Teachers and administrators have different perceptions regarding the importance and validity of various factors that influence veteran teachers' professional practice. Herzberg's 2-factor motivation-hygiene theory was used as the conceptual framework for this basic qualitative study. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of veteran teachers' and administrators' perceptions about motivating and hygiene factors and their influences on veteran teachers' professional practice in a southern California suburban school district. One-on-one semistructured interviews were conducted with 8 veteran high school teachers and 4 high school administrators. The interview responses were audio recorded and transcribed, then coded using open and axial coding and categorized into themes. Administrators perceived 3 prevalent motivating factors for teachers: academic freedom, student-teacher relationships, and feeling effective, whereas administrators' hygiene factors included administrative support with discipline and open and clear communication. Teachers cited students' progress and student-teacher relationships as their primary motivating factors and lack of administrative support as their most important hygiene factor. The hygiene factors provided a foundation and framework for teachers to perform the motivating work of teaching students and developing relationships. Through this study, both veteran teachers and administrators may become more aware of the motivating factors that positively influence veteran teachers' professional practice in the classroom, which may improve the ways in which administrators support and motivate them. Positive social change may result by creating synergetic relationships between administrators and veteran teachers that could not only expand the role of veteran teachers but also increase student academic achievement.

The health of the veteran population within the United States has become a matter of ever-increasing concern, and many individuals who have attained veteran status are experiencing health issues following their discharge from the military. Despite such concerns, there are often not enough resources available to assist these individuals to the degree necessary in an expedient manner. The purpose of this case study was to use social cognitive theory to understand the physical activity of veterans following their time in service. Through the use of social cognitive theory, this study explored the thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors of 11 veterans to determine how their physical fitness levels were affected following their time in the service. Data were collected by interview over the course of a 1-month period by visiting the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital a minimum of 3 days per week and a content analysis of interview transcripts led to the presented results. Results indicated that expectations of physical activity were realistic post service, and self-efficacy and self-control levels were high. Veterans indicated the beneficence of physical activity as a means of promoting overall wellbeing; however, paticipants also indicated dissatisfaction with the available options to them through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The results provided clear direction as to the steps that can be taken to work to increase the physical activity levels of veterans. Potential social change implications resulting from the study could lead to improvements in understanding of veteran health statuses.

This dissertation evaluates veteran participation in the martial art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) as a tool of reassimilation for veterans suffering from anxiety, stress and/or combat PTSD associated with military deployment. From the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation New Dawn, challenges associated with U.S. Veteran assimilation and reintegration have been increasing. Coping with long term displacement, trauma, loss, and making sense of identity shifts between being an active duty service member and civilian can often present challenges when navigating back into civilian life. By utilizing a neuroanthropological lens, ethnographic inquiry, surveys, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups, this research advances anthropology’s understanding of how sport participation may have the ability to combat assimilation and mental health challenges that are a result of combative trauma exposure. I examine BJJ as a physical and mental tool for strengthening social bonds, buttressing identity formation, and easing the burden of transitioning into a civilian life after enduring time within a combative theater. This analysis is a building block for future research that will explore BJJ as an avenue of elective intervention for veterans suffering from stress and anxiety disorders associated with time in service.

Moral injury (MI) among military personnel is a harmful condition caused by perpetrating, failing to prevent, or witnessing atrocities that violate one's deeply held morals or values. The current study built on the existing literature by exploring predictors of MI, specifically trait self-forgiveness (TSF), state self-forgiveness (SSF), perceived social support (PSS), and causal attributions (CA) following potentially morally injurious experiences (PMIEs) in service members and veterans. Participants were 92 U.S. military service members and veterans. The main findings were that TSF and PSS were both significantly negatively associated with MI in bivariate and multivariate analyses. Further, TSF and PSS were examined as potential moderators of the relationship between PMIEs and MI, but these moderation analyses were not significant. Given that some studies provide evidence for different symptom profiles between categories of PMIEs (i.e., PMIE-Self, PMIE-Other, and PMIE-Betrayal), the relationship between the different categories and TSF were explored. Of the three PMIE types, only PMIE-Betrayal was a significant negative predictor of TSF. Finally, CA was explored as a potential mediator of the relationship between TSF and MI outcomes, but this mediation analysis was not significant. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for clinical practice are included for discussion.

This work is a textual analysis of selected documentary films whose common theme is the inevitable discrepancy between the realities of the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq War from the perspectives of the veterans and soldiers, and the assumed reality that is constructed in the media. It is at this point that the inextricable link between documentary cinema and reality proved fundamental to the developing discourse of the entire study ahead. Since the manner in which the world is both transformed and depicted strongly depends upon the tools available to the director, the technological innovations and the emergence of portable cameras, by granting the documentary filmmaker flexibility, irreversibly solidified this link between non-fictional act of narrating and its approach and proximity to reality. Four works that are picked among a large body of documentary films are Winter Soldier (1972) directed by Winter Collective; Gunner Palace (2004) directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; Full Battle Rattle (2008) directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and finally Standard Operating Procedure (2008) directed by Errol Morris. Even though the films are historically ordered, this study's concern is to be systematic thematically than chronologically. In the course of these analyses, discussions of notions like reality and truth, the relations of the makers of the films, the camera and editing process to the subjects of the films, will naturally emerge, as will issues related to the political and social roles of documentary cinema.

The major part of the existing research on psychological effects on participating in war or residing in a war zone shows negative effects on the person’s mental health. However not all research, from an international perspective, shows the same results. Since we haven’t found any research regarding Swedish conditions and there has been a recent implementation of a decision from the Supreme Commander regarding commanded international service for all staff within the Swedish armed forces, the question has now become more relevant. This essay intends to examine how the direct contacts with warring counterparts have contributed to a change in Swedish soldier’s perception of their own aggression levels. High levels of aggression may be included in various types of mental illness, particularly in post-traumatic stress. Furthermore, perceived aggression levels in relation to involvement in direct fighting and combat exposure is investigated. The result demonstrates a clear increase in perceived aggression levels after the intervention, albeit from low levels. There was also an increase in perceived aggression in relation to the degree of personal combat exposure. / En överväldigande del av befintlig forskning kring psykologiska effekter av att delta i krig och stridszon påvisar en hel del negativa effekter för psykisk hälsa. Inte all forskning, internationellt sett, pekar mot samma håll. Då vi inte funnit några undersökningar avseende svenska förhållanden, och dessutom kan konstatera en implementering av ÖB Beslut gällande kommenderad utlands-tjänstgöring för samtlig personal inom de Svenska utlandsstyrkorna, gör att frågan nu blivit aktuell. Denna uppsats ämnar undersöka svenska soldaters upplevda förändringar av egna aggressionsnivåer efter insats i Afghanistan. Höga aggressionsnivåer kan ingå vid olika typer av psykisk ohälsa, bland annat vid posttraumatisk stress. Vidare undersöks upplevda aggressionsnivåer i relation med inblandning i direkta stridigheter och stridszon. Resultatet påvisar en klar ökning av upplevda aggressionsnivåer efter insats, om än från låga nivåer. Dessutom klargjordes ökningen i upplevd aggression i relation till grad av personlig stridsexponering.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the beliefs, philosophy, and experience of a veteran English teacher and how each of these constructs informed her classroom practice. This research, conducted in a metropolitan high school in the South, provides insight into the way a veteran teacher believes, practices in her classroom, and relates to her greater teaching milieu. The study is theoretically framed in Greene's (1971) notion of "doing philosophy" in which a teacher makes meaning from her reflected, lived-through experience, and Applebee's (1996) notion of curriculum as conversation for the teaching of language arts discourse. Research indicates that teacher's beliefs are personal (Munby, 1984; Pajares, 1992; Nespor, 1987), and transactional with practice (Richardson, 1991). Other research shows that beliefs may be tacitly or overtly held without manifestation (Fenstermacher, 1978; Green, 1971) but that they are the best gauges for the choices people make throughout their lives (Bandura, 1986; Nisbet & Ross, 1980). This study seeks to understand what a veteran teacher believes that may explain her practice. Data were collected over 15 weeks of an 18 week semester via observations, formal and informal interviews, and a researcher's log. Using a constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) the researcher determined recurring themes and structures in the data to explain beliefs into practice. The findings of this study showed that a veteran English teacher's beliefs were overtly held and practiced as a result of personal background, cumulative teaching experience, and certain conditions within the immediate and greater instructional setting. The study further indicated the teacher created personal meaning for herself and students, respectively, through practicing a form of professional autonomy from the greater teaching milieu and by creating a specialized learning community in her classroom. The results of this study suggest veteran teachers form self-inclusive practice based on beliefs and experiences, especially when conditions exist environmentally requiring the teacher be a self-sufficient practitioner.

The main focus of this study was to investigate how Swedish military veterans experience that events during an international service affect them after completed mission. This also includes the contact with their relatives. Secondly, this study deals with the course of the crisis, personal defense mechanisms, cumulative stress and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). The study was performed using a qualitative method and comprises individual interviews with six Swedish veterans. The responders were all men of different military positions, who participated in one or more international missions during 1993 to 2011. The results of this study show that, according to the veterans, the return back home is the most strenuous part of an international mission. With all the new experiences that an international service brings fresh in their memories, it is hard to re-adjust to the life of a civilian. In connection with the return back home, different degrees of stress reactions were also commonly seen, for example sleep disturbance, restlessness and exhaustion. One of the veterans being interviewed was also affected by post-traumatic stress syndrome, although healthy again at the time of the study.

<p>In his Dispatches, Michael Herr quotes the gonzo photojournalist Tim Page: "Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that?[...] Ohhhh, war is good for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." This dissertation is in essence an exploration of Page's question, examining how popular media during the American conflict in Indochina first removed and then restored the glamour of war. For most of its history, the United States has been defined by a certain level of militarism, a glamorizing of the process of regeneration through violence reflected in this quotation, but the late 1960s and early 1970s saw a challenging of this warrior ethos; this challenge was reversed by the 1980s, when American militarism was taken to a new, paramilitary, level. In this project, I propose that this oscillation in the association of masculinity and violence was directly linked to popular media's depiction of the Vietnam war and of the soldiers who fought it. American society is haunted by Vietnam, not just because it was the first war the US lost (as the cliché would have it), but because of the ways in which popular culture presented the war to Americans: in particular, because of the ways the American public received this war through the emerging technologies of their television screens. The rapid response of television news to the conflict created an image of mundane warfare not through any intention on the part of broadcasters but because of the nature of the medium itself; over the next twenty years this image was both mystified and moderated by the more delayed media of film and literature and eventually molded into the now-familiar Vietvet killing machine.</p><p>In five chapters, I chronicle the evolution of the iconic Vietvet through the twenty years following the war. Following the methods of Raymond Williams and the Birmingham School, I trace the history and development of images from Vietnam as well as the interaction of those images with popular narratives of war, violence, masculinity and heroism in America. I start with Susan Jeffords' work in The Remasculization of America, taking her emphasis on the cultural narratives that fostered the restoration of patriarchal ideologies; I then move through Marita Sturken's discussion of the creation of cultural memory from historical artifacts in Tangled Memories. To these foundational texts, I bring an emphasis on form and technology to shift the focus from the narratives to the mechanisms of transmission themselves. In my first chapter, I show how the relatively new medium of television, and the depiction on the nightly news of Vietnam as both mundane and corrupt, called into question the image of the heroic soldier, finally replacing that image with the demon of the uncontrollable violent vet, driven insane by an unjust war. My next two chapters look at how this image was rehabilitated through its recharacterization in the less immediate channels of novels and film, a recharacterization driven by national debates over the diagnosis of PTSD and the design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And in my final two chapters, I show how the image of the overly-muscled Supervet killing machine from pulps and blockbusters replaced the broken, victimized effigy.</p><p>I focus on the evolving history of veterans of the Vietnam War in particular because the strong interdependence of the history of that war and popular culture functions as a spotlight on the nature of the relation between media, history and cultural memory. Television coverage of the Vietnam War to a large extent worked not only to expose the inherent immorality of that particular conflict, but also of war more generally and of the image of the soldier hero. But in the two decades between the end of the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, the standard history of the war had resolidified into one glorifying combat and violence. By looking at this changing social understanding of Vietnam, I hope to reveal the greater mechanisms by which the newly emerging media technologies of the 1960s through the 1980s drastically changed the nature of representation of warfare, violence, and masculinity: first routinizing, then rejecting, and finally enthroning the image of the explosively violent soldier yoked to the state.</p> / Dissertation

The study aims to investigate the correlation for new veterans among their personalities, family factors, relevant coping strategies for employments provided by Veteran Affairs Commission in Tainan and re-employment. The research findings will be offered to administrators in Veteran Affairs Commission, as well as future researchers in the field, which would promote the possibility of employment for new veterans. Moreover, individual personalities such as gender, age, marriage, education, military seniority, type of demobilization pension, demobilization rank, situations of family and work, duration of unemployment and so on will be taken into consideration for probing the effect on re-employment. These findings will be reference for government to provide adaptive service for individual difference based on called ¡§Walking around service.¡¨ Finally, the research findings would suggest the administration, i.e. Ministry of National Defense, Council of Veteran Affairs, and Council of Labor Affairs, to cultivate second major training for those active military officials. These plans for their careers after demobilization will help them get used to the society, contribute more effort to the country in the next stage of life. The research subjects include new veterans in Tainan who demobilized in three years. The data was collected by distributing 486 questionnaire and 128 returned, effective returned rate reached 26.83%. The questionnaire was designed based on related references and inventories. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS 12.0 by using Reliability Analysis, Factor Analysis, Descriptive Statistics, t-test, One-Way ANOVA, Regression Analysis as well as Hieraechical Regression Analysis. The research findings concluded as follows: 1. The personality of new veteran has significant effect on his/her re-employment. 2. The personality of new veteran has significant positive effect on his/her work value. 3. The family factor new veteran has interaction between his/her personality and work value. 4. The opinion on re-employment provided by Veteran Affair Commission in Tainan has significant effect on personality, work values, family factors.