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Two prominent emotions in borderline personality disorder (BPD) are anger and shame. Rumination has been demonstrated to occur in response to shame and to escalate anger, and rumination, particularly anger rumination, has been shown to predict BPD symptoms. The present study examined whether one way that shame leads to the features of BPD is via increased anger and anger rumination. A sample of 823 undergraduates completed self-report measures of global and situational shame, trait- level anger, anger'rumination, and BPD features. A structural equation model was constructed using these measures. The hypothesized model of shame to anger and anger rumination to BPD features was largely supported. Bootstrapping was used to establish significant indirect effects from both forms of shame via anger rumination to BPD features, and from global shame via anger to BPD features. Recognizing this function of anger rumination may be important in developing and practicing interventions to reduce it. Further research into other ways individuals maladaptively respond to shame and functions of anger rumination is recommended.

The purpose of this study has two phases. In the first phase, a model that explains students&rsquo / mathematics achievement in TIMSS-R will be proposed. In the second phase, the proposed model will be evaluated to interpret the similarities and differences across three culturally and linguistically different countries / Turkey, the Netherlands, and Italy. This study will basically combine students&rsquo / answers on TIMSS-R Students Questionnaire items with their mathematics achievement scores obtained from TIMSS-R Mathematics Achievement Test. In order to achieve this, items in the student questionnaire will be grouped under latent variables and then the related models will be established. Thirty-seven items selected from the TIMSS-R Student Questionnaire were analyzed using principle component factor analysis for each country. The results indicated seven interpretable dimensions. Based on the results&rsquo / of factor analysis of Turkey, the latent variables were generated by selecting the observed variables with highest loadings. These latent variables were / out-of-school activities, socioeconomic status, importance given to math, math classroom iv climate, perception of failure, teacher-centered and student-centered activities. The proposed mathematics achievement model was tested by structural equation modeling for each country separately with the sample of 4772, 2728, and 2781 eighth grade students in Turkey, the Netherlands, and Italy, respectively. In all of the countries perception of failure was the strongest factor explaining the mathematics achievement of the eighth grade students. The other two important factors explaining mathematics achievement were socioeconomic status and student-centered activities for Turkey and Italy / out-of-school activities and importance given to math for the Netherlands. The results indicated that Turkey and Italy have more similar results when compared with the Netherlands. Different than the other countries in Turkey instructional activities formed two separate dimensions such as / teacher-centered and student-centered instructional activities. Since this finding emphasized the important role of teacher in the Turkish education system, it was suggested that more importance should be given to the teacher education.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors that are related to students&rsquo / science achievement in TIMSS-R. Basically instructional activities, affective characteristics of students and socioeconomic status (SES) were taken as the variables of the model proposed within the Linear Structural Modeling (LSM) framework. This study examined the TIMSS data for Turkish students with the sample size of 7841 through the analysis of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Resulting path diagram showed that the largest relationship existed between science achievement and SES of students. It was also observed that students&rsquo / enjoyment of science did not seem to have a significant contribution on science achievement. In addition, science achievement had a negative relationship with the classroom activities considered as student-centered. On the other hand, the activities considered as teacher-centered had a positive impact on the science achievement scores of the TIMSS tests. It was also observed that science achievement and perception of success/failure in science were highly related with each other. The results were interpreted within the framework of Turkish educational system, and some suggestions for future research studies were proposed.

Teachers are percived as primary role in a students&#039 / learning process. To adequately perform this role, certain teacher characteristics are potentially more valuable for encouraging student learning. In an attempt to discern those charactersitics related to student learning and teacher behavior in the science classroom, numerous studies have beenconducted. The aim of this study is modeling the relationship between the teacher characteristics abd the student science achievement. Modeling analysis was carried out by using the data collected for the Third Internatioal Mathematics and Science Study (TIMS, 1999) for Turkey with Science Teacher Background Questionnaire and students&#039 / achievement test scores. For the analysis LISREL package program was used. The results show that the students of teachers who prefer student-centered learning activities got low scores from science achievement test in TIMSS. Also teachers believe that disruptive and uninterested students in the class negatively affect sciecne achievement. Moreover, there is a positive significant relationship between the science achievement and the tasks that includes anlayze relationship, explain reasoning, and work on problems. In the present study you can find an analysis about the contradiction of the some of the results of the study with the current literature in the field of education.

The purpose of the present study is to assess the potential individual characteristics and environmental protective factors that promote academic resilience among impoverished eighth grade elementary school students in Turkey. The sample consisted of 872 (439 girls, 433 boys) students enrolled in 6 low SES inner-city public elementary schools in Ankara. Five instruments, Demographic Data Form, Resilience and Youth Development Module (RYDM), Scholastic Competence Scale (SCS), Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), and Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale (N-SLCS) were used in the present study. Grade point averages (6th, 7th and 8th grades) of students were used as the measure of Academic Achievement. Exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data. The results of the present study revealed that home high expectations, school caring relationships and high expectations, along with the peer caring relationships were the prominent external protective factors that predicted academic resilience for the adolescents in poverty. Considering the internal protective factors, having positive self-perceptions about one&rsquo / s academic abilities, high educational aspirations, having empathic understanding, internal locus of control and being hopeful for the future were positively linked with the academic resilience of adolescents in poverty. Conversely, the external factors of home caring relationships, community caring relationships and high expectations, and peer high expectations, and internal factor of problem solving ability were negatively linked with academic resilience. These factors seem to be vulnerability factors for impoverished Turkish adolescents although they are generally accepted as the protective ones.

In today’s technological environment, organizational capabilities for managing change are regarded as important for business survival and growth. In particular, dynamic organizational capabilities have attracted considerable research interest over the past decade. Recently several studies have suggested that dynamic capabilities may be associated with a concept termed organizational fitness. What is not clear in this emerging research stream is whether firms with superior organizational fitness are more likely to prosper than unfit firms. In addition, relatively little attention has been directed toward creating a systemic model of dynamic capabilities that explains organizational fitness. The nature of fitness has been intensively debated in the biological sciences over a period of several decades. A confusing variety of fitness definitions have emerged from this literature. The lack of an agreed definition of fitness has resulted in several streams of research on organizational fitness. As a result of this fragmentation, there has been little progress toward answering the question of how to measure organizational fitness. The fragmentation in organizational fitness literature is problematic, because research into the relationship between organizational fitness and firm performance is not well-advanced. In this study, organizational fitness is defined in terms of organizational capability to produce variation. By defining fitness in this way, the tautological criticisms leveled against existing concepts of fitness are avoided. The definition of fitness proposed here accommodates both an evolutionary learning perspective and a perspective of strategic management, and thus reflects an integrative approach to the concept. A notable feature of the literature exploring organizational fitness is that it has been focused on large corporations. However, a growing body of literature suggests that SMEs are different from large firms and need to be examined in their own right. SMEs are important contributors to business in most countries throughout the world. This study addresses that perceived gap in the literature and asks: What relationship, if any, is there between organizational fitness and business performance for SMEs? Theory is developed and tested here by means of a large sample of SMEs in New Zealand. Two distinct aspects of organizational fitness are identified for SMEs. First, survival fitness is associated with generic combinative capabilities. Second, growth fitness is associated with knowledge assimilation and transformation. SME growth fitness and survival fitness are each found to be positively related to business performance under a variety of contexts. Further, an increase of growth fitness and survival fitness provides a means of alleviating selection pressures for SMEs. That is, dynamic capabilities of knowledge assimilation and integration are found to be positively associated with SME business performance. In contrast to studies that advocate SME development of context-dependent capabilities, the findings of this study suggest an alternative perspective: variable selection pressures can be influenced by SMEs with a high level of survival and growth fitness.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 16, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 84-94).

Thesis (M. Com.)--University of Canterbury, 2009. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 121-131). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center; full text release delayed at author's request until 2006 Jul 29.