<p> Zoological parks are a complex place of human-animal, animal-environment, and human-environment interactions; as the global population becomes more urbanized, zoos are one of the only places in which urban dwellers can learn about and experience the "natural" world. Zoos now act as key purveyors of public conservation education, shaping the ways in which visitors understand and situate themselves within local and global conservation issues and natural environments. Zoos educate the public on these and other topics through the implementation of informal education programs (IEPs) within their institutions, but the effectiveness of these programs in positively altering visitor knowledge, attitude, and behavioral is not well understood. Through interviews, questionnaires, and participant observation conducted at the San Antonio Zoo I explored (1) how zoo visitors interacted with and perceived of a zoo animal species, the white-cheeked gibbon; (2) how zoo visitor perceptions of animals were influenced by visitor-animal interactions in various zoo contexts (e.g. within and outside of IEPs); (3) what zoo visitors were learning about animal and conservation within these various contexts; and (4) the effectiveness of an IEP in inspiring zoo visitors to actively participate in conservation initiatives. I framed my inquiry into visitor and zoo animal relationships within post-humanist theories and explored visitor perceptions of animals, the environment, and conservation through the lens of virtualism, resulting in a novel view of visitor experience and learning within the zoo setting. In this thesis I discuss the results of this research and their implications for conservation education efforts within zoos.</p>

<p> With the increasing number of Chinese international students coming to the United States every year, a more in-depth understanding of these international students' acculturation is necessary and urgent. Given the fact that past researches mostly describe Chinese immigrants, migrates or international students as oppressed cultural adaptors, who cannot avoid being marginalized; who suffer from various adjusting problems; and who have to make use of acculturative strategies to adapt to the new country, this thesis takes the factor of wealth and its relation with class, status and power into account during Chinese international students' acculturation under the globalized context. Instead of sticking to the stereotypical view of regarding Chinese International students as simply marginalized group, this thesis explores the possibility of these students as power negotiators in their everydayness of life by using the methodological tool of interview.</p>

<p> This qualitative study not only describes the intercultural capacities of 20 high-achieving, homeschooled, evangelical university students from diverse backgrounds, but also far surpasses this original aim by generating a new model that critiques and complements cultural intelligence theory (CQ). Debate regarding tolerance among homeschoolers has lacked adequate study because the right questions have been obscured by terminology too broad (socialization) and impossibly loaded (tolerance). This constructivist, grounded-theory study thus addresses the question through intercultural lenses. </p><p> Chapter 2 reviews literature to propose a Process-Outcome Model of Socialization, a 10-pair categorization of critics' concerns, and introduces a reconceptualization of Perry's (1970) scheme of epistemological development for a faith-based university. Chapter 3 describes data-collection. In Southern California, strategies include participant observation, interview, focus-group, narrative, written reflection about Emerson &amp; Smith's (2000) <i>Divided by Faith,</i> and case study response. In metropolitan DC, shorter measures confirm theoretical saturation. Chapter 4 presents 20 participants' intercultural journeys. Chapter 5 traces cognition. Chapter 6 outlines motivation, describing intercultural self-efficacy, initiative, and perceived value. Chapter 7 offers evidence of metacognition. Chapter 8 provides the missing piece&mdash;concern&mdash;as the connector of knowledge and desire, showing that the most intense reflection and regulation operate based on higher commitments (metaphysical, existential, and ethical). </p><p> Chapter 9 integrates core categories to present two new models. One shows the complementarity of CQ and concern. The other unites them as Sustainable Cultural Concern (SCC), a model explaining why some people grow in intercultural capacities while others do not. Three assertions underlie these models: a) concern is a meta-commitment that differs from motivation; b) CQ and border-crossing concern cooperate to sustain growth; c) a culturally-concerned person seeks to wed knowledge and desire according to concern. Though most participants display sustainable cultural concern, unconcerned outliers strongly suggest that homeschoolers and organizations should intentionally cultivate it. </p><p> Methodologically, the models correct inconsistencies regarding homeschooling socialization and challenge the prevalence of quantitative studies. Theoretically, they highlight ambiguity and overlap in CQ domains and the disproportionate scope of metacognition. Practically, they guide personal evaluation of intercultural engagement and growth in perception (honor), understanding (humility), regulation (integrity), and volition (faithfulness).</p>

<p> This dissertation investigates the normative construction of a politics of language and community in north-west Wales (United Kingdom). It is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted primarily between January 2007 and April 2008, with central participant-observation settings in primary-level state schools and in the teaching-spaces and hallways of a university. Its primary finding is an account of the gap between the national visibility and the cultural (in)visibility communities of speakers of the indigenous language of Wales (Cymraeg, or &ldquo;Welsh&rdquo;). With one exception, no public discourse has yet emerged in Wales that provides an explicit framework or vocabulary for describing the cultural community that is anchored in Cymraeg. One has to live those meanings even to know about them. The range of social categories for living those meanings tends to be constructed in ordinary conversations as some form of <i>nationalism,</i> whether political, cultural, or language <i>nationalism.</i> Further, the negatively valenced category of nationalism current in English-speaking Britain is in tension with the positively valenced category of nationalism current among many who move within Cymraeg-speaking communities. Thus, the very politics of identity are themselves political since the line between what is political and what is not, is itself subject to controversy. The result is what I call the &ldquo;submergence&rdquo; of Cymraeg-oriented cultural communities: People who would say Cymraeg is an essential part of their personality and communities mark out cultural space for their sense of continuity (to the past, to others) in ways that do not require <i>or enable</i> them to make any substantive cultural claims. </p><p> Within these settings of a modalized Welsh culture&mdash;always only partially expressed&mdash; indigeneity and ethnic difference are symbolized by the emblematic and lived importance of Cymraeg, while the significance of Cymraeg tends to be implicitly conveyed by means of overt references to &ldquo;Welshness&rdquo;. </p><p> This cultural submergence of the resources for Cymraeg-centered identity seems motivated and sustained by the fact that it produces a haven from holiday-goers and English patriots who do not value Welsh cultural features as highly as do those who take pride in the Cymraeg-centered cultural community. In light of these features of local life, I suggest several terms of art&mdash;including &ldquo;language demesne&rdquo; and &ldquo;language corridor&rdquo;&mdash;because they are more fitting of local politics than is the idea of a (global) language community. </p><p> This dissertation also contributes a theoretical basis for examining the pragmatics of language communities, which requires differentiating phenomenal-level semiotic analyses from investigations of the dynamics of cultural discourse. The &ldquo;obvious&rdquo; empirical situation in Wales&mdash;as analyzed using a Peircean-phenomenological semiotics&mdash;runs contrary to the relatively opaque and counter-empirical cultural dynamics in Wales. As a result, this account of the tensions between semiotic descriptions and cultural dynamics signals a wrinkle in received theories of metapragmatics. Conventionally, metapragmatics makes sense of the text&ndash;discourse relation, but not the relations between discourse and consciousness because theories of metapragmatics apply only to the former. Unless the relationship of text-and-discourse to consciousness is explicated at the epistemological level of analysis, ethnographic descriptions of locales within language communities&mdash;particularly those rife with language politics&mdash;can take on the appearance of an ontology of human kinds. Given this condition, any broad account of the cultural dynamics of language and community must take an analytic position regarding the relationship between the surface-level of semiotics and the historical and cultural processes of community constitution. </p><p> My approach engages directly with the neglected conflict between the strategy of primordialist essentialism and that of constructivism. The analytic strategy and theoretical perspective of this dissertation avoids the scholarly tendency to treat certain local conceptions as misconstruals of sociocultural life. Instead, they are treated as locally valid and proper constitutings of divisible community. Academics would be no less inclined to reject analogous conceptual entailments in their cultural worlds despite their commitment to the view that sociocultural realities are constructed. The position adopted here underwrites an account that denaturalizes without denaturing the essentializing claims (e.g., of language activists) in north-west Wales. </p><p> In engaging with current analytic strategies in linguistic anthropology, my &ldquo;inferentialist&rdquo; and pragmatistic strategy frames the politicizing of language and community in north-west Wales using an alternative to linguistic indexes or icons, which are grounded in an empirical sense of necessity. The framework adopted here envisions an empirical field organized not only by <i>necessary</i> principles of Welsh belonging that are practiced or not, but by tensions among many different &ldquo;modal&rdquo; types of constraints&mdash;normative principles that are inferable from community-specific ways of enacting belonging to a particular sociocultural imaginary that owes its coherence to language affinity. Consequently, this dissertation treats languages themselves as inhabitable and provides a theoretical justification for doing so.</p>

<p>Data was collected from high schools in Ireland and the United States.</p><p>This dissertation was a comparative study of computer science in secondary schools in both Ireland and the United States. Computer science was a new subject compared to more established subjects in both Ireland and the United States. This dissertation looked at how this subject could be accessed by students in both countries. I used a document research method for this dissertation, which involved collecting documents and literature from schools’ systems, national governments, state governments and private organizations in both countries to understand and answer my research questions.</p><p>Computer science is a relatively new subject in Ireland. After many attempts to start a computer science program in schools, the Irish government finally released a computer science Leaving Certificate curriculum in 2017 with the aim for the first class to take the computer science Leaving Certificate exam in 2020. A total of 40 schools across Ireland started teaching this course as part of an initial pilot.</p><p>Computer science in the United States high schools was more established than in Ireland. Over the last number of decades computer languages such as C#, C++, Java and Fortran have been taught in high schools across America. In the early 2010’s the National Science Foundation led an initiative to increase access to computer science in high schools across the United States by introducing a new computer science program called AP computer science principles; this was an introductory course that enabled high school students to learn computer science.</p><p>As part of my finding’s sections, I established that access was improving across America with many high schools now offering computer science classes that once didn’t; however, female participation in computer science classes in schools needs addressing.</p><p>Whereby Ireland has introduced computer science at both the Junior and Leaving Certificate level, there are still only 82 schools that offer Leaving Certificate classes and 94 schools that offer the coding course at Junior Certificate out of 727 schools nationwide. As part of my recommendations, I recommend that the States within the United States should attempt to provide access to 75% of schools by 2025 and Ireland should expect all schools to provide Leaving Certificate computer science classes by 2025.</p>

Esta tese se situa no campo da formação de professores, com foco nas relações entre experiência, cultura e formação. Ao apostar nas possibilidades de um pensamento em Educação elaborado a partir da experiência, o estudo teve como objetivo analisar o lugar das experiências culturais, especificamente, na constituição de um ethos docente, isto é, em um certo modo de ser professor. Examina, inicialmente, sob que condições históricas o discurso sobre formação cultural de professores ganha legitimidade hoje, bem como sua dispersão em espaços que orientam a carreira docente, quais sejam: pesquisas acadêmicas, políticas públicas e diretrizes curriculares. Como forma de construir uma memória discursiva da concepção de cultura como instância formativa, diretamente relacionada ao discurso em questão, resgata os conceitos de Paideia, Bildung e Hallbildung para, então, inscrever uma concepção particular sobre formação cultural de professores, à luz do nosso tempo. Os movimentos teórico‐metodológicos, por sua vez, compreenderam a revisão de dados históricos, em uma perspectiva de inspiração genealógica, aliada à análise foucaultiana do discurso. O material empírico da tese constituiu‐se de portfólios de experiências culturais, realizados por alunas de Pedagogia, bem como de interações oriundas da organização de um grupo focal com seis dessas alunas. Diferentes autores compõem a ancoragem teórica que sustentou as discussões da tese, dentre os quais destaco: Michel Foucault, Jorge Larrosa e Rosa Maria Bueno Fischer. As análises desenvolvidas possibilitaram identificar que as experiências culturais aparecem implicadas com a constituição de um ethos docente, na medida em que: (1) desencadeiam e potencializam uma abertura aos processos de negociação, o que pressupõe, não raras vezes, rever posicionamentos e acomodar novas verdades; (2) sugerem um certo empoderamento, não no sentido de uma tomada de poder pelas alunas, mas como ampliação de possibilidades de vida; (3) ao se configurarem como um compromisso assumido por essas alunas, naquilo que Foucault denominou cuidado de si, articulam modos de saber e de criar a si mesmo, em direção, quem sabe, à vida boa de que fala a ética. / This thesis is situated in the area of teacher education, focused on the relations among experience, culture and education. From betting in the possibilities of one knowledge directed to education, elaborated from the experience, this study had the objective of analysing cultural experiences, specifically in the constitution of an ethos docent, in other words, from the teacher way of being. Initially, it examines under which historical conditions the discourse on the cultural teacher education gain legitimacy today, as well as its dispersion in spaces that guide the teaching career, which are: academic researches, public policies and curricular directives. As a way of constructing a discursive memory of the conception of culture as a formative instance, directly related to the discourse in question, it rescues the concepts of Paideia, Bildung and Hallbildung for inscribing a particular conception about the cultural teacher education in the light of our time. The theoreticalmethodological movements, in turn, comprised the revision of historical data, from a perspective of genealogical inspiration, allied to the foucaultian analysis of discourse. The empirical material of the thesis consisted of portfolios of cultural experiences carried out by Pedagogy students, as well as interactions from the organization of a focal group with six of these students. Different authors make up the anchorage. The empirical material of the thesis is constituted of portfolios from cultural experiences, realized by pedagogy students as well as interactions deriving from the organization of one focal group constituted by six students. Different authors compose the theoretical anchorage that supported the discussions of the thesis, among which I highlight: Michel Foucault, Jorge Larrosa and Rosa Maria Bueno Fischer. The analysis that have been developed enabled the identification of cultural experiences implicated with the constitution of an ethos docent, in the means that: (1) unleash and enhance openness to negotiation processes, which often presupposes revising positions and accommodating new truths; (2) suggest a certain empowerment, not in the sense of a power takeover by the students, but as an extension of life possibilities; (3) in what they called the care of themselves, articulate ways of knowing and creating themselves, towards, perhaps, the good life of which ethics speaks.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Western Conservative Baptist Seminary, 1988. / Abstract. Bibliography: leaves 130-133.

<p> Respite care is a social support service that gives parents of people with intellectual disabilities a short break from the constant stress of giving care&mdash;an outside provider temporarily fills the caregiving role. Utilized by families of various socio-cultural backgrounds, little research to date examines respite efficacy holistically in different contexts. Through ethnographic research in the homes and communities of three families over six months of service utilization, meaningful patterns have emerged regarding the planning, perceptions, use, and expected outcomes of respite care. Findings include that parental satisfaction is associated with how parents make plans, if they find the care provider trustworthy, and how completely they and their adult children are able to achieve respite plans. In sum, service efficacy depends largely upon the degree to which parents feel in control of the entire respite experience.</p>

<p>This dissertation examines the linguistic practices 9&ndash;13 year-old African American students who attended an after school program in Washington, D.C. used to negotiate schooling and achievement. It builds on existing anthropological research on how young people are socialized into their communities, classrooms, and the wider society via language. It renders this process particular to the students&rsquo; lived experiences of race, poverty, and contemporary schooling reform. By focusing on linguistic practice and the language ideologies held by the students, the dissertation explores the difficulties racially identified minority students face in school when they are asked by the wider society&rsquo;s major socializing agents and institutions to exchange cultural identity for academic success. </p><p> The dissertation is based on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted from October 2010&ndash;June 2011. During these months, over 108 hours of data were recorded from 30 preadolescents who served as research subjects. Informal interviews with after school staff and adults from the local community were also conducted. In the third and final phase (April&ndash;June 2011), focus groups were conducted with 12 of the students. </p><p> The dissertation provides evidence that among same- and similar-age peers, the students often repurposed the linguistic practices they learned from adults, and in ways that did not always align with the dominant expectations of the more socially powerful members of either the community or the after school program. It argues that the types of AAVE-based &ldquo;conflict&rdquo; talk students test in peer contexts perform positive socializing functions but that these discourse styles were nevertheless often interpreted, by adults as well as the students themselves, as unpreparedness or unwillingness to achieve in school. </p><p> This study revisits major theorizing of hegemony, critical consciousness, and &ldquo;the Black underclass.&rdquo; It suggests that while preadolescent-age African Americans try to construct &ldquo;achievement&rdquo; on their own terms via linguistic practice, they are not always successful because they are not empowered in the classroom, situationally or in the long term. It concludes by recommending ways in which educational practitioners and theorists can better understand how academically marginalized students engage with schooling and how they can support these students&rsquo; negotiated achievements. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Calgary (Canada), 2006. / (UnM)AAINR13611. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1193.