published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Educational Psychology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Educators are beginning to realize that the apparent lack of "motivation" observed in many students may be due to a poor self-concept. The benefits of a positive self-concept are apparent in many different areas of a child's education ranging from attendance and behavior to interpersonal relations. While numerous studies support the need for a positive self-concept, the majority of leadership and motivation programs currently in existence are designed for the adult market. The "ASPIRE!" program, designed by the researcher, has been conducted in a number of secondary schools and is apparently meeting the motivational needs of the students. But, no statistical data existed to support this. The present study was undertaken to determine if the "ASPIRE!" program had any effect on helping selected secondary school students to develop a more positive self-concept and become more "internalized" in their locus-of-control. 240 students were involved in the study consisting of an equal number of male and female subjects as well as Anglo and Mexican-American subjects. The variables in this study were self-concept as measured by the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale and the Osgood Semantic Differential Scale, and locus-of-control as measured by the Rotter Locus-of-Control Scale. Demographic data was also collected. Significant differences were discovered on the measures of self-concept and locus-of-control for all subjects. It was found that the self-concept improved for all groups of students at the completion of the "ASPIRE!" program. The subjects also became more "internalized" in their locus-of-control. It was also discovered that there were no differences between males and females and Anglos and Mexican-Americans in developing a more positive self-concept. However, it was found that high socioeconomic status students and first or second born children or children from small families tended to have a more positive self-concept and be more internalized in their locus of control than other students. The findings suggest that the "ASPIRE!" program may be a useful tool in helping to improve the self-concept of junior and senior high school students.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that an ordinal relationship of adjustment and self concept existed among four groups of adolescent girls: (1) non institutionalized girls enrolled in a public high school; (2) institutionalized delinquent girls participating in a kinship system and homosexual behavior; (3) institutionalized delinquent girls participating in a kinship system, but not homosexual behavior; and (4) institutionalized delinquent girls not participating in a kinship system. Kinship involvement was defined as that role behavior accepted and exhibited by the girls representative of husband, wife, brother, sister, or other family member. Six sub hypotheses were presupposed and tested; three were related to adjustment and three, to self concept.One hundred twenty subjects participated in the study, thirty subjects being in each group. The ninety institutionalized girls were stratified on the basis of their behavior as judged by two of three persons: the institutional staff psychologist, the girls' assigned counselor, and the girls' housemother. The total sample ranged between fourteen and eighteen years of age.Adjustment was measured by the Total Adjustment score from the California Test of Personality, Secondary Level and the General Maladjustment and Personality Integration scores from the Tennessee Self Concept Scale, Clinical and Research Form (TSCS). The Total Positive score from the TSCS was utilized as the measure of self concept. All girls were tested during the spring of 1970.Data collected from the instruments were initially treated by a one-way analysis of variance. Utilizing the data computed, an analysis of orthogonal comparisons was applied to test the six hypotheses. An F test significant at the .05 level indicated rejection of the null hypotheses.Two of the six hypotheses were statistically significant. They indicated the noninstitutionalized adolescents were significantly better adjusted and evidenced higher self concepts than any of the institutionalized groups. No statistically significant differences were found among the institutionalized groups in adjustment or self concepts on the basis of the remaining hypotheses.In an effort to detect trends in the data and to determine which groups contributed most to the significant differences found, an analysis of orthogonal comparisons was applied to the subscales constituting the Total Positive and Total Adjustment scores. This was followed by the Scheffe test applied to those significant differences observed. A trend was observed for the institutionalized group participating in a kinship system and homosexual behavior to be significantly different in adjustment from the remaining institutionalized groups. No trend was observed on those subscales measuring self concept. Through further analysis, the kinship members involved in homosexual behavior were found to be significantly less adjusted than the remaining delinquent.groups. The kinship members not participating in homosexual behavior were found to evidence lower self concepts than any of the remaining delinquent groups.On the basis of the hypotheses tested, the general research hypothesis was only partially confirmed. An ordinal relationship among the four groups tested existed only as far as the differentiation between the non institutionalized and institutionalized groups were concerned. No ordinal relationship among the institutionalized groups was found to exist. Based on the post analysis findings, a reversed trend from the expected direction relative to adjustment was observed. The homosexually involved kinship members were significantly less adjusted than the other delinquent groups. No conclusion was drawn from the data relative to self concept. Suggestions for future research emanating from the results of the analyses conducted were offered.

There is no abstract available for this dissertation.

In creating my work I use bold, bright colors and fundamental shapes and patterns. My images reflect how I view the world and genuinely express my imagination, feelings, and thinking. Working this way allows me to apply a symbolic face to personal concerns, beliefs, fears, ideologies, and philosophies. I see a world where life and art blend to create images of triumph and tragedy, joy and pain, or growth and change. My ideas have grown from the desire to understand myself as a woman, as a Christian, and as a unique individual. Dealing with personal questions, I explore the varying relationships between popular culture and self-perception. Another source for my work are philosophical themes, along with political and social commentary. I want my messages to not only touch the heart and soul of people but convey a message that they will remember.

Mirror image stimulation (MIS) is reported to elicit persistent social responses in monkeys, in contrast to most humans and great apes, who exhibit self-recognition. The abnormal features of a mirror image as a social stimulus have generally been ignored in monkey reports, whereas research with other animals has identified some important differences between MIS and other stimuli. Differential agitation during separations in peer-reared and mirror-reared infant stumptail monkeys suggests that even the limited opportunity for physical contact with a reflection renders it a sub- optimal attachment-eliciting stimulus. Mirror-rearing appeared to only slightly diminish responsiveness to pictures of conspecifics, compared to peer-rearing. Animals reared with no form of social stimulation exhibited less responsiveness to pictorial stimuli, and engaged in more abnormal and self-directed behaviours than mirror- or peer-reared animals, indicating that a mirror can at least partly compensate for the absence of a true social companion during rearing. The extent of abnormal behaviours in alone-reared stumptail monkeys appears to be considerably less than that reported in rhesus monkeys. The mirror was reacted to as a social partner by mirror-reared animals, and correlations between behaviours, and between measures of a single behaviour, were similar in mirror- and peer-reared groups. However, a live cagemate received 50% more social behaviour than did a reflection, with play behaviours producing group differences in rate, duration, bout length, and variability. MIS or a peer behind Perspex reduced separation agitation in pair-reared but not group-reared infants. In comparison to a peer behind Perspex, MIS received positive responses in mirror-reared and pair-reared animals, whereas group-reared animals reacted more ambivalently to the abnormal animal represented in the mirror. Those mirror-reared animals who received additional experience of a peer behind Perspex during rearing reduced responding to the mirror, whereas responsiveness in mirror-only-reared animals persisted. Peer-only-reared animals were also highly responsive to MIS, possibly due to novelty. Alone-reared subjects, when tested in a familiar setting, were the most responsive of all the subjects to MIS. None of the subjects exhibited self-recognition, even although some had approximately 3,500 hours of experience of a triple mirror image effect, and an additional six months group mirror experience. Some results were obtained with small numbers of subjects, so caution is required in interpretation.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Philosophy), 2017 / This study seeks to investigate whether torture is fundamentally wrong and, if so, whether its status is a question of morality or of that which is prior to morality. According to the thought of Jacques Derrida, the play of différance makes it syntactically impossible for any term to signify meaning outside of the interplay of mutually opposing signifiers. Since Deontological and Utilitarian moral principles unfold within this differential play, they are syntactically incapable of signifying a concrete and constant moral status for torture. Even though différance is the syntactic possibility of being, I argue that there is a second and distinct category of experience. Drawing on the writing of Emmanuel Levinas and Bernard Lonergan, I contend that this category is our subjectivity as self-awareness, which always-already unfolds anterior to, as the primordial possibility of, and as otherwise than both différance and being. As an irreducibility constitutive of each person, the alterity of such self-awareness constitutes an absolute and singular relation of otherness between persons; this proximity functions as an absolute obligation and, in fact, constitutes ethics itself. Each subject therefore becomes an individual living ethicality. On this basis, it is always-already incoherent to identify any subject with any idea that we might have of him/her, including the idea of a person as a means to our ends. Since torture intentionally violates the living ethicality of the victim, it follows that torture must be ethically unjustifiable by primordial necessity under any and all possible circumstances. The ethical unjustifiability of torture therefore precedes all moral structures, although I suggest that torture may become permissible under certain practical circumstances, if saving human lives is at stake. Keywords: Torture; self-awareness; alterity; living ethicality; otherwise than being; différance; Emmanuel Levinas; Jacques Derrida; Bernard Lonergan. / GR2018

Thesis (M.Ed.(Educational Psychology)--University of the Witwatersrand, 1990.