Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-119). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1997. / Bibliography: leaves 96-100.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Chemistry and Biochemistry, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-127).

Thesis (M.T.S.C.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], vi, 55 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references (p. 33).

What has come to be labelled as 'the environment crisis' has roots in the structures and orientations of modern societies. True to our modernist ways we call on, or offer, education and research, experts and science, to address our socio-ecological concerns. This study set out to identify research priorities in environmental education from within the institutional setting of a university and within the context of environmental and political change in southern Africa and epistemological shifts in educational research traditions. The emergent research design allowed for a progressive clarification of theoretical vantage point: from an instrumental listing of priorities, through the participatory development of a critical and consensual framework for research, to a reflexive description of a landscape of shifting priorities. I collected data over a 3-year period, in inter alia 38 semi-structured interviews, workshops with some 150 participants, focus group discussions, documents and conferences. Participants' professional contexts included environmental education, natural resource management, social and biophysical sciences, development, formal and non-formal education, funding agencies, academic and non-academic settings. My engagement with the emerging discourses revealed patterns and inconsistencies in participants' views on research, environmental education, change and research priorities. I identified three orientations - Research for Management to Restore Order to Nature and Society, Research to Resolve Practitioners' and Communities' Problems, and Research for Radical Reconstruction - in the emerging landscape. These orientations were accompanied by change models and themes (discourses of difference and 'othering', instrumental views of education and research and accumulative knowledge, a conceptual theory-practice gap) which limited their potential for transformation towards sustainable living. They presented solutions cut from the same modernist cloth as the environment crisis. An emerging Reflexive perspective in and on environmental education research showed potential as a transitionary orientation outside modernist assumptions. I outline research priorities from this perspective. Reflexivity reveals the myths of expert-driven, instrumental and institutionalised research separated from environmental education and based upon rationalistic interpretations of science. It opens up possibilities for transformative knowledge emerging from 're-search' based versions of education as a process of, rather than a means to, social change.

This study set out to investigate the learning and change that emerged in and through participatory mapping in the context of biocultural diversity and resilience in rural Ethiopia. It did this through examining the learning and agency emerging from three participatory mapping practices (Participatory 3 Dimensional Modelling, sketch mapping and eco-cultural calendars) using two case study sites, located in the Bale Mountains and the Foata Mountains in Ethiopia, and honing in on in-depth reflective processes in two community contexts located within the broader case study sites, namely Horo Soba, Dinsho wereda in Bale; and Telecho, in Wolmera wereda, in the Foata Mountain complex. This study tried to answer three research questions related to participatory mapping: its role in mobilizing knowledge related to biocultural landscape, its role in learning and change, and its value in building resilience. The study used qualitative case study research methodology underpinned by critical realist philosophy, and used photographic ‘cues’ to structure the reporting on the cases. It used four categories of analysis: biocultural diversity, educational processes, learning and agency, in the first instance to report on the interactions associated with the participatory mapping practices as they emerged in the two case study sites. This was followed by in-depth analysis and interpretation of participatory mapping and biocultural diversity, as well as participatory mapping and learning, with an emphasis on acquisition, meaning making and identity formation processes. The in-depth analysis drew on social and learning theory, and theory of biocultural diversity and social-ecological resilience. The study also included analysis of broader change processes that were related to and emerged from the social interactions in the mapping activities, and the resultant morphogenesis (change), showing that morphogenesis, while broadly temporal, is not linear, and involves ‘little iterative morphogenic cycles’. These insights were then used to interpret how participatory mapping may contribute to resilience building in a context where social-ecological resilience is increasingly required, such as the two case study sites, where socialecological degradation is highly visible and is occurring rapidly. The study’s contribution to new knowledge lies in relation to the role of participatory mapping in facilitating learning, agency and change which, to date, appears to be under-theorised and under-developed in the participatory mapping and environmental education literature. As such, the study findings provide in-depth insight into how participatory mapping methodologies may ‘work in the world’, in contexts such as those presented in the two cases under study. It has tried to demonstrate how participatory mapping has managed to mobilize knowledge related to biocultural diversity, facilitated the acquisition of knowledge and helped members of the community to engage in meaning making activities relevant to their biocultural landscape and renegotiate their identity within the wider community context. It has also shown that dissonance is an important dynamic in the learning process; and that morphogenesis (or change) occurs over time, but also in smaller cycles that interact at different levels; and that participatory mapping cannot, by itself mobilise significant structural change, at least in the short term. It has also shown, however, that learning and the desire for change can emerge from participatory mapping processes, and that this can be utilized to adapt to the changing socio-ecological environments, potentially contributing to longer term resilience of social-ecological systems.

Behavioral data are frequently plagued with highly intercorrelated variables. Collinearity is an indication of insufficient information in the model or in the data. It, therefore, contributes to the unreliability of the estimated coefficients. One result of collinearity is that regression weights derived in one sample may lead to poor prediction in another model. One technique which was developed to deal with highly intercorrelated independent variables is ridge regression. It was first proposed by Hoerl and Kennard in 1970 as a method which would allow the data analyst to both stabilize his estimates and improve upon his squared error loss. The problem of this study was the application of ridge regression in the analysis of data resulting from educational research.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-02-05T18:30:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-09-01. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2016-02-05T18:34:07Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000857639.pdf: 3105407 bytes, checksum: a757d60b974014fee01ae80170244f62 (MD5) / No contexto atual de pesquisas que tratam de crianças e produção de imagens na área da educação surgem incômodos em relação ao próprio ato de pesquisar, principalmente pelo fato dos sujeitos da pesquisa serem, no caso, crianças, que se tornam protagonistas da pesquisa. Pelas lentes dos equipamentos, esses sujeitos/protagonistas nos apresentam um mundo rodeado de composições, de corpos, de focos e des-focos e de sentidos outros, por vezes até não-sentidos. Neta perspectiva, autores como Benjamin, Agamben, e Masschelein, que tratam da noção de experiência, da pesquisa como um proceder tateante, e da necessidade de uma educação do olhar e de uma pedagogia pobre, respectivamente, amparam questionamentos que versam sobre os modos de se fazer pesquisa na área da educação com crianças e imagens, e também acerca das leituras que se fazem possíveis acerca do material imagético produzido por crianças e professoras no contexto do cotidiano escolar. Diante destas palavras e considerando as ultimas pesquisas do I-M@go: Laboratório da imagens, experiência e criação da UNESP campus Rio Claro, Departamento de Educação, que vem tratando da questão da pesquisa com crianças, professores e produções imagéticas, e também vem trilhando um modo outro de se pesquisar, surge o interesse desta pesquisa de mestrado que perpassa a seguinte questão: Quais as possibilidades que se apresentam quando assumimos a perspectiva de um fazer pesquisa que aproxima-se dos conceitos de experiência, pegadogia pobre e heterotopia, partindo das elaborações acerca destes conceitos segundo Benjamin, Agamben, Masschelein e Foucault, respectivamente, para se pensar a pesquisa com crianças e imagens na área da educação? Para tanto, são utilizados e analisados: dados imagéticos (fotos e filmagens) de professores e crianças, registros realizados durante as coletas de imagens pelo pesquisador e pelos alunos-bolsistas, os quais trazem falas das... / In the current context of research dealing with children and the production of images in education appear uncomfortable in relation to the act of searching, mainly because of the research subjects are, in this case children, who become protagonists of the research. Through the lens of equipment, these subjects/actors show us a world surrounded by compositions of bodies of focus and de-focus and other senses, sometimes even nonsense. Granddaughter perspective, authors such as Benjamin, Agamben, and Masschelein, dealing with the notion of experience, research as a tentative proceed, and the need for an education look and a poor pedagogy, respectively, bolster questions that deal with the ways of doing research in education with children and images, and also about the readings that become possible about the imagistic material produced by children and teachers in the context of everyday school life. In the face of such words and considering the last of the IM@go surveys: images Laboratory, experience and creation of campus UNESP Rio Claro, Department of Education, which has been dealing with the issue of research with children, teachers and image productions, and is also pursuing a another of researching mode, comes the interest of this master's research that permeates the question: What are the possibilities that present themselves when we take the prospect of doing research approaching the concepts of experience, poor pegadogia and heterotopia, based on the elaborations about these concepts according to Benjamin, Agamben, Masschelein and Foucault, respectively, to think about research with children and images in education? To this end, are utilized for the analysis imagery data (photos and footage) teachers and children, records made during the collections of images by the researcher and the students fellows, which bring testimonies of the teachers, children and the impressions of the researchers, in addition to literature review. Many ...

Orientador: César Donizetti Pereira Leite / Banca: Regiane Helena Bertagna / Banca: Silvio Donizetti de Oliveira Gallo / Resumo: No contexto atual de pesquisas que tratam de crianças e produção de imagens na área da educação surgem incômodos em relação ao próprio ato de pesquisar, principalmente pelo fato dos sujeitos da pesquisa serem, no caso, crianças, que se tornam protagonistas da pesquisa. Pelas lentes dos equipamentos, esses sujeitos/protagonistas nos apresentam um mundo rodeado de composições, de corpos, de focos e des-focos e de sentidos outros, por vezes até não-sentidos. Neta perspectiva, autores como Benjamin, Agamben, e Masschelein, que tratam da noção de experiência, da pesquisa como um proceder tateante, e da necessidade de uma educação do olhar e de uma pedagogia pobre, respectivamente, amparam questionamentos que versam sobre os modos de se fazer pesquisa na área da educação com crianças e imagens, e também acerca das leituras que se fazem possíveis acerca do material imagético produzido por crianças e professoras no contexto do cotidiano escolar. Diante destas palavras e considerando as ultimas pesquisas do I-M@go: Laboratório da imagens, experiência e criação da UNESP campus Rio Claro, Departamento de Educação, que vem tratando da questão da pesquisa com crianças, professores e produções imagéticas, e também vem trilhando um modo outro de se pesquisar, surge o interesse desta pesquisa de mestrado que perpassa a seguinte questão: Quais as possibilidades que se apresentam quando assumimos a perspectiva de um fazer pesquisa que aproxima-se dos conceitos de experiência, pegadogia pobre e heterotopia, partindo das elaborações acerca destes conceitos segundo Benjamin, Agamben, Masschelein e Foucault, respectivamente, para se pensar a pesquisa com crianças e imagens na área da educação? Para tanto, são utilizados e analisados: dados imagéticos (fotos e filmagens) de professores e crianças, registros realizados durante as coletas de imagens pelo pesquisador e pelos alunos-bolsistas, os quais trazem falas das... / Abstract: In the current context of research dealing with children and the production of images in education appear uncomfortable in relation to the act of searching, mainly because of the research subjects are, in this case children, who become protagonists of the research. Through the lens of equipment, these subjects/actors show us a world surrounded by compositions of bodies of focus and de-focus and other senses, sometimes even nonsense. Granddaughter perspective, authors such as Benjamin, Agamben, and Masschelein, dealing with the notion of experience, research as a tentative proceed, and the need for an education look and a poor pedagogy, respectively, bolster questions that deal with the ways of doing research in education with children and images, and also about the readings that become possible about the imagistic material produced by children and teachers in the context of everyday school life. In the face of such words and considering the last of the IM@go surveys: images Laboratory, experience and creation of campus UNESP Rio Claro, Department of Education, which has been dealing with the issue of research with children, teachers and image productions, and is also pursuing a another of researching mode, comes the interest of this master's research that permeates the question: What are the possibilities that present themselves when we take the prospect of doing research approaching the concepts of experience, poor pegadogia and heterotopia, based on the elaborations about these concepts according to Benjamin, Agamben, Masschelein and Foucault, respectively, to think about research with children and images in education? To this end, are utilized for the analysis imagery data (photos and footage) teachers and children, records made during the collections of images by the researcher and the students fellows, which bring testimonies of the teachers, children and the impressions of the researchers, in addition to literature review. Many ... / Mestre

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master’s in Education (MEd) in the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2012 / Most learners whose home language is not English encounter mounting challenges when learning English as an additional language in schools. Navigating the learning discourses of such learners’ impact on instructional time. Efficient utilization of instructional time is crucial, as it is the time teachers spend teaching knowledge, concepts, and skills pertaining to school subjects. However, studies have shown that the amount of instructional time is diminished by interruptive activities, herein referred to as non-academic incidences. Non-academic incidences tend to obstruct the efficient enactment of lessons. The thesis investigated the extent to which non-academic incidences impact on instructional time during the teaching of English First Additional Language (EFAL), as well as explored how teachers addressed challenges emanating from non-academic incidences. The study utilized qualitative research approaches comprising of classroom observations and a focus group interview. The participants consisted of in-service teachers teaching in under-resourced schools and also enrolled in the Advanced Certificate in Education course at a university in Cape Town. The research identified some of the critical non-academic incidences pertaining specifically to EFAL, including inappropriate use of pedagogic strategies, poor use of code switching and unsuitable teaching exemplars. Other factors consist of the negative attitudes of both teachers and learners towards other learners who are less proficient in English language and possess poor linguistic ability. In addition, non-subject specific non-academic incidences identified included unpreparedness of teachers, teachers’ digression from core lesson, discipline problems in the classroom, lack of school management capability to protect instructional time, lack of EFAL teaching and learning resources, overcrowding, and impact of socio-economic status of learners. This research argues that to reduce non-academic incidences and maximize instructional time requires collaborative efforts from all stakeholders to develop formalized policy guidelines. Educators need training and support to create the uninterrupted atmosphere suitable for learning. Furthermore, educators need to be encouraged to willingly implement tailor-made initiatives to address specific challenges and learners must be motivated to develop a positive attitude towards EFAL. Educators should be provided with teaching aids and specialised learning resources. Even though increasing instructional time is advocated, the cost implication and utilization must be considered. The study could guide educational stakeholders to formulate appropriate policies to enhance efficient utilization of instructional time and also provide insights into the debilitating effects of non-academic incidences on teaching/learning environments.