No description available.

The professional duties of dental hygienists are broadening and with this expansion comes new responsibilities for patient care. The future role of the dental hygienist will include new opportunities as well as new obligations which will require proficiency in dental hygiene skills and judgment. It is incumbent upon dental hygiene educators, therefore, to provide the educational experiences necessary to prepare the professionals of the future for clinical as well as moral decision making. The conceptual framework upon which this dissertation was based was the cognitive-developmental theory developed by John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg. This investigation combined the cognitive developmental principle with the theories of group process to produce a teaching strategy designed to stimulate moral development.;The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between in-class discussions of ethical dilemmas and the moral judgment of dental hygiene students. In addition, data were sought to determine which type of group interaction was more effective in stimulating moral development, open-ended or consensus seeking discussions.;In this investigation, the independent variable was moral judgment as measured by Rest's Defining Issues Test, an objective measure of moral judgment based upon Kohlberg's moral dilemmas. The dependent variables were (1) the dilemma discussion method and (2) the type of peer interaction or group discussion, open-ended or consensus seeking. The population studied consisted of two intact classes of first-year dental hygiene students. The experimental group was randomly assigned to the two treatments, open-ended or consensus seeking discussions. A nonequivalent control group was employed to control for the effects of history, maturation, testing and instrumentation. The experimental groups met for two hours a week during which they discussed ethical dilemmas which are relevant to dental hygiene practitioners. One of the treatment groups was required to seek consensus concerning the action to be taken in each dilemma while the other group's discussions remained open-ended. After six weeks of in-class discussions, the experimental and control groups were posttested. One month after the completion of the treatment, a follow-up test was conducted to detect long-term and delayed action effects. Statistical procedures used were one-way analyses of variance with a priori orthogonal contrasts.;The statistical results did not support the hypotheses that stated that (1) the treatment groups would have a higher score on the DIT than the control group and (2) the consensus seeking group's DIT score would exceed that of the open-ended group. General observation of the data did indicate, however, that these predictions could be true if tested under different circumstances.;The major conclusions drawn by this study were that while there were no statistical differences between groups, nonempirical observations suggested that (1) the dilemma discussion method could have a positive effect on moral judgment and (2) consensus seeking discussion might be more effective than open-ended discussion in stimulating the moral development of dental hygiene students.

No description available.

It has been accepted that in order to maximize the educational growth of a child, the student should experience instruction in a consistent, uninterrupted fashion. Children who are disruptive, act-out, or otherwise obstruct the flow of knowledge may encounter problems when they must build upon information not learned at an earlier time. Students who frequently complain to their teachers of health issues or are sent to the nurse repeatedly, may suffer because of this break in their learning experiences. This research is directed toward exploring possible variables that may set children who frequent the nurse (Seekers of Nurse Support or S.O.N.S.) and their parents apart from a matched group of control children and their parents.;Ten elementary schools were selected as being representative of the population from an urban Virginia school system. Children who frequented the school nurse more than three times per week were given the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) and the Moos Family Environment Scale (FES) as were control children who were matched by age, sex, ethnicity and grade. The school system's Standards of Learning test (SOL) was used as the measure of achievement. The parents of the S.O.N.S. and the controls were interviewed using the Personality Inventory for Children (PIC) and the FES.;The t-test and Tukey's Quick Test were performed on the achievement measures and found no difference between the groups. The FES showed a significant difference between the groups regarding conflict, with the control group being more overt and demonstrative in their expression. No significant differences were seen between the two groups of students on their degree of anxiety.;The PIC showed significant differences in achievement, anxiety, hyperactivity and the lie scale. A discriminant analysis was performed on the four significant subtests and proved capable of separating the two groups of students.;There appears to be support for the hypothesis that there are family variables present which impact on the students who show an over-concern with health issues. The number of significant variables noted was not as large as hypothesized, but due to the exploratory nature of the project they were of interest. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).

The purpose of this research was to study younger children ages seven to ten in order to determine if younger children could exceed stage two in moral development as tested by Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview. Intelligence quotient, socioeconomic status, and achievement were studied to determine if there was a correlation between these variables and the stage of moral development in younger children, ages seven to ten.;One hundred and twenty students in the Goochland County, Virginia school system participated in this study. They were administered Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview from which their moral stage was assessed. School records and scores on the Science Research Associates test were used to compile data on intelligence quotient, socioeconomic status, and achievement.;It was hypothesized that (1) younger children ages seven to ten could exceed stage two on Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview and that (2) intelligence quotient, socioeconomic status, and achievement were correlated significantly with stage of moral development in children ages seven to ten.;It was concluded that nearly fifty percent of the students tested exceeded stage two on Kohlberg's Moral Judgment Interview. It was also concluded that intelligence quotient, socioeconomic status and achievement were not significantly correlated with stage of moral development in younger children ages seven to ten.;Further study is needed to explore the development of younger children ages seven to ten in the area of moral development. An outgrowth of this research could be the development of curriculum and teaching strategies in moral development for younger children ages seven to ten.

No description available.

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of group counseling on the self-concept of emotionally disturbed students in a public middle school. This study examined the efficacy of non-directive group counseling and structured group counseling and compared the two approaches.;Method. Thirty middle school students diagnosed as emotionally disturbed and enrolled in self-contained special education classes at four different schools were subjects in the study. Two classes were assigned to receive non-directive group counseling and the other two classes received structured group counseling. Both groups received their respective group counseling for ten weeks. Pre and posttesting was accomplished with the Tennessee Self Concept, the Behavior Evaluation Scale, and the projective technique; the Human Figure Drawing. It was hypothesized that by virtue of group counseling there would be significant improvement in self-concept as measured by (1) the Total Positive Scale of the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, and (2) significant improvement in classroom behavior as measured by the Behavior Quotient of the Behavior Evaluation Scale. Furthermore it was hypothesized that the students who participated in structured group counseling would show significantly greater improvement on the Total Positive Scale, and the Behavior Quotient Scale, and manifest significantly fewer emotional indicators on Human Figure Drawings than students who participated in non-directive group counseling.;Finds and Conclusions. The results were not statistically significant for any of the hypotheses. However, there were positive trends indicated by the direction of posttest means. This suggested that group counseling in general and structured group counseling in particular may have some potential to effect changes with emotionally disturbed students. Moreover, qualitative data seemed to support this indicating that future research along these lines may need to consider elements such as the emotionally disturbed population, instruments, and data gathering strategies.

Low-achieving students tend to be "externals," lack mastery orientation, and often do not "take responsibility" for learning. Through the cognitive behavioral approach in this study, the goal is to help the low achiever become better at self-monitoring and encoding information.;Low-achieving students from two elementary schools were pre- and posttested using the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test (to measure reading achievement), Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory (to measure self-esteem), and the Children's Academic Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (to measure intrinsic motivation). The teachers completed, as both a pre and post measure, the Devereux Elementary School Behavior Rating Scale II to measure student classroom behavior. Thirty low-achieving students who also received remedial reading instruction in each school, were randomly assigned to a cognitive-behavioral, study skills, and control group. The treatment groups participated in an eleven-week program of either a cognitive-behavioral or study skills intervention. The cognitive-behavioral approach used Meichenbaum's self-instructional phases in the context of developing better reading comprehension, study and problem-solving skills in the classroom. The study skills group received training on developing better study habits, and the control group received no treatment. The treatment groups were led by school psychologists. The course of the treatments followed a detailed outline.;It was predicted that all three groups would show significant gains in reading. It was also hypothesized that the cognitive-behavioral group would show significantly higher posttest score gains in achievement, student classroom behavior, intrinsic motivation, and self-esteem than the study skills or control groups. In addition, it was predicted that the study skills group would show significantly higher posttest score gains in academic achievement than the control group.;The MANOVA design was used to compare all groups to determine how they differed on each dependent variable. All groups, when analyzed together, showed a significant F ratio regarding gains in reading. There were no significant differences between any of the groups. It was thus concluded that no individual treatment was more effective than the other.

No description available.

This study investigated the relative merits of the paradoxical directives (PD) counseling techniques to the more didactic cognitive restructuring (CR) intervention. It was hypothesized that subjects in the PD groups would show an improvement in self-esteem, a reduction in depression and anxiety, and a change reflective of a more internal locus-of-control orientation to a degree significantly greater than the CR and the control groups.;The sample consisted of sixty eighth grade volunteers, twenty from each of three middle schools in a local area school district. Six groups were formed of ten subjects each, two groups for each treatment and two groups receiving no treatment. Participants were randomly assigned by treatment and counselor within each school. Eight group meetings were held, two a week for four consecutive weeks.;The research design used was the pretest/posttest control group design. Instruments used were the Coopersmith Self Esteem Inventory, the Children's Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (trait anxiety portion only), and the Nowicki-Strickland Locus-of-Control Scale for Children. An analysis of covariance was used to discern differences in posttest group means by treatment taking into consideration pre-treatment group differences. Statistical analysis resulted in the acceptance of null on hypotheses 1, 3, and 4 as reviewed in Chapter 4 and below. The null hypothesis was rejected at the .95 level of confidence for the second hypothesis. Posttest treatment means did not significantly differ with regard to self-esteem, anxiety, and locus-of-control. On the other hand, posttest treatment group means differed significantly at the 0.05 level on the measure of depression.