The current study examined if the narrative comprehension deficits that children with ADHD exhibit during childhood and adolescence continue in college students as a function of ADHD symptoms, and if a relationship existed between ADHD symptoms and self-efficacy. Children and adolescence with ADHD have difficulties in several areas of narrative comprehension, including maintaining goal structure, distinguishing important events from unimportant events, and making causal connections. If these deficits persist there also may be a relationship between ADHD symptoms and self-efficacy. Higher levels of ADHD symptomatology were associated with difficulties recalling story events in the college population. Some findings differed from the patterns observed for children and adolescents. College students with higher symptoms of ADHD recalled fewer events in the Growing Pains recall. However, unlike children and adolescents, college students with higher symptoms of ADHD did not recall fewer of the Growing Pains important events or causally connected events. The pattern of findings for the fables is consistent with that seen in research studying children with symptoms of ADHD. These deficits may lead to a serious deficit in academic outcomes within this population.

This autoethnographic study presents a narrative of my lifelong yearning to pursue the practice of magic while concurrently managing the frustrations of being a public elementary school teacher. This study also presents sets of facilitating factors that enabled me to surmount personal, professional, and sociocultural challenges to rekindle my direction and purpose in life. The research questions guiding this study include the following: 1) What are the multiple levels of influence that have contributed to my desire to be a magician and leave the teaching profession? ; and 2) In the interrelation of the above context, how do I reignite my artistic passion and purpose? Using the Bronfenbrenner model of human ecology, this study explores multiple levels of influence spanning those from a sociocultural perspective to those of an inter- and intrapersonal nature.

Mapping images – when words don’t work. My master essay is a walking contradiction. It is an explanation of how a non-wordly thought process emerged – but explained in words. Words have never been my strong suit and in my essay I try to illustrate how I use images instead of words, mapping instead of structure, to escape the dictatorship of the written explanation. Where words have a certain linear structure from A to B my thought process is instead a juxtaposed jumble of heterogeneous elements that together create different associations in a rhizomatic and non-structured way. When I begin a project it is always the images that guide my idea instead of the idea guiding my images. In this way I let myself be seduced by the non-explainable atmosphere of the images. Instead of explanations I collect the images in big maps that have no clear beginning, middle or end. I let the images speak to each other, compliment or contrast one another. For me this is a way of keeping my work open as long as possible. As I work with video and narrative structure in the final product, the juxtaposing of images is a way of postponing and contrasting the more closed process of editing on a linear timeline.  I have a strong belief in the power of images. The old cliché ‘a picture says more than a thousand words’ still works for me, specifically because they don’t have to explain themselves or be ‘literal’ (in the literal sense of the word). They allow me to dwell in atmospheres, non-logic connections and open questions. Together, the mapping of images doesn’t create one clear design for my work, but a heterogeneous multiplicity of potential works to come. Sooner or later I have to take control of the process and be the dictator of the images. But my experience have taught me, that the more I allow the images to speak for themselves in all their ambivalence, the more I can infuse my final work with the same ambivalence and open-endedness. My works are not answers, but questions. And the collection of images that guide my work process let me keep asking the questions that words cannot formulate. The essay grabbles with these themes of words, images and process. As an illustration of my process, the essay is accompanied by a visual map, where I have tried to explain the associations that the images create for the theme of my work. I haven’t escaped the dictatorship of words yet, but maybe given the images their proper place within my work process. / A 4 channel video installation. Size on screens: 136 x 76 cm. Duration on video: 17 min. In a defenceless condition we enter a room. And they in us. All of the rooms. Sure, there are differences. Though it is not important here, not anymore anyway. It is not important, when you will not remember why you walked into the room to begin with. What got you to enter, and why do you stay. Moments that extends infinitely in time, expands and pushes away the oxygen in the room, like the last to experience before death is this strange, anaerobe environment. Two people are sitting in a room that changes looks six times. They are waiting, but no one knows what they are waiting for. While waiting they start to confess to each other, but never directly. In stead they try to explain and apologize their action without ever mentioning what the actions were.

I detta arbete undersökts det huruvida ergodiska texter kan ge ett bättre stöd för att minnas en fabula av en text gentemot en traditionell text. Med två versioner av en text, en ergodisk och en traditionell, har deltagare fått ge ett återgivande av den version de tog del av. För att analysera deltagarnas återgivanden gjordes en lista av hållpunkter baserade på berättelsens fabula. Utifrån resultaten kom det fram att den ergodiska versionen var lättare att ta till sig, men på grund av det låga deltagarantalet ger detta inte ett representativt resultat. Vidare studier skulle kunna ge mer representativa resultat.

This thesis explores recent Scottish penal culture through the biographical narrative accounts of retired judges. Insights from the sociology of punishment are used to develop a more fully cultural approach to the judiciary and to sentencing practice. This entails a view of the judiciary as a complex institution whose practices reflect tension and compromise, and which recognises judges as bearers of penal culture through their sentencing practices. The aims of the research are twofold: to provide insight into the changing conditions of judging in Scotland and into the judicial role in criminal justice. Narrative research methods were used to interview retired judges and gain contextual accounts of judicial life and practice. This approach focuses on subjectivity and on individual responses to experiences and constraints. Reflecting the judicial role in punishment, an interpretive position based on the hermeneutics of faith and suspicion is used to evaluate and interpret these narrative accounts. This conceptual and methodological framework is used to explore aspects of judicial occupational culture including training and early experiences, the status of criminal work, judicial conduct, collegiality, the influence of criminological research on sentencing practice, and the relevance of the ‘master narrative’ - judicial independence - to sentencing. It is also used to explore the frameworks of meaning and vocabularies of motive which judges bring to penal practice. What emerges from these judicial narratives is firstly the entanglement of individual life histories and organisational imperatives. Secondly, a picture emerges of a judicial habitus that includes complex motivations, some openness to new approaches, and capacity for reflecting on the conditions which structure and constrain criminal justice practice. This suggests the reflexive judge may be an important vector of penal change and there are implications for judicial training, penal reform and for the dissemination of criminological and criminal justice research.

This doctoral study explores the museum as site and resource for language learning by adult migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision has emerged over the past decade in museums across the UK and elsewhere within an increasing emphasis on informal adult learning programs. While there has been extensive research on second language acquisition, museum learning and social inclusion separately, there have been few studies that have investigated language learning in the context of museums, and even fewer studies that have sought to understand the benefits of language learning in museums for this target group of learners and how it might relate to the concept of inclusion. The study is centred around an ethnography that addresses these gaps in the literature and which examined three primary questions: (a) what are the target learners’ experiences of social inclusion and exclusion post-migration, and its interface with their English language abilities? (b) what are learners’ perceptions of the impact of participating in ESOL in museums in terms of exclusion and inclusion?, and (c) what occurs in interaction during ESOL in museums? In collaboration with City of Edinburgh Council Museums and Galleries Service, a cohort of 14 adult ESOL learners were studied over a 5-month ESOL course held in the City’s Museums and Galleries. In-depth time-series interviews were conducted with participants over the 5-month period. Narrative analysis (Labov & Waletzky, 1967; Riessman, 1993) of interviews examined narrative trajectories within case and across cases, mapping experiences post migration, in and beyond museums. In order to investigate the affordances of dialogue in museums, conversational interaction was observed and recorded during the 11 weekly museum visits. Conversation analysis (Leinhardt & Knutson, 2004; Markee, 2000) examined what occurred in talk, focusing on interaction between interlocutors, its function and content. Drawing on a social theory that conceptualizes language as symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1977, 1989, 1991) and identities as constructed and reflexive (Block, 2007b; Giddens, 1991; Norton, 2000), analysis indicates that the experience of migration provoked deficit conceptions of self as participants negotiated their new social milieu through English language. Access to opportunities to engage in English are mediated both by institutional forces, e.g. social space afforded in institutional contexts, and perceptions of self. Analysis of dialogue in museums shows participants positioning themselves and being positioned as ‘knowers’, where primacy was given to collaborative meaning making about museum displays, objects and artefacts in conversational interaction. Analyses of interviews indicate shifts in identity trajectories from deficit to competent views of self through participation in ESOL in museums. These findings suggest a cumulative effect of micro-interactions on identities constructed in dialogue and point to the critical role which learning in museums and other informal environments can have in terms of providing social space within which to engage in positive dialogue that both challenges isolation and exclusion and helps foster increasing confidence and competence in the target language alongside feelings of inclusion for the majority of participants in the research.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

This dissertation demonstrates the function of the church in war in Revelation. Chapter 1 tracks the development of publications that address this subject and also illustrates the need for another academic contribution to it. Furthermore, it explains this dissertation's particular narratological approach. Chapter 2 examines the plot of Revelation. Borrowing the tools from narrative plot criticism, this chapter shows the priority of the warfare motif to the structure and development of Revelation's plot. Chapter 3 analyses Revelation's characters. Like Chapter 2, it proves the significance of the warfare motif to the author's process of characterization. Although minor characters are given a brief discussion, more attention is given to the way in which the main characters contribute to the concept of war. Chapter 4 illustrates the relevance of war to the author's point of view (POV). This chapter presents an analysis of passages wherein the author's POV is manifest in order to test the import of the war motif for the author's perspective. Chapter 5 identifies specific images in Revelation that contribute to Revelation's theology of the ecclesia. Provided is an exegetical defense for understanding the seven churches (1:4-3:22), the 144,000 and the multitude (7:1-17), the temple (11:1-2), the two witnesses (11:3-13), the 144,000 male virgins (14:1-5), and the judgment army (19;11-21) ecclesiologically. From those images, this chapter also renders a working definition of the essence of the church. Chapter 6 considers how each of the passages and images discussed in chapter 5 describe the function of the church in warfare in Revelation. All the preceding chapters warrant and support the concluding findings. Thus, this work hopes to fill a gap in ecclesiological and narratival studies in Revelation. The aim of this work is not simply to perform a specific kind of narrative critique upon Revelation, but to show how narrative criticism informs Revelation's theology of the church. Specifically, the Apocalypse mandates the ecclesia to do much more than obey; the narrative calls the church to engage her enemies in the cosmic war with specific acts of obedience until Christ's final, consummative victory.

In this thesis report traces I detail the process from the conception of the idea through the arduous development and finally the final product of Wayne Cheong’s narrative screenplay. Also included are the numerous revisions that have resulted from his involvement in this project. / text

The principal objective of this thesis is to explore the representation of China in British television documentaries broadcast between 1980 and 2000, focusing on historical documentaries. The thesis addresses, as its primary research questions and on the basis of substantial database, what is represented, how that representation is realised, and the social, historical influences which contextualise and underpin the representation of China. These questions relating to textual representation are framed within the wider context of Sino-Western relations, Western self-perceptions and conceptions of China. The study aims to reveal mechanisms of textual representation by concentrating on two main dimensions: the internal narrative structures and key discursive formations of the documentary text (including visuals), and structures of power relations operating to shape the representation in both the textual domain of meaning mediation and institutional domain of documentary production. Two aspects of the representation are foregrounded: China as a civilisation and China as a Communist `other'. The thesis focuses primarily on the narrative as a methodology in approaching representation, as documentary achieves meaning mainly through the stories it tells. Two dimensions of narrative are explored: a structuralist dimension drawing on theories developed by Propp and Silverstone, and a discursive dimension which is framed within Foucault's concept of power and knowledge. Extensive primary research established the database for the study, which is made up of 170 documentaries broadcast during the sample period between 1980 and 2000, and 18 field interviews with key personnel in broadcasting and production companies. The thesis argues that the British television documentary representation presents a largely Western understanding of China filtered through, among other things, selfperceptions and conceptions of the `other', and mediated by various sources of power. The process of representing `what is China' is enmeshed with the process of constructing how China should be viewed. The result of this social construction of truth and knowledge is that certain values, convictions, and ideologies are reinforced and reproduced in the vital domain of documentary representation