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The study was undertaken for the following purposes: 1. To determine the present level of physical fitness of a group of mentally retarded girls at Denton State School. 2. To determine the effect of a creative dance program, devised by the author, on the physical fitness level of a group of mentally retarded girls at Denton State School. 3. To determine the feasibility of the inclusion of creative dance in an overall physical education program for mentally retarded girls.

The sexualization of girls is an ongoing issue that has garnered much attention in recent years, with one contributing factor, media, becoming an ever-increasing part of children’s lives. This study explored four questions: How do mothers and teachers perceive the media’s influence on young girls’ identity development? To what extent do these caregivers engage young girls in analyzing media messages? What observed behaviors of 4-year old girls indicate media’s influence? and What are caregivers interpretations and responses to these behaviors? Analyzing the perceptions of mothers and female teachers of 4-year old girls contributes to a better understanding of how girls are influenced, both by caregivers’ actions and by media consumed. Twelve mothers and female early childhood teachers from three South Florida preschools were interviewed to better understand how girls are influenced by media, and to gain a more holistic perspective of the potential impact of media on young girls’ behaviors and their emerging understanding of what it means to be a girl today. The findings indicate that mothers and female teachers perceive media to be influential in the lives of girls, both in terms of general child development and young girls’ gender identity development. The participants are observing behaviors in their 4-year old girls that indicate media’s influence; these behaviors include sexualized dancing, attitude and language changes, and requests for sexualized clothing and beauty products. Although these mothers and teachers do not yet help girls analyze media messages, they do, however, engage in significant guidance as they interpret and respond to the observed behaviors. These findings reflect a need for media literacy education for parents and teachers, as well as comprehensive sexualization awareness and prevention education for children, parents, and teachers. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2018. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

May’s Journey is a game where you help a video game character, May, finding her friend and repairing the broken game world. This is a 3D puzzle game in which players solve an environmental maze by using the game’s pseudo code to manipulate the environment. The game is aimed at 12 to 18 year old girls and the purpose is to attract them into Computer Science fields by teaching them basics of programming by focusing on logics and concepts while still asking them to type simple instructions in our programming language. Players do this in a compelling environment, with characters they can identify with, embedded in a relevant story. Our design process was based on our research on young female preferences in games and current teaching techniques for programming. Each decision we made whether for the teaching content, the art style, or the game mechanics and the techniques used to develop this game are motivated by the goal of making programming more appealing and interesting for girls. For this we developed our own pseudo-code language in order to provide an interface that bridges the gap between drag and drop approach and real programming and introduce typing as part of the experience. We tested our game with 10 teenagers aged from 14 to 17 years old for educational content. We were pleased to see how engaged with the game they were. Overall, the testing results were mostly as expected. The players liked the game (rated 4.8 out of 6) and all of them wanted to play more of it. They all felt that they learned something and 8 of them expressed the will to learn more about programming. Unfortunately, the sample of players is too small to generalize our results so we plan to take the feedback into account, iterate and test it again with a larger study group and get conclusive results. Working on this project has allowed us to understand the importance of iterative design and early play test feedback. We have also learned the importance of tutorials in games and how that might completely change the users’ experience. Finally, a crucial point was the importance of the UI helpers and targeted feedback in serious games.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / This study explores the ways a small group of girls, ages 11-13, spoke about courage over a two-year period. Using Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a guide, the purpose of the present study is to discover how courage is present in the lives of a select group of girls, what their thoughts and perceptions are on courage, and how these thoughts and perceptions explain the operation of emotion and rationality in producing courage. This last question is based off Marcia Homiak's (1993) suggestion that Aristotle offers a way to explain how emotion and rationality operate together to develop positive, caring, independent and strong individuals. Differing from the predominant framework of Carol Gilligan's theory of an "ethic of care" in girls' developmental research, the present study uses and suggests that the practice of returning to the classical work of Aristotle offers a different approach to studying girls' development. The girls were interviewed in an effort to discover personal conceptions of courage, their thoughts on the relevance of intention, experience, emotion, sanguinity, and ignorance to courage, as Aristotle describes these terms, and how courage is present in their lives. The girls also performed an essay-writing task to clarify their thoughts. Several dominant themes resulted from this study. These included the participants stating that (1) a courageous act must stem from good intentions; (2) courage comes as a matter of experience or practice; (3) with enough practice courage can become a habit and thus part of your character; (4) while emotion is a precursor to courage, a courageous act cannot be done rashly and requires a degree of rationality to act in order to be considered true courage; and (5) their own recollections of acting courageously are in early development and thus far have been minimal. An additional finding was the degree to which participants found overly aggressive girls spur opportunities for courage. Implications for a model of active learning, character education, and further research on girls' development are suggested. / 2031-01-02

This thesis reports on an investigation into the sport experiences and views of a sample of young women in two High Schools in Lusaka, Zambia. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of the sports played by young women, their reasons for playing the sports, the benefits they gained, and how they navigated and negotiated the barriers they faced. The study was framed by looking at the intersections and interactions of four key ideas – sport, education, gender, and development. Significantly the study was set in the context of the United Nations' declarations of sport as a human right and the global policy position of using sport as a tool for development, gender equality and empowerment of young women. Thirty-six young females from Grades 10 and 11, identified through snowball sampling, participated in the interpretive phenomenological research. Data was collected mainly through six focus groups, thirty-six semi-structured interviews and field observations. The findings show that young women played team sports in schools' extracurricular programmes historically and culturally dominated by men and characterized by gender issues around participation. Interestingly the same young women also took part in after school activities organized by Non-Governmental Organizations that disseminated HIV/AIDS information and addressed gender equality issue through sports. Using young women's voices, the thesis details their personal and social reasons for playing traditionally male sports. It also details the personal, social, health-related and economic benefits they experienced, and, as active agents, how they navigated and negotiated gendered barriers associated with the notion of sport, access to playing space and resources, and regulation of their behaviour in doing sport. There was, however, no evidence from the young women to suggest that playing male sports or sport for development interventions contributed to gender equality and women's empowerment. The thesis underlines the importance of listening to young women about what sports they want to play, the social support they need from peers, friends and family and especially males, and that sport for development interventions may have potential in facilitating young women's participation or in reducing the gender-based barriers women face. The thesis highlights limitations of the study and suggests important directions for future research.

The focus of this work is an exploration of issues related to poor access and retention of girls across the Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE) level in Rwanda. This was accomplished through analysis of stakeholders' views and perspectives, informed by a constructivist ontological perspective and interpretative methodological stance. Specifically, through interviews and conversations, the research, sought to explore different experiences, ideas, attitudes and views held by stakeholders in the educational up-take by girls. These stakeholders groups included the educationist group (Headteachers, Teachers, and Education Officers), NGO group (FAWE and Community Women Organizations - CWO), Parent group (Parents in general and Parents on schools' PTAs), Learner group (pupils in school) and Girl dropout group (girls who had dropped out of school). This study sought to explore the stakeholders' perspectives on the main barriers to girls' access and retention across the 9YBE, where accountability lay for keeping girls in school, and proposed strategies for ensuring gender equity in education. The thesis is introduced from a geographical and an historical perspective as the context of the education provision in Rwanda. A literature review considers the challenges and solutions to girls' education provision and through this a conceptual framework is developed around equity and equality issues from which the research questions are formulated with respect to Rwanda. Following this the research design, methodology, data collection techniques and analysis are discussed. My constructivist methodology and interpretive-epistemological stance highlights the use of qualitative data mainly based on interviews. In findings I show that issues regarding poor access and retention of girls in school revolve around economic challenges and associated household poverty, school based challenges, traditional and cultural gendered beliefs and the positioning of girls in the Rwandan society and argue that these challenges have been accentuated by effects of the 1994 genocide that are still manifest today. I also argue that there is a serious lack of accountability for keeping girls in school, and that the decentralised education provision has sustained gender discrimination which is heightened among the poor. This signals the emergence of a class divide between those who are lucky enough to go to school, study and complete and those who do not. My analysis also indicates that issues of girls' poor access and retention in education revolve also around the lasting effects of war and genocide that Rwanda experienced 18 years ago. This has been accentuated by deep rooted family poverty that informs gendered choices on who goes to school under difficult circumstances. I show the implications of the conflict for current educational up-take and argue that in the Rwandan context there is a need for more informed and innovative work to solve the problems in addition to solutions suggested by interviewees that are mainly centred on the urgent need for government to eradicate poverty seen as a major setback to girls' education uptake. This study contributes to the contemporary debates in Rwanda, about whether or not the government is doing enough to ensure girls' access and full participation in 9YBE. It also illuminates stakeholder perspectives on this contested debate on how best girls' education may be provided to solve the current low uptake and the ways forward. As this research was conducted in Rwanda, a post-conflict country, it also contributes to an understanding of issues that face girls' schooling in post genocide conditions. Further, this study makes an addition to the limited stock of educational research in Sub-Saharan African nations.