This study examines what kinds of questions teachers and students ask during science lessons in three primary schools in Sweden. The study is based on the following questions: What kinds of questions do the teachers ask? How do the teachers describe the question asking behavior they use in the lessons? How do the teachers follow up students' answers? What kinds of questions do the students ask and how do teachers handle these inclass? This is a qualitative study based on interviews of four primary school teachers and observations of their Science lessons, covering topics as the solar system, electricity and the lives of the magpie and the squirrel. The theoretical frame of the study is social constructivism, which focuses on how knowledge is constructed in the social context of the classroom through language and other semiotic means. The questions asked by teachers and students are classified into two levels (high-order and low-order questions) based on Bloom's taxonomy. The results of the study shows that teachers mostly ask low-order questions during these lessons and that they ask three times as many questions as the students. In lessons where more “abstract” topics were discussed, such as the solar system, the low-order questions were more frequently asked by the teachers. The students asked questions when they were “invited” to do so and they asked more high-order questions during lessons where “abstract” topics were discussed.

The transition of emphasis in business competition from a technology-led age to a market-oriented era has led to a rapid shift from the conventional "economy of scale" towards the "economy of scope" in contemporary manufacturing. Hence, it is necessary and essential to be able to respond to the dynamic market and customer requirements systematically and consistently. The central theme of this research is to rationalise and improve the conventional means of analysing and interpreting the linguistic and often imprecise customer requirements in order to identify the essential product features and determine their appropriate design targets dynamically and quantitatively through a series of well proven methodologies and techniques. The major objectives of this research are: a) To put forward a hybrid approach for decoding and processing the Voice of Customer (VoC) in order to interpret the specific customer requirements and market demands into definitive product design features, and b) To quantify the essential product design features with the appropriate technical target values for facilitating the downstream planning and control activities in delivering the products or services. These objectives would be accomplished through activities as follows: • Investigating and understanding the fundamental nature and variability of customer attributes (requirements); • Surveying and evaluating the contemporary approaches in handling customer attributes; • Proposing an original and generic hybrid model for categorising, prioritising and interpreting specific customer attributes into the relevant product attributes with tangible target values; • Developing a software system to facilitate the implementation of the proposed model; • Demonstrating the functions of the hybrid model through a practical case study. This research programme begins with a thorough overview of the roles, the changing emphasis and the dynamic characteristics of the contemporary customer demand with a view to gaining a better understanding on the fundamental nature and variability of customer attributes. It is followed by a review of a number of well proven tools and techniques including QFD, HoQ, Affinity Diagram and AHP etc. on their applicability and effectiveness in organising, analysing and responding to dynamic customer requirements. Finally, an intelligent hybrid model amalgamating a variety of these techniques and a fuzzy inference sub-system is proposed to handle the diverse, ever-changing and often imprecise VoC. The proposed hybrid model is subsequently demonstrated in a practical case study.

This dissertation proposes two novel ideas to enhance the business strategy alignment to customer needs. The proposed business alignment clock is a new illustration to the relationships between customer requirements, business strategies, capabilities and processes. To line up the clock and reach the needed alignment for the enterprise, a proposed clock mechanism is introduced. The mechanism integrates the Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) with the House of Quality (HoQ). The relationship matrix inside the body of the house is defined using multivariate data analysis techniques to accurately measure the strength of the relationships rather than defining them subjectively. A statistical tool, multivariate data analysis, can be used to overcome the ambiguity in quantifying the relationships in the house of quality matrix. The framework is proposed in the basic conceptual model context of the EBA showing different levels of the enterprise architecture; the goals, the capabilities and the value stream architecture components. In the proposed framework, the goals and the capabilities are inputs to two houses of quality, in which the alignment between customer needs and business goals, and the alignment between business goals and capabilities are checked in the first house and the second house, respectively. The alignment between the business capabilities and the architecture components (workflows, events and environment) is checked in a third HoQ using the performance indicators of the value stream architecture components, which may result in infrastructure expansion, software development or process improvement to reach the needed alignment by the enterprise. The value of the model was demonstrated using the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) process at the Industrial Engineering and Management Systems department at the University of Central Florida. The assessment of ABET criteria involves an evaluation of the extent to which the program outcomes are being achieved and results in decisions and actions to improve the Industrial Engineering program at the University of Central Florida. The proposed framework increases the accuracy of measuring the extent to which the program learning outcomes have been achieved at the department. The process of continuous alignment between the educational objectives and customer needs becomes more vital by the rapid change of customer requirements that are obtained from both internal and external constituents (students, faculty, alumni, and employers in the first place).