Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2006. / Thesis directed by Maura A. Ryan for the Department of Theology. "September 2006." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 238-245). Also available via the World Wide Web.

In diesem Sammelband geht es um ein Potpourri kulturwissenschaftlicher, oder im traditionellen Sprachgebrauch: volkskundlicher Aufsätze, die sich mit dem Thema Reisen beschäftigen. Auf den ersten Blick ohne einen konsistenten Zusammenhang oder eine strukturgebende Klammer, ergibt sich im zweiten Blick ein Aufriss der Mühen der Kulturwissenschaft, mit dem Themenbereich Reisen - Tourismus - Reisewahrnehmungen umzugehen. Von hierher wirken einige Aufsätze amüsant, einige sind interessant, da sie kohärentere Einsichten bieten.

This dissertation examined the relationship between educational environments and academic achievement of Chinese-American college students—a conspicuous ethnic group with above-average academic records. A two-step sequential interview and survey questionnaire were employed as the primary methods for data collection. In-depth interview was applied to 12 Chinese-American college students with GPA equal to or above 3.5, 10 equal to or under 3.0, and two between 3.0 and 3.5. The analysis of the empirical data indicates that: (1) The participants had higher than average GPA and SAT scores and their selected majors concentrated on sciences and engineering. With an overwhelming majority being first and second generation, the participants had typical bicultural characteristics. Their parents were relatively well educated and had higher than average family income. (2) Familial emphasis on education and the tendency to maximize educational resources contribute to the high academic achievement of Chinese-American college students. (3) Derived from the reciprocal obligations between generations, stable family relations, secure family environment, and consistent parental concern and involvement erect a psychological safety island for Chinese-American college students and encourage high achievement. (4) High educational level and handsome income of the parents, and mindfully rehashed degree sagas, influence and motivate Chinese-American college students and materialize their educational goals. (5) Their determination to realize their goals along an often predetermined educational course drives Chinese-American students to work hard maximizing their capabilities and even stretching beyond their limitations. The goal is so definite or tangible that they seldom digress into other concerns such as racial discrimination or social status as a minority. In conclusion, although there may be many factors that have direct or indirect impact on educational achievement, two are prominent: traditional cultural values and economic status or goal. These two factors interact to promote educational achievement of Chinese-American college students. Traditional cultural values, economic goal, and education, as both means and ends, form a dynamic circle in motion.

The aims of this study were to define an Australian boarding school, provide a summary of international and Australian boarding school literature, and complete a small-scale qualitative investigation of students' views in a co-educational boarding school. At first glance, it appeared that contemporary Australian boarding schools were a reproduction of the influential public boys' schools of Great Britain. Although there have been a number of histories of Australian independent schools, the boarding element has often been portrayed as Dickensian and remains an overlooked area of educational research. In particular, the literature available about Australian residential schooling over the past 20 years has been limited to a handful of significant studies by Cree and Trimingham Jack. In this study 45 Australian and overseas students were asked to write memoirs of 4-5,000 words about their boarding experience emphasising their thoughts, feelings and aspirations. The limitation was that all respondents were full-time boarders for at least one year when the questionnaire-survey was completed. The memoir-based humanistic approach of the Polish- American sociologist Florian Znaniecki, as developed for the analysis of personal and group social systems in the culturally diverse context of Australia by J. J. Smolicz, was employed to interpret the memoir data. The memoir method has been well documented in Australia, as a means of collecting and analysing concrete and cultural facts, mainly in relation to the study of minority ethnic groups and their cultural actions. The humanistic approach emphasized that the researcher must accept cultural phenomena from the viewpoint of its participants and not from that of an outside observer. In the present study, this approach permitted the researcher to understand the experiences and attitudes of individual students towards an Australian co-educational boarding education through their own eyes. The memoirs analysed were generated from 26 concrete questions, which revealed place-of-birth, ethnic identity, and languages spoken at home. This provided the researcher with verifiable information about the everyday lives of the respondents. The second half of the memoirs required response to 23 questions - these yielded cultural data. These questions required students to reflect on their situation, attitudes and experiences of boarding as a system of education. This information could only have been provided by the participants themselves and gave the researcher direct access to the memoir writers' individual and group consciousness. The study discovered that a number of the students were in the process of re-evaluating and re-interpreting the advantages and disadvantages of boarding school as a social system transmitted to them by parents, friends, family, and teachers. The respondent's personal statements revealed that the relationships among students and among students and staff in the boarding House tended to be primary in nature, in that they were personal, informal, and involved the entire human personality. From these data, it appeared that the success of a boarding school was determined by the personal atmosphere, support, and comfort of the boarding House. Consideration of the empirical data found that 43 of the 45 respondents' memoirs believed that their overall experiences at the research boarding school were positive. Negative observations stressed the pressures of homesickness, tedium of school life and a lack of freedom thereby supporting Goffman's view of a "total institution". The majority of students' memoirs were ambivalent towards religion at the research school. Nevertheless, 11 stressed its significant implication in their day-to-day lives. The memoirs suggested that an education at the research boarding school was a crucible that forged students through a variety of experiences, positive and negative, individual and collective, for life. Overall, the memoirs support the observation that boarding school acts as a social system for the acceptance of new cultural values, such as the cultural diversity respondents' experienced in their lives at boarding school. The study revealed an attitudinal shift in the group that welcomed the cultural pluralism of the school and recognised the cultural monism of the home. These memoirs revealed that boarding school was a significant factor in fostering independence and embracing cultural diversity as experienced in the crucible of the boarding school. These findings challenged the popular maxim that an Australian residential education was an anachronistic, inflexible, colonial-British model and suggested that it has the potential to act as a system of education that prepares its students for the challenges of life. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Education, 2004.

<p>The role of mothering has always been an important area for study in nursing. However, transnational mothering, the experience of women mothering from afar, has not been well studied in the discipline. The purpose of this study was to explore the process of mothering by Mexican women in the context of their move to the United States. The conceptual framework of symbolic interaction and the methodology of grounded theory (Glaser &amp; Strauss, 1967) were used to guide the study. </p><p> Data were collected through 13 semi-structured interviews of women from Mexico living in New York City who had at least one child under the age of 16 still living in Mexico. The results indicated that the process of transnational mothering was non-linear. Phases emerged from data analysis using Grounded Theory Methods of constant comparative analysis of transcripts, using coding, categorizing, and conceptualizing. Three final phases, each with sub categories, which explained the process of transnational mothering included <i>reconceptualizing mothering, struggling,</i> and <i>embracing</i> hope. </p><p> <i>Reconceptualizing</i> mothering was used to name this substantive theory that emerged. The Basic Social Process identified that fit the substantive theory that emerged was "social identity" as social identity is affected by a new understanding of one's role. The women in this study acknowledged the poor fit of their traditional roles of mothering in New York and therefore created new roles. The community that they developed and relied upon assisted with this new role adjustment. Implications for this study in the area of practice include the need for greater client advocacy and assisting transnational mothers to build and foster a community. The importance of the discipline's involvement in the area of health policy cannot be overstated as policies affecting mother child separation and reunification need a nursing voice. </p>

<p>Social mobility is often viewed as a way to alleviate poverty and create equality; it represents the basis upon which the United States is viewed as a meritocratic nation of opportunity. Missing from this persistent narrative, however, is analysis of the actual experience of social mobility. This qualitative study explores the narratives of individuals as they reflect on their experiences of upward mobility through education. Data include in-depth interviews with 25 individuals with an advanced degree whose parents did not attend college, and 10 individuals who have an advanced degree similar to their parents. This study considers three dimensions of cultural capital&mdash;embodied cultural capital associated with how individuals present themselves, linguistic cultural capital associated with how individuals speak and communicate and cultural capital related to taste, beliefs and knowledge, associated with individual&rsquo;s leisure time choices, food and drink preferences and beliefs about the world. Across data, mobile individuals express the expectation or need to take on the cultural practices and behavior of their new class context. Data suggest that the process through which upwardly mobile individuals experience shifts in culture is more complex than currently conceived. In addition, these changes in culture can lead to internal conflict and difficulty in connection with families of origin; representing the potential costs of upward mobility. Implications include an amendment to cultural mobility research and to current strategies in urban education which position cultural capital as a character trait that can be learned or taken up by individuals. </p>

<p> Military intervention forces use a variety of techniques to achieve success in counterinsurgency operations. One technique recently put into more widespread practice by military units in Iraq and Afghanistan is key leader engagement. <i>Key leader engagements</i> are meetings that members of intervention forces conduct with influential people within a host-nation population capable of swaying the support of broader constituencies. The intent of these engagements is to establish functional relationships with powerful local leaders to further mission objectives. </p><p> This project is the first attempt to empirically evaluate the impact of key leader engagements as part of counterinsurgency operations. Using data from the Department of Defense's Combined Information Data Network Exchange (CIDNE) database during the military "Surge" of forces in Baghdad, Iraq, the author evaluates the impact of key leader engagements on reducing attacks against elements of the coalition military intervention force in the city. While some of the findings support practitioners' assertions about key leader engagements, others go counter to some of the prevailing assessments of key leader engagement effectiveness. First, the author finds that key leader engagements only impact levels of violence when conducted in conjunction with other intervention force operations. Second, the author found that&mdash;contrary to some practitioners' assessments that more engagements led to more successful counterinsurgency operations&mdash;large numbers key leader engagements were not always associated with a reduction in attacks. It was only those forces that appeared to use key leader engagements discriminately that observed a reduction in attacks. Third, key leader engagements involving promises were associated with an increase in attacks against the intervention force. Finally, contrary to the expectation that more frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders would reduce prejudice and strengthen cooperative relationships, frequent contact with small numbers of key leaders was associated with an increased propensity for attacks. </p><p> Based on these findings, the author recommends that the U.S. military continue its efforts to identify "best practices" for key leader engagements, refine the methods of evaluating the effectiveness of these engagements, mandate the integration of lethal and non-lethal targeting boards, and incorporate a greater analytical capability into the evaluation of persuasive operations in war.</p>

The main question of this study is the insufficient developed character of sociology in Turkey. In this study it is assumed that there are few factors that lead to this situation. Official ideology and its effects on sociology and university, the problems arisen from the discipline itself, the developing character of Turkey, and the conflict among sociologist academicians can be accepted as the factors that affect the sociology in Turkey. Related to this problem, in this study the opinions of academics sociologists in Turkey are examined. By using the techniques such as questionnaire and depth-interview, academicians&rsquo / evaluations are gathered.

Thesis (Ph.D) -- University of Western Sydney, 2006. / Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Education. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2891. Adviser: William T. Trent. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 496-500) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.