Research suggests that the promotion of a student’s social development and connectedness can help reduce problematic behavior in schools. Connectedness, in this context, refers to an individual’s feeling of ‘belonging’ in a school as a valued and effective member. Connectedness can also apply to feelings on one’s self-image, family, and friends. The purpose of this study was to examine connectedness among Hong Kong primary school students in Years 5 and 6. The relationships among connectedness and time spent in leisure activities by students are also explored. Demographic data was collected from 421 students who responded to questionnaires concerning their time spent in leisure activities. The students also completed a Chinese version of the Hemingway Measure of Adolescent Connectedness. The subscales demonstrated satisfactory reliability and convergent validity. Findings from the study showed that in general girls are more emotionally connected to school than boys, especially to their teachers, whereas boys showed more connectedness to neighborhood. Data on boys revealed a positive correlation between connectedness to major social groups (parents, teachers and friends) and time spent on sports; but a negative correlation between connectedness to parents and teachers and time spent on computer games. Girls tended to show a more positive attitude about ‘present self’ when more time was spent on sports, but a negative connection with parents and teachers if more time was spent on computer games or extra-curricular activities. Implications for future research and implementation of guidance programmes in primary schools are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purpose of this study was to verify the efficiency of McDowell's leisure counseling model for potential use with cardiac rehabilitation and intervention programs in effecting leisure attitudes, work attitudes, work self-concept, leisure self-concept and leisure satisfaction. To test the effectiveness of McDowell's model, an experimental research design, utilizing a pretest-posttest control group design, was used. The independent variable was counseling and the dependent variables, stated as alternative research hypotheses, were a positive effect on leisure self-concept, work self-concept, leisure attitudes, work attitudes and leisure satisfaction. Over a three month period, 24 adult subjects from an Adult Fitness Intervention Program volunteered for leisure counseling and were randomly assigned to one of two groups after which treatment was also randomly assigned. A test for homogeneity of regression revealed the subjects to be representative of the population on all variables except Work Self-Concept. In the study, a client typically was married, middle-aged, white-collar male worker. To measure the dependent variables, five instruments designed to be used with McDowell's model were used. The data obtained from the leisure counseling sample was first subject to a test for homogeneity of regression after which hypotheses one, two, three and five, were subjected to an analysis of covariance. The findings of the analysis of data allowed for the rejection of the null hypotheses and the acceptance of the research hypotheses for hypotheses two and five. For hypotheses one and three, the researcher failed to reject the null hypothesis, and rejected the research hypothesis. An interpretation of these findings suggested that leisure counseling using McDowell's model can affect one's leisure self-concept and leisure satisfaction. From the study it was concluded that for the sample studied McDowell's leisure counseling model can be said to have positively increased the clients' leisure self-concept and leisure satisfaction on a short term basis. It was also concluded that leisure counseling as a component of cardiac rehabilitation/intervention programs using McDowell's model was said to be neither effective or ineffective for the sample studies. These results must account for the fact that the research methodology was not able to identify the possible reactive effect of the pretest. / Ed. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy