This interactive phenomenological study was an attempt to understand how marginalized, low socioeconomic students in a predominately white suburban school were able to succeed to graduation and beyond. Six students were interviewed using semi-structured questions in an audio-recorded interview while the researcher annotated body language, emotions, and pauses of the participant. The perceptions of the students were examined in relation to Buber's existential I-Thou relational theory as well as other care-oriented educators such as Freire, Dewey, and Nel Noddings. Also informing the conceptual framework of the study were Milstein and others regarding resiliency.<br> Significant themes emerged from the participants’ narratives; however, rather than the expected prevailing theme of resiliency, something unexpected emerged. The participants all discussed the necessity of mattering to someone, of being heard and seen. This prevailing theme is what transformed the lives of these young people and gave them the inner strength to cope with often devastating events in their lives. / School of Education; / Professional Doctorate in Educational Leadership (ProDEL) / EdD; / Dissertation;

High school dropout continues to be an issue of national concern, and the inability of educators and researchers to find means of effectively reducing the dropout rate may be grounded in their approach to understanding this issue. Because there is limited prior research in addressing wellness, perceived stress, and mattering in relationship to at-risk status for dropping out of high school, this study concentrates on the gap in the educational and counseling literature documenting the extent to which these variables can contribute to the prediction of students who are at risk of dropping out of high school. Specifically, wellness, perceived stress, mattering, and at-risk status for dropping out of high school were assessed across 175 students attending a medium-sized high school located in the southeastern part of the United States. Parental informed consent documents and adult student consent documents were obtained primary to gathering data. Packets were administered to each participating student containing a minor assent document to be completed by minor students and removed by adult students, a demographic questionnaire, the Five Factor Wellness Inventory-Teenage Version, the Student At-Risk Identification Scale-Student Questionnaire, the General Mattering Scale, and the Perceived Stress Scale. There were 2 hypotheses considered in this study. First, a significant relationship was posited between the 5 second-order variables of wellness, perceived stress, mattering, and at-risk status for dropping out of high school. This hypothesis was supported with all variables correlating significantly. Second, an overall regression model with 7 predictors (the 5 second-order factors of wellness: creative self, coping self, social self, essential self, and physical self; perceived stress; and mattering) was expected to significantly predict at-risk status for dropping out of high school. Regression analysis revealed that the complete model including all seven predictor variables significantly predicted at-risk status for dropping out of high school, F(7, 167) = 12.89, p < .05. This model accounts for 35.1% of the variance in at-risk status for dropping out of high school. Thus, this hypothesis also was supported. These findings indicate that counselors should utilize skills and interventions that help students stay engaged in the academic process.

abstract: Research suggests that early family relationships have critical influences on later physical and psychological health, but most studies have focused on the influence of mothers ignoring the unique impacts of fathers. One mechanism by which families may transmit risk is by repeated activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in the short-term that leads to adult neurobiological dysregulaton, evident in hyper- or hypo-cortisol levels. Using 218 father-child dyads from the Parent and Youth Study (PAYS), the current study investigated whether father involvement in adolescence predicted youth cortisol AUCg and reactivity to a stress task in young adulthood, and whether this relation was mediated by youth perceptions of mattering to their fathers in adolescence. Results revealed that higher father-reported father involvement predicted lower cortisol AUCg in youth when mattering was included in the model, although father involvement was not a statistically significant predictor of AUCg or cortisol reactivity when mattering was not included. Additionally, children who reported higher father involvement also reported higher feelings of mattering, but this association was only statistically significant for girls and European American youth. Youth feelings of mattering did not predict their cortisol reactivity or AUCg in young adulthood. Results suggest that future research should include fathers when investigating the effects of family relationships on youth psychophysiological development. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2015

Yes / Whereas the behavioral and health sciences have been mainly concerned with the private good, there is an urgent need to understand and foster the collective good. Without a coherent framework for the common good, it will be extremely difficult to prevent and manage crises such as pandemics, illness, climate change, poverty, discrimination, injustice, and inequality, all of which affect marginalized populations disproportionally. While frameworks for personal well-being abound in psychology, psychiatry, counseling and social work, conceptualizations of collective well-being are scarce. Our search for foundations of the common good resulted in the identification of three psychosocial goods: mattering, wellness, and fairness. There are several reasons for choosing them, including the fact that they concurrently advance personal, relational, and collective value. In addition, they represent basic human motivations, have considerable explanatory power, exist at multiple ecological levels, and have significant transformative potential. The complementary nature of the three goods is illustrated in an interactional model. Based on empirical evidence, we suggest that conditions of justice lead to experiences of mattering, which, in turn, enhance wellness. Challenges and opportunities afforded by the model at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, occupational, communal, national, and global levels are presented. The proposed psychosocial goods are used to formulate a culture for the common good in which we balance the right with the responsibility to feel valued and add value, to self and others, in order to promote not just wellness but also fairness.

This study aims to explore the experiences of women students with non-European background of inclusiveness of teaching practices in higher education (HE) in Sweden, and the potential relationship with sense of belonging and mattering. This may inform how the unique challenges and needs of this group can be better met, subsequently facilitating related positive outcomes. This was achieved by conducting qualitative individual interviews with six woman student participants with non-European backgrounds. Their experiences were reviewed and depicted aligned with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to gain insight to each authentic individual account separately. This was followed by both individual as well as collective analysis, using Thematic Analysis, to go beyond personal experience, to additionally explore overarching patterns, similarities, and differences across cases, placing them in the specific context and factors that were of interest. Collective themes emerged, and findings from this inductive approach were consistent with the application of Critical Race Feminism as a theoretical framework to evaluate and interpret the meaning of the results. Common themes and factors were identified that may affect the inclusiveness of teaching practices, as well as affect sense of belonging and mattering. The themes and subthemes were; relationships (classmates, HE- and private-life separation), cultural differences (social differences, teaching practices differences), belonging and mattering, discrimination (language, microaggressions, reaction and coping), and inclusive teaching practices. Positive experiences of inclusive teaching practices seemed to be positively related to sense of belonging mainly, while mattering seemed to be dependent on specific situational factors, or meaningful relationships. Experiences of implicit racial and gendered discrimination in form of microaggressions were prevalent, and may influence experiences and perceptions of teaching practices. Additionally, participants may have adopted passive reactions and coping mechanisms that ignore, trivialise, or normalise this, which may create barriers from achieving equality, diversity, and inclusion as it allows implicit discrimination to remain concealed. Thus, this may potentially give the impression to majority groups that there is no apparent need to improve and implement inclusive teaching practices further. While in reality, the findings indicated that more active and conscious efforts to design and implement inclusive teaching practices that are underpinned by student-centred and relational pedagogies with additional aspects of culturally responsive, transformational, and anti-racist feminist pedagogies, are necessary to improve experiences of inclusion, sense of belonging, and mattering, while mitigating implicit forms of discrimination. Implications of the findings include that they may inform design and implementation of effective inclusive teaching practices that address the unique challenges and needs of this group in the Swedish HE context, and ultimately reduce the negative effects of discrimination. It was concluded that while most participants described overall positive experiences of inclusive teaching practices in Swedish HE, there were simply more implicit and concealed forms of discrimination, emphasising the importance of the institutions and teachers to take responsibility and actively design and implement inclusive teaching practices that also address implicit discrimination, since they have mainly been concerned with explicit forms so far. This may help remove barriers from improving sense of belonging and mattering further.

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The purpose of this study was to qualitatively explore the issues of race and mattering in relation to African American participation within historically White fraternities. Participant perspectives were obtained through six interviews with African American males at four collegial institutions within the Southeastern Region of the United States. Critical Race Theory was utilized to framed issues surrounding race in a homogenous Greek context. A second lens, Rosenberg and McCullough's (1981) concept of mattering, provided a comprehensive description of participants' feelings of significance within the inter-racial Greek experience. Thematic findings indicate that although African American members are recruited to be a part of a particular historically White fraternity's brotherhood, they initially experience marginality. Through continued interaction, the fraternal bonds become strengthened with participants rising to varying levels of leadership within the group, and, mattering to their White fraternal brothers. Other themes related to African American participation within historically White fraternities include: (a) One or no family member that attended college, (b) no immediate family members that are Greek, (c) significance of race is downplayed, (d) limited fraternal knowledge prior to entering college, (e) recruitment is driven by image, status, and counter assumption, (f) stereotypical organizations are racial holdouts; and, (g) discord exist with other African Americans that disapprove of the inter-racial experience.

Self-compassion refers to one’s kind, mindful, and self-referential response to the perception of one’s painful experiences and has been linked to a number of positive aspects of psychological well-being (Neff, 2003a, 2003b). Despite this, thus far, there has been very little research examining how this concept relates to various aspects of social relationships. The current study investigates whether levels of reported self-compassion are related to rejection sensitivity and excessive reassurance seeking from others. Furthermore, aspects of recalled parenting are examined to determine whether those who recalled their parents as unsupportive of their negative displays of emotion also demonstrated low self-compassion, a relationship proposed to be mediated by perceived mattering and experiential avoidance. Questionnaires measuring these constructs were administered online to 241 undergraduate students. Parental validation of negative displays of emotion was found to lead to increased self-compassion, a relationship which was mediated by experiential avoidance and perceived mattering. Parental invalidation was not related to self-compassion. In turn, increased mattering and self-compassion led to lower rejection sensitivity, whereas increased experiential avoidances led to excessive reassurance seeking. Further research in this area is needed in order to experimentally assess the cause and effect relationships between parenting, self-compassion, rejection sensitivity, and reassurance seeking. / Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council: Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Master’s Scholarship

abstract: Depression has been found to be a major problem for young adults in college, with multiple studies indicating high prevalence rates for this population. College students struggling with depression suffer from various consequences, including academic impairment and suicidal ideation, with suicide being a leading cause of death for people in the typical age range for undergraduates. Grounded in cognitive behavior theory and humanistic theory, this study examined the intra and interpersonal factors related to depression among undergraduates. Specifically, the interrelations between friend social support, sense of belonging to the college, mattering to friends, hope, and depressive symptoms were explored. Sex and number of close friends were controlled for, as the literature also showed evidence of their significant relations to depression. The sample consisted of 177 undergraduates between the ages of 18 and 25 from a large southwestern university. Participants responded to an online survey. While participants represented a diverse range of ethnicities, the majority were White. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses revealed that hope and sense of belonging to the college negatively predicted depressive symptoms. Furthermore, through zero-order correlations, it was found that friend social support, sense of belonging to the college, mattering to friends, and hope were all positively correlated with each other. Implications for prevention and clinical practice include the roles that counselors, college personnel, and students play in the battle against depression. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Counseling 2021

No description available.