Empirical studies have shown that learning from worked examples is an effective learning strategy. A worked example provides step-by-step explanations of how a problem is solved. Many studies have compared learning from examples to unsupported problem solving, and suggested presenting worked examples to students in the initial stages of learning, followed by problem solving once students have acquired enough knowledge. Recently, researchers have started comparing learning from examples to supported problem solving in Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs). ITSs provide multiple levels of assistance to students, adaptive feedback being one of them. The goal of this research is to investigate using examples in constraint-based tutors by adding examples into SQL-Tutor. SQL-Tutor is a constraint-based tutor that teaches the Structured Query Language (SQL). Students with different prior knowledge benefit differently from studying examples; thus, another goal of the research is to propose an adaptive model that considers the student’s prior knowledge for providing worked examples. Evaluation of this research produced promising results. First, a fixed sequence of alternating examples and problems was compared with problems only and examples only. The result shows that alternating examples and problems is superior to the other two conditions. Then, a study was conducted, in which a fixed sequence of alternating worked examples and tutored problem solving is compared with a strategy that adapts the assistance level to students’ needs. The adaptive strategy determines the type of the task (a worked example, a faded example or a problem to be solved) based on how much assistance the student received in the previous problem. The results show that students in the adaptive condition learnt significantly more than their peers who were presented with the fixed sequence of worked examples and problem solving. The final study employed eye tracking and demonstrated that novices and advanced students study SQL examples differently. Such information can be used to provide proactive rather than reactive feedback messages to students’ actions.

Diagrams are increasingly used in many design methods, and are being taught in a variety of contexts in higher education such as database conceptual design or software design in computer science. They are an important part of many assessments. Currently computer aided assessments are widely used for multiple choice questions. They lack the ability to assess a student's knowledge in a more comprehensive way, which is required for diagram-type student work. The aim of this research is to develop a semi-automatic assessment framework, which enables the use of computer to support the assessment process of diagrammatic solutions, with the focus of ensuring the consistency of grades and feedback on solutions. A novel trace model, that captures design traces of student solutions, was developed as a part of the framework and was used to provide the matching criteria for grouping the solutions. A new marking style, partial marking, was developed to mark these solution groups manually. The Case-Based Reasoning method is utilised in the framework to mark some of the groups automatically. A guideline for scenario writing was proposed to increase the efficiency of automatic marking. A prototype diagram editor, a marking tool and scenario writing environment were implemented for the proposed framework in order to demonstrate proof of concept. The results of experiments show that the framework is feasible to use in the formative assessment and it provides consistent marking and personalised feedback to the students. The framework also has the potential to significantly reduce the time and effort required by the examiner to mark student diagrams. Although the constructed framework was specifically used for the assessment of database diagrams, the framework is generic enough to be used for other types of graph-based diagram.

When an act is right or wrong, there may be an explanation why. Different moral theories recognize different moral facts and offer different explanations of them, but they offer no account of moral explanation itself. What, then, is its nature? This thesis seeks a systematic account of moral explanation within a framework of moral realism. In Chapter 1, I develop a pluralist theory of explanation. I argue that there is a prima facie distinctive normative mode of explanation that is essential to moral theory. In Chapter 2, I characterize normative explanation through its formal properties. I then draw on John Mackie’s claim that moral explanations are queer to develop a powerful form of moral scepticism. In Chapters 3–4, I reject attempts to reduce normative explanation to logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or conceptual (analytic) necessity. The failure of these accounts is taken to reinforce Mackie’s scepticism. In Chapter 5, I defend a partial analysis of normative explanation in terms of irreducible normative laws. I argue that irreducible normative laws offer a realist, though non-naturalist, answer to Mackie’s scepticism. The existence of irreducible normative laws then is defended as offering the best realist explanation of why rightness and wrongness supervene on descriptive properties. In Appendix A, I discuss the claim the normative explanation has an essential connection to the motivation of virtuous agents. I defend this claim from certain difficulties posed by Jonathan Dancy’s recent work.

The central aim of this thesis is to argue that the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation presents a stronger constraint on what counts as a satisfactory statement of the relation between the mental and the physical than can be acknowledged within the metaphysical framework of non-reductive physicalism. Although the chief merit of non-reductive physicalism appears to be its ability to respect the irreducibility of mental concepts to physical concepts, whilst respecting the primacy of the physical ontology, I claim that its commitment to the principles of physicalism prevents that framework from being able to accommodate what I will refer to as the deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation. The deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation manifests itself in the fact that the work carried out by mentalistic explanations is completely separate from the work carried out by physicalistic explanations. I claim that the deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation cannot be recognised within a metaphysical framework which claims to recognise the primacy of the physical ontology because recopsing deep autonomy requires giving up the assumption that the mental must be related to the physical in the manner appropriate to discharging such metaphysical principles. I defend the claim that we can recognise the deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation if we take our successful explanatory practices as the starting point of our investigation, and only then revert to the question of how best to articulate the relation between the mental and the physical. My claim is that there is an intrinsic connection between the nature of the mental and the nature of human relationships, and I therefore suggest that the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation ought to be understood in connection with the autonomous nature of human relationships. The basic ideas in this thesis are derived by combining features of Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations with features of John MacMurray’s approach to human relationships. On the basis of this combination, I argue for the more specific claim that there is an intrinsic connection between what it means to say that an individual has the capacity to think and what it means to say that he has the capacity to be involved in various types of human relationships. This connection is then used to develop a non-causal account of human action to challenge the physicalist ’s causal account, which will be used to support the claim that mentalistic explanations are autonomous with respect to physicalistic explanations in the deeper sense. I conclude by arguing that the considerations which put us in position to recognise the deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation ought to constrain our statement of the relation between the mental and the physical, and I suggest that this statement should be consistent with the way in which mentalistic and physicalistic explanations carry out their work in our explanatory practices. I claim that individuals are subject to mentalistic explanations in so far as they have a life to live in the world with other people, and that individuals are subject to physicalistic explanations in so far as human beings are creatures whose life has a natural biological dimension. But rather than identifying the mental with the physical, and thereby compromise the deeper extent of the autonomous nature of mentalistic explanation, I suggest that this relation might be understood in terms of the fact that the mental is embedded in the dimension of human life which is constituted by the involvement of individuals in various types of relationshps with each other, and that the dimension of human life in which physicalistic explanations are operative is presupposed as the causal background which must be in place if individuals are to have such a life to live in the world.

In this thesis I examine a number of topics that bear on explanation and understanding in molecular and cell biology, in order to shed new light on explanatory practice in those areas and to find novel angles from which to approach relevant philosophical debates. The topics I look at include mechanism, emergence, cellular complexity, and the informational role of the genome. I develop a perspective that stresses the intimacy of the relations between ontology and epistemology. Whether a phenomenon looks mechanistic, or complex, or indeed emergent, is largely an epistemic matter, yet has an objective basis in features of the world. After reviewing several concepts of mechanism I consider the influential recent account of Machamer, Darden and Craver (MDC). That account makes interesting proposals concerning the relationship between mechanistic explanation and intelligibility, which are consistent with the results of the investigation I undertake into the science surrounding protein folding. In relation to a number of other issues pertaining to biological systems I conclude that the MDC account is insufficiently nuanced, however, leading me to outline an alternative approach to mechanism. This emphasizes the importance of structure—function relations and addresses issues raised by reflection on the nature of cellular complexity. These include the distinction between structure and process and the different possible bases on which system organization may be maintained. The account I give of emergence construes the phenomenon in terms of psychological deficit: phenomena are emergent when we lack the capacity to trace through and model their causal structures using our cognitive schemas. I conclude by developing these ideas into a preliminary and partial account of explanation and understanding. This aspires to cover the significant fraction of work in molecular and cell biology that correlates biological structures, processes and functions by visualizing phenomena and making them imaginable.

The Nigerian banking system is presently riddled with distress, insolvency, and failure. The system is passing through what might seem the roughest phase in its history. The present bank distress and insolvency have culminated in the failure of many banks. In an attempt to correct this unhealthy development, the regulatory authorities (CBN and NDIC) have devised and implemented many novel policies to check this drift. Despite their efforts, however, the cankerworm continues to eat deeper into the Nigerian banking system. This study seeks to identify significant factors that might explain Nigeria's banking system failure as perceived by bank officials, and to recommend ways to minimize bank failure in Nigeria. The banking authorities, to a large extent, focused on a single cause of bank failure, such as unprofessionalism on the part of bank personnel. The majority of those interviewed accused them of committing fraud. The study showed that during the era of bank deregulation, a wider array of factors might have contributed to bank failure. The factors identified in this study are as follows: 1. The acute shortage of experienced and seasoned banking professionals during the era of banking deregulation led to an increase of forgeries and other abuses. 2. The inconsistent and frequent changes in macroeconomic policies during the period under study have negatively affected other macro-economic indicators. 3. Some factors during the period under investigation led to some banks' inability to meet standards set by the CBN/NDIC in respect to: capital adequacy, asset quality, management profile, earnings strength, and liquidity guidelines. 4. Lack of central bank independence contributed to bank failure. This study is important because the proposed recommendations would be of interest to operators of the banking industry, to regulators in the industry, as well as to the Nigerian government in its efforts to chart a new course in the Nigerian banking industry in the twenty-first century.

Popular music life is permeated by both male dominance and gender segregation – the latter most notably concerns musical instrument choice. The pervasiveness of these phenomena is suggested by both music research on gender and statistics. In this study, the overarching ambition is to explain boys' reproductive approaches to popular music/making. In order to successfully carry out a study with such an explanatory ambition, a theory of causality in social life is necessary. In this thesis the notion of causality is taken from a critical realist tradition. However, explanation and causal analysis is most often rejected among music researchers who deal with questions of gender. Nonetheless, I would argue that explanatory ambitions are tacit starting points in this kind of research, and the field would stand to gain from making them explicit. Therefore I have formulated two aims, which my study addresses. The first one is to explain boys' reproductive approaches to popular music/making, in regard to male dominance and gender segregation. The second one is more theoretically oriented: to apply critical realism within music research on gender. The aims has been fulfilled by, first, identifying the boys' adoption of and distancing from different approaches to popular music/musicians and musical instruments. Second, the boys' approaches are explained by reconstructing the social, cultural and psychological conditions that has enabled them. Altogether, this demonstrates why and how the boys' reproductive approaches arise, which (potentially) lead to a reproduction of the male dominance and gender segregation within the popular music field.

Change is a timely issue across organisations, particularly since the start of the economic crisis, and especially within English local government. Yet, this question remains dominated by macro and micro explanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or leadership factors for successful change. This thesis problematises this literature, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985) political discourse theory and its mobilisation by critical management studies of organisational change. Three avenues are identified to further this literature. First, the organisation is analysed as an ongoing and fragile hegemonic project in which spaces are defined and consent must be constantly renewed. Second, the organisation is recast as a discursively constituted ‘site’ within a flat ontology, where change is not the result of some ‘bigger’ phenomena such as neo-liberalism or austerity, but instead is the product of situated articulations, disparate demands being mobilised as threats or opportunities requiring change. Finally, a third proposition articulates leadership in organisations as a set of multiple and changing practices, pragmatically deployed by organisational players. In exploring those avenues, a five-step ‘logics of critical explanation’ approach is deployed, characterising organisational change practices according to social (rules and norms), political (inclusions and exclusions), and fantasmatic (fears and hopes) logics (Glynos and Howarth, 2007). A nine month case study of an English County Council and its local strategic partnership’s organisational change project, Integrated Commissioning 2012 (IC 2012), is analysed to problematise the emergence, transformation and failure of practices of change in organisations. Rather than a set of factors or top-down causes and effects, this research demonstrates how change, organisations and leadership are best explained as discursive constructions, where a set of conditions drawn from a given site must be problematised. This research contributes to critical explanations of organisational change politics in three ways. First, by developing the concept of hegemony and hegemonic spaces, this thesis evidences how organisations and change are the result of ongoing struggles, consent being notably gathered by the constant refuelling of the fantasmatic appeal of change. Second, framing the organisation as a site generates a more complex, situated and dynamic understanding of the mobilisation of disparate demands within change discourses. Third, by considering leadership as a set of changing discursive practices and developing four situated dimensions of leadership in the case study, this research adds to critical leadership studies and discursive discussions of the role of individuals in organisational politics.

Thesis advisor: Maria E. Brisk / This descriptive case study examines the role that Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory of language can play in making academic language more transparent and accessible to linguistically diverse students. In an urban fourth grade classroom composed of both bilingual and monolingual students, I incorporated key concepts of SFL into writing instruction on personal narrative and scientific explanation texts. Specifically, instruction explored the context, purpose, and tenor of each genre and scaffolded students' development of appropriate structure and useful language tools. Classroom instruction and student writing were examined using selective coding, constant comparison, and triangulation to make meaning from the data. Analysis of student writing in relation to SFL-influenced instruction revealed significant growth in areas of structure and language. In this case, SFL provided the researcher and classroom teacher with a useful theory of language and purposeful meta-language to identify and describe the functional elements of two genres to students from diverse literacy backgrounds. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Nesta pesquisa, examinamos a ação comunicativa e a linguagem presentes no jogo de ficção, enfatizando as seqüências de explicação e justificação produzidas pela criança. Concebendo a explicação, como conduta que se desenvolve num contexto interativo e, as condutas explicativas e justificativas (CEJ) como manifestações do uso informativo da linguagem ligado à capacidade de considerar os estados mentais do outro (Veneziano e Hudelot, 2003), analisamos a interação entre adulto e criança de cinco anos de idade, enfatizando as explicações/justificações produzidas em atividade lúdica de ficção. Vários estudiosos (François,1996; Hudelot,1997; Hudelot e Vasseur,1997) mostram que condutas discursivas do adulto trazem efeitos para a interação, pois são intervenções que suscitam reações na criança. Apoiadas na organização e elaboração do jogo de ficção proposto por Verba (1999), utilizamos o jogo \"Lego\" para intermediar a interação entre adulto - criança e relacionarmos as condutas discursivas do adulto ás condutas explicativas/ justificativas na criança. Como salienta a autora (op. cit), o jogo de ficção partilhado necessita do estabelecimento de um conjunto de significações comuns, resultante da elaboração das trocas sociais entre os parceiros que permitam, a cada participante, interpretar os \"dizeres\" e \"fazeres\" do outro no contexto do jogo. Sob a ótica de que a explicação aparece como forma de modificar as representações do outro, a intenção foi verificar como as condutas explicativas / justificativas colaboram para a elaboração e organização do jogo de ficção. Assim, correlacionamos posições discursivas do adulto, sugeridas por Hudelot (1987), às formas tutelares, propostas por Verba (1990) para o jogo de ficção, na produção de condutas explicativas/ justificativas pela criança. Constatamos, nas atividades lúdicas observadas, que o adulto geralmente solicita explicações, pois muitas das significações dadas pela criança, ou não foram compreendidas, ou houve um distanciamento entre as significações de ambos, de maneira a criar um desentendimento. Também observamos momentos em que a criança antecipa suas explicações e justificações para negociar seu ponto de vista e, conduzir o adulto em sua proposição. Desta forma, confirmamos nossa hipótese de que as condutas explicativas/ justificativas, na atividade de faz-de-conta, aparecem na situação de interlocução, tanto quando a interação e/ ou a comunicação se interrompe por falta de compreensão a uma dada questão, geralmente presente na partilha de significações, quanto quando há um distanciamento entre intenções, idéias e significações, promovendo a negociação de sentidos. As condutas explicativas/ justificativas no jogo de ficção com o \"Lego\" manifestaram-se, nas várias ocasiões em que a imaginação da criança prevalecia. Às vezes, o adulto solicitava uma explicação para entender melhor a fantasia da criança e poder participar da atividade junto a ela. Enfim, fica comprovado que, o jogo de ficção partilhado possibilita à criança desenvolver habilidades para representar o mundo e, ao estabelecer relações entre as coisas e confrontá-las com o outro, favorecer o desenvolvimento de competências para argumentar, explicar e justificar. / In this research, we examine the communication and the language in the fiction game, emphasizing the sequences about explanation and justification produced by the child. Conceiving the explanation as a conduct that is developed in an interactive context and that the explanation and justification conducts (CEJ) are language informative use manifestations, linked to the capacity of considering the mental state of the other one (Veneziano and Hudelot, 2003), we analyze the interaction between an adult and a five year old child, focusing the explications and justifications in a playful activity of fiction. Several studies (François, 1996; Hudelot, 1997; Hudelot and Vasseur, 1997) show that adult\'s discursive conducts bring effects for the interaction, because they are interventions that raise reactions in the child. Supported in the organization and elaboration of the fiction game proposed for Verba (1999) use the game \"Lego\" to intermediate the interaction between adult-child and relate adult\'s discursive conducts with explanation/justification?s conducts in the child. As the author points out (op. cit), the partitioned fiction game needs the establishment of a common significances, resultanting the elaboration of the social changes between partners, who allow, the each participant, interpret from other?s talking and doing in the context of the game. Under the optics that the explanation appears as a way to modifying the other?s representations, the intention was to verify how the explanations /justification?s conducts collaborate for the elaboration and organization of the fiction game. So, we examine how the adult\'s discursive relations suggested by Hudelot (1987) behaved, in relation to the proposed tutelary categories for Verba (1990) for the fiction game, in the explanation /justification?s conducts produced by the child. We verify, in the observed fiction activities, that the adult generally asks explanations, because many of the significances given by the child were not understood or there was a distance among significances between each other in order to create a misunderstanding. We also observed the moments in which the child foresees his/her explanations and justifications to negotiate his/her point of view and, lead the adult in his/her proposition. Thus, we confirmed our hypothesis that the explanation/ justification?s conducts, in the fiction activity, appear on the dialogue situation, as much when the interaction or the communication is interrupted for the lack of comprehension of one matter, arisen in this playful activity, as much when there is a distance between his/her intentions, ideas and significances. The explanation/justification?s conducts in the fiction game with ?Lego? were present in many occasions in the objects significances division, actions events and linkages, in which child\'s imagination prevailed. Sometimes, the adult asked an explanation to understand the child\'s fantasy better and take part in the activity close to him/her. Finally, it is proved that partitioned fiction game enables to the child develop abilities to represent the world and, when establishing relations among things and confronts them with other person, it makes use of the development to of competences to argue, to explain and to justify.