The primary goal of the thesis is to provide a comprehensive overview of legislation that concerns disciplinary offences. The thesis is mainly informative and descriptive. This structure seemed most suitable due to the complexity of the legislation regarding this topic. The thesis is divided into twelve sections. The introduction is followed by chapters on general theoretical description of the legislation. A particular attention is paid to an analysis of administrative offences and includes a salient passage that describes the distinction between administrative offences and criminal offences. The theoretical introduction also constitutes of a section focused on administrative punishment and the principles that may have an impact on it to the extent of judicial punishment. One part of the introduction also shows the deficiencies in administrative punishment which inevitably result from a rather complicated structure of this legislation. The fourth chapter is focused on administrative disciplinary offences in greater detail. Aside from a concise analysis of the superordinate term disciplinary offence, this part also addresses procedural adjustment of disciplinary proceedings and general features of disciplinary liability. The fifth chapter reflects the influence of European law on the legislation and...

The negative effects of retributive disciplinary measures in school settings are well documented. Exclusionary practices, such as suspensions, position students on the school-to-prison pipeline, perpetuating a cycle of failure. Restorative justice practices in educational settings provide an alternative to the retributive approach to student discipline. In this research study, a middle school in California was examined for its implementation of restorative justice practices. Numerical data pertaining to a five-year suspension history report for the school were utilized for the quantitative analyses, and four individual chi-square goodness of fit tests were conducted. The results demonstrated that the implementation of restorative justice played a significant role in the declining student suspensions across school years. It was found that the introduction of restorative practices to the middle school played a role in creating an inclusive school environment, with student suspensions having been applied to a lower proportion of African American and Hispanic students from pre-implementation of restorative justice to post-implementation. Through the use of a restorative framework, students may learn how to solve problems and repair relationships in school and life events, rather than being placed on the school-to-prison pipeline.

It is a truism in contemporary understandings of semantics that there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between a word and its referent. As Wittgenstein has suggested, we can only know the meaning of a word by understanding the way it is used, and these uses are known often to be variable and highly context-dependent. / The issue of the variable meanings of terms is especially important when the term in question has assumed some centrality within a particular social domain, when its meanings are contested, and when the way the term is interpreted has a major bearing on subsequent social and institutional practices. In contemporary debates about the aims and purposes of higher education one such term is ‘critical thinking’. Whilst there is general unanimity in the higher education literature about the importance of ‘critical thinking’ as an educational ideal, there is surprisingly little agreement about what the term means exactly, as well as what exactly students should be taught in order to be appropriately critical in their field. / This thesis reports an empirical study which investigated conceptions of critical thinking as they are held by academics from a range of humanities disciplines: History, Philosophy, and Literary/Cultural Studies. The broad method used was a ‘textographic’ one, focusing both on how the concept of critical thinking was talked about by informants in interview, and also how it was constructed in a range of texts used by them in their teaching on undergraduate programs. / The study found a good deal of variation in the meaning of the term ‘critical’, not only between the three disciplines, but also within them. This variation was located in a number of areas: in the epistemic entities to which students needed to direct their thinking (e.g. textual vs. phenomenal entities), and in the various analytical modes they were required to adopt (e.g. evaluative vs. interpretative modes). The broad principle to be drawn from these findings is that the nature of one's thinking is indivisible from the object to which that thinking is directed. / The varieties of critical thinking found in the study provide some challenge to certain generic understandings of critical thinking, ones that have assumed increasing influence in higher education debates in recent years. The study concludes by suggesting that the teaching of critical thinking is likely to be more effective if handled within the context of students’ study in the disciplines, as opposed to a generic extra-disciplinary approach. It is also suggested that an important part of becoming a critical thinker in the academy is being able to recognise and to negotiate this variety of critical modes.

This qualitative study was conducted to investigate how large publicly listed companies inSweden apply its code of conduct on external parties as well as how such application is bestcarried out. Three overarching steps (implementation, monitoring and actions) weredeveloped from previous research to serve this purpose. Agency and contract theory wereimportant to understand the underlying problems of application of codes of conduct onexternal parties. It was found that companies that adequately address all of the three stepsexperience a successful application of its code of conduct on external parties. Companies thatdo not address the three steps as thoroughly do not experience the same compliance with theircode of conduct. It was further found that many companies fail to adequately address theemphasized areas. Extensive deficiencies put companies in a vulnerable position as externalparties associated with a company might have a negative impact on the company’s brand andreputation. An outlook shows that companies are not prioritizing all of the steps sufficientlyand it is thus suggested that they revise their plans. The project was carried out incooperation with KPMG Forensic and Advokatfirman Delphi. A content analysis and a survey were used to collect necessary data.

Religious fundamentalism is a confusing and not well understood phenomenon in present day Western societies. In order to obtain fresh insights into what social forces and conditions affect religious organizational development such that they become fundamentalist organizations, this study seeks to analyze a religious group that historically has been mandated to integrate and utilize alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge into their canon of teachings. A triangulation study consisting of a content analysis of its accepted history and a discourse analysis of its accredited membership are utilized to gather data on this religious organization to understand the historical, organizational, and external social circumstances that have allowed this religious community to engage and interact with alternative scientific and/or religious knowledge without interpretations of conflict becoming a source of social strife within their organization.

From the beginning, social theory has been motivated by the desire to advance human freedom and bring about social change (Seidman, 2008). From classical theorists such as Marx, who writes of class division and the exploitative nature of capitalism in order to bring about change, to more contemporary sociologists such as C. Wright Mills, who helps to redefine personal problems in terms of public issues, many of sociology's foundational texts clearly demonstrate a propensity for advancing human freedom and inducing social change. Thus, it is interesting to examine what sociologists are doing because their work has historically had, and will continue to have, the potential to make real and significant change in the world. And, it is imperative to have knowledge of the current state of affairs in the discipline in order to facilitate discussion around how to promote sociological work that seeks to bring about social change. It is in this context that this research project seeks to answer the following: what is the distribution of sociology professors in Canada using Burawoy's (2009) disciplinary mosaic framework? In addressing this question, two sub-questions are asked: to what extent do Canadian sociologists agree or disagree with Burawoy's normative vision of the discipline? And, to what degree do the socio-demographic shown to be relevant by Brym and Nakhaie (2009) continue to emerge in the Canadian context. Using data collected from an online questionnaire delivered to all full-time sociologists in universities and colleges in Canada, this project reveals that Canadian sociology is dominated by Professional sociology with Public, Policy and Critical sociology featuring much less prominently. This is despite the fact that in aggregate Canadian sociologists tend to agree that all types of sociology ought to be conducted. Finally, several socio-demographic variables-such as gender, income and type of post secondary institution-continue to be relevant in the Canadian context.

The focus of this research is on the development of a novel multi-disciplinary design optimization scheme for micro-compliant devices. Topology optimization is a powerful tool that can address the need for a systematic method to design MEMS. It is expected that systematic design methods will make the design of micro devices transparent to the user and thus spur their use. Although topology optimization of MEMS devices with embedded actuation has received a great deal of attention among researchers recently, there is not a significant amount of literature available on the subject. The limited literature available addresses multi-physics topology optimization, which employs the homogenization method. However, the products of this method inherit the drawbacks of homogenized material discretization, including checkerboard pattern, gray-scale material and narrow flexural hinges in the optimum solution. In this thesis, a new topology optimization scheme is introduced that addresses the specific needs of MEMS domain. A new discretization approach with frame-ground structure is introduced. This approach offers significant conceptual and practical advantages to the compliant MEMS optimization problem, including compatibility with MEMS fabrication processes. The design spaces of compliant mechanisms are non-convex and it is critical to employ an algorithm capable of converging to the global optimum without the need to evaluate gradients of objective function. In this thesis, an efficient real-coded genetic algorithm is implemented, which shows a better repeatability and converges to very similar solutions in different runs. This new method of optimization facilitates the use of a coarse subdivision of the design domain rather than the homogenized material method, for the same resolution of shape definition. Therefore, the topology optimization scheme developed in this thesis significantly reduces the computational burden without compromising the sharpness of the shape definition. As the problem of compliant mechanism design is posed as a set of conflicting objectives, a well-posed multi-criteria objective function is introduced which avoids one objective dominating the solution. Moreover, the formulation is modified to incorporate electro-thermal boundaries and enables the optimization of the compliant mechanisms to transfer maximum motion or maximum force at the output. A number of design examples are used to demonstrate the ability of the procedure to generate non-intuitive topologies. Their performance is verified using ANSYS and compared with results from the homogenization method and designs reported in the available literature.

The current study explored the collaborative processes present in a collaboration between an urban university in the Southeast United States, a state-funded educational support agency, and several urban and suburban school districts served by the state agency. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the collaboration and relevant practices, perceptions were obtained from university, community agency, and K-12 school representatives through 12 individual and 2 group interviews. Data were collected and analyzed using Moustakas’s (1994) transcendental phenomenology methodology. Findings indicated that participants perceived collaborative processes in the areas of collaborative structure, communication practices, characteristics of collaborators and organizations, and group dynamics. Participants also described outcomes of the collaboration in the areas of general impact on professional learning participants, learning, evolution of behaviors and beliefs, relationship development, emotional impact, sustainability, and generalizability. Comparison of the current results to Hord’s (1986) model of inter-organizational collaboration and the literature on inter-organizational collaboration revealed strong support for a synthesis model of inter-organizational collaboration. Furthermore, the findings suggest implications for practice in the areas of goal alignment, communication, perceptions of collaborative involvement, system entry and assimilation, and personal characteristics.

From the beginning, social theory has been motivated by the desire to advance human freedom and bring about social change (Seidman, 2008). From classical theorists such as Marx, who writes of class division and the exploitative nature of capitalism in order to bring about change, to more contemporary sociologists such as C. Wright Mills, who helps to redefine personal problems in terms of public issues, many of sociology's foundational texts clearly demonstrate a propensity for advancing human freedom and inducing social change. Thus, it is interesting to examine what sociologists are doing because their work has historically had, and will continue to have, the potential to make real and significant change in the world. And, it is imperative to have knowledge of the current state of affairs in the discipline in order to facilitate discussion around how to promote sociological work that seeks to bring about social change. It is in this context that this research project seeks to answer the following: what is the distribution of sociology professors in Canada using Burawoy's (2009) disciplinary mosaic framework? In addressing this question, two sub-questions are asked: to what extent do Canadian sociologists agree or disagree with Burawoy's normative vision of the discipline? And, to what degree do the socio-demographic shown to be relevant by Brym and Nakhaie (2009) continue to emerge in the Canadian context. Using data collected from an online questionnaire delivered to all full-time sociologists in universities and colleges in Canada, this project reveals that Canadian sociology is dominated by Professional sociology with Public, Policy and Critical sociology featuring much less prominently. This is despite the fact that in aggregate Canadian sociologists tend to agree that all types of sociology ought to be conducted. Finally, several socio-demographic variables-such as gender, income and type of post secondary institution-continue to be relevant in the Canadian context.

The focus of this research is on the development of a novel multi-disciplinary design optimization scheme for micro-compliant devices. Topology optimization is a powerful tool that can address the need for a systematic method to design MEMS. It is expected that systematic design methods will make the design of micro devices transparent to the user and thus spur their use. Although topology optimization of MEMS devices with embedded actuation has received a great deal of attention among researchers recently, there is not a significant amount of literature available on the subject. The limited literature available addresses multi-physics topology optimization, which employs the homogenization method. However, the products of this method inherit the drawbacks of homogenized material discretization, including checkerboard pattern, gray-scale material and narrow flexural hinges in the optimum solution. In this thesis, a new topology optimization scheme is introduced that addresses the specific needs of MEMS domain. A new discretization approach with frame-ground structure is introduced. This approach offers significant conceptual and practical advantages to the compliant MEMS optimization problem, including compatibility with MEMS fabrication processes. The design spaces of compliant mechanisms are non-convex and it is critical to employ an algorithm capable of converging to the global optimum without the need to evaluate gradients of objective function. In this thesis, an efficient real-coded genetic algorithm is implemented, which shows a better repeatability and converges to very similar solutions in different runs. This new method of optimization facilitates the use of a coarse subdivision of the design domain rather than the homogenized material method, for the same resolution of shape definition. Therefore, the topology optimization scheme developed in this thesis significantly reduces the computational burden without compromising the sharpness of the shape definition. As the problem of compliant mechanism design is posed as a set of conflicting objectives, a well-posed multi-criteria objective function is introduced which avoids one objective dominating the solution. Moreover, the formulation is modified to incorporate electro-thermal boundaries and enables the optimization of the compliant mechanisms to transfer maximum motion or maximum force at the output. A number of design examples are used to demonstrate the ability of the procedure to generate non-intuitive topologies. Their performance is verified using ANSYS and compared with results from the homogenization method and designs reported in the available literature.