Developmental Psychology Commons^™

Profiles Of Family Engagement In Head Start, Elizabeth Jane Tremaine

Dissertations and Theses

Families of young children are active participants in their child's transition to kindergarten. Head Start is designed to facilitate families' engagement in their child's learning experiences (Head Start Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Framework, 2018). This study explores family engagement in Head Start, its changes across the transition into kindergarten, and its relation to children's development of social-emotional and executive function skills.

The current study addresses limitations of previous research by relying on family perspectives of family engagement, approaching family engagement as a developmental concept, and taking a person-centered analytic approach that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of family engagement. This …

Emotion-Focused Teaching And Preschool Children's Social, Emotional, And Self-Regulatory Development, Brielle Emily Petit

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the literature on supportive mechanisms for children's development of social, emotional, and self-regulatory competencies, the current study examines the contributions of emotion-focused teaching in preschool classrooms. Emotion-focused teaching is a framework used within preschool classrooms that encompasses three domains of teaching that support children's development of emotion skills—how teachers display their own emotions or emotion-related behaviors and actions (modeling), the ways they respond to children's emotional expressions (responding), and how instruction is used to inform children about emotions and related processes (instructing). More frequent emotion-focused teaching has been shown to be a …

What Kinds Of Experiences And Activities Contribute To College Students' Sense Of Purpose? A Mixed-Methods Study, Katlyn Rochelle Viers

Dissertations and Theses

For many young people, attending college is a core marker of the transition to emerging adulthood. Some students thrive in college while others become lost, confused, or seem to be just marking their time. Some researchers have hypothesized that one thing that can help students take advantage of their college experience is if they are firmly anchored in their own life goals and sense of purpose. The primary goal of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the role of a sense of purpose in college students' development, including not only its potential benefits to their academic functioning and …

Exploring Underrepresented Stem Undergraduates' Stem Identity Development: The Role Of Social Partners, Sandy Cerda-Lezama

Dissertations and Theses

This dissertation employs a three-study qualitative design to investigate the role of mentorship and social interaction in the identity development of racial minority undergraduate students in STEM disciplines. Grounded in Communities of Practice theory, this research amplifies student narratives to elucidate the relational and contextual factors that inform science identity, belonging, competence, and persistence in higher education. Study One draws upon interview data from fifteen participants in the BUILD program to analyze the role of recognition, particularly from expert scientists--in students' science identity development. This study aims to understand how racial and ethnic identity intersections influence the processes and impact …

Capturing Processes Of Influence In Students' Social Interactions: Examining A Two-Part Strategy To Detect Patterns Of Reinforcement In Continuous Real-Time Observations In The Classroom, James Lamar Delaney Iii

Dissertations and Theses

Students' active engagement in learning activities is presumed to be influenced by their interactions with social partners in the classroom setting, like teachers and peers. For instance, statements of support or affirmation from teachers or peer group members are assumed to encourage positive behaviors for struggling students, while statements of disapproval are assumed to discourage and undermine active classroom behaviors. Extant research examining these processes typically tries to demonstrate significant interaction patterns or show influence over time by way of indirect behavioral measures, such as survey-based assessments. It is an open question whether these processes of influence can be directly …

Optimizing Boys' Motivation Over The Transition To Middle School: A Pattern-Centered Approach To Identifying Boys' Profiles Of Engagement And The Interpersonal Resources Important In Supporting Optimal Engagement Of Boys Across Sixth Grade, Brandy Anne Brennan

Dissertations and Theses

There are normative declines in student engagement during the transition to middle school, and studies indicate that these challenges may be especially problematic for boys. Given the limited empirical evidence offering ways to support boys' motivation, the main goal of this study was to understand ways we can help boys reach their full potential over the transition to middle school by examining the interpersonal resources from parents, teachers, and peers that sustain boys' optimal engagement across the first year of middle school. Using data from an existing longitudinal dataset of 191 sixth-grade boys (N = 366; 52% male) in …

Youth Experiences Of Participation, Inclusion, And Influence Within A Youth-Serving Organization Implementing Participatory Processes, Rhen M. Miles

Dissertations and Theses

The youth development field has undergone shifts and reconstructions in how youth are conceived, impacting the approaches of youth-serving programs attempting to facilitate learning, growth, and engagement. Evolving views inform how policymakers, funders, and youth-serving agencies perceive and relate with youth. In turn, these dynamics influence how youth learn to think about themselves, others, and the world. Dominant discourse regarding youth development has been shifting from a deficit-based to an asset-based lens, with the proliferation of Positive Youth Development (PYD) frameworks, which seek to cultivate internal strengths and positive developmental outcomes rather than just prevent negative behaviors and outcomes. Despite …

Dynamic Social Ecologies Of Students' Motivational Resilience: The Complex Relationship Between Family, Teacher, And Peer Support, And Students' Academic Coping And Reengagement, Kristen Elizabeth Raine

Dissertations and Theses

Drawing upon self-determination theory (SDT) based models of motivational resilience, the following dissertation contains three studies that expand upon the current literature by investigating how processes of motivational resilience, or children's general capacity to handle the everyday academic stressors they encounter at school, are connected to the complex social ecologies created by the intersecting contexts of school and home. Study 1 examined whether family motivational support predicted increases in student reengagement through its effect on subsequent levels of students' self-system processes of relatedness, competence, and autonomy in a sample of 590 early adolescents from an urban middle school in the …

Faculty Mentors' Influence On Latino/A/X Stem Undergraduates' Stem Identity Development, Sandy Cerda-Lezama

Dissertations and Theses

Despite Latino/a/x college student attendance rising substantially over the past decades, their graduation rates do not match the increased admission rates. In addition, Latino/a/x students are considerably under-represented in STEM. However, research suggests that when these students are encouraged by social partners to have meaningful participation and given resources such as mentoring, this eases the barriers they experience. The current study utilized interviews with 11 Latino/a/x STEM undergraduates (aged 18-29) to understand how faculty mentors influence their STEM identity development. Students shared answers about how faculty promoted and inhibited their STEM identity development through conversations about their sense of competence, …

Character Strengths In Applied Behavior Analysis And The Treatment Of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Pilot Study, Michael G. Johansen

Dissertations and Theses

Diagnoses of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have continued to rise. Individuals diagnosed with ASD may display a range of deficits in social communication, behaviors, and symptoms that limit everyday functioning. Among the treatments for ASD, Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is typically the earliest and longest intervention individuals with ASD are exposed to. Concerns have been raised over ABA being a compliance-based therapy which potentially produces prompt reliance, reinforcement dependency, and a lack of intrinsic motivation. In an attempt to address these concerns, this study aimed to assess the potential benefits of including the concept of character strengths from the field …

Finding The Dream Job Or Finding Another Dream: Work Volition And Goal Reengagement As Predictors Of Work-Fulfillment, Wellbeing And Calling, Julia Price-Lee

Dissertations and Theses

Work is prominent in adults’ lives, and their opportunity to choose the work they prefer predicts key work and wellbeing outcomes (WWO), especially their sense of meaning in work and wellbeing. Work choice opportunities also influence a sense of calling. However, finding and keeping preferred work is often difficult when adults are also navigating finances, marginalizing systems, and non-work priorities. Work volition (WV) measures perceived freedom regarding work options and predicts the quality of work that people find and their wellbeing within and beyond work. Foundational theoretical models suggested that having safe and reliable work, known as decent work (DW), …

Main, Mediated, And Moderated Effects Of Participating In An After-School Social And Emotional Learning Program On Young Children's Development Of Social-Emotional Skills, Amy L. Cordier

Dissertations and Theses

Young children's social and emotional skills (SE skills) are highly predictive of the ease with which they transition to kindergarten as well as their success in the K-12 school system and in life after graduation. Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often enter kindergarten with less well-developed SE skills and lag their peers throughout their school careers. Studies of social-emotional learning (SEL) programs indicate that these programs are successful in teaching SE skills, both in school and in after-school programs. However, less is known about the mechanisms of changes through which SEL programs improve children's SE skills and for …

Integrated Stem Learning Activity: Effect On Student Engagement And Learning, Leslie Deitrich Sauder

Dissertations and Theses

Student engagement in math and science courses decreases starting in middle school and continues throughout high school (Museus et al., 2011). This lack of engagement results in students taking only the required math and science coursework and not advanced coursework that would help prepare them for future careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. Integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) learning activities may be used to promote student engagement and learning. This experimental design study was conducted with students in grades 3-5 in one rural mid-sized school district in the upper mid-west. Student engagement was analyzed using a …

Attachment Network Structures And Adult Mental Health, Junnan Tian

Dissertations and Theses

Close relationships are essential to the mental health and adaptation of adults. The study of close relationships and mental health has concentrated on dyadic interactions in different types of relationships, such as parents, best friends, and romantic partners. Much less attention has focused on how a network of close relationships informs mental health. This study concentrated on a network of five close relationships in relation to adult mental health outcomes. Four network metrics, which are composition (who), strength (number of attachment figures), morphology (hierarchical or nonhierarchical), and physical proximity were examined as predictors of adult mental health outcomes (i.e., depression, …

The Impact Of Perceived Social Support On Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Elizabeth Eng

Dissertations and Theses

Individuals who have experienced repeated and interpersonal trauma often develop symptoms of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), along with additional features relating to disturbances in self-organization (DSO), which is now known as Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD). CPTSD has been seen to be associated with adverse outcomes such as somatic symptoms, attachment insecurity, and overall lower life satisfaction (Karatzias et al., 2018; Kuhar & Zager Kocjan 2022; Maercker et al, 2022). Due to these additional features relating to DSO, CPTSD has been identified as distinct from PTSD, and so it has been important to investigate these unique symptoms. One such symptom …

How Adults Use Reddit To Cope With Being Children Of Divorce, Tamera A. Joseph

Dissertations and Theses

How do adults on social media describe their experiences as a child of divorce? The purpose of this study was to explore how posts on the social media platform Reddit are used by people to reflect on their parents’ divorce when they were younger. Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. The platform allows users to post content such as links, posts, images, and discussion boards. Posts on the website are organized by subjects called “subreddits”. In these subreddits, users discuss topics from news, philosophy, entertainment, and life experiences. Existing public data of archived and …

Growing Up Ghanaian: The Well-Being Of Ghanaian Children In The United States And Ghana, Akua Bemma Opoku

Dissertations and Theses

Children’s subjective well-being is a child’s judgment of their well-being. Subjective well- being can have positive and negative indicators. Positive indicators include but are not limited to safety, feeling happy, and feeling excited. Negative indicators include but are not limited to lack of safety, lack of confidence, and sadness. Children’s ethnic background and their relation to their ethnic background may influence their subjective well-being. Research focusing on ethnic identity and child well-being has found positive associations. Research has also found a relationship between the context of family, school, peers, religion, community, and ethnic identity. This comparative phenomenological study aimed to …

Do Motives Matter? The Role Of Motivation In Shaping The Impact Of Mindfulness Training On Teachers' Psychological Distress And Wellbeing, Cristi N. Pinela

Dissertations and Theses

Research on the impacts of mindfulness trainings (MTs) on teachers' psychological health and wellbeing suggests that MTs may be especially well-suited to preparing teachers for the unique demands of the profession. However, few studies have investigated whether different teachers benefit in different ways from mindfulness training, although there is some evidence that mindfulness training may yield dissociable benefits and preliminary evidence of differential effects of MTs on subgroup of teachers. The paucity of empirical evidence may be partly attributed to the paucity of theoretical frameworks that identify possible mechanisms for differential effects. The present study stepped into this gap by …

African American English As A Predictor Of Ethnic And Ethnolinguistic Identity In Adolescence, Giahna L. Glasco

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s purposes were to provide support for the Social identity theory of African American English (Vietze & Glasco, 2022) and the meanings African American English (AAE) speakers assign to their dialect. The study was primarily based on Tajfel’s (1979) social identity theory that proposes individuals derive a sense of self from group membership. The qualitative analyses examined ethnic and language group memberships. Ethnic identity development (Phinney, 1992), and ethnolinguistic identity theories (Giles and Johnson, 1987) guided narrative and content analyses of Kiese Laymon’s memoir, Heavy: An American Memoir (Laymon, 2018). The sample included 21 African American English conversations …

Sustaining Boys' Motivation Over The Transition To Middle School: Can Interpersonal Resources Protect Boys From Engagement Declines Across Sixth Grade?, Brandy Anne Brennan

Dissertations and Theses

Recent research has highlighted the challenges boys face in school. Boys are overrepresented on indicators of negative academic outcomes, such as detention, suspension, and dropout, as well as underperformance on state and national tests. Moreover, these effects may be long lasting: Compared to females, male students are less likely to graduate high school, enroll in college, and complete a college degree, and they may be particularly vulnerable in middle school. As students enter middle school, their motivation and engagement normatively decline, and these losses may be especially problematic for boys. Nevertheless, research documents the importance of close relationships with parents, …

Parenting And Children's Academic Coping As A Dynamic System: Feedforward, Feedback, And Mediators Of Changes Across The School Year, Kristen Elizabeth Raine

Dissertations and Theses

Using a motivational framework based in self-determination theory, the present study investigated the dynamic system between parenting and children's coping, defined as the ways they handle the everyday difficulties they encounter in school, using a sample of 1,020 students in grades three through six drawn from a larger cohort-sequential study. Three overarching research questions were examined using multiple regression that concerned 1) feedforward effects from parents' initial provision of motivational support (i.e., involvement, structure, and autonomy support) to changes in children's academic coping across the school year, 2) feedback effects from children's initial coping to changes in the same parenting …

"Like I Was An Actual Researcher": Participation And Identity Trajectories Of Underrepresented Minority And First-Generation Stem Students In Research Training Communities Of Practice, Jennifer Lynn Lindwall

Dissertations and Theses

Although calls for a more diverse workforce in biomedical fields have been widespread, racial and ethnic gaps in biomedical degree attainment remain. Contextualist perspectives seek to understand persistent STEM inequities by examining person-in-context experiences and how systemic factors filter into students' proximal contexts shaping their participation and science identity trajectories. Research training communities of practice aim to offer underrepresented minority and first-generation students support, guidance, and opportunities to learn the practices of science and construct their science identity. However, many students still choose to leave these programs. There is limited research on these students' science identity construction process and their …

Does Social Media Promote Disordered Eating?, Carly Feldstein

Dissertations and Theses

Hispanic people are the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the U.S. with a total of 18.5% of the U.S population being of Hispanic descent (United States Census Bureau, 2020). Although eating disorders (ED), particularly those involving binge eating, comprise a significant health concern, EDs are often overlooked in the Hispanic culture (Higgins et al., 2016; Opara & Santos, 2019). Hispanic individuals have comparable rates of anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, and an even higher rate of binge eating disorders compared to non- Hispanic (NH) White individuals (Higgins et al., 2016). Within Hispanic adults, the lifetime prevalence of EDs is higher …

Timing Of Sexual Minority Identity Developmental Milestones And Well-Being Among Three Generations Of Gay Men, Joseph R. Hillesheim

Dissertations and Theses

Social and political changes during recent decades have contributed to a more accepting environment for sexual minorities (non-heterosexual individuals) in the U.S., but recent evidence suggests that these shifts may create a “developmental collision” for younger generations (Meyer et al., 2021; Russell & Fish, 2019). Younger generations of sexual minorities “come out” and reach other sexual identity milestones earlier than older generations, and earlier timing of sexual identity development may contribute to increased vulnerability to stigma. The present study aimed to contribute to limited research on the relationship between the timing of sexual identity development milestones and well-being among three …

Detecting Reinforcement Patterns In The Stream Of Naturalistic Observations Of Social Interactions, James Lamar Delaney 3rd

Dissertations and Theses

How do consequences affect future behaviors in real-world social interactions? The term positive reinforcer refers to those consequences that are associated with an increase in probability of an antecedent behavior (Skinner, 1938). To explore whether reinforcement occurs under naturally occuring conditions, many studies use sequential analysis methods to detect contingency patterns (see Quera & Bakeman, 1998). This study argues that these methods do not look at behavior change following putative reinforcers, and thus, are not sufficient for declaring reinforcement effects arising in naturally occuring interactions, according to the Skinner's (1938) operational definition of reinforcers.

This study presents the conceptual and …

Does Resilience Moderate The Impact Of Children’S Experiences Of Racial And Ethnic Discrimination On Internalizing Problems?, Dahlia Abbas

Dissertations and Theses

This study’s objectives were to investigate how children’s experiences of discrimination impact the severity of their internalizing symptoms, and whether the relation between discrimination and internalizing symptom severity is moderated by resilience. It was predicted that children who had experienced more discrimination would have more severe internalizing symptoms, especially when they have low levels of resilience. Children [N=20; Mean (SD) age= 11.83 (2.50)] receiving low-cost music lessons in northern Manhattan were recruited into a larger study examining how learning music affects cognitive and emotional development. Children were interviewed in-person about experiences of discrimination because of their race/ethnicity using the Perceptions …

The Role Of Teacher Autonomy Support Across The Transition To Middle School: Its Components, Reach, And Developmental Effects, Julia Sara Dancis

Dissertations and Theses

Building upon self-determination theory, this study sought to ascertain the reach of teacher autonomy support beyond its well-documented impact on student autonomy and engagement to include student competence and relatedness, as well as to parse apart specific teacher behaviors that comprise autonomy support (i.e., respect, choice, relevance, coercion) and their unique influences on the multiple motivational outcomes, surrounding the transition to middle school. These questions were examined using information from 224 fifth graders, 339 sixth graders, and 345 seventh graders attending elementary and middle schools in a predominantly Caucasian working and middle class school district.

Regression analyses, predicting change in …

Pathways To Kindergarten Growth: Synthesizing Theories Of The Kindergarten Transition To Support Children's Development, Rita Yelverton

Dissertations and Theses

The transition into Kindergarten is a critical time for children's development--children's patterns of academic development and engagement with school often start in Kindergarten and persist throughout their academic careers. This is a developmental period that is marked by many changes in children's lives, and therefore it is not a surprise that many children struggle during this transition. These struggles are more common for children who are living in poverty, and although there have been national initiatives to address opportunity gaps in access to early education, investigations into the effectiveness of these programs in promoting children's Kindergarten development have shown mixed …

Student Motivation Profiles As A Diagnostic Tool To Help Teachers Provide Targeted Support, Cailin Tricia Currie

Dissertations and Theses

Research has demonstrated that academic engagement is an important resource for students, promoting their learning and achievement. Less well documented is the possibility that students' classroom engagement may also be a valuable resource for their teachers, capable of influencing how teachers treat their students over time. The current study sought to examine the relationship between student motivation and teacher behavior to better understand how teachers perceive and respond to their students' classroom motivation and whether these motivational states contain diagnostic information about the types of supports students may need in order to be engaged, enthusiastic learners. The observable manifestations of …

Sleep And Young Children's Development Of Self-Regulation And Academic Skills, Emily Michelle Weiss

Dissertations and Theses

School readiness incorporates children's academic abilities and their ability to self-regulate in the classroom. Prior research shows that sleep is related to children's development of these skills, although the mechanisms through which sleep affects school readiness are not well understood. Research also indicates that economically disadvantaged children and children of color may have poorer academic and regulatory skills at school entry and may sleep less and sleep less well on a regular basis.

The current study explores the role of sleep quantity and quality in young children's development of two skills critical for school success: self-regulation and academic abilities. This …