In Scotland, the interest and investment in the professional development of teachers is currently focused on the ongoing development and implementation of its new curriculum: Curriculum for Excellence. To cope with ever-evolving curricular and pedagogical demands and to be able to effectively identify and meet the needs of the students they teach, teachers need to become, and be, teachers-as-learners. Accordingly, teachers and those with responsibility for defining and supporting teachers’ development are likely to have a vested interest in identifying and understanding what might best facilitate teachers’ learning. Engaging with this agenda, the purpose of this study is to promote and inform dialogue within and between all those in the educational community who have responsibility for teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD), so that some of the complexity involved in becoming and being teachers-as-learners might be recognised and better understood. With the aim to explore what we can learn from teachers’ own accounts of becoming and being teachers-as-learners in Scotland today, this co-operative enquiry was conducted with nine Chartered Teachers (CT), six of whom were fully qualified CTs and three of whom were still en route to achieving full CT status. To meet the Scottish Standard for Chartered Teacher, teachers need to demonstrate that they are teachers-as-learners. Enquiring with these teachers was, therefore, seen as particularly apposite to this study’s chief aim. Attending to the personal, professional and political influences they perceived as significant, these teachers shared their views, when they looked inwards to their own feelings, reactions and dispositions; outwards, to the professional and political environments with which they interact and backwards and forwards, over time. This is the first study to carry out an inquiry with Chartered Teachers in a way that allowed them to explore this complexity, because it sought to explore all four dimensions, i.e. inward, outwards, backwards and forwards (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000:50) of their storied accounts. Storied accounts of the teachers’ learning journeys were co-created during a loosely structured, dyadic, in-depth interview. Integral to this process, was discussion about the artefact(s) that eight, of the nine, participants had created for this study, to represent, reflect upon and record aspects of their journeying. Thematic narrative analysis has illuminated the complexity and particularity of each teacher’s learning journey as well as some important commonalities across them. This thesis further explores the teachers’ accounts of their experiences, in depth, and the key issues these accounts raise. Through examination of individual accounts, we learn, for example, that the teacher’s own disposition to professional learning really matters but, importantly, that it does not necessarily define the outcome. Sometimes supported and sometimes inhibited by the professional and political contexts in which they work, these teachers, motivated by a powerful sense of moral purpose, report that they have made significant and apparently, sustainable changes to their thinking and practice. Postgraduate CT study proved crucial to their journeying because, for the first time since qualifying, they had been encouraged and supported to make sense of why and to what extent, their day-to-day practices would, or would not, meet the needs of their students. It is this understanding why that appears to have made the greatest difference to their practice and to the reconstruction of their professional identities. It emerged as one of the most significant influences to their becoming and being teachers-as-learners. To do so, however, the teachers felt they have had to ‘dare to be different’. Their ability, willingness and commitment to talk about, promote and evaluate learning, in critically informed ways has meant they have often felt isolated. Despite this, the perceived benefits of being a teacher-as-learner were seen to more than compensate for what might be viewed as negative experiences. The findings suggest significant implications for the provision of, and teachers’ participation in, CPD in Scotland. They indicate the need to establish a much clearer and more critically informed focus on developing teachers’ knowledge and understanding of why they do what they do to promote learning and to develop their professional enquiry skills and understandings. If this is to happen, it will necessitate systemic change and support, involving, individual teachers, teachers as collectives within school cultures, CPD facilitators/providers and policy makers at all levels.

Until recently, research into dreaming followed the reductionist paradigm within a Freudian framework. This line of enquiry has failed to date to provide a meaningful relationship between neuropsychology and dreaming. As a result, theory development has halted, original therapeutic approaches outside the analytic tradition are scarce, and practitioners are disempowered when confronted with dream material. However, in recent years the concept of consciousness is back on the scientific agenda and the study of the subjective experience of dreaming is once again possible. Eight coinquirers employed Heron’s (1996) co-operative inquiry. We collaboratively explored our experience of dreaming holding seven meetings over six months. Paradoxically, we found that our experiences and understandings were similar and conflicting, mirroring the current debates in dream research. Our findings indicate strong links with waking consciousness, and that dreams are a source of entertainment, insight, problem solving and angst. Our study also highlighted that directing our awareness altered the nature of our dreams and our perceptions. Implications for Counselling Psychology theory, practice and research are discussed. It is argued that intentionality is a key concept and should be incorporated in Counselling Psychology research, theory and practice.

This study aims to answer the main questions "Does the motivation of Co-operative Board of Directors affect the Co-operative's performance in Thailand, and to what extent?", and "Which factors affect the motivation of Co-operative's Board of Directors?" The methods used consist of both quantitative and qualitative approaches: Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) and in-depth interview, respectively. The study result suggests that the motivation of Co-operative Board of Directors significantly affects the Co-operative's performance with a standardized factor loading of 0.144. Surprisingly, the types of motivation that affect the Co-operative's performance are not those of altruism, but they are those of personal interests, i.e. to gain reputation from the community or society, to obtain honors or awards, and to gain the feelings of accomplishment from working. However, this result is subject to the condition that cooperative performance is measured solely in financial terms and quality of management. This is due to the current limitation in standardizing the measurement of cooperative performance in social terms and should be left for future research. Factors that are found to affect Board Member motivation include the knowledge, skills and experience possessed by the Board Members, Board authority and function, the composition of the Board (the presence of external persons) and lastly, the quality of the Board meetings. Specifically, Board authority and function is the characteristic determining whether the Board is involved in the Co-operative operation. Factors whose relationship with Board motivation was not found included the one person one vote principle, Board size, chairman-manager duality, Board term, and Board structure (the presence of a compound Board).

The diploma thesis deals with contemporary legislation of housing co-operative as one of the most frequent type of flat ownership in the Czech Republic. The housing co-operatives represent legal entities that meet the housing needs of more than 1.5 millions people in the Czech Republic. Therefore, undoubtedly, the legal aspects of the housing cooperatives became a much discussed issue. Although the housing co-operatives have a long tradition on the territory of Czech Republic, the thesis focuses mostly on the effective legislation taking into consideration the historical aspects when required due to necessity of the issue's complexity. The thesis is divided into five separate chapters. The first chapter generally describes the contemporary housing co-operative legislation and its challenges in regards to the near future recodification of the Civil law. Second chapter focuses on defining fundamental terms such as "co-operative," "housing co-operative," "co- operative housing unit," etc. The third chapter concerns the co-operative membership emphasizing the establishment of the membership, rights and obligation of the members, membership contribution, transfer of rights and duties connected to the membership in a housing co-operation, the membership share transfer, complicated issue of the joined...

Cette thèse analyse le régime juridique des coopératives brésiliennes et des coopératives françaises à partir de leur principe plus remarquable: la double qualité d’associé et d’usager de la société coopérative. Elle vérifie la modalité selon laquelle sont réalisés l’engagement sociétaire et l’engagement de coopération dans les deux pays, en présentant les contrastes et les convergences entre les deux systèmes juridiques, ayant comme objectif contribuer à la modernisation du droit coopératif français et brésilien. On remarque les nouvelles modalités de renforcement du capital, tel comme réalisées en France et la notion d’acte coopératif brésilien, inexistant en France. L’adoption du modèle français de contrat de coopération, est présentée comme une alternative pour le système brésilien, dans l’objectif de garantir l’efficacité des engagements opérationnels réalisés par la coopérative et par le coopérateurs. L’adoption des éléments de l’acte coopératif, tel comme pratiqué au Brésil pourra se révéler comme important mécanisme en France lors du processus de qualification du contrat de coopération. / This paper analysis the juridic system of the Brazilian co-operative societies and the French agricultural co-operative societies, from their most remarkable principle: the twofold quality of both owner and user of the members of these societies. It was verified how the society's engagement and the cooperation engagement is done in both countries, presenting the contrasts and the convergences between the two juridic systems, with the finality to contribute to the modernization of the Brazilian co-operative law system, as well as the French. There were highlighted the new ways of capital reinforcement as the practiced in France and the notion of the Brazilian co-operative act, unknown to France. The adoption of the French model of co-operative contract was suggested as an alternative to the Brazilian system, in a sense of guaranteeing the stability of the operational engagements done to both the co-operative society and the co-operators. As to the acceptance of the elements of the co-operative act, such as the practiced in Brazil, will also be able to be revealed as an important mechanism in France, related to the qualifying process of the co-operational contract.

The purpose of this study is to provide profound elements of successful social enterprise that are reliable and valid and can serve as guidelines for those who want to examine how a SE is performing.This work is based on a single case study of social enterprise to analyze the fundamentals of successful social enterprises. It tests the feasibility of previous theories, model and characteristics that are used in evaluating nonprofits organizations. We use interviews, direct observation and questionnaires. There were five elements of successful social enterprise that were re-created in the study, namely; social wealth, networking efficient opportunities, innovation and adaptation towards financial independence, independence from volunteers and generation of economic wealth. Social benefits should be considered the most important aspect while economic wealth should not be taken for granted although it ought not to consider being the primary concern.

I Sverige finns många sommarstugeföreningar som direkt arrenderar ut mark till sina medlemmar genom bostadsarrende. Frågor kring bostadsarrendeställets skötsel finns inte reglerat i lag och inte heller alltid i arrendeavtalet. I vissa fall kräver arrendegivaren i arrendeavtalet att arrendatorn måste vara medlem i föreningen. Syftet med uppsatsen är att analyser om det går att inskränka en bostadsarrendators totalnyttjanderätt genom att föra in skötselregler i föreningens stadgar och i så fall med vilket majoritetskrav. Det ska även utredas vilken effekt en klausul som tvingar arrendatorn att vara medlem har på majoritetskravet. En bostadsarrendator anses ha totalnyttjanderätt och därmed själv kunna bestämma om arrendeställets skötsel. Genom gällande regler krävs två tredjedelars majoritet för en ekonomisk förening att ändra i stadgarna och i vissa fall högre majoritet. Vissa beslut kan dock vara så pass inskränkande i den enskilde medlemmens rätt att det inte borde gå att rösta igenom utan samtliga medlemmars samtycke. Inskränkning i arrendatorns totalnyttjanderätt genom att föra in regler i den ekonomiska föreningens stadgar borde gå att göra. Avtalsfrihet råder inom civilrätten och dessutom uppfyller skötselinförandet kravet på skriftlighet och syftet bakom det. Ett beslut om stadgeändring bör vid införande av skötselregler kräva full majoritet för att röstas igenom. Gränsen mellan att kräva enhällighet eller två tredjedelars majoritet är dock fin, men övervägande själ talar för enhällighet. Om det dessutom i arrendeavtalet skulle föreskrivas att arrendatorn ska vara medlem i föreningen, talar väldigt starka själ för att ett sådant beslut ska kräva enhällighet då en medlems möjlighet att gå ur föreningen blir illusorisk. / In Sweden, many co-operative societies lease land to its members through residential tenancy. How the residential tenancy should be looked after is not regulated by law and often not even in the tenancy contract. Sometimes the contract stipulates that the tenant must be a member of the co-operative society in order to rent. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the possibility for the co-operative society to restrict a residential tenants total right to use the tenancy by regulating how it should be looked after in the statutes and with which majority such a decision should be made. The clause stipulating that a tenant must be a member of the co-operative society is also analyzed to see what effect it has on the majority decision. A residential tenant is considered to have total right to use the tenancy a thus be able for himself to decide how the tenancy should be looked after. Current rules require two thirds majority for a co-operative society to change its statutes and sometimes even higher majority. Certain decisions can be very restrictive to the individual member's right and changing such a statute should not be possible unless all members agree to it. Restrictions on the tenant's total tenancy by inserting rules in the co-operative society’s statute should be possible. There is freedom of contract in civil law. The requirement of written contract and the purpose behind it is also fulfilled. A decision to introduce requirement on how to look after the tenancy should require full majority. The line between requiring unanimity or a two-thirds majority is fine, but most of the reasons speak for unanimity. If the tenancy contract stipulates that the tenant must be a member of the co-operative society in order to rent, very strong reasons speak for the decision to require unanimity as the members’ right to leave the co-operative society becomes illusory.

The purpose of this study is to describe the three most significant pedagogical ideas and their impact on the national curriculum from the concept of communication. As the school is a social learning community this study looks at some teachers’ perceptions and experiences of teaching with a communicative approach, and the obstacles they claim to meet. The educationist Kieran Egan argue that these three pedagogical ideas are incompatible and that a curriculum that compromises them is doomed to fail. He mean that a new coherent view on education is required and should be based on students’ understandings. The knowledge should be presented as it easiest can be comprehended during a person’s intellectual development. The study includes qualitative interviews with four teachers that teach students from 6 to 9 years old, and field observations in their classrooms. The main conlusions are that a communicative approach requires a suitable classroom design that enables co-operative learning. The teachers in the study pairs their students two and two or four and four to enable that a dialog occurs between the students, on the subject of the lesson. The classroom design also makes a statement of dissociation with traditional teaching if the teacher’s desk is placed in the back of the classroom, out of focus. As the national curriculum highlights the importance of communication all teachers in the study encourages their students to co-operative learning and communication, but find the noise difficult to handle. It’s their conclusion that smaller groups of students is highly desirable and possibly the only way to overcome the incompatibility that exists within the curriculum.

The intensification of agriculture through Europe has led to a lot of environmental issues. Among these are the increased use of fertilizer and pesticides which also constitutes a risk for many water resources. This is mainly due to the leakage of nitrate and pesticides to the water which makes it unsuitable for drinking. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the nearby agriculture constituted a risk in the catchment of Skottorp. If risks were found, the study was also aiming to evaluate possible measures that could be taken. An additional aim was to find out whether a co-operative agreement between the local authorities responsible for the catchment and the farmers would be a possible solution in case of future problems. For the study, water data related to agriculture was analyzed statistically and interviews were performed with the farmers. The study shows that there are no imminent risks to the water in the catchment related to agriculture, which makes measures unnecessary. If problems would arise in the future the study also shows that co-operative agreements are a suitable course of action.

A qualitative study was undertaken that explored the conditions for transformative learning (Mezirow, 2000) in a specific form of work-integrated education (WIE), co-operative education, towards the development of a theoretical model. The research question considered was ‘what pedagogical and workplace practices available during WIE contribute to transformative learning?’ WIE students, supervisors and their co-op coordinator were the participants in this study. Four case studies were developed based on evidence from interviewing these participants at the beginning and end of one work term. Aggregated data from the coordinator, student and supervisor interviews were analyzed. The Kelly repertory grid was used as a way to elucidate and rate participant constructs of transformative learning during WIE. Activity theory, which theorizes that expansive learning is a result of a dialectic, mediated process embedded in a socio-cultural context (Engeström, 1987), provided the theoretical framework to examine these constructs and their relationship to the conditions for transformative learning. The findings from the study revealed several results that add to our theoretical models for WIE. First, WIE, including co-operative education, relies heavily on the constructivist perspective of Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, 1984) yet the participants cited transformative learning from critical-cultural, psychoanalytical, situative and enactivist perspectives (Fenwick, 2000) with each perspective providing a different lens through which critical reflection, the antecedent to transformative learning, could be supported (Mezirow, 1998). Second, critical reflection, in addition to being supported from a variety of perspectives, was found to occur as a result of the resolution of contradictions found in the dialectic and mediated processes explicated by activity theory’s cycle of expansive transition (Engeström, 1987). Third, the enablers (mediators) most involved in contributing to this process were: opportunities for work and learning, a supportive environment, student capabilities, co-workers, supervisors, and assessment and reflection practices. Fourth, within the context of WIE, activity theory introduces the dimensions of time, context and transformative processes (Keengwe & Jung-Jin, 2013) to our understanding of how transformational learning occurs and results in the transformative outcomes of self-formation (Dirkx, 2012), and social transformation (Merriam, Caffarella, & Baumgartner, 2007). Fifth, the integration of these transformative outcomes into the WIE or workplace was dependent upon the time and value given to transformative processes, institutional requirements and a positive emotional environment that supported the resultant changes to the students’ world view and ability to act (Avis, 2009; Hanson, 2013; Holman, Pavlica, & Thorpe, 1997; Taylor, 2008). The implications of these findings are that WIE theoretical models include considerations of: perspective, socio-cultural context, dialectic and mediated processes and creating a positive emotional space to support the critical reflection necessary for transformative learning. Including these considerations shifts WIE theory from a constructivist perspective towards an enactivist perspective with the potential that programs intentionally support both students’ individual change and the social change of organizations where they work and study. Furthermore, adopting a view of WIE as an interaction between two systems, with the resultant “knotworking”, “boundary spanning” and “co-configuration” (Engeström, 2009), opens up possibilities for innovation and renewal in WIE programs and workplaces. / Graduate / 0515 / 0745 / nmcrae@uvic.ca