Both long-term language knowledge and language ability affect the efficiency of the working memory system (Kohnert, Windsor, & Yim, 2006; Summers, Bohman, Peña, Bedore, & Gillam, 2009). Models of working memory (Baddeley, 2003; Cowan, 1999; Potter & Lombardi, 1990) account for variations in how memory is used in nonword repetition (NWR) and narrative retell tasks. Use of working memory varies by language ability and language experience. The current study explored the role of working memory, language ability, and language experience on narrative retell in bilingual children. Eighty bilingual first grade children participated in the study and represented a wide range of language abilities as determined by the Bilingual English Spanish Assessment (Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein & Bedore, in preparation) and a wide range of language experiences. The participants repeated nonwords (Calderón, 2003; Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998) and retold stories in both English and Spanish. Stories were scored based on the percent of key components (KC) that were recalled based on the model story. Results revealed that Ability predicted narrative retells in both English and Spanish. Current language experience also predicted English and Spanish retells. English NWR predicted narrative retell in English only. NWR did not mediate the effect of language ability or language experience on recalling KCs. Yet, English NWR did predict English KCs. These results support memory models that account for memory tasks using longer units of language (Cowan, 1999; Potter & Lombardi, 1990). / text

With increasing teenage pregnancy rates among Blacks in the United States and the negative impact on families, it is important that practitioners and communities acknowledge the changes in society. According to the research, the influence of the media, entertainment industry and technology weigh heavily on the behavior and interactions of teens. Building on Erikson’s Theory of Identity Development, sexual scripts which are drawn from hip-hop culture are utilized as points of entrance and tools for reeducating Black adolescents and preventing teenage pregnancy. Finally, intervention and prevention strategies that educate teenage girls around sexual scripts and utilize personal narratives are essential to reducing teen pregnancy are presented. / text

My dissertation research explored the experiences of mathematics anxieties in women elementary preservice teachers while learning mathematics as K-12 students and while learning to teach mathematics. Previous studies conducted in mathematics teacher education have emphasized the importance of preservice teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, as a confident and competent mathematics teacher is a vital necessity in the classroom (Beilock, Gunderson, Ramirez, & Levine, 2010; Gavin & Reis, 2003; Huebner, 2009). As evidence of elementary preservice teachers' anxiety, I analyzed three women preservice teachers' oral and written narratives about their experiences with learning mathematics and learning to teach mathematics, which I collected over eighteen months at key moments in their teacher preparation program. My findings have revealed that for some women elementary preservice teachers, mathematics anxiety may be an issue or concern that remains consistent and recurs for decades. In fact, the multiple stories that the three preservice teachers had to tell indicated that their experiences in learning mathematics led them to develop a unique coping strategy to deal with mathematics anxiety. They continued to utilize their strategy repeatedly across their experiences as a student learning mathematics and learning to teach mathematics, even when the strategy sometimes failed to protect them from stress, embarrassment, and demoralization. Moreover, these coping strategies appeared to become so powerful that when the women confronted situations in which they felt expected to know mathematical content that they did not understand, they used their unique strategies for coping with mathematics anxiety rather than seriously attempting to learn that content. In this manner, these coping strategies often appeared to have injurious effects on their mathematics learning. Given that my study only included three participants, I suggest future research that mathematics teacher education researchers may want to consider. I also propose ways in which mathematics teacher educators might address issues of mathematics anxiety in elementary teacher preparation programs.

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For those living in resource rich countries such as Canada a positive HIV diagnosis no longer means an imminent death. In response to this change, numerous treatment and therapeutic institutions have arisen to assist individuals with managing their illness. Illness narratives then, the stories people tell and retell about their illness experience, are constructed by and within this multiplicity of medical frameworks that can interact in ways that are both complimentary and contradictory. Drawing on ethnographic data obtained through two months of participant observation and seven in-depth interviews at an HIV/AIDS treatment facility in Vancouver, British Columbia I discuss how illness narratives reveal the presence of and an orientation towards the powerful discourses of medicine. Some of the frameworks evident in the narratives I examine include biomedical understandings of health and disease, support group dialogues on self-empowerment, tenets of complementary and alternative medicines, clinical models of low-threshold access to health care, notions of health services as a human right, and addiction treatment concepts. In order to afford a place for the institutional discourses of medicine in my analysis, the subjective experience of illness is contextualized with reference to it’s situatedness amongst the myriad of other voices that both construct and constrain narrative production. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate how the incorporation of disparate institutional voices into a subjective story of illness reflects the development of a unique orientation to the institutions of medicine an understanding that I conceptualize as medical consciousness.

Emerging conversations within oncology have drawn more attention to cancer among young adults (ages 18-45). Recent research has illuminated many of the psychosocial difficulties young adults face as they go through the many trials and tribulations of chronic illness. However, a subject still understudied, much is unclear about the personal as well as the cultural implications of being diagnosed during this period of time. In a book of cancer stories, performer and young adult cancer patient Kairol Rosenthal (2009) expressed her frustration with what she saw as “stereotypes” promulgated by the limited public discourses that exist on the subject (p. 7). She sought to counterbalance these representations with stories capturing the “complexities of our real daily lives” (p. 7). Indeed, in oncological discourses young adults tend to be cast in oversimplified terms, based upon cultural expectations about what young adulthood should be and pressures to conform to those standards. Intersecting with dominant discourses within narrative identity development, two imperatives are placed upon young adults’ stories: integration of different life experiences and selves into a coherent narrative and developing a sense of self-authorship in the direction of one’s life. What seems to be lost in these imperatives within the existing research is what is at stake for individual lives (a phenomenological perspective) and how those stakes are negotiated or contested with hegemonic trajectories of life (a critical perspective). Receptive to Rosenthal’s critique of dominant discourses around cancer and young adulthood, the purpose of this thesis was to explore the complexity and diversity of young adults living with cancer. More specifically, I intended to interrogate some of their existential and biographical challenges as expressed in their narratives of cancer, as well as their engagements with ideological constructions of young adulthood, namely, the expectations of narrative coherence and self-authorship. This research marked a departure from most studies on the subject in its qualitative methodology (i.e., narrative analysis) and in its explicit evaluation of the effects of cultural discourses on young adults’ attempts to make meaning. More generally, this research shows the importance of language—in discourses, narratives, and metaphors—in constructing and communicating illness experiences. For this project, I gathered a mix of written and oral narratives (through semi-structured interviews) from 21 participants from across Canada. The foci of analyses were on what could be called narrative ‘moments of meaning’ and ‘moments of being,’ that is, situated expressions of how they made sense of their worlds and themselves. Many of these were critical moments in the sense of questioning and resisting dominant discourses of cancer and young adulthood. Their moments of meaning often expressed negotiation of personal desires and innovative intentions with familiar cultural narratives or “prototypical plots” (Good, 1994)—including stories of battling cancer, embarking on a life journey, nearing recovery, encountering unpredictability and mystery, and living with chaos. These moments of meaning served an array of purposes well beyond the expected function of constructing a coherent narrative. When telling of identity disruptions and the liminality of cancer, participants produced both more orderly moments of being (e.g., survivor, patient, or warrior identities) and more liminal moments of non-being (e.g., victim, phoenix, or trickster identities). Self-authorship seemed to be present among the former, while the latter expressed less control and certainty of being—which was not always seen as a problem. These moments of being and non-being were collaborated and contested within the intersubjective spaces of their clinical relationships, local worlds, and cancer patient communities. More specific to their age group, their moments of being and non-being often related to what may be understood as developmental identities, including the ‘traditional milestones’ such as individual autonomy, family (i.e., marriage and parenthood), and vocation (i.e., getting an education and building a career). In their struggles they sometimes reaffirmed these cultural ideals toward identity integration and other times resisted them as “normalizing ideologies” (Becker, 1997) of young adulthood. As part of these larger negotiations of meaning and being, the participants expressed struggles to understand the moral significance of their illnesses. Confronted with what may be called “causal ontologies” of suffering (Shweder, 1997), they spoke of different etiological models of cancer’s origins as well as reconciliatory models for living with cancer in the future. Their narratives sometimes led toward “remoralization” (Kleinman, 1988)—couching experiences of suffering in terms of a moral order (narrative coherence) and personal responsibility (self-authorship)—and sometimes led away from it, depending on whether they believed their illnesses originated from events in their personal and social lives. Overall, the participants in this study communicated complex and potentially chronic existential challenges. In many ways their narratives resisted dominant representations of young adults with cancer—and of cancer patients in general—suggesting that such representations need to be rethought. Their critical moments of meaning and being may serve as counternarratives to the stereotypes of concern to Rosenthal and many other cancer patients. Specifically, their narratives revealed the merits and limits of the ideological construction of young adulthood as a time of narrative coherence and self-authorship. This study has important implications for future health research and psychosocial support in the field of oncology; building upon a “narrative medicine” (Charon, 2006), sensitivity to how language is used among young adult cancer patients may lead toward more inclusive clinical practices.

The black-white suicide paradox explored in the current study explores black women's notions of suicide. In its most basic form, a fundamental question of this project is why have black women's suicide rates remained consistently low? This project seeks to explore specific internal and external adaptations that black women have come to rely on for long term survival. A great deal of attention will be given to black women's perspectives of suicide inside and outside of the black community. This qualitative study by way of narratives provides insight into the entities that black women perceive to contribute to their virtually non-existent suicide rates. This approach is particularly appropriate for this study because black women's accounts on suicide will provide rich detailed data typically unseen in current suicide literature. In my work, I assume that black women's multifaceted oppressive conditions have compelled them to use subtle forms of resistance, i.e. coping mechanisms that act as protective barriers against suicide. This study also re-examines notions of social integration and religious beliefs in lessening chances of suicide among black women. Research findings were presented by way of four themes that emerged from the dominant narratives of twenty-two in-depth interviews. Respondents perceived family and communal obligations, faith based beliefs, a sense of long suffering, and declaration of strength to be the primary grounds for black women's low rates of suicide. Recurring themes were consistent despite the women's income or education levels. The study concludes that black women employ and perceive these strategies to be significant in coping or resisting trivial and significant stressors of life. Additionally, black women's perception of suicide as a weakness played a significant role in the way they defined themselves as well as the act. For literature on suicide, I engaged the works of Durkheim, Prudomme, Hendin, and Lester among others as a theoretical framework for this study.

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This essay argues that The Help by Kathryn Stockett highlights black people in a patronising way. In order to analyse the novel a postcolonial perspective has been applied. The novel is an example of narratives of difference and the representation of the characters Miss Skeeter, Minny and Aibileen increases and enhances the differences between people. The coloured people are described as the other, whereas the whites are seen as the norm. Moreover, the essay includes a didactic part, which discusses how to teach a novel like The Help in a multicultural classroom.