This dissertation explores the social context of children with severe motor and communication impairments who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), examining how they participate socially, and how they interact in a goal-oriented play activity. Chapter One provides the context by reviewing literature concerning the children who use AAC: describing their presentation, outlining the role of environmental influences, and reviewing what is known about their social context, participation and communicative interactions. This chapter reviews the issues faced by children who use AAC and outlines the thesis purpose and objectives. Chapter Two presents a qualitative study that explores the children’s social context, participation and social relationships from both children’s and parents’ perspectives. This study provides insight into children’s communicative abilities but highlights their limited social context and opportunities and supports for communicative interaction and social participation. Chapter Three presents a study that explores the communicative interaction within goal-oriented play activity. This study found that, if you give children who use AAC a ‘voice’, they experience communicative success. Group differences were evident, however. Compared to their peers, children using AAC were less specific, made more and different errors and received more help from partners. This study provides evidence of how contextual elements within activity settings could be altered so children could actively participate. Chapter Four presents a conceptual framework for understanding social context. This chapter integrates person-focused and environment-focused perspectives and leads to development of a framework that depicts the transactional influences of children and social environments. Recommendations for future studies are presented. Finally, Chapter Five discusses the implications of this dissertation, placing the insights gained from the empirical studies in the context of the proposed framework. Suggestions for further research and interventions are made that may improve health and developmental outcomes in children with severe motor and communication impairments. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

In this thesis, public housing was investigated with particular reference to the nature of communication between the landlord and tenant. It focussed on interactive behaviours and the incidence of litigation. The study attempts to bridge the gap between social theory and social practice through the application of existing social theory in the description and analyses of social problems. Based on a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of communicative interaction and human relationships are described, together with the history of housing provision and the growth of litigation to resolve issues in public housing. Research of communicative interaction in the housing sector in general and the landlord-tenant interaction in particular has been a neglected area of research that is addressed in this thesis. An initial study surveyed both tenants and housing officers in the Sydney metropolitan area. Social analysis focuses on local interaction between landlord and tenant and how these local interactions expand into global patterns. The thesis analyses how power-relating, ideological/evaluative and ethical choices of housing officers and tenants influence their communicative interaction and the subsequent access and distribution of services and resources in the public housing sector. The theoretical framework explicates on complex responsive processes (CRP) perspective. CRP is a process theory that looks into the simultaneous and co-influencing relationship between the individual and the social and multi-agency approach in social analysis. The conceptualising framework relies on the application of this theory and the principles of Humanity, human rights and social justice to achieve a dialogical communicative interaction. The thesis applied complementary quantitative and qualitative methods where a quantitative study of a small population was conducted using structured interviews and group meetings to guide the qualitative research. The population was identified by natural experiment, i.e., identification of two populations in a public housing estate: a Participative group, comprising tenants who had consciously participated in the housing authorities?? renewal programs, and a Non-participative group of tenants who had not taken part in the Tenant Participation programs by Housing New South Wales (HNSW). The housing officers and tenants were identified using snowball and quota sampling. The findings reveal a conspicuous absence of research that focus on local interaction between housing officers and tenants in public housing. The study confirms the anti-dialogical nature of communicative interaction in public housing, which is iterated, sustained and perpetuated by the use of litigation, a mechanism that is increasingly being preferred to settle disputes, by both landlord and tenant.

In this thesis, public housing was investigated with particular reference to the nature of communication between the landlord and tenant. It focussed on interactive behaviours and the incidence of litigation. The study attempts to bridge the gap between social theory and social practice through the application of existing social theory in the description and analyses of social problems. Based on a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of communicative interaction and human relationships are described, together with the history of housing provision and the growth of litigation to resolve issues in public housing. Research of communicative interaction in the housing sector in general and the landlord-tenant interaction in particular has been a neglected area of research that is addressed in this thesis. An initial study surveyed both tenants and housing officers in the Sydney metropolitan area. Social analysis focuses on local interaction between landlord and tenant and how these local interactions expand into global patterns. The thesis analyses how power-relating, ideological/evaluative and ethical choices of housing officers and tenants influence their communicative interaction and the subsequent access and distribution of services and resources in the public housing sector. The theoretical framework explicates on complex responsive processes (CRP) perspective. CRP is a process theory that looks into the simultaneous and co-influencing relationship between the individual and the social and multi-agency approach in social analysis. The conceptualising framework relies on the application of this theory and the principles of Humanity, human rights and social justice to achieve a dialogical communicative interaction. The thesis applied complementary quantitative and qualitative methods where a quantitative study of a small population was conducted using structured interviews and group meetings to guide the qualitative research. The population was identified by natural experiment, i.e., identification of two populations in a public housing estate: a Participative group, comprising tenants who had consciously participated in the housing authorities?? renewal programs, and a Non-participative group of tenants who had not taken part in the Tenant Participation programs by Housing New South Wales (HNSW). The housing officers and tenants were identified using snowball and quota sampling. The findings reveal a conspicuous absence of research that focus on local interaction between housing officers and tenants in public housing. The study confirms the anti-dialogical nature of communicative interaction in public housing, which is iterated, sustained and perpetuated by the use of litigation, a mechanism that is increasingly being preferred to settle disputes, by both landlord and tenant.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T14:36:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RosanaCG_DISSERT.pdf: 2327029 bytes, checksum: f9d8a2744667bf393eb6990e4ebebc9f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-04-06 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior / Inclusion of students with autism in regular education settings is a topic that has not been much explored by the national scientific literature. This matter is complex and, due to the extent of various aspects involved, it is essential to delimitate a focus of investigation. The direction taken by this study was to evaluate the effects of an intervention program in the communicative interactions between a student with autism and his teacher in a regular classroom. Data were collected in an elementary private school, located in the city of Natal, Rio Grande do Norte during the 2010 academic school year. The study included a teacher and a non-vocal, 10-year-old student diagnosed with autism. A quasi-experimental A-B research design was employed. During the intervention program the teacher was trained to use Naturalistic Teaching Strategies and Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) resources to increase the frequency of interactions with the student during three classroom routines (entry time, snack and pedagogical activity). The results indicated qualitative and quantitative changes in the interactions of the dyad after the implementation of the intervention program. The student began to use pictograms to communicate with the teacher in two of the three routines investigated. The frequency of AAC use was also observed in the teacher‟s repertoire, especially when the student failed to understand gestures and words. The teacher positively evaluated the intervention program / A inclus?o de alunos com autismo em ambientes regulares de ensino ? um t?pico pouco explorado na literatura cient?fica nacional. O tema ? complexo e, em fun??o da amplitude dos aspectos envolvidos, delimitamos um recorte como alvo da presente investiga??o. A dire??o tomada por este estudo foi avaliar os efeitos de um programa de interven??o nas intera??es comunicativas entre um aluno com autismo e sua professora, no contexto da sala de aula regular. Os dados foram coletados em uma escola particular de Ensino Fundamental, localizada na cidade de Natal no estado do Rio Grande do Norte no decorrer do ano letivo de 2010. Participaram deste estudo uma professora e um aluno n?o-vocal de 10 anos com diagn?stico de autismo. A pesquisa utilizou delineamento quase experimental do tipo A-B (linha de base e tratamento). No programa de interven??o, a professora foi capacitada a empregar estrat?gias do Ensino Natural?stico (EN) e recursos da Comunica??o Alternativa Ampliada (CAA) para aumentar a frequencia de intera??es com o aluno durante tr?s rotinas da sala de aula (hora da entrada, lanche e atividade pedag?gica). Os resultados indicaram mudan?as qualitativas e quantitativas nas intera??es da d?ade ap?s o programa de interven??o. O aluno passou a utilizar os pictogramas para se comunicar com a professora em duas das tr?s rotinas investigadas. A frequ?ncia no uso da CAA foi, tamb?m, observada no repert?rio da professora, principalmente quando o aluno falhava em compreender gestos e palavras. A professora avaliou o programa de interven??o de forma positiva

This doctoral dissertation proposes a fuller, more inclusive account of practice than that which dominates current discourse on organizations, which typically turns upon occupations, professions and jobs as manifestations of publicly recognized roles or functions within organized activity, established as a function of prescribed divisions of labour and the application of skills and techniques, and assumes that people interact in the ways that their assigned roles and functions are planned to work as interrelated parts of a shared task. The approach here is a reflexive process akin to what Lévi-Strauss characterizes as ‘bricolage’, using ready-to-hand materials linking narrative, literature and argument, adding pieces iteratively in an open-ended building process over the course of the dissertation. The reflexive process entails (a) the act of writing narratives (derived from the author’s own management experiences in the private, public and voluntary sectors) so as to produce insights and themes of interest in relation to the broader theme of practice; and (b) readings of certain key works of the literature on organizations and organized activity (including Sarbin and Allen, Denzin, Wiley, Collins, Elias, Mead, Habermas, Stacey and Mintzberg) so as to expose practice-related themes relevant to the construction of an alternative account which proposes the following: (1) Practice in organizations is communicative in nature and entails the enactment of roles. Conventionally, enactment is taken to mean that the role-incumbent meets expectations set by decision-makers and premised on conformity to preset structures within a metaphorical organizational space. In an alternative account of practice, however, enactment can be more accurately framed as a dialectical process of co-emergence of role and organization by virtue of the local social interaction of the persons involved. (2) In active life the mutually-exclusive emergent process and the spatial organizational metaphor necessarily co-exist. Reframing role enactment opens a path to new understanding, such that role enactment and practice thus become problematized in that practitioners can be seen as holding a paradoxical position of some considerable relevance to practice. Today’s predominantly objectivist management thinking primarily stresses accountability for the communicative interaction of others within the organizational space. The reflexive processual approach contests the adequacy and exclusivity of this position, because managing as an emergent practice is more comprehensively communicative and open-ended. (3) The co-presence of both the objectivist and emergent accounts thus requires the manager paradoxically to hold both these views of role and organization at the same time in his or her experiences of managing. As paradox cannot be resolved, it is instead taken up by the manager-practitioner by virtue of the reflexivity central to all processes of communicative interaction. (4) It follows that acknowledging processes of enactment and the centrality of reflexivity in the practice of managing and bringing that to the attention of managers and management educators will enhance how managing sophisticated cooperation is understood and carried out.

À la lumière des connaissances théoriques actuelles, cette recherche-action est centrée sur un projet dans lequel les apprenants à l'Université Nationale –Palmira ont la possibilité d'améliorer leur interlangue en anglais. Notre hypothèse principale est la suivante : en adoptant l'approche par tâches, les activités d‘enseignement / apprentissage seraient plus efficaces dans le programme de formation en L2. En fait, l‘acquisition des connaissances pour l‘interaction langagière orale et la compréhension des textes scientifiques dans les cours de la L2 aidera ces apprenants à développer des compétences pour interagir dans des situations de la vie réelle, mais aussi à acquérir les "savoirs" et les techniques pour extraire les informations contenues dans les textes écrits scientifiques. Cette hypothèse a été validée par la réalisation d'une expérience d‘enseignement / apprentissage. D‘autres hypothèses secondaires ont cherché à obtenir des informations sur les besoins, attentes et attitudes aussi bien des apprenants que des enseignants de la formation institutionnelle en anglais. Nous souhaitons que cet apport permette à notre université de s‘engager dans un processus d‘innovations pédagogiques où les apprenants adoptent une posture plus responsable concernant l‘apprentissage d‘une L2. / In the light of current theoretical knowledge, this action-research focuses on a project in which learners at the National University –Palmira have the opportunity of improving their inter-language in English. Our main hypothesis is that by adopting the task-based approach, L2 learning would be more efficient. It is inferred based-learning activities will help them to develop ways of obtaining knowledge and strategies to interact in real-life situations, and techniques to extract information from scientific written texts. This hypothesis has been validated through the realization of teaching / learning practices. Some secondary hypotheses to establish learners‘ and teachers‘ needs, expectations, goals and attitudes of formal training in English were also verified in this action-research. We hope this contribution may lead our university to adopt pedagogical innovative practices in which learners feel more concerned and involved in acquiring a second language.

This dissertation is a qualitative study exploring the sociocultural influences on adult migrants’ second language learning and the communicative interaction through which they use the language. Guided by a theoretical perspective based on the concepts of life-world, habitus, social capital, symbolic honor, game, and the idea of the interrelatedness of learning and using a second language, this study aims to understand how migrants’ everyday life context, attachments to the home country, and ethnic affiliations affect the motivation for and attitude towards learning and using Swedish as a second language. Furthermore, the study explores in what way the context within which the language is taught and learned might affect the language development of adult migrants. The research questions of the study focus on both the institutional context, that is to say, what happened in a particular classroom where the study observations took place, and a migrant perspective based on the participants’ experiences of living in Sweden, learning the language and using it. Semi-structured interviews, informal conversational interviews, and classroom observations have been used as strategies to obtain qualitative data. The findings suggest that most of the participants experience feelings of non-belonging and otherness both in the classroom context and outside the classroom when they use the language. These feelings of non-belonging make the ties to other ethnic establishments stronger and lead to isolation from the majority society. The feelings of otherness, per se, are not only related to a pedagogical context that advocates monoculturalism but are also rooted in the migrants' life-world, embedded in dreams of going back to the home country, while forging a constant relation to ethnic networks, and in the practice of not using the Swedish language as frequently in the everyday life context as would be needed for their language development. / <p>ISBN 978-91-7104-591-1 (Malmö) ISBN:978-91-7519-271-0 (Linköping)</p>

This thesis examines a middle manager’s response to strategic directives on integrated care in a National Health Service (NHS) organisation and the development of an awareness of prejudice that acknowledges its relationship to the process of understanding. The research focuses on an integration of two community NHS trusts and an NHS hospital trust into one integrated care organisation (ICO). A change programme was initiated and promulgated on an assumption that integrating the three organisations would facilitate integrated care. However, despite the use of organisational change approaches (such as communication plans and systematic approaches to staff engagement), implementing the strategy directives in practice remained problematic. What emerged during the integration process was resistance to change and a clear division in the different ways of working in the community NHS trusts versus the community and hospital trusts – differences that became apparent from the prejudices of individuals and staff groups. The proposition is that prejudice is an important aspect of relationships whose significance in processes of change is often overlooked. I argue that prejudice is a phenomenon that emerges in the processes of particularisation, which I describe as an ongoing exploration and negotiation in our day-to-day activities of relating to one another. Our pejorative understanding of the term ‘prejudice’ has overshadowed more subtle connotations, which I propose are unhelpful in understanding change in organisations. However, I suggest a different way of thinking about prejudice – namely as a process that should be acknowledged as a characteristic of human beings relating to one another, which has the potential to generate and enhance understanding. The research is a narrative-based inquiry and describes critical incidents during the integration process of the three organisations and focusing on interactions between key staff members within the organisation. In paying attention to our ongoing relationships, there has been a growing awareness of disconnection from traditional management practices, which advocate systematic approaches and staff engagement techniques that are designed to encourage cooperation and reduce resistance to proposed change. This thesis challenges assumptions surrounding prejudice and how middle managers traditionally manage organisational change in practice in their attempts to apply deterministic approaches (which assume a linear causality) to control and influence human behaviour. I have taken into consideration a hermeneutic perspective on prejudice, drawing on the work of Hans Georg Gadamer, and have argued from the viewpoint of the theory of complex responsive processes. This offers an alternative way of thinking about management as social processes that are emergent in our daily interactions with one another, that are not based on linear causality, or on locating leadership and management with individuals. It provides a way of taking seriously the relationships between individuals by paying attention to what emerges from the interplay of our expectations and intentions. This leads to a different way of thinking about the relationship between prejudice and strategic directives, which I argue are not fixed instructions but unpredictable articulations of our gestures and responses that emanate from social interaction and continually iterate our thinking over time. This paradoxically influences how we make generalisations and particularise them in reflecting on and revising our expectation of meaning I suggest that it is not possible to predetermine a strategic outcome; and that traditional management practice, which locates change with individuals – and reduces aspects of organisational life, such as resistance, into a problem to be fixed – obscures our capacity to understand the processes of organisational change in the context of a much wider social phenomenon. I therefore conclude that my original and significant contribution to the theory of complex responsive processes and to practice is encouraging a different way of thinking about prejudice – as a process that can be productive and generate understanding, when considered as encompassing our expectations of meaning, linked to our own self-interests. This then opens up possibilities for transforming ourselves in relation to others – and, through this process, to transform the organisations in which we work.