Studies which examine conflict have identified coping strategies as potent variables for the social competencies of children. To extend these ideas to more specific indicators of social adjustment this study examined emotional impairments and coping strategies of victims and bullies. Inventories measuring emotional impairment: depression, anger, anxiety and self-concept were completed by 103 primary school children aged 9-11. A questionnaire measured five coping strategies: problem solving, social support seeking, distancing, externalising and internalising. Bully and victim nominations identified almost 5 times as many male bullies compared to girls therefore findings which specifically relate to bullying refer to boys only. Emotional impairments were identified as predictory variables for bullying and victimisation particularly for boys where anger was identified as moderating the relationship between externalising and bullying behaviour while anxiety was identified as a mediating variable between problem solving and victimisation. Findings here also suggest that all children learn how to cope with negative emotions through their experiences with adults. For bullies internalisation as a result of poor experiences during problem solving with adults makes problem solving with peers less likely.

Cognitive Work analysis (CWA) as an analytical approach for examining complex socio-technical systems has shown success in modeling the work of single operators. The CWA approach allows room for social and team interactions, but a more explicit analysis of team aspects can reveal more information for systems design. CWA techniques and models do not yet provide sufficient guidance on identifying shared constraints, team strategies, or social competencies of team players. In this thesis, I explore whether a team approach to CWA can yield more information than a typical CWA. Team CWA techniques and models emerge and extend from theories and models of teamwork, past attempts to model teams with CWA, and the results of two sets of observational studies. The potential benefits of using Team CWA models in domains with strong team collaboration are demonstrated through the results of a two-week observation at the Labour and Delivery Department of The Ottawa Hospital and a fifteen-week observation at the IBM Ottawa Software Group.

Cognitive Work analysis (CWA) as an analytical approach for examining complex socio-technical systems has shown success in modeling the work of single operators. The CWA approach allows room for social and team interactions, but a more explicit analysis of team aspects can reveal more information for systems design. CWA techniques and models do not yet provide sufficient guidance on identifying shared constraints, team strategies, or social competencies of team players. In this thesis, I explore whether a team approach to CWA can yield more information than a typical CWA. Team CWA techniques and models emerge and extend from theories and models of teamwork, past attempts to model teams with CWA, and the results of two sets of observational studies. The potential benefits of using Team CWA models in domains with strong team collaboration are demonstrated through the results of a two-week observation at the Labour and Delivery Department of The Ottawa Hospital and a fifteen-week observation at the IBM Ottawa Software Group.

In an increasingly globalized world and with rapid advancement in technology, there is a need to grapple more intently with social implications of engineering and technology. In the engineering community, these trends direct us to more critically consider how engineering and technology affect humanity and to interact effectively in diverse populations. Empathy, an ability that is central to the process of understanding and considering others, has been recognized as a valuable competency in the education of engineers. In engineering education specifically, several studies have pursued definition of empathy in the engineering context and its importance in engineering curriculum. Studies suggest that service learning is a useful pedagogical approach for supporting students in the development of social competencies, including empathy. However, it is not clear how this development happens. In this dissertation, I sought to understand engineering students' experiences in a service-learning context to learn the ways in which empathy emerged in their descriptions and the elements of participants' experiences that shaped their empathy development. My participants were fourteen engineering students from two institutions, a small private university and a large public university, with both groups involved in at least one-semester of a service-learning course. I describe my phenomenological approach to this investigation and share my findings. Notably, I found eight main themes in my investigation of the role of empathy within the service-learning experiences described namely: changing perspective about others, having a sense of responsibility to others, keeping an open mind, inquiring of stakeholders, seeing others' points of view, understanding others' situations, being able to adjust goals and compromise and recognizing and/or welcoming difference. Additionally, I found both elements of participants' experiences designed into the course and those that were unprecedented relevant in shaping their empathy development. I also discuss the implications of these findings for engineering education and practice. / Doctor of Philosophy / In an increasingly globalized world and with rapid advancement in technology, there is a need to think more intentionally about social implications of engineering and technology. These trends make is necessary for the engineering education to incorporate critical consideration of how engineering and technology affect humanity and how to interact effectively in diverse populations. Empathy, an ability that is central to the process of understanding and considering others, has been recognized as a valuable competency in the education of engineers. Studies suggest that service learning is a useful pedagogical approach for supporting students in the development of social competencies like empathy. My aim in this dissertation was to understand engineering students' experiences in a service-learning context to learn the ways in which their descriptions reveal empathy and the elements within their context that shaped empathy development. My participants are fourteen engineering students from two institutions, a small private university and a large public university, with both groups involved in at least one-semester of a service-learning course. Having explored students' experiences, I discuss key findings about how and within which contexts empathy came to play in these experiences. There are many different ways that empathy can play a role within students' experiences in a service-learning context and many facets of an experience help draw out more empathic practices. In this dissertation, I discuss implications of these findings for engineering education and practice.

Die vorliegende Arbeit ist Teil eines Lehrerfortbildungsprogramms zur Förderung von Selbstwirksamkeit und Selbstbestimmung bei Schülern. Im Fokus dieser Arbeit steht die Untersuchung der Wirksamkeit eines Teilmoduls dieses Projekts, das auf die Förderung sozialer Kompetenzen und des Klassenklimas abzielte. Als zentrale Interventionsstrategien wurden kooperatives Lernen sowie Maßnahmen der Klimaförderung (soziale Regeln, Klimadiagnose) im Rahmen von Workshops an Lehrerkollegien vermittelt. Über einen Zeitraum von drei Jahren setzten die Lehrkräfte diese Maßnahmen in ihrem regulären Unterricht um und dokumentierten ihre Aktivitäten in Logbüchern. Zur Untersuchung der Wirksamkeit der Intervention wurden in der vorliegenden Arbeit 364 Schüler aus acht Interventionsschulen und 198 Schüler aus fünf Kontrollschulen über drei Messzeitpunkte im Hinblick auf die Entwicklung sozialer Kompetenzen und Kompetenzüberzeugungen sowie auf das Klimaerleben untersucht. Der Vergleich der Schülergruppen zeigte in der Interventionsgruppe eine weniger starke Verschlechterung in der Lehrer-Schüler-Beziehung als ein Merkmal des Klassenklimas. Unter Berücksichtigung des von den Lehrern dokumentierten Implementationsausmaßes wurden weitere Effekte der Intervention deutlich. Ein verstärkter Einsatz der Maßnahmen ging mit günstigeren Entwicklungen der sozialen Kompetenzüberzeugungen, der Schüler-Schüler-Beziehungen sowie der Lehrer-Schüler-Beziehungen einher. Die Befunde zeigen die Wichtigkeit der Erfassung von Informationen zur Implementation im Rahmen von Interventionsstudien auf, da Analysen ohne die Berücksichtigung von Implementationsinformationen zu ungenauen Schlussfolgerungen über die Wirksamkeit der Intervention führen können. Gleichzeitig machen die Befunde deutlich, wie anspruchsvoll eine zuverlässige Erfassung der Implementation im Hinblick auf die Konzeption und Umsetzung ist. Zukünftige Forschung sollte auf diesen Aspekt der Evaluation besonderes Augenmerk legen. / A teacher training program was developed to improve students’ self efficacy and self determination that consists out of three units. In this work one of the units concerning social competence and the classroom climate is focused. The core intervention strategies of this unit were cooperative learning as well as strategies to improve the classroom climate (e.g. social rules, climate diagnostics). These strategies were taught in workshops attended by the teacher stuff of the participating schools. The teachers implemented the strategies in their regular classrooms and documented the implementation fidelity by a logbook. The intervention as well as the implementation was evaluated over a period of three years. The treatment efficacy was tested in a longitudinal study (3 assessment points) at 364 students from 8 schools with intervention and 198 students from 5 schools without intervention serving as control group. The targeted criteria in this evaluation were the development of social competence, social competence beliefs and class climate. Comparing the two groups the teacher-student-relationship decreased less drastically in the schools with intervention compared to the control group. Taking the teachers’ documentation of the implementation fidelity into account results indicate that more frequent implementations of the strategies led to better development of the students’ social competence, the teacher-student-relationship as well as student-student-relationship. Therefore, the results impressively demonstrate the relevance to assess the implementation fidelity in intervention trials. Data on implementation fidelity (exposure, adherence) enables more valid conclusions on the intervention’s effectiveness. However, the project revealed difficulties to develop and to apply instruments to assess implementation fidelity, Therefore, in future research instruments for the evaluation of the implementation process have to be focused as well.

Online social networking along with computer mediated communication (CMC) has become a crucial part of teenagers' everyday life. Today it is vital to be a member of online peer community in order to stay in touch and maintain friendships. For teenagers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) social networks are undoubtedly a way to create and maintain friendships without the difficulties that come along with the diagnosis. Autism spectrum disorders affect mainly social competencies, communication skills and imagination. The thesis is focusing on how social networking could help to improve social competencies of teenagers with ASD. In order to examine this topic it is important to focus on the connection between offline and online relationships that teenagers with ASD maintain in their peer group. Therefore a quantitative measurement of loneliness and social dissatisfaction was used in combination with semi-structured interviews covering the topics of relationship with peers, using social networks and internet in general. Results of an ASD group were then compared with a group of a neurotypical control group. The comparison between the groups showed that ASD group does not have a great interest in participating in social networking sites, except for online messengers. That could be due to a smaller...

In this research the use of the Lions-Quest programme “Skills for Adolescence“ at an intermediate secondary school level is examined qualitatively. It is investigated how pupils at a German intermediate secondary school perceive the social skills training and how that training affects the social competencies of the pupils. It is also explored if the pupils can relate their acquired competencies with their values and beliefs. Based on the empirical-theological praxis cycle, the planning, carrying out and the results of thirteen one-to-one interviews and three group interviews are presented. Five types of adolescents can be distinguished in terms of knowing and applying social skills as result of different grounded theory coding strategies: the power-conscious, the autonomous, the ambivalent, the self-confident and the competent. This study wants to contribute to a better evaluation of the implementation of social skills programmes at schools and particularly in religious education. / Practical Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)

Critical and enduring questions for teachers are whose ethics or what ethics they should be teaching in schools and how, given the pluralism of the wider society. The focus of this study is to establish whether it is possible to identify a common, non-relativist basis for what should be taught in Ethics Education and then to consider how such an approach might best be undertaken. This task involves finding some basis for ethics that we all have reason to accept and requires an understanding of the nature of moral development and learning. An interdisciplinary approach has been undertaken to investigate whether it is possible to find a common basis for ethics and to determine what constitutes the nature of moral development and learning. In the first instance, this interdisciplinary approach has been used to investigate whether there is justification for believing that as human beings we share certain characteristics and patterns of behaviour, or a common humanity, the features of which might suggest a common basis for ethics that we all have reason to accept. This investigation examines empirical findings and theoretical conclusions relating to the sociobiological, psychosocial and sociocultural dimensions of human beings to support the notion that we share a common humanity which is characterised by a number of features. These features include the deeply reciprocal nature of our relationships with one another and the sociocultural nature of our moral learnings. Moreover, we are a highly interdependent social species whose survival and well-being are dependent not only on cooperation with one another but also with sustaining a satisfactory ecological balance with other forms of life within dynamic, natural systems. This interdependence suggests that the norm of having care for one another and our world is one that we all have reason to accept. This norm, in turn, suggests a telos, or set of goals for ethics, that involve the creation of a just and caring society. However, in order to realise such a telos for ethics it is necessary to provide some specific theoretical and practical guidelines related to deciding what constitutes the nature and scope of care within specific contexts. Accordingly, the study undertakes a brief review of contemporary approaches to ethics to evaluate the extent to which these provide a means for realising the ethical form of life based in the norm of having care for one another and our world. This review suggests that feminist theories of care provide the most promising basis for delineating what it is to care for one another and our world. However, it is also acknowledged that there are a number of limitations with existing theories of care. This study, therefore, undertakes a conceptual analysis of the nature and scope of care and outlines an extended ethic of care. This theorising recognises that care for others is characterised by the dimensions of responsiveness, the exercise of responsible action and is refined and amended by critical reflection. It is acknowledged that justice is intrinsic to the nature of care as is the exercise of a range of virtues. The scope of our caring responsibilities is seen to extend to all others in the global community, as well as all other species, while also requiring care for self, and care for particular others for whom we may have special familial or work-related responsibilities. The evaluation of what constitutes caring practice is also discussed and it is acknowledged that caring practices must meet minimum requirements in terms of respect for basic human rights and should contribute to the welfare and well-being of the recipients of care. This specification of the nature and scope of care, in conjunction with a consideration of the nature of moral learning and development, provides a basis from which to develop a philosophical foundation as well as a set of aims and objectives for Ethics Education. It is acknowledged that students need to develop a wide range of cognitive, emotional and social competencies in order to understand what it means to care for self and others within specific socio-cultural contexts and also to develop the sense of empathetic connection and affiliation to others that translates moral decisions into responsible moral action. It is hoped that the study provides the basis for beginning a dialogue in schools that involves students, teachers, families and members of the wider community about what it means to live the ethical form of life and how education itself might promote broadly such a form of life.

In this research the use of the Lions-Quest programme “Skills for Adolescence“ at an intermediate secondary school level is examined qualitatively. It is investigated how pupils at a German intermediate secondary school perceive the social skills training and how that training affects the social competencies of the pupils. It is also explored if the pupils can relate their acquired competencies with their values and beliefs. Based on the empirical-theological praxis cycle, the planning, carrying out and the results of thirteen one-to-one interviews and three group interviews are presented. Five types of adolescents can be distinguished in terms of knowing and applying social skills as result of different grounded theory coding strategies: the power-conscious, the autonomous, the ambivalent, the self-confident and the competent. This study wants to contribute to a better evaluation of the implementation of social skills programmes at schools and particularly in religious education. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M. Th. (Practical Theology)