This research study intends to find out about the use of online collaboration tools in supporting knowledge workers for the practice of employee volunteering. Online collaboration tools refer to the web-based technologies such as popular Web 2.0 tools like blogs or wikis and traditional online tools such as instant messenger, discussion forums, online chats and e-mail used by several individuals with the aim of achieving a common goal. The employee volunteering program- called Corporate Service Corps (CSC) - is an employee volunteering program in which the IBM employees tackle the economic and societal issues of the less developed countries they have been sent to while getting involved in project-based learning activities. This study provides an insight into how online engagement enabled the continuation of non-formal workplace learning practices such as volunteering and opened up possibilities for new ways to contribute to the learning process of employees. When it comes to online communities there is a mixture of entanglements, partnerships, negotiations and resistances between these tools and human actors. This research study explores how online communities are created by employee volunteers and also provides an understanding of non-formal learning practices within such fluid settings; important issues for organizations interested in non-formal learning practices of their employees are also raised. Today’s workplace settings are in constant need of recurrent learning processes interwoven with daily tasks on digital spaces. However, these digital spaces are not devoid of any issues and hence suggest the need for employees to be conscious of the emerging issues. The results from the case study are analysed by using participatory design methods in order to contribute to the understanding of the use of technology as both a single and collective experience. This research identified the specific benefits of online collaboration tools, and explored how their usage has been appropriated by employee volunteers for their practice of volunteering and how they influenced the process of their meaning-making. By doing so, it raised an awareness of the digital tools that provide collections of traits through which individuals can get involved in non-formal learning practices by having digital interactions with others.

Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Donna Augustine-Shaw / Jessica Holloway / School superintendents have traditionally been removed from the systemic process of learning in a school district and instead of been considered more indirect supporters of student achievement. Now, in the face of changing leadership standards, they are being required to provide leadership that more directly enhances student learning by way of teacher professional development. This case study takes a deeper look into the process of the superintendent’s role in district professional development. This will include a purposeful examination to clearly understand the superintendent’s role in designing, implementing, and monitoring professional development in the school district. The study includes (a) the meaning of professional development; (b) examination of school leadership theories and roles; and (c) analysis of how professional development impacts the classroom design of a district instructional framework for professional development.

Professional ethics in legal practice Key words: ETHICS, ADVOCACY, PROFESSIONAL ETHICS The primary subject of my diploma thesis is professional ethics related to carrying out advocacy in the Czech Republic and institutions related to the ethics of solicitors. The reason for my choice of the aforementioned subject is mainly my experience in a legal office, where I have encountered many positive and negative approaches to carrying out this profession, and also the public's interest in the ethics of advocacy, which is growing concurrently with the rising needs of citizens to use services by legal consultants and representatives. In the first chapter of my work I describe the key terms (ethics, morals, law), definition of which is fundamental for understanding the issue of professional ethics and I also outline the mutual relations between these terms. In the second chapter I briefly present the short but varied history of advocacy in the Czech Republic, which began in the 12th Century. The third chapter focuses on definition of the institute of professional ethics. The first part concerns professional ethics as a set of moral standards valid for a specific profession and the second part defines professional ethics in relation to carrying out advocacy. The third part of the third chapter is called the...

This diploma thesis goes into a problem of the legal interpretation of the term lex artis, which some authors describe as well-known term of unknown content. Generally, this term relates to the activities of doctors and other health care professionals within taking care of patients, and usually we can meet with the ablative lege artis, which is used to denote a professionally correct action. This term is in common usage also in the reference books and case law where the breach of the duty to act lege artis is considered to be a precondition for liability of physician or health care provider for injury to the patient. Certain difficulty of using the term lex artis lies in the fact that the legislation in force does not mention not even define this term and its meaning must therefore be inferred from legislation by interpretation. For the legal definition of lex artis is from 1st April 2012 considered the provision of s. 4 (5) of Act No. 372/2011 Sb., about Health Services and Terms (the Health Services Act), as amended, which defines appropriate professional standard of providing health services and which is from the early beginning criticized by the part of professionals for its alleged conflict with patients' rights guaranteed by the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. The aim of this...

Ethical rules of conduct of judges in the Czech Republic This master thesis deals with ethical rules of conduct of judges in the Czech Republic. I chose the topic because in this area there is lack of scientific literature given to the topic of professional ethics in general and even less literature directly addressing the professional ethics of judges. The main objective of this thesis is to provide the most comprehensive picture of the professional ethics of judges in the Czech Republic and the resources on which it puts. The topic is brought to the reader within five chapters. The first chapter introduces the reader to the topic of ethics and its relation with morality and law and brings the view from the perspective of philosophy and legal theory. The second chapter deals with professional ethics and professional ethical codes, presents to the reader what the professional ethical code should be like. The content of the third chapter is in the first place to introduce the reader to the character and personality of the judge, his status in the legal system and, above all, the analysis of the professional ethics of judges. This chapter is the core of the work and in the analysis of various aspects of professional ethics draws on information acquired in the previous chapters. The main basis for this chapter...

M.Ed.

Professional development in education is often a process focused on teachers' limitations. Teachers are rarely offered choices in professional development, nor are they asked to qualify the attributes of their professional development experiences they find most meaningful. This study situates the National Writing Project as a specific professional development program from which to consider teachers' beliefs and perceptions regarding their professional development experiences. The study begins with a broad view of professional development, then directs attention to the Writing Project as a professional development model. Ten teachers participated in individual and focus group interviews for the study. Interview data were collected and analyzed using a qualitative phenomenological approach to discern the features of the Writing Project that teachers value as a professional development experience. Results from this study include five essential elements of the Writing Project experience as reported by participants. Results show that the Writing Project builds teachers' instructional and pedagogical capacity, sponsors teachers' professional voice, breaks down isolationism, connects teachers to the writer within themselves, and attracts leaders while facilitating leadership in its members. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications researchers and educators may draw from the results.

The research examined the relationship between knowledge of faith-based church leaders regarding the facts of child sexual abuse and the practice of child sexual abuse prevention steps utilized within the church. It examined the historical, theological, biblical, and ethical concerns about child sexual abuse and the church. The biblical accounts of David and Bathsheba along with the story of Tamar and Amnon were reflected upon within the historical and biblical context of sexual abuse. The theological understanding of sin and its results was analyzed in the context of child sexual abuse. A chronological exploration of the history of child abuse in the United States along with statistics for the represented years was included in the study. Exploration of the abuse of power, the multileveled aspects of denial, the victim, the perpetrator, prevention steps available to the church and parental partnership were included. The common prevention steps discussed were: a written policy and procedure manual, screening form, interview, reference checks by phone or written, criminal background checks (fingerprinting), keeping doors open, windows in the classrooms, hall monitor system, a 2-adult rule, computer on-line check for sexual offenders, waiting six months from membership, prevention training at the local church, prevention training at denominational level, adequate church insurance, and a team of members ready to deal with any accusations that may occur. There was a description of the research process. The study was descriptive quantitative research by use of a research instrument (developed from the precedent literature and validated by an expert panel) that examined the relationship between knowledge and practice of faith-based church leaders regarding child sexual abuse and prevention. The research instrument consisted of five sections: Demographics, Likert Response Scale, Prevention Steps Checklist, Hindrances, and Comments. The Likert Response Scale included questions on knowledge of child sexual abuse facts, knowledge of prevention steps, higher education, and the issue of denial among church leaders. There were 213 seminary students who were church leaders that participated in the research study. Displays of the data, analysis of the data, and interpretation of the data were included along with a description of the research implications and applications, along with possible further research. Pearson r correlation was conducted to determine if there was a relationship found between knowledge and practice of church leaders. Recommendations were made to the church on the subject of child sexual abuse prevention. / This item is only available to students and faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. If you are not associated with SBTS, this dissertation may be purchased from <a href="http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb">http://disexpress.umi.com/dxweb</a> or downloaded through ProQuest's Dissertation and Theses database if your institution subscribes to that service.

M.Ed. (Psychology of Education) / The political upheavals of decades before the advent of democracy left far reaching consequences to the South African education system. The culture of teaching and learning suffered a severe blow since schools were the battlegrounds of the oppressor and the oppressed. Whilst learners developed an academic attitude, teachers lost sight of their professional ethos. The oppressor’s ultimate aim was largely to create a black labour force mentality that is denied opportunities to creativity and critical thinking approach. A different approach to the training of student teachers was necessary if the integrity of the teaching profession was to be retained. This includes the inculcation of a perspective in which aspirant young student teachers embrace the teaching profession with more positive attitude to their practice. It is significant that diverse institutions such as the University of Johannesburg, with its education faculty, began to conceptualise a framework based on the educational excursion for first year B.Ed Students. The Golden Gate Educational excursion became an outdoor learning experience for realisation of the faculty framework. The framework expresses the commitment to the education and training of caring, accountable, critically reflective educational practitioners who would be able to nurture and support learning in a diverse educational context. The educational excursion curriculum was therefore, tailored to serve both conceptual framework and the professional development. This research report attempted to articulate the views of first year B.Ed students on the professional development after the Golden Gate educational excursion. A generic qualitative study situated within an interpretive research paradigm was applied in the study. Observations, interviews and feedback evaluation forms were vital in the collection of data. B.Ed first year students were the participants in the research process. The premise for the study of their professional development is deduced from Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystemic model. The central view is that development cannot be fully understood unless we view it in relation to various systems in which people are involved. It is therefore, viewed within the social context. Within the social context, students accumulate experience that determines how they attach and construct meaning to reality around their environments. The accumulated experiences as well as their personal reflection on the professional practice provide a learning experience that result in new paradigm about the teaching profession. Feedback evaluation forms completed by first year B.Ed. students served as a reflective exercise on detailed aspects of the excursion. Their views were well articulated and triangulated with interviews and observation data in form of pictures attached in the addendum. The evidence clearly showed a positive change of first year B.Ed. students’ views about teaching profession after Golden Gate excursion.

This compilation thesis concerns how an educator task in Swedish police education context can be understood as individual and collective meaning making and professional development. The main actors in this thesis are police teachers, police supervisors and field training officers (FTOs), and they have a mutual task in educating new police officers and hence preparing for a complex occupation. However, due to varied educating preparations these three groups of police educators seem to perform their task with different prerequisites in a constantly revised and developed Swedish police education. During the last twenty years research and literature regarding occupational and professional education concern, among other issues, professional development and professionalization, frequently from a learner orientated and lifelong learning perspective. Hence, as ideas of transferring occupational knowledge from person to person increasingly appears to be regarded as obsolete, internship education through supervising pedagogies seems to have evolved during the last decades. The rarely investigated intra-professional educators (e.g., police officers educating new police officers) have an important role in this kind of learning process, especially due to socialisation phenomena frequently described in worldwide research regarding the police occupation. The conceptions of Swedish intra-professional police educators are investigated through an exploratory and qualitative design using mainly focus-group interviews and with a reflexive approach and hermeneutic analyse models. Viewed through a theoretical framework based on meaning making, reflexivity and thought styles/thought collectives, the findings disclose that the Swedish police educators clearly share similar views on pedagogies although they have disparate preparations before the task. Their conceptions reveal how the police educating task works as an incentive for increased insights in the police task, as well as in the educating task. These findings are also conceptualized as a collective process in interacting with police students and police probationers, with reflexivity as a main tool for meaning making, especially in the educating task. In conclusion this thesis argues how the conceptions of the Swedish police educators can vitalize the discussion about how police educators better can be prepared, especially through courses with reflexive pedagogies. The conclusion also emphasizes on how the positive, reflexive and creative intentions within the intra-professional police educators can be used as a role model and as an incentive in developing the Swedish police force, and that these ideas can be applied on other occupations and professions. / I en stor fyrkantig soffgrupp i ett fikarum på Polishögskolan i Solna runt år 2002, fördes stafettsamtal om problembaserad undervisning. Lärare, chefer och ibland städpersonal eller administrativ personal deltog genom att gå in och ut ur dessa samtal beroende på vilka andra sysslor som pockade på. I denna fyrkant skapades på något sätt både pedagogik och pedagoger, av både erfarna och oerfarna utbildare. Detta skedde främst genom utbyte av erfarenheter av lyckade och mindre lyckade undervisningsaktiviteter i syfte att skapa mening i ett för många av deltagarna okänt utbildningskoncept, ofta genom användandet av begreppet reflektion. Stafettsamtalen kan beskrivas som del av en process eller ett förlopp där något framåtskrider och utvecklas, i detta fall polisutbildarnas kunskapande och meningsskapande om polisutbildning. Den meningsskapande processen placerades inom ramen för den nya reviderade polisutbildningen, som satts i spel 1998. Polisutbildningen skulle nu bygga på en problembaserad pedagogik (Colliver, 2000; Hmelo-Silver, 2004) och initialt utföras av i huvudsak yrkespraktiker med begränsad pedagogisk erfarenhet eller utbildning, vilket genererade oväntade problem som krävde snabba lösningar. De första åren från 1998 innebar många problem med både frustrerade lärare och polisstudenter, vilket en utvärdering visade (Rikspolisstyrelsen, 2000). Denna situation skapade ändå en pragmatisk men reflekterande utbildningskultur där studenternas lärande till poliser till stor del var i fokus (Polishögskolan, 2014b). De lärare som hade polisiär bakgrund, i denna avhandling benämnda ”polislärare”, fick en framträdande roll för att fungera som en brygga mellan yrkeserfarenhet och teoretisk/praktisk kunskap, trots att få av de utbildande poliserna hade pedagogisk utbildning eller någon längre erfarenhet av att undervisa. Vissa polislärare visade också en brant utvecklingskurva gällande förmågan att undervisa, medan andra misslyckades helt och försvann lika snabbt som de kom. Denna beskrivning bygger på min egen upplevelse av händelseförloppet, för jag satt också där i fyrkanten, som nyanställd lärare i muntlig och skriftlig framställning, erfaren gällande undervisning men helt okunnig om polisverksamhet. Lärarna på Polishögskolans gemensamma uppdrag var att på bästa sätt förbereda polisstudenter för en introduktion in i en polisiär yrkesverksamhet och yrkeskultur (Crank, 2004; Lauritz, 2009). Ett polisyrke som många i samhället har en uppfattning om, och som visat sig vara ett i många avseenden komplext uppdrag. Manning (2010) har under årtionden ägnat sig åt att belysa polisarbetets komplexitet och förändring. Han menar bland annat att polisarbetet kan ses utifrån ett dramaturgiskt perspektiv där poliser förväntas 2 fatta svåra beslut baserat på subjektiva omdömen i en offentlig miljö, och i hög grad beroende av samarbetet med kollegor och allmänheten: Policing is both an individual and collective performance, based on faceto-face interactions, public deference, and societal validation of the collective representation. The process of interaction is the product of policing, and the consequences of these interactions are the most consequential outcomes of policing. (2010, s. 183) Polisuppdraget har också förändrats under de senaste trettio åren, från reaktivt till proaktivt allteftersom samhället ökat kraven på polisen via problembaserat långsiktigt polisarbete (Fielding, 1988; Macvean &amp; Cox, 2012; Paoline &amp; Terrill, 2007). Uppdraget kan dessutom sägas vara motsägelsefullt, med å ena sidan den repressiva aspekten att upprätthålla lag och ordning och å andra sidan vara en service och trygghet för medborgarna (Petersson, 2015). Litteraturen beskriver också att många av de kunskaper som krävs för att lösa snabbt uppkomna situationer är svåra att utveckla på ett utbildningscampus utan kräver kontakt med yrkespraktiken (Chan et al., 2003). Ur detta perspektiv blir det därför synnerligen intressant hur sådan kunskap utvecklas och frodas i utrymmet mellan utbildning och yrkespraktik. Vidare, även om forskningen visar att det finns poliser som är olämpliga och har stora svårigheter att hålla sig professionella i detta uppdrag, finns det berättelser om poliser som klarar av att upprätthålla den professionella etiken i svåra situationer. Det finns alltså uppenbarligen poliser som kan vara empatiska, men ändå tydliga och handlingskraftiga, repressiva men ändå professionella, goda kollegor som ändå kan säga ifrån och anmäla om något fel begåtts. Litteratur om polisyrket berör även fenomen som sammanhållning, kamratskap, konformitet, kåranda, alienation, övervåld, rasism, stress, posttraumatisk stress, korruption och lämplighet (Crank, 2004; Lauritz &amp; Karp, 2013; Van Maanen, 1975). Litteraturen ger också exempel på antiintellektualism inom polisen, där handlingskraft är normen och reflektionsförmåga ses som en svaghet (Crank, 2004; Granér, 2004, s. 214). Det finns också beskrivet hur konkret yrkeskunskap byggd på sunt förnuft (common sense knowledge) uppmuntras under polisutbildningen, vilket grundar sig i polisarbetets oförutsägbarhet och därmed riskfylldhet; man måste kunna lita på att kollegan finns där och agerar när fara uppstår. Där skildras också hur sunt-förnuft-kunskap konstitueras i rutinartat småprat mellan uppdragen i det dagliga polisarbetet, till exempel genom utbyte av dråpliga anekdoter från polisarbetet (”war stories”) (McNulty, 1994). Blivande poliser beskriver också sitt första möte med poliskollektivet som välkomnande och omslutande, speciellt avseende det vardagliga småpratet kollegor emellan (Ekman, 1999: Lauritz, 2009). Här har studier också visat på ett polisyrke med ökad etisk medvetenhet, där nya poliser faktiskt kan fungera 3 som förändringsagenter mot en positiv utveckling av poliskulturen utifrån dessa höjda samhälleliga krav (Chan et al., 2003; Granér, 2004; Reid, 2015). Efter att ha tagit del av ovanstående litteratur, väcktes mitt intresse för olika perspektiv på polisutbildarnas betydelse för hur lärandet till ett polisyrke går till, och vilken betydelse detta får för en förmodat lärande organisation (Andersson Arntén, 2014; Bergman &amp; Jansson, 2010). Runt 2006 gjorde jag en första genomgång av forskning om polisutbildning. Då upptäcktes en lucka i forskning om yrkesutbildare som aktiva subjekt i sitt yrkeslärande (Se Webster-Wright, 2009), i synnerhet studier av poliser som är polisutbildare. Speciellt noterade jag en avsaknad av svensk forskning på hur polisutbildare hanterar frågorna ovan och hur de ser sig på sig själva som utbildare i detta sammanhang. Ett kunskapsintresse började på så sätt mejslas fram och blev inledningen till ett explorativt forskningsprojekt inom yrkesutbildningsfältet, ett projekt som skulle pågå i över tio år. Slutresultatet blev denna doktorsavhandling om polisers individuella och kollektiva upplevelser av uppdraget som polisutbildare och presenteras i form av sammanläggning av en redan publicerad licentiatuppsats om polislärare (delstudie ett) samt två artiklar rörande aspiranthandledare (delstudie två), och aspirantinstruktörer (delstudie tre). Jag menar att denna avhandling kan vara intressant även för andra yrkesutbildningar, både vad gäller frågor om grundutbildning såväl som vidareutbildning, men även rörande förändring, utveckling och lärande i en yrkespraktik. Kunskapsbidraget är främst empiriskt eftersom polisutbildare, internationellt och i Sverige, i begränsad omfattning har undersökts. Avhandlingen bidrar också i metodologiskt avseende då främst intervjuer i fokusgrupper använts, vilket är ovanligt i polisforskning. Dessutom tillämpas ett teoretiskt ramverk baserat på idéer från bland annat John Dewey, Jennifer A. Moon och Ludwik Fleck, i en kombination som kan vara en inspiration för andra liknande studier med fokus på utvecklingsprocesser i yrkesutbildning och yrkesverksamhet.