Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-234).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 236-253).

abstract: ABSTRACT Teachers working in isolation to overcome instructional challenges are left to their own devices, but teachers working together can benefit from others' perspectives. Teacher collaboration can increase communication and open doors to increased collective knowledge and rapport. Collaborative knowledge sharing and decision-making that focus on student achievement can go far in improving instructional learning. This action research focused on increasing collaboration among members of a middle school team of teachers. Involving teachers in a collaboration development processes was intended to improve productive interactions and contribute to instructional learning as a professional learning team. Study participants were involved in an eight week professional development initiative that involved techniques to promote collaboration along with instructional learning tools to promote professional learning in regard to guiding students to high levels of cognition. A mixed methods set of data was generated including a research journal, artifacts, surveys, meeting transcriptions, and interviews. Findings concluded that focusing on collaboration contributed to positive changes in the middle school team's interactions. Setting and revisiting norms of collaboration were crucial steps in this focus, leading to increased buy-in and active participation during team meetings. Focusing on relevance contributed to multiple aspects of the team's instructional learning. Participants valued their collaborative efforts especially when they found direct links between their professional learning and their individual classroom situations. Focusing on an action plan also contributed to participants' instructional learning. Setting manageable short terms goals gave the team direction and fostered accountability. Finally, working as a professional learning team contributed to the team's instructional learning. Taking the time to meet frequently allowed teachers to share classroom experiences, assist one another, and develop professionally. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Leadership and Innovation 2011

abstract: Proponents of current educational reform initiatives emphasize strict accountability, the standardization of curriculum and pedagogy and the use of standardized tests to measure student learning and indicate teacher, administrator and school performance. As a result, professional learning communities have emerged as a platform for teachers to collaborate with one another in order to improve their teaching practices, increase student achievement and promote continuous school improvement. The primary purpose of this inquiry was to investigate how teachers respond to working in professional learning communities in which the discourses privilege the practice of regularly comparing evidence of students' learning and results. A second purpose was to raise questions about how the current focus on standardization, assessment and accountability impacts teachers, their interactions and relationships with one another, their teaching practices, and school culture. Participants in this qualitative, ethnographic inquiry included fifteen teachers working within Green School District (a pseudonym). Initial interviews were conducted with all teachers, and responses were categorized in a typology borrowed from Barone (2008). Data analysis involved attending to the behaviors and experiences of these teachers, and the meanings these teachers associated with those behaviors and events. Teachers of GSD responded differently to the various layers of expectations and pressures inherent in the policies and practices in education today. The experiences of the teachers from GSD confirm the body of research that illuminates the challenges and complexity of working in collaborative forms of professional development, situated within the present era of accountability. Looking through lenses privileged by critical theorists, this study examined important intended and unintended consequences inherent in the educational practices of standardization and accountability. The inquiry revealed that a focus on certain "results" and the demand to achieve short terms gains may impede the creation of successful, collaborative, professional learning communities. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

No ambiente urbano regido pela lógica capitalista são raros os momentos para estreitar laços, fazer novas amizades e usufruir de conversas pela simples satisfação que momentos como esses proporcionam. A sociabilidade, no sentido que lhe é atribuído por Georg Simmel, é dificultada pelos imperativos da vida moderna que resultam de uma lógica na qual as relações humanas são permeadas pela economia monetária. Tendo em vista que a sociabilidade é uma necessidade humana, as pessoas se organizam de maneira a contornar o isolamento produzido pela cidade capitalista. O objetivo dessa dissertação é investigar à luz das contribuições teóricas do sociólogo alemão, o modo pelo qual as pessoas organizam espaços que oportunizam momentos de compartilhamento e convivência fraterna no ambiente urbano. Por meio de uma abordagem qualitativa, tomamos o Projeto Vizinhança (PV) como objeto de investigação empírica e utilizamos entrevistas semi-estruturadas e pesquisa exploratória como técnicas de obtenção de dados. O PV é um coletivo aberto que ativa espaços ociosos transformando-os, por tempo determinado, em palcos para que as pessoas se conheçam, troquem experiências e compartilhem ideias enquanto realizam inúmeras atividades. Com o auxílio da análise de conteúdo foi possível verificar que iniciativas como o PV contribuem para amenizar o isolamento na vida urbana na medida em que atende à necessidade de sociabilidade que o capitalismo tardio não proporciona. / In the urban environment governed by the capitalist logic, there are few moments to strengthen ties, to make new friends and to enjoy conversations for the simple satisfaction that moments like these provide. Sociability, in the sense attributed to it by Georg Simmel, is hampered by the imperatives of modern life which result from a logic in which human relations are permeated by monetary economy. Given that sociability is a human need, people organize themselves in such a way as to avoid this isolation produced by the capitalist city. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate in the light of the theoretical contributions of the German sociologist, the way in which people organize spaces that provide opportunities for sharing and fraternal coexistence in the urban environment. Through a qualitative approach, we take the Neighborhood Project (PV) as an object of empirical research and use semi-structured interviews and exploratory research as data collection techniques. The PV is an open collective that activates idle spaces by transforming them, for a determined time, into places for people to get to meet each other, exchange experiences and share ideas while doing many activities. With the help of content analysis, it was possible to verify that initiatives such as the PV contribute to soften the isolation in urban life insofar.

This interdisciplinary dissertation examines the relationship between exile and collaborative authorship in the films of blacklisted American director Joseph Losey and British-Jewish playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter. During the 1960s and early 1970s, they collaborated on the celebrated British art-house films The Servant (1963, based on the novella by Robin Maugham), Accident (1967, based on the novel by Nicholas Mosley), and The Go-Between (1971, based on the novel by L.P. Hartley), which won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1971 Cannes International Film Festival. Both Losey and Pinter commented frequently on the synergistic nature of their successful collaboration, but Anglo-American film scholarship tends to often incorrectly interpret the collaboration as a disproportionate alliance of talent with Losey serving subordinately to the Nobel laureate Pinter's dramatic genius. Moving beyond the auteur critics' emphasis on solitary film authorship, this dissertation reads the Losey and Pinter collaboration through the lens of exilic cinema. Losey and Pinter's shared exilic vision--the synthesis of the exiled blacklistee Losey and the British-Jewish insider-outsider Pinter--interrogated a British culture that, during the 1960s and early 1970s, possessed a new allure due, in large part, to the international popularity of the Beatles, James Bond, and the fashion of designer Mary Quant. Yet this veneer of sex appeal and economic prosperity veiled ongoing class and racial tension, gender inequality, homosexual oppression, and a dissolving Empire. Losey and Pinter foreground these socio-political issues through a complex modernist film aesthetic, which challenged the classical Hollywood and British narrative film structure by bending genre conventions and archetypes in The Servant, and later fusing elements of modernist literature and Continental European art-house cinema, particularly the films of the French Nouvelle Vague and Rive Gauche filmmakers, in Accident and The Go-Between. This dissertation analyzes The Servant, Accident, and The Go-Between against the socio-political climate of Britain in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the creative and economic alliance between the British and Hollywood film industries during this significant filmmaking period. The goal is not only to illustrate that the Losey-Pinter collaboration cannot be placed easily within a single author paradigm, but also that studies of film collaboration need to consider relevant historical, socio-political, and industrial factors.

abstract: The intention for the dance production Story was to develop and explore a collaborative creative process to communicate a specific narrative to an audience. The production took place in the Margaret Gisolo Dance Studio at Arizona State University on November 18, 19, and 20, 2011. The purpose of my thesis work was to investigate how my personal inspiration from classical ballet, balletic movement vocabulary, fantasy narrative (an imaginative fictional story), supportive lighting, set, costumes and expressive sound might merge within a collaborative dance-making process. The final choreography includes creative input from the participating dancers and designers, as well as constructive feedback from my thesis committee. My reflection on the creative process for Story describes the challenges and personal growth I experienced as a result of the project. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.F.A. Dance 2012

[pt] Criados em 2001 na IBM, os Jams são iniciativas baseadas na plataforma WEB 2.0 (Internet) que têm como objetivo principal promover a inovação em toda a empresa através de brainstorming intensivo, conectando de poucas centenas até dezenas de milhares de funcionários, clientes e parceiros de negócios, ultrapassando as fronteiras organizacionais, funcionais ou geográficas e desenvolvendo ideias práticas em torno de negócios críticos ou questões empresariais urgentes. Representam uma oportunidade única de contribuição com suas ideias inovadoras, para pessoas através da colaboração social, compartilhando suas perspectivas e criando possibilidades para influenciar o futuro do negócio. Este estudo de caso visa analisar empiricamente como a Internet colaborativa pode ser um elemento de transformação do processo estratégico da IBM, descrevendo as intervenções dentro do contexto onde ocorreram, para o desenvolvimento de estratégias experimentais (formulação de estratégia empresarial por meio de redes sociais). Além de possibilitar melhorias na operação e catalisar uma mudança cultura para o estabelecimento de uma cultura baseada em confiança e inovação colaborativa entre os funcionários, verificou-se no estudo que os Jams fortalecem os sentimentos com relação às oportunidades existentes na organização, rompendo as barreiras da hierarquia e, sobretudo auxiliando a organização na definição e operacionalização dos valores, bem como, na priorização dos planos operacionais. / [en] Created in 2001 at IBM, the Jams are Web 2.0 platform (Internet) based initiatives which main objective is to promote innovation across the company through intensive brainstorming, connecting from a few hundred to tens of thousands of employees, customers and partners business beyond the organizational, geographic location or functional boundaries to develop practical ideas about urgent or critical business issues. They represent a unique opportunity to contribute with innovative ideas for people through social collaboration, sharing their perspectives and creating new possibilities to influence the future of the business. This case study aims to examine empirically how the Internet can be a collaborative element of the strategic transformation of IBM, described the interventions within the context where they occurred, to solve real problems and develop experimental strategies (business strategy formulation through social networking). In addition to enable improvements in the operations and catalyze a cultural change to establish an organizational culture based on trust and collaborative innovation among employees, it was found in this study that the Jams stronger their feelings about the opportunities available in the organization, breaking down the barriers of hierarchy, and especially in assisting the organization on its values definition and implementation, and to prioritize operational plans.

[pt] A terceirização na manufatura e em serviços tem proporcionado às empresas vantagens estratégicas como menor custo devido a economias de escala (no fornecedor), maior competência técnica, rápida aquisição de novas competências, menor necessidade de investimento, maior foco em produtos e mercados entre outras. Nesse cenário, ganha importância o relacionamento colaborativo em que as empresas mudam a ênfase do benefício imediato em transações isoladas para estratégias que objetivam transações repetitivas com parceiras preferenciais em busca de eficiência e eficácia no longo prazo. Através de um estudo de caso, a presente pesquisa busca averiguar, na relação de uma empresa com algumas de suas importantes parceiras, até que ponto a eficiência das operações está associada aos elementos-chave da colaboração encontrados na literatura. A pesquisa foi realizada numa companhia telefônica durante um período de três meses, no qual, um questionário estruturado foi aplicado ao pessoal de gerência e supervisão. Os dados da pesquisa foram confrontados com indicadores de desempenho compilados periodicamente pela companhia para medir e monitorar a atuação das terceiras. Os resultados sugerem que há, de fato, uma correlação positiva entre os níveis dos fatores relacionados a práticas colaborativas mais significativas e o bom desempenho operacional da parceria. / [en] Outsourcing in manufacturing as well as in services has granted enterprises strategic advantages such as lower cost yielded by economies of scale (at the vendor), greater technical competence, fast acquisition of new competencies, less investment needs, and sharper focus on products and markets, among others. This scenario promotes the collaborative relationship whereby enterprises change their emphasis from the immediate gain in individual transactions to strategies that seek repetitive transactions with preferential partners for enhancing efficiency and effectiveness in the long run. By means of a case study this research aims to verify, in the relationships of an enterprise and some of its important suppliers, to what degree the efficiency of operations is associated to the key elements of collaboration found in the literature. The research has been conducted in a telephone company along a three-month period when a structured questionnaire was filled out by the managerial and supervisory personnel. The data from the survey were confronted with the performance indicators regularly collected by the company for measuring and monitoring the outsourced services. The results suggest that there is, indeed, a positive correlation between the levels of the more important factors related to the collaborative practices and the good performance of the partnership.

We examine which capabilities technologies provide to support collaborative process modeling. We develop a model that explains how technology capabilities impact cognitive group processes, and how they lead to improved modeling outcomes and positive technology beliefs. We test this model through a free simulation experiment of collaborative process modelers structured around a set of modeling tasks. With our study, we provide an understanding of the process of collaborative process modeling, and detail implications for research and guidelines for the practical design of collaborative process modeling.