This dissertation attempts to explore the nature of a particular food consumption pattern using a number of different deviance theories in order to outline the career path of vegetarianism. Using semi-structured interviews with 45 practicing vegetarians from two regions of the United States, the career path of the vegetarians was developed around David Matza's (1969) theory of becoming deviant. Within each stage of Matza's classic work, more specific theories were applied to explain the friction between vegetarianism and the more socially-accepted practice of meat eating within the United States. The framework of the stages includes the affinity for, affiliation with, and signification of vegetarian ideology and practice. Each stage within the theory is also a stage in the development of the vegetarian identity. The more specific theories utilized to explain phenomena within each particular stage attempt to show a progression from initially being interested in the ideals and practice of vegetarianism to becoming and verbalizing as a mature, practicing vegetarian. Finally, the vegetarians interviewed were asked to give the prognosis for the future of vegetarianism. / Ph. D.

Little is known about how students learn when using computer-assisted modular curriculum, if such curriculum truly promotes self-regulated learning, or if the cognitive principles of teaching and learning are integrated throughout the design of the modules. The purpose of this study was to investigate the phenomenon of student cognitive responses to learning with computer-assisted modular curriculum, based on the Phases and Subprocesses of Self-Regulation. This triangulation mixed methods case study connected qualitative and quantitative data derived from curriculum content analysis, student course evaluations, participant observations, and interviews. Thirty-six middle school students enrolled in an agricultural education course designed with computer-assisted modules served as the case study group. Data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed, leading to the emergence of six common themes. Overall, the design and content of the computer-assisted modules lack integral principles of teaching and learning. Participants prefer a mix of traditional and computer-assisted instruction because of the variety of instruction, opportunities for social learning, and the hands-on activities. When integrated properly, computer-assisted modules do not inhibit interactions among the teacher and the students. The activities associated with the modules do not encourage self-regulatory processes. However, self-regulation is innate and students engage in self-regulation at different levels during the learning experience. Despite intrinsic interest or value for a particular topic, participants felt it was always important to pay attention in school. Thus, when learning with computer-assisted modules, students engage in social learning with their peers and desire hands-on learning experiences, with or without the modules. / Master of Science in Life Sciences

A current national concern is the low financial literacy of college students. College students are not receiving the financial knowledge necessary to be successful in today's fast paced economy. Due to an increasingly complex marketplace, college students need greater knowledge about their personal finances and the economy. The financial decisions made early in life create habits difficult to break and affect students' ability to become financially secure adults. Most recent studies show average personal financial scores declining with average scores close to a failing grade. The College Student Financial Literacy Survey (CSFLS) was created to collect data specifically for this study. The purpose of this descriptive, cross-sectional, on-line survey design study is three fold. First, I investigated the personal financial literacy (knowledge, attitudes and behavior) of a sample of undergraduate and graduate college students using the personal characteristics of gender, class rank, and socioeconomic status (SES). Second, I examined parental and peer influences on the level of financial literacy of college students. Finally, I examined how college students' financial knowledge and attitudes correlated with their financial behavior. The study found that financial knowledge, attitude, and behavior scores were low but that they significantly increased each year from freshman to masters. Further, students who were financially influenced by their parents had higher financial knowledge, attitude, and behavior scores. Finally, students with higher financial knowledge also had higher financial attitude and behavior scores. / Master of Science

Social Learning in the workplace can encompass many things. In social environments, adults are constantly communicating with their colleagues and actually participating in an exchange of shared knowledge. As virtual learning continues to become more prominent in the workplace in an effort to help adults work and collaborate, learners will need to continually generate a network of communities to engage in practice. This study utilized the theoretical framework of Wenger's social theory of learning as a lens for identifying experiences contributing to social learning in the workplace and to what extent technological tools contributes to those collaborative learning opportunities. Qualitative methods were utilized for this study which generated themes central to "learning through collaboration", and "learning through system processes". There were also findings that related to the use of technological tools and specifically related to how they contribute to opportunities for learning. Extension Professionals including Extension Agents and State Specialists were recruited for participation. / Ph. D. / Social Learning in the workplace can encompass many things. In social environments, adults are constantly communicating with their colleagues and actually participating in an exchange of shared knowledge. As virtual learning continues to become more prominent in the workplace in an effort to help adults work and collaborate, learners will need to continually generate a network of communities to engage in practice. This study utilized the theoretical framework of Wenger’s social theory of learning as a lens for identifying experiences contributing to social learning in the workplace and to what extent technological tools contributes to those collaborative learning opportunities. Qualitative methods were utilized for this study which generated themes central to “learning through collaboration”, and “learning through system processes”. There were also findings that related to the use of technological tools and specifically related to how they contribute to opportunities for learning. Extension Professionals including Extension Agents and State Specialists were recruited for participation.

This dissertation studies three models of sequential social learning, each of which has implications for the impact of the internet and social media on political discourse. I take three features of online political discussion, and consider in what ways they interfere with or assist learning.In Chapter 1, I consider agents who engage in motivated reasoning, which is a belief-formation procedure in which agents trade-off a desire to form accurate beliefs against a desire to hold ideologically congenial beliefs. Taking a model of motivated reasoning in which agents can reject social signals that provide too strong evidence against their preferred state, I analyse under which conditions we can expect asymptotic consensus, where all agents choose the same action, and learning, in which Bayesian agents choose the correct state with probability 1. I find that learning requires much more connected observation networks than is the case with Bayesian agents. Furthermore, I find that increasing the precision of agents’ private signals can actually break consensus, providing an explanation for the advance of factual polarisation despite the greater access to information that the internet provides. In Chapter 2, I evalute the importance of timidity. In the presence of agents who prefer not to be caught in error publicly, and can choose to keep their views to themselves given this, insufficiently confident individuals may choose not to participate in online debate. Studying social learning in this setting, I discover an unravelling mechanism by which non-partisan agents drop out of online political discourse. This leads to an exaggerated online presence for partisans, which can cause even more Bayesian agents to drop out. I consider the possibility of introducing partially anonymous commenting, how this could prevent such unravelling, and what restrictions on such commenting would be desirable. In Chapter 3, my focus moves on to considering rational inattention, and how this interacts with the glut of information the internet has produced. I set out a model that incorporates the costly observation of private and social information, and derive conditions under which we should expect learning to obtain despite these costs. I find that expanding access to cheap information can actually damage learning: giving all agents Blackwell-preferred signals or cheaper observations of all their neighbors can reduce the asymptotic probability with which they match the state. Furthermore, the highly connected networks social media produces can generate a public good problem in investigate journalism, damaging the ‘information ecosystem’ further still.

Gratitude is an emotion with a number of positive benefits for both individuals and organizations; however, very little research has addressed the role of leaders in influencing the gratitude of those they lead. Organizational leaders can increase the gratitude levels of the leaders who report to them, who then can influence the gratitude of their own subordinates. This study addresses how the emotion of gratitude can trickle-down through two levels of an organizational hierarchy. There are two potential theories to support such trickle-down effects of gratitude: a behavioral explanation in social learning theory and an affective explanation in gratitude as an emotional contagion. Social learning theory can explain how gratitude trickles via the influence role models (i.e., leaders) have on the behavior of those below them. In addition, gratitude as an emotional contagion can unconsciously increase feelings of gratitude after experiencing gratitude expressions and these feelings of gratitude should increase the spread of gratitude to others. An experimental study design consisting of students acting as supervisors and subordinates evaluating email manipulations was used to test the hypotheses. The results from this study support the idea that gratitude can spread from upper-level leaders to lower levels in an organizational hierarchy. In addition, results suggest that this relationship is positively mediated by role modeling effects supporting the behavioral explanation of trickle-down effects. However, results did not support emotional contagion theory as a mechanism that explains trickle-down effects. Such findings offer important implications as leaders can play a significant role in spreading the positive effects of gratitude throughout their organization.

Learning allows animals to adapt to new and changing environments. Animals can learn through their own personal experiences, known as asocial or individual learning. Asocial learning produces reliable information, but it can be energetically costly and risky for the learner. So instead of learning on their own, animals can choose to learn by observing and copying the behaviours and choices of others, known as social learning. However, because individuals that socially learn are gaining second-hand information, this form of learning is often less reliable. Animals are expected to be flexible in their use of individual versus social information, and to use whatever strategy provides the greatest benefits. Not all animals or individuals have been found to employ a flexible strategy, and research shows that many have a clear preference for one type of learning over the other. This preference for social or individual learning can be influenced by their personality, their sex and even an individual’s reproductive status. Another factor that could influence learning is an individual’s rank, but this topic has received little attention. In my M.SC. research, I studied how social rank influences an individual’s performance in an asocial and in a social learning task using the cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher. Using this species I also tested if social rank influences information use, by providing conflicting individual and social information to the fish. I found that subordinate N. pulcher were faster at a reversal learning (suppressing a previously learned rule and learning a new one), but there were no clear differences between the social ranks in associative learning or in social learning. When presented with conflicting individual and social information, both subordinate and dominant N. pulcher relied on individual information first. However, dominant N. pulcher were more likely to also use the conflicting social information in addition to their individual information. Taken together these results help us better understand cognitive differences between social ranks, and shed light on how information and behaviours in social groups can be learned and spread. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

The present study aimed at describing and analysing stakeholders' perception of the role of the school in providing moral education in a multicultural society. The relevance of moral education today in the context of the Mauritian society cannot be underscored given the widespread concern about the collapse of family structures and the demise of family role models as agents of moral education. The adoption of a materialistic philosophy of life and the increasingly influential role of the media have contributed to the disintegration of the moral fibre of society. Using a qualitative approach, the understanding of various categories of stakeholders, namely teachers, students, parents and school administrators, regarding the issue of morality, moral education and the role of the school have been investigated through a survey. The sample consisted of 33 teachers, 30 students and 9 school administrators and 10 parents. The data was collected through four focus group discussions with students and teachers respectively and a series of individual in depth interviews with parents and school administrators. The data collection period extended over eight months. The conceptual framework used in the study was based on the social learning model developed by Bandura (1991:91). The notion of modelling or vicarious learning as a form of social learning is particularly relevant in the case of moral learning and moral socialisation in the context of the school. The findings reveal a general consensus among adults of the need for schools to seriously reconsider its function as a moral educator. Their perceptions of the ways in which it ought to take place focus primarily on the use of role modelling and dialogue within the school set up. Adults also seem to believe that some form of direct moral instruction could be considered if the strategy used is more student-centred and based on discussions about case studies. The students, however, perceive indirect moral instruction through the hidden curriculum to be more effective in helping them to understand and internalise moral values. Chief among their concern is the role of the teacher and his or her professionalism as well as communication skills. In the light of the findings, guidelines have been developed to implement a moral education programme at secondary school level. / Educational Studies / D.Ed.(Psychology of Education)

<p>Syftet var att undersöka fyra hälsovägledares uppfattningar och strategier för att motivera individer till viktminskning. Avsikten var även att utreda vad de bygger sina uppfattningar och strategier på, samt att jämföra deras strategier med befintliga teorier om beteendeförändring såsom Motiverande samtal, Stages of change, Social learning theory och Health belief model. Teorierna valdes då de belyser hur en beteendeförändring kan gå till samt att de varit fram­gångsrika i tidigare forskning. Studien är kvalitativ och genomfördes med ostrukturerade intervjuer där respondenterna valdes genom ett bekvämlighetsurval. De fyra hälsovägledarna arbetade med att motivera individer till viktnedgång, alla hade utbildning inom hälso­främjande arbete som varierade mellan en vecka till flera år. Resultatet visade på att hälso­vägledarna använder sig av befintliga teorier samt av strategier som bygger på deras utbildning och egna erfarenheter. De förändrar sin arbetsmetod efterhand som de får ny kunskap samt då de reflekterar över sitt arbetssätt, vilket tyder på att de är reflekterande praktiker.</p>

Syftet var att undersöka fyra hälsovägledares uppfattningar och strategier för att motivera individer till viktminskning. Avsikten var även att utreda vad de bygger sina uppfattningar och strategier på, samt att jämföra deras strategier med befintliga teorier om beteendeförändring såsom Motiverande samtal, Stages of change, Social learning theory och Health belief model. Teorierna valdes då de belyser hur en beteendeförändring kan gå till samt att de varit fram­gångsrika i tidigare forskning. Studien är kvalitativ och genomfördes med ostrukturerade intervjuer där respondenterna valdes genom ett bekvämlighetsurval. De fyra hälsovägledarna arbetade med att motivera individer till viktnedgång, alla hade utbildning inom hälso­främjande arbete som varierade mellan en vecka till flera år. Resultatet visade på att hälso­vägledarna använder sig av befintliga teorier samt av strategier som bygger på deras utbildning och egna erfarenheter. De förändrar sin arbetsmetod efterhand som de får ny kunskap samt då de reflekterar över sitt arbetssätt, vilket tyder på att de är reflekterande praktiker.