Unemployment and precarity have become key features of 21st century work. Employability is presented as a solution to these issues. Individuals are exhorted to manage their employability, in order to be able to exercise choice in the labour market. While employability is individuals' responsibility, governments, employers and educational bodies simply provide opportunities for its development. Higher education is a key site for this process, as employability rhetoric increasingly informs policy and practice. It is founded on rhetoric that emphasises flexibility, skills and marketability, shaping students in certain ways with the risk of being deemed unemployable as the consequence of disengagement. At the same time, there has been a rise in employer presence on university campuses. Recruitment is no longer its key feature. Traditional 'milkround' recruitment has been replaced by year round marketing campaigns. As a result, students are continually exposed to a selection of employers promoting a specific image of work and work orientations. The theoretical framework of this study is informed by works of Antonio Gramsci and Mikhail Bakhtin. Gramsci's notion of 'common sense?' is central to analysing the rhetoric on work and employability present on campus. I also give voice to students by recounting how they as 'dialogical selves' engage with such 'common sense'. These issues are explored through an analysis of data gathered during seventeen months of fieldwork. This includes longitudinal interviews with students, participant observation, documents, interviews with careers advisors and non-participant observation of career consultations. From this, I argue that there was a strongly normative image of work constructed around an orientation I term 'consumption of work'. This image was closely associated with consumption opportunities, marketed to students through corporate presence on campus. 'Consumption of work' was central to shaping students' work orientations and only few of them resisted the 'common sense'. Those who made 'alternative' choices articulated doubt about these, with the challenge to employability as a key reason for it. Employability was presented to students as a lifelong project of the self, where constant acquisition, development and selling of skills were necessary to maintain a position in the labour market. Many students embraced the rhetoric of skill 'possession', but were 'playing the game' when 'demonstrating' skills. Conforming to what the employers were willing them to 'demonstrate' and understanding how to do this became the primary condition for achieving employability.

The aim of this research is to expand the framework of contemporary conflict resolution by constructing a complementary relationship between Western epistemologies and a Buddhist epistemology. Despite its evolution and development through self-reflexivity and self-critique, contemporary conflict resolution established upon Western epistemologies has confined the understanding of human mind to social/cultural orientations and left a comprehensive and qualitative analysis of the potential of individual human mind underdeveloped. Buddhist epistemology, the central theme of which is to address human suffering that is mainly psychological and subjective, makes a critical analysis of human subjectivity in terms of how it can be become a root cause of suffering including conflict and how it can be addressed by gaining an insight into the social/cultural construction of human subjectivity. The argument of the thesis is that when a socially/culturally-oriented view of human mind and a deeper and more profound view of human mind are combined together, we can engage in a qualitatively richer and deeper analysis of the psychological and subjective dynamics of conflict resolution.

The sex-role orientation was determined for 352 high school seniors in Plano, Texas. Using maternal employment status as the independent variable, the students were divided according to full-time employed mothers or full-time homemaker mothers. Results indicated that adolescents of employed mothers had a more liberal sex-role orientation and attitude towards the division of household tasks than adolescents of homemaker mothers. When male and female scores were analyzed separately, the order from most liberal to least liberal was females of employed mothers, females of homemaker mothers, males of employed mothers, and males of homemaker mothers. The mean scores indicated a nontraditional attitude. The study also indicated that maternal happiness with employment did not affect male and female sex-role orientation.

This study examined relationships between college students’ writing achievement goal orientations, writing self-regulation, and writing grades. The study was conducted in a postsecondary setting at a large public university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Using multivariate quantitative techniques (confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling), survey and writing sample data were gathered to address the following research questions: Do college students’ writing achievement goals relate to their writing grades; do college students’ writing achievement goals relate to their writing self-regulation; and, does writing self-regulation partially mediate the relationship between writing achievement goals and writing grades in college writing classrooms? A convenience sample of 107 participants completed both the survey and writing prompt portions of the study. Findings showed that all three writing achievement goal orientations tested (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance) were related to college students’ writing self-regulation. However, only writing performance-approach orientation was related to college students’ writing grades. Additionally, writing self-regualtion did not partially mediate the relationship between all three writing achievement goal orientations and writing grades as expected. Writing self-regulation did fully mediate the relationships between writing mastery and performance-avoidance goal orientations and writing grades, but failed to mediate the relationship between writing performance-approach goal orientation and writing grades. These findings contradict some of the prior literature on achievement goal orientations and self-regulation. However, these results help bridge a gap in the achievement goal orientation and self-regulation research, as prior studies have predominantly focused on PK-12 settings and domains other than writing (reading, mathematics, science, etc.). The findings from this study are limited by the size and nature of the sample, and the survey items used. Future studies should attempt to gather further insight into the goals college students set for their writing, how those goals impact their self-regulation behaviors, and ultimately their writing grades.

This dissertation discusses United Arab Emirates (UAE) state-society relations in historical perspective; analyses qualitatively the Emirati political culture; examines how the latter affects governmental policies in the UAE; and evaluates both qualitatively and quantitatively the political orientations and values of the Emirati educated youth. Through a discussion of existing theoretical and conceptual approaches, and the observation of the UAE case study, it argues that an important and overlooked dimension among students of state-society relations in authoritarian rentier states is citizens’ political culture, which should nonetheless be examined within a more integrative framework of analysis. Accordingly, this study employs a refined version of the holistic ‘state-in-society’ approach (Kamrava, 2008), in combination with rentier state theory (RST) and the political culture perspective (Almond & Verba, 1963), to qualitatively discuss the general Emirati political culture (agency/input), and assess how the latter affects governmental performance/policies (output); and to evaluate, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the political culture of the educated Emirati youth as the main potential supporters or opponents (agency/input) of the ruling elite. Adding to the debate around the continued significance and scope of RST, the dissertation concludes that the rentier nature of a state does not necessarily determine its people´s lack of interest in politics, but can actually empower them to challenge authoritarianism through political socialization. The historical approach to UAE political movements and discussion about contemporary political standpoints demonstrate that governmental policies (redistributive, co-optative, repressive, or reformist) are mainly driven by domestic pressure and run parallel to historical development of domestic political activism. Hence, rentierism by itself does is not sufficient to explain state-society relations in the Gulf region. Finally, the analysis and measurement of cognitive, affective and evaluative political orientations of Emirati UAEU students reflects that there is adherence to ‘post-materialistic’ and ‘self-expression’ values among important sectors of the Emirati educated youth, which are associated with the emergence of a participative political culture (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005): an ‘aspiring participant’ political culture.

The purpose of this research was to explore the classroom experiences and perceptions of novice faculty in the classroom setting of an Associate Degree of Nursing programs, located in community colleges. The transition from expert practitioner to novice teacher can be a difficult experience for new classroom nursing instructors. Novice nursing faculty often has very limited educational preparation or background in classroom instruction skills. Nursing research, typically conducted at university level, has minimal applicability for the community college nursing programs. Community colleges educate sixty percent of the graduate Registered Nurses in the United States and have scant research into their programs and faculties. Historically, faculty in registered nursing programs is hired for expert clinical skills in a specific area of nursing practice. Participant inclusion for this study was limited to novice faculty in Associate Degree of Nursing programs located in the community college setting. The study was specific to instructors with classroom lecture assignments and with less than four years teaching. The participants did not have prior instructional or educational experience in the college classroom instructor role. Participating community colleges in this investigative research were in southern Louisiana and Mississippi. Qualitative emergent research was conducted to explore the perceptions of the novice faculty prior to and after assumption of the teaching role. Lived experiences were described using semi-structured interviews that provided the opportunity for narratives which shared experiences of the transition to nursing educator process. Unexpected student cultures, attitudes, and uncivil behaviors, and lack of academic orientations were components of the findings in this research. However, the overall love of teaching and nursing education was communicated by all of the participants. I love to teach was the overwhelming reason the instructors had selected academics. The transition from the role clinical expert in the practice setting to the role of academic novice faculty in a community college setting can be chaotic and filled with unexpected issues. Effective preparation with administrative support and resources can enhance the career transition to produce a successful and confident nursing instructor.

L’éducation à la paix s’est développée juste après la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, notamment avec la création de l’UNESCO. D’ailleurs, son Acte constitutif commence avec l’énoncé du principe suivant: « Les guerres prenant naissance dans l’esprit des hommes, c’est dans l’esprit des hommes que doivent être élevées les défenses de la paix. » (Unesco, 1945, 2014, p. 5) Après des recherches sur l’idéal de paix et sur les conceptions de l’éducation à la paix, nous avons posé quelques questions: Quelles sont les différentes stratégies d’éducation à la paix formelles, informelles et non formelles mises en place à travers le monde? À partir de l’inventaire des stratégies d’éducation à la paix, quelles sont celles qui participent le plus à l’objectif de construire un artisan de paix en chaque individu, peu importe son âge, sa classe sociale, sa culture et sa société? La recension des écrits a permis de mettre en évidence quelques pratiques: le dialogue pour la réconciliation, l’éducation interculturelle et aux droits humains, la médiation des conflits. Mais on ne relève pas de pratiques d’éducation à la paix basée sur les modèles. C’est pourquoi, nous avons énoncé la question générale de recherche en ces termes: En quoi les vies des figures de paix en tant que modèles de paix peuvent-elles contribuer à l’éducation à la paix? Nous avons mis en relief le lien possible entre le modèle de paix et la pédagogie basée sur le modèle (Gardner, 1999) dans le but de faire de l’éducation à la paix. Puis, nous avons pu poser deux objectifs de recherche: 1. Élaborer un matériel pédagogique à partir de la vie de modèles de paix pour servir à l’éducation à la paix dans des contextes éducatifs non formels; 2. Faire valider le matériel par des experts. Selon la démarche méthodologique de la recherche de développement (Van der Maren, 2014), nous avons élaboré le prototype du matériel pédagogique. Pour cela, nous avons sélectionné cinq modèles de paix: le Mahatma Gandhi, Mère Teresa, Martin Luther King, Wangari Maathai et Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba. Pour chaque modèle, nous avons créé des scénarios pédagogiques et élaboré du matériel d’accompagnement en fonction d’événements marquants dans leurs vies. Sept experts ont évalué le matériel produit et ont fait des suggestions pour l’améliorer. L’analyse de leur évaluation et leurs recommandations nous a permis de rédiger une nouvelle version que nous avons appelée la version validée du matériel. Le matériel pédagogique produit est intitulé La vie de modèles de paix: Outils d’éducation à la paix. La visée de ce matériel est de donner la possibilité à l’être humain d’identifier son potentiel en tant qu’artisan de paix et de l’amener à développer la paix en lui-même afin de semer la paix autour de lui. Les retombées de cette recherche concernent tant la communauté scientifique que la communauté professionnelle. Nous avons développé une approche pédagogique nouvelle pour faire de l’éducation à la paix et avons dégagé ses fondements théoriques, en plus de produire pour des intervenants socioéducatifs un matériel pédagogique qui a fait l’objet d’une évaluation rigoureuse.

This study addresses the question: How do the structural conditions of university organisation modulate subject position, social relations and discourse and therefore shape individual consciousness and activity? The response is informed by an empirical pedagogical problem located at the tertiary level in Japan: What makes acquirers attain higher levels of language mastery in foreign language (Spanish) settings informed by communicative language teaching? The attempted answer is framed within cultural-historical activity theory, the cultural theory of Holland et al. (2001), and Basil Bernstein’s code theory. These theories have been combined using Marxian-Hegelian notions of culture and subject, which allow language development and mastery to be treated as the acquisition by an individual of a cultural tool (semiotic mediation) subject to both individual agency and historical forces. The organisational and pedagogical contexts of three institutions engaged in Spanish language education have been analysed using motive-action/educational task as the unit of analysis that situates the observation in between micro and macro levels of analysis, in combination with the methodologies for ascertaining subject position provided by Bernstein’s code theory and the cultural theory of Holland et al. This procedure made it possible to determine acquirers’ coding orientations (orientations to meaning) and to establish comparisons between organisation and learning settings. The findings indicate that acquirers who have a formal trajectory of language learning and who are able to recognise grammar instructional discourse – i.e., who possess a representational gaze – attain better levels of language mastery (active realisation) than those with informal trajectories (e.g. learning languages overseas in a conversational fashion without following a formal programme) and who do not recognise grammar instructional discourse. Evidence is provided to indicate that there is no way to avoid representational-function programmes. The bottom-up move within Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development is suggested as a feasible intervention without a drastic reshaping of the programmes.

Apesar de constituírem parte fundamental da prática clínica em psiquiatria e saúde mental, as psicoterapias ainda são pouco investigadas do ponto de vista científico. Este estudo tem o objetivo de examinar as preferências de profissionais da saúde mental em relação às escolas de psicoterapia ao longo da história e investigar a aplicação clínica corrente de uma das abordagens psicoterápicas mais praticadas na atualidade. Tanto quanto sabemos, este é o primeiro estudo a conduzir uma revisão sistemática e metaregressão que examina as prevalências globais de orientações teóricas entre psicoterapeutas ao longo dos últimos 50 anos, e especialmente na ultima década, conforme apresentado no primeiro artigo. A utilização no momento atual de intervenções cognitivo-comportamentais para um amplo espectro de transtornos psiquiátricos e outras condições médicas foi o objeto de estudo do segundo artigo. Por meio de busca computadorizada de artigos da literatura em bancos de dados eletrônicos, conduzimos uma revisão sistemática de pesquisas realizadas com profissionais de saúde que investigaram sobre suas afiliações a escolas psicoterápicas publicadas no período entre 1960 e 2012. Sessenta artigos que apresentavam dados originais com porcentagens específicas de preferências dos terapeutas por uma das 5 escolas de psicoterapia de maior preferência foram incluídos na análise. Posteriormente foi realizada uma segunda revisão sistemática de todos ensaios clínicos randomizados (ECRs) publicados no ano de 2014 que descreviam a comparação de uma intervenção cognitivo-comportamental com outra forma de intervenção psicossocial ou tratamento médico. Trezentos e noventa e quatro ECRs foram identificados e incluídos na análise final. Os dados analisados no primeiro estudo demostram que na ultima década a terapia cognitivo-comportamental (TCC) é o modelo teórico praticado por cerca de 28% dos psicoterapeutas pesquisados, seguido pela abordagem eclética/integrativa praticada por cerca de 23% dos profissionais. A orientação teórica psicanalítica e psicodinâmica foi endossada por 15% dos profissionais de saúde pesquisados. No segundo estudo, dados extraídos de artigos publicados no ano de 2014 revelaram que cerca de 58.000 indivíduos foram submetidos a intervenções cognitivas e comportamentais para tratamento de 22 diferentes diagnósticos médicos e psiquiátricos. Conforme esperado, 20% dos ensaios abordaram tratamentos para transtornos depressivos. Outras condições médicas, como tratamentos para dores e fadiga crônicas, e sintomas colaterais de tratamentos para o câncer, foram tratadas com intervenções cognitivas e comportamentais em 75 estudos, 19% do total. Um em cada 4 estudos foi feito em grupo; 65/394 estudos realizaram intervenções via computador; e quase todos (95% do total) foram realizados em países de alta renda econômica. Há um interesse crescente na utilização do modelo cognitivo-comportamental de psicoterapia por parte dos profissionais de saúde mental. Desde que iniciou sua trajetória, esta abordagem foi a única dentre as 5 estudadas que apresentou aumentos sistemáticos na porcentagem de terapeutas que professavam sua utilização na prática clinica. Um grande número de resultados de ECRs realizados em um único ano, com amostras de estudos conduzidos em todos quadrantes do planeta, relatando sua utilização cada vez mais abrangente para diferentes condições clínicas, demonstra a tendência de consolidação definitiva das terapias cognitivas comportamentais em nosso arsenal terapêutico. / Despite being an essential part of clinical practice in psychiatry and mental health, psychotherapies are still poorly investigated from a scientific point of view. This study aims to examine the endorsements of mental health professionals to psychotherapeutic orientations throughout history and to investigate the current clinical applications of one of the most practiced psychotherapeutic approaches. To our knowledge, this study is the first one to conduct a systematic review and meta-regression examining the prevalence of theoretical orientations amongst psychotherapists worldwide in the last 50 years, particularly in the last decade, as presented in the first article. The current uses of cognitive-behavioral interventions in a wide scope of psychiatric and other medical disorders was the second article focus. From a computerized literature search, we conducted a systematic review of the literature identifying any research conducted with health professional published in the period between January 1960 and December 2012. Sixty papers containing original data about the single preferred orientation of psychotherapists for one of the five most endorsed schools of psychotherapy were included in the final analysis. Then a second systematic review of the literature of all published papers in the year of 2014 describing randomized controlled trials that compared cognitive behavioral therapies with another form of psychosocial intervention or medical treatment was conducted. Three hundred ninety four studies were identified and included in the final analysis. The analysis of the data from the first study shows that in the last decade cognitive-behavioral therapy is the theoretical model practiced by around 28% of the researched psychotherapists, followed by the eclectic/integrative approach preferred by around 23% individuals. The psychoanalytic and psychodynamic theoretical orientation was endorsed by 15% of health professionals. In the second study, extracted data from papers published in the year of 2014 revealed that around 58,000 individuals underwent cognitive and behavioral interventions for the treatment of 22 different medical and psychiatric diagnoses. As expected, treatments for depressive disorders were the focus in 20% of trials. Other medical conditions, as chronic pain and fatigue, and collateral symptoms of cancer treatments, and insomnia, were treated with cognitive behavioral interventions in 75 studies, 19% of total. One in every 4 studies conducted group treatments; 65/394 studies performed computer-assisted psychosocial interventions; and almost all (95% of total) were conducted in high-income economy countries. There is a growing interest by mental health professionals in the cognitivebehavioral model. Since its appearance, this approach was the only one amongst the 5 studied that showed systematic increases in the percentages of therapists’ endorsements. The high number of randomized clinical trials conducted in a single year, with study samples from all planet quadrants, reporting an increasingly widespread use for different clinical conditions, demonstrates a definite consolidation of cognitive behavioral therapies in our therapeutic arsenal.

Eating disorders remain extremely difficult to treat and investigation has revealed that manual-based eating disorder treatment outcomes have failed to improve over the second half of the last century. Various studies have observed that clinicians use evidence-based treatments for eating disorders inconsistently and often exclude fundamental theoretical techniques. Some argue that this departure from evidence-based practice may in some cases be the efforts of clinicians to develop methods more sensitive to real world situations. It stands to reason that some of the techniques currently being used by clinicians are promising treatment approaches. The purpose of this study was to explore the therapeutic process of a select group of clinicians at one eating disorder treatment center. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 clinicians. A hermeneutic analysis of the interview transcripts revealed a common treatment approach with nine areas of focus: (a) stabilizing behaviors, (b) relationship building, (c) providing education, (d) increasing motivation, (e) challenging cognitions, (f) understanding emotions, (g) finding purpose and meaning, (h) improving body image, and (i) preventing relapse. Insights acquired from the clinicians in this study could contribute to the development of more effective treatments for clients with eating disorders.