Em um contexto de explicitação dos problemas ambientais e sociais que assolam o planeta, causando enormes disparidades entre países, as empresas, e mais fortemente as Multinacionais, se vêem diante da cobrança pela adoção de uma postura de responsabilidade ampliada, ou seja, de incorporação das 3 dimensões do desenvolvimento sustentável (econômica, social e ambiental) em suas estratégias. Esta responsabilização das empresas, traz à tona o problema da gestão dos trade offs envolvidos com estas 3 dimensões e, para as Multinacionais, a gestão destes trade offs na relação entre Matriz e suas Filiais. Tendo por objetivo, justamente, a proposição de um framework baseado em um conjunto de proposições para a concepção do processo de formação da estratégia de desenvolvimento sustentável, na relação entre Matriz e Filial, de Multinacionais, a presente pesquisa foi conduzida em 3 fases. Adotou-se uma postura epistemo-metodológica de concepção, aceitando a interação entre sujeito e objeto e a intencionalidade do sujeito/pesquisador ao longo da pesquisa, buscando-se explicitamente, a geração de conhecimento aplicável aos gestores dos Grupos estudados. Adotou-se também uma lógica abdutiva, ou seja, permitindo constantes “idas e vindas” entre teoria e campo empírico, na media que se avançava nas fases da pesquisa. Assim, na primeira fase buscou-se um aprofundamento teórico sobre Estratégia Empresarial, Desenvolvimento Sustentável e Teoria da Complexidade, visando dar suporte a pesquisa e a construção de um questionário com roteiro semi-estruturado, para ser aplicado junto a experts em desenvolvimento sustentável. Este roteiro foi aplicado na segunda fase da pesquisa, que tinha por objetivo a identificação de temáticas importantes a serem consideradas, em estratégias que levem em conta o desenvolvimento sustentável. Duas etapas foram desenvolvidas nesta segunda fase: na primeira etapa foram entrevistados 10 experts brasileiros, com os quais se co-concebeu 8 temáticas iniciais; na segunda etapa foram entrevistados 12 experts europeus, com os quais se procurou consolidar as temáticas iniciais, co-concebendo com os mesmos, 4 temáticas consolidadas (Relação com os Stakeholders, Governança Empresarial, Ética Empresarial e Aprendizagem Organizacional). Estas temáticas consolidadas serviram de base para a terceira fase, onde foram realizados 4 estudos de caso (Grupos A, B, C e D), em Grupos Multinacionais com a Matriz na França ou Luxemburgo e uma Filial no Brasil. A confrontação entre os estudos de caso, as entrevistas com os experts, o referencial teórico e a atitude inventiva do pesquisador possibilitaram a emergência de 7 proposições epistêmicas (estratégia de desenvolvimento sustentável vista a partir de princípios da teoria da complexidade, ou seja, dialógica, recursividade, retroativa, holograma e auto-eco-reorganização), 12 proposições conceituais (governança empresarial, ética empresarial, e aprendizagem organizacional) e 16 proposições operatórias (governança empresarial - estrutura da área de desenvolvimento sustentável e divisão de ganhos com os stakeholders; ética empresarial - conteúdo e fixação de objetivos e postura empresarial; aprendizagem organizacional - sensibilização e troca de informações sobre o desenvolvimento sustentável), que em conjunto formam o framework proposto aqui. Assim a presente pesquisa contribui com avanços epistemológicos e metodológicos para a área de Gestão, além de avanços teóricos para a estratégia empresarial (quando integrada com as discussões sobre desenvolvimento sustentável e teoria da complexidade), e de avanços para os Grupos Multinacionais, através do conjunto de proposições. / Considering the innumerous environmental and social problems which are devastating the world and increasing differences among countries, companies are demanded, more precisely Multinationals, to stand for a responsible posture, i.e. the incorporation of the 3 dimensions of sustainable development in their strategies (economical, social and environmental). This responsibility from the companies arises the problem of trade off management connected to the 3 dimensions, and for the Multinationals trade off management among the Headquarter and its Subsidiaries. This research was conducted in 3 phases aiming the proposition of a framework based on a set of propositions for the conception of a sustainable development strategy formation process in the relation between Multinational Headquarters and Subsidiaries. An epistemic-methodological positioning was adopted, accepting the interaction between subject (researcher) and object and the intentionality subject/researcher throughout the research, explicitly searching for the knowledge generation applicable to the managers from the studied Groups. It was also adopted an abductive logic, i.e. allowing regular “come and go” between the theory and the empirical field as the research advanced. Thus, in the first phase theoretical deepening about Company Strategy, Sustainable Development and Complexity Theory was intended, aiming to support the research and the construction of a semi-structured questionnaire in order to be applied to the sustainable development experts.This script was applied in the second phase of the research, which expected to identify some important thematics to be considered, within the strategies that take into account the sustainable development. Two steps were developed in this second phase: in the first phase 10 Brazilian experts were interviewed, where 8 initial thematics were co-conceived; in the second phase, 12 European experts were interviewed, where it was tried to consolidate the initial thematics and then co-conceiving 4 consolidated thematics (Stakeholders Relation, Enterprise Governance, Enterprise Ethics and Organizational Learning). These consolidated thematics were the basis of the third phase where 4 case studies were conducted (Groups A, B, C and D) with Multinational Groups having the Headquarter in France or Luxemburg and a Subsidiary in Brazil. The confrontation among the case studies, the expert interviews, the theoretical referential and the inventive attitude from the researcher made possible the emergence of 7 epistemic propositions (development of sustainable strategy from the complexity theory principles, which is dialogical, recursivity, retroactive, hologram and autoeco- reorganization), 12 conceptual propositions (Enterprise Governance, Enterprise Ethics and Organizational Learning) and 16 operational propositions (Enterprise Governance – the structure of the sustainable development area and the sharing of profit with stakeholders; Enterprise Ethics – objective content and fixation and enterprise position; Organizational Learning – consciousness and information exchange about sustainable development), which here compose the proposed framework. Thus the present research contributed with epistemological and methodological advanced for the area of Management, and also theoretical advances for the enterprise strategy field (when integrated with the discussion about sustainable development and complexity theory), and advances for Multinational Groups through a set of prepositions.

Submitted by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2015-11-24T22:17:06Z No. of bitstreams: 2 O desenvolvimento das múltiplas linguagens em ambientes virtuais.pdf: 2788140 bytes, checksum: b28e2999c30a311dc8e705d379918c53 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Aline Batista (alinehb.ufpel@gmail.com) on 2015-11-25T16:05:33Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 O desenvolvimento das múltiplas linguagens em ambientes virtuais.pdf: 2788140 bytes, checksum: b28e2999c30a311dc8e705d379918c53 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-11-25T16:06:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 O desenvolvimento das múltiplas linguagens em ambientes virtuais.pdf: 2788140 bytes, checksum: b28e2999c30a311dc8e705d379918c53 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-11-13 / Sem bolsa / Os Institutos Federais de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia priorizam em suas grades curriculares das modalidades de Ensino Médio Integrado, as disciplinas voltadas ao Ensino Técnico, deixando as disciplinas das linguagens com menos de 8% da Carga Horária total nos cursos dessa modalidade. A disciplina de Língua Portuguesa possui apenas 2h/a semanais para articular o ensino de Língua, Literatura e Produção de Textos. Frente a essa problemática, objetivou-se, com essa pesquisa, verificar o uso das ferramentas tecnológicas para a compensação da falta de tempo. Além disso, buscou-se também articular o ensino de linguagens com elementos mais atrativos e motivadores aos alunos. O método de pesquisa se configurou por uma pesquisa de cunho qualitativo e etnográfico, no qual os dados foram descritos por um professor, que é o próprio pesquisador, implicado diretamente na aplicação da prática, coleta e análise dos dados. O público-alvo dessa pesquisa são alunos ingressantes no Ensino Médio Integrado de um Instituto Federal localizado no extremo sul do Rio Grande do Sul. A faixa etária dos sujeitos envolvidos fica em torno dos 13 aos 18 anos e são alunos ingressos nos cursos técnicos em Refrigeração e Climatização, Geoprocessamento, Informática e Eletrotécnica. O Referencial Teórico está dividido em sete seções, as primeiras discutem o perfil do atual estudante de língua, trazendo à discussão o conceito de Nativo Digital, de Prensky (2001), perpassando pelos conceitos de Normalização de Bax (2003).Posteriormente, fazem-se algumas observações relevantes acerca dos Multiletramentos e dos Letramentos Digitais. Ainda nesse contexto, discute-se o blog como recurso de CALL, e para analisar os efeitos do uso das Tecnologias no ensino de língua, perpassar-se-á pelos conceitos da Teoria da Complexidade. A Análise de Dados contemplou a completude da atividade – dessa forma – visualizou-se o processo inteiro, sem excluir nenhum evento que fosse pertinente à prática de produção de textos. Foi feita uma análise sequencial, semanal do percurso da elaboração dos roteiros para curtas-metragens executada nos blogs, observando o desenvolvimento do processo do princípio até sua conclusão e entrega. Como base nisso, percebeu-se a interlocução entre diferentes linguagens para que fosse efetivada a prática de produção. Nisso, têm-se que essa proposta se caracteriza como uma prática de letramento, pois caracteriza-se por ser uma prática social implícita nos princípios socialmente construídos, pois os modos pelos quais os sujeitos usaram a leitura e a escrita estão atreladas às concepções de conhecimento, identidade e modos de ser e estar nas suas práticas sociais. Além disso, um grupo interagindo em um ambiente, seja ele virtual ou não, já caracteriza práticas de complexidade, logo, para comprovar essa afirmativa, observou-se as seguintes características dos SAC presentes no desenrolar da prática: dinamicidade, não-linearidade, imprevisibilidade, sensibilidade às condições iniciais, abertura, auto-organização, sensibilidade a feedback e adaptabilidade. / The Federal institutions of Education, Science and Technology prioritize those disciplines which belong to the Integrated High School Technical Schooling modalities of their curricular grid, and the disciplines related to Language which have less than 8% of the work load are set in the courses of that modality. Portuguese Language has only 2h per class a week to develop Language teaching, Literature and Textual Production. Towards this issue, in this research it was objectified to verify the productivity of technological tools to compensate the lack of time. Moreover, it was aimed to articulate the language teaching process with the use of more attractive and motivating elements to students. The research method was based on a qualitative and ethnographic approach, in which the data had been described for a professor, the researcher himself, who is directly responsible for the practice, data capture and analysis. The target public of this research is the entrant student of the Integrated High School of a Technical School located at the Southern tip of Rio Grande Do Sul. The age-group of the involved individuals is that of 13-18 year-old entrant students in technical courses such as Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, Geoprocessing, Electro Technology and Informatics. The Theoretical Background is divided in seven sections, the first ones argue about the profile of the current student of languages, bringing Prensky's Digital Natives Theory (2001) into discussion, spanning over Bax's Normalization concepts (2003). Later, some relevant comments concerning the Digital Literacy and Multiliteracy are pointed out. Still in this context, blogs are referred as CALL resources, and, in order to analyze the effect of the use of Technologies in language teaching, it will be necessary to go through the Complexity Theory concepts. The Data Analysis approached the activity completeness, so the entire process was observed without excluding any event that was pertinent to the textual production practice. A sequential, weekly analysis of the scripts' elaboration course for short films was made in blogs, observing the development of the process from its beginning to its conclusion and delivery. Based on this, the interlocution among different languages was perceived so that the production practice could be accomplished. Regarding this, this proposal characterizes itself as a literacy practice because it is a social practice implied in principles socially constructed, since the ways by which the individuals used the reading and the writing are linked to the conceptions of knowledge, identity and behavior in their social practice. Moreover, a group interacting in an environment, either virtual not, already characterizes complexity practices, then, to prove this statement, it was observed the following characteristics of the SAC present in the practice conduction: dynamism, non-linearity, unpredictability, sensitivity to the initial conditions, opening, self-organization, sensitivity to feedback and adaptability.

Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka och kartlägga den komplexa språksituationen och - användningen hos en flerspråkig person. Den undersökta personen kallas för Frida. Hon hade redan i ung ålder lärt sig mer än två språk och har sedermera varit i kontakt med sju språk på en signifikant kunskapsnivå. Denna studie ville knyta an till de teorier och modeller som har presenterats i den modernare forskningen kring andra- och tredjespråksinlärning. Undersökningen baserades enbart på Fridas självredogörelser enligt tre kriterier; hennes språkbiografiska bakgrund, språkfärdigheten och hennes attityder gentemot sin egen språksituation och språk i allmänhet. Dessa kriterier undersöktes med hjälp av kvalitativa intervjuer och självbedömningsmallar. Resultaten bekräftade antaganden om att Fridas språkanvändning och –situation idag påverkas av ett komplext samspel mellan ett flertal multifaktorella komponenter som uppstår i en flerspråkig kontext. Kartläggningen av Fridas språkbiografiska bakgrund, hennes språkanvändning och hennes attityder gentemot språken samt medvetenhet har gett inblick i hur de underliggande mekanismerna inom flerspråkighet verkar. / The aim of this study was to explore and analyse the complex language situation and use of a multilingual person. The examined person is called Frida. Already at a young age she had acquired more than two languages and today she has been in relevant contact with around seven languages. This study wanted to connect to the theories and models, which are presented in today’s research on Second and Third Language Acquisition. The study was entirely based on Frida’s self reports according to the following criteria: her background of language acquisition, her proficiency levels and her attitudes and perception towards her own language situation and languages in general. These criteria had been worked out with the help of guided qualitative interviews and a self-assessment grid for the language skills. The results approved that Frida’s language use and situation is affected by the interaction of an amount of multifactorial components, which occur in a multilingual context. This analysis of Frida’s language background, her language use, attitudes and awareness gave an insight into how the underlying mechanisms of multilingualism work.

The aim of this study is to define and describe a scientific problem solving capability to be used by the Institute for Maritime Technology (IMT) in its Decision Support Domain in order to provide a scientific support service to decision makers in the South African Navy. Cognisance is given to the fact that the context within which this scientific service functions is of a complex nature, and so are some of the problems which the Decision Support Domain are required to study. For this reason a methodology developed by the proponents of complexity modelling for management and organisational science, namely to approach the problem through “Perspective Filters” is used. The aim is therefore to identify emergent patterns in the development of various disciplines commonly utilised for problem solving. Their respective developments during the twentieth century are studied with this stated aim in mind. Scientific method is seen to be a dominant perspective in this pursuit. The outcome of the study is a proposed generic, pluralist scientific problem solving process which provides a stable definition of such a service despite its constantly changing environment. This greatly enhances the robustness of the service, which makes it cost-effective to develop. The definition of pluralism which is used in this study, and which underpins the definition of the capability, differs from other current dominant views of pluralism in that it upholds the realist aim of science. Although this process is developed in the specific context of IMT, its generic nature makes it a general knowledge technology for any such a service with the aim of providing a scientific service, not limited to the context within which it is developed. / Dissertation (MSc (Technology Management))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Graduate School of Technology Management (GSTM) / unrestricted

Submitted by Ricardo Cedraz Duque Moliterno (ricardo.moliterno@uefs.br) on 2016-09-05T22:21:53Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Vers?o final da Disserta??o de Mestrado em Educa??o de Cleudin?te Ferreira dos Santos Souza (1).pdf: 1405485 bytes, checksum: cddb8847ddf1187f7aadad879f6ab482 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-09-05T22:21:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Vers?o final da Disserta??o de Mestrado em Educa??o de Cleudin?te Ferreira dos Santos Souza (1).pdf: 1405485 bytes, checksum: cddb8847ddf1187f7aadad879f6ab482 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-04-15 / Coordena??o de Aperfei?oamento de Pessoal de N?vel Superior - CAPES / The research that led to this Master's thesis, developed in the Graduate Education Program of the State University of Feira de Santana, aimed to understand the affective relationship between a teacher and students in the teaching practice, in the context of the Civil Engineering course, having as references its social representations. The study, a qualitative approach in the case study method, was guided by the principles of the Social Representation Theory and in the Complexity Theory. In the collecting and production of the data, we used systematic observation of teaching practice, both in the classroom and in the construction site, and interviews with the use of stimulus question. The observed group consisted of 36 students. Of these, we selected 12 students and the faculty for interviews. The study was referenced in authors such as Ribeiro (2004, 2009, 2010), Moraes (2003), Pinto (2005), Tassoni and Santos (2013), Damasio (2000), among others, to handle on the concept of affectivity, emotion and feeling ; Ribeiro, Jutras and Louis (2005), Veras and Ferreira (2010), Carpim, Behrens and Torres (2014), Freire (1996), Postic (2007) and others to discuss the teaching practice concepts and Moscovici (2003) and Jodelet (2005) to support the Theory of Social Representations; Morin, 2007; Moraes, 2008; Behrens, 2007 to support the Complexity Theory. The Data analysis was inspired by the Bardin Content Analysis (2010). During the analysis three dimensions were identified: a) the affective sense in the educational relationship; b) the challenges of the affective relationship between teachers and students; c) the facing of the challenges of affective relationship in teaching practice. The results show that the meanings attributed by research collaborators in relation to affectivity are linked: to the idea of pleasure in teaching; the teacher's attitudes towards students; the personal qualities of the teacher.The challenges to be faced refers to the promotion of changes in relation to the teacher attitudes with students and to the changes in teaching strategies. With regard to the possibilities to face the challenges, it was evident the need for reflection on the practice itself and the continuing training of higher education teachers. In addition, the results show that the affective teacher is near, supportive, welcoming, cares with the training needs of students, respect cultural differences, is dedicated to the profession, is a friend, has common sense, sensitivity, flexibility and humanity in dealing with cognitive and affective difficulties of students. The main conclusion of this study was that the centrality of the practice of the teacher considered affective is on students learning. / A pesquisa que deu origem a esta disserta??o de Mestrado, desenvolvida no Programa de P?s-Gradua??o em Educa??o da Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana, teve por objetivo compreender a rela??o afetiva entre uma professora e estudantes na pr?tica de ensino, no contexto do Curso de Engenharia Civil, tendo como refer?ncias as suas representa??es sociais. O estudo, de abordagem qualitativa na modalidade Estudo de Caso, pautou-se nos princ?pios da Teoria das Representa??es Sociais e da Teoria da Complexidade. Na coleta e produ??o dos dados, utilizamos a observa??o sistem?tica da pr?tica docente, tanto na sala de aula quanto no canteiro de obra, al?m de entrevistas com o uso de quest?o est?mulo. A turma observada era composta por 36 estudantes. Desses, selecionamos para entrevistas 12 discentes e a docente. O estudo se referenciou em autores como Ribeiro (2004, 2009, 2010), Moraes (2003), Pinto (2005), Tassoni e Santos (2013), Dam?sio (2000), dentre outros, para tratar sobre o conceito de afetividade, emo??o e sentimento; Ribeiro, Jutras e Louis (2005), Veras e Ferreira (2010), Carpim, Behrens e Torres (2014), Freire (1996), Postic (2007) e outros para discutir as concep??es de pr?tica de ensino; Moscovici (2003) e Jodelet (2005) para fundamentar a Teoria das Representa??es Sociais; Morin, 2007; Moraes, 2008; e Behrens 2007 para dar suporte ? Teoria da Complexidade. A an?lise dos dados foi inspirada na An?lise de Conte?dos de Bardin (2010). Durante a an?lise foram identificadas tr?s dimens?es: a) Os sentidos da afetividade na rela??o educativa; b) Os desafios da rela??o afetiva entre professores e estudantes; c) O enfrentamento dos desafios da rela??o afetiva na pr?tica docente. Os resultados obtidos apontam que os sentidos atribu?dos pelos colaboradores da pesquisa em rela??o ? afetividade se vinculam: ? ideia de prazer na doc?ncia; ?s atitudes do docente em rela??o aos estudantes; ?s qualidades pessoais do docente. Os desafios a serem enfrentados referem-se ? promo??o de mudan?as em rela??o ?s atitudes do docente com os estudantes e ?s mudan?as nas estrat?gias de ensino. No que diz respeito ?s possibilidades para o enfrentamento dos desafios, ficou evidente a necessidade da reflex?o sobre a pr?pria pr?tica e a forma??o continuada dos professores da educa??o superior. Al?m disso, os resultados revelam que o professor afetivo ? pr?ximo, solid?rio, acolhedor, se peocupa com as necessidades formativas dos estudantes, respeita as diferen?as culturais, dedica-se ? profiss?o, ? amigo, tem bom senso, sensibilidade, flexibilidade e humanidade ao tratar das dificuldades cognitivas e afetivas dos estudantes. A principal conclus?o deste estudo foi que a centralidade da pr?tica do professor considerado afetivo est? na aprendizagem dos estudantes.

Research demonstrates those who fail to learn to read well face unfair and lifelong societal disadvantage (Allington, 2011; Castles et al., 2018; Frontier, College, 2018). The number of children who fail to learn to read proficiently remains unacceptable and persists even as research suggests practices to help struggling readers (Allington, 2011; Castles et al., 2018). Building upon dismal findings from literacy networks and evidence from empirical research this study addresses this problem by exploring how contextual factors influence teachers’ learning and practice and student early reading achievement through two research questions: 1) How do contextual variables at the school, board and provincial level influence the planning, delivery and uptake of early reading professional learning opportunities? 2) How do teachers perceive the relationships between (a) their professional learning experiences, (b) their classroom early reading practices, and (c) student reading outcomes? This complexivist multiple instrumental case study explores the role of context upon teachers’ (N = 6) perspectives in three diverse schools (rural, urban and suburban) in one school board with the voices of principals (N = 3) and board-level reading experts (N = 3) providing additional layers of context. Within-case findings demonstrate the importance of meeting local teacher and student needs. Contextual networks represent pathways leading to learning, teaching and student reading development. Cross-case findings reveal the universal needs of the participants for meeting students’ core social and academic needs. Finally, a conceptual framework depicts the interaction of contextual factors within the teaching, learning and student achievement process. Theoretical, empirical and practical implications anchor a discussion proposing a research agenda situating teacher early reading learning into a professional learning collective compassionate to the learning needs of teachers who in turn can be more responsive to the local and universal needs of their students.

No description available.

Mental health has been receiving increasing amounts of attention in recent years. Despite this, there are still many barriers to receiving mental health care in all parts of the world. Post-conflict countries have the dual challenge of increased mental health problems among their populations and trying to respond to these problems with low resources as their economies are often destroyed by the effects of war. This research studies the implementation of Rwanda’s post-genocide mental health policy to assess the challenges and best practises of implementing mental health reform in a low-resource, post-conflict country. The thesis found that the implementation of Rwanda’s mental health policy has relied on policies of rapid decentralization and integration to increase accessibility to mental health care. Decentralization has ensured that mental health services are available at every level and relies on a referral system. Mental health care is integrated into the general healthcare system by training generalists in hospitals and health centres to respond to mental health issues, therefore making these services available at nearly all health institutions. These policies were viewed positively by stakeholders, but there were still many gaps and challenges in the implementation of Rwanda’s mental health policy. One of the major challenges was stigma acting as a barrier to accessing services while one of the largest gaps was that the implementation relies too much on institutionalized, individualized, and Westernized care, which participants pointed out is not always suitable in the Rwandan context. Recommendations included an increase in sensitization campaigns, shifting towards community-based mental health care, expanding personnel and services, as well as increasing funding. The analysis, relying on complexity theory, found that many of the gaps are missed by the government because of a lack of collaboration with local organizations and service providers working in the domain.

In an increasing number of use cases, databases face the challenge of managing irregularly structured data. Irregularly structured data is characterized by a quickly evolving variety of entities without a common set of attributes. These entities do not show enough regularity to be captured in a traditional database schema. A common solution is to centralize the diverse entities in a universal table. Usually, this leads to a very sparse table. Although today's techniques allow efficient storage of sparse universal tables, query efficiency is still a problem. Queries that reference only a subset of attributes have to read the whole universal table including many irrelevant entities. One possible solution is to use a partitioning of the table, which allows pruning partitions of irrelevant entities before they are touched. Creating and maintaining such a partitioning manually is very laborious or even infeasible, due to the enormous complexity. Thus an autonomous solution is desirable. In this paper, we define the Online Partitioning Problem for irregularly structured data and present Cinderella. Cinderella is an autonomous online algorithm for horizontal partitioning of irregularly structured entities in universal tables. It is designed to keep its overhead low by incrementally assigning entities to partitions while they are touched anyway during modifications. The achieved partitioning allows queries that retrieve only entities with a subset of attributes easily pruning partitions of irrelevant entities. Cinderella increases the locality of queries and reduces query execution cost.

Following an introduction to the context of Human-Level Artificial Intelligence (HLAI) and (computational) analogy research, a formal analysis assessing and qualifying the suitability of the Heuristic-Driven Theory Projection (HDTP) analogy-making framework for HLAI purposes is presented. An account of the application of HDTP (and analogy-based approaches in general) to the study and computational modeling of conceptual blending is outlined, before a proposal and initial proofs of concept for the application of computational analogy engines to modeling and analysis questions in education studies, teaching research, and the learning sciences are described. Subsequently, the focus is changed from analogy-related aspects in learning and concept generation to rationality as another HLAI-relevant cognitive capacity. After outlining the relation between AI and rationality research, a new conceptual proposal for understanding and modeling rationality in a more human-adequate way is presented, together with a more specific analogy-centered account and an architectural sketch for the (re)implementation of certain aspects of rationality using HDTP. The methods and formal framework used for the initial analysis of HDTP are then applied for proposing general guiding principles for models and approaches in HLAI, together with a proposal for a formal characterization grounding the notion of heuristics as used in cognitive and HLAI systems as additional application example. Finally, work is reported trying to clarify the scientific status of HLAI and participating in the debate about (in)adequate means for assessing the progress of a computational system towards reaching (human-level) intelligence. Two main objectives are achieved: Using analogy as starting point, examples are given as inductive evidence for how a cognitively-inspired approach to questions in HLAI can be fruitful by and within itself. Secondly, several advantages of this approach also with respect to overcoming certain intrinsic problems currently characterizing HLAI research in its entirety are exposed. Concerning individual outcomes, an analogy-based proposal for theory blending as special form of conceptual blending is exemplified; the usefulness of computational analogy frameworks for understanding learning and education is shown and a corresponding research program is suggested; a subject-centered notion of rationality and a sketch for how the resulting theory could computationally be modeled using an analogy framework is discussed; computational complexity and approximability considerations are introduced as guiding principles for work in HLAI; and the scientific status of HLAI, as well as two possible tests for assessing progress in HLAI, are addressed.