<p> With operations involving global interindividual interactions and strategic organizational change, organizations face a human resource problem. Today, human resources departments seek individuals capable of interacting across and beyond sociocultural boundaries and sometimes in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous settings. The literature has identified that organizations underutilize a specific pool of employees with extensive international life-work experience. This study was designed to explore the phenomenon of the <i> transcultural individual</i> from a humanistic perspective. To be a transcultural individual is to have successfully integrated two or more cultures into their worldview. The study also examined transculturality, designating transcultural traits or characteristics, as a positive attribute to being an <i>agent of change</i> in the workplace. Three underlying premises drove this study: first, human relations are malleable; second, transcultural individuals are naturals in interindividual intercultural interactions; and third, change is continuous. </p><p> The study population included five women and four men located in Washington, D.C., and Paris, France. The study used a qualitative interpretive inquiry design and a transdisciplinary theoretical framework to explore the nine life stories. Semistructured interviews provided rich and thick descriptions for analysis. The results were threefold: the participants transcended their inherited culture to attain a degree of cultural freedom; a transcultural life lessens angst in the face of change; and self-perception of being a manager and/or leader of change seems normal to the participants. </p><p> The findings uncovered the transcultural life experience as a way of being and a way of knowing the world. Moreover, being transcultrual, from a human development and an existential transformative process, appears to predispose individuals to being proactive agents of change in the workplace. This study highlighted the positive humanistic perspectives, derived from being a transcultural individual, that organizations need from individuals with relevant knowledge to address cross-cultural challenges and complexified work settings due to a continuous state of change. The study also revealed a perception of change to be related to individuals&rsquo; prior life experiences with change, including emotional behaviors and coping mechanisms developed under such circumstances. Unforeseeably, conversations exposed personal the presence and role of temporalities in relation to personal perceptions of time in relation to change.change when revisiting and recollecting memories. In conclusion, recommendations for transcultural individuals and organizations are derived, and further research is suggested.</p><p>

Situated within the interpretive and critical traditions, this study aims to contribute to one of the continuing primary themes in urban preservation: how to interpret and preserve the intangible values of built environments. A comprehensive analysis of dominant theories of urban preservation forms the conceptual framework within which this dissertation takes place. It starts by locating the intellectual context of preservation in North America, and examines its basic premises and core issues. It identifies three limits to the traditional approach to preservation planning. The complexity and fragility of history, its narrative quality and its particularities, its emotional content and economic values, all connect urban preservation with public history. Therefore, in the spirit of communicative democracy and “a shared authority”, the study incorporates collective memory as an essential construct in urban landscapes, and suggests a culturally sensitive narrative approach (CSNA). The study employs an in-depth case study. The setting is Kensington Market in Toronto, Canada. It examines retrospectively the urban renewal planning of Kensington Market in the 1960s, identifies the pivotal events that prompted the change of urban renewal policies, and demonstrates, through the interpretive policy analysis, that sometimes urban renewal plans that fail to be implemented can become success stories in how to preserve urban neighborhoods as a kind of public history. To probe deeper into the sources of conflict between the professionals and the public, the study further explores the mutual relationship between collective memory and urban landscapes. It takes a selective look at some significant sites of memory, and connects them into a narrative path. Through oral history interviewing, field observation, and material cultural analysis, this part of the analysis constitutes an empirical study of CSNA. A proposition is derived from this critical case study. The study concludes with seven steps of CSNA, a guide for urban landscape preservation and planning.

<p> Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Native American ancestral lands in the western United States developed for tourism and recreation. The stewards of these lands seek to engage visitors and enrich their experience, and simultaneously to protect the lands&rsquo; natural and cultural resources. To achieve their mission, protected areas regularly use <i>interpretation </i>&mdash;materials and experiences that aim to educate visitors about resources and see them as personally meaningful. However, there is little literature on interpretive content in protected areas, few qualitative studies of interpretation as constructed by visitors and interpreters, and little literature on the representation of Native Americans in museums and protected areas. </p><p> I consider the public presentation of archaeology at exemplary protected areas in the U.S. Southwest and Great Basin within a theoretical framework of governmentality and representation. Within a mixed-method research design, this project used participant-observation at thirteen protected area locales to identify interpretive content and representational strategies, and semi-structured interviews with 31 individuals to elicit staff and visitors&rsquo; understandings of interpretation and display. This research found three types of narratives in the interpretation sampled&mdash;scientific narratives, cultural narratives, and management messages. In general, scientific narratives appeared more frequently than cultural narratives and both appeared more frequently than management messages. Archaeology dominated scientific narratives, cultural continuity dominated cultural narratives, and orientation dominated management messages. In general, archaeology appeared with greater relative frequency than any other component of interpretive content. This study also found that interpretation predominantly adopted a third-person omniscient point of view and represented people predominantly in the ancient past. </p><p> This study has both academic and applied outcomes. The work aims to contribute to the scant body of literature on interpretive content in protected areas stewarding natural and cultural resources, the few qualitative studies of interpretation as constructed by visitors and interpreters, and the existing literature on the representation of Native Americans in museums and protected areas as well as informing future interpretive practice. These findings inform a report on contemporary interpretive practice and recommendations for the public presentation of archaeology delivered to the US Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2013.</p>

<p> If there is a leitmotif to American criticism of the past fifty years it is that America, exceptionally, was not discovered but constructed. Those in a new world void of self-evident tradition or the conventional markers of history, the story goes, invented an organic truth to their past experience, current interests, and future intentions. They constructed cultural memory. Fiction from the early national period, critics argue, variously reflects, exposes, challenges, and participates in this hegemonic process. </p><p> This project is dedicated to another group of American writers who insisted that the land did speak: Mormon and Gentile immigrants who walked west the breadth of a new nation and in their journals described haunted rock cities and uncanny Indian massacres. In these descriptions, poetic patterns prove more powerful than manifest appearances. The complex erosion and accretion of these rock cities and these massacre stories prompts reassessment of nineteenth-century Euro-American settlers&rsquo; relationship with the land and the land&rsquo;s inhabitants and alternate interpretations of the seminal texts of American Romanticism. </p><p> In Chapter 1, I consider Idaho&rsquo;s City of Rock&rsquo;s mythical Almo Massacre in the context of Mormon prophecy, theology, and history. In this reading, I am centrally concerned with the effects of the story&rsquo;s poetics: how does the Almo-Massacre story invent and perform the nation? The Mountain Meadows Massacre, and its translation from its authentic site to the site of its mythical reenactment in the City of Rocks, is my central concern in Chapter 2. Chapter 2 reminds us that trauma narratives are never about authentic specifics of place, time, or experience but about synesthetic sense: how things feel. This sense is artifactual, and thus heritable and transportable. This revelation informs my readings of the journals of America&rsquo;s nineteenth-century overland immigrants who walked west and described not the virgin land of American myth but contested space. In Chapter 4, I turn to three of America&rsquo;s canonical nineteenth-century nation stories: Washington Irving&rsquo;s &ldquo;Rip Van Winkle,&rdquo; James Fenimore Cooper&rsquo;s <i>The Last of the Mohicans </i>, and Mark Twain&rsquo;s <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn </i>. In these stories, the world-as-felt matters as fully as the world-as-seen. </p>

<p> Successful collaborations take effort. This study analyzed the process followed by 20 groups of diverse professions that were brought together to solve a community health problem. To this goal a four part model of conflict was adapted and used to understand how conflict emerged, was managed or resolved. The model allowed for the identification of five routes to conflict. Conflict was either averted or managed constructively by most of the groups and a set of productive behaviors is associated with this ability. Experienced collaborators utilize these behaviors at various times throughout the collaborative process to promote group cohesion and the possibility of integrating differences and transforming them into more creative outcomes. Conflict is found to be neutral; for some groups it is stagnating while others are able to use it constructively.</p>

<p> There are three hypotheses for this research: 1. High school mathematics students in urban public schools, who are provided interactive technology resources during normal course work, will experience a multiplier effect of enhanced learning in mathematics. They will have an increase in positive dispositions indicative of their identity development as competent doers of math. 2. Through focusing on solving problems that relate to the life-world of students, students will experience an increase in the levels of solidarity with participants of the course. This will have a positive impact of the learning experiences and achievement of students. 3. Students will develop increased value of using their developing competencies in math to model and analyze issues relevant to their communities.</p><p> The purpose of this research is to study effective utilization of interactive technologies and math computer programs in public high school mathematics classes. The interactive technologies used in classes are to support graphical, tabluar, verbal and analytical representations of the mathematics in hopes of increasing the learning potential and math fluency of students. The research will serve as a basis for ongoing development of teaching practices that improve student achievement in mathematics. </p><p> The research design is an interpretive / phenomenological study of evolving attitudes and practices of students as they are engaged with math problem solving. Students will not be asked to produce any data solely for the purposes of the research. All activities that students do, and all data that will inform the research, will emerge from best teaching practices, which are supported by the school principal and have been formally approved by the school board. All methods and strategies employed in this study are ones I have used, over the past six years, in my role as a highly qualified math teacher in Newark public schools. No changes in what happens will occur because of this dissertation study. </p><p> The research design is an interpretive / phenomenological study of evolving attitudes and practices of students as they are engaged with math problem solving. Students will not be asked to produce any data solely for the purposes of the research. All activities that students do, and all data that will inform the research, will emerge from best teaching practices, which are supported by the school principal and have been formally approved by the school board. All methods and strategies employed in this study are ones I have used, over the past six years, in my role as a highly qualified math teacher in Newark public schools. No changes in what happens will occur because of this dissertation study. </p><p> Not all teachers are implementing the best practices that this study focuses on. I want to shed light on these practices and show how they can become more common and done in a more collaborative way. Students can opt not to use technologies at all, but it is not likely they would want to since doing so would slow down their progress. Teachers, however, are required to teach math with using various technologies, such as in an advanced graphing calculator or an interactive smart board. This is a case of, students are using technology in classes, gaining advantages with this technology use, and I would just like to analyze it write about my findings in my dissertation. Please see the school issued student calculator contract included with this application. It shows that math teachers are required to teach with school approved technologies, in this case a newer handheld graphing calculator), but that students may opt not to use it. Furthermore, many teachers don't yet know how to use these newer school approved technologies and must be shown the methods and benefits.</p>

<p> Cross-cultural factors affect the cognitive processes engaged in by subjects to respond to rating scales. By using a sequential explanatory strategy of mixed-method research design, this study investigates four cultural groups in the software industry (n=92) - Israelis, Latinos, Romanians, and Americans &mdash; to investigate cultural effects on the thought processes used by respondents performing selected verbal (ordinal) and numeric (interval) scales.</p><p> Cluster analysis of the qualitative data identified four main response styles used by subjects &ndash; Extremes, Midpoint, Range, and Refiners. While the clusters did not differ in their demographics, when evaluating their cognitive processes against the theory of Tourangeau, Rips, and Rasinski (2000), clusters used different cognitive processes. Specifically, Refiners and Midpoint were more likely to adjust their responses during the Judgment stage before responding. </p><p> The findings of this research identified that values as acquired through life experience (i.e., leadership position) and demographics (i.e., gender, age, and educational level) rather than basic culture play a key role in the cognitive processes used by subjects to respond to scales. These factors affected scale preference, response style, cognitive processes, and even generated sentiments and emotions. Focusing on cultural values rather than cultural practices is a key need to yield valid survey results. </p><p> While some of the subjects are oblivious to the cultural effects discussed in this study, those effects have theoretical and practical implications for surveys conducted by multi-national organizations and business leaders. Furthermore, identifying and handling cross-cultural differences described in this study can be used to train leaders in cross-cultural environments.</p>

<p>Abstract Varying in age from ninety-nine to two-hundred-twenty years old, the surviving historic buildings on Grand Isle reflect the patterns of lifestyle and ethnic heritage on the state?s only continuously occupied barrier island and define Louisiana Coastal Vernacular. These structures, and the stories of the people who continue to occupy them, provided the primary resources for this thesis. The proposed National Register Multiple Property Listing (MPL) comprises the only documented study in the United States of historic coastal vernacular structures endangered by climate change and wetland loss. The structures also potentially hold the keys to future coastal construction methods. Research for the MPL revealed techniques developed through trial and error that allowed buildings to survive category four hurricane winds and storm surges up to sixteen feet for over a hundred years. Once formally identified as Louisiana Coastal Vernacular, these structures may hold the keys to future coastal construction methods. Potential global applications in the face of rising seas and increasingly severe annual tropical events require further investigation of surviving historic structures and their environments. Future investigation and documentation may reveal substantial applications to new construction that reduce loss of life and property during coastal storm events. Over the past thirteen years, state and federal authorities, citizens, and industries have struggled with numerous issues related to life in Louisiana?s unique coastal environment. What, how, and where to build has constituted a major theme of these discussions and yet, no comprehensive documentation of structures that have survived centuries of this environment has been conducted to ascertain how they survived and whether that information may be applied to future coastal communities. The historic buildings on Grand Isle represent a unique facet of life in Louisiana as well as containing the potential groundwork for a better way of living with coastal areas around the world.

<p> Helping someone maximizes the interaction that takes place between individuals because it provides a purpose for communication. The unique experience of exchanging information and support also results in the gratification of being able to impact another person&rsquo;s life. Mentoring relationships support Buber&rsquo;s I-Thou relationship of respectfully helping others when the opportunity exists. The cost and benefits shared while learning from each other also expand on Homans&rsquo; (1961) social exchange theory that suggests that the purpose behind human behavior is based from the exchange between each other. With more motivation to engage in a collaborative relationship, aspiring leaders have advanced personally and professionally from the result of a relationship with a mentor. This project strives to bring awareness of the need to develop Latina leaders through the support of a mentoring relationship. After expanding from the applied research, this project engages the use of computer mediated communication (CMC) to educate and inspire future Latina leaders to be involved in a mentoring relationship to increase their presence in top leadership roles. Project website: Mentoring Latina Leaders: Establishing and nourishing a positive mentoring relationship www.jresende1.wix.com/mentoringlatinas </p>

<p> This dissertation explores how Louisiana French cultural resources, specifically historic documents, oral history recordings, and photographs of colonial artifacts, might be rendered more digitally accessible for the purpose of preserving and promoting Louisiana's unique French language and heritage. Methods of action research design guided this study's investigation. First, I examined the needs of French speakers living in and around the city of Lafayette, Louisiana. Then, after reviewing several projects using information communication technologies, in particular projects from the fields of cultural computing and digital humanities, I conceptualized distinct Internet applications for French-speaking Louisianans and for people interested in Louisiana's French language, history, and culture. Three fictional, yet feasible narrative scenarios serve to illustrate how my envisioned Internet applications might function. Specifically, I propose how Louisiana French resources could be enhanced through technologies including (1) metadata encoding, (2) database interoperability, (3) social networking, (4) serious games, (5) voice-recognition applications, and (6) enhanced digital video subtitles. This dissertation also (1) looks at copyright issues concerning objects of cultural heritage and (2) discusses trends of cultural institutions&mdash;museums, archives, and libraries&mdash;that are currently adopting policies, which encourage the public to freely access, reuse, and redistribute text and image copies of certain institutional holdings. This dissertation concludes by recommending collaborative efforts between Louisiana public libraries, Louisiana universities, and the Digital Public Library of America, a national initiative seeking to digitize, preserve, organize, and present cultural heritage resources online to the public.</p>