This study was to test the effect of cognitive therapy in boosting children’s resilience. Pretest-posttest control group design was adopted. Fifty-eight Primary Three students were randomly assigned to either treatment or control condition. Cognitive therapy was delivered in four one-hour group training sessions and was designed to improve the participants’ explanatory style. Findings showed that children in the treatment group had significantly higher resilience level than those in the control group, and the treatment effect on the level of resilience was mediated by the more optimistic explanatory style for negative events. In view of the positive results, school personnel is encouraged to consider using the intervention as stipulated in the study to promote resilience in junior primary school students. / published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Thesis (Ph. D.)--St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Texas, 2007. / "October 2007." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-85) and appendices.

This study offers a detailed exploration of the personal narrative of a nine year old boy diagnosed with a learning disability, and explains how the nature of the therapeutic relationship facilitated shifts in his personal understandings of himself, others and the world. Children diagnosed with learning disabilities experience a range of challenges in their different life contexts, and particularly within the school context. This is often because of constant evaluation and surveillance from teachers, family members and peers, who define the child within rigid and limiting frameworks. Soon enough children diagnosed with learning disabilities develop problem-saturated narratives that can significantly influence their relationship with themselves and others. This is because the individualising effects of having a disability cause them to feel different or isolated from their peers. This study illustrates an eight session case study, facilitated by a narrative play therapy approach, between a counsellor, a child and his parents. The therapeutic encounters were intended to assist the child in moving away from problem-saturated narratives of incompetence and inferiority towards more preferred narratives that would positively influence his self esteem. Key words: learning disability, dyslexia, narrative, narrative therapy, identity, self esteem. Children Diagnosed with a Learning Disability Children who have been diagnosed with a learning disability often experience themselves and their world very differently from other children (Rodis, Garrod, & Boscardin, 2001). Within the educational system a considerable amount of pressure is placed on children to succeed. The educational discourse of achievement that professes itself to be the only direction from which a successful future can be attained, marginalizes and rejects those children whose knowledge and skills exist outside this rigid and oftentimes insensitive system of evaluation. As a result, children soon create problem saturated narratives, believing themselves to be the problem. However, in the last two decades there has been a move from reductionism to constructivism and as a result research in the field of learning disabilities has started to focus on children’s non-traditional strengths and talents, which are often misunderstood and ignored by schools. Armstrong (1987) sums it up as follows: The schools allow millions of imaginative kids to go unrecognised

Thesis (M.A.)--East Carolina University, 2009. / Presented to the faculty of the Department of Psychology. Advisor: Jeannie Golden. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 3, 2010). Includes bibliographical references.