This thesis reports on a three-part research project in which the images of mathematics and mathematicians held by lower secondary pupils were investigated. A survey tool which asked pupils to draw a picture of a mathematician at work, and which included a Likert-type scale and open-ended writing prompts, was designed and developed for use in an international study of pupils in five countries (n = 476). The results indicate that while some pupils hold stereotypical images in common, all pupils appear to know very little about mathematicians and the work they do. Mathematicians' invisibility to pupils of this age appears to affect their images of mathematics. The tool was refined and utilised again as part of two interventions in the United States: the first attempted to see if images would be affected by a unit in graph theory and discrete mathematics topics (n = 28); the second brought pupils (n = 174) together with a panel of mathematicians. Each intervention had different strengths, but both widened pupils' views of mathematics, enabling them to see it as more than just a study of numbers. In a third small study, professionals in the mathematics field (n = 106) from ten countries were asked in a short survey to comment on Who is a mathematician? and Who may call oneself one? Findings of this portion of the study indicate a lack of a unified vision among members of the mathematics community and some evidence of an elitism which would restrict who may define themselves as a mathematician.

This evaluation study of a curriculum innovation in sport specialisation was conducted in Singapore from 1994 to 1997. The longitudinal design provided scope for a comprehensive analysis of the school, the staff, the pupils and the implementation of the sports programme, known as the Sports Class. The use of qualitative as well as quantitative paradigms enabled data to be triangulated within the inquiry, which added security to the interpretation of the subjective data. Surveys, interviews and non-participant observations provided the qualitative data whilst established, validated inventories from the field produced the scientific data. A control/experimental group design was selected as a means of removing any maturational data that might have interfered with the results. The study examined the implementation of the programme as an innovation from its inception and provided formative feedback to the school from its findings through annual reports. As background research, the study considered the historical development of sport in Singapore from its colonial past through to its current status as a 'developing' nation to better understand the dominant values for sport within the culture. Elitism, gender and a pre-occupation with fitness were notions that initially directed the investigation. The study also examined the level of intrinsic motivation and assessed the task and ego profiles of the players in the programme. As well as assessing the programme outcomes against the original goals prescribed by the Principal, the study sought out unanticipated effects that made an impact on the school. The study addressed the influence this elitist initiative had on physical education from an egalitarian perspective. The study found that the programme had been successful in improving sporting as well as academic success, two of the original goals, but found that modifications made to the programme design impaired the final structure that created concerns about the future success of the initiative.

Thesis advisor: Rowell S. Melnick / In 1965, at the height of the Great Society, when there was also a consensus about the importance of the humanities to edify American life, Congress established a federal agency to support them: the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH). Shortly thereafter arose a sea change in scholarship and education in the humanities, which by the 1980s became an issue in the broader U.S. culture wars. Many scholars and intellectuals became sharply divided over such questions as the authors and books to prioritize and include in liberal arts curricula, modes of interpretation of texts, and perspectives on the goodness (or lack thereof) to be found in Western civilization and American history. This policy history examines how, in this changing context, the NEH has managed to endure and how it has interpreted and carried out its mandate to support the humanities. It is divided into two parts. Part I tells the story of how the NEH has maintained itself; how it has survived attempts at termination, achieved budget increases and sustained losses, and how it has set its budgetary priorities. This analysis of organizational maintenance traces the evolution of the national debate over federal funding for culture, looking at how the major political parties have changed position on this issue over time. It examines how the NEH built a clientele, the state humanities councils, to bolster its support in Congress. And it looks at how changes in party positioning and related developments in the culture war effectively empowered that clientele—with the effect of helping save the agency when threatened with abolishment, but also giving that clientele greater influence over the NEH’s policies and budgetary priorities. Part II explains how the NEH’s internal bureaucratic structure has operated during the culture wars. When the agency was founded, Congress established a structure with the goal of empowering the NEH to make decisions on the basis of nonpolitical expertise in the humanities, assuming that the agency would need to be able to resist pressures to award grants to favored constituencies at the expense of merit. Part II analyzes how that structure has operated in a different and wholly unanticipated context, one in which many of those who could claim the mantle of expertise have become polarized on issues such as multiculturalism and the importance of “great books.” It compares the bureaucratic structure at the NEH with the structures and practices that have evolved at other federal grant-making agencies: the National Endowment for the Arts and National Science Foundation. The analysis shows how the structure at NEH has enabled Democratic and Republican appointed chairmen to push the substance of grant-making in progressive and traditional directions, respectively, despite continuity of formal rules, procedures, and professional staff. This dissertation concludes with an assessment of what can be expected from the NEH in regard to its durability, budgetary priorities, and grant-making under Republican and Democratic administrations. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

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Singapore är ett fascinerande land. På bara några få decennier har landet gått från att vara en liten instabil stadsstat utan större naturresurser till att bli ett ekonomiskt världscentrum. Mur hur fungerar egentligen Singapores politiska styrelseskick? Är landet verkligen en demokrati eller har det i själva verket diktatoriska drag? Denna uppsats syftar till att steg för steg undersöka landets politiska situation för att slutligen landa i en definition om vad Singapore egentligen står politiskt. Dem styrande hävdar att dem levererar en effektiv och okorrumperad regering till medborgarna medan vissa oppositionspolitiker menar att regeringen styr med auktoritära medel. Hur kan man definiera den politiska situationen i Singapore idag och framför allt vilken regimtyp kan landet klassas som? Detta arbete är en fallstudie av teorikonsumerande art där olika fakta kommer att analyseras och sedan sammanfattas i en slutlig analys där jag skall fastställa regimtypen.

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The topic ``Elitism in nursing{\crqq} was chosen based on the author´s interest in this issue, which is considered very attractive, and tributary to the present time, when nursing in our country is undergoing a revolutionary change. Nurses gain new competences and become partners of physicians, new legislature related to the profession comes into effect continuously, there is an effort to enhance the prestige of nurses and thereby to increase their status in the eyes of both the medical and general public. As mentioned above, the entire field of nursing, the nursing education system and the nursing profession in our country has been undergoing a fundamental transformation for some time, which places high demands on information, lifelong learning, free access to the latest information on the course of events not only in our country but especially on the international professional scene. Nursing is a field that has multiple layers - from basic nursing care, which is within the competence of nurses, to a specialized nursing and superspecialized care, which requires thanks to advances in nursing science the highest possible level of education. To define the elite of the nursing profession, it is necessary to specify the elite as an exclusive social group. Through this study the author tried to describe the issue of elitism in nursing in a comprehensive form. The objective was to briefly characterize the current situation in terms of the relationship between different groups of nurses and also debate over the question: "What does it take to be a nurse?" Is it the knowledge of an intricate technique or empathic wiping sweat from a patient´s forehead? The new century makes the nurse think about the concept of extended roles in nursing, which should help elevate social status of the profession. A negative feature is that a nurse has been detracted from the kind of work for which she had become a nurse - the nursing care of a patient and the care of basic biological needs of a patient. Due to this aspect, a lot of nurses believe that enhancing the prestige of the nursing profession is not compatible with the term ``menial{\crqq} job relating to nursing. The research outcomes showed that in Czech nursing, there is a status called elitism, and that there are disciplines perceived as exclusive, the relationship between professionalization and elitism was also proved. The research survey noted a big shift in improving communication between nurses and patients compared to the past years, and the author hopes that also a better communication between nurses will contribute to the improvement of relations on both sides, both the exclusive and the so-called common, because a truly elite - exceptional nurse is the one who combines education with a good character.

We have investigated organizations we consider having an elitist approach. Wehave researched how these approaches are manifested, managed, and what pros and cons that the approach can result in. Common consequences of an elitist approach include high perfor-mance and efficiency, but also high levels of stress and anxiety among employees. The organ-izations we chose for the study were a sales company and a consulting firm. The concept of elitist approach is broken down into three elements: achievement, culture and legitimacy. We made our own model of how the three components relate to each other and how so-called chan-nels, give power to the different components. The different channels are ambition, status, hier-archy and competition. During the study we encountered that in order to counteract the negative effects associated with an elitist approach, the organizations was using a compassionate culturewhich was surprising for the author group.

This study follows students from two Swedish elite upper secondary schools with different profiles when they participate in a parliamentarian role-play game. The game lacks a teacher authority and is not a graded activity, putting the students in a position where they must negotiate what constitutes winning and losing. The game is used as an ethnographic site to investigate what it means to be a ‘successful’ elite school student and how it is embodied. The aim is to explore concrete processes of habitus formation, extending the knowledge regarding elite socialization in the Swedish case. The findings suggest that the game puts notions of what it means to be a ‘successful’ student to its head, giving rise to conflicts between students from the two differently profiled schools. The conflicts articulate differences between schools within the elite school category with regard to student formation. Further, the game singles out a few students and make them feel entitled to become leaders. The study shows that the intersection of students’ school affiliation, gender and social class background is important in order to understand whether they feel entitled or not, as well to understand their more encompassing experiences in this elite school game.

Denna undersökning syftar till att med en kvalitativ receptionsanalys svara på frågan hur de anställda på Banken X tolkar en intern reklamfilm på ett dominant, förhandlande eller oppositionellt vis. Ytterligare en frågeställning om huruvida de anställdas uppfattning av begreppet ambition, som är centralt i den interna kampanjen, korresponderar med det som Banken X vill att den ska förmedla.  Undersökningens metodik är en receptionsstudie som innefattar dominant, förhandlande samt oppositionella tolkningar. Resultatet för dessa tolkningar bygger på nio stycken kvalitativa, semistrukturerade intervjuer med anställda på ett av bankens lokalkontor. Våra teoretiska utgångspunkter är receptionsanalys, kritisk teori, socialkonstruktionism, interkommunikation samt företagskultur. Teorierna har legat till grund för vår analys samt resultat. Resultaten visar på att olika tolkningar av den interna reklamfilmen har gjorts av de anställda, men att den dominanta tolkningen var den mest framstående. Vidare har vi sett att ambition är ett väldigt brett begrepp som tolkas olika av de anställda vilket gör det svårt att få en helt koherent uppfattning av de över tusen anställda. Vi har kommit fram till att våra valda teorier internkommunikation och företagskultur är starkt sammankopplade på det vis att internkommunikationen på något vis definierar företagets kultur. Undersökningen har även visat på att det som behövs för att nå en ökad förståelse hos de anställda är mer diskussion och information kring vad begreppet ambition står för i företagets kontext samt vad man vill förmedla både internt och externt till kunderna.