The thesis has its origins in a concern that teacher librarians in schools throughout Australia were disadvantaged in the development of their professional learning due to their professional and often geographical isolation in schools. A listserv (online discussion network) called OZTL_NET was developed to facilitate the enhancement of teacher professional learning for this group of teachers. OZTL_NET has been available to teacher librarians and others interested in teacher librarianship for over nine years. The study sought to determine whether usage of OZTL_NET was associated with the enhancement of teacher librarians’ professional learning. The study also explored the characteristics of teacher professional learning from the literature and sought to determine which characteristics of online communities may contribute to teacher professional learning. A case study design for the research was adopted using a mixed methods approach. The methods of data collection were a web survey and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed and a detailed description of the object of study, OZTL_NET, was provided. A major finding of this study was that usage of OZTL_NET was significantly related to the enhancement of teacher professional learning. It was concluded that online learning communities may provide appropriate contexts for teacher professional learning and that, in relation to the case of OZTL_NET, various aspects of the concept of online learning communities and, to a lesser extent, communities of practice, are portrayed in the listserv. The findings supported the assertion that online learning communities have the potential to enhance the professional learning of teachers and provide opportunities for teachers to learn online. The study also revealed that community building online is a complex and demanding activity. Usability and sociability factors must be carefully considered and developed over the lifetime of the community. This process should include input from the community, the leadership of which should be broad-based and inclusive. Two broad principles emerged from the research that provide guidance for the management of listservs for teacher professional learning online. First, the study revealed that involvement and collaboration were critical ingredients in teacher professional learning online. Involvement was portrayed not only in the learning that ensued from the interactivity that necessarily underpins the sharing of tacit knowledge through information exchange and professional discussion between and among subscribers online but also by individuals through less obvious means such as lurking, archive searches and off-list communications. In terms of collaboration, this study found that in addition to high levels of trust, subscribers experienced a strong sense of collegiality and support as members of OZTL_NET. Second, the major finding above confirms that involvement and collaboration are strongly related to individual and collective orientations of teacher professional learning. The broad concept of individual or collective orientation recognises that teacher professional learning occurs in both orientations online as it does offline. Teachers have long recognised their colleagues as their major source of professional information. The difficulty in the past has been in the identification of a means by which teachers can readily access a wider pool of colleagues with whom they can discuss important issues, seek advice and so on. This is particularly important for teachers who are professionally isolated as a consequence of their teaching speciality (such as teacher librarians) and those who are geographically isolated making real time meetings with colleagues expensive and/or impracticable. In this context listservs such as OZTL_NET can play a critical role in providing the infrastructure to support distributed models of teacher professional learning online.

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>Liljestrand, Johan (2002): Klassrummet som diskussionsarena. (The classroom as an arena for discussions)</p><p>The aim of the dissertation is to study whole class discussions in the Swedish upper secondary school, concerning issues subjected to controversy in the public debate. The empirical study is related to a wider question: the possibilities for the school to educate democratic citizens. </p><p>By using discourse analysis,14 videotaped lessons from social- and religious studies where analysed, with the ambition to investigate recurrent patterns of participation and meaning making. Five teachers and six classes participated in the study.</p><p>The analysis shows that the teachers have two concurrent goals: to focus on the students’ contributions on issues in the public debate, and introduce the students to different questions in the public debate. A consequence of these goals is that the role of the teacher often becomes complex. By acting on the basis of having responsibility for the students’ development of knowledge, and sometimes also calling attention to certain values, the teacher attempts to guide the students as not yet ready for the public debate. Features from other kinds of teacher-centred education are thereby present in the discussions. However, students can also act as more autonomous participants in relation to the teacher. When they are not answering the teacher’s questions in an expected way, and in particular, in situations in which they are interacting with each other, the students may discuss the public issues without being teacher-guided to the same extent as in other situations. </p><p>The last chapter concludes that the authority of the teacher is partly given by the official steering-documents. It is still possible to ask if the guiding role of the teacher itself could be subjected to discussion. This suggestion is made from the point that teacher authority is considered as more or less limited for developing a critical attitude among the students. One may also ask if the students’ could be offered possibilities to choose the topic for discussion themselves. This latter point is made against the background that classroom-discussion presupposes student’s viewpoints in order to be accomplished. </p><p>Key words: discussion, democracy, public issues, education, participation, meaning making.</p>

The purpose of this study is to explore the performance appraisal practice in Qidi, and suggest in what way Qidi should go in performance appraisal in the future. The result shows that there are some problems in Qidi’s performance appraisal, management. Thereby, the suggestions are that Qidi should establish a standard performance appraisal system, create a formal control system, and keep the process transparent in appraisal.

Members of 26 MySpace social groups for self-injury (SI) provided data for this study investigating knowledge of SI, friends’ perceptions of SI, and the impact of online activity on SI. This study proposes that people who have belonged to these online SI groups for longer periods have higher levels of SI knowledge than those group members who have recently joined. In addition, the study proposes that individuals who self-injure have higher levels of SI knowledge than professionals who work with individuals who self-injure. An additional purpose of this study is to explore information regarding the reasons why people belong to online SI groups, the outcomes of participating in them, and their perceptions of their online peers’ and face-to-face peers’ attitudes regarding SI. A convenience sample of 101 members solicited from SI social groups on MySpace completed the survey, which consisted of five sections including the following: demographics, experiences with SI, knowledge of SI, activities related to SI in MySpace groups, and perceptions of online and face-to-face peers’ attitudes regarding SI. The knowledge section of the survey contains a 20 item measure previously used by Jeffrey and Warm (2002). A knowledge score was created based on participants responses to these 20 items. This score was used in the analysis of both hypotheses one and two. Results indicate that participants have a good understanding of SI, based on their mean knowledge score. In addition, results reveal that the current sample’s mean SI knowledge level is higher than are four of the seven groups' mean knowledge scores. Length of membership on online SI groups is not significantly greater for individuals who score higher on the knowledge of SI measure as assessed through independent t tests. Descriptive information indicates that participants perceive their online friends to react more positively to their self-injurious behaviors than they do their face-to-face friends. In addition, the sample does not indicate that participation in online SI groups has an impact on the frequency of their self-injurious behaviors, which is consistent with prior research (Murray & Fox, 2006). Limitations discussed include sample size and solicitation, survey length, and the lack of a thorough assessment of online activity.

The continuing of industrial revaluation and capitalism today are facing the most difficult enemy ever. 38 billion years of natural resources will be destroyed and over utilized within the next 10 years. The global business will be paying 1500 billion dollars to overcome the effect of changing wheather and natural environment especially those digital industry. The global high tech industry is having a ¡§Green colour¡¨ hits. It is not a war in invoice competition. It is a war for life. The continues of the technological advantages and fast development in industry, have bringing in a convenient life to human being but on the other hand it had introduced lots of troubles in our natural environment. The awareness of our natural environment began in 1970, the first ¡§Global Day¡¨ continues in 1972, Stockholm¡¦s environment and development conference, people begins their awareness of our natural environment, knowledge, understanding and its trouble. In August this year the European alliances will be announcing the three directions of the law in the waste of electrical engineering and facility and electrical facility and products awareness. Therefore the producers have to register their product before August this year. Which includes the digital produce company, products, after sales services and recycling business are all effected bye the law. The following trend of Green Process will be the next demand on industry generation. Under the green process direction, every products that produced have to be recyclable, Lead free, Halogen free . Therefore the trend will bring to a whole new revolution of digital industry. Taiwan¡¦s IC packing industry is one of the most important rule to be a part in global semiconductor. In order to be part of trend, and facing the changing environment, follow the flow is the only way to continue the business. Our aim for this research is to discover the green products¡¦ that¡¦s affect to the packing industry. Our research is hoping to discover a deep underneath for every cases of green process products changing and to the IC packing industry. We also hoping the research could analyze the future development of the green process environment.

Abstract This research is to distinguish the Kaohsiung City resident by the level of their community sense from the view of social psychology. Due to the society changes and the high living density of urban caused by urbanization, the problems related to the collective life of residents are increasing. Besides, how much do they join the public event also control the success of promoting the collective event. This research is to discuss the community sense and the main effecting factor of different resident attribute and the issue of public event under the increasing of people joining the issue of public event. Furthermore, the suitable participation skill for different community sense and resident attribute is discussed This research expects to construct the suitable people participation skill while the different community sense and resident attribute faces the public event and take it as the reference for people participation in the future. The result shows, that the participation skill of different resident attribute and different issue of public event is clearly related; moreover, the high-low categorization of community sense and the skill of different issue of public event is also related. Additionally, according to the related statistics and analysis, the corrupt practises of current people participation skill are presented; the people participation skill that suitable for the residents of Kaohsiung City and the people participation skill that suitable for different community sense categorization are concluded. Furthermore, the suggestion of people participation and community sense and the comment for the later researcher is presented. Keywords: Sense of community, Civil participation skill, Discussion of public affair.

<p>Software systems form an essential part of Western society,serving as tools to uphold institutions, processes andservices. It is understandable, therefore, that the mostfundamental aspects of programs are their function and utility.But they are not, however, the only things programmers areconcerned with when writing them.</p><p>On the contrary, programmers also discuss about many otheraspects of software, including the beauty of code. Theydistinguish between different programming styles and expresstheir personal preferences, often by way of admiring andvilifying other people's code. Programmers' identification withaesthetic preferences may give rise to vanity, to disagreementsso entrenched that they deserve the name of 'holy wars' and toother similar phenomena.</p><p>This thesis describes and analyses these phenomena, whichultimately originate in the human faculty to create andappreciate nuances, to become attached to them and to engage indisputes because of them - even infields as standardised ascomputer programming. Its aim is to expose the aesthetics ofcode, and in doing so, to discuss the symbolic aspects ofinstrumental action at large.</p><p><b>Keywords:</b>aesthetics, code, instrumental action,internet discussion fora, programming, symbolic action</p>

Thesis (EdD)--Open University.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 93-97).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-191).