Maria Tereza Lins Dyer graduated with her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in May 2003 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She received her Masters in Psychology from the Federal University of Paraiba, Brazil. There her major area of concentration was social psychology and her thesis was Moral Development in University Students- An Educational Intervention. She also completed a 360-hour course in Educational Psychology with the Center for Post Graduate Studies in Psychology at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. Her undergraduate degree in Education (with a dual major in Educational Psychology and Methodology and Teaching Methods) is from the Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil. She is fluent in Portuguese and English and has oral and reading comprehension in Spanish.

Tereza has been teaching as a full-time professor at DePaul University for two years. Currently, she is teaching Human Development: Elementary [and Secondary], for graduate students’ and Human Growth and Development, for undergraduates. Educational Psychology is her major.

As part of her doctoral training, Tereza taught UIC students in the undergraduate program. She also has extensive experience in teaching at the college level in Brazil, where she has taught courses in educational psychology and teaching methods at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Tereza's research interests are in the manner in which moral and social norms are related to the ways children and their parents' reason about children's areas of personal choice. She is particularly interested in how social development is affected by culture, social class, and educational experience. Coming from a Latin American background, she has been particularly interested in contributing to a better understanding of the development of Latino adolescents in the U.S.

She has conducted research (Lins-Dyer & Nucci, 2001) on the impact of social class on mothers' and daughters' conceptions of parental control in Northeastern Brazil. The study focused on who (mother or daughter) controlled particular behaviors of the daughters, and on whether there were class differences associated with possible discrepancies in the views maintained by mothers and daughters. Findings from the study showed that regardless of social class girls did not differ in their perceptions of who should make decisions about their actions. For both social classes, girls differentiated an area of behaviors that they viewed as personal and private, and which they and not their mothers should have decision-making authority over. On the other hand, girls in both social classes also agreed that mothers should have considerable say in the actions of daughters that might violate moral or conventional norms, or that might result in harm to the girls. Mothers across classes stated that they gave greater latitude to daughters in the personal (private) domain, but maintained control over prudential/conventional and moral issues. Furthermore, daughters in both social classes perceived their mothers as exerting more control over their actions than the daughters thought desirable. Finally, the findings revealed that the discrepancy between daughters' perceptions of what should and what actually happened increased with age from early to late adolescence across social classes.

Her dissertation research, "Perceptions of Parental Control and Academic Achievement in Latino Adolescents - A Social Domain Perspective", extended her earlier study with Brazilian adolescents to examine whether differences in parental control perceived by Latinos living in the U.S. over what children perceive to be their legitimate zones of privacy and choice are related to their performance in school. There is some prior work suggesting that parental over-control has a negative impact on children's academic performance. However, that work has not differentiated between areas of children's behavior that parents should control from those areas behavior that parents should view as matters of their children's personal lives. Nor has prior research has taken this differential perspective with Latino students and families.
Tereza wishes to establish a career focusing on teaching and research at the college level that conforms to her lifelong commitment to educational development.

e-mail: mterezaldyer@comcast.net

Publications
Lins, M. T. (1993) An Efficient Strategy for Moral Education, Analise Psicologica 4 (XI): 507-515, Lisbon, Portugal.

Rique, J., & Lins-Dyer, M. T. (2003). Teachers' Views of Forgiveness for the Resolution of Conflicts Between Students in Schools. Journal of Moral Education, vol.32, No. 3.

Lins-Dyer, M. T.& Nucci, L. The Impact of Social Class on Conceptions of Parental Control of Mothers and Daughters in Northeastern Brazil. Submitted to the Developmental Psychology, September 2003.

Presentations
Rique, J., Lins-Dyer, M. T. & Camino, C. Social and Personality Characteristics of Forgivers of Injustices. Poster presented at the Association for Moral Education. Krakow, Poland, July 2003.

Nucci, L., Hasebe, Y. & Lins-Dyer, M. T. Adolescent Mental Health and Parental Control of the Personal: Issues of Culture, Class and Development. Paper presented within the symposium “Changing boundaries of parental authority during adolescence: Developmental and cultural variations” at the Biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Orlando, Florida, April 2003.

Lins-Dyer, M. T. & Nucci, L. Reflecting on Perceptions of Parental Control Among
Latin Girls in the United States and Brazil. Paper presented at the Association for Moral Education – Symposium: Moral Judgment, Peace and Forgiveness: Studies by Brazilian researchers, Chicago, Illinois, November 2002.

Lins-Dyer, M. T. & Nucci, L. Perception of Parental Control and Academic Achievement in Mexican and Mexican-American Adolescents – A Social Domain Perspective. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association – Symposium: Role of Latino Parents in Education. New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2002.

Rique, J. & Lins-Dyer, M. T. A Study on the Relationships Among Equity, Justice and Forgiveness Reasoning. Poster presented at the Jean Piaget Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 2002.

Lins-Dyer, M. T.& Nucci, L. Perceptions of Parental Control in Different Age Groups of Brazilian Adolescents - Social Domain View. Poster presented at the Jean Piaget Society. Berkeley, California, June 2001.

Rique, J., & Lins-Dyer, M. T. Teachers' and Student Teachers' Views of Forgiveness for Conflict Resolution in Schools. Paper presented at the Jean Piaget Society. Symposium- Values in the construction of social justice. Berkeley, Ca., June 2001.

Lins-Dyer, M. T.& Nucci, L. The Impact of Social Class on Daily Life Decisions of Mothers and Daughters in Northeastern Brazil. Poster presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chicago, IL. April 2000.

Lins, M. T. Moral Education among University Students. Poster presented at the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development, Latin American Conference on Developmental Psychology, Recife, Brazil. November 1989.

Lins, M. T. Moral Values among High School and University Students. Paper presented at the Brazilian Association of Social Psychology, Joao Pessoa, Brazil. September 1989.

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