Educators often employ instructional approaches because of their customary use in the classroom, not because they are necessarily supported by validated evidence. Missing from leadership literature is an understanding specifically about elementary school principals' use of knowledge sources to support their instructional leadership. This study identified the knowledge sources used by nine elementary school principals, discovered the barriers they faced in using the sources, and revealed how they guided their teachers to use the sources. This study was guided by three research questions: (a) What are the knowledge sources used by elementary school principals in Virginia? (b) What are the barriers elementary school principals face to using the knowledge sources? (c) How do elementary school principals guide their teachers to use the sources? The elementary school principals completed extensive data analysis of students' Standards of Learning (SOL) test results and curriculum related benchmark test results to determine their students' instructional weaknesses and strengths. Despite the complexity of challenges such as students' poverty, mobility, and diversity, the elementary school principals conveyed a commitment to access the best current professional knowledge related to the curriculum, leadership, the brain, poverty, diversity, and motivation. Time constraints and funding limitations emerged as barriers for elementary school principals with using knowledge sources. The elementary school principals disseminated knowledge to teachers in a variety of formats. This study provides useful information to school system leaders, school board members, designers of principal preparation programs, and for professional organizations that seek to improve the profession by promoting evidence-based practices. The elementary school principals led with an overriding belief that all children could be successful. Their omnipresent spirit and motivating presence allowed their teachers to prevail despite significant contextual issues and identified instructional weaknesses related to their students. As head learners they accessed the best available knowledge sources and exemplified continuous professional enhancement. Results from SOL tests and curriculum based tests data were critically important knowledge sources. Data allowed the elementary school principals to lead teachers to make sound instructional decisions and enhance their pedagogical repertoires. / Ed. D.

Geography of knowledge sources in knowledge intensive business services and creative industries: the case study of design industry This thesis examines the creation and transfer of knowledge within knowledge-intensive business services and creative industries, with special attention being paid to the design industry. To obtain the required information it was implemented a series of in-depth interviews with representatives of selected design studios. Acquired knowledge provides in- depth probe into the issue of creation and transmission of knowledge and the nature of innovation in the design industry. The main finding is that for the creation and transfer of knowledge within the design industry existence of networks between the design studios and specific subjects is essential. Key words: knowledge sources, innovation, networks

Managing organizational knowledge is a critical issue for business. Due to the dynamic changes of environment and market demand, organizational knowledge often evolve over time and it is important to understand different patterns of organizational knowledge and their relationships with organizational competitiveness. In this research, we propose an evolutionary model of organizational knowledge. This model consists of four major stages: Variation generation, Internal Selection, Replication, and Retention. The evolution of organizational knowledge generally follows this model to evolve over time. A case study was conducted to assess the model. Evidence collected through interviews in a large semi-conductor company indicates the existence of these stages and activities. Besides, we found two evolutionary patterns driven from different knowledge sources. Their distinct features are compared in the thesis.

Allt fler människor blir överviktiga. Människor som sitter hemma i soffan och äter istället för att gåut och röra på sig. Det finns dock vissa som tar på sig träningskläderna och ger sig iväg för att träna,människor som på något vis nästan alltid finner motivationen till att röra på sig. Flera studier visarpå att träning är bra för hälsan så länge det är i lagom mängd. Syftet med den här studien är att tareda på vad som gör att vissa människor är motiverade till att träna. Hur de här människorna får detatt gå ihop med vardagslivet och om de har kunskaper som de kan dela med sig av. I studienintervjuades tre personer från olika yrkesgrupper angående vad som motiverar dem till att träna.Resultatet visar på att välmående är en stor motivationskälla för människorna, det framkommerockså att mycket av den kunskap de besitter kommer från internet och tidningar, alltså media.Resultatet beskriver också hur personerna lägger upp sina dagar för att hinna med att träna och vadde får prioritera bort för att tiden ska räcka till.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between knowledgesources, knowledge capacities, and business model innovation in small medium-sizeenterprises (SMEs) and discover the specific pattern among the three groups. Design/methodology - A total of 103 SMEs' CEOs, entrepreneurs and seniormanagers provide the samples for exploratory factor analyses and multiple regressionanalyses. The data is collected by self-completion survey based on perceptualmeasurement of constructs and also referred to objective data from companies' annualreports. Findings - The results indicate a significant relationship between knowledge sources,capacities and business model innovation. External knowledge interaction associatedwith the business network is positively contributed to business model innovation.Information system integration is directly related to business model innovation andmediates in the link between individual knowledge and business model innovation. Thebetter understanding of customers is also positively related to achieving a successfulbusiness model innovation. SMEs identify knowledge sources, develop knowledgecapacities and apply them specifically in different phases of business modelinnovation. Practical implications - To confront the big enterprises' sufficient knowledge, thisstudy inspires entrepreneurs and leadership of SMEs with the possibility of businessmodel innovation. By integrating and implementing the knowledge from external andinternal, SMEs can intentionally enable to map the phases of business modelinnovation, reach the helpful resources, proactively recognize the challenges andfinally achieve a competitive business model.Research limitations/implications - The confirmatory bias might miss out on thephenomenon occurring and the findings are still generally for direct application to aspecific situation. More focused case studies will be suggested in the future to furtherinvestigate the reality differing from individuals, strategies, sectors and nat ions. Inaddition, longitudinal studies with less time restriction will be feasible to understandhow knowledge and business model interact with each other. Originality/value - This study pioneers a measurement of success in business modelinnovation and a justification of overall influence of knowledge on business modelinnovation. By further implementing, some of the results testify the originality'svalidity in SMEs, others present exceptional findings beyond the previous theories.

The basis of dietary habits is linked to an individuals’ nutrition knowledge; for collegiate athletes this is the difference between optimal performance and falling short. To understand how nutrition information is disseminated to student-athletes, this research surveyed the athletes themselves and their sports staff (coaches, athletic trainers, and strength and conditioning specialists) on their current knowledge. Sport staff and student-athletes at East Tennessee State University were given the opportunity to participate in a 52-question online survey that tested both their general and sports-related nutrition knowledge. While the study sample size did not allow for statistical analyses required to address all three research questions, findings did indicate some variation between teams on measures of nutrition knowledge, and there was a statistically significant difference between sport staff and athletes’ general and sport nutrition knowledge. This study aimed to understand if nutrition knowledge of sport staff directly affects that of their corresponding athletes.

The purpose of this study was to determine what sources of professional knowledge are available to principals in 1 rural East Tennessee school district. Qualitative research methods were applied to gain an understanding of what sources of knowledge are used by school principals in 1 rural East Tennessee school district and the barriers they face to using knowledge sources. This study questioned whether these resources are adequate for, accessible to, and used by school principals. In this study I examined principals’ perceptions of the need for a district-led mentoring program. The study first consisted of a preliminary data collection procedure. Ten of the school district’s principals completed a demographic questionnaire and list of survey questions developed from the 4 research questions and elements of the literature review. These data were reviewed by the researcher in order to categorize the respondents’ responses into meaningful demographic data. The final data collection procedure involved 6 principals chosen to complete face-to-face interviews consisting of open-ended questions developed from an initial interview protocol. Results indicated the principals’ examples of seeking knowledge and information from data sources, collegial professionalism, readings of research and literature, and professional development. The principals presented evidence that they embrace teaching and learning within their roles as school principals. The 2 areas on which the principals focused their concerns were time and the current state department educational reforms. The principals provided recommendations for a future district-wide principal mentoring program.

Identifying topics of a textual document is useful for many purposes. We can organize the documents by topics in digital libraries. Then, we could browse and search for the documents with specific topics. By examining the topics of a document, we can quickly understand what the document is about. To augment the traditional manual way of topic tagging tasks, which is labor-intensive, solutions using computers have been developed. This dissertation describes the design and development of a topic identification approach, in this case applied to disaster events. In a sense, this study represents the marriage of research analysis with an engineering effort in that it combines inspiration from Cognitive Informatics with a practical model from Information Retrieval. One of the design constraints, however, is that the Web was used as a universal knowledge source, which was essential in accessing the required information for inferring topics from texts. Retrieving specific information of interest from such a vast information source was achieved by querying a search engine's application programming interface. Specifically, the information gathered was processed mainly by incorporating the Vector Space Model from the Information Retrieval field. As a proof of concept, we subsequently developed and evaluated a prototype tool, Xpantrac, which is able to run in a batch mode to automatically process text documents. A user interface of Xpantrac also was constructed to support an interactive semi-automatic topic tagging application, which was subsequently assessed via a usability study. Throughout the design, development, and evaluation of these various study components, we detail how the hypotheses and research questions of this dissertation have been supported and answered. We also present that our overarching goal, which was the identification of topics in a human-comparable way without depending on a large training set or a corpus, has been achieved. / Ph. D.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T16:58:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Julio Cesar Guimaraes Queiroz.pdf: 840643 bytes, checksum: 8510f01586ba2706e33cdbfeb75df9d1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-12-06 / Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo / The aim of this research is to investigate the mathematical knowledge sources of a teachers group who teaches in a public elementary school, in the city of São Paulo . Firstly we checked the available mathematical knowledge sources and we did a complementary research about similar themes. We also checked the graduation and recognition of the teachers as professionals. We found in Tardif and collaborators the background for development of this research. In order to find out the answer for the research question, we applied a needs analysis with thirteen questions for sixteen teachers. According to the answers, we chose three questions for an interview with five of these teachers to becoming clear important points in their answers. The result gotten into the needs analysis shows that the main material used by these respondents is the didactic book and also the graduated Mathematics teachers that help them with their doubts. We also concluded that the knowledge valued by the respondents is the one that Tardif (2006) calls Experiential Knowledge, which comes from in their individual or group daily experiences / O objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar sobre fontes de saber matemático de um grupo de professores e professoras que lecionam nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental (do primeiro ao quarto ano do ciclo I) em uma escola pública municipal paulista. Para isso, percorremos uma trajetória de investigação sobre as fontes de saber matemático disponíveis e procuramos fazer um levantamento de trabalhos sobre tema similar. Também estudamos sobre a formação e a profissionalização do professor. Buscamos o referencial para o desenvolvimento de nossa pesquisa em Tardif e colaboradores. Em busca de resposta à nossa questão de pesquisa, aplicamos um questionário para dezesseis professores, composto por treze questões, e realizamos entrevista com cinco desses professores, com três questões que julgamos que esclareceriam pontos importantes levantados a partir das respostas ao questionário. Ao analisarmos os dados obtidos por meio dos questionários e das entrevistas, verificamos que as fontes de saber mais utilizadas pelos sujeitos de nossa pesquisa são os livros didáticos e os colegas, incluindo os professores especialistas, com formação em Licenciatura em Matemática. Verificamos também que os saberes valorizados pelos sujeitos são os que Tardif (2006) chama de Saberes Experienciais, aqueles que emergem das experiências individuais ou coletivas no cotidiano escolar

<p>Докторска дисертација разматра утицај<br />информалног учења на ниво информационе<br />писмености ученика. У циљу тога, анализирају се<br />карактеристике информалног учења, начини<br />коришћења информалних извора знања, као и<br />начини на који ученици најчешће долазе до<br />информација и знања о ИКТ. Истраживање је<br />вршено на узорку од 930 ученика четвртих разреда<br />средњих школа, а мерни инструмент за<br />истраживање је наменски конструисан као<br />сумациона скала за процену начина стицања и<br />усвајања знања о ИКТ. На основу резултата<br />истраживања, утврђено је да ученици у великој<br />мери користе информалне изворе знања, утврђени<br />су начини на који ученици најчешће долазе до<br />информација и знања о ИКТ, а посебно се истиче<br />значај коришћења Интернета као информалног<br />извора знања. Такође, резултатима истраживања је<br />утврђено да се коришћењем информалних извора<br />знања доприноси повећању нивоа информатичке,<br />дигиталне и мултимедијалне писмености ученика.<br />Резултати истраживања могу да послуже као<br />допринос валидацији информалног учења.</p> / <p>Doktorska disertacija razmatra uticaj<br />informalnog učenja na nivo informacione<br />pismenosti učenika. U cilju toga, analiziraju se<br />karakteristike informalnog učenja, načini<br />korišćenja informalnih izvora znanja, kao i<br />načini na koji učenici najčešće dolaze do<br />informacija i znanja o IKT. Istraživanje je<br />vršeno na uzorku od 930 učenika četvrtih razreda<br />srednjih škola, a merni instrument za<br />istraživanje je namenski konstruisan kao<br />sumaciona skala za procenu načina sticanja i<br />usvajanja znanja o IKT. Na osnovu rezultata<br />istraživanja, utvrđeno je da učenici u velikoj<br />meri koriste informalne izvore znanja, utvrđeni<br />su načini na koji učenici najčešće dolaze do<br />informacija i znanja o IKT, a posebno se ističe<br />značaj korišćenja Interneta kao informalnog<br />izvora znanja. Takođe, rezultatima istraživanja je<br />utvrđeno da se korišćenjem informalnih izvora<br />znanja doprinosi povećanju nivoa informatičke,<br />digitalne i multimedijalne pismenosti učenika.<br />Rezultati istraživanja mogu da posluže kao<br />doprinos validaciji informalnog učenja.</p> / <p>The doctoral dissertation examines the impact of<br />informal learning on the students&rsquo; information literacy<br />level. For that purpose, it analyses characteristics of<br />informal learning, the ways informal knowledge<br />sources are used, as well as the methods most<br />frequently used by students to obtain the information<br />and knowledge on ICT. The research has been<br />conducted on a sample of 930 fourth grade secondary<br />school students, and the research measuring instrument<br />has been a questionnaire created with a specific<br />purpose to assess the ways knowledge on ICT has been<br />obtained and acquired. Based on the research results, it<br />has been concluded that students use informal<br />knowledge sources to a large extent, the means<br />students use most frequently to obtain information and<br />knowledge on ICT have been identified as well,<br />whereas the significance of the use of internet as<br />informal knowledge source is most remarkable. The<br />research results have also shown that use of informal<br />knowledge sources contribute to the increase of the<br />level of the students&rsquo; information, digital and<br />multimedia literacy. The research results may serve as<br />a contribution to validation of informal learning.</p>