The aim of this study was to explore the meaning of being a father with a group of five fathers with a Learning Disability, with reference to existential concerns and the role of the counselling psychologist in working with these men. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse nine interviews conducted with five fathers. The main themes that arose from the analysis were "identity with family"; "identity as a father"; "disability as undesired" and "struggles of self in the community". It was found that fathers' identities were complex and mirrored the current cultural diversity of concepts of fatherhood. There were also difficulties highlighted with managing personal relationships and enforced separation from children. Associated with this were the complications of managing painful emotions, particularly anger. Fathers felt that they had been disadvantaged within their local communities and needed support to fulfil their parenting role. This is consistent with published research on parents with Learning Disabilities. Counselling psychologists provide a unique variety of services to people with learning difficulties in combining psychological theory with therapeutic practice which places great emphasis on both personal and relational awareness. Thus it was considered that counselling psychologists might be of specific benefit to assist these fathers with the difficulties they may have in their relationships and coming to terms with the consequences of living with a Learning Disability, as well as supporting professionals to develop strong working relationships with these families. As there is so little published material in this field, further research would be necessary to investigate more fully the considerations pertinent to this group of fathers.

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No description available.

Programming is a core subject within Computer Science curricula and many also consider it a particularly difficult subject to learn. There have been many studies and suggestions on what causes these difficulties and what can be done to improve the situation. This thesis builds on previous work, trying to understand what difficulties students have when learning to program. The included papers cover several areas encountered when trying to learn programming. In Paper I we study how students use annotations during problem solving. The results show that students who annotate more also tend to be more successful. However, the results also indicate that there might be a cultural bias towards the use of annotations. Not only do students have problems with programming, they also have problems with designing software. Even graduating students fail to a large extent on simple design tasks. Our results in Paper II show that the majority of the students do not go beyond restating the problem when asked to design a system. Getting stuck is something that most learners experience at one time or another. In Paper III we investigate how successful students handle these situations. The results show that the students use a large number of different strategies to get unstuck and continue their learning. Many of the strategies involve social interaction with peers and others. In Papers IV, V, and VI we study what students experience as being key and threshold concepts in Computer Science. The results show that understanding particular concepts indeed affect the students greatly, changing the way they look at Computer Science, their peers, and themselves. The two last papers, Papers VII and VIII, investigate how researchers, teachers and students view concurrency. Most researchers/teachers claim that students have difficulties because of non-determinism, not understanding synchronization, etc. According to our results the students themselves do not seem to think that concurrency is significantly more difficult than any other subject. Actually most of them find concurrency to be both easy to understand and fun. / Programmering har en central roll i datavetenskapliga utbildningar. Många anser att programmering är svårt att lära sig. Ett stort antal studier har undersökt vad som orsakar dessa svårigheter och hur det är möjligt att övervinna dem. Denna avhandling är en del av denna forskning. Artiklarna i avhandlingen undersöker vilka problem som studenterna stöter på under sina programmeringsstudier. Artikel 1 beskriver hur studenter använder sig av annoteringar vid problemlösning. Resultaten visar att studenter som gör många annoteringar tenderar att prestera bättre. Resultaten antyder också att det kan finnas kulturella skillnader i hur ofta annoteringar används. Studenter har inte bara problem vid programmering, de har också problem med att utforma programvarusystem. Även sistaårsstudenter misslyckas till stor del att utforma lösningar för relativt enkla system. Resultaten i Artikel II visar att majoriteten av studenterna inte kommer längre än en omformulering av problemet. Att inte förstå ett koncept eller en specifik detalj är något som alla studenter stöter på då och då. I Artikel III undersöker vi hur framgångsrika studenter hanterar en sådan situation. Resultaten visar att studenterna använder sig av ett stort antal olika strategier för att få en förståelse för konceptet/detaljen. Många av de redovisade strategierna bygger på en social interaktion med andra. Artiklarna IV, V och VI utforskar vad studenterna uppfattar som nyckelkoncept inom datavetenskap och hur förståelsen av dessa koncept påverkar dem. Resultaten visar att förståelsen av vissa specifika koncept kan göra att studenterna ändrar hur de ser på datavetenskap, kollegor och sig själva. I artiklarna VII och VIII undersöker vi hur forskare, lärare och studenter ser på de problem studenter har vid jämlöpande programmering. De flesta forskare och lärare hävdar att studenterna har problem med att förstå icke-determinism, synkronisering, etc. Våra resultat visar dock att studenterna inte själva tycks anse att jämlöpande programmering är signifikant svårare än andra ämnen. Tvärtom, de flesta anser att jämlöpande programmering är både lätt att förstå och roligt.

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Submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of M Ed (Ed. Psych) in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Zululand, 2005. / Reading is generally considered to be a critical skill, both within and beyond the walls of the classroom. Its importance for academic success within a school is unlikely to be contested by many people. Reading is well-integrated into our education system generally, such that educational or academic success is almost synonymous with reading success. With this in mind, the purpose of this research was to examine the relationship between reading difficulties and academic performance. To this end a group of Foundation Phase learners were selected on the basis of having an already identified reading difficulty. Using data from their school academic progress reports and from a scholastic assessment carried out by an educational psychologist, correlations were calculated between the learners' reading ability and academic performance. The research findings showed no significant correlation. These results were not in line with the general opinion supported by the literature, in that the children's reading difficulties did not appear to be impacting negatively on their academic potential. Various factors are discussed as possible explanations for this phenomenon.

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This paper reports the two phases of an evaluative study looking at the impact of Thrive training. A small Local Authority (LA) in the South West of England commissioned this study. In phase-one, Thrive trainees completed Likert-type questionnaires about the three areas below: • Perceived relationships with children with BESD; • Self-efficacy in managing children’s BESD; and • Causes to which BESD can be attributed. Data were taken from Thrive trainees who attended either the one-day Thrive training or the nine-day Thrive training. Thrive trainees (n= 60) completed questionnaires before training began and after training had finished. The questionnaire comprised three established scales, investigating the three areas listed above. Data gathered was quantitative and analysis was designed to show differences between participants’ ratings before and after completing the Thrive training. For the nine-day training, results show an overall increase in trainees’ perceived relationship quality, and self-efficacy in managing children’s BESD. It was also seen that Thrive trainees attributed the existence of challenging behaviour to causes thought to be beyond the child’s control yet within the provision control. Findings were less evident for the one-day training. These results are related to past research and conclusions are drawn about the efficacy of the Thrive training. In phase-two, eight participants were randomly selected from the sample used in phase-one. Participants were interviewed through the process of hierarchical questioning and contextual focusing and qualitative data was gained. The focus of phase-two was to investigate what changes (if any) Thrive trainees identified as occurring due to their attendance on the Thrive training as well as which factors (if any) within the Thrive training particularly facilitated change in each of the areas measured in phase-one (perceived relationship building, self-efficacy and causal-attributions). Thematic analysis was used to draw themes from participants’ responses. Results show that Thrive trainees discussed changes in their behaviour; thoughts; feelings; and personal attributes. Results also found that Thrive trainees attributed these changes, as well as changes relating to the three areas measured quantitatively in phase-one, to specific factors within the Thrive training. These include: • The delivery style; • The Thrive model and specific training content; and • Other mediating factors. Results are discussed with reference to past research; conclusions are drawn about the efficacy of the Thrive training and some general implications for the LA for whom the current research was conducted, as well as for educational psychology practice, are reported.