M.Ed. (Psychology of Education) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract.

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The dynamic and rapidly changing society of the R.S.A. has brought about such urgent requirements/need for change in the teaching profession that the present adult image has been subjected to scrutiny. This image calls for urgent analysis and evaluation so that the problems which surround education can really be addressed. This study has formed part of a project in which an analysis and description of "Adulthood" has been made. This could give direction for education in the R. S. A. The aim of this empirical investigation was explicitly directed at the importance of the different pre-identified facets in the evaluation of adulthood namely responsibility, moral and religious values, labour-orientation and self-sufficiency, responsibility towards fellow human beings, self-concept (image) and self acceptance, time orientation, citizen expectations and duties, family responsibility, perspective of future and family planning conservation as well as the economic demands and financial management and duties. This specific examination concerns the sense of responsibility as a facet of adulthood. As a result of sense of responsibility being such a complex concept, the investigator was compelled to select certain aspects and the importance thereof in an empirical manner. These aspects of the sense of responsibility were examined and are as follows : liability, integrity, conscientiousness, trustworthiness, loyalty, liberty and self-control. After the theoretical basis of the sense of responsibility was established, the research subject used in the examination was stipulated and the development of the empirical examination was stated. The following conclusion could be drawn from these statistics : regardless of the independent differences ego sex, language, qualifications, vocations, lecturers, age, permanent homes, religious ties, marital status, children and income, few differences in the view points of the respondents with regard to the importance of the sense of responsibility as a facet of adulthood occurred. The differences in the perception of adulthood which appeared were between the different sexes; qualification groups and religious groups (Christians and those with no religious ties) were statistically indistinct and thus did not influence the perception of the sense of responsibility. The analysis of the empirical information reveals that the sense of responsibility and more specifically the essence thereof namely: the human ability of trustworthiness, honesty, sincerity as well as responsibility, were viewed as important by all respondents. The aspects regarded as very important were: trustworthiness, integrity and conscientiousness. Through this, those approaching adulthood can be prepared to play their role in life so that they can eventually be well-adjusted, happy adults in the new R.S.A.

Psychological flexibility (PF), the core process of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; a third-wave cognitive-behavioral therapy), is the ability to stay focused on the present moment and intentionally engage in value-driven behavior despite experiencing difficult thoughts or feelings. This multifaceted construct includes components that target processes occurring both internally (e.g., cognitive processes) and behaviorally (e.g., value-consistent actions). Psychological flexibility has been applied to studies of adjustment in non-clinical samples and may be beneficial for college students as individuals navigate novel developmental stressors. Despite evidence suggesting the benefits of PF for psychological distress, additional work is needed to examine the potential of PF to foster adaptive functioning. The current study builds on previous research by a) conceptualizing distinct internal and behavioral components of PF as promotive factors and b) emphasizing competence-focused outcomes. This research examined the influence of components of PF over the course of an academic semester. A sample of college students (N = 250) completed self-report measures online at the beginning (Time 1) and end (Time 2) of a college semester. Measures included components of PF, competence, and demographic and academic information. Structural equation modeling was used to examine associations between components of PF at Time 1 on competence at Time 2, while accounting for the influence of competence at Time 1. Findings suggested that within the social domain, value-consistent action at Time 1 was associated with increased social competence at Time 2. Additional results indicated that baseline competence accounted for associations between components of PF and Time 2 competence. Implications for the dissemination of ACT-informed efforts to promote positive adjustment among college students are reviewed, and future research directions are discussed.

This thesis explores the lived experience of race as told through narratives of the city. It draws on photo diaries, observations and qualitative interviews with 32 people aged between 20 and 30 years old in three areas of Manchester. It examines how discourses, which construct UK cities as tolerant and multicultural spaces, are reproduced by the respondents and yet are contradicted by their everyday experiences. It argues that narratives that actively silence race, for example through notions of tolerance and colour-blindness, obscure the ways that people are differentially positioned and makes it difficult to name difference and name racism. The thesis explores a series of dilemmas that form part of the struggle to reconcile multiple and often contradictory levels of experience and situates these within the broader political context. The thesis engages with discussions around what have been broadly defined as ideas of ‘post-race’. It argues that the city becomes a useful avenue through which to direct this discussion, because it acts as a location in which race is imagined in conflicting ways; simultaneously as a site of segregation and conflict and cosmopolitanism and ‘mixing’.The thesis explores how people talk race through their representations of different spaces of the city. It argues that people’s stories about their relationship to place help make perceptible the different ways that they deal with difference. Race is silenced in narratives of place, emerging primarily through coded references to class and criminality, except when it is articulated with exotic and ‘sympathetic’ representations of the ‘ethnic’ or ‘migrant’ neighbourhood, or with a white underclass. It also examines how, within these narratives, people talk about knowing others that they emphasise are racially or ethnically different. Notions of tolerance and colour-blindness are invoked throughout these narratives and used to suggest that they are emblematic of a new generation. The thesis argues that the respondents' narratives resonate with national discourses of multiculture that imagine liberal spaces of cosmopolitanism and, simultaneously, silence inequalities and exclusion. The central problem is that these discourses and processes of silencing do not take account of the meanings of race and how people are differentially positioned. Consequently, they disable questions about the significance and the effects of race. This has implications for how racism can(not) then be named. People subjected to racism are, instead, under pressure to assimilate and conform to the behavioural norm. The thesis argues that respondents’ narratives of the everyday can, therefore, be interpreted as a form of orientalism (Puwar 2004). They are indicative of the kind of multiculturalism that ‘tolerates’ and ‘bestows rights’ on the racialised Other, but does nothing to demythologise the Other, or engage with the needs of minorities (Amin, 2010). The façade of ‘racial etiquette’ when it is constructed as such, thus implies a ‘refusal to understand’ (Foucault 1978), because to do so would necessitate confronting the currency of racism and the fact of white privilege.

In this study, the purpose was to describe the knowledge of, and involvement in, retirement planning among employees in their middle adulthood. Retirement is often viewed as an issue only relevant to older people who are on the verge of retiring and as something that has nothing to do with young employees or young people in general. This study will therefore add knowledge regarding middle adulthood employees and their understanding of, and involvement in planning for retirement. The first objective of the study was to conceptualise theoretically retirement planning. The second objective was to describe empirically the knowledge of and involvement in retirement planning among employees in their middle adulthood and the third objective was to formulate conclusions and recommendations to the Department of Health and Social Development. A descriptive applied study was conducted with the aim of describing the knowledge of, and involvement in, retirement planning among employees in their middle adulthood. It was a mixed methodology approach with the quantitative design being more dominant. A sample of 119 respondents was identified with the final response rate of (50%). No sampling methods were used because the population was too small. A questionnaire was used as the tool for data collection and the respondents had to complete these themselves. All respondents signed a consent form prior to the commencement of data collection. In achieving its objectives, the study discovered that although most of the employees still lack knowledge regarding retirement planning information, some are already involved in financial planning activities. There is not a retirement education programme within the institution even though it is supposed to be part of the induction programme. It was therefore concluded that there is a need for more education and encouragement among employees to assist them in planning for retirement. / Dissertation (MSW)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Social Work and Criminology / unrestricted

The purpose of this dissertation was to a) examine the correlational relationships between Canadian university athletes’ perceptions of coach leadership behaviours and their perceptions of positive developmental outcomes (e.g., life skills) and negative experiences related to university sport, and b) explore how coach leadership behaviours and the associated developmental outcomes and negative experiences were described by both coaches and athletes. Data for this dissertation were collected over four stages. In Stage One, an online survey was used to collect data from a pan-Canadian sample (n = 605) of university athletes. In Stage Two, semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with fifteen university athletes. In Stage Three, semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with fourteen university coaches. In Stage Four, an online survey was used to collect data from a second pan-Canadian sample of university athletes (n = 498). Five articles were written to address the purpose of this dissertation. In Article One, data from two pan-Canadian samples of athletes were used to modify and confirm a new measurement tool known as the University Sport Experience Survey (USES). The USES provides a reliable and factorially-valid instrument for measuring development in university sport. In addition, Article One provided the first operational definitions of the positive developmental outcomes and negative experiences that could be reliably and validly assessed in a university sport context. Article Two qualitatively explored athletes’ perceptions of the developmental outcomes associated with their participation in university sport, as well as their perceptions of transfer. Results provided additional support for certain USES categories to be used for understanding positive development within the context of Canadian university sport programs. Further, results suggested university sport programs offer rich opportunities for developing skills, qualities, experiences, and relationships needed to become functioning members in our society. In Article Three, quantitative survey data were used to assess the cross-sectional relationships between athletes’ perceptions of their coaches’ leadership behaviours and outcomes from the USES. Coach leadership behaviours were conceptualized within the Full Range Leadership Model and assessed using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. Findings showed that transformational coaching was generally related to positive developmental outcomes and inversely related to athletes’ negative experiences in sport. Moreover, coaches’ passive/avoidant behaviors were commonly related to athletes’ negative experiences in university sport. Contrary to expectations, passive/avoidant coaching behaviors were also positively related with a number of positive developmental outcomes. Article Four qualitatively assessed athletes’ perceptions of who they believed was responsible for their positive development within the university sport context. Athletes specified other athletes, the head coach, the coaching staff, and their parents as the people who influenced their positive development within the context of university sport. Notably, athletes felt they themselves were the ones who contributed the most to their own development. Article Five qualitatively explored coaches’ perceptions of and strategies for fostering their athletes’ positive development through university sport. The coaches believed there were inherent conditions surrounding university sport that facilitated positive development. However, the coaches maximized their athletes’ development by establishing a support network, building team culture, and empowering their student-athletes by teaching them fundamental skills related to self and social regulation. Together, the five articles make novel theoretical and practical knowledge contributions to the field of positive development through sport, and set a precedence for positive development research in university sport, as well as other emerging adult sport contexts.

The current study was undertaken as a preliminary evaluation of a qualitative extension measure for use with emerging adults. A series of studies have been previously conducted to provide evidence for the reliability and validity of the RDA framework in evaluating youth development programs (Kurtines et al., 2008) and this study furthers this research to utilize RDA with emerging adults. Building on previous RDA research, the current study analyzed psychometric properties of the Identity Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood-Qualitative Extension (IDEA-QE) using RDA. Inter-coder percent agreement among the Theoretical Open Coders (TOC) and Theoretical Content Coders (TCC) for each of the category levels was moderate to high, ranging from .67 to .87. The Fleiss’ kappa across all category levels was from moderate agreement to almost perfect agreement, ranging from .60 to .88. The correlation between the TOC and the TCC demonstrated medium to high correlation, ranging from r(31)=.65, pr(31)=.74, p<.001.

The present study investigated how young women “do” and “undo” gender in relation to their anger in romantic relationships. With this aim, I conducted in-depth interviews with 24 young women between the ages of 18 and 25. I interviewed participants about the characteristics of their current romantic relationships and their experiences of anger in this context. I used a constructivist grounded theory methodology involving open, axial, and theoretical coding to analyze the data collected through the interviews (Charmaz, 2006). My analysis suggested an emerging theory of young women’s anger in romantic relationships involving 5 categories, 16 sub-categories, and 4 types. Overall, the findings suggest young women experience contradictions about their power in romantic relationships and variability across events in how they “do” and “undo” gender in relation to their anger in romantic relationships. The findings also confirm that for most young women, their power in romantic relationships is associated with how women relate to, understand and express their anger. The emerging theory of women’s anger in romantic relationships provides a tool for further research on anger in the context of romantic relationships and a set of guidelines for clinicians to assess young women’s anger in romantic relationships. / Ph. D.

Emerging adulthood is a developmental stage that has risen out of a need to recontextualize the lives of individuals aged 18-29 years old in modern times. Sometimes described as a prolonged period of adolescence, emerging adulthood presents unique challenges and opportunities as individuals launch from adolescence and begin to assume more adult roles. Early research on this developmental period details five themes that commonly prevail the lives of emerging adults: identity exploration, feeling in-between, being self-focused, exploring possibilities, andinstability (Arnett, 2000). Though previous studies suggest that these themes remain fairly consistent despite the heterogeneity of the emerging adult population (Arnett et al., 2014; Baggio et al., 2017), there is a call for greater exploration of these themes and how they present based upon different demographic variables. To date, the experiences of rural Appalachian emerging adults have not been examined through the context of these themes. This gap presents an opportunity to explore the rich nuances of Appalachian culture, including its focus on social support and its impact on student success (Hand & Payne, 2008) and emotional well-being (Gottron, 2020). Participants of this study were college students (N = 296, mean age = 20.13) in northeast Tennessee. Participants answered a series of standard questionnaires and several open-ended questions about transitioning to adulthood. The present study examines the written responses to two open-ended questions: What have you most enjoyed about becoming an adult? and What is most stressful about becoming an adult? Two raters coded these responses based on their applicability to the aforementioned themes of emerging adulthood. Chi square analyses examined the presence of these themes in relation to geographic region (rural, urban, suburban). Positive endorsement of being self-focused differed by the area in which one grew up, X2(2, 277) = 13.34, p = .001. Post-hoc analyses with a Bonferonni-corrected alpha (p = .008) examined group differences. Individuals from rural areas reported being self-focused more positively compared to students from suburban or urban areas (p = .002). Due to the strong family commitments often associated with rural culture (Hand & Payne, 2008), rural emerging adults may perceive the ability to focus on their own priorities and goals, rather than that of their family members, as the most salient benefit of growing older. Additionally, these findings suggest that future discussions surrounding Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood requires further nuance when considering region-specific cultural differences. Understanding where and why the experiences of individuals from rural areas may be different is key as educators and faculty continue to find ways to support the success of their students.