Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-75).

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

This is a study of approaches to fisheries management in the United Kingdom (UK) between 1945 and 1996. It examines the choices and incentives faced by UK Governments when designing policy instruments to deliver international commitments to sustainable fishing. The failure of international agreements to sustainably manage fisheries resources is often attributed to international institutions, the politicization of negotiations and their distributive outcomes. This thesis makes an original contribution by arguing that the success of international agreements was also dependent upon local negotiations that shaped the design of national delivery mechanisms. The central research question concerns the role and influence of local interests in delivering global economic and environmental agendas and how national governments accommodate local tensions within this process. A sustained content analysis of UK Government archives is used to argue that local political and sectional industry interests had a significant bearing on the development of UK fisheries policy and the design of domestic delivery mechanisms. The exception was UK policy on the international distribution of fisheries resources at the United Nations Law of the Sea Conferences (1958, 1960 and 1973-82). Economic considerations drove early environmental policy with sectional fishing industry interests of secondary importance to the potential economic benefits associated with the more valuable energy resources. In then seeking to implement controls on fishing activity, this thesis argues that UK fisheries management mechanisms were designed to compensate for tension between global commitments mandating a reduction in fishing effort and the local fleets and communities that had to bear the costs of industry contraction. This created a policy-making environment in which social and political motivations continually trumped the application of economic and scientific advice. This advice advocated a contraction in the size of the fleet which had become necessary as technical change and falling stocks resulted in overcapacity. The use of fisheries policy as a political tool to ease local tensions incentivised policy choices that directly contributed to the UK's failure to reduce fishing pressure and deliver international commitments. This thesis demonstrates the importance of local negotiations and interests in the construction of national and international approaches to environmental and natural resources problems.

While disparities between the declared and the enactive curriculum have been widely observed, the significance of what is actually taught has not been investigated. This study proposes that the enactive curriculum is not merely deviant from the declared curriculum; rather, it is part of the curriculum-making process. Teachers necessarily produce the curriculum as an object of study which students encounter in the classroom. This object of study expresses the teacher’s conception of what students need to learn, and is intelligibly related to what they do learn. To explore this idea, the research project focused on the study of physics and history at Year 12, where teachers used a common curriculum and worked to a common external examination. Teachers of these subjects were interviewed about their practice and what they wanted students to learn. A phenomenographic analysis of these interviews showed a systematic relationship between the teacher’s focus and the embedded metaphors s/he used to describe students’ learning. In physics and history, the teachers’ conceptions formed a parallel sequence. What was to be studied was described in a widening context: from a narrow focus on facts or algorithms, to a wider view of a body of knowledge or theory, to a relational view where the physicist or the historian was seen to construct theoretical interpretations or readings of relevant detail. There was corresponding variation in the questions and tasks in which students were engaged.

In 1988 the New South Wales (NSW) Government was the first in Australia, and amongst the first in the world, to commit to implement accrual accounting for its General Government Sector. Subsequently, accrual accounting has been implemented by numerous governments, including all Australian governments. This thesis examines why the NSW Government decided to implement accrual accounting and the impact of this accounting change on decision making within a General Government Sector organisation. The historical account is derived from a combination of archival and oral data sources whilst an organisational learning theoretical frame is used in a single-site case study to understand the impact of accrual accounting on managerial decision making. The history of the NSW Government adoption of accrual accounting is characterised by five notable features. First, the whole-of-government initiative was implemented with remarkable speed. Second, the change was aided by the actions of an epistemic community, in which private sector consultants were most active. Third, the change was justified through expected improvements in accountability and management. Fourth, a period of resistance to the change was followed by an absence of critical discussion on the implications of the change as forces supportive of the change synergistically combined. Fifth, the change is explained by mimetic forces that initially coalesced around phantom images, presented by consultants, and subsequently recognised self-interest as an integral part of the change to accrual accounting. The impact of accrual accounting on management decision-making at an organisational level from has been mixed. Information acquisition has expanded in that new sets of accounting data are collected. However, information distribution has been unchanged by accrual accounting whilst information interpretation only marginally changed at a top management level with no discernible change at operational levels. Organisational memory has been altered by accrual accounting in that additional accounting skills and information are now held. However, use of that organisational memory is severely impeded by organisational objectives and constraints that effectively render accrual accounting information irrelevant to public sector managers’ concerns. Policy implications arising from this project are that an alternative model of accrual accounting is required together with the dual recognition that centrally imposed change may produce unpredicted change at an operational agency level and that accounting change needs to be matched to organisational characteristics. Additionally, improvements in asset management, as sought by advocates of accrual accounting, could have been delivered by non-accounting means and there is little prospect for improved managerial decision-making from the current model of accrual accounting. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1375063 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

In 1988 the New South Wales (NSW) Government was the first in Australia, and amongst the first in the world, to commit to implement accrual accounting for its General Government Sector. Subsequently, accrual accounting has been implemented by numerous governments, including all Australian governments. This thesis examines why the NSW Government decided to implement accrual accounting and the impact of this accounting change on decision making within a General Government Sector organisation. The historical account is derived from a combination of archival and oral data sources whilst an organisational learning theoretical frame is used in a single-site case study to understand the impact of accrual accounting on managerial decision making. The history of the NSW Government adoption of accrual accounting is characterised by five notable features. First, the whole-of-government initiative was implemented with remarkable speed. Second, the change was aided by the actions of an epistemic community, in which private sector consultants were most active. Third, the change was justified through expected improvements in accountability and management. Fourth, a period of resistance to the change was followed by an absence of critical discussion on the implications of the change as forces supportive of the change synergistically combined. Fifth, the change is explained by mimetic forces that initially coalesced around phantom images, presented by consultants, and subsequently recognised self-interest as an integral part of the change to accrual accounting. The impact of accrual accounting on management decision-making at an organisational level from has been mixed. Information acquisition has expanded in that new sets of accounting data are collected. However, information distribution has been unchanged by accrual accounting whilst information interpretation only marginally changed at a top management level with no discernible change at operational levels. Organisational memory has been altered by accrual accounting in that additional accounting skills and information are now held. However, use of that organisational memory is severely impeded by organisational objectives and constraints that effectively render accrual accounting information irrelevant to public sector managers’ concerns. Policy implications arising from this project are that an alternative model of accrual accounting is required together with the dual recognition that centrally imposed change may produce unpredicted change at an operational agency level and that accounting change needs to be matched to organisational characteristics. Additionally, improvements in asset management, as sought by advocates of accrual accounting, could have been delivered by non-accounting means and there is little prospect for improved managerial decision-making from the current model of accrual accounting. / http://proxy.library.adelaide.edu.au/login?url= http://library.adelaide.edu.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=1375063 / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, Business School, 2009

This research involves understanding the civic learning that emerged from the ways individuals in two civic action groups, Greenhill Historical Society (GHS) in Bonnybridge, a deindustrialised location, and Cumbernauld Village Action for the Community (CVAC) in Cumbernauld Village, a Conservation Area, enacted their citizenship through the spatial (geographical) and temporal (historical) characteristics of their place. I use a citizenship-as-practice conceptualisation, where citizenship is not a status ‘given’ to individuals who have successfully displayed pre-requisite outcomes, but is a continuous and indeterminate practice through exposure to real challenges. To understand the learning occurring for, from and through their practices, I used Biesta’s theory of civic learning (Biesta, 2011). It involves a socialisation conception of civic learning as the adoption of existing civic identities, where individuals adapt to a given political order, and a subjectification conception which focuses on how political agency is achieved. The theory connects learning and action together, where Biesta argues socialisation involves the individual requiring to learn something in order to carry out the ‘correct’ actions in the future; however, subjectification involves action preceding learning, where learning comes second, if at all. I used a case study design and a psychogeographic mapping methodology involving secondary data analysis, psychogeographic mapping interviews and observations. Civic action emerged as a more central component than civic learning through my empirical analysis. The civic actions of GHS emerged as a case of reconsideration (redefining, re-meaning their location through interventions in public), and CVAC of reconfiguration (actions physically altering the landscape). These actions concerning space and time involved spatial shifts from mapreading to mapmaking, and temporal shifts from histories ‘of’ and ‘for’ the public, towards histories ‘by’ the public. Respondents became ‘curators’ of their places: from spectators to participants in making and representing spaces and histories that opened their locations to interruptions of the continuities of time. Attending to practices of citizens with space and time contains possibilities for public pedagogies that work ‘with’ context rather than just ‘in’, towards opening up opportunities for citizens to ‘become public’ as practices that trouble pre-existing arrangements and configurations.

In the old university of Turku there were written about 4 400 theses. About 1100 of them havefound their way to Linköping in Sweden. This paper describes these theses, new variants whichwere found and some characteristics of their provenance. They are compared with the largebibliography over theses from Turku by Vallinkoski. A couple of theses with completeinformation which have not been available since 1827 were found. Several new variants werefound and together with the known variants they have increased our knowledge about use oftheses by students. Different variants could be designed to thank people at the Academy and inTurku, to thank people at home in Sweden who have contributed to the costsome studies andvery often to the bishop of the students home-diocese. There are even examples of wbichdifferent variants were printed for different dioceses.Theses from time before 1713 are quite few, about 150. They seem to have come to the libraryby private persons, mostly by priests who studied in Turku. No signs of other forms of distributioncan be seen.There are many more theses from the period 1722-1827. The collection is anonymous withhundreds of theses which never have been opened. This and other facts indicate amassdistribution. The author presumes that this massdistribution is connected with the exchangeof publications that started in Sweden in the 1740s initiated by the Uppsala university.