This study described and explored perceptions of the context and behaviors of seven 4-year-old children whose parents attended a parenting education program. The problem was to explore a group of 9 volunteer parents' perceptions of their parenting styles and perceptions of their 4-year-old children at home while the parents participated in, and completed, a minimum of 4 out of 6 Active Parenting Today parenting education classes. Volunteer parents were recruited during public school registration for prekindergarten. In addition, perceptions of 4 teachers and 4 classroom educational aides in regard to behaviors of the 4-year-old children whose parents participated in and completed the Active Parenting Today program were explored.

This paper examines the metaphoric structures that underlie Chopin's major novel, The Awakening, as well as those underlying selected short stories. Drawing on the modern theory of metaphor described by Mark Turner, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson, the author argues that conceptual metaphors are the structural elements that underlie our experiences, thoughts, and words, and that their presence is revealed through our everyday language. Since these conceptual structures are representative of human thought and language, they are also present in literary texts, and specifically in Chopin's texts. Conceptual metaphors and the linguistic forms that result from them are so basic a part of our thinking that we automatically construct our utterances by means of them. Accordingly, conceptual metaphor mirrors human thought processes, as demonstrated by the way we describe our experiences.

This research grows out of an interest in what scholars commonly call the wisdom tradition of the ancient near east. This tradition or movement involved groups of thinkers and writers, known collectively as scribes, who were concerned in a philosophical way with the problems of living, and with principles of living well. Such communities are known to have flourished in Egypt, the various kingdoms of Mesopotamia, and western Asia, from at least the middle of the third millennium B.C. These scribal communities are also known to have sponsored schools, intended primarily for training in statecraft and the professions, but also for training in the scribal profession per se. The documentary and historical record indicates that such schools provided education from the most rudimentary level of literacy and writing to the most advanced levels of scribal scholarship. These advanced levels of training were functionally equivalent to what is nowadays known as higher education; and the ideals, the philosophy, which guided this enterprise found expression in a corpus of literature bearing the name "wisdom." The problem for this dissertation is whether or not there was in ancient Israel, specifically in the Solomonic era (10th century, B.C.), such an advanced scribal school associated …

Studies of William Blake's poetry have historically paid little attention to the Welsh literary context of his time, especially the bardic lore (barddas), in spite of the fact that he considered himselfto be a bard and created an epic cosmos in which the bardic had exalted status. Of particular importance is the Welsh concept of the awen, which can be thought of as "the muse," but which must not be limited to the Greek understanding of the term For the Welsh, the awen had to do with the Christian concept of the Holy Spirit, and beyond that, with the poet's connection with his inspiration, or genius, whether Christian of otherwise. This study explores the idea of inspiration as it evolves from the Greek idea of the Muse, as it was perceived in the Middle Ages by Welsh writers, and as it came to be understood and utilized by writers in the Age of Blake.