Military-Focused Leadership Talent Development: An Examination of JROTC Participation and Postsecondary Plans (open access)

Military-Focused Leadership Talent Development: An Examination of JROTC Participation and Postsecondary Plans

Federal and state descriptions of gifted and talented services include identifying and developing leadership talent, but in many states, services are not mandated or funded. Consequently, leadership development is often left to extracurricular programs (e.g., student organizations, athletics). The Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) provides school-based military-focused leadership education and opportunities to apply emergent leadership skills. This qualitative descriptive study examined leadership talent development in JROTC and the postsecondary paths participants chose. A self-report survey was distributed to graduating seniors enrolled in JROTC in Texas public high schools and semi-structured interviews were conducted with JROTC instructors across the state. The findings highlighted characteristics of students in the sample who chose to pursue military-focused education or careers after high school and themes about the experiences and key considerations related to choosing postsecondary paths. JROTC instructors supported students with differentiated development plans and information about flexible pathways to reach postsecondary goals. Students benefitted from broad definitions of success, exposure to career options, realistic self-assessment, and alignment between intentions and preparation.
Date: May 2021
Creator: Meyer, Melanie S.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Establishing Criterion on a Personality-Based Assessment for Employment: A Latent Class Analysis of Faking Behavior (open access)

Establishing Criterion on a Personality-Based Assessment for Employment: A Latent Class Analysis of Faking Behavior

Personality assessments have a long history in psychology and have become the backbone of the human capital management industry, with the Big-Five model being the most prevalent. The central criticism of personality assessments for employment decisions is validity of responses since applicants for employment often endorse items to make themselves more desirable for hire, referred to as faking behavior. The present study examined faking behavior using the Assess Personality Survey (APS). Using a sample of applicant and incumbent data (N = 8,020), the objective was to identify response difference between applicant and incumbents, and the prevalence of faking behavior in applicants. Latent class analysis (LCA) was used to compare groups. Results indicate a clear distinction between applicant and incumbent response patterns. Additional analyses suggest 6 classes of testing patterns among applicants, and results are compared with previous faking identification procedures to improve criteria used to establish faking behavior in respondents.
Date: December 2018
Creator: Johnson, Casey W.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mothering while Brown: Latina Borderland Mothers' Experiences of Epistemic Injustice (open access)

Mothering while Brown: Latina Borderland Mothers' Experiences of Epistemic Injustice

Anti-immigrant rhetoric undermines Latinx parents' epistemic legitimacy as producers of valued parental knowledge, irrespective of immigrant status. Little is known about the epistemic harm to Latina mothers who must negotiate their maternal scripts against the backdrop of a parenting discourse steeped in deficit thinking. This study used testimonio to explore the experiences of Latina mothers of young children living in the borderlands of South Texas via a Chicana/Latina feminist epistemological framework that conceptualizes the self as multiplicitous and responsive to the straddling of multiple cultures, nationalities, races, languages, and physical borders. The research questions guiding the study included: (1) How do Latina borderland mothers experience epistemic harm in the context of mothering knowledge? and (2) What strategies do borderland mothers employ to nurture strength and counter epistemic harm? Two theoretical constructs emerged from data analyses. First, the borderland was a site of recurring credibility battles as well as a site of "in-the-flesh" encounters that deepened human connection. Supporting themes included "Brown-on-Brown conflict vs. like-me counters" and "situating injustice vs. denying injustice." The second theoretical construct asserted that borderland mothers' ways of knowing are polyvocal and reflect a Brown body ethic of care. Its two supporting themes included "co-family as sources …
Date: December 2019
Creator: Verdin, Azucena
System: The UNT Digital Library
Developing a Self-Respect Instrument to Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem (open access)

Developing a Self-Respect Instrument to Distinguish Self-Respect from Self-Esteem

Throughout the scientific literature, researchers have referred to self-respect and self-esteem as being the same construct. However, the present study advocated that they exist as two distinct constructs. In this quantitative study, an instrument was developed to measure self-respect as a construct, and subsequently distinguish that self-respect is distinct from the construct of self-esteem. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) indicated 32.60% of the variance was accounted for by the 11-item Jefferson Self-Respect instrument (JSR), which measured self-respect as a unidimensional construct. The reliability estimate of the scores from the JSR reached an acceptable α = .82. Fit indices (RMSEA = .031, SRMR = .037, CFI = .982, and TLI = .977) from the confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) signified a well-fitted hypothesized model of self-respect that existed as a unidimensional construct. Additionally, the CFA revealed that the construct of self-respect, and self-esteem was generally distinct, and the strength of the correlation between the two constructs was moderately positive (r = .62).
Date: August 2017
Creator: Jefferson, Sean G.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Institutional Pluralism and the Organization's Response: A Case Study of Chinese Women's Ice Hockey (open access)

Institutional Pluralism and the Organization's Response: A Case Study of Chinese Women's Ice Hockey

In recent years, the sport of women's ice hockey is growing fast worldwide. Upon winning the bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, women's ice hockey in China started to develop rapidly. However, the development of women's ice hockey in China has encountered numerous challenges. These challenges include addressing traditional Chinese culture, gender norms, and the process of sport reform. This study used a qualitative case study methodology to examine the perspectives of Chinese women ice hockey players, coaches, club administrators, government administrators, and the parents of youth hockey players to understand how women's ice hockey navigated itself within the institutional complexity to gain legitimacy, and how the different institutional logics impacted the identities of organizations within women's ice hockey in China. An abductive grounded theory approach was used to analyze the transcriptions and archived documents. Findings indicated that there were challenges for the development of women's ice hockey in China at macro level, meso level, and micro level. Actors such as hockey administrations, professional clubs, and ice hockey coaches and players at different levels adopted multiple forms of institutional work to find out ways to incorporate institutional structures that mitigated the fact that there were multiple logics. In addition, …
Date: May 2020
Creator: Li, Hongxin
System: The UNT Digital Library
Flipping Scripts: Mentoring for Secondary Readers (open access)

Flipping Scripts: Mentoring for Secondary Readers

Researchers have reported that a variety of socio-cultural interventions can be used to increase positive attitudes toward reading for secondary students. A socially constructed reading intervention could add learning growth for a reluctant reading population. This study examines whether secondary students experience a measurable increase in positive attitudes toward reading after engaging in modeling and mentoring sessions with a much younger student and whether there is a perceivable difference in the secondary students' attitude following this mentoring activity. A variation of the one-way ANOVA, the Mann-Whitney U test, was completed to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between these groups of students after participating in the reading intervention plan. It was determined that a small increase was found in one of the domains. The measurement survey is divided into four measured components that align with Albert Bandura's model for self- efficacy. The results from this study indicated growth in only one of the measures, however, some of the outcomes in the other measures suggested potential growth in attitudes with a relaxation of these necessary experimental strictures. A limitation of this research was the change from face-to-face tutoring completed by the secondary student with elementary students in an afterschool …
Date: August 2021
Creator: Cross, Terry
System: The UNT Digital Library
Coaching Athletes with Post-Traumatic Stress: Exploring Trauma-Related Competencies and Coaching Efficacy (open access)

Coaching Athletes with Post-Traumatic Stress: Exploring Trauma-Related Competencies and Coaching Efficacy

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) assess cycling coaches' trauma-related competencies, as measured by trauma knowledge (i.e., trauma-specific education, familiarity with post-traumatic stress [PTS]), stigma of persons with PTS (i.e., fear/dangerousness, help/interact, forcing treatment, negative emotions), and interpersonal skills (i.e., self-reported emotional intelligence, perceived quality of coach-athlete relationships); and (b) examine the influence that trauma knowledge and stigma of persons with PTS has on coaching efficacy specific to coaching trauma-impacted athletes (i.e., trauma-informed coaching efficacy), after controlling for general coaching experience. Descriptive statistics indicated the majority of coaches had no trauma-specific education, a high degree of familiarity with PTS, and a low level of stigma via four attribution variables. Moreover, participants highly appraised their own emotional intelligence, the quality of their coach-athlete relationships, and their trauma-informed coaching efficacy. A hierarchical regression analyses indicated that familiarity with PTS helped to explain additional variance in trauma-informed coaching efficacy over and above demographic and general coach experience variables. The study establishes trauma-informed coaching as a distinct area of research and highlights the need for improved continuing education opportunities for coaches related to psychological trauma and PTS.
Date: August 2020
Creator: Leibovitz, Amanda Patricia
System: The UNT Digital Library
Teacher Evaluation as a Function of Leadership Style: A Multiple-Correlational Approach (open access)

Teacher Evaluation as a Function of Leadership Style: A Multiple-Correlational Approach

One of the most persistent issues in contemporary organizations has been how to evaluate individual performance. Basically, the problem is who should evaluate whom and against what productivity criterion. Educational institutions have been the organizations most concerned with this dilemma in recent years. As recently as September, 1973, teachers went on strike over accountability procedures. This study was conducted to identify which mode of teacher evaluation was most efficient, based on fairly objective performance criterion, and to establish a basis for viewing teaching style as leadership style. In existing research, superior ratings were the most used evaluation measure, student ratings were a rapidly growing mode of evaluation, self-ratings were considered biased, and peer ratings were used very little. Hence, who should do the evaluating was an unsolved problem. All four evaluation modes were employed in the present study for comparison.
Date: May 1974
Creator: Swanson, Ronald G.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reaping the Seeds of Leadership: Evaluating a Proposed Model of Lifespan Leadership Development (open access)

Reaping the Seeds of Leadership: Evaluating a Proposed Model of Lifespan Leadership Development

Though research suggests that several factors are related to the onset of leadership, few researchers have endeavored to determine how these factors may interact to bring about early leadership development. A descriptive discriminant analysis was conducted to test the validity of early factors cited by Murphy and Johnson; namely, lower scores on measures of temperamental negative affect, higher scores of temperamental extraversion, effortful control, orienting sensitivity, authoritative parenting style, secure adult attachment, older relative age, and more reported team sports and extracurricular activities experiences were hypothesized to predict current and past leaders versus never leaders. Additional analyses investigated possible gender differences in how these early factors may predict leader occupancy. The results indicate that early factors are able to predict leadership status for male students, though a majority of the variance in leader status is still left unaccounted. Implications for future leadership development research and training are discussed.
Date: August 2019
Creator: Mitchell, Mary E.
System: The UNT Digital Library
Therapeutic and Educational Effects of Writing an Autobiography in an Undergraduate Developmental Psychology Course (open access)

Therapeutic and Educational Effects of Writing an Autobiography in an Undergraduate Developmental Psychology Course

The purposes of this study were to investigate the possible therapeutic and educational effects of writing an autobiography in an undergraduate developmental psychology course, to explore the role of structure in writing an autobiography, and to determine if any significant sex differences exist in the effects of writing an autobiography.
Date: May 1982
Creator: Price, Jack Randall
System: The UNT Digital Library