Thesis advisor: Ana Martínez-Alemán / Research has demonstrated that attending a selective college increases the probability of graduating and accessing certain economic and social opportunities, but few community college transfer students obtain such an opportunity. In an effort to seriously consider how to increase access to this underserved population, it is important to examine the bridges by which academically-qualified community college transfer students access selective institutions. This multi-case study looks at why and how three private selective institutions in Massachusetts currently recruit community college students. The four main themes identified as to why these institutions recruit community college students were: strategic enrollment practices, diversity, institutional enrichment, and community engagement. The two themes identified for how institutions recruit community college students were: information sharing and infrastructure support. Several challenges facing both the selective colleges, and the community college transfer students were also identified and explored. The major finding of the study was that the unique position occupied by each institution within the hierarchy of the higher education system influences the rationale as well as the methods by which it approaches and considers the transfer of community college students. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration.

Internet services play an increasingly important role in modern society. Mobile Internet, a fast-growing technology that combines the Internet with mobile devices, has recently become popular. It is predicted that the convergence between mobile networks and the Internet would become the next generation of network architecture, and mobile IPv6 is likely to emerge as the most efficient and cost-effective instrument to achieve "anywhere and anytime" fast Internet and resolve the problems of worldwide mobility management. This research project reviews mobile Internet competition and the market mix in New Zealand, both major players and minor players being involved. The researcher also investigates the requirements of the mobile Internet deployment model from two perspectives: the market and the consumers. Finally the connection between end user services (for example, mobile Internet) and convergence (for example, network convergence and technology convergence) are examined in the research study conducted.The researcher applies a multi-case study strategy to conduct the research project and interview is adopted as the major research technique in order to collect research data. Several organizations which deploy mobile Internet services in New Zealand are chosen as participants, with the aim of offering both personal insights and business views to the research questions and objectives.

This study is focused on how characters of management control system affect organizational climate and the how the relation between those two factors guide performance in different organizations. With four diffent case studies in Taiwan, this study found three types of reaction in management control system, organizational climate and organizational performance: mediator model, moderating model and interactive model. This study showed that the relationship among management control system, organizational climate and performance are not in a given type; there would be various possible mixes in their relationship. In mediator model, management control system is an important factor to improve performance and the awareness of organizational climate in employee directly affected the guiding effects of management control system to organizational performance. According to the previous finding, an environment makes the employee have better awareness about organizational climate will help managers to reach the performance goals with management control systems. In moderating model, organizational climate moderate the linkeage between managemeant control system and the awareness of performance in employee. It is not ony the factor to adjust effects of management control system but also change managers¡¦ designs of management control system and moderate the relationsip on management control system and performance. Organizational performance could be improved when managers design indicators and controlling mechanism with considered interactive effects in organizational climate. This study also found that industrial characters will affect operational process of management control system and awareness of organizational climate in employee. Due to professional knowledge is an important factor for employee in service industry to provide servive to their customers, attendance rate and safety of customers are two important indicators to management control system in such industry. According to this reaesch, the case in service industry put more focus on this performance item than the cases in manufacturing industry, so the study found the characters of industrial technology will also a factor to affect the design of management control system

Internet services play an increasingly important role in modern society. Mobile Internet, a fast-growing technology that combines the Internet with mobile devices, has recently become popular. It is predicted that the convergence between mobile networks and the Internet would become the next generation of network architecture, and mobile IPv6 is likely to emerge as the most efficient and cost-effective instrument to achieve "anywhere and anytime" fast Internet and resolve the problems of worldwide mobility management. This research project reviews mobile Internet competition and the market mix in New Zealand, both major players and minor players being involved. The researcher also investigates the requirements of the mobile Internet deployment model from two perspectives: the market and the consumers. Finally the connection between end user services (for example, mobile Internet) and convergence (for example, network convergence and technology convergence) are examined in the research study conducted.The researcher applies a multi-case study strategy to conduct the research project and interview is adopted as the major research technique in order to collect research data. Several organizations which deploy mobile Internet services in New Zealand are chosen as participants, with the aim of offering both personal insights and business views to the research questions and objectives.

Innovation processes require organizations to transcend current boundaries. These include not only technological as well as social limitations but "above all" the way we address the future. We are used to face the future with our existing knowledge and experiences from the past. This strategy, however, can hardly lead to knowledge off the beaten path. We therefore suggest a new learning approach for organizations, which enables to literally envision a desired future scenario and thereby, allows for the creation of radical new knowledge. We argue that the created knowledge yields a higher degree of novelty and radicalness. Along with an enhanced theory of learning including learning from the future, we present our empirical findings from comparing the outputs of Learning from an Envisioned Future and learning from the past. For this purpose, we use data from two organizational learning projects; one, which was conducted with a high school in Austria and another one, which was conducted with members of the Austrian Economic Chamber. Our findings from both case studies suggest that Learning from an Envisioned Future does produce significantly more paradigm challenging knowledge compared to the output gained from conventional learning from past experiences. We conclude that the combination of both learning sources may lead to best learning outcomes in organizations.

With the trend of globalization, competition on the 21st century’s global economy is complex and filled with challenges. More and more MNCs realize that effective leadership, as a foundation of competitive advantage, plays a crucial role in better performance of the organizations. Both practitioner and theorists thus pay numerous attention to the study of effective leadership in different countries. However, researchers still report noticeable absence of cross-cultural research in the field of the three major Western leaderships study, i.e. charismatic leadership, transformational leadership and transactional leadership. An urgent need raises to further investigate the major Western leadership styles in non-Western contexts. The study aims to explore the most effective leadership style in MNCs Chinese Subsidiaries and to answer the question “why it differs from the Western world?” through applying the Western leadership theories into Chinese business practices. Eventually, the causes behind these differences have been disclosed and discussed. By reviewing 18 peer-reviewed articles, the attributes of the three major Western leadership styles are identified. Subsequently, all dimensions of the three leadership styles are ranked in terms of effectiveness and activity. As a result of combining the rank and all the identified attributes, a theoretical model of the three leadership styles is proposed. Based on a multi-case study approach in the Chinese context, the empirical data is collected through semi-structured interviews with five Chinese managers and five Chinese followers. The result of qualitative data analysis suggests that the most effective Chinese leaders’ behaviors belong to the transactional leadership style. With reference to the proposed theoretical model, this finding differs from the Western leadership theories. The study further reveals the major causes that lead to the differences between the Chinese practices and the Western theories. Seven implications were thus concluded. The study contribute to better understanding the applicability and effectiveness of the Western leadership theory in non-Western contexts, particularly China, and further address the weakness of cross-culture research reported in existing literature. The implications of this study give advice to MNCs that are paying increasing attention to exploring effective leadership style in China.

Throughout the history of teacher education, the final fieldwork experience has often been called the single most influential experience in teacher preparation programs (Burns, Jacobs, & Yendol-Hoppey, 2016; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986; Parker-Katz & Bay, 2008). Though this experience has been expanded to include fieldwork experiences throughout many teacher education programs (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990), the final fieldwork experience remains the closing activity and the lasting image of teacher preparation (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1986; Rosaen & Florio-Ruane, 2008). Given its importance, though, researchers know relatively little about it. “The knowledge thus produced is akin to the quantum theory of physics; we know what goes in . . . and what comes out . . . but not what occurs in the interim” (Guyton & McIntyre, 1990, p. 524). Given the current reforms in mathematics education and mathematics teacher education (National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, 2010; National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), Guyton and McIntyre’s observation is still relevant today. During the final fieldwork experience, university-based and school-based mathematics educators must work together on behalf of the novice to marry university-promoted theory (especially reform-oriented theory) with the practical classroom expectations of day-to-day teaching life. Though there is much research on how this kind of work should be done and the dilemmas that have arisen during fieldwork (e.g., Knight, 2009; Loughran, 2006; Nolan & Hoover, 2004; Sergiovanni & Starratt, 2006; Sullivan & Glanz, 2013), we have little information about the experiences of the mathematics educators who collaborate during final fieldwork. Furthermore, we have very little information on how these educators navigate mathematics reforms to prepare teachers of mathematics. This multi-case study was designed to investigate three novices, their school-based mentors, and their university-based mentor (me) who collaborated during a year-long final fieldwork experience at the close of a middle school mathematics teacher preparation program. To write single case reports that illuminated our collaborative experiences, I wrote the “stories” of each triad. To collect these stories, I used individual and group interviews, paired conversations, asynchronous text interviews, conference observations, collaborative fieldwork artifacts, my own practitioner-researcher journal, and three cycles of participant member checks. After verifying the veracity of the stories of each triad, I engaged in cross-case analysis to make assertions about the commonalities and unique circumstances that defined these fieldwork cases. This study adds to teacher preparation fieldwork literature by evoking a response from educators working in the field and providing them with examples of open dialogue that created more empathetic collaborative experiences. The study also provides evidence that the empathy generated by sharing stories can create more productive and effective learning experiences for the novices involved. In particular, open dialogue provided the collaborators in these cases with a platform for acknowledging pedagogical differences, negotiating fieldwork expectations, and setting and meeting novices’ professional goals. For future investigations of teacher preparation fieldwork collaboration, this study provides evidence that a practitioner approach to research affords the researcher exceptional access to the stories of novices and mentors and establishes empathetic bonds that can make the telling of those stories both illuminating and respectful of the voices they represent.

The aim of the study presented in this thesis was to understand how 16-19 year old students within three different types of educational institution, approached the process of having to 'market' themselves in the context of applying for university places, and why discourses and practices of self-marketing have become more prominent in recent decades. The research focused particularly closely on the role of the Personal Statement as part of the Higher Education application process, and the ways that the particular characteristics and situations of different schools and colleges may shape distinctive self-marketing practices among their students. A multi-case study model was used, in which interviews were conducted with 36 students and various key members of staff, across three institutions and over three successive research phases. This interview data was supplemented by further data gathered from field observation and documentary analysis. The final interview with each respondent used the student's Personal Statement as a resource to explore their self-marketing behaviour in more detail. Drawing on a Bernsteinian theoretical framework it was found that each institution had developed a pedagogy of self-marketing that was strongly embedded within and shaped by the dominant pedagogic code of that institution - both pedagogies being part of an ongoing strategic response to the conditions of the local education market-place. Self-marketing in the context of making applications to Higher Education institutions involved: firstly the recognition of a 'destination habitus' (a combination of institutional status and disciplinary habitus), and secondly the realisation of that destination habitus through the use of particular discourses in the production of the Personal Statement and, in some instances, performance in selection interviews. Crucially, the 'imaginary subject' projected by the dominant pedagogic code of the school/college was a reflection of the 'destination habitus' of the typical university/course that students from that institution in the main applied to. Individual student's orientations to self-marketing were then summarised in, what I have termed, a 'self-marketing profile', which shaped the discourses they deployed on their Personal Statement, and was itself shaped by the institution's pedagogy of self-marketing. The primary conclusion of this thesis is that the far-reaching education reforms of the late 1980s in England and Wales have created market pressures which powerfully constrain both 16-19 institutions and Higher Education institutions to create market 'niches' for themselves, which then significantly influence students' self-marketing practices. These practices are therefore strategic responses both on the part of the institutions that students are currently located in, and also those they are applying to, and demonstrate that the institution 16-19 year olds attend makes a very significant difference to their orientation toward and experience of self-marketing.

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Due to a lack of effective writing strategies and inhibition of English language proficiency, university students in China are found to produce little and shallow content in their English academic writing. Similar problems are also embodied in the academic writing of Chinese overseas students who struggle to survive in the target academic community. The purpose of this study was to investigate the writing processes of second language (L2) writers, specifically examining the writing strategies of three Chinese post-graduate students in an Australian higher education institution. The study was prompted by the paucity of research in the writing strategies used by Chinese students in English academic writing in an authentic context. Although it was too small in scale to generalise in the field of L2 writing, the study will stimulate research in L2 writing theory and practice. Based on a review of theories related to L2 writing and research in Chinese and English writing strategies, the writing strategies used by three Chinese post-graduate students while writing academic papers in English were investigated. Their understandings of English and Chinese writing processes, the issue of transfer of Chinese writing into English writing and cultural influence of native language on L2 writing were explored as well. Qualitative hermeneutic multi-case study methods were employed to provide a richer description of the writing strategies used by the three students to develop a deeper understanding of the L2 writing process. Data were provided by three Chinese post-graduate student writers in Public Health who were observed undertaking different tasks. Ally, a Masters student, was observed completing one of the assignments for a course. Susan and Roger, both doctoral students, were observed working on a second stage proposal and a journal paper respectively. Data collected from semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, retrospective post-writing discussions and papers were categorised and analysed using topical structure analysis and cohesion analysis. The findings suggest that writing in a second language is a complicated idiosyncratic developmental process influenced by cognitive development, social/educational experience, the writer's first language (L1) and second language (L2) proficiency and cultural factors as well. These proficient writers were found to utilise a broad range of writing strategies while writing academic papers in English. This study in some degree supports Silva's (1993) finding that the L2 writing process is strategically, rhetorically, and linguistically different from the L1 writing process. Most of the metacognitve, cognitive, communicative and social/affective strategies except rhetorical strategies (operationally defined in this study as organisation of text or paragraphs) were found to transfer across languages positively. These student writers were noticed to have difficulties in acculturating into the target academic discourse community because of their background of reader-responsibility which is regarded as a crucial feature in Eastern rhetoric and is distinguished from writer-responsibility in English rhetoric (Hinds, 1987, 1990).