The dissertation attempts to answer the question of how to theorize resistance from within the philosophy of social science. To answer this question we must consider more than just the philosophy of social science; we also must look to political and moral philosophy. Resistance to the social norms of one’s community is possible to theorize from within the philosophy of social science once we develop a sufficiently nuanced account of social and moral communities (which involves identifying political and moral elements in community formation, reformation, and transformation), according to which membership in a community is not defined by sharing judgments, conceptual frameworks, or comprehensive worldviews, but by sharing terms of discourse so that discussion about judgments, conceptual frameworks, and comprehensive worldviews is possible. Understanding the structure of one’s moral community is not the same as to endorsing that structure. This suggests that contestation is already present within communities about what ‘we’ do, up to and including who ‘we’—as a ‘community’—are. Challenging communitarian understandings of what makes a community a community (usually construed as ‘cultures’, understood somewhat monolithically), I argue that communities are best understood as forming around common concerns or perceptions of problems (sometimes veridical, sometimes not). This contestation plays a major role in determining the identities of communities, and these identities are constantly shifting.

Anecdotal and qualitative evidence suggests that women may experience disrupted adjustment during the months following the end of adjuvant breast cancer treatment, in part due to the loss of a "safety net" associated with regular treatment coupled with uncertainty regarding cancer status. The present study examined distress and quality of life, as well as behavioral and cognitive predictors of adjustment, during the three months following adjuvant treatment for breast cancer. Participants were 89 women with breast cancer who completed measures of distress, quality of life, health behavior, behavior changes, and common-sense beliefs about cancer at three time points: toward the end of adjuvant treatment, 3 weeks following the end of treatment, and 3 months post-treatment. Findings indicated that breast cancer survivors were remarkably well-adjusted following treatment: participants reported low levels of anxiety and depression and good health-related quality of life. Nonetheless, women acknowledged significant concerns about ongoing physical symptoms, potential recurrence, and the process of returning to or building a "new normal." Results further suggested that behavior changes were quite common after the end of treatment, particularly positive changes in health practices. Although good health practices were associated with better adjustment, making positive changes in the same behaviors often predicted greater distress. Women's common-sense beliefs about breast cancer provided insight into whether women decided to make behavior changes and what behaviors they decided to change. Women who perceived greater control over their cancer, saw their cancer as an acute rather than chronic condition, and attributed cancer to controllable causes or believed that behavioral or psychological factors could prevent recurrence were more likely to make behavior changes and engage in positive health practices. Although it was predicted that beliefs and behavior changes would interact to predict distress, no consistent pattern of interactions was found. In sum, breast cancer patients actively attempt to create a "new normal" following treatment, and changes in health practices appear to be an important part of this process. Assessing women's beliefs about their cancer and providing psychoeducational interventions addressing post-treatment behavior changes may assist in promoting breast cancer survivors' psychological and physical well-being.

This dissertation examines the history of VaBocha experiences with Christianity. Historians have long assumed that Christian conversion was a static product. I show that conversion was an ongoing fluid process that churchgoers negotiated, contested, and appropriated to suit the Bocha social fabric. I demonstrate how existing social facts and sites of socialization shaped VaBocha understanding of Christianity. In doing so, I focus on the daily social practices to reveal how VaBocha reconciled the idioms of Christianity with their indigenous lifeways. VaBocha made use of existing sites of socialization to make Christianity useful to their everyday life. These sites were social spaces were VaBocha articulated familial and kinship relations and learned the values, behavior, and skills fitting to Bocha society. By probing the relations occurring at the familial and communal level, the dissertation illustrates that the domestication of Christianity started in familial domestic spaces. In the dissertation, I discuss the nuanced relationships that occurred between churchgoers and family members who were not churchgoers. The fact that Christianity never established hegemony over existing social facts and the ways of socialization which reproduced them meant that VaBocha churchgoers had to devise ways to balance the demands of Christianity against familial and communal obligations. I show why churchgoers became eclectic Christians who participated in both church and indigenous activities and beliefs, despite the fact that the churches condemned most of these indigenous practices. The dissertation shows that the pre-Christian ethics of tolerance of diversity allowed for Christian and indigenous practices to co-exist harmoniously.

Employing a quasi-experimental design, this pilot study on teacher practices with toddlers during social conflicts was conducted in the southeastern USA. Four child-care classrooms, teachers (n = 8) and children (n = 51) were assessed with the Classroom Assessment Scoring System – Toddler [CLASS-Toddler; La Paro, K., Hamre, B. K., & Pianta, R. C. (2011). Classroom Assessment Scoring System – Toddler (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Brookes], an author-developed problem-solving measure, a measure of child temperament and teacher interviews. Teachers in intervention classrooms were provided professional development in three areas: (a) teacher self-regulation and stress management, (b) child self-regulation of emotions and behaviours, and (c) social problem solving. For intervention classrooms, results showed growth in several CLASS dimensions including positive climate, teacher sensitivity, and classroom guidance, while the problem-solving measure revealed an unanticipated increase in problems. Additional research is needed on toddler social problem-solving skills and supportive teacher practices. Further refinement of the problem-solving measure and delineation of specific professional development intervention components that indicate positive classroom change is needed.

In most public schools, children begin school in kindergarten. Recently, many school systems have begun to implement programs for preschoolers, ages three and four. Georgia introduced the first statewide universal pre-K program in 1995 which offers all 4 year old children free preschool. New York, Oklahoma and Florida have followed (Barnett & Hustedt, 2003). Tennessee recently passed a bill to use $25 million of lottery money to fund preschool for children considered "at risk" ("Latest Pre-Kindergarten News," n.d.). The substantial amount of research involving brain development has stressed the importance of quality experiences in the early years of life (birth-8 years). Why not house these programs along with childcare in a public school? And, better yet, why not design a program and building for children six weeks through II years of age (traditional grade five age) which is based upon early childhood practices and incorporates constructivist principles? That is exactly what educators in a small, diversified school district in Northeast Tennessee did when the system committed to creating a "21st Century" elementary school.

There has been extensive, mostly negative research on the outcomes of foster care youth. Due to the abundance of this research, Extended Foster Care (EFC) was created to help to provide additional resources and support to young adults in foster care until age 21. This is a fairly new program, therefore little research has been completed. One of the negative outcomes of foster youth is the high pregnancy and parenting rates. The purpose of this study is to be able to understand the knowledge and use of family planning services among the young adults participating in EFC. Understanding this information will help to improve services provided by the social workers who work with this population. This research used a quantitative questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed to the young adults participating in EFC in San Bernardino County. A statistical analysis was completed using SPSS version 21. The study’s findings showed that on average, EFC participants have a good understanding of safe-sex practices but do not usually use safe-sex methods or go to family planning service organizations. The study also found that participant demographics do not have a correlation to their knowledge or use of family planning services, nor to the number of pregnancies or live births. However, there is a negative correlation between a participant's knowledge score and if they have children in their custody. Finally, 47% of participants reported being informed about family planning service organizations by their Social Worker.

The purpose of this study was to investigate recruitment practices used .in industrial arts education programs and to identify factors which influence students in deciding to prepare for teaching industrial arts. Findings led to these conclusions: 1. Teacher-respondents were mostly unaware of or apathetic to the -problem of recruiting for the future. 2. Teachers used three types of recruitment practices: (a) presentations about industrial arts teacher education; (b) motion pictures and slides on industrial arts; and (3) articles in periodicals written about teaching and college activities.

Self-care is necessary for psychotherapists to prevent burnout and to provide ethical services for clients. Counselling students often recognize the need for self-care, but neglect to implement it, preventing them from building the necessary practices to endure hardships related to practicing psychotherapy. Previous research, such as Butler and colleague’s work (2017), has examined the importance of self-care in counselling education, but has not examined how it is applied in practice. Therefore, this project’s research questions included: 1) How do novice therapists engage in professional self-care? 2) How do novice therapists bridge the gap between conceptual knowledge and practice of professional self-care? 3) What are the barriers to self-care? Thematic Analysis (TA) was used to distil meaning from common experiences of participants. Four psychotherapists with an average of 1.5 years of experience were interviewed using an in-depth semi-structured interview protocol. Eighteen subthemes were generated from the data, further categorized under four themes: (1) obstacles to self-care; (2) work-life balance; (3) pathways to self-care; and (4) effects of self-care. Implications of this research include structured self-reflection in counsellor training programs, integration of flexibility and self-care provisions in workplace cultures, and a strong policy emphasis on the need for counsellor self-care and improving professional guidelines to allow for counsellor self-care practices.

Students at an eastern United States high school have experienced low pass rates on the High School Assessment Program for English Language Arts (HSAP ELA) for the past 5 consecutive years. The HSAP ELA test is 1 of 2 exams that students must pass to receive a high school diploma. Students who failed the HSAP ELA were provided remedial content and test preparation courses and enrichment tutorials to pass the state's ELA high-stakes test. The purpose of this qualitative bounded case study was to explore the teaching practices used to improve student performance on the HSAP ELA test. The conceptual framework for this study was the ELA competency model, a framework that combines instructional-practice principles and assessment. A purposeful sampling of 8 high school ELA teachers (3 regular education teachers, 4 remedial teachers, and 1 teacher who taught both groups) who taught ELA content and test preparation courses volunteered to participate in semi-structured interviews and provided sample lesson plans for document review. Qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis with open coding to identify patterns and themes. Teachers used graphic organizers, vocabulary study, questioning, relevant texts, and writing to prepare students for success on the HSAP ELA test. It is recommended that the current ELA curriculum and professional learning opportunities include teaching practices which could increase student content knowledge and performance on the HSAP ELA. These endeavors may contribute to positive social change by providing ELA teachers with specific teaching practices to prepare students to pass the HSAP ELA test, thus increasing the number of students receiving high school diplomas and increasing employment opportunities after high school.

Head Start, the largest early childhood organization in the United States, was federally mandated to employ bachelor degreed operational employees, with no additional funds. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore effective strategies that successful leaders of Head Start Nonprofit Organizations use to retain operational employees. The population of this study included 5 Head Start CEOs/Program Directors in 5 Head Start nonprofit organizations in Alabama who successfully retained operational employees in their organization. Kouzes and Posner's transformational leadership theory provided a conceptual framework for this study. Data were collected via telephone interviews and employee records from the human resources department. Reviewed human resource documents included the highest level of credentials for the leader, the policy for degree requirement for operational employees, and the number of operational employees, and the participants' highest level of education. The data were analyzed using inductive analysis which consisted of a line-by-line approach to review data identifying words, phrases, ideas, and actions consistent among participants and organizations to identify patterns and themes. Results indicated that Head Start leaders used incentives, continuous training, educational support, and job benefits to retain their operational employees. The implications for social change include the potential for young children to receive optimal teaching and caregiving from retained qualified operational employees.