According to the 2008 Statistics Canada report on the extracurricular activities of Canadian children and youth, approximate 76% of Canadians under the age of 17 participate in sport. As such, sport represents a significant developmental experience in many young peoples’ lives. Whether this experience is positive or negative depends on a number of factors related to the specific context in which sport participation occurs. In particular, interpersonal interactions are known to be a significant influence on athlete development and may vary greatly across sport contexts. In youth sport, there are two primary contexts of participation: coach-driven organized sport and youth-driven informal sport play. The purpose of the present program of research was to examine the predominant interpersonal interactions occurring in organized sport and informal sport play contexts and their relationship to athlete development. Study 1 was methodological and presents the development and validation of an observational coding system designed to capture the motivational tone of youth sport coaches’ interactions with their athletes. Motivational tone represents a theoretically relevant but previously unexplored dimension of coaches’ interactive behaviour. Study 2 used the newly developed coding system from study 1 to examine the motivational tone of coach-athlete interactions in competitive youth volleyball, an organized sport context. Using a person-centred analysis approach, these coach-athlete interaction were then linked to athletes’ longitudinal development trajectories over the course of the competitive season. Results revealed significant differences in the coach-athlete interaction profiles of athletes on a negative developmental trajectory compared to athletes on a positive developmental trajectory. Study 3 was an exploratory observational examination of peer interactive behaviour in an informal sport play context. These interactive behaviours were examined with respect to athletes’ developmental outcomes. Results pointed to the social nature of participation in informal sport play contexts and the critical relationship between athlete competence and peer interaction tendencies. Overall, the results of the three studies comprising this program of research offered new information to further our understanding of interpersonal interactions and athlete development in different youth sport contexts but also identified several avenues requiring further research. / Thesis (Ph.D, Kinesiology & Health Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-27 14:27:49.668

This research uses a novel policy writing method to explore young people’s subjective understandings of the problems of poverty. Working with five groups of young people, aged 11 – 21, from some of the most financially deprived areas of England, it sought to draw out and explore their “policy imaginary”, or the way they viewed the problems of poverty through a lens of ideal policy responses. It unpacks these young people’s policy imaginaries, and the life-narratives they discussed alongside these imaginaries, within a discourse of individualisation. Across four articles, it demonstrates and explores the complexities and ambiguities of these young people’s thinkings. This thesis begins by suggesting that many of the problems of poverty they identify as important to their lives are structural, and that they understanding the role of collective and political agency, rather than their own individual agency, in ending poverty. It then more specifically explores their understandings of their neighbourhoods and houses, which suggests that individualised factors often identified in other research, such as social contagion and epidemic neighbourhood effects, are not what they identify as most important in their local areas. It concludes by identifying a policy gap emerging along similar theoretical lines. Here, this research suggests that much of the policy directed towards these young people focuses on individualised problems, and their individual agency as a route of out poverty, but that this sort of policy response is not what these young people felt was needed. However, this is not to suggest that these young people downplayed or dismissed their own agency in charting their life-pathways. Indeed, as much previous literature has found, these young people spoke fluently about the agency and opportunities they have in their lives, often seeming ‘hyper-agentic’. However, this thesis suggests that exploring these young people’s policy imaginary appears to create a medium through which they can talk both about their agency and the constraints and limitations low-incomes generate. It allowed them to bridge their highly agentic biographies to their socially structured histories, as they saw them.

The purpose of this thesis research is to better understand the experiences of street-involved youth in educational institutions. Data for this study was collected through a five-wave panel study of street-involved youth in Victoria, British Columbia (N=64). I used Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) as a framework for analyzing the responses to open-ended questions regarding the participants’ experience with education. At the time of first interview, 89% of the participants had not continued past grade ten and their average age was 16.7 years. Salient themes throughout the analysis included not fitting in, re-engaging, and connectedness. Under not fitting in participants detailed strained relationships with peers, staff and teachers, and difficult experiences trying to engage with their education and learning that did not fulfill their natural curiosity for knowledge. The experiences of not fitting in led to a devalued view of education. Participants also spoke extensively about trying to re-engage with their education and encountering many barriers. Their experiences re-engaging highlight difficulty fitting in within the school environment, policies that prevented their full participation and continued difficulties within the school environment. Despite this, through re-engaging with mainstream schools or alternative education programs some participants were able to find spaces where they fit. Points of connection within schools including positive relationships, positive experiences, and meaningful learning opportunities worked to encourage their participation and attendance in their education. The thesis concludes with a summary of the findings, limitations, implications for practice and future research. / Graduate

The aim of our study is to explore the thoughts and beliefs held by the professionals who work with the sentence youth service for young offenders, and how they feel about the same. How is the sentence youth service perceived from a professional perspective? How does the concurrence look like between the police, the social services and the prosecutor, when it comes to young offenders? What kind of difficulties/challenges do the professionals see in the possibility to effect the sentence youth service? The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consists of seven semi-structured interviews with two police officers, four social workers and one prosecutor. The results of our study indicate that youth service is a good sentence for young first-time offenders; the study also indicates that concurrence between the different professions is a success factor; furthermore the study revealed that it was very difficult finding adequate working places.

Thesis (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2005. / Theses (Dept. of History) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2003. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-117). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1974. / Typewritten.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 144-151.

Historically, Liberian immigrants to the United States tended to be wealthy, educated individuals who wanted their children to acquire a Western education. The thirteen-year Liberian Civil War resulted in a new wave of U.S. migration. Many recent Liberian immigrants hold low socio-economic statuses. Some came to this country illiterate or with gaps in their education. This has created a cultural-educational gap amongst newly arrived Liberian immigrants. Many young Liberian immigrants struggle with educational and socialization issues. Studies have been conducted on the acculturation experiences of youths from Europe, Asia, and South and Central America. Yet to date, very little research has been done on the lives of African youth, especially those who emigrated from Liberia after the civil war. Their voices have been missing from the literature. This qualitative study provides narratives of four Liberian immigrant youths, between the ages of 18 and 22 years old, who formerly attended schools in Liberia, have lived in the U.S. less than ten years, and have attended at least three years of high school in the United States. Each youth was interviewed regarding their school, home, and community acculturation experiences. Excerpts of their interviews allow the reader to hear the participants' stories in their own words. Findings of the research from emergent themes indicate that the Liberian immigrant youths had many commonalities in their acculturation experiences such as: accent ridicule, bullying by peers, fights between African Americans and Liberian immigrants, and lack of appreciation for African cultures. The participants also struggled with ethnic identity issues, limited finances, and unjust educational and social systems in the United States. All four Liberian immigrants experienced some type of external and internal conflicts. A relationship was found between the possession of resiliency traits and the Liberian immigrant youths' abilities to handle conflicts and successfully acculturate to the United States. Two participants possessed strong resiliency characteristics such as autonomy, problem solving abilities, abilities to forgive, a sense of purpose and future, and creativity. They had favorable acculturation experiences, successfully graduating from high school. Two other participants lacked resiliency traits and had less favorable acculturation experiences. They succumbed to external and internal conflicts and dropped out of high school.