WPI’s global and off-campus IQPs, rich with real-world sponsors/projects and increasingly diverse teams, require that both faculty and students navigate a network of ambiguous situations and relationships. Despite the increasing adoption of project-based learning as a preferred educational model across higher education, and the prevalence of project-based work in STEM careers, research on how to best prepare students and faculty to identify and navigate ambiguity inherent to project-based learning is limited. Seeking to fill this important gap, this graduate thesis advances a pilot qualitative study focused on how students in domestic and off campus IQPs experience and navigate ambiguity in their IQPs. The thesis presents preliminary grounded theory regarding the types of ambiguity experienced by students, how students navigate through the ambiguity, and elements that appear to impact a student’s success in that navigation.

The dominant pedagogy for engineering educations still remains chalk and talk despite the large body of education research that demonstrates its ineffectiveness. Traditional approaches to structural engineering education place a heavy emphasis on lecture-based delivery of the theories of structural analysis and the behaviour of common constructions materials. Design projects are given varying emphasis at different institutions, but are frequently left to the final year of the course. Assessment weighting often heavily favours examinations over project work. In recent years, the engineering profession and the bodies responsible for accrediting engineering programs have called for change in assessment and teaching practices.This study proposed that the use of design projects in structural engineering is an effective method of learning that models industrial practice. Projects enable students to understand the synthesis of structural analysis, material behaviour and availability, constructability and economic reality that occurs in the professional practice of structural engineering. To examine effectiveness of project-based learning in structural engineering a case study was undertaken in a third year undergraduate course of a civil engineering program in South Australia.This thesis first provides some background to structural engineering and current practice in structural engineering education. Project-based learning as applied to engineering is also examined. The case study design and data collection are then discussed. The study was developed around a conceptual framework for educational evaluation that differentiates between the intended, implemented, perceived and achieved curriculum. The intended curriculum, defined as the original vision underlying a curriculum, was developed through a literature review that considered the requirements of industry and ++ / engineering accreditation bodies. The degree to which the intended curriculum was successfully implemented in the course was evaluated through video-tapes of lessons, journal records and interviews. The actual learning experiences as perceived or experienced by the students, was evaluated through student journals, interviews and two questionnaires, one of which was also administered to a senior structural engineering industry group to enable a comparison between the student and industry groups perceptions of the importance of certain skills in the engineering profession. The achieved curriculum, defined as the resulting learning outcomes of the students, was also examined. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the findings of the study as well as their significance and limitations and then considers the possible extensions of project-based learning to other areas of engineering and some of the issues that will need to be addressed for this to occur.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Few terms in organisational studies inspire less agreement than leadership. It is a slippery concept and much that is written on the subject is confusing and contradictory. Early theories of leadership have, generally, reduced leadership behaviour to a concern for task balanced against a concern for the well-being of employees. This two-dimensional approach has proved to be a limited conceptualisation of leadership. In response, over the past thirty years, researchers have tried to highlight the less rationalistic, more intangible, aspects of leadership. However, there is still very little in leadership research that conveys a sense of the leader as a person. I have argued, in this study, that the reason for this lies in the fact that most leadership research has been conducted along positivistic lines and, therefore, cannot take into account the values, feelings, morals and life experiences of the human beings being studied. Thus, for the human being to take centre-stage in leadership enquiry, a different research paradigm needs to be explored. I have chosen to use phenomenological enquiry as an avenue for examining how John Stoker, the leader of the Rhodes University Mathematics Education Project (RUMEP), experiences being a leader. This is because phenomenology, in both theory and practice, privileges the nature of the meanings that people construct in their lives and that guide their actions. In adopting such a methodology my research findings have examined a number of issues that are of interest to current leadership researchers, however they have also highlighted a number of concerns that have not been explored thoroughly in the leadership literature. These include the importance of the individual leader’s action, intention and will in shaping an organisation, the complex nature of a leader’s creativity within the organisation and possible differences between educational leaders and business leaders. In adopting a phenomenological perspective the eccentricity and fulness of an individual leader’s action is expressed through the research, however, the research also focusses on how the researcher translates and evolving philosophical understanding into sound methodology. Therefore, interwoven into the discussions on leadership there are reflections on how I applied phenomenological theory. The purpose of these reflections is to deliberate on the appropriateness of applying such a methodology to the eclectic field of leadership and to show how my own developing philosophical attitude has transformed into practice.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-112).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1931. / Vita. Published also as Teachers college, Columbia university. Contributions to education, no. 490. Bibliography: p. 58.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1931. / Vita. Published also as Teachers college, Columbia university. Contributions to education, no. 490. Bibliography: p. 58.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-112). Also available in print.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / This thesis was based on a larger international comparative study called the ROSE (Relevance of Science Education) project. The study investigated the affective factors pupils perceive might be of relevance for the learning of science and technology using the ROSE survey questionnaire, and was aimed at providing data that might form part of an empirical basis for local adaptation of the science curriculum. / South Africa