The novel Bifocal, a fictional young adult novel that examines the racist backlash that occurs at a high school after a male Muslim student is arrested on terrorism charges, was published in 2007 and has received wide critical acclaim for its portrayal of issues of racism. Working from an anti-racist framework, this research interviews two teachers who have used the novel in their classrooms, and considers the value and limitations of the book as an anti-racist teaching tool. Through discussions about specific themes in the novel and its overall presentation of racism, I argue that, while Bifocal presents some useful interventions, it also reflects a simplistic and individualistic perspective on racism and how racism can be addressed. I also examine the ways that Bifocal – and young adult literature in general – can be read in order to encourage more critical discussions about systems of racism and privilege.

This study uses institutional ethnography (IE) to address the question of how young women, considered to be “at risk” youth, make decisions about their working lives. Based on interviews with young women and program workers in housing, employment, young mothers’ and girls’ programs, field observations, and document analysis at Gen-Y (pseudonym for a women’s community-based social services agency), young women’s provisioning experiences are used to critique current program and policy models that feature notions of choice and risk. Provisioning is a concept that captures a wide range of work and work-related activities that young women perform for themselves and people they feel responsible for. IE is applied to understand how institutional processes and practices give rise to the conditions under which young women participants at Gen-Y make career and life decisions.

The goal of this thesis is to first give an overview of the modern approach, using the paper of A. Vershik and A. Okounkov, to inductively parametrizing all irreducible representations of the symmetric groups. This theory is then used to answer questions concerning to central projections in the group algebra. We index units first by partitions, and then by so called standard tableaux. We also present a new result and discuss future research exploring the connections between this theory and Quantum Information.

The purpose of the study was to determine whether tenth grade adolescents can exhibit the three goals of bibliotherapy, identification, catharsis, and insight, thus achieving self-discovery, through reading contemporary adolescent novels and discussing them with their English teacher on an individualistic basis. Six subjects, four girls and two boys, were selected from two tenth grade English classes at Anderson High School, Anderson, Indiana. The students were given two literary attitude surveys: "Questionnaire: Responses to Feminine Characters in Literature" and "Literary Transfer and Interest in Reading Literature," as pre-tests and post-tests. The six subjects, selected on the basis of average or better grades as well as demonstrated maturity and responsibility, read' Confessions of a Teenage Baboon by Paul Zindel, Don't Look and it Won't Hurt by Richard Peck, The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katharine Paterson, My Darling, My Hamburger by Paul Zindel, The Pistachio Prescription by Paula Danziger, and That Was Then, This Is Now by S. E. Hinton. The students discussed each book in a specific order in a private, tape-recorded session with their English teacher, the researcher, who asked predetermined questions over each book. After the tape-recorded discussions were transcribed, the responses were identified as examples of identification (ID), catharsis (C), and insight (IN).Findings1. Identification with fictional characters can lead to insights by adolescents not only about the characters but also about their own personal lives.2. The number of insights did not increase as more books were read.3. In this study the girls appeared to achieve more identification and to gain more insights than the boys.4. Catharsis is the one goal of bibliotherapy less frequently experienced, but the more an adolescent becomes emotionally involved in a book, the more likely he is to experience catharsis.5. Adolescents can achieve self-discovery if they are given the opportunity to discuss fictional characters and situations as related to their own concerns with teachers who can take the time to do so.Conclusions1. Bibliotherapy on an individual basis with adolescent novels not only has emotional and personal benefits but also academic value in that students will respond more readily and responsibly to literature within the realm of their own experience than to the traditional literature of classroom anthologies.2. Emotional maturity and self-discovery can occur if educators are willing to individualize and humanize education.3. Bibliotherapy with adolescent novels can engender feelings of mutual trust and respect between teachers and their students, who need the opportunity to discuss their feelings and problems with adults whom they perceive care about them.4. The individualized approach to bibliotherapy can provide more thorough and genuine responses, leading to significant conclusions.

No description available.

This study explored the development of musical self-efficacy and musical self-image in 35 young adolescents choral musicians engaged in a vocal improvisation program. A mixed methods methodology was employed. Quantitative measures were conducted through a survey instrument developed for this study based on a five-fold theoretical structure of efficacy development. Using a sequential explanatory design, quantitative data was followed by interviews, written reflections, and participant and teacher/researcher field notes. Participants were engaged in daily vocal improvisation activities for 16 weeks. Four transitions points in the study demarcated data collection segments. Transitions consisted of two participant observations and two improvisation concert performances. Findings indicate significant increases in two efficacy source factors: mastery experience and peer vicarious experience. Vocal improvisation facilitated mastery experience perceptions of vocal development through vocal range expansion. Interactive peer vicarious experiences were found to be an important source of efficacy information and an essential feature of musical self-efficacy development. The musical self-efficacy journey was found to be one of ebb and flow as participants struggled to negotiate the musical and social challenges of vocal improvisation. Findings from this study suggest differences in the ways girls and boys negotiated the musical and social challenges of vocal improvisation. Despite the inherent struggles of participants to negotiate these challenges, vocal improvisation provided a rich environment for the study of musical self-efficacy and musical self-image development. Musical self-image was revealed through multifaceted perceptions of musical/creative growth, participant self-regulatory actions and the values participants ascribed to the improvisation experience. Study findings include teacher/researcher reflections on the experience of teaching vocal improvisation in a middle school choral classroom. These reflections include an analysis of teacher identity tensions related to the creative development of students and the performance expectations of the teacher and the musical community.

Since the first successful measurements of stellar trigonometric parallax in the 1830s, the study of nearby stars has focused on the highest proper motion stars (mu > 0.18"/yr). Those high proper motion stars have formed the backbone of the last 150 years of study of the Solar Neighborhood and the composition of the Galaxy. Statistically speaking, though, there is a population of stars that will have low proper motions when their space motions have been projected onto the sky. At the same time, over the last twenty years, populations of relatively young stars (less than ~100 Myr), most of them with low proper motions, have been revealed near (<100 >pc) the Sun. This dissertation is the result of two related projects: A photometric search for nearby (<25 >pc) southern-hemisphere M dwarf stars with low proper motions (mu < 0.18"/yr), and a search for nearby (

Today is the era of millennial generation, many researchers in social sciences claim that Millennials are well-educated, confident, achieving, taking advantage of opportunities and so forth. Nowadays, the world is full of changes and uncertainty the whole nation needs talents of entrepreneurs more than ever before. The challenge for us is that we only know entrepreneurs when they appear themselves. Therefore, there is a great amount of potential entrepreneurs who keep in the background, while others take the best from developing their enterprises. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate in entrepreneurial potential of present millennial generation and to understand about potential, external and environment characteristics which contribute our interviewees to become entrepreneurs. The research is conducted by applying both qualitative and quantitative methodology. The face to face interview is conducted with Swedish young entrepreneurs whereas web-based questionnaire survey is conducted with Master students in Sweden by applying FACETS Framework (the facets of entrepreneur: identifying entrepreneurial potential). Regarding application of literature review, conceptual framework, empirical data and discussion of findings part are concluded.

This investigation explored the contextual factors affecting young consumers’ attitudes and their intentions of green purchase behavior in the area of consumer behavior. This study seeks to understand young consumers’ green purchase intentions based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). At the same time, this study also intends to detect variables that influence young consumers’ intentions of buying green products.  In this thesis, a quantitative approach was adopted. Using a sample of 282 young people, a survey was developed and conducted in Umeå University, Sweden. Results indicate that parental influence is the top predictor among all the variables we studied. From the correlation analyses; we can see that top three predictors are important for understanding purchase intentions of young consumers.  Influence of contextual and background factors –parents, peer, and environmental knowledge – clearly played an important role in influencing young consumers’ purchase intentions of buying green products. To the end, a proposed model is developed to understand green purchase intentions of young consumers. Implications for marketers are also discussed in this study.

Background: Across North America, smoking prevalence is highest among young adults (YAs). Understanding the cessation behaviours of YAs is critical given their higher smoking rates; however, there is a paucity of prospective studies on YA cessation from a population-based sample of smokers. Objectives: This study characterizes younger and older adult smokers as well as identifies the rate of making a quit attempt (QA) and smoking cessation among a representative sample of younger and older adult smokers. Guided by the Social Cognitive Theory (SCT), this study also examines the interpersonal predictors of moving toward smoking cessation among YAs. Methods: Self-report data on 592 YA and 2777 older adult smokers were compiled from the Ontario Tobacco Survey baseline and six-month follow-up interviews. Smoking cessation behaviour was measured as an ordinal variable: made no attempt to quit, made a QA that lasted for less than 30 days, and successfully quit for 30 days or longer. Design-based analyses examined the characteristics of young and older adult smokers. Making a QA and smoking cessation during a six-month follow-up period were modeled according to the SCT constructs while accounting for the complex study design. Results: Young adult smokers were more likely to be men with lower levels of addiction but greater self-efficacy and an intention to quit than their older counterparts. While YA smokers were more likely to make a QA than their older counterparts (25% vs. 17%, respectively), they were no more likely to succeed (14% vs. 10%, respectively). Having an intention to quit smoking and having made two or more lifetime number of QAs predicted making a QA; the use of smoking cessation aids or resources and having knowledge that stop smoking medications make quitting a lot easier also contributed to making an attempt to quit. Self-efficacy, use of smoking cessation aids or resources and having someone to support one‘s QA were positive predictors of quitting whereas having high levels of addiction was a negative predictor of cessation. Conclusions: Young and older adults are distinct types of smokers with different personal and smoking characteristics. Different factors predicted making a QA and smoking cessation among YAs. Smoking cessation interventions for YAs should provide social support and skills to build and maintain self-efficacy to quit. It is critical to ensure YA smokers have effective smoking cessation aids and services that are easily accessible and appropriate for this population. Future research is needed to understand long-term smoking cessation and relapse in this vulnerable population.