Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign, 1989. / Vita. Typescript (photocopy). eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-310).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign, 1989. / Vita. Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 288-310).

The present thesis is a study of how body and space interrelate in the novel La Plaça del Diamant (1962) by the Catalan writer Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983). I will in the following argue that these relations are important effects of the literary form of the novel and study how they produce a certain form of subjectivity. The analysis is generated by the following questions: how are the textual differences, translations, transitions and cancellations between the domains of body and space made readable by La Plaça del Diamant?  Centering on these questions, what will be studied more specifically in the novel is: The practice of naming (and re-naming) and its implications for subject formation The construction of bodily perception through spatial signs The aesthetic strategies used for the inscription of a female experience and corporeality Stylistic aspects of fragmentation   The Diamond Square as threshold chronotope and producer of a subject in crisis The analysis is underpinned by a materialistic, feminist and critical theory, in which the literary text is seen as a discursive act that generates certain conditions for a subject to take form. The method of study consists in a deconstructive and performative reading of La Plaça del Diamant, based on the view on the literary text as an event between aesthetic and socio-historical elements that materialize (and question) the conditions of subject formation. Previous research has argued that the main character of the novel undergoes a progressive development during the course of the story – that she in the beginning is naïve and passive to then become a free and active subject in the end. I will however try to formulate an alternative reading of Rodoreda’s novel; a reading that will question Western-liberal accounts of subjects as freely choosing, autonomous agents and instead search for the formal and discursive conditions of La Plaça del Diamant that render certain subjects legible. The emphasis is to study how the novel deconstructs and challenges a homogeneous notion of the subject – through its use of various stylistic, narrative and symbolic devices – and how it thus problematizes the very concept of identity.

Personalized instruction has long been a goal of behavior analysis in the education of typically developing populations, one important element of which is the delivery of lectures in new formats. This study tested feasibility of online lecture delivery by comparing online and in-class delivery of lectures using an adapted alternating treatments design. Each week, the lecture component of a unit of an introductory behavior analysis course was presented either online or in-class, alternating week to week. The alternation was counterbalanced between two sections, where one section saw the lecture for a given unit -online while the other did it in-class, allowing for comparison between lectures of a given unit as well as across units within a section. First attempt quiz scores were measured. No significant difference in the trend of quiz scores between conditions was detected, averaging 73.1% (range, 50.4% to 83.4%) for online and 72.8% (range, 54.8 to 84%) for in-class conditions. This suggests that online lectures are a feasible alternative lecture delivery in this introductory behavior analysis course. This experimental methodology may also be used to test other instructional techniques as well. The ability to place lectures online, opens the door to further, more refined, experimentation with modern instructional methods such as the “flipped classroom.”

Blank space in western Art History and visual culture is something that has tended to be either explained away, or ignored. Pictures that do not depict challenge the visual basis of the ego and its others, confronting what I call the 'Phallic reader' (who sees according to the logic and rules of the Phallogocentric system he inhabits) and potentially disturbing his sense of the visible. The Phallic reader, the visible and the seeing ego's sense of how to see, meet in what I call the 'psychic surface'. Deploying this notion of a 'psychic surface' allows for readings which move on from the potentially confining logic of the Phallus. Paradoxically, the psychic structure of monochrome's liminal blankness is homologous to the indeterminate Mixed Race subject, whose body transgresses not only the foundational historical binarism of 'Black/White', but also Lacanian psychoanalysis. This thesis aims to concentrate on exploring blank spaces, with particular reference to the monochrome within western Art History. Building on the considerable work since at least the 1960s that critiques the binary logocentrism of Eurocentric, Hegelian-originated Art History, this thesis aims to explore the specific ways monochrome evades, undermines and tricks commonly accepted 'groundrules' of Art History. The Phallic reader is severely restricted in understanding that which falls outside of the signifying logic of a particular system of Art History that follows a binary, teleological and Phallogocentric course. Both monochrome and the Mixed Race subject fall outside of this logic, as both contain the structure of the trick. In each case, the trick is activated in the tension between the prychica nd the opticals urfaces. I suggestt hat monochrome's psychic space is pre-Phallic, a space of eternal deferral of meaning, a space that playfully makes a nonsense of binary structures. Psychoanalysis is largely used here as an analytic tool, but also appears as an object of critique. Art History provides an anchor for the optical surfaces under discussion. Theories of 'radical superficiality' both contradict and complement these ways of theorising the psychic surface. The trick/ster is a significant/signifiant means of deploying interdisciplinary methodologies to negotiate this difficult terrain between Black, White and monochrome. An interdisciplinary approach also enacts the psychic structure of indeterminacy of my objects of study. I hope that by proposing a potential transgressive power for those indeterminate things that continue to confound the binary systems that aim to contextualise and confine them, I will contribute to the areas of Visual Culture and 'Race' Theory.

The issue of subject pronominal expression (SPE) in language contact situations, as illustrated in Nosotros somos muy buenos estudiantes [‘We are very good students’] vs. Ø somos muy buenos estudiantes [‘(we) are very good students’], has been the focus of decades of research in both variationist and generative studies (Bentivoglio, 1987; Cameron, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996; Chomsky, 1981, 1986; Huang, 1984; Orozco & Guy, 2008; Travis, 2005a, 2005b; Otheguy & Zentella, 2007, 2012; Rizzi, 1982; Morales, 1980; Silva-Corvalán, 1982, 1994, 1997; inter alios). While generative studies have shown that null subject languages (NSLs) can either be licensed by rich verbal paradigms or by discursive mechanisms, variationist studies have shown that there are predictors that condition SPE in NSLs. Furthermore, they have argued that the rates of SPE reflect uniformity across different varieties of Spanish (Orozco, 2015). In spite of this significant body of evidence in monolingual varieties of Spanish, studies involving bilingual groups and indigenous languages are relatively sparse, as most studies have studied Spanish in contact with other Indo-European languages. This dissertation investigates the SPE in the Spanish of a group of highly proficient bilingual speakers of Uwa and Spanish in a language contact situation. The research reported in this dissertation also studies the nature of cross-linguistic influence between the two languages of the bilinguals. Specifically, the idiosyncratic morphosyntactic traces in SPE resulting from the contact between Uwa and Spanish and whether those traces evidence patterns of variation, and, if so, how they can be accounted for. Spanish and Uwa are both NSLs and thus both allow for referential null subject pronouns (SPs). However, each language has specific syntactic and discursive predictors responsible for null subjects. For instance, Uwa relies heavily on discursive clues whereas Spanish is a sentence-oriented language. This means that while in Uwa the subject reference is understood from context and discursive clues governed by chains of topics, the rich verbal paradigm of Spanish is responsible for licensing null subjects. The fact that Spanish and Uwa are both NLs but still have dissimilar typological status provides a rich testing ground for the mechanisms involved in SPE as well as for investigating the effects of bilingualism. This dissertation aims at enhancing our linguistic knowledge in relation to the principles and mechanisms involved in SPE in bilingual communities and at providing a better understanding of the nature of cross-linguistic influence in highly proficient bilinguals.

<p>Denna studie har genomförts i år 4, 6, 7 och 9. Målet för undersökningen har varit att ta reda på vilka attityder elever i dessa årskurser har gentemot matematiken samt hur dessa attityder uppkommer och om de går att påverka/förändra. För att ta reda på vilka attityder som finns hos elever, har jag låtit jämföra min studie med vad annan litteratur säger om elevers attityder till matematik. Min studie bygger på en enkätundersökning genomförd i de tidigare nämnda skolåren. Jag har sedan ställt enkäterna mot varandra och försökt se skillnader och likheter i de olika skolåren. Som komplement till min studie och till litteraturen har jag även genomfört en lärarintervju. Den har jag i huvudsak använt för att försöka ta reda om klassläraren arbetar aktivt med att påverka sina elevers attityder till matematiken.</p><p>Resultatet visar i huvudsak att eleverna i år 4 anser matematiken vara ett av de roligaste ämnena i skolan. I år 6 är matematiken viktig snarare än rolig. Eleverna kan tidigt förstå vikten av att lära sig räkna för att klara sig bra genom livet. Matematiken anses av eleverna vara "kul när man fattar och tråkig när man inte förstår" – det vill säga, ett ämne där förståelsen är av vikt för uppkomsten av attityden.</p>

<p>Syftet med undersökningen är att ta reda på hur NTA fungerar på förskolenivå. Detta gjordes via intervjuer och en observation. Samtliga pedagoger i undersökningen menar att NTA fungerar bra även på förskolenivå, sålänge man bryter ner det till barnens nivå.</p>

<p>Examensarbete handlar om hur förskolan arbetar med antalsuppfattning. För att besvara mina frågeställningar har jag använt mig av litteratur och en enkätundersökning som behandlar antalsuppfattning.</p><p>I enkätundersökningen har 16 förskollärare medverkat, en från varje förskola i den tillfrågade kommunen, där jag har valt att göra min undersökning. Förskollärarnas ålder varierar och ungefär hälften av förskollärarna har utbildning i matematik. I enkäten har jag fått fram bakomliggande motiv som förskollärarna anser aktuella för att aktivt kunna arbeta med antal i förskolan.</p><p>Resultaten av denna undersökning visar att alla förskollärare i den tillfrågade kommunen, tycker att det är viktigt att arbeta med antal. Genom enkätundersökningen kan vi ta del av hur förskollärarna arbetar med antalsuppfattning i de olika rutinsituationer som finns i förskolans verksamhet. Vi får även tips och idéer på hur en förskola kan arbeta med antal.</p>

<p>Syftet med denna uppsats har varit att undersöka hur inledande läs-och skrivinlärning går till ute i praktiken. Anledningen till att vi blev intresserade av detta är på grund av att mycket av den litteratur vi läst om, inom detta område, har allting varit svart eller vitt. Enligt litteraturen använder en lärare sig antingen av en syntetisk metod, så kallad traditionell metod där man börjar med delar för att gå vidare med helheten, eller analytisk metod, en metod där man går från helheten till delarna. Detta hade vi svårt att tro på, mycket på grund av att under vår VFU (verksamhetsförlagd utbildning) har vi sett att lärare blandar dessa metoder under inledande läs-och skrivinlärning. För att vi skulle kunna få en inblick i vad som är syntetisk- eller analytisk metod har vi läst litteratur som handlar om det individualpsykologiska perspektivet och Wittingmetoden, som hör till det syntetiska, och om det socialinteraktionistiska perspektivet och LTG-metoden som hör till det analytiska. För att få reda på om lärare använder sig av en "ren" metod under inledande läs-och skrivundervisning har vi gjort en etnografiskt orienterad studie där vi under tre dagar observerat hur en lärare lär sina elever att läsa och skriva. Vår undersökning gav oss bekräftelse på att i alla fall vår valda lärare blandar olika metoder vid inledande läs- och skrivinlärning. Vi fick även bra och motiverade svar på hennes resonemang kring metodval.</p>