Education Commons^™

Job Stress Moderates The Effects Of A Mindfulness Intervention On Early Childhood Teachers' Emotion Dysregulation, Emily J. Starr

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Addressing the current crisis of early childhood (EC) teacher turnover is essential for supporting the development of young children. Teacher attrition remains a concern for policymakers globally, and in the United States, early childhood teachers frequently cite job stress and lack of support as reasons for leaving the field. For over 40 years, researchers who study childcare have been concerned about the consequences of work-related stressors. Even if these stressors do not result in turnover, EC teachers’ psychological well-being may be impacted, leading to increased emotion regulation difficulties and more frequent negative teacher-child interactions. Young children’s emotional development is significantly …

The Influence Of Proximal And Distal Familial Factors On Preschool Children's Inhibitory Control And Social Emotional Skills, Amy Encinger

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Children in the United States experience higher rates of poverty than any other age group, including elderly adults and the poverty rate of young children (0-5 years) is considerably higher than that of older children (Proctor et al., 2016). There is an extensive body of research examining familial socioeconomic status (SES) and the influence on the skills and behaviors of young children; however, common key indicators of family SES may not fully depict the ways in which children living in poverty/low-income homes are influenced by economic disadvantage. The focus of the current study is to explore the ways in which …

The Role Of Faculty In Fostering Psychosocial Wellbeing Among University Students, Kelley Wick

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The transition to college represents a major life event, and successfully navigating this shift has implications for students’ psychosocial wellbeing. While there is ample support for the idea that social relationships can facilitate student wellbeing during the transition to college, there is limited understanding of the unique role faculty may play in supporting students. The aim of this study was to determine the relation of faculty support to student wellbeing and self-efficacy, independent of peer support and student level of stress. Additionally, the primary questions were to examine whether self-efficacy mediated the relation of faculty support to student wellbeing, and …

A Longitudinal Examination Of Bedtime Routines And Sleep In Toddlers, Amanda Prokasky

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Ample research has examined the impacts of sufficient and high-quality sleep on children’s health, development, and well-being (Chen, Beydoun, & Wang, 2008; Gregory & Sadeh, 2012; Touchette et al., 2009), yet less research has focused on the factors that contribute to sufficient and high-quality sleep in early childhood. The bedtime routine is one environmental influence on children’s sleep that has received little attention in the literature base and therefore is the focus of the current study.

In a sample of 399 30-month old toddlers studied over the course of one year, three aims were investigated: the within-age consistency of the …

The Impact Of Distractor Duration On Spatial Working Memory In Early Childhood, Brian Keiser

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Spatial attention appears to act as a rehearsal mechanism in spatial working memory (Awh, 1999; Awh & Jonides, 2001) as adults have trouble maintaining spatial information in their mind when required to shift their attention to locations unrelated to the to-be-retained location. Futhermore, adults increase intentional directed attention to the to-be remembered location when warned ahead of time that distractors will be present during the memory delay (Awh, 2003). Our initial study looked at the presence of a distractor and its impacts on spatial working memory in children. We found that the distractor did impact three and six year old …

Examining The Effect Of Medical Risk, Parental Stress, And Self-Efficacy On Parent Behaviors And The Home Environment Of Premature Children, Kathryn Woods

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between medical risk and parenting stress and the extent to which parental self-efficacy moderates the relationship between medical risk, parenting stress, specific parenting behaviors (i.e., parental responsivity, acceptance of child, parental involvement) and the home environment (i.e., organization of environment, learning materials, variety in experience, and IT-HOME total score) of premature children. Participants included 72 parent-child dyads with premature children between the ages of 7 and 35 months corrected age. Measures included parent reports of medical risk, stress, self-efficacy, and the IT-HOME. Results show that medical risk was not significantly …

Prosocial Behavior As A Protective Factor For Children's Peer Victimization, Emily R. Griese

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study was to investigate the protective role prosocial behaviors may serve for victimized children. Although a significant portion of the victimization literature focuses on the association of victimization with negative outcomes, research findings suggest a need to examine the heterogeneity also apparent in children’s responses to victimization. By beginning to examine the variability in children’s responses to peer victimization, researchers can gain insight into the dynamic process of peer victimization and begin to define what factors might distinguish children who show resiliency to negative effects from victimization from those who do not. Research examining the protective …

The Embodied Mind In Early Development: Sitting Postural Control And Visual Attention In Infants With Typical Development And Infants With Delays, Regina T. Harbourne

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As infants learn to sit between the ages of 5 and 8 months, they undergo many changes in their bodies as well as in their minds, creating conditions for the emergence of skills that allow greater interaction with their environment. The present study focused on the interaction of developing postural control in sitting with cognition, exemplifying the concept of the embodied mind. Look time, or the time an infant looks at an object, served as a proxy for the construct of cognitive processing. Three experiments examined developmental changes in sitting postural control and looking. The first experiment examined archival data …

Exploring The Complexities Of Learning Motivation In Pre-Service Teacher Education Students: A Grounded Theory Approach, Kristin K. Grosskopf

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This qualitative, grounded-theory study investigated learning motivation differences among three achievement groupings of undergraduate students enrolled in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Nine students participated in in-depth interviews that explored their reasons for pursuing their degree, their learning experiences in a university setting, their perceptions about meaningful learning experiences, and the nature of factors that both enhance and challenge their learning motivation. Participant responses conveyed strategies and conditions that were coded and analyzed, and a theoretical model was developed describing causal conditions that underlie students’ motivation to learn, phenomena that arose from those …