences. Two semi-structured interviews with ten participants who were once members of Southern Baptist churches informed this study. Four Southern Baptist churches were represented by the ten participants. Data analysis was aided by NVivo 11. In spite of the inclusive mission of the church, the results of this study clearly place microaggressions, with their accompanying marginalization, within the church. Characteristic of microaggressions, this study found that micro aggressions in the church: a) leave the responsibility of reparation with the target; b) deny the existence of microaggressions within their congregation; and c) breed a sense of rejection as a result of marginalization. This study affirms and extends Pargament's (2002) suggestion that short-term distress may lead to long-term spiritual growth. This study also emphasizes the need to address issues of faith as a dimension of diversity.

This study sought to analyse critically the discourse of pupils’ disaffection captured in the views of a teacher, a Learning Mentor and a group of six pupils from key stage 4 at a secondary school in south London. The analysis examined how some pupils acquired the label ‘disaffected’ and considered the extent to which dominant curriculum ideologies and power relations between teachers and pupils contributed to pupils’ disconnection from learning. Additionally, the study examined the effectiveness of the Alternative Education project organised by the school in a bid to engage disaffected pupils in learning. The corpus of data was generated through a combination of semi-structured one to one interviews and a focus group interview. Drawing on Fairclough’s (1989, 2001, 2003) approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), excerpts from the data were chosen on the basis of their salience to the key themes of the study to describe, interpret and explain the opaque and contradictory discourse of disaffection. The teachers’ narratives largely located explanations for pupils’ disconnection from learning in pupils’ cognitive, emotional and behavioural pathologies or the influence of a moral underclass culture in their communities. The pupils’ counter-narratives suggested that their disengagement was a rational response to a perception of de-motivating curricula and disrespectful teachers, resulting in a counter school culture, where resistance accorded status among peers and compliance with teachers’ demands for conformity earned the derisory label ‘Neek’. The teacher’s narrative also revealed that curriculum overload and the preoccupation with attainment targets posed significant challenges in his attempts to engage disaffected learners. However, the success of the Alternative Education Programme highlighted the importance of flexibility and positive educator-pupil relationships in capturing and sustaining the interest of learners. It is argued that an adequate analysis of the determinants of disaffection ought to consider the impact of instrumentality in education on relationships in the situational, institutional and societal contexts of schooling. Furthermore, the significance of class, ethnicity and gender on the academic under-achievement of black working class boys, can not be overstated.

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This thesis is an exploratory case study that investigates a 'successful' pupil referral unit (PRU) for key stage 3 secondary school pupils located in the semi-rural southwest of England. The achievement of the PRU was externally acknowledged by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) with a recently reported overall grade of 1 or ‘Outstanding’. This exploratory study took a social constructionist approach and was informed by the methodology of illuminative evaluation. This study explored the stories and experiences of pupils and staff using interviews, a focus group and video diaries for the pupils. The analysis of these data was from a socio-cultural theoretical perspective. The research data suggested that success was in a state of flux for all in the PRU. For pupils there were personal transformations in their attitudes, behaviours and values. Pupils’ social and emotional capital was increased by the ‘deep relationships’ that developed between pupils and staff. The innovative approach to the curriculum allowed pupils to engage positively with education and featured lessons that were routinely based upon experiential learning. This included weekly outdoor learning lessons which provided a rich context for informal learning to take place alongside the formal objectives. Leadership and management appeared to be the keystone of the PRU success. There was a clear well founded educational philosophy that was successfully articulated through the operational systems of the PRU. All of these parts contributed to the holistic success of the PRU. Findings from this case study are not generalisable due to its specificity to one particular setting and small number of participants. However, ‘naturalistic generalisations’ may be arrived at by the reader. For example, the reader may be able to apply some aspects of good practice, such as developing deep relationships, to their own context when working with those pupils who are, or have the potential to be, disaffected.

A significant number of Pennsylvanians were not, in any meaningful sense, either revolutionaries or loyalists during the American War for Independence. Rather, they were disaffected from both sides in the imperial dispute, preferring, when possible, to avoid engagement with the Revolution altogether. The British Occupation of Philadelphia in 1777 and 1778 laid bare the extent of this popular disengagement and disinterest, as well as the dire lengths to which the Patriots would go to maintain the appearance of popular unity. Driven by a republican ideology that relied on popular consent in order to legitimate their new governments, American Patriots grew increasingly hostile, intolerant, and coercive toward those who refused to express their support for independence. By eliminating the revolutionaries' monopoly on military force in the region, the occupation triggered a crisis for the Patriots as they saw popular support evaporate. The result was a vicious cycle of increasing alienation as the revolutionaries embraced ever more brutal measures in attempts to secure the political acquiescence and material assistance of an increasingly disaffected population. The British withdrawal in 1778, by abandoning the region's few true loyalists and leaving many convinced that American Independence was now inevitable, shattered what little loyalism remained in the region and left the revolutionaries secure in their control of the state. In time, this allowed them to take a more lenient view of disaffection and move toward modern interpretations of silence as acquiescence and consent for the established government. / History

This thesis comprises two papers. Paper One: Previous research in relation to young people who are at risk of school exclusion can be criticised for the lack of studies that truly elicit and foreground the voices of these young people within a school context. While retrospective studies have explored their views post exclusion, few have examined their perceptions within a mainstream context prior to exclusion. This can be explained in terms of the inherent difficulties of engaging disaffected young people with research, often attributed to a combination of poor language skills and negative perceptions of adults, and schools’ reluctance to foreground these voices. This paper reports how a participatory research method, which took into account the individual needs of disaffected young people, overcame these difficulties and succeeded in eliciting the voices of ten young people at risk of school exclusion within their mainstream context. Rich, meaningful and contextualised data were generated about disaffected young people’s perceptions of their mainstream school experiences. The data were thematically analysed and then interpreted using self determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000). This revealed that from young people’s perspectives the need for a sense of relatedness was more relevant than the need for a sense of autonomy. The need to feel competent only became relevant in certain subject contexts. Findings showed a more holistic and nuanced perspective of disaffection. The young people perceived their engagement to be context driven and, importantly, were able to view themselves as positively engaged with some aspects of school. This highlights the need for further research into disaffected young people’s voices regarding what they perceive to be positive engagement as this may differ from practitioners’ perceptions. Implications for practice are that Educational Psychologists (EPs) are well placed to foreground the voice of disaffected young people with practitioners. In so doing they help them make better sense of disaffected young people’s school experiences and enhance practitioners’ ability to support these young people. Paper Two: Interventions in relation to young people at risk of exclusion tend to be drawn from education practitioner views which focus on a particular perspective of disaffection such as within child or curricular factors. Consequently interventions are ‘done to’ rather than ‘with’ young people and lack an integrated, holistic approach. In this small case study the researcher facilitated an intervention with seven Learning Mentors (LMs) set within two different school contexts. The aim of the intervention was to engage LMs with the voice of disaffected young people. The LMs met in two groups over two months during which vignettes of disaffected young people’s voices were used as stimuli for prioritising, implementing and evaluating changes to current LM practice. LMs’ personal constructs of disaffected young people were elicited pre and post intervention. The findings reveal that when LMs are facilitated to engage with the voice of disaffected young people it can have a positive impact on their perceptions of those young people. The effectiveness of the impact was dependent on the context of the school, level of training received and the extent to which LMs engaged with the facilitative process. As this is one of few studies which have implemented an intervention to engage schools with the voice of disaffected young people, further research exploring whether the intervention could be replicated in other school contexts would be of value. This study adds to the body of knowledge on school disaffection in young people and indicates that EPs are well placed to manage facilitative processes aimed at engaging schools with the voices of disaffected young people. In doing so they support practitioners to broaden their understanding of these young people and, importantly, enable them to act on their voices.

Grounded in Festinger s (1954) theory of social comparison processes, this thesis aims to examine three aspects of this theory in the physical education context, where ability is the characteristic under comparison: adolescent motives for comparison; frames of reference; and consequences of comparison. Although there is a growing evidence base investigating social comparison processes in academic subjects, there remains a dearth of knowledge concerning the role that comparison can play in determining outcomes in physical education. Furthermore, there is very little research within psychology in general that examines young peoples motives for and outcomes of comparison. This thesis begins to address this lack of knowledge by providing an in-depth exploration of social comparison processes (Study 1) which is followed by an examination of the role that two frames of reference (the class and a chosen individual) and motives for comparison (evaluation, improvement, enhancement) play in determining: physical self-concept; engagement; disaffection; self-efficacy, positive affect and negative affect (Studies 2-4). Additionally, the moderating role of behavioural regulations, motivational climate and perceived autonomy support are also investigated. Across the four studies, comparative evaluations with the class are influential in determining both positive and negative outcomes whilst the role of individual comparisons varies according to the dependent variable under investigation. Evidence for both the moderating and direct role of motives for comparison is presented as well as support for the moderating role of motivational climate and behavioural regulations. The findings highlight the need to investigate multiple aspects of social comparison processes simultaneously in addition to investigating moderators of comparative evaluations in order that a more comprehensive understanding of social comparison processes is achieved.

Motivational interviewing (MI) has been used extensively and often effectively in medical settings to support behaviour change in adults. There is emerging evidence that MI may also be a useful approach for working with young people in schools. This thesis investigated the effectiveness of MI in educational settings and is presented in three sections. The first paper is an evaluative systematic literature review examining the evidence for student-focused MI in educational settings. Eleven studies were included in the review, although just eight were identified as 'best evidence' and included in the synthesis. Overall there is evidence for the effectiveness of student-focused MI in the areas of behaviour, school-based motivation and academic achievement. However, a number of methodological weaknesses were identified in the existing literature, which provides clear pointers for future research. Previous research has highlighted the potential usefulness of MI when used as a therapeutic intervention with disaffected students. However, to date, there has been little published research investigating students' views on MI. The second paper aims to investigate students' views on an MI intervention. Three disaffected students took part in an individual MI intervention, which was delivered by three educational psychologists (EPs). Semi-structured interviews were used to obtain the students' views, immediately after the intervention and again at a follow-up interview three months later. The results indicated that students were enthusiastic about the intervention and most perceived that there had been a positive impact on their learning motivation and classroom behaviour. However, these results were not consistent with questionnaire responses and two of the students experienced exclusions around the time of the intervention. The implications of these ambiguous findings are discussed in relation to the use of therapeutic interventions by EPs and the possible factors that are crucial to the success of MI interventions. The third paper provides a critical appraisal of the overall research process, including implications of the work, wider context of the research and dissemination of evidence to professional practice.