I denna kvalitativa studie undersöktes hur förskollärare anser sig använda högläsning i verksamheten, samt att undersöka hur pedagogerna uppfattar att högläsningen bidrar till barnens språkliga utveckling. Fem förskollärare observerades och intervjuades med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Intervjuerna transkriberades och analyserades genom tematisk analys för att hitta likheter och olikheter i förskollärarnas svar. Vår studie visade att förskollärare anser att högläsningen är viktig för barn, dock visade intervjuerna på att det perfekta högläsningstillfället för förskollärarna såg olika ut. Faktorer som spelade in var den socioekonomiska status upptagningsområdet hade, tid för planering, gruppstorlek, samarbete med bibliotek samt verksamhetens rutiner. Skillnaderna som gestaltade sig var dels hur ofta högläsningen skedde, hur förskollärarna valde att involvera barnen i läsningen, vilka böcker som användes, samt vilka förväntningar förskollärarna hade på högläsning vid olika tidpunkter på dagen. Trots skillnader och likheter visar denna studie på att förskollärare nedprioriterar högläsningen till fördel för annat, trots att förskollärarna var väl medvetna om att högläsningen gynnade barnens språkliga utveckling. / <p>Betyg i Ladok 240110.</p>

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Small groups are integral for many activities in the foreign language classroom and their pedagogical importance is well established. Despite the widespread use of groups in foreign language education, there is a dearth of research investigating group processes and the impact of emergent leaders within these groups. This mixed-methods, longitudinal study was designed to first establish the presence of emergent leaders within an SLA context, and then to investigate the factors influencing who will emerge as the leader, and the impact they have on the views and performance of the group. First-year students majoring in science at a private university in western Japan were placed into three English Communication classes depending on their major within the school, and further randomly assigned to small groups of three to four people within each class. Students worked together in these groups for the first semester spanning 14 weeks and were required to take part in group presentations and group discussions. Measures of aural and general English ability, English communication self-efficacy, and the Big Five dimensions of personality were used to predict who would emerge as leaders within each group, and group and individual change was tracked using measures of self- and collective-efficacy. Participant and video observation, and interview data were used to provide rich description of the intra-group processes. In the second semester the students were allowed to self-select their groups, which were then fixed for the 14-week course. The first finding of the study was that leaders emerged in the small groups in this context, and proficiency in English was found to be the only consistent predictor of group leader emergence, with extroversion predicting initial perceptions of leadership only. The second finding of the study was that individuals' perceived leadership was relatively stable when in the same group, but that when the group makeup was changed there were large differences in the perceived leadership scores, suggesting that leadership behavior depends on the group in which students are in, and that group makeup influences individual student behavior. The third finding was that different types of leader were found to exist, with visible leaders who were easily identified by the teacher, and invisible leaders who were recognized by group members to be leader, but not clear to the teacher. The fourth finding was that collective-efficacy was existed as a group-level construct in this context, and growth models showed that self-efficacy increased for students in both the first and second semesters, and that the group experiences in the first semester seemed to influence rates of change in self-efficacy in the second semester, suggesting that the products of previous group experiences carry into subsequent group work and affect attitudes and behavior. The fifth finding was that students select group members based on friendship, but that students had mixed preferences with regard the choice between random group formation and self-selection into groups. Students almost universally felt that changing group members at regular intervals of several weeks was beneficial. Overall the study highlighted the importance of group makeup, and particularly leadership in this context, and showed that behavior in the language classroom was heavily influenced by group members. / Applied Linguistics

When disasters occur, new or informal groups often emerge to assist with the response or have resources that can aid professional disaster managers involved in the crisis. Historically, incorporating these groups into the formal disaster response system under conditions of urgency and uncertainty has been difficult. This mixed-methods, three-article dissertation explores two cases of interorganizational collaboration in which public administrators working to manage the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated and integrated emergent actor participation in the response. The findings of the study point to the potential for disaster managers to routinize the anticipation of emergence by considering those organizations that may be best positioned to facilitate different emergent actors, ways of engaging them before crises occur, and mechanisms that might break down barriers to formal/informal responder collaboration during an acute response. The results of this study have implications for public administration, interorganizational collaboration, and disaster management. / Doctor of Philosophy / Large-scale disasters involve acute dangers to human and environmental health, and often property, creating significant disruption to society. This disruption may challenge public administrators' abilities to manage the size and scope of the impacts, creating an opportunity to work with groups not normally involved in managing disasters but that have unexpected but needed resources. As these new groups may not have the background or knowledge of formal disaster response systems and processes, they may not know how to identify or work with the officials managing the disaster. The COVID-19 pandemic, a complex and relatively uncommon disaster, provides an opportunity to explore the ways in which disaster managers incorporated novel resources and groups as they reacted to the ever-changing demands of the crisis. This dissertation explored two examples of groups of organizations working together in the state of Virginia to manage aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to understand the ways in which disaster managers may be better able to plan for, facilitate, and incorporate new groups into disaster management efforts. The results of this study indicate several ways in which new groups might be integrated into disaster management efforts, including differential implementation of disaster policy, the use of community liaisons to external groups, and technological innovations that reduce barriers to collaboration. Though we can never predict where the next major disaster will strike or what type of hazard it might involve, we can predict that first, it will happen and second, it will bring new groups into the response effort, as well as the need for disaster managers to collaborate with those new groups. As the findings from this project suggest, by considering the ways in which new groups might be better integrated during a disaster, it might be possible to better leverage critical resources to help communities better respond to a disaster.

Microphone arrays have seen wide usage in a variety of fields; especially in sonar, acoustic source monitoring and localization, telecommunications, and diagnostic medicine. The goal of most of these applications is to detect or extract a signal of interest. This task is complicated by the presence of interferers and noise, which corrupts the recorded array signals. This dissertation explores two new techniques that increase signal clarity: interferer suppression and emergent signal detection. Spatial processing is often used to suppress interferers that are spatially distinct from the signal of interest. If the signal of interest and the interferer are statistically independent, blind source separation can be used to statistically extract the signal of interest. The first new method to improve signal clarity presented in this work combines spatial processing with blind source separation to suppress interferers. This technique allows for the separation of independent sources that are not necessarily simultaneously mixed or spatially distinct. Simulations and experiments are used to show the capability of the new algorithm for a variety of conditions. The major contributions in this dissertation under this topic are to use independent component analysis to extract the signal of interest from a set of array signals, and to improve existing independent component analysis algorithms to allow for time delayed mixing. This dissertation presents a novel method of improving signal clarity through emergent signal detection. By determining which time frames contain the signal of interest, frames that contain only interferers and noise can be eliminated. When a new signal of interest emerges in a measurement of a mixed set of sources, the principal component subspace is altered. By examining the change in the subspace, the emergent signal can be robustly detected. This technique is highly effective for signals that have a near constant sample variance, but is successful at detecting a wide variety of signals, including voice signals. To improve performance, the algorithm uses a feed-forward processing technique. This is helpful for the VAD application because voice does not have a constant sample variance. Experiments and simulations are used to demonstrate the performance of the new technique. / Ph. D.

The purpose of this position paper is to propose a comprehensive theoretical model of what can and does occur in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to extend thinking, learning and construction of meaning within a shared reading activity setting, including the development and emergence of language, literacy and social skills. By incorporating Lev Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective, Jean Piaget's dialectical learning, and the concepts of metacognition, mindfulness, and mind-mindedness, a model depicting the dynamics of a shared reading activity is proposed. Implications for research and practice are discussed, including suggestions for future research and ways to foster effective teaching practices. / Master of Science

<p>Despite the many researches made on emergent strategies and project portfolio management, one can hardly find studies on the link between them. It can easily be assumed that emergent strategies and market dynamics have considerable effect on the portfolio of projects in organizations and, supposedly, give rise to emergent projects. We defined emergent projects to be untypical or irregular projects for the organization which are at the borderline or even outside the mainstream of the current portfolio of projects. These types of projects impact the company’s strategy with the aim to increase the organizations competitiveness. This study will try to find out the possible distinct characteristics and strategic impact of emergent projects on large organizations so that these kinds of projects can be properly recognized for what they really are and managed effectively.</p><p> </p><p>We used a semi-structured interview method to collect data from six international companies in four countries. The countries are Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Taiwan. Using template analysis method, we analyzed the collected data. The analysis confirmed our assumption that there is a correlation between emergent strategies and project portfolio management. Moreover, we found out some of the characteristics and strategic impacts of emergent projects. The results of the study, therefore, shows that emergent projects are kinds of strategic projects which have bigger significance and bring a higher sense of urgency to organizations than the normal projects in their portfolio. Furthermore, the study indicated that emergent projects do not need any different project management methodology than typical projects do. Nonetheless, emergent projects are characterized by rarity, disrupting routine operations, enhancing company-customer relationship, causing resource reallocation, bringing profit, demanding higher budget, opening both internal and external new opportunities, posing risk due to shorter planning phase and limited implementation time, and capturing higher attention from top management. The major result we have found out in the research about the strategic impact of emergent projects is that they have a higher potential to bring profit and new business opportunities which in total make organizations more competitive in their respective markets.</p><p>The theoretical and managerial implications of our research have a common idea that emergent projects should be recognized and categorized as strategic projects of organizations. Further studies should be carried out on how the dynamic situations of business environments and emergent strategies affect the project portfolio of organizations. Moreover, it is worth researching on how the idea of emergent projects are dealt in the studies of strategic project management and project categorization both in the academic and practitioners world. Overall, the study has brought the linkage between emergent strategies and project portfolio management into light through the discussion on emergent projects.</p>

Despite the many researches made on emergent strategies and project portfolio management, one can hardly find studies on the link between them. It can easily be assumed that emergent strategies and market dynamics have considerable effect on the portfolio of projects in organizations and, supposedly, give rise to emergent projects. We defined emergent projects to be untypical or irregular projects for the organization which are at the borderline or even outside the mainstream of the current portfolio of projects. These types of projects impact the company’s strategy with the aim to increase the organizations competitiveness. This study will try to find out the possible distinct characteristics and strategic impact of emergent projects on large organizations so that these kinds of projects can be properly recognized for what they really are and managed effectively.   We used a semi-structured interview method to collect data from six international companies in four countries. The countries are Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, and Taiwan. Using template analysis method, we analyzed the collected data. The analysis confirmed our assumption that there is a correlation between emergent strategies and project portfolio management. Moreover, we found out some of the characteristics and strategic impacts of emergent projects. The results of the study, therefore, shows that emergent projects are kinds of strategic projects which have bigger significance and bring a higher sense of urgency to organizations than the normal projects in their portfolio. Furthermore, the study indicated that emergent projects do not need any different project management methodology than typical projects do. Nonetheless, emergent projects are characterized by rarity, disrupting routine operations, enhancing company-customer relationship, causing resource reallocation, bringing profit, demanding higher budget, opening both internal and external new opportunities, posing risk due to shorter planning phase and limited implementation time, and capturing higher attention from top management. The major result we have found out in the research about the strategic impact of emergent projects is that they have a higher potential to bring profit and new business opportunities which in total make organizations more competitive in their respective markets. The theoretical and managerial implications of our research have a common idea that emergent projects should be recognized and categorized as strategic projects of organizations. Further studies should be carried out on how the dynamic situations of business environments and emergent strategies affect the project portfolio of organizations. Moreover, it is worth researching on how the idea of emergent projects are dealt in the studies of strategic project management and project categorization both in the academic and practitioners world. Overall, the study has brought the linkage between emergent strategies and project portfolio management into light through the discussion on emergent projects.