A review of the research indicates that identifying self as a teacher can be a life-long, complex personal and social process. This researcher investigated 4 pre-collegiate students' construction of a teaching identity during their participation in an introduction to teaching course conducted in a rural high school located in a southeastern state. Two purposes framed this investigation, 1) to gain an in-depth understanding of the pre-collegiate students' past and present experiences related to teaching and the meanings the students make of these experiences, and 2) to examine these experiences as connected to construction of personal teaching identities. Using a life history methodology, data sources included 3 interviews, drawings of self as a teacher, journal writings, and personal experience writings. The findings are presented in 4 narratives one for each participant. Each narrative, represented by an exemplar quote, (i.e., Being There, Being a Kid, Right Heart, Being A Helper) illuminates the nature of the participants' teaching prototype, which emerged from past and present educational experiences. Results indicate that the participants possessed well-defined beliefs pertaining to caring teachers and to teaching as a profession, in addition, to commonly held cultural teaching beliefs. These beliefs guided their course experiences and self-assessment of a teaching identity. Although the identification to a teaching identity varied among the 4 participants, results indicate that 1 participant was actively constructing a storied teaching identity. A storied teaching identity involved a significant nuclear episode with a teacher that became the bound context for a teaching story. This type of high school level career studies course can assist in strengthening the recruitment pool of teacher education candidates and assist in testing a vocational teaching identity. Implications are offered for future research involving pre-collegiate students enrolled in an introduction to teaching course and investigation of storied teaching identities. / Ph. D.

Creating a conducive environment for healthy eating can be achieved by empowering consumers with the necessary information to make informed nutritional choices. As a result, nutritional labeling has become increasingly imperative in assisting individuals in their daily purchasing decisions. Although research suggests that front-of-pack labeling is an effective means of informing consumers about healthier food options, no single labeling system has proven successful in this regard. The absence of a definitive labeling system ideal for all purposes makes it challenging to determine the most effective one. This uncertainty has led to a gap in the literature, which provided an opportunity for further research to examine the various labels and related concepts and factors. This dissertation aimed to fill the gap in the literature by studying two popular front-of-pack labeling systems: The Health Star Rating system and Nutri-Score. Four research chapters have been included to achieve this objective. The study commenced with a systematic review of the Health Star Rating label in the literature. The next chapters examined the impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on consumers' food choices and preferences. The research investigated how the presence or absence of a label influences consumer decision-making and how individual differences play a role in interacting with these nutrition labels. Finally, the performance of the nutrition labels is examined in the context of existing beliefs and attitudes. This last study provided a fresh perspective on the effect of Nutri-Score on food choices by exploring its impact on consumers’ prior beliefs, intuitive thinking, analytical processing, and judgment of healthiness. In conclusion, the body of literature reviewed and the experimental data gathered in this thesis suggest that food labels are effective at influencing consumer choice; however, due to this, special caution must be exercised due to the risk that they could be used more as a marketing tool than as a genuine aid to informed choice.