Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oklahoma, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toronto, 2004. / Adviser: Lana Stermac.

Thesis (Doctoral)--University of Stockholm, 1983. / Cover title. Abstract and summary in English and Swedish. English title: Nutritive values of wild Swedish plants : analyses and physiological studies of different components, with special reference to carbohydrates, proteins and ascorbic acid"--P. 1. Author's "Vilda växter som füda under 10 dagar vid en 250 km lang överlevnadsmarsch" appended as Supplement. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Env.St.) -- University of Adelaide, Mawson Graduate Centre for Environmental Studies, 1998. / Bibliography: leaves 91-95.

No description available.

This study investigated changes in self-esteem and perceived problem solving ability of academically at-risk students participating in a program called Science of Survival. The program combined adventure education and problem based learning approaches. One hundred and fifty-five male and female students, between the ages of 16 and 24 years completed the Self-Esteem Inventory and the Problem Solving Inventory at the beginning of the semester, after an adventure experience weekend, and at the end of the semester. A group of seventy-seven first year social science students, serving as a control group, also completed the inventories on the same time schedule. Self-esteem and perceived problem solving ability scores were analyzed by two one-way (treatment versus control) repeated measures (three assessments times) ANOVAs. Correlations between the two measures were also computed. Results indicated significant (p $<$.05) interactions of group by time for both self-esteem and perceived problem solving ability and significant correlations. Further analysis showed the Explorations II program was effective at increasing self-esteem and perceived problem solving ability and that these two constructs are related. The control group did not change in self-esteem over the period, but showed a deterioration in perceived problem solving ability.

Wilderness therapy, the practice of sending troubled young people into nature in order to re-socialize them, poses a paradox. Time spent in wilderness is imagined to produce civilizing effects on young people, rendering them better prepared to live responsible and productive lives in society. Study of wilderness therapy, therefore, provides insight into constructions of youth and nature in contemporary American society. This thesis emerges from ethnographic research conducted at Camp E-Wen-Akee, a therapeutic camping program for troubled youth, in Benson, Vermont, USA. In addition to living with the three groups of campers in their rustic camp sites and engaging in camp activities, I facilitated two camper-run research projects, and interviewed camp staff members, and the state social workers responsible for sending adjudicated youth to residential programs. I find that camp life is an achievement of many heterogeneous actors, some of whom are human and others nonhuman. The resulting work is an ethnography of a nature-culture, wherein I describe how the camp mobilizes various resources to create the conditions for therapeutic change. The differing nature narratives of campers and the adults indicated that expectations for nature are at least in part, outcomes of class processes. Close attention to camp life shows that therapy is a social strategy brought into being at a number of scales: the material body, built and temporal architectures, landscape, and 'public' wilderness outside of camp's borders. I find at each scale a tension between the ordering tactics deployed by camp staff members and resistance posed by campers and 'nature' alike. Campers' identities are meant to change as a result o f repeated performances of prosocial behavior, and the on-going circulation of success stories. Together these practices underscore that what one person does always has effects on others. The irony uncovered i n this research is that while troubled youth are sent to a nature imagined as separate from society, Camp E-Wen-Akee provides young people with an ecological model for social life. Wilderness therapy is the outcome not of a separation between nature and society, but of ongoing relations between the two. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

The objectives of this research were to determine if the personality traits of instructors at the National Outdoor Leadership School were related to instructor effectiveness as perceived by their students, and to determine if instructor effectiveness was related to changes in the self-concept of students who complete a NOLS course. The research used a pre-treatment/post-treatment· administration of the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (TSCS) to 355 students in the treatment group, where the treatment was a NOLS course. A control group of 50 students consisted of students scheduled to take a NOLS course. Significant gains in self-concept were found, using ANCOVA analysis procedures, on 7 of the 10 TSCS scales. The only scales not showing significant change were satisfaction, personal self and self-criticism. Instructor personality traits were determined using the Cattell 16PF self-report instrument and by a post-course evaluation instrument which asked for student attributions of instructor personality on a semantic differential scale. Students also rated the overall effectiveness of each instructor on their course. The student effectiveness ratings for the instructors had significant but low predictive ability when regressed against changes in self-concept. The objective 16PE personality instrument produced no significant trait differences between instructors who had effectiveness ratings above the median and those with scores below the median. The 16PF factors, as independent variables, showed significant but low predictive ability on the dependent effectiveness scores. The student-rated personality traits, however, produced very different profiles between high effectiveness instructors and lower effectiveness instructors. The student attributions of instructor personality traits produced an R² of .513 when regressed against effectiveness ratings. The major conclusions from the research were that changes in self-concept do occur as a result of a wilderness skills oriented NOLS course and secondly, that students were able to discriminate instructor effectiveness on the basis of the personality-based teaching behaviors of NOLS instructors. Recommendations for extension of this research .are presented as well as suggestions for research on broader issues of wilderness education and wilderness values. / Ph. D.