This thesis is focused on the analysis of the current system of funding for research, development and innovation in the Czech Republic and the subsequent comparison with foreign countries. The thesis provides a detailed overview of the current funding situation in the Czech Republic, the role of public administration in the process and mentions the critical comments that currently appear most often. Topicality and importance of the topic increases the current proposal on the creation of a new ministry for science. Working on the basis of analysis and comparison with other countries recommends changing the current system of funding for research, development and innovation in the Czech Republic, however, means other than the creation of the proposed new ministry.

Principals come to their current positions with their own beliefs about their role, about their practice, and about other educational issues related to the nature of education: schools, teachers, students, community, and professional growth. These and all other factors that influence how principals think about their job are what I refer to as "principals' professional beliefs." This study demonstrated that principals bring to change initiatives their professional beliefs and those beliefs influence how they interpret the language of the change initiative, how they conceptualize the change, and how they plan for enactment of the policy change. I used a multi-case study approach to examine how eight principals in a school district that was undergoing a district policy change, thought about their enactment of the change at the school level. I identified three groups of principals: (1) supporters of teacher decision making, (2) facilitators of shared values, and (3) promoters of mutual respect. These principals differed in their involvement in the negotiation of the way the change would be carried out in the school, how much and what kinds of support they offered to teachers, and the degree of autonomy they allowed teachers in determining how the change would be implemented. Three questions guided the study: (1) What factors influence principals' responses to a change in school district policy? More specifically, what are the professional and context-specific issues the principals consider as they interpret a school district policy change and plan for their own action in carrying out that change process? (2) How do principals enact the policy changes in their own schools? (3) What impact did the principals perceive that the policy change had on their enactment of their role? This study provides insights into how principals understand and interpret educational policy language, how they work toward the development of collaborative relationships and collegial cultures, and how their professional beliefs inform their practice. The policy change and the language of the policy is mediated through principals' professional belief systems as they determine how they will enact the policy change. This study disputes findings in existing literature and contributes to our understanding of change in schools by recognizing that principals play significant roles in change at the school level. / Education, Faculty of / Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of / Graduate

À la suite du paquet Énergie Climat Européen et des Grenelle de l’Environnement, l’État français lance à partir de 2011 une série d’appels d’offres et d’appels à manifestation d’intérêt pour la construction d’infrastructures d’énergies marines renouvelables (EMR) le long des côtes françaises, en particulier en Basse-Normandie, région fortement marquée par son lien avec le nucléaire civil et militaire. Les parties prenantes du développement des EMR y anticipent des problèmes d’« acceptabilité sociale ». L’objet de cette thèse est, à partir de l’étude des acteurs qui concourent au développement des EMR en Basse-Normandie et des dispositifs d’acceptabilité qu’ils mettent en place, d’appréhender le maintien et le renouvellement d’un système énergétique centralisé fondé sur le nucléaire, en y intégrant l’alternative renouvelable. S’appuyant sur une combinaison de techniques d’enquête (observation directe, entretiens, questionnaires, recueil de productions documentaires, de textes réglementaires et de documents biographiques) dont l’analyse s’appuie sur des méthodes principalement qualitatives, ce travail montre que le maintien du système énergétique opère à travers le gouvernement de la critique. Les acteurs locaux, y compris critiques des projets, sont mobilisés par les entreprises, l’État, les collectivités, et les scientifiques à l’aide de dispositifs visant à construire l’acceptabilité sociale. Avec ces dispositifs d’acceptabilité, on n’assiste pas à une transformation des projets techniques vers l’intégration de dimensions sociales, mais davantage à la translation d’enjeux sociaux en termes techniques. / Following the European Union climate and energy package and le Grenelle de l’Environment, the French State launched, from 2011, a series of calls for tender and for expressions of interest for the construction of infrastructures of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE). The planned infrastructures are located along the French coast, particularly in Lower Normandy, a region characterized by the production of civilian and military nuclear power. Stakeholders in the development of MREs anticipated problems of "social acceptability". This thesis, based on a study of the actors who participated in the development of MREs in Basse-Normandie and of the acceptability mechanisms they have put in place, focuses on maintaining a centralized energy system based on nuclear energy, that has integrated the renewable alternative. Based on a combination of survey techniques (direct observation, interviews, questionnaires, collection of documentary productions, regulatory texts and biographical documents) analysed mainly through qualitative methods, this thesis reveals that the maintaining of the energy system operates through the government of critique. Local actors, including those who oppose the project, are mobilized by companies, the state, regional public authorities, and scientists through mechanisms aiming to build social acceptance. Thus acceptability, as an instrument of governing, does not mean a transformation of technical projects towards a better integration of social dimensions, but rather a translation of social questions into technical terms.

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The problem with which this research is dealing is the lack of any explanatory model which explains both the perception and the adoption of new products. One objective of this study is to advance a new conceptual framework concerning both the perception and the adoption of new products. The second objective of this study is to evaluate this new framework theoretically and empirically. Bunge's evaluative criteria are used to evaluate the new model theoretically while Hunter, Schmidt, and Jackson's meta-analysis technique is used to evaluate the model empirically. An extensive review of literature pertaining to the definition of innovation, the adoption process, and innovativeness is included in the second chapter. Chapter three covers research plan and methods. The new model and its assumptions are presented in chapter four. The results of both theoretical and empirical investigations of the new model are reported in chapter five. Finally, chapter six includes a discussion of the main findings and provides some suggestions for future research. An interpretive and postulational model is introduced in this study. The model is built on three main assumptions and contains thirty-one different theoretical constructs. Those constructs are bounded together by forty-six theoretical propositions. Those propositions are the postulates or the axioms which state the nature of the interrelationships among all constructs included in the model.

In this research, it was proposed that self-efficacy is the missing underlying psychological factor in innovation diffusion models of higher education. This is based upon research conducted in the fields of innovation-diffusion in higher education, technology adoption, self-efficacy, health and behavioral change. It was theorized that if self-efficacy is related to adoption, it could provide a quick-scoring method for adoption efficiency and effectiveness that would be easy to administer. The innovation-diffusion model used in this study was Hall and Hord\'s (1987) Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) and it\'s Seven Stages of Concern (SoC) About an Innovation. The SoC measures a user\'s perception of"and concerns about"an innovation over time.  The self-efficacies under study were general, teaching, and technology.  The scales used in this research instrument were Chen\'s New General Self-Efficacy (NGSE), Prieto\'s College Teaching Self-Efficacy Scale (CTSES), and Lichty\'s Teaching with Technology Self-efficacy scale (MUTEBI), respectively.  This research hoped to uncover a relationship between self-efficacies and a Stage of Concern in the adoption of an instructional technology innovation, Google Apps for Education, at a large university institution.  Over 150 quantitative responses were collected from a pool of 1,713 instructional faculty between late Fall 2012 and early Spring 2013 semesters.  The response group was not representative of the larger population. Forty-six percent represented non-tenure track faculty compared to the expected 19 percent.  Analysis using nominal logistic regression between self-efficacy and Stages of Concern revealed that no statistically significant relationship was found.  Of note is that nearly all participants could be classified as being in the early-stages of an innovation adoption, possibly skewing the overall results. / Ph. D.

Obtaining low-latency results from window-aggregate queries can be critical to certain data-stream processing applications. Due to a DSMS's lack of control over incoming data (typically, because of delays and bursts in data arrival), timely results for a window-aggregate query over a data stream cannot be obtained with guarantees about the results' accuracy. In this thesis, I propose a technique, which I term prodding, to obtain early result estimates for window-aggregate queries over data streams. The early estimates are obtained in addition to the regular query results. The proposed technique aims to maximize the contribution to a result-estimate computation from all the stateful operators across a multi-level query plan. I evaluate the benefits of prodding using real-world and generated data streams having different patterns in data arrival and data values. I conclude that, in various DSMS applications, prodding can generate low-latency estimates to window-aggregate query results. The main factors affecting the degree of inaccuracy in such estimates are: the aggregate function used in a query, the patterns in arrivals and values of stream data, and the aggressiveness of demanding the estimates. The utility of the estimates obtained using prodding should be optimized by tuning the aggressiveness in result-estimate demands to the specific latency and accuracy needs of a business, considering any available knowledge about patterns in the incoming data.

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