The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of third grade students with high-stakes testing. The study was designed to address this issue from the perspective of the third grade student's experience and offer a venue for them to share their stories. The following research question guides this study: What are the socio-emotional experiences and perceptions of third grade students with high-stakes testing? Data analysis employed here falls under the rubric of qualitative approaches of symbolic interaction and phenomenology written in a narrative format with the provisions of portraiture. This study uses the analytical procedures set out by Marshall and Rossman (1989) to give meaning to the data. The analytical procedures include: organization, synthesis, analysis, and presentation of the data. To ensure that the data remained in purest form for the development of student portraitures, the resulting themes and patterns were then reviewed under five strategies proposed by Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis (1997). These five strategies are: repetitive refrains, resonant metaphors, institutional and cultural rituals, triangulation and revealing patterns. There were 51 participants in this study. Twelve were primary participants and 39 were support participants. The 12 primary participants were students who voluntarily took part in in-depth interviews and focus groups and provided written reflections and drawings. The 39 support participants joined the 12 primary participants by providing written reflections and drawings. Themes that emerged are: (1) Self-Test, (2) Attribution, (3) Prevalent Influences, and (4) Emotions. These themes are analyzed and the results discussed. Then, the analysis turns to the development of portraitures. Three portraitures are revealed to provide the perceived experiences of the participants. A discussion of the findings, along with recommendations for practice and research conclude the study.

This dissertation focuses on perceptions of principals, assistant principals and teachers of their impact on student achievement scores in improving their school's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test letter grade scores. This information is of importance because we do not have information on how school reference groups (principals, teachers) perceive the grading of schools as defined by the Florida A+ Plan. Specifically, this study investigated perceptions of school principals, assistant principals and teachers on their role in improving the school's FCAT letter grade by two grade levels in a 9-month school year. This qualitative case study analyzes perceptions of factors and behaviors that have made a positive difference in two Polk County, Florida public elementary schools' FCAT. Data collection included interviews of teachers, assistant principals and principals. Study implications include the impact upon students, teachers, administrators and parents, particularly pressures upon all involved at the school level to improve student test scores and therefore, to improve their letter grade on the Florida A+ Plan. Another implication may be the possibility of improving results by decentralizing into small learning communities (SLC's). Conclusions including administrators and teachers perceiving emotional, professional, instructional, and climate support as key factors, but no clear conclusive perception by a majority of respondents was evident regarding improved scores.

Bakgrund: Autismspektrumtillstånd (AST) innebär en neuropsykiatrisk funktionsnedsättning och begreppet autismspektrumstörning innefattar flera diagnoser som autistiskt syndrom, aspergers syndrom och atypisk autism. Föräldrar kan ofta missförstå beteenden som är karaktäristiska för AST och detta kan utveckla känslor av misslyckande samt hopplöshet inför barnets framtid. Dessutom kan det vara svårt för föräldrar att anpassa sig efter nya rutiner och ta hänsyn till barnets beteenden. Sjuksköterskan har en viktig roll i att bedöma familjens situation och se deras behov av hjälp och stöd. Syfte: Att belysa föräldrars upplevelser av att leva med barn med AST. Metod: Litteraturstudien bestod av nio kvalitativa artiklar som valts ut från databaserna PubMed, Scopus och Cinahl. Artiklarna granskades och analyserades med inspiration av kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Resultatet resulterade i tre kategorier: ”Känna sig avskärmad från samhället”, ”Stora utmaningar som förälder” samt ”Familjen påverkas av AST”. Konklusion: Den bristande förståelsen för AST samt det bristande stödet kan vara en förklaring till att många föräldrar upplever känslor av depression, ångest och stress. Sjuksköterskan har en viktig roll i att vara närvarande och ge relevant stöd samt att uppmuntra föräldrarna för att de ska kunna växa i sitt föräldraskap. / Background: Autismspectrumdisorder (ASD) represents a neuropsychiatric disability and the concept of autism spectrum disorder includes several diagnoses such as autistic syndrome, asperger syndrome and atypical autism. Parents often misunderstand behaviors that are characteristic of ASD and this may develop feelings of failure and hopelessness about the future of the child. In addition, the difficulty for parents is to adapt to new routines and take into account the child's behavior. The nurse has an important role in assessing the situation of the family and see their need for help and support. Aim: The aim of this study was to illuminate parent’s experiences of living with children with ASD. Method: A literature study of nine qualitative articles from the databases PubMed, Scopus and Cinahl. The articles were reviewed and analysed with inspiration of a qualitative content analysis. Results: The results were resulted in three categories: “Feeling foreclosed from society”, “Major challenges as a parent” and “Family affects by AST”. Conclusions: The lack of understanding of AST as well as the lack of support can be one reason that many parents experience depression, anxiety and stress. The nurse has an important role to be present and provide relevant support and encourage parents to enable them to grow in their parenting.

Objective: To date there have been few if any qualitative studies of adults who have experienced childhood sexual abuse (CSA) followed by psychotic experiences later in life. This study aimed to explore how a sample of four women make sense of their childhood experiences of sexual abuse and their psychotic experiences later in life. Methodology: Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with four women. The data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in order to develop a detailed understanding of the women’s search for meaning in their own lives. Results: Four major themes emerged from the analysis of the women’s accounts: ‘Interpersonal difficulties,’ ‘Striving to Get Better’ and ‘A Relationship with Shame’ and ‘Links Between CSA, Mental health & Psychosis’. These are explored in detail. Conclusions: The women’s accounts highlight the ongoing difficulty of living with psychosis and CSA, in particular, the role of psychosis in exacerbating isolation, shame and negative self perceptions. Attention is also drawn to the development of competence for therapists in this area of work. Clinical Implications: Supporting and validating existing healthy coping strategies as well as exploration of the interaction of psychosis and CSA through psychological mechanisms of shame as well as family / society discourses. Therapist/ researcher selfawareness is crucial in supporting clients with such traumatic histories.

Participants on sex offender treatment programmes (SOTPs) seem to value victim empathy (VE) training exercises, despite there being little evidence to suggest that these reduce risk of reoffending. Participants also appear to value their therapeutic relationships. There has been very little research into SOTP facilitators’ views on treatment. This study explores whether facilitators also feel VE training is a useful part of treatment and if seeing empathy develop in offenders strengthens therapeutic alliance. 12 prison SOTP facilitators were interviewed. The transcripts were analysed using content and thematic analysis, there were six main findings. Facilitators were concerned that the perceived impact of VE was superficial compliance and the particular emotional aspect of VE training may help facilitators to empathise with difficult group members. This study contributes a facilitator perspective to the debate on including VE training in SOTPs, and suggests further research be completed into empathy constructs and how these apply to facilitators work.

This thesis is about the growth and sustainability of a systemic consultancy that for more than ten years has experienced continuous growth and development. It sets out to describe the kind of distinctive dialogical relational practices (Shotter, 2006, 2008) that enables the conditions for a continuous creation of novel and innovative practices which has been expressed into an ever growing and mutating practice both within the community but also in relation to clients. It is argued that it is the distinctive systemic way of being irreverent towards one's own practice; that is privileging curiosity over certainty (Cecchin, 1987), imagination over inference (Rorty, 1989, 1991a), that is perhaps the most specific difference between systemic theory-practitioners and other ways of consulting. Through cases these ideas are described from within the experiences of those participating offering unique expressions of how this difference is lived in a day-to-day conduct. The treatment of these episodes leads to the hypothesis that innovative practices become a 'way of being' in the world rather than a special feature applied on practice which means that it is not only something we do it is also how we see ourselves grow and develop as individuals as well as a community. How this is expressed into client relationships is explored through two cases of innovative consultancy. The thesis is also a self-reflexive portrait described through neo-pragmatic ideas as found in Rorty's (1980, 1989, 1991a, 1991b, 1999) writing. This project is providing a tension within the project of developing the thesis re-viewing my previous systemic vocabulary through the use of new words and metaphors, through which the reader is invited into an extension of the idea of 'irreverence' with Rorty's writing on irony and redescription. During the course of this project a portrait of the kind of leadership practice that facilitates a relationally dialogical way of being in an organisation is described, which serves as a kind of self portrait. The research methods applied is best captured by the notion of participant research (Lindlof, 1995. Wadel, 1991), which entails using a series of data such as interviews, on the spot observations, written material, post episode reflections and participant dialogues in relation to the different meanings an episode can have. All the data used is discussed and related to the theoretical project within the thesis.

How can an agent bootstrap up from a pixel-level representation to autonomously learn high-level states and actions using only domain general knowledge? This thesis attacks a piece of this problem and assumes that an agent has a set of continuous variables describing the environment and a set of continuous motor primitives, and poses a solution for the problem of how an agent can learn a set of useful states and effective higher-level actions through autonomous experience with the environment. There exist methods for learning models of the environment, and there also exist methods for planning. However, for autonomous learning, these methods have been used almost exclusively in discrete environments. This thesis proposes attacking the problem of learning high-level states and actions in continuous environments by using a qualitative representation to bridge the gap between continuous and discrete variable representations. In this approach, the agent begins with a broad discretization and initially can only tell if the value of each variable is increasing, decreasing, or remaining steady. The agent then simultaneously learns a qualitative representation (discretization) and a set of predictive models of the environment. The agent then converts these models into plans to form actions. The agent then uses those learned actions to explore the environment. The method is evaluated using a simulated robot with realistic physics. The robot is sitting at a table that contains one or two blocks, as well as other distractor objects that are out of reach. The agent autonomously explores the environment without being given a task. After learning, the agent is given various tasks to determine if it learned the necessary states and actions to complete them. The results show that the agent was able to use this method to autonomously learn to perform the tasks. / text

Researchers and companies are paying increasing attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and the reaction to them by consumers. But despite such corporate efforts and an expanding literature exploring consumers' response to CSR, it remains unclear how consumers perceive CSR and which "Gestalt" consumers have in mind when considering CSR. Moreover, academics and managers lack a tool for measuring consumers' perceptions of CSR. This research explores consumers' perceptions of CSR and develops a measurement model for them. Based on qualitative data from interviews with managers and consumers, a conceptualization of consumers' perceptions of CSR is developed. Subsequently, this model is tested and validated on three large quantitative data sets. The conceptualization and the measurement scale help companies assess consumers' perceptions of CSR relative to their performance. They also enable managers to identify shortcomings in CSR engagement and/or communication. Finally, the paper discusses implications for marketing practice and future research. (authors' abstract)

Child sexual abuse is a burning issue raising concern because of the statistics which indicate that one in five children are victims of some kind of abuse. The protective program, the “Underwear Rule” was launched by the European Council in order to inform and equip parents, caregivers and children towards this sensitive issue. The program is addressed to all European countries in the exact same form and content, with only differentiation the language. This study tries to examine theoretically and empirically the applicability of the “Underwear Rule” to Greek parents, in the sense that each country has its own cultural background and cast of mind, which differentiate the acceptance and the applicability of the Rule. This relates mainly to prior research of Kirana exploring Greek parents’ perspective towards sexual education, as well to Babatsiko’s research about developing national protective programs corresponding to local and cultural demands. An interview study has been carried out, focusing on parents’ point of view about the Underwear Rule. The analysis is based on the subjective experiences and thoughts of seven parents whose children are in the age-target group covered by the Underwear Rule. The parents’ interviews have been analyzed thematically. Overall this study argues that The Underwear Rule is a good protective program, but parents would like improvements and enrichment in order the burning topic of child sexual abuse to be covered more effectively

Defined as an awareness of suffering coupled with a willingness to do something to relieve suffering, compassion has recently received an incredible amount of attention in popular culture, social media, and academic and scientific research (Jinpa, 2015). Qualitative research is needed to investigate the experiences of adults learning to cultivate compassion. The present study adds to the body of research on compassion by investigating compassion cultivation with first person accounts, and by providing examples of somatic learning, or learning through the body. In this qualitative study, I investigate individuals' perceptions of the course Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT), developed at Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE). I explore three questions: 1) How do participants find CCT and why do they take the course? 2) How do participants describe the CCT course and their learning experiences? 3) How do participants describe the impact of CCT and integrate what they learned into their daily lives? I conducted 1-hour open-ended interviews with 18 CCT alumni and a qualitative analysis of interview transcripts to identify themes across the data. I identified four cases that exemplify elements of cultivating compassion, including: a case of depression relief, a case of increasing the capacity to stay, a case of dealing with self-criticism and a case of reducing empathy fatigue. I then organized findings across the entire data set into three categories according to my research questions; in each finding, I identified four themes and clustered participants' responses according to themes. Findings indicate that the 18 participants' reasons for taking CCT are diverse, including the desire to connect with others, curiosity about compassion and contemplative science, and the need for compassion in their personal and professional lives. All respondents reported CCT as a powerful and meaningful learning experience, describing the value of learning through the body, through meditation practices, and as a group. Participants attributed substantial positive changes to the course, citing improvements in their relationships to themselves and others, and increased awareness of their own mental and emotional states.