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Secondary hypothyroidism is caused by treatment for hyperthyroidism and is a chronic condition. After adequate treatment, people can continue to experience persistent physical and depressive symptoms. There is a lack of research into the psychological factors involved in the condition, such as how people adjust to hypothyroidism. The study used Kelly’s (1955) Personal Construct Theory to explore the way in which patients construe (appraise) themselves with hypothyroidism and how this relates to coping, depression and hypothyroid symptoms. Twenty participants were recruited from an endocrinology clinic and online, through thyroid support organisations. Participants completed a semi-structured interview called a repertory grid and self-report measures of coping (Brief COPE), depression (HADS) and hypothyroid symptoms (ThySRQ). Repertory grid measures were extracted such as distances between different views of the self. The results showed that how unfavourably the self now was viewed compared to self before a thyroid disorder was positively correlated with depression, dysfunctional coping and hypothyroid symptoms. Identification with a negative view of hypothyroidism was associated with poorer mental and physical health and with dysfunctional coping. Polarized (i.e. black-and-white) construing and tight (i.e. rigid) construing were significantly and positively related to depression scores. Tightness of construing was also related to the number of hypothyroid symptoms experienced. Dysfunctional coping was positively correlated with depression and hypothyroid symptoms. Those with a history of depression experienced significantly more hypothyroid symptoms. Exploratory multiple regression analyses uncovered that how unfavourably the person viewed themselves now compared with before any thyroid problem, hypothyroid symptom frequency and dysfunctional coping accounted for 82.9% of the variance in depression. This highlights the importance of understanding how people construe the experience of hypothyroidism and their coping strategies and therefore psychological interventions may be helpful. Limitations include a small sample size and a correlational design, whereby cause and effect conclusions cannot be drawn.

This study examined teacher pedagogical content knowledge changes through a Middle School Mathematics Program professional development workshop, development of noticing use of student representations, and teacher changes in hypothetical learning trajectories due to noticed aspects of student representation corresponding to the hypothetical learning trajectory model. Using constant comparatives and repertory grid analysis, data was collected in two phases. Phase one, the teacher pre-test, occurred at the beginning of the summer of the 2003 professional development workshop. Phase two, the teacher post-test, occurred at the end of the workshop. Twenty-four teachers supplied data on pre- and post-tests during phases one and two. Eleven teachers were from Texas and 13 from Delaware. Six Texas and eight Delaware teachers worked with the algebraic expression concepts. Five Texas and five Delaware teachers worked with the equivalent fraction concepts. Four mathematics education researchers from Texas, three from Delaware, and two from the American Association for the Advancement of Science participated in facilitating the professional development. The results show that teacher pedagogical content knowledge changes with the help of a professional development partnership. The differences in knowledge can be measured with a hierarchal cluster analysis of the repertory grid by analyzing relationships between constructs and elements. Teacher hypothetical learning trajectories change depending on student representations of what they do and do not know about concepts. The study encourages teachers to use knowledge of students’ representation about a concept to determine what to teach next and how the concept should be taught. Teachers should use different types of representations including formal, imagistic, and action representations in teaching mathematical ideas. This will promote student development in all process standards including reasoning and proof, communication, problem solving, and connection. The findings suggest that teacher pedagogical content knowledge can be redefined during professional development partnerships. Furthermore, teachers’ knowledge of representation is varied and emphasis on the imagistic representation should be explored further. Finally, professional development models that facilitate how to extract what a student does and does not know based on representation, can be the basis for defining hypothetical learning trajectories.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], vi, 103 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references (p. 79-88).

The current economic climate has placed a tremendous amount of pressure on businesses and their staff to perform and as a consequence the number of lost workdays associated with work place stress is becoming a significant burden upon the UK economy. In order to improve and reduce the cost burden of lost workdays many businesses, and more specifically their leadership teams, have now started to look at non-business related environments in their search for success and ways in which to combat workplace stress. On such environment that business leaders have shown a growing interest in is that of sport and in particular the development and utilisation of mental toughness in order to achieve and sustain high performance. As a result there is a growing, if not an insatiable, desire to create mentally tough business professionals. However even though there are numerous books describing mental toughness to date no one has determine whether its ‘stress coping’ capability will actually benefit business professionals and whether the [sporting] definitions and frameworks are really appropriate for use in a business context. Existing examinations of sporting mental toughness have successfully adopted a qualitative approach in order to examine mental toughness. Similarly this research thesis adopted a qualitative approach using both Personal Construct Psychology and Appreciative Inquiry in order to capture business professional’s individual views, experiences, meanings, and perceptions of theirs or other people’s responses to events and situations in order to describe and characterise business mental toughness. Twelve business professionals participated in the study from which a definition of business mental toughness was developed and the attributes of the ideal mentally tough business person documented. The findings suggest that business mental toughness does exist but is different to that observed in sport and draws on our own values, beliefs, motivations and emotional intelligence and a set of coping mechanisms that enable business professional to cope with the stress and pressure of the work environment whilst maintaining emotional control and delivering on their objectives. This thesis provides the basis for further empirical research into business mental toughness, as well as providing guidance as to some of the conceptual and practical implications for the use of mental toughness techniques within a business environment. Given that £25.9 billion is lost due to work place stress in the UK alone, there is sufficient demand and reason to further the research into the stress coping capabilities of mental toughness and ensure that the correct type of mental toughness is developed within business.

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