<p>The purpose of this study was to describe school counsellor development, paying particular attention to (a) what experiences school counsellors identify as significant markers in the development of their professional beliefs and practices, and (b) how such events come to attain their significance. Narrative methodology was utilized, with the intent of eliciting storied material and presenting the findings in storied format. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four participants: two school counsellors and two school social workers. A narrative was composed for each participant based on the researchers analysis of the interview transcripts. The researcher discussed the individual participants contributions to the research questions as well as some emergent across-cases themes.<p> Participants identified a wide range of experiences that had impacted upon their personal and professional development. There were several factors contributing to an experiences significance: (a) emotional intensity, (b) readiness to learn, (c) goodness of fit, (d) positive reinforcement, and (e) cognitive accommodation. Across-cases themes with reference to critical experiences included the influence of childhood, the challenging or painful nature of incidents, and the simultaneous strength and vulnerability of empathy. Issues in the practice of school counselling included a necessarily remedial focus, insufficient supervision, and interventions beyond counselling. Self-care practices and metaphors of counselling also frequently appeared in the narratives.<p>The narrative design of this study allowed for detailed descriptions of experiences that underlie general developmental trends identified in the counsellor development literature. The data suggested that school counsellors develop in much the same way as the wider counsellor population. However, they face impediments to optimal professional development in the form of excessive caseloads, inadequate supervision, and role confusion. Implications for future research and the practice of school counselling are discussed.

<p>The purpose of this study was to describe school counsellor development, paying particular attention to (a) what experiences school counsellors identify as significant markers in the development of their professional beliefs and practices, and (b) how such events come to attain their significance. Narrative methodology was utilized, with the intent of eliciting storied material and presenting the findings in storied format. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four participants: two school counsellors and two school social workers. A narrative was composed for each participant based on the researchers analysis of the interview transcripts. The researcher discussed the individual participants contributions to the research questions as well as some emergent across-cases themes.<p> Participants identified a wide range of experiences that had impacted upon their personal and professional development. There were several factors contributing to an experiences significance: (a) emotional intensity, (b) readiness to learn, (c) goodness of fit, (d) positive reinforcement, and (e) cognitive accommodation. Across-cases themes with reference to critical experiences included the influence of childhood, the challenging or painful nature of incidents, and the simultaneous strength and vulnerability of empathy. Issues in the practice of school counselling included a necessarily remedial focus, insufficient supervision, and interventions beyond counselling. Self-care practices and metaphors of counselling also frequently appeared in the narratives.<p>The narrative design of this study allowed for detailed descriptions of experiences that underlie general developmental trends identified in the counsellor development literature. The data suggested that school counsellors develop in much the same way as the wider counsellor population. However, they face impediments to optimal professional development in the form of excessive caseloads, inadequate supervision, and role confusion. Implications for future research and the practice of school counselling are discussed.

Abstract Entrepreneurship not only is an attractive dream of today's youth, but also a main activity which organizational, economic and social community survives from. Consequently, it has been highly attentive by manageial scholars in recent decades, and triggered off a number of related research and discussion. However, mentality of entrepreneur is not very easy to investigated by research, and entrepreneurial spirit is difficult to discover. Research about entrepreneurship is on the horns of a dilemma when theoretical paradigm is still lack, for the purpose of understanding the current situation and problems of entrepreneurship and also exploring the development of entrepreneurial mentality. In a related study of psychology, early scholars focused on exploring "what kind of people will become entrepreneurs?" which called the personality traits of the entrepreneur. For example, entrepreneur with high-risk tendency, high-need for achievement and high-degree internal control characteristics. But in decades, researches have been still unable to empirically confirm what kind of significant impact the behavior of entrepreneur could be influenced by personality traits of entrepreneur (Baron¡A 1998; Mitchell¡A Busenitz¡A Lant¡A McDoufall¡AMorse¡A Smith¡A 2002)¡CTherefore, this study is to classify the development of entrepreneurial mentality, and to explore the Q organization of the L general manager with dreams achieved his vision. Throughout entrepreneur makes a self-narrative about the entrepreneurial process, our study is to explore the entirety and development of entrepreneurship, and to analyze and interpret from his entering and selecting occupation to investing business in the recallable and narrative history. This research discovers the entrepreneurial process has happened lots of transition from school teacher to real estate salesman to manager to investor, and from taking over the business of real estate to building the new human resources organization, and from multiple independent business to the whole organization, and observes about entrepreneurial mobility, managerial decision-making and the establishment of new business and business integration during the development. From these stories, better understanding about the creating whole process of the entrepreneur is to make several important implications. First, self-ability, interest and clearly strongly actions. Second, adaptability and decision-making capacity. Third, persistence and explicit beliefs. Fourth, from gratified myself to gratified talent and building up the core team Key words: Entrepreneurship¡BIntegrity¡Bnarrative inquiry

In the long run, people are confused between professionalism and specialized knowledge. Researcher discovered that specialized knowledge is not sufficient in conquering all the challenges in the real working field, professionalism is the key competency that we should have. But, what is professionalism? And how we can cultivate the ability? The study is to discuss the abilities what we should equip, the factors of professionalism, process of cultivation, under the¡ydynamic¡Bcomplex¡zindustry environment. Researcher also discovered the differences between professionalism and specialized knowledge and the dynamic process structure of ability cultivation. The dynamic learning structure is as follows¡G I. Career attitude A. Hard-working spirit B. Entrepreneurship of challenging courage C. Desire of learning II. Working sills A. Knowledge B. Imitation or experience copying C. Logical thinking D. Sense of conceptual issues

With a number of major economic and social turnarounds already occurred in mankind¡¦s history, we are currently also at such an era. From the onset of the 90s, the rapid high-tech development and the global economic integration have fueled the world economy and the society to undergo rapid transformation, a shift that also fosters new research perspectives and viewpoint. Under the globalization, digitalization and diversification trend, with the present startup ventures having to confront the rapid changes in the external environment, a majority of the past startup venture studies and analyses that tend to fall under a still-mode, one-sided and single perspective approach, and a logical validation theory-based research methodology, has fallen short of manifesting the actual interactive process of the startup act. To compensate the deficiency of the past startup studies, the study attempts to truthfully present, in the duo capacity as a startup operator and a research, the process of a startup venture. With a startup entrepreneur regards the startup venture as an action-based startup process, while a research regards the startup as a research process, the searcher has, through nearly two years of research on entrepreneurship, developed eight story narrations through the author¡¦s self reflection and the constant self dialog as a startup entrepreneur. By putting the eight story narrations through the Narrative Inquiry to interpret the reconstruction process, the study discovers that successful startup ventures have not come from a perfected startup opportunity or a startup plan, but rather through the startup management process in how a startup initiator locate the resources, utilize the resources and group the resources. Of the research findings derived from the ¡§Bricolage¡¨ , the study will also offer an in-depth observation and emulate how startup entrepreneurs are able to constantly interact with the resources around them to promote the emergence of new organizations, new markets and new products.

Assisting young people in becoming resilient is the topic of much research in the education community. My research utilised the life stories of four participants and sought to understand their experiences in their attainment of resiliency. Their personal accounts offered a unique perspective. Attachment Theory, Locus of Control Theory and Self-Efficacy Theory has much to offer the topic of resiliency and support the findings of my study. Results indicate that each of the participants had secure attachments, an internal locus of control and a strong personal self-efficacy. Optimism and hardiness were evident as each participant spoke about the process of attaining resiliency. Insights as to how educators can utilise the findings of this research and promote resilience were also addressed.

This thesis is a narrative inquiry of laughter in a University Lab School preschool classroom that describes the many situations in which children laugh as well as laughter's importance for the children, for me, and for all of us as a whole within the context of our classroom. To date, there is a paucity of research on children's laughter, especially in young children. The majority of research that has been conducted has been quantitative in nature, with few attempts to comprehensively describe the many situations in which laughter occurs. For my study, I felt it crucial to look at, document, and describe preschoolers' laughter, taking into consideration the many facets of their school day including free play, story time, playground time, and snack time. My sample included all of my 14 preschoolers, who ranged in age from 3 years to 4 years, 4 months at the outset of the study. I also deemed it important to look at what these laughter-producing situations meant to me and the children in my classroom, including what deeper worth laughter for all of us, how we used it in the classroom, and how it helped me to grow both personally and professionally through my research. / Master of Science

Thesis advisor: Curt Dudley-Marling / Improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities remains a challenge for professionals in the field of special education. With the passage of <italic> NCLB <italic/> and <italic> IDEA 2004 <italic/> has come the recommendation to establish higher standards for educational productivity for these students. This call to action seems warranted, especially in light of recent findings published in a report by the U.S. Department of Education (2002) entitled <italic>A New Era: Revitalizing Special Education for Children and Their Families <italic/>. The report suggests that students with disabilities drop-out of high school at twice the rate of their peers and higher education enrollment rates for students with disabilities are 50 percent lower than rates for the general population. Recent literature indicates that improving educational outcomes for students with disabilities depends in large part on creating constructive partnerships between their families and schools. The present study contributes to the knowledge base on partnership-making by investigating family-school partnerships in special education from the perspective of parents. This study utilized the qualitative methodology known as narrative inquiry to investigate the following research questions: 1. What stories do parents tell regarding their personal experiences with the special education process? 2. What do these stories tell us about the family's perspective of family-school partnerships in special education? 3. What can we learn from these stories that might translate into effective policy and practice in schools? Findings from interviews with fourteen parents of students receiving special education services indicated that they were concerned about issues of teacher effectiveness, honesty and trust, and their role in securing services for their children. Knowledge derived from their experiences offer suggestions for schools, institutions of higher education, and future researchers. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis research is a narrative inquiry into the cross-generational schooling experiences of six former and current students during a period of momentous social, economic, cultural and political change in China’s modern history, 1949 to the present. It focuses on students’ experience in curricular situations and how they construct and reconstruct curricular meanings. Through this work, I intend to foster a deeper understanding of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and values about schooling revealed from students’ school experiences. According to Dewey (1938), Schwab (1978), Connelly and Clandinin (1988), curriculum does not only refer to the content in textbooks, but includes people, things, and processes of a learning environment. I used Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum, student, subject matter, teacher and milieu, to explore students’ curricular experiences in relation to the general field of curriculum studies as framed by Dewey, Schwab, Connelly and Clandinin. “These [four] commonplaces combine in different ways, becoming more or less prominent, and more or less salient, in teaching and learning situations” (Conle, 2003, p. 6). Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum provided an avenue for exploring the curricular meanings my and my participants make of our schooling. My participants are my parents, my nephew, an old (male) friend from school, a young female and myself. Since we all share a Chinese upbringing, our school stories were told and explored within China’s social, economic and political contexts. Telling and retelling my and my participants’ schooling experiences and making meaning and significance from them help to convey what has been happening in our curricular situations. Our cross-generational student experiences bring a set of perspectives to explore what it means to be educated in China. By constructing and reconstructing the meaning of our schooling experiences, this study provides space for students’ school stories to be reflectively heard and examined (Olson & Craig, 2005; Richie & Wilson, 2000)in the recent change in China’s educational reforms that seek to promote quality education and engage students’ independent and critical thinking.

This thesis research is a narrative inquiry into the cross-generational schooling experiences of six former and current students during a period of momentous social, economic, cultural and political change in China’s modern history, 1949 to the present. It focuses on students’ experience in curricular situations and how they construct and reconstruct curricular meanings. Through this work, I intend to foster a deeper understanding of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and values about schooling revealed from students’ school experiences. According to Dewey (1938), Schwab (1978), Connelly and Clandinin (1988), curriculum does not only refer to the content in textbooks, but includes people, things, and processes of a learning environment. I used Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum, student, subject matter, teacher and milieu, to explore students’ curricular experiences in relation to the general field of curriculum studies as framed by Dewey, Schwab, Connelly and Clandinin. “These [four] commonplaces combine in different ways, becoming more or less prominent, and more or less salient, in teaching and learning situations” (Conle, 2003, p. 6). Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum provided an avenue for exploring the curricular meanings my and my participants make of our schooling. My participants are my parents, my nephew, an old (male) friend from school, a young female and myself. Since we all share a Chinese upbringing, our school stories were told and explored within China’s social, economic and political contexts. Telling and retelling my and my participants’ schooling experiences and making meaning and significance from them help to convey what has been happening in our curricular situations. Our cross-generational student experiences bring a set of perspectives to explore what it means to be educated in China. By constructing and reconstructing the meaning of our schooling experiences, this study provides space for students’ school stories to be reflectively heard and examined (Olson & Craig, 2005; Richie & Wilson, 2000)in the recent change in China’s educational reforms that seek to promote quality education and engage students’ independent and critical thinking.