The Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, signed an Executive Order to establish the Virginia Governor’s Children’s Cabinet, an executive-level cabinet dedicated to the education, health, safety, and welfare of Virginia’s children and youth. One of the Cabinet’s initiatives was to improve academic outcomes for students in Petersburg, a low performing school division that was selected as a pilot site to help the Cabinet learn how to build trust and work collaboratively with localities. While the Virginia Department of Education had a Petersburg school improvement plan focused on school leadership and teacher quality, the Children’s Cabinet focused on reducing absenteeism through interagency collaboration to address drivers such as inadequate health, housing, and nutrition. These drivers were selected because 34 percent of Petersburg students had seven or more unexcused absences per year, with more than five percent missing over 21 days; there were over 300 homeless students in the division; the teen pregnancy rate was five times the state average; and 100 percent of students received free and reduced lunch. To improve attendance, the Children’s Cabinet partnered with the Petersburg Superintendent and City Manager to create the City Partnership with the Schools which included state and local leaders from across health, social services, juvenile justice, education, nonprofits, faith communities, families, and students. Because the state’s role had traditionally been one of enforcing compliance, not collaboration, this capstone describes the journey of transforming the state’s role from sanctions to support. Throughout this capstone, I recount and analyze my process for creating a sustainable state and local partnership by understanding Petersburg’s powerful history, brokering interagency relationships, leveraging state resources, building local capacity, establishing collaboration structures, shifting mindsets, developing trust, and moving diverse stakeholders toward a collective goal of improved student outcomes. Seven principles emerged to inform future Governor’s Children’s Cabinet collaborations with localities: 1) Culturally responsible engagement; 2) Asset-based approach; 3) Inclusion of local voice at all levels; 4) Development of a sustainability plan; 5) Equalized access to power; 6) Strengthened relationships; and 7) Improved local capacity.

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The evaluation of training models has evolved from Kirkpatrick's (1959) four level model and Brinkerhoff's (1987) six stages of effective human resource development to Guskey's (2000) five critical levels of professional development. This evolution responds to the changing needs of organizations. Analyses of organizational contexts is gaining in importance given that these analyses point to the specific aspects of organizations which require attention to enhance the likelihood that training outcomes will be successfully implemented (Bennett, Lehman & Forst, 1999). The study formally tests the factors outlined in the third level (organizational support and change) of Guskey's (2000) model. These factors make up the conceptual framework in order to explore and assess the contextual congruence of organizational context to determine whether the current context is conducive to the successful implementation of training outcomes. The study further examines the applicability of Guskey's (2000) third level factors outside educational settings as well as other relevant factors that may not have been considered. Guskey's (2000) third level factors are partially tested to ascertain whether they are adaptable within the community mental health sector. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The effectiveness of an interactive computer game designed to alert children to dangers on the Internet and to encourage them to develop their own guidelines for Internet safety is assessed. Pre- and post-test data were collected from a treatment (n = 181) and comparison group (n = 157) of Grade 6 and 7 students from 8 elementary schools in and around a large Western Canadian city. Reported frequencies of risky online behaviours, Internet safety-related attitudes, and number of Internet safety guidelines were measured in a questionnaire format. Initial frequencies of risky online behaviours and attitudes were quite low, making it difficult to demonstrate change due to playing the computer game. Subjects who had played the game, however, wrote more Internet safety guidelines than did those who had not. These positive results for the safety guidelines provide promising initial evidence that this computer game can be used effectively as part of an Internet safety program in schools. Methodological limitations are discussed to provide direction for future research in this area.

The purpose of the present study was to explore how Mount Everest climbers experienced cognitive dissonance in their natural setting. This study also set out to explore the role of self-concept and feelings in Mount Everest climbers' experiences with the phenomenon. Guided by the ethnomethodological (Garfinkel, 1967) school of thought, Aronson's (1968, 1992) self-consistency revision of Festinger's (1957) original cognitive dissonance theory and the Resonance Performance Model (Newburg, Kimiecik, Durand-Bush, & Doell, 2002) were used as conceptual guides. The research methodology included a narrative (Sparkes, 2002) multicase study (Stake, 1995) approach involving multiple in-depth interviews captured on video and participant observation captured by field notes. Six climbers attempting to scale Mount Everest comprised the case studies; five men and one woman. Data were collected over an entire climbing season and one month after the participants returned home from the mountain. Guided by Gergen and Gergen's (1983) strategy for analyzing the structure and content of narratives, data analysis occurred on three levels. First, for each participant the researcher developed a background profile. Second, a narrative case study analysis was performed to explore how the participants experienced cognitive dissonance. The third level of data analysis entailed a cross-case study analysis to explore the patterns of similarity and difference between narratives or themes expressed. Cognitive dissonance was routinely experienced by all six of the participants to socially organize behavior and produce a sense of order from within the Mount Everest culture. That is, whenever the participants interpreted a discrepancy between their behavior and their own standards for competence and morality, which derive from the conventional morals and prevailing values of the society to which they belonged, they experienced feelings of psychological discomfort which lead them to try and reduce or eliminate it through a process of self-justification. Specifically, this process of reducing cognitive dissonance involved the climbers reconstructing the past in such a way that restored their pre-formed notion of self. Through language and reasoning, which were part and parcel with the situated activities of climbing the mountain, the climbers arrived at an interpretation of their day-to-day activities that not only appeared normal, natural, and real, but also felt good to them. The climbers' experiences with cognitive dissonance, which were defined by an ongoing reconstruction of meaning, allowed them to make sense of self-discrepant acts as they strived to achieve not only a sense of cognitive and affective self-consistency but also shared knowledge. The findings in the present study provide support for Aronson's (1968, 1992) self-consistency perspective of cognitive dissonance. More importantly, the study's most notable contribution to the existing body of work on cognitive dissonance is not the empirically based confirmation that Mount Everest climbers do indeed experience dissonance when their self-concept is involved, but an explanation of how the processes underlying the phenomenon are experienced in the minds of these climbers when under extreme physical and psychological duress. Using an ethnomethodological narrative case study approach, this study afforded a unique way of understanding how cognitive dissonance is internalized in the subjective consciousness of climbers.

This research investigates the role personal expressive writing plays in aiding young women with their identity search. The focus is on the expressive and interpretive processes of refiguring identity as it occurs in the perceptions of self, mediated by the cultural milieu and shaped in journal entries. The purpose is to explore: (a) young women's construction of meaning from the context of writing experiences; (b) the effects of journaling as a model that allows the self to experience personal growth and discovery; (c) the construction of young women's gender identity. Issues of gender identity and self-representation are approached from the perspectives of 17 female university students who have been passionate journal writers since their early adolescence. There are four data collection strategies: (a) 2 questionnaires; (b) in-depth interviews; (c) participants' personal journal texts; (d) the researcher's journal. Three distinctive disciplines inform the theoretical framework for my research: psychoanalysis (object relations theory drawing on Winnicott), Cultural Studies, and, feminism. Findings indicate that young women use personal journal as a Potential Space, where deeper self-understanding is attained through approaching the personal in terms of a shared experience with cultural implications. Personal journal writing is also used as a transitional phenomenon that enables the interaction with others within this inner world, an interaction that allows the transition from being merged into separate being. Additionally, participants use their personal journal writing as a defence against painful realities. By investigating one's engagements with personal writing, an awareness of dominant ideologies and the construction of the journal writer's subjectivities result. Young women use language and journaling as a tool to gain a clearer sense of self, to differentiate from others, and as an experience of communication and personal awareness in relation to their socially constructed identities. Further pedagogical considerations and implications of personal journal writing for young adult women are explored.

Master of Science / Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology / Christy D. Moran / Maintaining identities of being a Christian and a lesbian or gay has traditionally in mainstream society been considered to be an oxymoron. Yet upon review, a large number of homosexuals profess to be Christians and find strength in their faith. The purpose of this report is create a hypothesis that is developed as a result of a literature review and informal interviews on the identity development and synthesis that occurs for lesbians and gays in the areas of homosexual identity and spiritual identity. To accomplish this task a comparison was made between Anthony D’Augelli’s Model of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Development (1994) and Sharon Daloz Parks Spirituality Development Theory (1986, 2000). Within the confines of this report, key attention was paid to examining whether the developmental critical paths for each area can be visually constructed as parallel lines with independent critical paths occurring simultaneously, if there is only a one line with a singular critical path or if one critical path intersects the other and therefore certain development stage(s) of one model must be completed before the individual can progress in the other model. Findings revealed that in most cases individuals did not move simultaneously on the two developmental paths. Rather, it was necessary for most individuals to be high on either the spiritual identity development model or high on the homosexual identity development model in order to move forward on the other with the goal being to gain a reconciliation between the two identities.

Master of Science / Special Education, Counseling and Student Affairs / Aaron H. Carlstrom / Attending college or university immediately after serving on active duty in the U.S. military can be a challenging transition because the daily roles and responsibilities of active duty service members greatly differ from that of college students. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to provide an accurate portrayal of the experiences and challenges veterans encounter when they leave the armed forces and become students at a college or university. The report is a resource that academic advisors and other student affairs professionals can use to increase their awareness and understanding of veterans’ transition experiences from military life to college life. To achieve this goal, the following are included in the report: (a) a theory driven description of veterans’ needs and concerns as they transition from military to college, and available resources that can facilitate veterans’ transitions; (b) questions advisors should ask themselves and their respective institution regarding how they can better serve this population of students; and (c) three case studies of student-veterans who served at least two, but no more than four, years of active duty in the United States Armed Forces, and who chose to enroll in an institution of higher education shortly after their discharge from the military. The four coping mechanisms, or four S’s (Situation, Self, Support, Strategies), of Schlossberg’s Transition Theory (Schlossberg, Waters, & Goodman, 1995) serve as the organizing framework of the report. Although some articles have touched upon Schlossberg’s transition model to the student-veteran transition (DiRamio, Ackerman, & Mitchell, 2008; Livingston, 2009), none used the model as a framework to organize the relevant literature.