The topic of my research is the lived experiences of eight psychotherapists and counsellors who consciously work with unusual phenomena as it arises in the therapeutic encounter. Unusual phenomena in this thesis refers to felt experiences which are considered to be beyond the everyday in the Cartesian paradigm and are often referred to as spiritual and/or mystical phenomena. Exploring these phenomena brings to light the potentialities in the vastness of consciousness which is considered to be an integral aspect of human existence in the thesis. I chose Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenological methodology for the research because it gives credence to the many and varied possibilities and potentialities both in particular lived experiences and in human existence as a whole. Van Manen’s lived existential provides the framework in which the participants’ experiences are explored. What emerged from the research is that unusual phenomena are not unusual for the participants. Although such phenomena are less visible and therefore less familiar in the everyday world, they are recognizable through their consistent presentation. This includes the participants having a powerful sense of ‘knowing’ which is all-encompassing and is beyond familiar landmarks such as the linear models of time and space. The participants bring their ‘knowing’ into the everyday world through embodiment and through their acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of existence. The expression of interconnectedness is experienced by the participants as lovingness, from which the ability for immediate healing in their therapeutic work becomes apparent. The participants’ accounts show a capacity for accessing the subtleties of human existence which emerge in the phenomenological process as the forgotten feminine of consciousness. The feminine of consciousness is a term used to describe a fundamental state of ‘being’ in contrast to the everyday masculine principle of ‘doing’. The research has implications for psychotherapy and counselling as it illuminates the need for a holistic approach which acknowledges the multidimensionality of human existence.

This thesis critically explores the issue of access to biological resources and Indigenous knowledge Historically, biological resources collected and documented, and knowledge associated with their use, have been considered the 'common heritage of mankind' The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) changed this understanding to tights of states over biological resources, but also gave rise to issues of equity and justice, especially with regard to Indigenous Nations encapsulated within First World states-so-called 'Fourth World Nations', A central concern of Fourth World Peoples is their marginalisation within access negotiations, despite their claims of connate (birth) rights to r esou.r ces and knowledge they identify as their own. Increasing global Indigenous activism over their concerns, has in turn raised an increasingly important policy gap that is becoming recognised in fora and processes with regard to access to biological resources. My thesis addresses this policy gap. I explore some of the complex historical, political and cultural dimensions that led to the emergence and resilience of this policy problem The failure to address the concerns of Indigenous peoples, and Fourth World Nations in particular, is more important and problematic now because of contemporary biotechnological developments and the emergence of bioprospecting. Bioprospecthg refers to the practice of appropriating biological resources, and Indigenous knowledge of those resources, and incorporating them into biopharmaceutical processes. Literature on bioprospecting as a problematic issue for Third World States has been emerging steadily over the last decade under the impact of the commercialisation of biodiversity, which has become big business for biopha.rmaceutical companies. The unique interests and experiences of Fourth World Nations are not recognised within this literature as significantly different to that of the Third World, and of their encapsulating states.. This study has addressed this significant gap by utilising and developing an analytical approach that uses Fourth World theory, synthesised with elements of Foucault's analytics of power. When combined, these two theoretical approaches provide a new and rich under standing of how dominant 'ways of knowing' and 'ways of owning' have been privileged, while other knowledge and ownership systems have been, and continue to be, marginalised, Eoucault's understanding of discursive power as having the capability to be either, or both, dominant and resistant is important to my analysis, as it accommodates the Fourth World as a discursive site of resistance to dominant power. I posit that richer insights are gained through the development and application of this theoretical framework to the issue of fair and equitable access to biological resources, than other approaches offer. I demonstrate the framework's utility by applying it to a case study on bioprospecting in Australia. Important findings have emerged while tracking the activities of Fourth World peoples on the international stage, and their attempts to challenge dominant power/knowledge structures within political institutions For example, participation at the international level has enabled Fomth World peoples to apply pressure on their encapsulating states to accommodate their interests. This has been furthered through forming alliances with, for example, environmentalists, and through the adoption of the language of effective participation within international fora.. Overall, however, the study found that the participation of Eourth World peoples within international, central state and local state policy processes is not always empowering in challenging dominant interests Instead, the more accurate impression is that at this stage of the discursive policy terrain, it may only create an illusion of participation that actually serves to entrench their disempowerment. This places pressule on policy processes to address and resolve this access issue equitably if social turbulence is to subside, justice be served, and certainty provided for all.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Visual Art education, in an increasingly globalized visual world, is gaining significance for its contribution to the intuitive, critical and creative aspects of student learning and meaning-making. This awareness is foregrounded by a realization that tomorrow’s world will be increasingly dominated by the triumph of the image, multi-modal practices, technologies and visual culture. In this context, the development of an ethico-aesthetic disposition through visual contemporary communicative capacities might be regarded as essential to modern meaning-making. The research seeks to reveal the impact of studying Visual Art for the adolescent student and its value to them in terms of its contribution to their personal, social and cultural understandings beyond the classroom. This research represents a qualitative examination of a post-compulsory Visual Art curriculum in New South Wales, Australia that has shifted from a modernist perspective to a conceptual framework informed by contemporary art practices and by a Habermasian theory of communicative knowing. The research presents its findings in the form of, first a meta-analysis of a longitudinal study of the ARTEXPRESS exhibition spanning 15 years of student learning outcomes from the Visual Art curriculum and, second, a case study of 7 students who reflect on the value of the Visual Art learning to them beyond school. The study employs a critical hermeneutic phenomenological methodology, using image and text analysis as data. The methodology bridges traditional educational research methods with Visual Art practices by employing arts-inquiry as a qualitative research method. It uses the montage as a visual communicative platform informed by narrative perspectives to present the results. In the 21st century, educators, together with the entire world community, are growing in consciousness of the arts as a significant player in developing the attributes and skills that citizens will require in order to be effective participants of tomorrow’s rapidly evolving world. The public welfare benefits that accrue from the arts' intrinsic values are increasingly being seen to constitute a central role in generating wider benefits (McCarthy, Ondaatje, Zakaris & Brooks, 2004; National Review of Visual Education, 2006). Through analysis of ARTEXPRESS student artworks, reflective journals and interviews, the research identified that the skill of visual communicative proficiency links explicitly to the performative act as it emerges from each student’s desire and affectivity. In turn, this act is demonstrated to be beyond the knowledge of Visual Art cultural practices, being shaped by critique and power relationships in society. Self-portrait as narrative and subjectivity production were seen by the students as legitimate means of communicating meaning about self and other. The understanding of the logic of the relationships between visual technical activity, embodied material processes and conceptual understandings as contemporary communicative practices was valued by students and parents for its capacity to mediate societal and cultural values, as well as ethical practice and citizenship. Visual and performative communicative practice links identity, image and meaning. In this study these practices supported self-agency and the creative development of multiple, reflective returns. Visual artmaking is presented as supporting the development of creative possibilities. In turn, an understanding of the endless ways in which imaging and communicating can represent self, truth, reality and existence benefit the individual and society quite beyond the bounds of the traditional classroom.

This thesis examines the way in which traditional accounts of gender differences in the self-concept have relied on distal explanatory factors, and have thus conceptualised the gendered self as stable across both time and situation. This notion of a stable, gendered self has been implicated as underlying of a range of psychological gender differences (e.g., Cross & Madson, 1997), such as those in moral reasoning (e.g., Gillian, 1982) and ways of knowing (e.g., Belenky et al., 1989). As a result, these behaviours are also seen to be stable across time and context.¶ An alternative perspective is investigated, which looks to social identity theory and self-categorisation theory for a conceptualisation of both gender and the self-concept as being malleable and context-dependent (e.g., Turner et al., 1987). The social identity perspective describes the way in which proximal aspects of the social context affect the expression of gender-related behaviours, attitudes, and beliefs. In this way, the social identity perspective provides an analysis of group membership, group norms, and social influence which can not only account for the differences that are observed between men and women, but can also offer an analysis of the context-dependence of these difference and an approach by which gender differences can be mollified.¶ A series of nine empirical studies are reported, investigating the way in which individuals (a) define themselves, (b) approach moral reasoning, and (c) approach knowledge and learning, across a number of different social contexts. Together, the results suggest that the self-concept, moral orientation, and ways of knowing are neither stable nor inherently gendered, but are malleable and dependent on the nature of the self-other relationship as defined by the proximal aspects of the social context. The implications for traditional theories of gender differences are discussed, as are the broader implications for feminism and social change.

Contemporary theories of learning suggest that successful learners are active in the learning process and that they tend to use a number of metacognitive processes to monitor learning and remembering. Drawing on the theoretical framework of Nelson and Narens (1992), the current study examined the effect of certain variables on metamemory processes and on students' ability to recall and recognise learned material. The present study explored the effect of four independent variables on five dependent variables. The independent variables were: 1. degree of learning (responses given until 2 or 8 times correct), 2. judgment of learning (JOL) timing (given immediately after learning session or 24 hours later), 3. retention interval between study and test (2 or 6 weeks), and 4. type of material studied (sentences, in or out of context). The dependent variables were: 1. judgement of learning (JOL), 2. confidence rating, 3. feeling of knowing (FOK), 4. recall, and 5. recognition.. As ancillary analyses, the study explored, firstly, whether gender differences had an effect on meta-level and object-level memory, and secondly, whether students who recalled more also made more accurate metamemory judgements. The effects of the independent variables on recall and recognition were consistent with those found by previous studies. The most interesting new finding of the present study was that students who made JOLs after twenty four hours were more likely to take into account the effect of the interval between learning and testing. Students who made immediate JOLs did not allow for the effect of the time interval on retention. A further new finding was that gender appeared to have had an influence on JOLs. The findings about the effects of timing of JOLs and of gender effects on JOL have implications for metacognitive theory and will stimulate further research. The practical significance of this research, particularly the implications for study skills training for all students, was that educators cannot presume that students will correctly predict what they will recall after six weeks if they make that judgement immediately after learning has occurred. Therefore, the effects of the passage of time on memory, and the efficacy of delaying judgments, should be made explicit. The finding that the manipulation of JOL timing has a significant effect on the accuracy of judgements has implications in the wider area of educational policymaking and for the current debate on competencies and quality assurance. Learning cannot be considered a simple process and when a large component of learning is selfdirected, as it is in tertiary institutions and increasingly in schools, many variables are operating.

Older patients comprise a large portion of patients in the acute care setting. Registered Nurses (RNs) are the main care providers in the hospital setting. RNs caring for older hospitalized patients are affected by many factors including workload pressures, issues related to the acute care environment and attitudes toward older patients. However, a literature review identified a limited number of studies exploring the RNs experience of caring for older patients in the acute care setting. This study explored the RNs experience of caring for older patients (age 65 and older) on an orthopedic unit in an acute care hospital. Saturation was reached with a purposive sample of nine RNs working on the orthopedic unit, including eight females and 1 male. Participants were interviewed using broad open-ended questions, followed by questions more specific to emerging themes. All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using Glasers (1992) grounded theory approach. Participants described the basic social problem as dealing with the complexity of older patients. The basic social process identified was the concept of looking beyond. Looking beyond was described as looking at the big picture to find what lies outside the scope of the ordinary. Three sub-processes of looking beyond were identified as connecting, searching, and knowing. Connecting was described as getting to know patients as a person by taking time, respecting and understanding the individual. Searching was described as digging deeper, searching for the unknown by looking for clues and mining everywhere for information. Knowing was described as intuitively knowing what is going to happen and what the older patient needs by pulling it all together and knowing what to expect. These dynamic sub-processes provided the RN with the relationship and information required to look beyond to manage the older patients complexity. The results of this study have implications for nursing practice, education and research. These findings may provide RNs with a process to manage the complex care of a large portion of our population.

Older patients comprise a large portion of patients in the acute care setting. Registered Nurses (RNs) are the main care providers in the hospital setting. RNs caring for older hospitalized patients are affected by many factors including workload pressures, issues related to the acute care environment and attitudes toward older patients. However, a literature review identified a limited number of studies exploring the RNs experience of caring for older patients in the acute care setting. This study explored the RNs experience of caring for older patients (age 65 and older) on an orthopedic unit in an acute care hospital. Saturation was reached with a purposive sample of nine RNs working on the orthopedic unit, including eight females and 1 male. Participants were interviewed using broad open-ended questions, followed by questions more specific to emerging themes. All interviews were audio-taped and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed using Glasers (1992) grounded theory approach. Participants described the basic social problem as dealing with the complexity of older patients. The basic social process identified was the concept of looking beyond. Looking beyond was described as looking at the big picture to find what lies outside the scope of the ordinary. Three sub-processes of looking beyond were identified as connecting, searching, and knowing. Connecting was described as getting to know patients as a person by taking time, respecting and understanding the individual. Searching was described as digging deeper, searching for the unknown by looking for clues and mining everywhere for information. Knowing was described as intuitively knowing what is going to happen and what the older patient needs by pulling it all together and knowing what to expect. These dynamic sub-processes provided the RN with the relationship and information required to look beyond to manage the older patients complexity. The results of this study have implications for nursing practice, education and research. These findings may provide RNs with a process to manage the complex care of a large portion of our population.

This study explores the challenge faced when an organization utilizes innovative knowledge management system to transfer internal best practice. The objective of this study is to explore what model should be employed by an organization to promote continual emergence of practical knowledge for knowledge workers as this kind of knowledge is deeply affected by situated factors when high tech engineers have high level of personalized knowledge and are embedded in practice. By qualitative case study methodology, this study adopts theoretical views of the nature of knowledge embeddedness and situated learning to explore the process of two semiconductor companies implementing management models to help engineers transfer their knowledge and experiences. Of these two companies, the ChipMaker is a supplier of semiconductor equipment. It inputs a set of system based knowledge model to transfer best maintenance practices of engineers by this system. While the other ChipTest company operates community oriented knowledge management model. After strict instructions, engineers regularly gather to share their experience and problems they faced. After theoretical and qualitative data analysis, this thesis study has three major study findings. First, the nature of situated knowledge is shown from the maintenance jobs of engineers. This kind of knowledge is personalized cognition and is embedded in work situation. Diversified deciphering situations are developed via irritation of work situations. The situated knowledge can only be emerged from social network based on situation development and impromptu dialog and action accompanying problem exploration. Second, many existing literatures and practical applications do not clarify the nature of knowledge embeddedness, but adopt "system based knowledge management model", which assumes that an organization can directly manage "knowledge" and acts of "knowledge workers". However, this study finds that the system can only manage "knowledge object" and is only applicable to problems of steady and simple situations. Furthermore, the system inclines to misleading engineers exchange superficial knowledge documents. In other words, "situated knowledge" most needed by engineers is the process of continual reproduction and potential transfer through social interaction, not a linear manner of direct transfer. Therefore, only situated learning can effectively share knowledge of embedded nature. Third, this study finds that an organization is not likely to manage "situated knowledge" that is emerged only from specific situation, but manages "social structure" to nourish knowing in practice . This dialog structures must have the following four features: 1. situated stimuli, 2. multidimensional situation link, 3. group identities, 4. collectively implied memories. Only with these features, members can be attracted to continually input activity energy to keep vitality of community interaction. Finally, from two cases of knowledge managements this study develops two kinds of knowledge management models ¡V "object style", i.e. big K and small m [Km], and "jigsaw style", i.e. small k and big M (kM) ¡V and suggests their theoretical and practical implications

Dealing with the problem between user related knowledge and design, the present thesis underlines the guiding role of designer&rsquo / s user concept as a concept in problem structuring, by framing his/her understanding about user and influencing knowledge use and solution generation. Considering limitations of prevailing user concept in the architectural design studio, underlying problems are detected with reference to knowledge and design contexts, which have critical influence on the formation of user concept, particularly on its capacity to cover qualities of user and its relation with design. Defined narrow content of knowledge context and the detachment between design and knowledge contexts constitute the problematic basis of limited user concept and indicate a need for a shift in student&rsquo / s user understanding. The thesis aims to provide a conceptual framework to define required change referring underlined contexts. The broadening of knowledge context is defined addressing unifying perspective of Universal Design, with its emphasis on diversity, user experience, and knowing user by experience. With reference to the notion of designerly ways of knowing, required constructive relation between knowledge and design contexts is reconceptualized as designerly way of knowing user and defined as user related knowledge generation as part of problem structuring and design concept generation through this knowledge base. The potentials of proposed framework are exemplified by an architectural design studio experience. The analysis shows that when student&rsquo / s user learning is organized within student&rsquo / s actual user investigation as part of problem structuring, it is possible for students to acquire needs and expectations of diverse users and translate them to solutions from user perspective generating user related design concepts. Therefore, proposed conceptual base promises to improve user concept of student not only to involve experiences of diverse users, but also to be designerly.

Tyrimo problema. Žiniasklaida yra vienas galingiausių diskursų, konstruojančių bei reguliuojančių visuomenės žinojimą. Ji formuoja skonį, gyvenimo būdo ypatumus, pažiūras, vertybes, elgseną. Pastaruoju metu žiniasklaida vis dažniau nukrypsta nuo vykdomos tiesioginės visuomenės informavimo funkcijos, paremtos laisvo žodžio principu, dažniau ji įtakojama komercinių interesų, orientuojasi į bulvariškumą ar sensacijas. Tyrimo tikslas - išanalizuoti alkoholio kontrolės įstatymo pataisų diskursą šalies dienraščiuose. Tyrimo analizei buvo pasirinkti du Lietuvos dienraščiai: „Lietuvos rytas“ ir „Respublika“. Buvo atlikta kiekybinė bei kokybinė dienraščių publikacijų alkoholio kontrolės įstatymo pataisos tema diskurso analiz��. Duomenų rinkimas buvo atliekamas 2008 vasario - balandžio mėnesiais. Rinktos publikacijos laikotarpio nuo 2007 06 08 iki 2008 04 26. Viso buvo surinkta 51 straipsnis, 4 viešieji kreipiniai į Lietuvos Respublikos Prezidentą, viena karikatūra. Atlikta kiekybinė bei kokybinė publikacijų alkoholio kontrolės įstatymo pataisų tema diskurso analizė atskleidė žiniasklaidos formuojamo diskurso galią. Ne tik dienraštis, žurnalistai turi galią savaip „konstruoti“ pranešimą, turima galia pasinaudoja ir įvairios interesų grupės. Analizė parodė, kad „Lietuvos rytas“ kur kas vienpusiškiau pateikė minėtas įstatymo pataisas, neskyrė dėmesio įstatymo pataisų šalininkų argumentams. Kritiškoji diskurso analizė padėjo atskleisti kalbėtojų ar teksto autorių sociokultūrinį pagrindą... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / Problem of investigation. Media is one of the most powerfull discourse that constructs and controls social knowing. It conditions taste, lifestyle, behavior, opinion and valuables of society. Recently media more and more often move from its direct function sustained by principle of free word. More often it is influenced by commercial interest. Purpose of investigation - to analyse the corrections of alcohol control legislation discourse in Lithuanian media. For the analysis of investigation there were chosen two popular Lithuania’s newspapers: “Lietuvos rytas“ and “Respublika“. There was investigated quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis of the publications on the corrections of alcohol control legislation. Data collection was executed in 2008 from february to april. Publications collected from 2007 06 08 till 2008 04 26. There were collected 51 publication, 4 open appeal to the President of Lithuania Respublic, 1 cartoon. Investigation in quantitative and qualitative discourse analysis of the publications on the corrections of alcohol control legislation detected the power of discourse which is formed by media. Not only newsletter, its journalists have their power to construct the article in their way but also various all concerned. The analysis shows that “Lietuvos rytas” was much more jug-hendled than “Respublika”, didin’t give enough attention for legislation supporters‘ arguments. Critical discourse analysis helped to show speakers’, authors’ of texts and... [to full text]