Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-197).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 221-241). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

This thesis offers a new perspective on the nature and experience of parent-child relationships c.1450-1620. Focusing on correspondence and family papers from selected aristocracy and gentry families, it argues that authority in parent-child relationships was renegotiated throughout the life cycle, particularly at points of tension or crisis such as marriage or death. These ‘crisis points’ are episodes which show us the negotiations that took place around domestic authority and give a personal insight into the emotional responses of parents and children and the nature of authority within early modern society. This thesis addresses a gap in knowledge about the changing reciprocal nature of this relationship over the life course. It understands ‘parent’ and ‘child’ as relational statuses experienced differently at different points throughout the life cycle. These new definitions argue that ‘parent’ and ‘child’ were not statuses that were limited to a single life stage but impacted on an individual throughout life. It reveals that individuals were motivated by societal expectation of family roles and also exhibited a range of emotional responses in reaction to perceived threats to the smooth running of family life according to the rules and structures of age, gender and status. The expectations associated with being a parent or a child continued to shape the actions and behaviour of individuals well into adulthood, as loyalty and obedience between parents and children was challenged and renegotiated. The thesis also considers how different roles within the family could overlap, leading to conflict as family members sought to manage their obligations and responsibilities as parents, children, siblings or step-relations. The personal source material is put into context with legal records and conduct literature considering the conflict between ideals of family life and its lived experience.

Alongside the social and economic reform of the 1980s, special education and inclusive education have been developing rapidly over the last three decades in China. Despite increasing research on the positive relationship between parental involvement and children’s educational achievement, only a limited number of studies have begun to focus on how Chinese parents get involved in inclusive education in China. The aim of this research was to explore how a small group of Chinese hearing parents support their deaf children to be ready for and educated at mainstream schools in Beijing, China. A qualitative research design combining constructivist grounded theory and autoethnography was applied to this study. Following the guidelines of Charmaz’s grounded theory, intensive interviews were conducted with 10 Chinese hearing parents of deaf children in Beijing, China. All hearing parents were interviewed twice, resulting in 18 total interviews plus back-up interviews. Additionally, my own story of being a deaf person growing up and attending regular schools in Beijing, provided autoethnographic reflections on the data and codes. The analysis of interview data has explored and developed a conceptual theory of parental involvement including three key categories: the effects of parental involvement, parental involvement strategies, and the barriers to parental involvement. Also, these findings showed that Chinese hearing parents’ ‘tried and tested’ strategies for supporting their deaf child to be ready for and educated at mainstream schools and actively removing the barriers to their involvement. In conclusion, the findings of this research discussed that these parents’ attitudes towards deafness and inclusive education could influence their strategies in deaf diagnosis, early intervention, school settings and coaching their deaf child. And these findings suggested that this theoretical model of parental involvement could influence a deaf child’s development in self-concept and deaf identity, contributing to the theories and practices of parental involvement and inclusive education for deaf children in China.

UK Government calls for more effective ways of communicating and engaging with the community to devolve power and enable local improvements in the concept of the 'Big Society'. Devolved power is often gained through local community organisations. These organisations are being tasked to manage community assets calling for a new breed of skilled community participants. They are under tremendous pressure and this additional stress may have a detrimental impact on individuals’ wellbeing. Community organisations often struggle to attract capable community participants as they compete with the well-known giants of the voluntary sector, who have significant marketing budgets. They need to develop their use of ICT to compete, attract and sustain community participants. When the public consider community participation there are a series of local social interactions that take place, culminating in a tipping point, when they decide to participate. This process is complex with varying sources of information linking into decision making. Coupled with the needs of community organisations necessitates careful management to ensure the wellbeing of both. The aim of this research was to develop a wellbeing themed framework for effective community participation, applying both complexity and design perspectives. This has repeatedly been highlighted as an area of need and yet still no real answer has been found to offer the public a process that supports the development of wellbeing whilst creating tipping points for community participation. The research started with a literature review followed by open interviews of experiences and a separate analysis of spiritual reflections to develop and clarify themes for the wellbeing semi-structured interviews. The interview process involved reflection, Mindsight and Mindfulness of each themed area to rate where participants felt they were at that point in time, where they wanted to be and what actions they could have taken to get there and when. An international evaluation was completed to add qualitative and quantitative information to the research, validate the process and understand beneficial language. This was followed up with refinements from the literature. The evidence demonstrated the effectiveness of the wellbeing process with designed tipping points for community participation. The community sector can exploit this research for their benefit, offering well-fitting roles for career development of young people, unemployed, retired or ill health recovery. The contribution to knowledge acquired is the development of a sustainable, effective, efficient and time saving wellbeing framework and process for online communication mediation for wellbeing in a community participation context.

Educators and researchers have long discussed methods for improving student achievement in the social studies and history. Research on student attitudes reveals that the social studies suffers from a lack of interest among students. Common complaints among students are that the subject is tedious, does not relate to their lives, is not particularly useful for their future careers, is repetitive, or that it is simply boring (Schug et al., 1982}. Even when students recognize the utilitarian value of skills they learn from social studies/ history, they rarely express an interest in the subject (Chiodo, 2004). After reviewing the body of literature on student attitudes towards the social studies, Shaughnessy and Haladyna (1985} concluded, "most students in the United States, at all grade levels, find social studies to be one of the least interesting, most irrelevant subjects in the school curriculum" (p. 694). Russel and Waters (2010) linked these attitudes to the prevalence of passive learning (lecture, worksheets and other busy work, and rote memorization) within contemporary social studies classrooms. Studies examining social studies/ history education suggest that pedagogical techniques from drama/ theatre may be effective at teaching these subjects by helping students actively engage with and retain material. Drama-based strategies can be particularly effective in improving student reading skills (Rose et al., 2000). By strengthening such basic skills, drama/ theatre helps support student achievement in social studies/ history. Teaching strategies that utilize historical narrative have been shown to get students to effectively engage with and improve their understanding of social studies content (Downey et al, 1991; Brophy et al., 1991). Drama can act as a form of historical narrative and be particularly effective at reaching students (Otten et al., 2004; Jackson et al., 2005). Drama-integration methods also complement the social studies curriculum by being well suited for multicultural education practices, cross-curricular learning, and the investigation of social justice issues (Gay & Hanley, 1999; Fautely & Savage, 2011; Lement & Dunakin, 2005}.

This thesis evaluates the usefulness of post-nationalist theory in developing and understanding existing debates around national cinemas in film studies. Whilst a great deal of research has focused on the significance and importance of national cinemas, changes in the international landscape have offered challenges to the value of national cinema as a concept. To date, these challenges have been primarily addressed within discussion of transnational cinema which, although useful, has yet to fully interrogate the power relationships between nations. The importance of post-nationalist theory in this regard is that it deliberately seeks out texts which explore these power structures and often focuses on contact zones in which the dominant nationalism, and therefore national cinema, is being overtly opposed and undermined. The central question addressed by this thesis is ‘How can post-nationalist theory advance cinematic debates concerning national and transnational cinemas?’ In order to address this, the films of several migrant, exilic and diasporic filmmakers will be discussed as case studies. This is because their hyphenated identities offer access to a greater number of nationalisms, and also highlight a state of rootlessness in which oppositional positions can be more easily adopted. The filmmakers discussed are: Fatih Akin, whose work offers representations of migrant figures and literal border crossings; Ferzan Ozpetek, who expands these migrant representations to include issues of sexuality and class as non-official nationalisms; Atom Egoyan, whose cinematic style opposes cinematic forms, conventions and nations; Michael Haneke, whose films engage in an overtly oppositional style; and Gurinder Chadha, as a filmmaker who not only uses gender to advance these debates, but also enters them into discussion with mainstream cinema. The thesis will apply close textual analysis to each of the directors’ work in order to illustrate how post-nationalist theory can be used to understand the oppositional spaces they create in relation to nations and national cinemas. This will demonstrate not only the relevance of post-nationalist theory to cinema, but also develop current understanding of the strengths and limitations of the conceptual and theoretical work associated with national and transnational cinemas.

The problem of this study is to determine what is recommended for fourth-grade social studies. An evaluation of these findings will be made in order to make suggestions for a program for this grade level.

This study investigated how students perceived their motivation in high school social studies classes in school and to determine if a correlation exists between students’ grade level, race, gender, and their motivation. The sample included 337 high school students in Broward County, Florida. To assess students’ perceptions on their motivation the academic self-regulation questionnaire was utilized. Results indicate that social studies students show high levels of external regulation, with a mean score at 22.31 on a scale of 36 points. The results show a mean score of 24 on a scale of 28 points for identified regulation among social studies students. Findings revealed that student motivation could be gauged. No statistical significance was found between high school students’ grade level, race, gender, and their motivation in social studies classes. The findings of this study have shown that students at Boyd H. Anderson High School want to learn social studies.

This study assessed the civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes of Hispanic eighth grade students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS), Florida. Three hundred sixty one Hispanic students of Cuban (253), Colombian (57), and Nicaraguan (51) ancestry from 10 middle schools participated in the study. Two hundred twenty eight students were from low socio-economic status (SES) background, and 133 were of middle SES background. There were 136 boys and 225 girls. The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement Civic Education Student Questionnaire was used to collect data. The instrument assessed the students’ civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to test for differences in the civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes of participants based on ancestry, SES, and gender. The findings indicated that there was no significant difference in the civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes of Hispanic eighth grade students that were of Cuban, Colombian, and Nicaraguan ancestry. There was no significant difference in the civic vi ii skills and in five of the civic attitude scales for students from low SES families compared to those from middle SES families. However, there was a significant difference in the civic knowledge and in the civic attitude concerning classroom discussions and participation based on SES. The civic knowledge of middle SES students was higher than that of low SES students. Furthermore, middle SES Hispanic students displayed a higher mean score for the civic attitude of classroom discussions and participation than low SES students. There was no significant difference in the civic knowledge and in five of the civic attitude scales between boys and girls. However, there was a significant difference in the civic skills and the civic attitude of support for women’s rights between boys and girls. Hispanic girls displayed a higher mean score in civic skills than Hispanic boys. Furthermore, the mean score of civic attitude of support for women’s rights for Hispanic girls was higher than that of Hispanic boys. It was concluded that Cuban, Colombian, or Nicaraguan participants did not demonstrate differences in civic attitudes and levels of civic knowledge and skills that eighth grade students possessed. In addition, when compared to boys, girls demonstrated a higher level of civic skills and a greater support for women’s rights and participation in politics and their roles in politics. Moreover, SES was demonstrated to be a key factor in the acquisition of civic knowledge, regardless of ancestry.