The creation of identity, a stable sense of one's self, is a major developmental process in adolescence (Erikson, 1950). Identity develops through the process of socialization and identification with other people, such as role models. Adolescents have a primary inclination to use media in socialization, and Arnett ( 1995),reasons that the familial sources of socialization start to diminish during adolescence. Although peers are a major contributor of identity formation, media personalities are also used in the development of identity (Arnett, 1995). The purpose of the present study was to examine adolescents' identity-socialization process through use of 'media-based personalities. A sample of three-hundred-and-one students between the ages of 11 and 21 were surveyed. The participants were administered a questionnaire packet including written instructions and questions pertaining to the individual’s demographics, and identification with media-based role models. The packet also included the following inventories: the Multidimensional Self-Esteem Inventory (O'Brien and Epstein, 1987), the Emotional Autonomy Scale (Steinberg and Silverberg, 1986), and the Extended Version: Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status (Adams and Grotevant, 1979). The results of the present study suggested that media role models do have a significant impact on identity development in adolescence. Younger adolescents did not differ from older adolescents in overall level of media role model identification, but the variation in level of identification was much smaller for younger than for older adolescents, indicating that older adolescents are more individuated in their attitudes toward role models. Significant correlation's were also found between how often one wears clothing and jewelry associated with media role models and personality variables, such as emotional autonomy and level of identity attainment. Level of Total identification with media role models stayed high and steady throughout all adolescent age ranges. This finding suggests that media role models are highly identified with by adolescents. Overall, this study purports that media role model identification is a healthy process in identity achievement.

published_or_final_version / Psychiatry / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of the present investigation was to explore the relationship of the adolescent experience of parental death to the variables of identity formation, adjustment, and coping. The inclusion of adolescents who had experienced parental divorce and those who had not experienced either loss condition allowed for group comparisons.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The current study examined the possibility of using cluster analysis to classify attachment styles in middle childhood. Attachment classifications were measured by looking at child coping strategies and perceived maternal behavior. The attachment classification was then tested for construct validity by examining whether it can predict adjustment outcomes in interpretable patterns. The adjustment outcomes examined were a self-reported global self-worth scale and peer-reported internalizing and externalizing behaviors measured using a Peer Nomination Inventory. The current study had 199 third through eight graders and provided evidence for the cluster analysis approach and also showed that the disorganized attachment was associated with the most adverse adjustment outcomes. That is, results showed that disorganized attachment was linked with the lowest levels of global self-worth and the highest rates of internalizing and externalizing behaviors and was significantly different from the securely attached cluster on each measure. The implications and possible underlying causes are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015 / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-132).

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-132). Also available in print.

This study offers an account of reading clubs as a literacy intervention in a grade 8 English class at a former ‘Coloured’ high school in South Africa. Using Margaret Archer’s social realist methodology, it examines different practices of ‘reading’ used by learners in talking and writing about text. Archer’s analytical dualism and morphogenetic model provided an explanatory framework for this study. Analytical dualism allows for the separation of the parts (structural and cultural elements) from the people (the grade 8 learners) so as to analyse the interplay between structure and culture. The morphogenetic model recognises that antecedent structures predate this, and any study but that through the exercise of agency, morphogenesis, in the form of structural elaboration or morphostasis in the form of continuity, may occur. This study used a New Literacies perspective based on an ideological model of literacy which recognises many different literacies, in addition to dominant school literacies. Learners’ talk about books as well as personal journal writing provided an insight into what cultural mechanisms and powers children bring to the reading of novels. Understandings of discourses as well as of Gee’s (1990; 2008) construct of Discourse provided a framework for examining learners’ identities and shifts as readers. The data in this study, which is presented through a series of vignettes, found that grade 8 learners use many different experiences and draw on different discourses when making sense of texts. Through the separation of the structural and cultural components, this research could explore how reading clubs as structures enabled learners to access different discourses from the domain of culture. Through the process and engagement in the reading clubs, following Gee (2000b), learners were attributed affinity, discoursal and institutional identities as readers. It was found, in the course of the study, that providing a safe space, scaffolding, multiple opportunities to practice and a variety of reading material, helped learners to access and appropriate dominant literacies. In addition, learners need a repertoire of literacy practices to draw from as successful reading needs flexibility and adaptability. Reading and writing inform each other and through gradual induction into literary writing, learners began to appropriate and approximate dominant literacy practices. Following others who have contributed to the field of New Literacy Studies (Heath, 1983; Street, 1984; Gee 1990; Prinsloo & Breier, 1996), this study would suggest that literacies of traditionally underserved communities should not be considered in deficit terms. Instead these need to be understood as resources for negotiating meaning making and as tools or mechanisms to access dominant discourse practices. In addition the resilience and competition from Discourses of popular culture need to be recognised and developed as tools to access school literacies.

The purpose of this study was to explore the psychosocial phenomena of self-esteem in relation to gucose control in diabetic adolescent girls living in the Inland Empire. Three central themes emerged: body image, peer acceptance, and stress.

This dissertation focusses on pupils who do not act according to the expectations of their educators. They are restrained in their becoming actualising persons. On the basis of the description of becoming as a phenomenon, criteria are formulated in order to identify children restrained in their becoming. These children's actualisation is investigated in accordance with the criteria for adequate actualisation. By way of observation, questionnaires and personal interviews it has been empirically established that the restrained child has relational difficulties, especially with parents, and that these difficulties result in inadequate exploration, emancipation, differentiation, distantiation and objectification. One restraint can affect every area of the child's actualisation. Educators may assist the restrained child by ensuring that his basic educational needs are met. But the chief need of the child restrained in his becoming has emerged as the security and protection an adequate father-figure (all be it a teacher) provides. / Educational Studies / M. Ed. (Empirical Education)