abstract: Prior research has provided evidence to suggest that veterans exhibit unique assets that benefit them in engineering education and engineering industry. However, there is little evidence to determine whether their assets are due to military service or other demographic factors such as age, maturity, or gender. The aim of this study is to discover, better understand, and disseminate the unique assets that veterans gained through military service and continue to employ as engineering students or professional engineers. This strength-based thematic analysis investigated the semi-structured narrative interviews of 18 military veterans who are now engineering students or professionals in engineering industry. Using the Funds of Knowledge framework, veterans’ Funds of Knowledge were identified and analyzed for emergent themes. Participants exhibited 10 unique veterans’ Funds of Knowledge. Utilizing analytical memos, repeated reflection, and iterative analysis, two overarching themes emerged, Effective Teaming in Engineering and Adapting to Overcome Challenges. Additionally, a niche concept of Identity Crafting was explored using the unique narratives of two participants. This study provides empirical evidence of military veterans experientially learning valuable assets in engineering from their military service. A better understanding of the veterans’ Funds of Knowledge presented in this study provides valuable opportunities for their utilization in engineering education and engineering industry. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Engineering 2020

Optimal learning environments designs that move beyond traditional pedagogical considerations to include Social Justice concepts can be a challenge for educators in academic and practice contexts. The workshop promotes learning environments designs reflective of inclusiveness and members’ psychosocial safety. Inclusiveness reflects sensitivity to learner diversity and promotive of psychosocial safety, a term coined by the workshop facilitator. Psychological safety is operationalized as the offering and receiving of respect despite and because of one’s differences, a knowing uniqueness will be honored as will beliefs and course content understanding. Psychosocial safety flourishes in strengths-based, trauma-informed atmospheres. Additionally addressed are barriers to designing optimal learning environments, including solution strategies. Experiential Learning Theory informs the workshop; experiential learning devices (e.g., reflexive activities, group discussions) encourage defining and refining workshop skills and strategies. The sensitive and culturally bound nature of social justice suggests use of scaffolding of strategies by educators to aid integration of learning.

This Degree Project studies health promotion and strengths-based approaches in an Indigenous Australian context. The study focuses on an Indigenous Australian organisation called the Deadly Choices and their health-related promotion. The study is informed by postcolonial theory as well as cultural identity theory, and it was conducted through a textual analysis by analysing Deadly Choices’ Facebook posts and Twitter tweets both qualitatively and quantitatively. The study set out to determine what kind of features and what style language could contribute to the notion of a strengths-based approach and thus could empower Indigenous people to become change agents themselves.  The aim of the study was to understand if there are certain repetitive, identifiable features that construct the basis for a strengths-based approach and thus contribute to the matters of empowerment and decolonising health promotion in the context of Deadly Choices. In total 151 samples were analysed. I was able to conclude that Deadly Choices uses a strengths-based approach to an extent, but they tend to focus on only the resilience approach rather than the more prominent sociocultural approach.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has typically been treated with a deficits-based response while most research has ignored any intelligence differences between the subtypes, despite differing symptomology. This quantitative study explored whether or not a distinct pattern of intelligences existed within each of the subtypes or presentations of ADHD: inattentive (IT), hyperactive (HT), and combined (CT). Using Gardner's multiple intelligences theory, data were collected via an online, self-administered survey from a sample of 132 participants, over 18 years of age, with IT, HT, and CT ADHD. The goal was to identify the most predominant of 8 different strengths or intelligences. Predominant intelligence types were measured through the completion of the online Multiple Intelligences Developmental Assessment Scale (MIDAS). Discriminant function analysis was used to interpret differences and combinations among predictors through identification of interdependency and pattern delineation. Study results failed to identify a distinct pattern of a relationship between the types of intelligence and ADHD subtypes. Further research is needed in the area of identifying the strengths of individuals diagnosed with ADHD in an effort to shift treatment and intervention responses to a more strengths-based perspective, possibly impacting individual, academic, and social success for those with ADHD.

This study aimed at examining if a strengths-based intervention implemented by two coordination teams in Surahammar and Hallstahammar has a positive effect on the wellbeing and work capacity of participants with complex needs such as mental and physical disabilities. As a direct result of citizens with complex needs having problems getting gainful employment the two teams were formed to help people who has not yet been helped by other previous interventions. Due to the studied group commonly facing several mental and physical disabilities the teams were constructed to use a strengths-based solutions-focused approach for their interventions. During a one-year intervention period the participants actively participated in strengths-based interventions consisting of solutions-focused activities, group activities, individual coaching and on-site job training. The research method used had a mixed methods design using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Data were gathered with the sense of coherence questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. When measured, using the instruments, results showed that participants wellbeing as well as their work capacity increased. In the discussion it is suggested that further research is needed as a small sample size and participant dropout limit the possibility to generalize the findings to a broader context.

Alarming K-12 nationwide teacher attrition statistics have led reform efforts to focus on teacher retention (Olsen & Anderson, 2007), especially in urban schools where teacher burnout and attrition are high (Darling-Hammond, 1998). It was not until recently, however, that teacher resiliency, a strengths based framework (Henderson & Milstein, 2003), was viewed as an alternate lens of reform in achieving higher teacher retention. This study utilized a Likert survey to quantify if 284 elementary teachers in sixteen, public urban elementary schools in two urban school districts in southern California agree or disagree with the six most significant school factors linked to teacher resiliency. The six school factors known as collegiality/ collaboration, professional development, leadership, shared power, commitment to students, and teacher efficacy were identified by synthesizing the current literature on teacher resiliency and retention. The two most significant predictors of teacher resiliency from the literature, as found by multiple regression analyses, were commitment and values and shared power. This study also investigated whether resilient elementary teachers in urban schools self-reported any additional school factors linked to teacher resiliency, not originally identified in the literature. The significant additional school factors found in this study linked to resiliency were urban school dynamics, intrinsic motivation, and community.

Recent studies have reported that African American couples in the military are less likely to divorce than their civilian counterparts. This dissertation was designed to document the experiences of African American military couples in order to understand the challenges they face while serving in the armed forces and the strategies they have used to maintain their marriages. A grounded theory approach was utilized to produce 12 main themes that categorize experiences of both the individual and the couple within the context of their respective military branch. Photo-elicitation was incorporated into semi-structured interviews with 10 couples to identify what they consider to be the important aspects of their marriage, the ways in which their relationships were impacted by the demands of duty, and their perspectives on the role that race plays in an institution that has been characterized as relatively race-neutral.

This study uses selected data from a qualitative study by Ney, Stoltz and Maloney (2013) who explored family experiences of voice and participation in child protection family group conferences in British Columbia, Canada. A family group conference is a decision-making process founded on strengths-based philosophies that encourages collaborative and empowering relationships between child protection workers and client families. Traditionally, relationships between these workers and client families in child protection are situated within an environment founded on problem-based perspectives with child protection workers positioned as experts. This study explores the perspectives of child protection workers and their client families about their experiences with a family group conference, focusing on areas of dissonance between strengths- and problem-based perspectives that are assessed by analyzing interview transcripts. Purposeful extreme case sampling was conducted to select three cases from the primary study that represented both positive and negative family experiences. Inductive and deductive thematic analyses were conducted on interview transcripts of nine participants. Findings from the thematic analyses as well as between-case, within-case and within-participant comparisons revealed an underlying dissonance in two of the three cases in that the workers endorsed the strengths-based philosophies of family group conferencing as well as – and perhaps unknowingly - the problem-based philosophies inherent in child protection practice. The families from these cases experienced the family group conference in contradiction to its strengths-based philosophies. The results point to possible connections between dissonance in practice, worker worldview and family experience. Recommendations for further research and for child protection workers to be more reflective and aware of worldviews are discussed. / Graduate / 0452 / 0630 / wtm@uvic.ca

The secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and young people have been significant, including impacts on education, young people’s social lives, physical activity and mental health, as well as increased abuse. These impacts risk running into the long term, and in order to mitigate this, a better understanding of how children and young people’s lives have changed and the role they can play in driving solutions is needed.   UNICEF’s global Communication for Development (C4D) team has commenced a collaborative project with partners, the Children & Young People Participatory Research and Communication for Change Initiative, to better understand the experiences and perspectives of children and young people in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to what extent they are able to be involved in developing solutions. As part of this initiative, desk reviews were carried out to establish the landscape of children and young people’s experience of issues in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their participation in these issues.   This paper serves to narrow down the focus of the subsequent research to be undertaken by UNICEF and partners as part of the initiative, which will produce new information on children and young people’s experiences and participation in the context of COVID-19, and help build a model for children and young people’s participation to inform future UNICEF Communication for Development programmes. Through interviews and focus groups with UNICEF staff in the 11 participating country offices, this paper produces a set of recommendations for specific areas of research in terms of the key issues to be further investigated regarding children and young people’s participation in the context of COVID-19. It also demonstrates how using strengths-based and intersectional approaches to the research can bring subaltern youth voices in particular to the fore.

In 2016, over 47,000 youths in the state of Florida were served by the Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) probation services. While on probation, these youths were exposed to 2 different, and potentially conflicting disciplinary management systems. Youth are under the authority of juvenile probation officers (JPOs), who are bound to a consequence-based management approach. This approach is guided by negative reinforcement. The youths are simultaneously engaged with staff from diversion programs, many of which are strengths-based and guided by positive reinforcement. According to the ecosystemic complexity theory of conflict, exposure to incongruent systems can have negative effects such as confusion and ineffectiveness. By applying a hermeneutic phenomenological approach, I explored the responses to this convergence point from the perspective of 9 strengths-based school counseling staff members who supervise the youth that navigate between these 2 different behavior modification systems. This sample of 9 staff members also work directly with JPOs. Data were collected using iterative versions of semistructured interviews and analyzed using content analysis. Findings revealed that conflict did exist at the convergence point, and that cohesion, on varying levels, also existed, and that solutions to the philosophical incompatibility have emerged. This research contributes to social change by illuminating the possible conflict inherent in implementing incongruent approaches to behavior management, which may inform policymakers regarding program management for juvenile justice.