Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Relations Between Expressive Writing and Teachers' Affect and Predictors of Engagement with Expressive Writing During the COVID-19 Pandemic(2022) McCurdy, Kelsey Faith; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The physical and psychological health benefits associated with expressive writing (EW) have been extensively studied (Frattaroli, 2006; Frisina et al., 2004; review by Pennebaker, 2018; Smyth, 1998). Despite the depth of this research, two important questions remain why is EW beneficial and who chooses to engage in EW. This study addresses these two questions by using a mixed methods procedure, which includes teachers’ written products about significant teaching experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as their ratings of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) before and after writing, and their ratings of the impact of the event they wrote about. Narratives were coded for levels of meaning-making and self-regulation with acceptable reliability among four raters. Results showed an immediate small decrease in NA after writing (d=.30) and an immediate small to moderate increase in PA after writing (d=.38). Additionally, correlational analyses revealed that higher levels of narrative meaning-making were related to higher levels of pre-writing NA, but not changes in NA or PA. Conversely, higher levels of narrative self-regulation were not related to pre-writing affect, but were significantly related to adaptive changes in immediate post-writing affect (increase in PA and decrease in NA). Two logistic regression models, one predicting who completed the first expressive writing session and one predicting who volunteered to receive information about the next phase of the study (i.e., additional writing sessions) were not significant. However, a logistic regression predicting whether a participant completed a second writing prompt using change in affect and narrative quality as predictors was significant. Narrative self-regulation was the only significant predictor, such that higher self-regulation was related to an increase in the likelihood of completion of a second prompt. Overall, results suggest that meaning-making and self-regulation are related to different outcomes associated with participants’ affect, with self-regulation being associated not only with adaptive change in affect, but also with continuing to engage with EW.Item Worry Intensity about Situations Experienced by Student Teachers(2019) McCurdy, Kelsey Faith; Teglasi, Hedwig; Counseling and Personnel Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Student teachers are often overlooked in discussions about teacher burnout, attrition, and turnover despite evidence that burnout may begin to develop during student teaching (Horgan, Howard, & Gardiner-Hyland, 2018). High rates of teacher turnover and attrition are costly and detract from the quality of education (Alliance, 2014). This study examines four questions related to student teachers’ experience with worry and stress: how much do student teachers worry about common teaching situations, to what extent is worry intensity situational, how do student teachers describe their experiences with worry, and is worry intensity related to perceived stress reactivity? Results demonstrated that person differences accounted for relatively more variation in worry intensity than did situations. Further, results demonstrated that worry intensity was significantly related to perceived stress reactivity to social evaluation. Implications for understanding how individuals reason about worry intensity and implications for teacher preparation programs are discussed.