Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: [58]-66)

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Montana, 2007. / Title from title screen. Description based on contents viewed July 18, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 25-29).

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Submitted in partial fulfillment for the requirements of the Degree of Master of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology in the Faculty of Education at the University of Zululand, 2003. / This study encompasses the phenomenon of drug abuse in the context of learning and teaching. The researcher endeavoured to explore certain aspects of this phenomenon in this particular context in view of a growing concern about the apparent demise of a culture of learning in our schools and related learning environments, and the threatening consequences thereof on a much wider front than might generally be realized. Due to the interwovenness and mutual playing field of learning and teaching, such threat will inevitably not only adverse affect learning, but teaching as well. The literature study revealed factors which are possibly as known in some circles but it is unknown or ignored in other, causing the potentially disastrous consequences of the latter to be underestimated while aggravating the threat to a vulnerable terrain such as the learning environment in its different school related manifestations. Due to the magnitude of the phenomenon of drug abuse, and consequently its impact on learning and teaching, this study had to be demarcated to some causes and effects of drug abuse on learning and teaching. The study concentrated on what the researcher termed an interplay between these factors, that might impact drug abuse, something that appears to be at the root of the perceived uneasiness and even despondency in education circles as regards the apparent fading of a culture of learning in the learning environment. An empirical investigation of this natuie, being regionally locusci only, is obviously limited in its outcome. Although conclusive, generally representative inferences could not be drawn, it indicated without doubt that the culture of learning and teaching in the learning environment has been dented and is in fact under siege by drug abuse. Certain recommendations such as the following were made and motivated: > Ignorance as regards drug abuse and its effects on the learning environment should be combated by providing the necessary infrastructure, particularly in the rural areas. Determining needs, purposeful action and the monitoring thereof should carry the main focus. > Prevention, intervention and rehabilitation are to be given much more prominence, inter alia by ensuring and expertly monitoring prevention, intervention and rehabilitation programmes for the victims and potential victims of drug abuse in the learning environment. > Further research which should include, inter alia^ and in particular, drug trafficking, especially as regards access into the organized learning environment, viz. the school.

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The thesis investigates the dynamics that surround participants' responses to questions about illicit drug activities. By examining the attributional and discursive literatures, the opening chapters (Chapters 1 and 2) outline the difficulties associated with assuming veridicality in question-answer dyads. Emphasis is placed on the essentially social and intentional foundations of the applied research procedure. The existing research on methodological effects in substance research is outlined at the start of Chapter 3. These form the foundation for the empirical investigations that constitute the remainder of the thesis. The studies carried out attempt to examine methodological issues in the context of applied research procedures that combine quantitative outcomes with qualitative considerations such as reflexive consideration of the role of the researcher and the status of the participant. The first investigation demonstrates the influence of treatment status on the discourse provided by adult substance users. Drug users in contact with treatment services provide drug-related explanations distinct from those given by users who are not in treatment. This distinction is assessed in terms of a theoretical model of addiction based on discursive criteria and contextual influence (Chapter 4). These contextual influences are further examined in the empirical studies presented in Chapters 4 and 5 in which the subjects are young people whose drug experiences are assessed in the context of drug education (Chapter 5) and treatment and service needs (Chapter 6). Each of these investigations attempts to demonstrate the sophistication of discourse that respondents exhibit in their drug-related conversations and the ways in which their attitudes and understandings of these topics are shaped by the context of the experiences they have had.

This thesis is a theological reflection on substance use and misuse. René Girard’s mimetic theory of human Desire is used as a hermeneutic to explicate the formation of self in Western modernity. The role of intoxicative and hallucinogenic substances in Western culture is seen primarily as facilitating the Capitalist template of homo oeconomicus whose central tenets are individualism, autonomy and rationalism. The mind-altering quality of such substances is a means to cope with the existential angst of individualist modes of life and provides, in the milieu of social interaction, an artificial and temporary sense of connectedness with others. Humanity’s ubiquitous search for connectedness and meaning beyond itself is argued as its defining spiritual character. Consequently the addiction recovery principle of sobriety through accountability to a Higher Power – seen as a spiritual principle and practised in recovery programmes based on the twelve-step method of Alcoholics Anonymous – provides the foundation for the empirical aspects of this study. Lifestory narratives of a sample of recovering individuals reveal the spiritual roots of substance misuse as disconnection and isolation from certain significant others (such as parents), or from a normative code of early social settings (such as schools). The role of intoxicative and hallucinogenic substances in providing alternative means of connection and belonging is illustrated through the mimetic patterns in the narrative accounts which substantiate Girard’s reading of human Desire as fundamentally contingent upon the Other. In considering the implications for the Church’s praxis, Girard’s notion of nonrivalistic mimesis is elucidated as an antidote to Capitalist Desire in which the Church unwittingly participates. Hauerwas’ vision of a communal and sacrificial witness is put forward as an alternative template for the Church in its witness and offer of Christocentric relationality whose economy of Love removes the need for mindaltering substances in order to affirm one’s identity.

M.A. / In this study different constructions regarding the social phenomenon of drug addiction will be examined. These constructions are woven through the narratives of four rehabilitated participants. Each participant explained their process of addiction by referring to the course of their addiction, rehabilitation, the drug addict and the drug itself. It was possible to identify general discourses in the drug addiction narratives through the process of discourse analysis. These discourses all form part of the reality constructions regarding drug addiction and contributes to the meaning-making processes in understanding such a phenomena. The importance of having a better understanding of drug addiction seems to be a matter of how we know, and not what we know about drug addiction.