Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Alongside informal networks of friends and family, formal social groupings such as voluntary associations are valued by older people as opportunities for engagement. In Australia, one such grouping is the licensed social (or ‘registered’) club. Approximately 20 per cent of all older Australians, and 80 per cent of older residents of the state of New South Wales, actively participate in such clubs. Despite this, older people’s registered club participation has received little scholarly attention. This ethnographic study of one particular registered club aimed to discover the nature, meaning and role of club participation for its older members. Social capital existing in club-based networks emerged as a further investigative focus, and its mechanisms and outcomes were examined. Participant observation and in-depth interviewing were the main data collection methods used. Data analysis procedures included thematic analysis (based loosely on grounded theory methodology), as well as the more contextsensitive narrative analysis and key-words-in-context analysis. The study found that club participation enabled older members to maintain valued social networks, self-reliance and a sense of autonomy. Social networks were characterised by social capital of the bonding type, being largely homogeneous with respect to age, gender, (working) class and cultural background. Strong cohesive bonds were characterised by intimacy and reciprocity, and possessed norms including equality and the norm of tolerance and inclusiveness. These helped to minimise conflict and build cohesiveness, while protecting older club-goers from increasing marginalisation within the club. Peer grouping within this mainstream setting may have shielded the older club-goers from stigma associated with participation in old-age specific groups. The nature and scale of registered club participation amongst older Australians points to their unique and important role. The findings of this research indicate that – for at least this group of older men and women - club use is a major contributor to maintaining social connectedness and a sense of self as self-reliant, autonomous and capable. In the context of an ageing population, Australia’s registered clubs feature in the mosaic of resources available to older people, and their communities, for the creation of social capital.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Graduate School of Education, Oral Roberts University, 2006. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 143-170).

Studiens syfte var att undersöka om, och i så fall hur, barns konsumtionsmöjligheter påverkar den sociala delaktigheten bland barn i förskola/skola/fritids. Vi ville fånga skolpersonalens upplevelser av fenomenet för att förstå hur detta skulle kunna hanteras. För att svara på syftet har en kvalitativ studie gjorts med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer med personal som arbetar inom verksamheterna. Resultatet visar att barnens konsumtionsmöjligheter till viss del påverkar den sociala delaktigheten. på både gott och ont. Personalen har för det mesta hittat egna lösningar för att hantera fenomenet då styrdokumenten är otydliga med hur man bör gå tillväga för att skapa en jämlik miljö i skolan utifrån barnens olika konsumtionsmöjligheter. / The aim of the study was to examine how the childrens consumption- possibillities affects social participation among children in preschool/school/leisure. We wanted to catch the staff's perceptions of the phenomenon in order to understand how this could be handled. To answer the aim, a qualitative study have been made. The study has been carried out using semi-structured interviews of personnel involved in the various organizations. The result shows that children's consumption- possibillities to some extent affect social participation, both good and bad. The staff have mostly found their own solutions to address the phenomenon, because the policy documents are unclear of how tp proceed in order to create an equitable enviroment in schools by children of different consumption opportunities.

published_or_final_version / Social Work / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In the next few years, the number of international students, including graduate students, in Canada is expected to increase considerably (Cudmore, 2005). Simultaneously, recent funding cuts to higher education in a more neoliberal policy climate leave these students with fewer services to facilitate their integration into the host community (Hellsten & Prescott, 2004; Trice, 2004). One important way in which students become integrated is by participating in civic engagement projects. This study examined how, in the current policy climate, international graduate students are taking part in such projects. / Based on semi-structured interviews with six international graduate students in the field of education in Quebec, the study showed that students embraced a more Deweyan perspective of education and successfully participated in civic engagement projects despite many challenges, such as an academic culture that provides little active support for their involvement in civic engagement activities. The study concludes with recommendations so that universities can provide such support.

This research paper looked at a war room as a decentralized space for change through which public participation is to be enhanced and service delivery accelerated at a ward level. The Lunerburg community demarcated as ward one under eDumbe Local Municipality was used as a case study. The eDumbe Local Municipality falls under Zululand District Municipality located in the northern part of KwaZulu-Natal. Since the take-off of democracy in South Africa, national government has put programmes in place to fight the acceleration of poverty and attend to the backlogs of service delivery. Provincial government are always mandated to implement national programmes or improvised according to the needs of their provinces. In the province of KwaZulu-Natal, the former Premier Zweli Mkhize launched war rooms as a provincial strategy derived from the national war on poverty campaign (announced by former president Thabo Mbeki during the State of the Nation Address, 2008) in the attempt to create decentralized spaces for change through which public participation is to be enhanced to achieve accelerated service delivery at a ward level. The other significance of the strategy is that it takes provincial government to local municipality wards in a collaborative manner. It is also important to note that the use of war rooms in the attempt to enhance public participation and service delivery is not understood and accepted by many people. Currently there are discussions held by the KZN office of the Premier in collaboration with sector departments as well civil societies in the attempt to give war rooms a relevant name. Literature on public participation, decentralization as well as on good governance supported by various diagrams and tables was used to argue in support that citizen’s voices should be integrated in development plans that affect them directly. The study was empirical, employed qualitative methodologies and used triangulated means to collect the data. Content analysis was used to analyse the collected data. The focus of the research was to investigate the extent through which, war rooms as decentralized spaces for change, serve as a unique mechanism to achieve public participation at a ward level in respect to currently existing strategies at a ward level. The study intended to also highlight mechanisms that are used by the war room as well to diagnose the support that the war room is receiving from other government departments. Study findings revealed that the Lunerburg war room executive committee members still lack proper training in relation to their roles and responsibilities within the war room. Members of the Lunerburg community didn’t know where the war room is located and what it does at a ward level. It was also discovered that the Lunerburg war room is not resourced to enhance public participation and accelerate service delivery on its own. Operations of the Lunerburg war room enable community members as beneficiaries of the war room to remain passive participants rather than active participants in the decisions that affect them directly. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2014.

Qinhuai river in Nanjing, China, has suffered pollution since the late 1970s. To solve the problem, Nanjing Municipality conducted two river control projects. The first one in 2002 ended up a failure, and the second one in 2012 also faced various hinders. The aim of the thesis is to examine the sustainability of the river control launched in 2012, and to contribute with some suggestions for improvement. In this thesis, the author used methods of interview and literature review to gain the empirical data of the river control, used method of stakeholder analysis to analyze the data with the lens of sustainable development, Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and externalities. After the analysis, the river control is considered unsustainable. The conclusion is that the pollution mainly originates from wasted domestic water. And the river control launched in 2012 is not sustainable as it lacks long-term perspective, social participation, gender awareness and solutions to mitigate the externalities. The emphasis is that, as the enabler, regulator and provision offer, Nanjing Municipality needs to raise social participation and internalize the environmental externalities to reach sustainable management of the Qinhuai river.

Since Bergevin and McKinley (1966) first wrote about Participation Training as a way to create collaboration among learners, more than 40 years of research has explored, separated, and defined various types of group work and group learning. Themes that emerged in the study were: Participation Training as something missing, Participation Training as resistance, Participation Training as "self' concepts, Participation Training as theater, Participation Training as negotiation, and Participation Training as shared experience. Data collected through interviews with individuals who experienced a 2007 Participation Training Institute reveal the complex, eductive nature of the phenomenon. That is, although the structures employed throughout the training were articulated before the participants actually experienced them, the constructed process, including content, was entirely authored by the particular group of people involved. The structural tools that define the procedure were prescribed; learners came to Participation Training having read about the structure of the training, the roles, and yet every one of the contributors believed there was no structure present at the beginning of the training. The experience of Participation Training did not depend on discussion content; it depended on rehearsal and reflection. In this study, contributors perceived the absence of content as the absence of structure. When none was supplied, they gradually created structure by determining content together, so they were able to take "ownership" of the process as they generated it. This absence of prescribed content was, for these contributors, the essence of Participation Training.Using a variety of theoretical lenses, Participation Training should be explored for its potential towards helping learners – teachers and students – work together through the development of individual skills that support interdependence. Since Participation Training is based on dialogue, discourse analysis might provide a particularly rich window onto the development of various forms of interaction among learners; semiotics could examine the meaning of Participation Training as a face-to-face, rather than technologically mediated, experience. Comparative case studies might reveal productive similarities and differences between Participation Training and other forms of group learning. / Department of Educational Studies

No description available.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / Alongside informal networks of friends and family, formal social groupings such as voluntary associations are valued by older people as opportunities for engagement. In Australia, one such grouping is the licensed social (or ‘registered’) club. Approximately 20 per cent of all older Australians, and 80 per cent of older residents of the state of New South Wales, actively participate in such clubs. Despite this, older people’s registered club participation has received little scholarly attention. This ethnographic study of one particular registered club aimed to discover the nature, meaning and role of club participation for its older members. Social capital existing in club-based networks emerged as a further investigative focus, and its mechanisms and outcomes were examined. Participant observation and in-depth interviewing were the main data collection methods used. Data analysis procedures included thematic analysis (based loosely on grounded theory methodology), as well as the more contextsensitive narrative analysis and key-words-in-context analysis. The study found that club participation enabled older members to maintain valued social networks, self-reliance and a sense of autonomy. Social networks were characterised by social capital of the bonding type, being largely homogeneous with respect to age, gender, (working) class and cultural background. Strong cohesive bonds were characterised by intimacy and reciprocity, and possessed norms including equality and the norm of tolerance and inclusiveness. These helped to minimise conflict and build cohesiveness, while protecting older club-goers from increasing marginalisation within the club. Peer grouping within this mainstream setting may have shielded the older club-goers from stigma associated with participation in old-age specific groups. The nature and scale of registered club participation amongst older Australians points to their unique and important role. The findings of this research indicate that – for at least this group of older men and women - club use is a major contributor to maintaining social connectedness and a sense of self as self-reliant, autonomous and capable. In the context of an ageing population, Australia’s registered clubs feature in the mosaic of resources available to older people, and their communities, for the creation of social capital.