Práce se snaží reagovat na posun ve vnímání fungování veřejné správy. Tím je zejména přechod od nařizovací správy k chápání správy jako službě veřejnosti. Jednou z možností modernizace a zlepšení práce veřejné správy je aplikace metod managementu kvality. V práci se poukazuje na rozdílnost veřejné správy a celého veřejného sektoru oproti soukromému. Ze soukromé sféry jsou zdůrazněny metody, které mohou být aplikovatelné i ve veřejné správě. Větší část práce je pak věnována Modelu CAF (Common Assessment Framework), který byl speciálně navržen pro implementaci ve veřejném sektoru. Pro jeho snazší zavedení jsou uvedeny i upravené praktické příklady ze starších projektů.

Esta pesquisa buscou pensar as relações de experiência, memória e oralidade como dimensões de uma linha específica de história oral que cada vez mais se pretende autônoma e pública. Essas relações foram feitas a partir de duas formas narrativas: uma contada - construída em colaboração durante entrevistas com procedimentos dessa história oral e outra narrativa cantada - composição musical que Adálio Pereira de Oliveira, um nordestino na Amazônia, fez para contar sua história de vida. Essa linha de história oral valoriza os aspectos subjetivos das experiências narradas e possui pressupostos epistemológicos claros: a colaboração, a mediação e a dimensão pública do texto produzido. / This research intended to think about experiences and their relations, memories and orality as dimensions of a specific oral history hat becomes more autonomous and public. Those relations were maid from two narrative forms: one: spoken built on interviews with a certain oral history procedures and the other: narrative song-composed that Adálio Pereira de Oliveira, a northeastern in Amazon, made to tell his history of life. This oral history line values the subjective aspects of narrated experiences and clear epistemological beddings: common work, mediation and the public dimension of the document.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

With the transition to Common Core, school librarians are called to collaborate with teachers as well as to provide library media instruction for the preparation of our students in college and career readiness. How do we assist our teachers with Common Core instruction while preserving our love of fiction? How do we achieve Common Core Standards in our own instruction while sharing our treasured stories? Although Common Core focuses on informational text, there are numerous ways in which we can incorporate fiction as well as nonfiction into the curriculum.

Mixed-format tests containing both multiple-choice and constructed-response items are widely used on educational tests. Such tests combine the broad content coverage and efficient scoring of multiple-choice items with the assessment of higher-order thinking skills thought to be provided by constructed-response items. However, the combination of both item formats on a single test complicates the use of psychometric procedures. The purpose of this dissertation was to examine how characteristics of mixed-format tests and composition of the common-item set impact the accuracy of equating results in the common-item nonequivalent groups design. Operational examinee item responses for two classes of data were considered in this dissertation: (1) operational test forms and (2) pseudo-test forms that were assembled from portions of operational test forms. Analyses were conducted on three mixed-format tests from the Advanced Placement Examination program: English Language, Spanish Language, and Chemistry. For the operational test form analyses, two factors of investigation were considered as follows: (1) difference in proficiency between old and new form groups of examinees and (2) relative difficulty of multiple-choice and constructed-response items. For the pseudo-test form analyses, two additional factors of investigation were considered: (1) format representativeness of the common-item set and (2) statistical representativeness of the common-item set. For each study condition, two traditional equating methods, frequency estimation and chained equipercentile equating, and two item response theory (IRT) equating methods, IRT true score and IRT observed score methods, were considered. There were five main findings from the operational and pseudo-test form analyses. (1) As the difference in proficiency between old and new form groups of examinees increased, bias also tended to increase. (2) Relative to the criterion equating relationship for a given equating method, increases in bias were typically largest for frequency estimation and smallest for the IRT equating methods. However, it is important to note that the criterion equating relationship was different for each equating method. Additionally, only one smoothing value was analyzed for the traditional equating methods. (3) Standard errors of equating tended to be smallest for IRT observed score equating and largest for chained equipercentile equating. (4) Results for the operational and pseudo-test analyses were similar when the pseudo-tests were constructed to be similar to the operational test forms. (5) Results were mixed regarding which common-item set composition resulted in the least bias.

Nearly extirpated from the Central Appalachians, USA by the mid-1900s as a result of human persecution, loss of forests, and absence of large mammal carrion, remnant populations of common ravens (Corvus corax) have recolonized portions of their historical range. One such area of recolonization is southeastern Kentucky where the species is listed as state threatened. Southeastern Kentucky appears to have extensive suitable breeding habitat, but raven records remain relatively rare with sightings and a few nests being confirmed during the past three decades. Because little is known about local ecology or population status of this reclusive corvid in Kentucky, I assessed distribution and occupancy of ravens in available cliff habitat to quantify factors that affect detectability of ravens, identify landscape attributes important to raven breeding locations at multiple scales, and develop a protocol for monitoring occupancy of potential raven breeding habitats in Kentucky. Based on surveys of 23 cliff sites during 2009–2010, I found that ravens are highly detectable (p=0.90 (95% CI = 0.81–0.95)) at known occupied cliff sites, suggesting a survey effort consisting of two visits, each lasting one hour, will enable occupancy to be determined with 95% confidence. Using this and the habitat information associated with occupancy (cliff area and horizontal strata orientation), a monitoring protocol was developed and initiated in 2011 that should be useful to wildlife managers and land stewards interested in long-term monitoring, management, and conservation of common ravens in Kentucky’s cliff habitat.

ABSTRACT For several years, college-level remediation in English and mathematics has been of great concern for California community colleges and four-year colleges and universities. The cost of remediation has skyrocketed into the billions of dollars for postsecondary institutions. Placement tests are required for most students before they are permitted to enroll in any college courses. These placement tests determine in what English and/or math class students will begin their college experience. At issue is that many students who successfully complete high English in the 11th & 12 grades (earn an A or B) are placing into a remedial English class. In 2012, the California Community College Chancellor's Office (CCCCO) reported that over 70 percent of new college students were required to take a remedial English and/or math class. The same is occurring in the California State University (CSU) system. In 2012, 18,690 (33%) CSU first-time freshmen system-wide needed remediation in English. Because of the high rate of remediation among California students in postsecondary institutions, questions have been raised concerning the disconnect between high school English and math and college-level English and math. A mixed-method study will address grades and other variables as predictors of English placement into a community college English course and common language between Common Core State Standards and college-level English course content.

The literature shows that collaboration is a critical part of a professional learning community and leads to higher student achievement. However, there is limited research on what collaboration actually looks like in a school setting. The purpose of this study was to examine the beliefs and strategies of elementary teachers and elementary administrators of three high achieving elementary schools utilizing a weekly common planning period for collaboration. Research questions for the study inquired strategies utilized by classroom teachers and principals to capture specific actions and beliefs regarding collaboration to increase student achievement. A phenomenological qualitative method was utilized through interviewing 9 elementary teachers and 3 elementary principals to capture the essence of the phenomenon of collaboration. Coding was completed and data analysis with the assistance of AtlasTi Results showed that teachers build capacity through dialogue that revolved around data analysis, strategies to teach lessons, and creating common assessments. Principals noted data analysis and shared leadership as to leading to increased student performance. Implications for social change is for universities and districts by providing effective strategies to implement effective teacher collaboration leading to higher student academic achievement and greater opportunities for students in a global economy.

Repetitive thought, or the recurrent, often cyclical, focus on self-relevant concerns and experiences, is one liability that may be common across internalizing (INT) and externalizing (EXT) disorders. One particular area of interest for examining repetitive thought as a transdiagnostic process is in relation to alcohol use because alcohol abuse and dependence are the most common, and possibly most costly, EXT disorders. This study experimentally induced abstract repetitive thought, concrete repetitive thought, or distraction to test if repetitive thought and construal level have an effect on drinking behavior. It was hypothesized that individuals in both repetitive thought conditions would drink more than those in the distraction condition. Second, it was expected that individuals in the abstract condition would drink more than those in the concrete condition. Neither of these hypotheses was supported. Additionally, to assess for evidence of repetitive thought as a transdiagnostic process, the interaction between repetitive thought and INT was examined. If repetitive thought is truly transdiagnostic, then the relationship between repetitive thought and drinking should be stronger for individuals with more internalizing symptoms. Results did not indicate a significant interaction effect. The lack of findings in this study may be due to an ineffective experimental manipulation. Alternatively, they may suggest that repetitive thought does not have an effect on drinking.

This study investigates the knowledge that legal practitioners use to solve authentic practical legal problems in naturalistic settings. The study examines the declarative and procedural knowledge that practitioners use in that context and whether experienced practitioners use knowledge organised in encapsulated and script form (Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992; Schmidt, Norman, & Boshuizen, 1990) to enable ‘expert’ performance. The purpose of the study is to provide an empirically-based understanding of the knowledge used in solving real-life practical legal problems, for the information of the providers of practical legal training in Australia and other common law countries. The providers of that training use assumptions about that knowledge and how it is acquired, which do not always rest on coherent theoretical or empirically-derived foundations. The study uses the lawyering literature to identify the knowledge such literature considers is required to solve practical legal problems in lawyer and client interview settings. The study also examines the assumptions about the nature of that knowledge, and how it is acquired, which are apparent in the approaches of the providers of practical legal training. The limitations of those assumptions are identified from a cognitive perspective. The study examines cognitive conceptions of the knowledge used in problem solving in particular fields and how that knowledge becomes proceduralised and organised into structures called chunks and schemas. A particular examination is made of cognitive theories developed in the field of medical problem solving, which use the concepts of ‘encapsulations’ and ‘illness scripts’ to explain ‘expert’ performance in diagnosing disease in clinical settings. This analysis is used to synthesise the prediction that experienced legal practitioners may develop and use structures similar to encapsulations and illness scripts in problem solving. This prediction is based on the similarities between the way medical practitioners and legal practitioners are educated and trained, and are taught to solve problems using a hypotheticodeductive method (or a domain variant in the case of law), and on the similarities between clinical settings and lawyer and client interview settings. The study also examines theories that explain human problem solving by reference to a metaphorical ‘problem space’, and synthesises the prediction that practical legal problem solving can be explained by a problem space theory that was developed to accommodate complex, ill-defined problems. That theory uses the concepts of a problem zone to reflect the ill-defined nature of the problem as presented to the problem solver, a search and construction zone to reflect the phenomenon that the problem solver will have to construct operators to use to solve the problem, and a satisficing zone to reflect the phenomenon that there will be no single unambiguous solution to the problem (Middleton, 1998). The study uses the lawyering literature to identify the characteristics of practical legal problems in a lawyer and client interview setting. The cognitive literature is used to identify the cognitive conceptions that correspond to those characteristics. It is argued that these problems are complex, ill-defined problems that have to be found by the problem solver using weak problem solving strategies such as problem decomposition, attribute identification and means-ends analysis (Simon, 1973; Dillon, 1982; Newell, 1980). Based on these predictions two research questions are developed as follows: How do legal practitioners find and construct practical legal problems? Are there differences in the knowledge that experienced legal practitioners use and that which novice practitioners use? Do those differences reflect differences in the individual practitioner’s underlying knowledge and how that knowledge is organised? These questions are investigated in four case studies. Two of these studies involve experienced legal practitioners and two involve novices. These studies reveal that all the subjects used similar general problem solving strategies to find and construct problems. The subjects all constructed a series of problems rather than one large problem. The subjects did not all find and construct the same problems and some subjects’ constructions of problems changed as new information came to light. Most subjects did not finish the construction of problems at the interview. The processes that the subjects use to construct problems can be explained by Middleton’s (1998) problem space model, although this study suggests that model needs to be modified to accommodate the on-going emergent character of practical legal problems as they occur in lawyer and client interview settings. The investigation revealed qualitative differences between the problem attributes and moves that the experienced subjects identified and those that the novices identified. In summary, the experienced subjects identified attributes and moves that were more detailed, more directly related to the ‘facts’ and more concrete than those that the novices identified. Both the experienced subjects and the novices appeared to rely on recognition (Newell & Simon, 1972) to identify problem attributes and moves rather than on any apparent step-by-step legal analysis and reasoning process. This study suggests that the superior performance of the experienced subjects may be explained by their use of knowledge in encapsulated and script form, as predicted. The study discusses the implications of its findings for practical legal training courses as a need to provide students with general problem solving knowledge, provide them with the knowledge that they will need to recognise problems in specific areas of practice, to help them start to develop knowledge in encapsulated and script form, and to develop an understanding of the limits of institutional training in developing professional expertise.