There is conflicting evidence on Black parenting, specifically Black mothers as it relates to their educational participation in their children’s lives. This study focuses on the intersection of Black parenting, specifically single Black mothers, their Black experience in society, and their participation in the educational experiences of their daughters. There is a need to explore the experiences, behaviors, and actions of single Black mothers as they raise their daughters from early childhood to high school. For example, some research depicts Black mothers as uncaring about their children’s education. The purpose of this study is to examine how these single Black mothers educate and care for their daughters to provide additional insight. The following areas of research were highlighted: the Black experience, the Black family, cultural roles of Black women, the Black mother’s standpoint, and the culture of acting white. The concept addressed in this study is the resiliency of the Black mothers. The statement of the problem is drawn from motherwork, a theoretical framework that looks at distinct ways Black mothers navigate the education experiences of their children. The research questions and qualitative methodological approach of portraiture is different from traditional qualitative work, which focuses on the goodness of the research participant, instead of the failure of research participants. Portraiture paints a portrait of the research participant with words and allows for in-depth dialogue. Some current research depicts single mothers in a negative perspective. This study provides additional insight on how single Black mothers educate and care for their daughters. This additional information may be applicable to all parents and educators and serves as another source about motherhood for children being raised from early childhood to high school. / text

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A journey in metaxis explores the facilitation of drama workshops using an adaptation of Theatre of the Oppressed, a participatory drama process used with high school students, teachers and others in the community. New possibilities of engagement open up as knowing emerges through a variety o f forms of dramatic action which are simultaneously the medium, subject and re-presentation of research. As a theatre pedagogue I explore how knowing and meaning emerge through theatre and in the interplay between my life and my work. Writing, then reading, narratives of my practice engages me in a conversation that helps me draw attention to my practice. Diverse roles and points of view of the drama facilitator begin to become apparent as these narratives speak through a spiralling process of shared experiences. Commentaries on these experiences lead to discussions of the implications of this inquiry for other forms of reflective leadership practice in drama and in education. Particular attention is placed on the role of the body and mind (bodymind) of facilitator and participants as they journey into an increasing awareness of senses, histories, the landscapes worked in, and the relationships that intertwine through the constant ebb and flow of the drama workshop. Using a framework that parallels the drama workshop I facilitate, I play with forms of texts, languages and styles to enter into the text(ure) of the worlds of facilitation so that we may come face to face with kinaesthetic and discursive experiences remembered and reconsidered. Writing my body into this exploration enables me to become mindfully aware of, and extends and transforms, my practice. I re-awaken the memory of my senses and re-connect with them in the moments of "performing" my teaching. Such poetic and expressive writing enables an evocation of the world of drama. Writing from and through a sensing body means that reflection on practice becomes not merely reporting experiences, but also celebrating and expressing the multi-vocal, multi-layered events that develop drama facilitation skills. Writing, then reading, about this process of coming to know my identity-in-process as a drama facilitator enables the interpretation, interrogation and transformation of how one becomes facilitator, "making the way as we go," (re)writing/performing our presence.

This study investigated the subjectively constructed narratives of individual change for lead persons in a Therapeutic Enactment (Westwood, Keats & Wilensky, in press). Narrative investigation of Therapeutic Enactment to date has not been conducted and, as such, the study is important to the field of counselling psychology and the further development of Therapeutic Enactment. In terms of both theory and practice the study expands our understanding of the complexities of the change process in Therapeutic Enactment. It also provides the unique personal contexts related to change and it provides concrete examples of what actually changes in the lives of lead persons in Therapeutic Enactment. In this study, the co-researchers consisted of 4 female lead persons and 2 male lead persons, who had taken part in their own Therapeutic Enactment at a residential retreat on the outskirts of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The co-researchers were interviewed in-depth using person-centred narrative interviewing techniques, combined with semi-structured interview questions. Five narratives were written in the first person focusing on the subjective experience of individual change in Therapeutic Enactment. Each narrative was returned to the respective co-researcher for editing and validation at which point co-researchers removed portions of the narratives they did not want included in the study and then added or amended content that they did want to be included in the study. The principal researcher made the requested changes and then returned final copies of the narratives to each of the co-researchers. The final narratives are presented herein. The co-constructed narratives indicate that lead persons in Therapeutic Enactment experienced change on six general levels including body sensations, emotions, behaviours, thoughts, relationships and spiritual connection. This study provides an in-depth examination of the subjective narratives of individual change in Therapeutic Enactment.

The Bender-Gestalt test is one of the most widely used psychological tests in clinical practice. However, very few empirical studies have investigated its projective use with adults. The purpose of the present study was to replicate a study conducted by Sellbom et al. (2001), which examined distortions of the Bender-Gestalt hypothesized to measure antisocial, impulsive, and depressive characteristics. It was found that the findings in Sellbom et al. (2001) were partially replicated, indicating that certain distortions, especially in conjunction, were significantly related to antisocial characteristics. The author suggests that the Bender-Gestalt could potentially be used as a screening measure for antisocial characteristics, but not to measure impulsive and depressive characteristics. / Department of Psychological Science

The aim of this thesis was to study how social workers in social services in several municipalities perceive that they interpret the concept of domestic violence and how they believe they would act when it comes to different types of domestic violence. The thesis has focused on three types of violence; physical, psychological and economical. Seven social workers were interviewed with a thematised interview guide and six vignettes. The theoretical perspectives applied in the analysis were the process of normalization and the continuum of violence. The results showed that the social workers did not interpret domestic violence unanimous, and they had different ideas of how they would act in the vignettes. To sum up, the study showed that the social workers found it easier to identify and define physical violence as domestic violence and they tended to more frequently suggest the couples in the vignettes to separate as well as to protect the victim of violence. In comparison to physical violence, the social workers found it more difficult to identify and interpret psychological and economical violence, and tended to suggest the couple to stay together and try family counselling.

Functional analysis techniques traditionally used in the assessment of problem behaviors in humans were used to identify the reinforcing consequences for undesirable, human-directed behaviors such as feces throwing and spitting in two captive adult chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). The first subject's problem behaviors were maintained by both positive and negative reinforcement contingencies, with rates being highest when the display of inappropriate behaviors resulted in access to social attention and juice. The implementation of a function-based treatment plan combining functional communication training with extinction resulted in a 90% reduction in the chimpanzee's inappropriate behaviors. No function was identified for the second subject's inappropriate behaviors. This project represents one of the first attempts to apply these function-based behavioral techniques to a non-human subject.

Bodydialogue is a coherent and simple system of exercises, rehearsal techniques, principles and aesthetic values which in application enhance the actor's ability to physicalise dramatic action and behaviour. It can be applied directly within a rehearsal process to heighten the physical life of a play or performance event, or it can be taught separately as a system for providing student actors with concrete skills in movement, stagecraft and physical characterisation. Unlike many other movement systems taught in drama schools, such as Mime, Dance, Acrobatics or Alexander, which are grounded in their own discipline base, Bodydialogue is grounded in Stanislavsky's Acting through the Method of Physical Action, and as such is centered in the discipline of text-based Acting. It is thus first and foremost an approach to Acting via Physical Action and Physical Behaviour, rather than a study of Movement, or a movement genre. This thesis describes the development and application of Bodydialogue physicalisation techniques to a workshop production of miss julie downunder - an adaptation of Strindberg's Miss Julie - and situates the place of these techniques within contemporary Acting discourse.

Little has been written of Yat Malmgren’s actor training technique, despite its international influence in mainstream western actor training. Created originally for the construction and performance of characters in theatrical and screen realism, at the Drama Centre, London, in the 1960-1970s, Malmgren’s actor training process, known as Character Analysis, forms a body of knowledge, which is transmitted practically and experientially to trainee actors. This thesis outlines the Malmgren technique’s traditions, processes of transmission and centres primarily on the modes of understanding that underlie this practical system. This research sets a series of widening contextualistations of understandings of the modalities of embedded/embodied knowledge disseminated through the training process. Interwoven throughout this thesis, the researcher’s voice appears as a Researcher’s Journal, placing the embodied awareness of the researcher, as one of the principal Malmgren trainers in Australia. The material and engendered locus for this research is my own embodied consciousness. This research differentiates Malmgren’s training process both from Laban’s movement techniques and from other twentieth century western actor training processes. It begins with the traditions of Rudolf Laban’s movement theories, from which the Malmgren technique arose, Hermeneutic phenomenology is the methodological framework used to investigate the meaning of the Malmgren technique to those studying it, taking into account contemporary performance and communication theories of agency and embodiment. Benner’s (1994) hermeneutic phenomenological method of data collection and analysis, used previously in nursing research, is newly applied to the field of acting. Participants from three full-time acting courses, where Yat Malmgren’s technique is the principal mode of actor training, provide the interview data to articulate a series of phenomenological themes. This research uses Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s image of the chiasm, where materiality and consciousness interweave as an underlying metaphorical structure for embodiment. This research proposes a six-step progression, through which Malmgren’s technique enables trainee actors to develop a growing performative awareness of their bodily-located behaviours. This research also posits the generation of heightened differentiation of sensory inputs and expressions for trainee actors through the Malmgren technique, and how this opens up possibilities for transformation in modes of embodiment for the trainee. Using feminist theories, this research links this development of embodied awareness, in particular the awareness of non-verbal communication and the ‘unspoken’, with a greater understanding of alterity. Whilst the Malmgren technique was developed for purposes of theatrical realism, this research indicates that the technique’s impact facilitates a range of modes of performance by investigating the less articulated forms of performative communication. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (M.A.) (Hons.) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 1998. / Bibliography : p. [181-188].