Given the fundamental role beliefs play in guiding what individuals think and do, it is important to understand teachers' beliefs and their development in order to facilitate professional growth, which in turn has the potential to promote effective teaching and learning. While research efforts have been devoted largely to investigating teachers' beliefs, it is surprising that, despite its significance, there is little published data concerning vocabulary teaching, not to mention how professional training contributes to teachers' change in relation to the language area. This thesis, therefore, seeks to investigate teachers' epistemological and pedagogical beliefs about vocabulary development, understand their relationship with actual practice, as well as exploring how they develop through a dialogic approach which emphasises interaction and self-reflection. The study reported herein is situated in the context of Hong Kong, where problems relating to the teaching and learning of English vocabulary have been repeatedly highlighted in the literature. It mainly involves six frontline teachers of English as a second language in a local secondary school selected using purposeful sampling. Of these six teachers, four participated in a teacher development programme which focused on dialogic reflection on beliefs and practices regarding vocabulary teaching, whereas the remaining ones did not. Adopting a case study research strategy, the research draws on four major sources of data, including lesson observations, semi-structured interviews, teachers' professional dialogues and reflective writing, to illuminate issues regarding vocabulary teaching and the process of change. The findings of the study reveal the need to promote teacher professional development regarding vocabulary teaching and develop teachers' awareness of their own and alternative beliefs and practices. They also provide empirical support for the notion that dialogic reflection helps foster teachers' change, and enable us to arrive at a better understanding of the complicated nature of teachers' cognitive and behavioural development. These shed new light on sociocultural theory, generate original insights into how dialogic interaction can be used as a mediational tool to facilitate and understand teacher change in beliefs and practice, as well as providing implications for second language education and teacher professional development.

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The official version of law in Australia is that the state has a monopoly over sovereignty: there is only one Australian law whose meaning is determined by the courts. However, the courts have implied that there is another law, the law of Indigenous peoples which exists as a social fact. It can be recognised by the state for particular purposes, such as the protection of the ‘native title’ of Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders to their traditional countries. Native title is characterised as the translation of a primarily spiritual connection to land into proprietary rights and interests, requiring proof of the connection that a particular Indigenous society has under traditional laws and customs continuously acknowledged since Britain claimed sovereignty. Given the special nature of native title, the preference is to recognise title by negotiated agreement. This thesis undertakes a study of some of the assumptions and inconsistencies on which the recognition of native title – and this ‘not quite’ legal pluralism – rests. It questions law’s relation to fact, time, space, identity, language and practice as these are deployed in calibrating Indigenous peoples’ claims, and so reaches across disciplines to History (questioning the knowable past), Philosophy (the notion of recognition), Legal Theory (the concept of law as rules and the separation between law and fact), Anthropology and Literary Studies (the possibility of translation), Aesthetics (the rationality of proof), and Geography (the alternative space of negotiation). In looking closely at the practical and discursive process of making a claim, an account of native title can be given that refuses the cogency of the monopoly of sovereignty, and envisages instead a multi-faceted phenomenon that is the ‘unofficial’ law of native title. Native title is a set of practices which stimulate new articulations of Indigenous law and settler law and put them in relation with one another: the process of recognition is also a creative process of transformation.

This research explores how human values and concerns are manifested and negotiated through the process of design. In undertaking this study, a variety of design interventions were explored to facilitate how values can be articulated and discussed amongst project stakeholders during the design process. These design interventions will be referred to as projects within the exegesis. In this exegesis, I will argue for the importance of a dialogic process among project stakeholders in the creation of a human-centred design practice in communication design. This exegesis explains the central argument of the research and how the research questions were investigated. It presents a journey of the discoveries, learnings and knowledge gained through an inquiry of the research questions. The total submission for this research consists of the exegesis, exhibition and oral presentation. Through each mode of delivery I will share and illuminate how the research questions were investigated.

This study investigates the influence of dialogic relationship and organizational cultures on the military-public relationship. College students (N=218) participated in a 2 x 2 (dialogic relationship: high vs. low x organizational culture: military vs. civilian) independent groups factorial quasi-experiment. To induce dialogic relationship, two versions of the U.S. Army internet webpage screenshots were created. Organizational culture was controlled by purposive sampling two groups of military and civilian subjects. The results indicate that dialogic relationship and organizational culture combine exerts an effect on the military-public relationship by increasing perceptions of control mutuality, trust, commitment and communal relationship for civilians but not the military. In addition to its theoretical contributions, the results of this study have important practical implications for the military public affairs.

At present two options are available that can lead to a determination of how moral education may be possible in practice. One takes its formulation from the work of Kant, the other stands in the tradition of Aristotle. Kant emphasizes the importance of duty mid obligation. In contrast, Aristotle attempts to construct a theory of moral life on the practice of virtue. Both theoretical perspectives have debilitating deficiencies. A spectrum of moral experience is presented that represents the wood opportunities available to the agent in life experience. The polarities of this spectrum pull most naturally towards either an Aristotelian or a Kantian perspective, although neither perspective is capable of addressing the requirements of the entire spectrum. The Aristotelian perspective is associated with the life of non-dilemmic virtue, undertaken in community, where relational realities and the contextual contingency of moral life is emphasized. The Kantian perspective is associated with dilemmic situations to be resolved by a process of moral The central problem of the dissertation acknowledges the antithetical nature of these perspectives, and the dichotomous nature of their philosophical roots. The central task of the dissertation is the establishment of a dialogic process that has the potential to reconcile this dichotomy, and to allow these perspectives to mutually inform and reinforce each other. This task is accomplished by providing responses to a central research question that is accompanied by a series of subsidiary questions. From an analysis of various theories of moral education, Kohlberg's theory of structural developmentalism is chosen for reformulation as it is informed by the exploration of the requirements of the dialogic process. To address the research questions, additional Spectra are offered to provide an epistemological and ontological basis for a five-step dialogic treatment that combines, through a developmental climacteric, the Magistral dialogue of Vvgotsky Socratic dialogue of Bakhtin. The five-step model is comprised of a recursive loop through the four steps of the Magistral dialogue prior to an entrance into a Socratic dialogue. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The current study extends the exploration of online relationship building by examining how Business Next top 100 online sellers use the popular social network site Facebook to assist dialogic communication with their fans. A content analysis of Facebook fan pages maintained by Business Next top 100 online sellers (n=100) and individual posts which posted on those pages (n=2804) examined the use of dialogic features within the Facebook fan pages as well as the individual. The contraction process of social networking sites effectiveness indexes used literature review and content analysis. Those indexes were revised by reexamining the circumstances of Facebook. Four dimensions of indexes were ¡§Usefulness of information¡¨, ¡§Generation of return visits¡¨, ¡§Conservation of return visits¡¨, and ¡§Dialogic loop¡¨. 25 indexes were developed. Results indicated that online sellers which manage Facebook fan pages (76%) employed the dialogic strategies of dialogic loop mostly (M=16.76). It presents the highly interactive of Facebook fan pages. Interact games on Facebook fan pages which combine asking interesting questions and special discounts are significantly related with user responses.

Transculturalism refers to how cultural barriers are transcended and how cultures meet. Because the transcultural perspective reflects hitherto unrepresented spaces, it revises and innovates literary canons. This study investigates aspects of transculturalism in texts dealing with travel by the Canadian writer Janice Kulyk Keefer. It also explores how these aspects might alter our view of Canadian literature. The transcultural perspectives between mainstream Canada and Ukraine, Europe and Acadie have been analysed through three tropes of travel: departure, passage and arrival. Keefer’s texts have been read in accordance with Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theories to chart transcultural encounters and clashes. This thesis argues that a historic consciousness of their ethnic group gives the young generation a transcultural position that enables them to profit from their dual cultural competence. Although Imagined Communities are affirmed as receptacles of the cultural heritage, the impending environmental catastrophe demands that the national interests that they represent be abandoned for international co-operation. In Keefer’s European texts the transcultural aspects reflect how travel becomes synonymous with quests and epiphanies. Travelling is described as a learning process in Rest Harrow where the protagonist’s increasing cultural competence changes her from a tourist to a real traveller. The transcultural aspects also unmask prejudices, collisions and failed transitions. In this context Imagined Communities are criticized as agents of the colonial discourse, chauvinism, and intolerance. The transcultural perspective also reveals that patriarchal paradigms and the silencing of persecutions victimize the young generation. Furthermore, their ignorance of the mother tongue works as a linguistic barrier shutting them out from their ethnic group. Keefer's Acadian texts support Bakhtin's contention that isolated groups become intolerant to strangers and deviants. While the transcultural perspective unmasks tourists' perception of other countries as idiosyncratic, also the travellers' own ironic postmodernist view of themselves as tourists and of the artificiality of tourism is featured. The cultural assumptions of literary discourse are challenged by border blurring phenomena such as story-telling, the camivalesque, intertextuality and historiographic metafiction. Thus the morality of Keefer's transcultural approach lies also in her literary technique. The alternative perspective inherent in transculturalism makes individuals break away from their given cultural context to embrace a new transcultural ethos. / <p>Diss. Umeå : Umeå universitet, 1996</p> / digitalisering@umu

Attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) describes children that show inappro-priate behaviour in two categories, i.e. 1) Inattention and 2) Hyperactivity-impulsivity and which are maladaptive and inconsistent with their developmental level. ADHD impacts the whole life of a child diagnosed with it. One of these areas that is impacted is the relationship between child and parent. As found in a thorough literature study, much research has been done on the relationship between parents and their children diagnosed with ADHD. No research has been done on parents’ experience of the dialogic relationship, according to the Gestalt theory, with their children that are diagnosed with ADHD. The dialogic relationship was research specifically in the context of the five principles of the dialogic relationship, i.e. inclusion, presence, confirmation, commitment to dialogue and non-exploitation. In this qualitative study nine parents’ experience of their dialogic relationship with their child in the middle childhood, diagnosed with ADHD was explored and described. A case study was used as research design to study how participants give meaning to the phenomenon that is being studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mothers and two fathers after which data was thematically analysed. The trustworthiness of the study and ethical aspects applicable to the study were discussed and the limitations of the study were listed. It was found that parents apply inclusion and presence in their relationship with their child with ADHD. The application of confirmation and commitment to dialogue is a bigger challenge because the children’s behaviour results in parents reacting negatively rather than giving acknowledgement. Sometime it is difficult for parents to commit to the dialogue because the children withdraw from the interaction. The researcher made recommendations for parents of children with ADHD, for professionals who are working with children with ADHD and for further study in this field. / Thesis (MA (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.

Attention-deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) describes children that show inappro-priate behaviour in two categories, i.e. 1) Inattention and 2) Hyperactivity-impulsivity and which are maladaptive and inconsistent with their developmental level. ADHD impacts the whole life of a child diagnosed with it. One of these areas that is impacted is the relationship between child and parent. As found in a thorough literature study, much research has been done on the relationship between parents and their children diagnosed with ADHD. No research has been done on parents’ experience of the dialogic relationship, according to the Gestalt theory, with their children that are diagnosed with ADHD. The dialogic relationship was research specifically in the context of the five principles of the dialogic relationship, i.e. inclusion, presence, confirmation, commitment to dialogue and non-exploitation. In this qualitative study nine parents’ experience of their dialogic relationship with their child in the middle childhood, diagnosed with ADHD was explored and described. A case study was used as research design to study how participants give meaning to the phenomenon that is being studied. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven mothers and two fathers after which data was thematically analysed. The trustworthiness of the study and ethical aspects applicable to the study were discussed and the limitations of the study were listed. It was found that parents apply inclusion and presence in their relationship with their child with ADHD. The application of confirmation and commitment to dialogue is a bigger challenge because the children’s behaviour results in parents reacting negatively rather than giving acknowledgement. Sometime it is difficult for parents to commit to the dialogue because the children withdraw from the interaction. The researcher made recommendations for parents of children with ADHD, for professionals who are working with children with ADHD and for further study in this field. / Thesis (MA (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2013.