Browsing by Subject "Caring"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Caring, Power, and the Emotional and Organizational Architecture of Life in Schools
    (2017-12) Walls, Jeff
    Purpose: Schools are expected to care for students, but many students do not experience care at school- especially students from historically underserved populations. One reason why implicates the way that school adults use their positional and relational power inside and outside of classrooms. The purpose of this study is to examine how adults, individually and collectively, think about and use their power in efforts to care for students, and how students experience these efforts. Research Methods/Approach: This study employs a grounded theory approach and utilizes participant observation and photo elicitation interviews of students and staff at two middle schools. Findings: At the classroom level, caring and power intersect in ways that reveal teachers’ understanding and support of student emotions. Teachers with stable caring relations often view care and control as complements, whereas teachers with less stable caring relations view care and control as substitutes. At the organizational level, the existence of schoolwide expectations and common beliefs amongst teachers had implications for whether caring was practiced in a consistent way throughout the school. Conclusions and Implications: This study reveals the importance of leadership support for building teachers’ reflectiveness and decision-making regarding supporting students’ emotions. It also reveals the importance of consistent beliefs about caring and students’ potential amongst school adults to build capacity and solve organization-wide problems.
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    The impact of family and non-family roles on caregiver health over time.
    (2011-06) Matzek, Amanda E.
    Using stress process and life course theory, this dissertation investigated pathways of adult child caregivers' family (caregiving, marital, parenting) and non-family (employment) roles and their relation to caregiver psychological and physical health over time. Eight waves of data (1992-2006) from the Health and Retirement Study were analyzed for 1,300 adult child caregivers. Latent class analysis provided strong substantive and statistical evidence for a 4-class model of caregivers' role pathways. The four pathways were (a) Married, Working Caregivers (22.5%), (b) Married, Retired Caregivers with Co-Residing Child (12.5%), (c) Married, Retired Caregivers (30.5%), and (d) Not Married, Retired Caregivers (34.6%). Married, Working Caregivers, who were more likely to be male, White, and younger than most other pathways, had more optimal psychological and subjective physical health, but were more likely to have high blood pressure compared to caregivers in other pathways. Results suggest that (a) adult child caregivers have distinct family and non-family role pathways, (b) caregivers' gender, race/ethnicity, and age predict pathway membership, and (c) caregivers' role pathways are connected to psychological and physical health over time. Future research should explore how adult child caregivers' role pathways structurally differ for male versus female and younger versus older caregivers to further explain the heterogeneity of adult child caregivers' role pathways. Family practitioners may be helpful in identifying practices and policies that help adult child caregivers manage their diverse range of long-term family and non-family roles.