Qualitative research on education and aspirations has been produced with the sole focus on the reproduction of class inequalities within a White middle class structure. There has only been a handful of studies of analytic engagement with Black professional middle class parents' expectations and aspirations regarding their children's futures in Britain. This gap creates an opportunity for new research to gain deeper insight into what decisions and choices are made by Black professional middle class parents and bring to light important knowledge of professional middle class educational attainment. The research presented here explored how Black professional middle class parents’ construct strategic approaches towards creating better futures for their children within a predominantly White middle class structure. Drawing on primary data taken from interviews with 25 Black African and Black Caribbean middle class parents’ (half from African or Caribbean heritage) , this thesis analyses parents’ strategic decision making and navigation in an unequal playing field of education. Findings indicate adaptations of Bourdieu’s social, cultural and economic capitals to prepare and engage their children along certain pathways in order to create aspirational opportunities. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) it is argued that while class is very influential in explaining educational attainment, understanding Black professional middle class parents’ aspirations for their children requires a deeper understanding of race. Evidence from in-depth narratives provided an insight into parents' own biographies that were either originally working or middle class backgrounds in shaping their orientations to, and manner of engagement with, their children's futures. Drawing from the data middle class parents were beginning to be geographically mobile, moving out of inner London areas in search of a better quality of life for their children and a preferred school choice – with a higher quality of education found around the surrounding areas of London and the South East suburbs. Parents’ subjective biographies illustrated diverse parenting practices and values such as those sets of parents using their Christian faith to help build a solid foundation for moral values, self-confidence and respectability. The research offers new insights into the choices made and strategic approaches used to nurture high aspirations for Black professional middle class children’s futures.

M.Ed. / Divorce is one of the most traumatic experiences that families can encounter. Children suffer when parents divorce and much research has been done on the effects that divorce has on young children in terms of their social, socio-economic and psychological development. As a result of this extensive research, parents are aware that, if they divorce when their children are young, it may have negative effects on their children’s development. Hence, some couples wait until they believe their children are mature enough to understand the situation and to deal with the consequences, thereby limiting any possible damage. These parents often wait for their children to complete their senior secondary education before moving forward with divorce proceedings. They believe that this is the right time to divorce. This research study uses a Qualitative Research Paradigm to investigate the effects that waiting to divorce has on the young adult child and his or her relationships and future career opportunities. The theoretical framework for this study includes understanding Systems Theory, the family life cycle, the development of personality in the young adult and the nature and stages of divorce. The research study shows that young adult children do experience hardship particular to their stage of development when their parents divorce. In particular, they find themselves caught between stages of their lives. They are on the cusp of two worlds – school and their future careers. Interviews were used as a method of data collection. Three participants were selected to form part of the study and in-depth interviews were conducted to understand the experiences and perceptions of these individuals. The findings were analysed and recorded. The data was interpreted from which conclusions were drawn and recommendations made.

This is a comparative study of parental involvement in the governance of public and private schools in the Matatiele District of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Parental involvement can range from occasional attendance of the school functions to partnership through parent teacher organizations and parent management bodies. Education is a national enterprise that requires the co-operation and participation of all the role players who are parents, community, teachers, learners and the Department of Education. The problem to be investigated in this study is: Why is it that parental involvement is more positive in the governance of private schools than that of public schools? Two schools were selected for the study and the researcher administered questionnaires personally by hand and conducted face to face interviews to collect the primary data. The responses of the administered questionnaire were tabulated and recorded in table form so as to give an accurate interpretation of what was revealed in the data. Patterns in the data were considered in order to provide an accurate interpretation of the information. The findings were divided into two, that is: findings from the public school and those from private schools. From the public school it was found that: parents are not involved in the governance of the school; the school does not involve parents on financial matters; parents do not attend meetings when invited; they do not know their roles and responsibilities, for example, according to the South African Schools Act (SASA), parents must be actively involved in the governance of the school in their community and that there is an element of ignorance and negligence on the part of parents towards their children’s education. From the private schools it was found that: parents are more involved in the governance of the school; they attend and participate actively in school meetings; the school involves parents in financial matters and as such the financial support from the parents is very good; parents are much involved in the monitoring of the progress of their learner’s education and are passionate about the school and seem to own the policies and the governance of the whole school system. The conclusion drawn from the study is that private schools allow for parental involvement in the governance of their schools whereas in public schools parental involvement is low.

This study was undertaken to determine (a) the extent to which P.T.A's in the Vancouver area engage in activities designed to promote citizenship education for New Canadians and (b) the relative effectiveness and merit of citizenship programs by a comparison of what is being done with what might be accomplished. The study is based on (a) a questionnaire submitted to the 53 associations In Vancouver, (b) examination of records In the office of the Historian for P.T.A's and in the files of the Liaison Officer in Vancouver, and (c) on personal and telephone Interviews with executive officers of the associations and ethnic groups, with school principals and with officials of the Vancouver Council of P.T.A's. The questionnaire was designed to establish the different types of programs and projects used, and to find out, where applicable, the factors limiting their use. Interviews were used to gain information about program planning and association aims and purposes, with reference to whether or not these were oriented to citizenship education. Following a consideration of citizenship education from the viewpoint of implications for Canada as a nation, this study outlines briefly the history of the P.T.A. movement and then examines the focus of P.T.A. programs in the Vancouver area. These are found to centre around (a) interpretation of the school to parents; (b) parent-child relationship problems; (c) topics of current interest in the community and (d) programs portraying student skills and talents. Program planning is, with three exceptions, carried out with consideration for what is thought to be the purpose of the association and the predominating Interests of its members. Seventeen associations out of forty-five reporting, or 38%, do not use any citizenship programs or projects. The reasons given are (a) there are too few New Canadians in the area to warrant time being devoted to the subject and (b) there is no demand from their members for such programs. Three indicated they thought this was not a P.T.A. function. The remaining twenty-eight associations together devoted eighty hours or 6% of their total program time to citizenship activities. Of the twenty-eight, one association reported having devoted the full year's program to citizenship education for newcomers, using twenty hours. The programs used, in order of frequency, are: (a) Films about Canadian life and about other cultures; (b) social evenings and afternoon teas; (c) "New Canadians" evening and (d) plays, pageants or concerts. Examination of records and files showed a great variety of material available from which citizenship education programs could be readily developed. No appreciable cooperation was found to exist between P.T.A's and ethnic groups. This study indicates the need for cooperation and coordination amongst groups interested in citizenship education for newcomers. It is concluded that P.T.A's, organized as they are in practically every local school area, could plan effectively for programs and projects which would help newcomers get a better understanding of, and fit more easily and readily into, the community. Further study could be devoted, with profit, to the particular needs of each association with reference to the incidence of immigrant population and, consequently, the kinds of citizenship programs and projects most pertinent to each area. / Arts, Faculty of / Social Work, School of / Graduate

It has been suggested that 25% of marriages in Canada are remarriages (Schlesinger, 1981). In such remarriages it has been recommended that the non-custodial parent have minimal contact with the new family (Goldstein, Freud & Solnit, 1973). More recently, therapists have begun to recognise the importance of having permeable boundaries in remarriage families which allow all significant family members to stay involved (Messinger, 1985; Sager et al., 1983). This research study Included 33 families in which the wife had remarried after a divorce, and had children from the previous marriage. A total of 105 subjects participated including 33 wives, 30 stepfathers and 42 adolescents. Employing an anonymous questionnaire format, the following hypotheses were tested: (1) There is a significant relationship between the wife's contact with her former spouse and family cohesion. (2) There is a relationship between contact with the former spouse and marital adjustment. (3) There is a positive relationship between balanced cohesion and marital adjustment. (4) There will be less variance between family members on cohesiveness when there is moderate contact with the former spouse. The total frequency of contact was assessed over a three month period, and subjects were grouped according to No Contact, Telephone Contact Only and Personal Contact. Eighty-two percent of the children were found to have contact with their non-custodial father once per month or less. Statistical analysis supported the relationship between marital adjustment and former spouse contact. Pearson Correlation Coefficients revealed a significant relationship between cohesion and marital adjustment. The strongest relationships were found in the husband scores in both cases. The relationship between cohesion and frequency of contact with the former spouse was not statistically significant. No significant difference in variance on cohesion scores was found between groups with No Contact or Personal Contact with the former spouse. The sample was found to be within the norms (Spanier, 1976) on the marital adjustment measure, and significantly below established norms (Olson et al., 1985) on cohesion. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This study investigated the relationship of personality type and parenting style. Using a sample of convenience, 102 parents (71 female, 31 male) completed three tests: the Myers Briggs Type Indicator which measures personality types, 64 items from the Block Child Rearing Practices Report which measures parental child rearing attitudes and values, and FACES III which measures family functioning. Forty of the 64 items from the Block Child Rearing Practices Report clustered into two homogeneous groups that served as subtests for parenting style. A canonical correlation between four personality type scores (extraversion-introversion, sensing—intuition, thinking—feeling, judging— perceiving) and two parenting style scores (nurturance, restrictiveness) indicated significant relationships between personality and parenting. Parents who were strong on sensing and moderately introverted tended to employ a parenting style that was highly restrictive and moderately nurturant. Parents who were strong on perceiving and moderately extraverted tended to employ a parenting style that was highly nurturing and much less restrictive. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

This purposes of this study were to discover what the second grade children seemed to consider as desirable companionship between themselves and their parents, and to recognize the apparent needs for parental companionship that seemed to exist among the pupils.

One fundamental conceptualization of the biomedical category of autism is that of the withdrawn child, isolated in an impenetrable world. This trope, and associated neurobiological, cognitive and linguistic markers, have become central to how autism is recognized in both academic research and in popular understanding. In this paper, I draw on fieldwork in Ethiopia, where the first education and care center for autism was founded in the capital of Addis Ababa in 2002. My research explores the relatively recent introduction of the diagnostic category, working principally with Ethiopian parents who have identified and sought care at the center, and educators on staff. I find that the adults understand these children not as withdrawn, but in terms of three key characteristics: a “tied mouth,” an inability to listen, and experiencing inner disturbance. Colloquially, any of these three may mean that a son or daughter is “ye otizm lij” [lit. autism’s child]. Drawing on ethnographic material, I show how, for these parents, these three markers shape how they understand and work to care for their children, and therefore, autism.

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Clinical Psychology) in the Department of Psychology University of Zululand, South Africa, 2000. / Single parenting has become very common today due to having a child illegitimately, death of spouse, separation, and high rate of divorce. Single parent families are subject to many forms of economic and psychological stress. For example, they result in the creation of non-custodial parents, whose contact with their children is often irregular and unrewarding. The quality of interpersonal relationships with others makes the difference in coping or not coping during the first five years of being a single parent. An organization of single parents (self-help group) provides a support system responsive to the special problems of single parents, including discussion groups, which are responsive to the inadequacies in the ongoing lives of single parents, in promoting mental health. Self-help groups fall within the social action model of community psychology which aims to promote personal empowerment defined as the process of gaining influence over events and outcomes of importance to an individual or group. This model is a shift in intervention from prevention to empowerment and from needs to rights. The present research has been motivated by the World Health Organisation's 'target for all* document and the Ottawa Charter for action to achieve health for all by the year 2000 (presented at the first international conference on health promotion in November 1986). It has also been a motivation to note a commitment and emerging progress by health professionals and psychologists in mounting an array of health promotion and prevention programs. The aims of the study were to elicit needs from a group of single parents, form and evaluate an ongoing self-help group program and promote the following variables: psychological health, empowerment andparent effectiveness. It was hypothesized that the self-help group program for single parents will result in improvement of the mentioned variables. The researcher called for volunteers to join the group. Eight single parents committed themselves to be available for most sessions, seven of whom were females. The researcher made use of the following psychological techniques : biographical inventory, needs analysis questionnaire, global assessment of functioning scale, power maps, parenting skills rating scale, and program evaluation interview guide. In line with the social action model, this was a participatory action-research, program-evaluation type of design, where single parent co-researchers jointly defined the aims of their group, the themes to be discussed and the meanings of such variables as psychological health, empowerment and parent-effectiveness. The participants were pre- and post- tested on the above variables- The group ran for a contracted period of five weeks and the members met twice each week. The study realised its aims and the hypotheses were not rejected. The main strength of the research is that it encouraged community participation. The themes from sessions have been presented and analysed and it is evident that the study yielded positive results. It questioned the way the participants have been doing things and the reasons they did them. It led to them changing their attitudes toward their accustomed styles of parenting. This was interpreted as empowerment as they were gaining influence over events and outcomes of importance to them. The single parents self-help group empowered participants to be able to empower other single parents as the eight participants in the present research committed themselves to starting more groups of the same kind. In that way, they will be cascading the skills and knowledge they gained from the group. / National Research Fund (NRF)

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree Master of Education in the Department of Educational Psychology of the Faculty of Education at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2003. / The aim of this study was to pursue an investigation into accountable parental involvement in primary schools From the literature study it became clear that there are many areas and possibilities for parents to become formally and informally involved in the schooling of their primary school children. Formal involvement of parents in school activities is based on juridical, historical and educational grounds. Juridically, legislation in South Africa stipulates that parents must be involved in the school at least at the level of governance. Parents exert a lot of influence on their child's cognitive development in the early years and thus the contact between home and school should be maintained, especially during the primary school years, if the child is to succeed in formal schooling. For the purpose of the empirical investigation a self-structured questionnaire, to be completed by primary school educators, was utilised. The completed questionnaires were analysed using descriptive statistics. In conclusion a summary was presented on the findings of the literature and empirical study and the following are some of the recommendations that were made: • Positive attitudes must be inculcated in parents to become actively involved in their children's formal schooling. • Educators and parents must be trained to offer parental involvement programmes. Further research should be conducted concerning the accountability of parents regarding their involvement in primary schools.