The selfhood of social professionals in children’s services is under-researched, and where the primary focus is on practice ‘outcomes’. Informed by a critical social policy frame this thesis focuses on the selfhood of social professionals in children’s services to ask how it might, or might not, be possible to think, and do, self differently. I bring into play a critical posthumanist (non-sovereign) becoming self alongside, and in relation to, the other ‘allowed’ or ‘prescribed’ selves of neo-liberalism, professional practice and (critical) social policy itself. Utilising theoretical resources, in particular from Arendt, Deleuze and Guattari, and Foucault, I characterise this as thinking with both ‘surveillance’ and ‘appearance’, and self as an explicitly political project. In a post-structural frame I pursue a post-methodological rhizomatic and cartographic methodology that aims to open up proliferations in thinking and knowledge rather than foreclose it to one clear answer, and where I also draw on a small number of interviews with experienced professionals and managers in children’s services. A rhizomatic figure of thought involves irreducible and multiple relations that are imbricated on the surface; it is a flattened picture where theory, data, researcher, participants and analysis are not separate, where all connections are part of an overall picture, and in movement. I argue that social professionals occupy a deeply striated landscape for being/knowing/practising, a particular ontological grid that tethers their selfhood to the pre-existing, and to intensifications in a neo-liberal project. Here, ‘rearranging the chairs’ becomes more of the same, where the sovereign humanist subject is “a normative frame and an institutionalised practice” (Braidotti, 2013, p.30). In thinking otherwise, beyond traditional critical theory, a posthuman lens draws attention to the ways in which we might be/live both inside and outside of the already existing and where we become with others, human and non-human in shifting assemblages. However, the self prescribed and prefigured in dominant discourses constitute the historical preconditions from which experiments in self, and other possibilities may emerge. Practices of de-familiarisation, a radical, non-linear relationality, and a hermeneutics of situation are suggested as strategies for thinking forward, for appearance, and a self beyond self.

As human beings our identities are formed from birth as we draw on our connections to people, places and the experiences we encounter in life. For young children, adults are crucial in directing these experiences, whether this is at home, school or further afield and therefore they play a key role in identity formation. In the world of education this means that decisions are made by adults based on what is considered best for young children in order to succeed in the future. This has the potential however to have both an enabling and a limiting effect on children's lives. In a climate where arts education funding is being cut and awareness of children's voice and rights is growing in strength, this PhD seeks to explore experiences of visual arts and perceptions of self-identity from a child's perspective with the aim of informing adult perspectives of arts education policy and practice in primary schools. The main argument focuses on children as autonomous identity curators continuously drawing on their curiosity of the world. By engaging them in dialogue about their experiences and lives, adults will be presented with an alternative perspective of the world that can be used to genuinely meet individual needs in young children. The research question 'How do visual art experiences interact with children's self-identity?' is addressed drawing on the principles of bricolage to discuss and analyse the issues through multiple lenses, including the work of Dewey, Bourdieu, and Giddens. A small-scale, multiple case-study, interpretivist approach has therefore been adopted focused on nine participants drawn from four classes from two schools in a Scottish city. Data were gathered during the academic session of 2016-2017 employing narrative inquiry and arts-informed, participatory methods and analysis. Each participant presented a uniquely different relationship with visual art, with some indicating that it was an integral part of their identity and others not so much. Adults, both at school and home, were key in informing this and in one sense the children lacked autonomy and agency in their visual art experiences. However they were autonomous when it came to determining the value of these experiences in their lives and in their identity, with each drawing on their curiosity of the world in different ways to determine this. Rather than create identity, they curated it. They presented a reasoned perspective of their experiences, and highlighted an awareness of aspects of visual art that in some cases came more from their experiences outside of school than from within. Thus at times the perspective was at odds with the intentions of the adult world, particularly from education and creative industries viewpoints; the children created their own meaning and learning from their experiences which were in contrast to the intended learning of the adult world. They also demonstrated a curiosity and open-mindedness in relation to visual art which was not necessarily developed fully by the adults in their lives. This PhD is therefore important because it demonstrates that children do have a degree of agency and autonomy in the formation of their identity and that they develop interests and knowledge that is independent of adult intentions regarding teaching and learning. It is a key piece of research which also presents the voices of children who are not currently represented in academic research in this depth. Finally it raises questions regarding the effectiveness and relevance of current art education practice in education and cultural institutions for children in the contemporary world.

archives@tulane.edu / Multicultural psychologists have discussed the growing concern over ecological validity in understanding children’s mental health: insufficient participatory efforts to incorporate marginalized perspectives have led to a subsequent lack of inclusive, culturally sensitive definitions of support and support systems. The phenomenology around experiences, beliefs and perceptions is an integral component in describing support and support systems, where the composition and content of support systems depend on context and culture. Using archival qualitative research data from focus groups and ecomaps conducted with elementary school-aged children across 9 of the 14 international sites in the Promoting Psychological Well¬-Being Globally (PPWBG) project (Nastasi & Borja, 2016), the present research used children’s voices in identifying contextually-relevant sources of support, as well as patterns across 9 of the 14 sites. The present research was a part of a multi-method study, serving as a secondary analysis to triangulate (across two methods) previously analyzed data elicited from the focus groups (Borja et al., 2016) and ecomap tool (Borja et al., 2017). The goal of triangulation was to examine for consistent themes related to support and enhance the credibility of the combined tools’ ability to elicit data around support. The triangulation yielded 33 codes related to systems of support for psychological well-being¬. A thematic analysis condensed the codes into 5 broad themes: Financial/Material Support, Emotional Support, Social Support, Recreational Activities and Academic Support. These themes were salient across the nine sites. Ultimately, the five themes were either identified as being possibly global or context-specific, which may be useful in future research to inform practice and instrument development. / 1 / Sydney A. Wing

ADHD is a common behavioral problem among children and adolescents and has been studied extensively. However, this disorder is still understudied in ethnic, immigrant minorities in the U.S. such as Arab families. Thus, this descriptive, qualitative study was important and needed because a gap exists in the literature concerning Arab immigrant mothers' perceptions of the children's behavioral problems such as ADHD and the implications of such child behavioral problems within the Arab immigrant family. The available literature has focused on other minorities in the United States and not Arab minorities. Accordingly, this study focused on and took a qualitative approach in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how Arab immigrant mothers perceive, describe and respond to children behavioral problems. The main purpose of this study was to elicit mothers' perceptions of and responses to behavioral problems in children, especially those behaviors associated with ADHD, in a purposeful sample comprised of Arab immigrant Muslim mothers. The findings of this study indicate that generally, mothers used several terms to describe problematic behaviors in children, words like "active", "overactive", "spoiled", "concentration problems,"...etc. Also, mothers reported several strategies for how they would respond to a child's behaviors if the child exhibited behavioral problems as well as the use of many resources available for handling a child with behavioral problems. Mothers reported various issues they considered to be triggers that would cause them to seek help for a child's behaviors. Moreover, mothers emphasized the issues of social stigma, lack of knowledge, and lack of resources as problems that would hinder them from seeking professional mental health assistance for treating behavioral problems for children in the mothers' country of birth. The results indicated that the mothers' unfavorable attitudes toward seeking formal mental health services are most likely to be affected by cultural and traditional beliefs about mental health problem. Interestingly, mothers reported that their attitudes toward children's behavioral problems differ when in the U.S. than the generally accepted attitudes held in their home countries. This study added new knowledge and also provided information to social scientists, health care providers, mental health professionals, educators, and policy makers to better understand the needs of Arab immigrant families with children who may suffer from behavioral problems/ADHD. Finally, this study provided information for future researchers who wish to study child behavioral problems/ADHD with immigrant families other than Arabs.

The purpose of this study was to examine children's perceptions of social situations as these are related to the social environment in which the child lives, and to investigate the influence of social class upon their perceptions. An oral picture test, consisting of seven pictures, was administered to 60 fourth grade children in two Ogden, Utah, public schools. The findings of this study are that there are differences between middle and lower class children, but not between boys and girls, in their perceptions of their social environment. Middle class children were shown to be more positive in their social environment. Middle class children were shown to be more positive in their general outlook towards life, and lower class children are found to have tendencies toward a more negative perception of life. The conclusions are that social class does influence children's perceptions of their social environment, and the most favorable life circumstances for the lower class child seem to be those which are encountered in relationship with siblings. Also, there is need for concern about the image of the peace officer in the minds of children in both social classes, and about the lower class child's perception of the teacher in the classroom.

No description available.

This study was designed to find out elementary students knowledge about the environment, their attitudes towards helping the environment and what they actually have done to help the environment. Specifically, during the northern spring of 2002 all grade-4 and grade-5 students in one public elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida were administered the Children's Environmental Attitude and Knowledge Scale (CHEAKS) instrument. In 2002, some students in both grade levels interviewed each other in pairs to determine why they answered the way they did on the CHEAKS instrument. In the interviews, students discussed what they had been taught in school, compared to what they had learned outside of school that was related to the environment. The following year, during the northern spring of 2003, all grade-4 and grade-5 students in the same elementary school were given the CHEAKS instrument. Students at the elementary school were also asked questions which they answered in writing. These included: Which questions on the survey did you feel were difficult?; what do you remember learning about environmental education in school, at home or elsewhere? In addition, some gifted grade-6 students, who attended the nearby middle school and other grade-6 students who were in heterogeneous ability classes also responded to the CHEAKS instrument. / Analysis of the data showed that grade-4 students in this elementary school had a higher commitment to the environment than did grade-5 students and gifted students had more knowledge than regular students. Only the gifted students in grade-5 had a high commitment to the environment. Comparing independent t-test results in year 2002 between grade-5 regular students (n=105) and grade-5 gifted students (n=30), grade-5 gifted students were statistically less committed to the environment in terms of scores on the Verbal Commitment. There was no difference in knowledge or commitment in grade-6 students. Girls were more verbally committed to the environment than boys. Having knowledge about the environment did not necessarily mean students were committed to saving the environment or took action to solve environmental problems. The thesis concludes with explanations, discussions about the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.

Abstract: This thesis investigates the origins of contemporary fictional constructions of childhood by examining the extent to which current literary representations of children and childhood have departed from their Victorian origins. I set out to test my intuition that many contemporary young adult novels perpetuate Victorian ideals and values in their constructions of childhood, despite the overt circumstantial modernity of the childhoods they represent. The question this thesis hopes to answer therefore is, how Victorian is contemporary young adult fiction? To gauge the degree of change that has taken place since the Victorian period, differences and points of continuity between representations of nineteenth century childhood and twentieth century childhood will be sought and examined in texts from both eras. The five aspects of fictional representation that I focus on are: notions of innocence; sexuality; the child as saviour; the use of discipline and punishment to create the ideal child; and the depiction of childhood and adulthood as separate worlds. The primary theoretical framework used derives from Michel Foucault’s concepts of the construction of subjectivity through discourse, discipline and punishment, and his treatment of repression and power, drawn mainly from The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (1976) and Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison (1977). I have chosen to use Foucault primarily because of the affinity between his work on the social construction of knowledge and the argument that childhood is a constructed rather than essential category; and because Foucault’s work on Victorian sexuality exposes links with current thinking rather than perpetuating assumptions about sexual repression in this period.

This thesis concerns the visual representation of the Maori in illustrations featured in the School Journal, Bulletins, Maori Language Readers, and Remedial Readers published by the New Zealand Department of Education from 1907-96. The main focus is to examine how the prehistory of Aotearoa has been presented to the public. For this reason School Journals were chosen as they have been a resource available to all school children for almost a century, and reflect changing theories incorporated into illustrations which can be just as significant, or even more powerful, than text in transmitting information (and sometimes culture-bound values) to the public about past Maori lifeways. I examined specific areas such as the representation Maori physiognomy, representation of gender and ethnicity, material culture, and activities in illustrations and photographs to create an overview of how the Maori have been depicted and question how closely these representations adhere to reality.

The purpose of this study was to investigate children's comments on stories. Through a series of interviews the study sought to elicit comments from six 8 year old and six 11 year old children on evaluating literature, both their own and others and on how they compose stories. A classification system was applied to these comments so as to represent them as set of propositions, constructs or concerns about evaluating and composing stories. The system of classification applied was derived from the children's comments rather than use pre-determined categories. Propositions for evaluation were represented as a list of 'traits' and those for composing as a list of 'facets of the composing process.' These propositions were then compared and contrasted by age and mode (evaluation of reading or writing and comments on composing). This analysis led to the identification of some common concerns and patterns of response as well as distinctions according to age and the topic discussed. Video taped writing episodes were used to investigate the composing process. The children were asked to comment whilst writing and this was replayed for them to invite further comment and explanation. All other interviews were recorded on audio tape. Finally consideration is given to further applications of the analysis and methodology to children's comments.