<p> Leader capacity is threatened by a projected gap in corporate leadership as a result of retirements of the baby-boomer cohort necessitating a need to develop effective leaders. Authentic leadership, underpinned by people's sense of self-awareness, has been found to increase employee performance. The purpose of this quantitative, quasi-experimental study was to examine changes in self-awareness and authentic leadership among volunteers and controls over a 40-day period during which a national breast-cancer walk occurred. A Pearson's correlation was conducted as a control to determine whether self-awareness and authentic leadership are independent constructs. Forty-six volunteers were selected from publicly posted lists of volunteers matched by age and gender to 46 controls that were recruited from Survey Monkey&trade;. Self-awareness was measured using the Leader Self Awareness Scale and authentic leadership was measured using the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire. Both questionnaires were self-administered as a pretest 7 days prior to the event, as a posttest 7 days after the event, and as a follow-up 30 days after the event. Mixed ANOVAs were used to reveal a significant interaction effect of volunteerism by time on self-awareness, <i>F</i>(2, 180) = 59.43, <i> p</i> &lt; .001, and authentic leadership, <i>F</i>(2, 180) = 57.62, <i>p</i> &lt; .001, while no significant main effects for volunteerism were found for either self-awareness, <i>F</i>(1, 90) = .007, <i>p</i> = .93, or for authentic leadership, <i>F</i>(1, 90) = .04, <i>p</i> = .84. There was a significant positive correlation between self-awareness and authentic leadership among volunteers, <i> r</i>(44) = .70, <i>p</i> &lt; .001, 30 days after the event, which was not found in the controls, providing additional confidence in the interpretation of the study results in that self-awareness and authentic leadership were independent constructs. Overall, these findings suggest that volunteerism over time may have functioned as a trigger event leading to enhanced self-awareness and increased authentic leadership. To expand the value of this study beyond the specific venue of the 3-day cancer walk, investigations into other volunteer events are needed as well as investigations into the reflection process. Recommendations for organizations include cultivating employees, who volunteer, in order to develop self-awareness and authentic leadership potential.</p>

<p> School Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS) is a current framework for schools to model their discipline strategies. SW-PBS has a framework built on identifying behaviors and predictors of their occurrence, routines to correct and prevent these problems, and implementation of these routines school wide to collect information to evaluate these strategies. Office discipline referrals were reviewed in the secondary school of Rural District 10 in Missouri from 2004-2013 to determine the significance between implementation of SW-PBS and the number of office discipline referrals. School climate was also studied in Rural District 10 as well as other secondary schools around the state of Missouri. A survey was sent to students, teachers and administrators from Rural District 10 and teachers and administrators from other districts around the state that have implemented SW-PBS for at least two years. The data revealed no statistically significance difference between the number of office discipline referrals before and during implementation of SW-PBS in Rural District 10. Based on the perceptions from the questions on the survey, teachers and administrators in Rural District 10 felt as though the climate and culture of the building overall was better compared to the perceptions of students in Rural District 10. Comparing Rural District 10 to other districts, Rural District 10 teachers and administrators felt as though the climate and culture of their secondary school was better, overall, as compared to other districts around the state of Missouri that have implemented SW-PBS for at least two years.</p>

<p> I investigated linguistic patterns in middle school students' writing to understand their relevant embodied experiences for learning science. Embodied experiences are those limited by the perceptual and motor constraints of the human body. Recent research indicates student understanding of science needs embodied experiences. Recent emphases of science education researchers in the practices of science suggest that students' understanding of systems and their structure, scale, size, representations, and causality are crosscutting concepts that unify all scientific disciplinary areas. To discern the relationship between linguistic patterns and embodied experiences, I relied on Cognitive Linguistics, a field within cognitive sciences that pays attention to language organization and use assuming that language reflects the human cognitive system. Particularly, I investigated the embodied experiences that 268 middle school students learning about water brought to understanding: i) systems and system structure; ii) scale, size and representations; and iii) causality. Using content analysis, I explored students' language in search of patterns regarding linguistic phenomena described within cognitive linguistics: image schemas, conceptual metaphors, event schemas, semantical roles, and force-dynamics. I found several common embodied experiences organizing students' understanding of crosscutting concepts. Perception of boundaries and change in location and perception of spatial organization in the vertical axis are relevant embodied experiences for students' understanding of systems and system structure. Direct object manipulation and perception of size with and without locomotion are relevant for understanding scale, size and representations. Direct applications of force and consequential perception of movement or change in form are relevant for understanding of causality. I discuss implications of these findings for research and science teaching.</p>

<p> This study examines how personal characteristics of a team facilitator (transformational leadership, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability) impact team members' stress level, trust in leadership, and team climate. Participants comprised assessment teams in the student affairs of higher education, providing a unique perspective on a leadership role in which hierarchical positioning between the leader (facilitator) and follower was minimized.</p><p> Hypothesis 1 examined transformational leadership and three of the subscales of the Five-Factor Model (FFM)&mdash;agreeableness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability&mdash;as predictors of team stress. It was hypothesized that team facilitators who achieved higher scores would elicit lower team stress. This hypothesis was not supported.</p><p> Hypothesis 2 examined emotional stability and conscientiousness as predictors of team climate. It was hypothesized that higher-scoring facilitators would elicit a more positive team climate. This hypothesis had partial support on two of the independent variables. The higher the facilitator scored on conscientiousness, the higher the members rated Team Climate Inventory (TCI) subscale of Vision. The higher the facilitator scored on emotional stability, the lower the members rated the TCI subscale of Participant Safety.</p><p> Hypothesis 3 examined emotional stability as a predictor of trust: the higher the score elicited on emotional stable qualities, the higher the trust level. This hypothesis was not supported by the data.</p><p> Hypothesis 4 examined transformational leadership as a predictor of trust: the higher the score, the more trust gained. This hypothesis had full support, with transformational leadership being a reliable predictor of trust.</p><p> Hypothesis 5 examined agreeableness in predicting stress: those scoring moderately would alleviate stress. This hypothesis was not supported by the data.</p><p> Analyses were also conducted on team satisfaction and team performance. Trust, team climate, and stress were examined to predict team satisfaction and performance. For both satisfaction and performance, only one of the three predictors, the TCI, contributed significantly. As the team climate became more positive, team satisfaction and team performance also increased.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the extent to which children's tablet software applications, commonly called <i>apps,</i> are designed appropriately to promote the optimal development of preschool children aged three to five. This study extends previous research, particularly the theoretical frameworks of <i>developmentally appropriate practice</i> and Bers' <i> positive technological development.</i> The researcher argues that, for children's mobile apps to be developmentally meaningful, they need to satisfy three conditions: (1) apps must be designed appropriately to accommodate the developmental stages and needs of young children; (2) content must be designed to promote young children's development in the areas of cognition, academic skills, social-emotional skills, and physical development; and (3) digital interactions engage children in activities and behaviors that foster optimal developmental assets. The researcher devised three instruments to evaluate and examine the breadth, depth, and design quality of 100 children's apps from the Apple's App Store for iPad. Content analysis revealed that only a non-significant majority of apps (58%) were meaningfully designed for preschool children in terms of user interface, audio and visual design, and instructional support. The apps selected for this sample included games and learning activities, interactive eBooks, as well as creativity and utility apps. The content of these apps tended to cluster around school skills and they rarely engaged children in activities beyond academic drill-and-practice. These apps largely ignored the social, emotional, and physical aspects of children's development. Using numerous vignettes and examples as illustrations, the analysis highlights design techniques, content offering, and technological features that could be productive toward children's development, as well as those that distract from meaningful user experiences. This study underscores the need for developmentally meaningful children's mobile apps for preschool children.</p>

<p> This study examined the role of course engagement in college student success, especially for students who have multiple life commitments and few social supports. Building on previous measurement work and based in self-determination theory, the study was organized in five steps. Relying on information provided by 860 undergraduates from 12 upper and lower division Psychology classes, the first step was to improve the measurement of course engagement, by mapping the increased complexity found in self-reports of college students (by incorporating items capturing engagement in &ldquo;out-of-classroom" activities and general orientation, to standard items tapping classroom engaged and disaffected behavior and emotion). 12 items were selected to create a brief assessment covering the conceptual scope of this multidimensional construct; its performance was compared to the full scale and found to be nearly identical. </p><p> Second, the assessment was validated by examining the functioning of course engagement within the classroom model: As predicted, engagement was linked to proposed contextual and personal antecedents as well as course performance, and fully or partially mediated the effects of both context and self-perceptions on actual class grades; findings also indicated the importance of including a marker of perceived course difficulty. Third, the university level model was examined, which postulated key predictors of students&rsquo; overall academic performance and persistence toward graduation. Unexpectedly, academic identity was found to be the primary driver of persistence and the sole predictor of GPA; moreover, it mediated the effects of learning experiences and course engagement on both outcomes.</p><p> The fourth and most important step was to integrate the classroom and university models through course engagement, to examine whether students&rsquo; daily engagement predicted their overall performance and persistence at the university level. As expected, course engagement indeed showed a significant indirect effect (through academic identity) on both success outcomes, and these effects were maintained, even when controlling for the effects of university supports. Finally, student circumstances were added to the integrated model, specifically focusing on whether course engagement buffered cumulative non-academic demands on performance and persistence. Although unexpected, most interesting was the marginal interaction revealing that students whose lives were higher in non-academic demands showed the highest levels of persistence when their course engagement was high (and were the least likely to return next term when their engagement was low). Future measurement work and longitudinal studies are suggested to examine how course engagement cumulatively shapes academic identity, especially for students with differentiated profiles of non-academic demands and supports. Implications of findings are discussed for improving student engagement and success, and for using the brief assessment of course engagement as a tool for instructor professional development, and as part of threshold scores that serve as early warning signs for drop-out and trigger timely and targeted interventions.</p>

<p> Given society's increasingly technology centric play and workplace environment, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs) can be an excellent sandbox to develop future leaders of teams, which are the lifeblood of any organization. MMOs like World of WarCraft provide rich immersive experiences that allow leaders and followers the ability to create highly complex ecosystems that can mimic some of the largest out of game organizations. In game they can potentially gain valuable insights, which can later be applied to the workplace. This study explores Leadership characteristics appearing in and out of game. A combination of identity theories and leadership characteristics provide a greater understanding of possible relationships that may be occurring between leaders and followers; and in and out of multiplayer video game environments. Using transformational leadership as a framework, 6 leaders were interviewed, and assessed with the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). Also, their guild communities were examined for evidence of leadership behaviors. The results found relationships between a leader's in and out of game characteristics with values and contexts in the workplace between leader, community, and follower. These relationships create and shape the lived experiences of leaders providing them the insights to create connections between relevant contexts in game with their workplace environment. This study identifies leadership stories, that can been employed in the workplace for the benefit of the organization; and the use group play spaces as a place to practice leadership operations of a business. Through these narratives, leaders can better understand the values that shape their identity; the relevant contexts that enabled the appearance of leadership characteristics in and out of game; and an opportunity to connect with a community aligned to teach leaders how to be.</p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the essence and underlining structure of a hybrid identity development process among undergraduate students who lived a transborder lifestyle in the U.S.-Mexico border region by identifying the factors that influenced the phenomenon. In the 1990s transnational and transborder individuals were identified by scholars as part of a new understanding for the movement of populations. Today researchers state that this phenomenon is ever most prevalent at the world's busiest international border shared between the cities of San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. Part of the transborder phenomenon is college students who collaborate internationally between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico because they reside in both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border while attending higher education institutions in San Diego, California. Currently there is no information about how many students live a transborder lifestyle in the San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico border region and few researchers have explored the understanding of their experiences. As a result, the lack of research about the development of this student population called for further investigation. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted with twelve undergraduate students who lived a transborder lifestyle in the San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico border region; they took place at a higher education institution in San Diego, California. The central finding of this study is the illustration of the developmental process of a Hybrid Identity; therefore, a conceptual framework for the systematic understanding of the phenomenon was created. The stories which participants shared as part of their interview illustrate how their hybrid identity development was influenced by the transborder lifestyle they lived through the transborder context in the U.S.-Mexico border region. The influential factors of their hybrid identity development are identified as the obstacles they faced through the transborder context and the different ways they coped with and adapted to the barriers of their milieu.</p>

<p> Safe Zone (or Safe Space) programs are common on college campuses to encourage support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, (LGBTQ) and other people who identify as sexual and gender minorities. However, research describing the efficacy of Safe Zone programs is infrequent and often methodologically problematic. A program evaluation was performed of the Safe Zone Network program at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB). Measures were chosen to assess homonegativity, LGBTQ knowledge, attitudes, self-reported behavior, and identification as an LGBTQ ally, as well as a demographic survey. These measures were administered via paper survey before and after participation in the Safe Zone Network workshop. The same measures were administered before and after a health education program for use as control measurements. The data were analyzed with correlations and repeated-measures ANOVA. At pretest more pro-LGBTQ knowledge, attitudes, self-reported behavior, and ally self-identification was associated with identifying as a sexual and/or gender minority, attending the workshop voluntarily, being younger, and having more LGBTQ social contact prior to the workshop. Participation in the Safe Zone workshop was associated with significant changes in decreased homonegativity and hate, as well as increased LGBTQ knowledge and self-identifying as an LGBTQ ally, when compared to the control group. Despite differences in pretest scores based on the reason for participating in the workshop, reason for participation did not significantly relate to the amount variables changed over the workshop time, indicating that the workshop may be beneficial for both mandated and voluntary participants. More pro-LGBTQ pretest scores may have indicated more likelihood to change during the program. Overall, these results suggested that the UB Safe Zone Network program is related to prosocial changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors (such as the proxy could estimate), and ally self-identification, particularly for participants who are primed to be more sensitive to these issues. Results were discussed in context of current research. Limitations and future directions for research were discussed.</p>

The research in this thesis examines the influence that both geometric and extrageometric factors have on children's spatial language production. Over the years it has widely been assumed that spatial prepositions identif' where objects are in the world (geometric factors) and that this is reflected in the semantic representations of these words. More recently, researchers investigating the lexical semantics of spatial prepositions have begun to question this assumption by demonstrating that what objects are and how they are interacting can also affect the way we describe where they are in the world (extra-geometric factors). Following on from research conducted with adults that has demonstrated the importance of both of these factors on spatial language, the main aim of this thesis was to ascertain for the first time whether these factors also influenced children's spatial language production, and if so, when they became important in children's development of spatial expressions. Additionally, due to the paucity of research investigating the production of spatial terms, the Experiments reported in this theis set out to redress the balance. The research in this thesis demonstrated for the first time that both geometric and extra geometric factors influence the production of children's spatial expressions from an early age. In doing so, however, the Experiments reported here were not necessarily revealing as to the nature of the semantic representation of spatial terms, rather they highlighted a different issue; how people make distinctions during a verbal interaction. Evidence is presented that suggests a level of agreement between people regarding the nonconventional use of words. In order to distinguish between functional and non-functional situations, both adults and children used different types of spatial terms to locate an object even when they had a limited number of words in their lexicon. An approach to the whole process of prepositional production is suggested rather than concentrating on what is represented in an individual's lexicon.