The goal of this inductive study was to identify factors that facilitate and inhibit binational collaboration in the recovery of endangered species in the northern Mexico borderlands, focusing on the Mexican wolf (Canis lupus baileyi). A conceptual model was developed using qualitative techniques, providing the basis for design of a mail survey. The target population included participants with experience in recovery efforts for over a dozen species at risk in the region. Long interviews were recorded with 44 participants from Mexico and the United States. Thematic hierarchical analysis was used to develop a conceptual model of how interviewees talked about factors influencing binational collaboration. Issues were classified in five thematic clusters: project, organization, people, resources, culture/history. The survey was used to conduct a needs assessment, measuring respondents' attitudes about the relative priority of issues identified in the conceptual model. High priority needs were identified from each thematic cluster: (a) equitable participation in project design and implementation, (b) continuity of personnel, (c) coordination of federal, state and local efforts, (d) increased funding, managed with accountability, and (e) exchange visits to facilitate understanding of diverse perspectives. Responses to almost half the survey items indicated accord among the sample of respondents, providing a basis for shared common ground. The nature of discord was within the range of "manageable", with no clear polarization of attitudes measured. This exploratory data analysis suggested that the structure of the conceptual model developed from the Mexican wolf case study was generally a valid basis for future deductive analysis and reflection by practitioners. For 82% of 22 statements of need, priorities of participants in the Mexican wolf recovery efforts did not differ significantly from other respondents. Nationality (of respondents) significantly affected priority rankings for only 18% of the need statements. Significant effects of five demographic variables indicated that interactive effects should be examined in future multivariate analyses to determine how respondents' attitudes on issues related to priority rankings. Recommendations were provided for a more efficient and effective approach to collaborative problem-solving, engaging reflective practitioners from the private and public sectors in principled negotiation processes to better understand diverse perspectives.

This study examines the elements of collaborative research partnerships (CRPs) between university researchers and other organizations or individuals in the education sector whose mandate is to conduct and disseminate research for service delivery. Studying these partnerships for knowledge mobilization(KMb)includes understanding the roles partners take on; the tensions or facilitators they face when bringing research into practice; the structures to maintain the partnership; and the knowledge mobilization activities. Phase 1 takes an in-depth look at one partnership using key informant interviews and document analysis, while phase 2 utilizes a survey between four overarching university-community organization partnerships across Canada. Findings suggest that although difficult, when research producers and users work together, capacity is built at the organizational level to view research evidence as an important part of the organizational service delivery, with small impacts on individual knowledge development; that partnerships remain informal in their practice; that the mechanisms by which partners use to communicate within the partnership and the frequency of communication helps to build relationships between partners; and the ideal type of CRP, where they ought to always be an equal endeavour, is overstated in the literature. Not all useful partnerships are exact equal contributions from research producers and their user-based partners. Implications include that researchers gain access to practice expertise and insights into practice-based research rather than engaging in only theoretical research while community partners gain access to greater capacity for understanding and using research through exchanges with academics.

This study examines the elements of collaborative research partnerships (CRPs) between university researchers and other organizations or individuals in the education sector whose mandate is to conduct and disseminate research for service delivery. Studying these partnerships for knowledge mobilization(KMb)includes understanding the roles partners take on; the tensions or facilitators they face when bringing research into practice; the structures to maintain the partnership; and the knowledge mobilization activities. Phase 1 takes an in-depth look at one partnership using key informant interviews and document analysis, while phase 2 utilizes a survey between four overarching university-community organization partnerships across Canada. Findings suggest that although difficult, when research producers and users work together, capacity is built at the organizational level to view research evidence as an important part of the organizational service delivery, with small impacts on individual knowledge development; that partnerships remain informal in their practice; that the mechanisms by which partners use to communicate within the partnership and the frequency of communication helps to build relationships between partners; and the ideal type of CRP, where they ought to always be an equal endeavour, is overstated in the literature. Not all useful partnerships are exact equal contributions from research producers and their user-based partners. Implications include that researchers gain access to practice expertise and insights into practice-based research rather than engaging in only theoretical research while community partners gain access to greater capacity for understanding and using research through exchanges with academics.

The three studies in this dissertation examine the relationship between the decision of market participants to compete or collaborate on their innovation strategies and outcomes as well as the broader industry structure and technological progress. The first study analyzes the impact of modern patent pools on the innovative performance of firms outside the pool. Theories generally predict that modern patent pools have a positive impact on innovation by reducing the cost of access to the pool’s technology, but recent empirical research suggests that patent pools may actually decrease the innovation rate of firms outside the pool. Using a difference-in-difference-with-matching methodology, I find a substantial decline in outsiders’ patenting rate after the pool formation. However I find that the observed reduction is mainly due to a shift in firms’ investment from additional patentable technological exploration toward implementing the pool technology in their products. The results shed light on how the interaction between cooperation, in the form of patent pooling, and competition shapes firms’ innovative strategies by enabling opportunities for application development based on the pooled technologies. In the second study, I examine the impact of restrictive stem cell policies introduced by George W. Bush in 2001 on the U.S. scientists’ productivity and collaboration patterns. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the 2001 Bush policy led to a decline in the research productivity of U.S. scientists. However, the effect was short-lived as U.S. scientists accessed non-federal funds within the United States and sought funds outside the United States through their international ties. The results suggest that scientists may use international collaborations as a strategic means to deal with uncertainties in their national policy environment. In the third study, I examine the effects of the fragmentation of patent rights on subsequent investment in new inventions. Using a theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the semiconductor industry, I seek to shed light on the contingency factors that shape the role of technological fragmentation in explaining the investment decisions and appropriation strategies of firms. The results provide a dynamic explanation of the interplay between firms’ R&D investment, their patenting strategies, and technological fragmentation.

This article provides an overview of the Tools for Outreach and Teaching Series (TOTS) at UBC Library. The series was created by three UBC Librarians to enable library staff to learn from each other about social software and other emerging technologies that might be useful in their work.

In documents, which decides about the training in comprehensive schools is said, that it is necassary to educate a person, who is able in self-contained and together to deal one‘s and community‘s problems, creativly answer in nowadays world‘s challenges, capable to give a sense his life in contradictory reality of nowadays. One of the vicissitude of education determing factors – vicissitude of school‘s and place community. That means, that to realize the point is nessesary school‘s community‘s undivided attention and collective work. Just from the schools head‘s dessicions depends how will develops rapports of education and how will the points will be realized, how changes will be in progress on parents and educators communication. Parents are part of the furniture in school‘s community‘s life, whom concentration into schools community is the main school‘s improving process point. Not even the schools educates the student, but the whole community‘s life, especially the family, where the child grows. That becouse it is important not just a collective activity of school‘s heads, teachers and parents, but as well as parent‘s education. From this, how it will succeed for school to organise and coordinate the activity of the head‘s of the classes and special educators, which are connected with collaboration with parents, depends education success. School‘s work organising, coordinating and control‘s function belongs to manager. States and abroad‘s educators attention for school‘s... [to full text]

Scientific communities have established social mechanisms for proposing explanations, questioning evidence, and validating claims. Opportunities like these are often not a given in science classrooms (Vellom, Anderson, & Palincsar, 1993) even though the National Science Education Standards (NSES, 1996) state that a scientifically literate person should be able to “engage intelligently in public discourse and debate about important issues in science and technology” (National Research Council [NRC], 1996). Research further documents that students’ science conceptions undergo little modification with the traditional teaching experienced in many high school science classrooms (Duit, 2003, Dykstra, 2005). This case study is an examination of the discourse that occurred as four high school physics students collaborated on solutions to three physics lab problems during which the students made predictions and experimentally generated data to support their predictions. The discourse patterns were initially examined for instances of concept negotiations. Selected instances were further examined using Toulmin’s (2003) pattern for characterizing argumentation in order to understand the students’ scientific reasoning strategies and to document the role of collaboration in facilitating conceptual modifications and changes. Audio recordings of the students’ conversations during the labs, written problems turned in to the teacher, interviews of the students, and observations and field notes taken during student collaboration were used to document and describe the students’ challenges and successes encountered during their collaborative work. The findings of the study indicate that collaboration engaged the students and generated two types of productive science discourse: concept negotiations and procedure negotiations. Further analysis of the conceptual and procedure negotiations revealed that the students viewed science as sensible and plausible but not as a tool they could employ to answer their questions. The students’ conceptual growth was inhibited by their allegiance to the authority of the science laws as learned in their school classroom. Thus, collaboration did not insure conceptual change. Describing student discourse in situ contributes to science education research about teaching practices that facilitate conceptual understandings in the science classroom.

Dabarties gyvenimo iššūkiai iš kiekvieno žmogaus reikalauja: dalyvauti bendrame gyvenime, gyventi ir veikti kartu su kitais, sėkmingai prisitaikyti prie ateities pokyčių t.y. įgyti socialinę kompetenciją. Tinkamam socialinės kompetencijos ugdymui labai daug įtakos turi mokinių tarpusavio santykiai, gebėjimas bendrauti ir bendradarbiauti. Todėl, norint sėkmingai ugdyti socialinę kompetenciją, didelis dėmesys turi būti skiriamas gebėjimo bendrauti ugdymui. Tyrimu siekiama nustatyti kaip mokymosi bendradarbiaujant metodai skatina plėtoti mokinių gebėjimą bendrauti, keičia jų tarpusavio santykius. Tyrimo problema - nepakankamai išplėtotas pradinių klasių mokinių gebėjimas bendrauti. Tyrimo objektas - pradinių klasių mokinių gebėjimas bendrauti.Tyrimo tikslas yra atskleisti mokinių gebėjimo bendrauti ugdymo galimybes pradinėse klasėse. Uždaviniai: 1. Apibrėžti socialinės kompetencijos sampratą, jos aktualumą ir ugdymo(si) galimybes pradinėse klasėse. 2. Išryškinti bendravimo ypatumus pradinėse klasėse. 3. Apibūdinti mokymosi bendradarbiaujant metodus bei jų reikšmę ugdant gebėjimą bendrauti. 4. Įvertinti mokymosi bendradarbiaujant metodų įtaką mokinių gebėjimo bendrauti ugdymui(si). Atliktas veiklos tyrimas, kuris padėjo išsiaiškinti esamą situaciją bei numatyti praktinės veiklos tobulinimo būdus, siekiant išspręsti kilusią problemą. Tyrimo metodai: mokslinės literatūros analizė, sociometrijos tyrimas, interviu. Atlikus tyrimą, paaiškėjo, kad mokymosi bendradarbiaujant... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Today every person has to face the challenges of participating in public life, living and working together with other people and adapting successfully to future changes, i.e. developing social competence. Relationships among pupils and their communication and co-operation skills have a great impact on the proper training of social competence. Therefore, for the successful development of social competence, more attention should be paid to the training of communication skills. The research seeks to determine how the methods of learning by co-operating encourage the development of communication skills in pupils and change their relationships. The research problem is the insufficient development of communication skills in primary school pupils. The research object is the communication skills of primary school pupils. The aim of the research is to reveal the possibilities for training communication skills in primary school pupils.Tasks: 1. Define the concept of social competence, its relevance today and the possibilities for training/developing social competence in primary school; 2. Disclose the peculiarities of communication in primary school; 3. Describe the methods of learning by co-operating and its importance in training communication skills; 4. Evaluate the impact of the methods of learning by co-operating on the training/development of communication skills in pupils. The examination of current practices has been performed that allowed to clear up the current situation and... [to full text]

Currently responsible for policing over one million citizens, the Calgary Police Service (CPS) has earned its reputation as a progressive law enforcement organization in part by focusing on the early recognition and acknowledgement of evolving crime trends. To maintain essential public trust CPS remains attuned to the constant shifting of legal and moral public accountability, an issue highlighted by judicial inquiries that have illustrated a consistent lack of police interagency cooperation. Since police are restricted by geographic jurisdictional boundaries, the answer to inter-jurisdictional challenges appears to be the timely sharing of intelligence, something the CPS has proposed through its newly developed Real Time Operations Centre (RTOC). This study investigated the question of how CPS might best develop an Alberta law-enforcement collaborative based upon the paradigm of a central real-time operations centre (RTOC), feasibility of this model, and potential challenges to its implementation. This study conducted qualitative action research with the leaders of all major law enforcement organizations in the Province of Alberta. Research data generated by one-on-one interviews with each participant was thematically analyzed to produce knowledge sufficient to plant the seeds of change for both organizational transformation and future inquiry. Study findings suggest it will be incumbent upon police leaders to create and develop the organizational social awareness necessary to enhance and leverage social capital essential to inter-agency cooperation and collaboration. Identifying positive aspects of a strong organizational culture will create a culture of well-being able to address crucial communication issues and the critical alignment of resources.

The three studies in this dissertation examine the relationship between the decision of market participants to compete or collaborate on their innovation strategies and outcomes as well as the broader industry structure and technological progress. The first study analyzes the impact of modern patent pools on the innovative performance of firms outside the pool. Theories generally predict that modern patent pools have a positive impact on innovation by reducing the cost of access to the pool’s technology, but recent empirical research suggests that patent pools may actually decrease the innovation rate of firms outside the pool. Using a difference-in-difference-with-matching methodology, I find a substantial decline in outsiders’ patenting rate after the pool formation. However I find that the observed reduction is mainly due to a shift in firms’ investment from additional patentable technological exploration toward implementing the pool technology in their products. The results shed light on how the interaction between cooperation, in the form of patent pooling, and competition shapes firms’ innovative strategies by enabling opportunities for application development based on the pooled technologies. In the second study, I examine the impact of restrictive stem cell policies introduced by George W. Bush in 2001 on the U.S. scientists’ productivity and collaboration patterns. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the 2001 Bush policy led to a decline in the research productivity of U.S. scientists. However, the effect was short-lived as U.S. scientists accessed non-federal funds within the United States and sought funds outside the United States through their international ties. The results suggest that scientists may use international collaborations as a strategic means to deal with uncertainties in their national policy environment. In the third study, I examine the effects of the fragmentation of patent rights on subsequent investment in new inventions. Using a theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the semiconductor industry, I seek to shed light on the contingency factors that shape the role of technological fragmentation in explaining the investment decisions and appropriation strategies of firms. The results provide a dynamic explanation of the interplay between firms’ R&D investment, their patenting strategies, and technological fragmentation.