Thesis (M.Ed. (Educational Management))--Mahidol University, 2007. / LICL has E-Thesis 0024 ; please contact computer services.

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As societies and cultures evolve with time, human settlements also transform gradually. These days, globalization and modernity bring about rapid changes and in a matter of a few years, the face of a settlement is changed forever and the lives of the people are no longer the same. While such changes are inevitable, it will be suggested that they should be conducive to the existing built environment. Change brought about by capitalistic and consumeristic pressures does not necessarily have to take away the identity of a settlement.Because I am a person from Kathmandu, Nepal, I chose that place to study how and why change is evidenced in the environments, lifestyles and house forms of the local people, and to explore how specific families both maintain and mediate their cultural values amidst these changes. As much as Kathmandu is an Asian center of glorious art, architectural, and cultural history, it is also a center of development, growth and change. In recent years, a growing trend in Kathmandu is for homeowners to leave their ancestralhome in and of the historic city and to relocate to new urban areas. This thesis focuses on this particular trend of relocation.Available literature, documentation from other sources, and the author's few years of professional experience in Kathmandu, shape the analysis of the settlement patterns, house forms, socio-cultural activities and the economics of the urban Kathmandu in the past and the present. The families, which have lived through the changes -- as they have moved from the historic center to new neighborhoods -- are the ones who can best represent the current scenario. Four such families were studied. Their answers to a lengthy questionnaire along with photographic documentation and physical mapping of their old and new dwellings have formed the main body of research.In their responses, the local people spoke volumes on how change is necessary, desirable, and inevitable. Still, there are major cultural values that never change. They exist in the spirits and to some extent in the way people conduct daily chores in the house. To a greater extent, however, cultural affinity exists at the larger scale of a neighborhood. Quality of life in the historic city is brought about by its rich festivities, sociability of spaces and the feeling of communal harmony. Although the society is changing into a more individualistic one and material and spatial needs are fulfilled in the new location, people miss the quality of life in terms of the socio-cultural attributes of the old place.As designers, we can extract upon these attributes to bring back their lost sense of place.Being sensitive to these values, design can become more a response than an imposition. / Department of Architecture

The patterns of paid and unpaid work adopted by migrants families with dependent children are more or less similar to that of prevailing working pattern of men and women of Australian born couples. A case study with 28 couple families, 14 husbands and 14 wives who migrated from Nepal under "skill" or "professional" category and the literature review on paid and unpaid work of couple families with dependent children show that in both families the trend of change of working pattern in paid and unpaid work is similar. With the increased participation of married women in the paid labour force, men increased participation in household work. There is increased household work for both husbands and wives, but women tend to do more household "inside" and childcare work than men. In the mean time, men tend to do more work in the "masculine" sphere of "outside" work in house maintenance, repair and car care. The only factor that differentiates working pattern of migrant families with Australian born families is the experience of migration and the category that they migrated. The change of working practice of paid and unpaid work of migrant families are affected by the change of family type from extended family to two generational family and their education and previous work experience that they brought along with them. Professional migrants who migrated family as a "unit" migrated spouse and dependent children together and they made their own decision to migrate, unlike other categories of migrants who migrated from political or economic pressure. One of the important experiences of migrant families is that there are new opportunity, new lifestyle, new intimacy and companionship and new sharing of work between husbands and wives after migration. At the same time, there are losses of extended family relatives, close friends and cultural event which affects their day to day lives. There are Australian based friends who provided support in the initial period of migration but these families do not provide regular assistance or support which family relatives provided in Nepal.

The celebrated Sherpas of Himalayan mountaineering, who lived in the rugged high-altitude environment of the Everest area of Nepal, lacked Western style medical services and so iconic New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, 'hero' of Everest, built them a small hospital in 1966. He administered Khunde Hospital through the Himalayan Trust, but with substantial support, since the late-1970s, from the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation in Canada. Overseas medical volunteers assisted by local staff provided a range of outpatient and inpatient, curative and preventive services. The history of Khunde Hospital, therefore, provides a case study for the introduction of modern medicine, as Sherpas referred to Western or biomedicine, and for the implementation of an overseas aid project. In my analysis I have moved away from a binary, oppositional examination of a cross-cultural encounter and have situated Khunde Hospital in a conceptual device of 'worlds'. I argue that the hospital existed and operated simultaneously within multiple separate yet interconnected worlds, but do not privilege one discourse over another. These worlds work beyond culture, encompassing institutions, political structures and knowledge communities and were physical, social and intellectual spaces within which there were rules and norms of behaviour that structured action. In order to explore the histories of Khunde Hospital I set it within four distinct but overlapping worlds: that of Sir Edmund Hillary, the Sherpa, Western medicine and international aid. These are worlds that I have identified as being important for the questions I am looking at. My central discussion is the ongoing encounter between Sherpa beliefs and practices about sickness and modern medicine, particularly looking at the individual patient�s use and non-use of the hospital and how staff there responded. The response was neither a one-way diffusion of Western medical practice, nor a collision between the spirit-suffused system of the Sherpa and scientific biomedicine. People used the hospital for some things but not others, based on their perception as to whether the hospital was the effective, appropriate option to take. Over the years, the hospital and community became used to each other in a relationship that was in practice a coexistence of difference. Each acknowledged and could incorporate aspects of the other�s beliefs and practices when dealing with a person�s sickness, but remained separate. Using the conceptual device of worlds, however, suggests the need for this example of the introduction and spread of Western medicine to be grounded in a consideration of Hillary�s particular form of aid, the shifting discourse of international medical aid between the 1960s and the 1990s and the unique world of the Sherpa of Khumbu. All of these worlds influenced the provision of health care at and from Khunde Hospital in different ways, sometimes separately but often simultaneously, and at some times and for some issues more than others. People, place and relationships often had as much influence as - and sometimes more than - the medicine. If the key to understanding Khunde Hospital is the relationship between Sherpas and Hillary and the respect that began in a partnership on the mountains in the 1950s, then the multiple worlds of Khunde Hospital underscore the complexities of implementing Sherpa requests to build a hospital in their rugged home near the world�s highest mountain.

<p>The purpose of this study is to find out what working procedures are used in Nepalese schools. We have also investegated teachers'views on how schools are organised and how the school system is structured in Nepal. Furthermore, we studied what kind of National Curriculum and other official documents that existed in Nepal, to support teachers when planning their teaching. In our study we used an ethnographic approach. </p><p>The literature review and our results show that the teachers in Nepal face several challenges in their profession. We believe that the central power of the government can in a future development be discussed in terms of de-centralisation of the school system. If so, it could be problematised how and what the teachers should teach and how the pupils'final School Leaving Certificate exam should look like.</p>

The purpose of this study is to find out what working procedures are used in Nepalese schools. We have also investegated teachers'views on how schools are organised and how the school system is structured in Nepal. Furthermore, we studied what kind of National Curriculum and other official documents that existed in Nepal, to support teachers when planning their teaching. In our study we used an ethnographic approach. The literature review and our results show that the teachers in Nepal face several challenges in their profession. We believe that the central power of the government can in a future development be discussed in terms of de-centralisation of the school system. If so, it could be problematised how and what the teachers should teach and how the pupils'final School Leaving Certificate exam should look like.

Research on acculturation has been evolving over the past few decades; however, with very limited research focusing on the acculturation experiences of South Asians in the Hong Kong context, this study helps to fill the research gap by examining the acculturation experiences and adaptation of Pakistani and Nepalese adults in Hong Kong. The dearth of information on the acculturation process of South Asians prevents us from fully comprehending the factors that facilitate or impede their adaptation. By incorporating Berry’s acculturation research and Ward and colleagues’ work on adaptation as the theoretical framework, this study investigated important psychosocial constructs such as the impact of acculturation orientation, perceived discrimination, acculturation stress and social support on psychological and sociocultural adaptation. This study adopts both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Using a cross-sectional research design in the first part of the study, data was collected by means of convenience sampling from a total of 402 Pakistani and Nepalese first-generation adults. Two focus groups were then established after preliminary analyses of the quantitative results, providing more in-depth understanding and context-specific explanation in interpreting relationships among variables. Moreover, the focus groups also provided the opportunity for study participants to augment and supplement the quantitative data. Quantitative data were analyzed with a series of analysis of variance and hierarchical regression analysis. The results of this study highlighted the levels of complexity apparent in the dynamic process of acculturation among Pakistani and Nepalese immigrants in Hong Kong. For the Nepalese, factors such as integration strategy, higher level of orientation towards the host and heritage culture, as well as perceived social support, were significant predictors for life satisfaction. Acculturation orientation to the heritage culture, the separation strategy, and acculturative stress were significantly associated with psychological distress. On the other hand, sociocultural adaptation was more predicted by the acculturation orientation to the host culture and the heritage culture, the integration strategy, acculturative stress and perceived discrimination. Marginalization strategy was associated with lower life satisfaction, higher psychological distress and more difficulties in sociocultural adaptation. For Pakistanis, gender and perceived social support were indicative of life satisfaction, whereas perceived discrimination and acculturative stress emerged as significant predictors of psychological distress. Sociocultural adaptation was more strongly predicted by education level, proficiency of the host language, the integration strategy, perceived discrimination and acculturative stress. The marginalization strategy showed significant negative effects on sociocultural adaptation. Acculturative stress and perceived discrimination both had direct and indirect effect on adaptation outcomes that were partially mediated by perceived social support. This observation highlights the important role that social support plays in both acculturation and adaptation processes. Additionally, the focus group data analyses revealed that education for their children is an important area of concerns among the study participants. With the findings of this study, implications for practice and policy for South Asians are also presented. The methodological and research limitations and the directions for future research are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This dissertation has two main purposes: (a) to provide an analysis of the past tenses in Nepali and compare them with those of English from a discourse pragmatic perspective; and (b) to investigate how Nepali learners of English use the English past tenses in terms of forms, meanings, and functions.A major claim of the dissertation is that tenses and aspects play various discourse functions in Nepali. Although Nepali has various past tenses as in English, their actual use is different from those of English. A significant difference between the use of the past tenses in English and Nepali is revealed in the use of the past perfect tense. In Nepali, unlike in English, the past perfect does not always require the existence of the past reference point between the event time and the speech time. Although used in similar as well as different contexts, the past perfect in both languages is found to express background information. In the analysis of the Nepali past tenses, one of the major arguments is that the traditionally termed `unknown past' does not have `past' as part of its basic meaning. The main function of this verb form is to express the speaker's unawareness of a situation at the time of its happening, whether in the past or the future.After the discussion of the Nepali past tenses in comparison with the English past tenses and aspects, an error analysis of Nepali EFL learners' use of the English past tenses in written essays is carried out. It was hypothesized that Nepali learners would make a wide variety of errors in the use of the English past tenses. Because of differences in the use of the past perfect and the past tense in the habitual sense between Nepali and English, it was expected that Nepali ESL learners would make errors in those areas. However, overgeneralization due to difference in the use was found only in a very few cases. Most of these errors cannot be traced to Nepali influence. One area, however, where Nepali has a clear effect on the students' use of English is in indirect speech. I argue that Nepali speakers do not change tenses in English indirect speech appropriately because verb tenses in Nepali are not changed from direct speech to indirect speech as in English.It is hoped that this dissertation will enhance the understanding of grammatical categories such as tense and aspect in general and of Nepali tense and aspect systems in particular. In general, this dissertation showed contribute to several areas of study in discourse analysis, second language acquisition, language transfer and contrastive analysis. A major significance of this dissertation is its demonstration of the role of tense and aspect in Nepali in the expression of various discourse functions. / Department of English

The celebrated Sherpas of Himalayan mountaineering, who lived in the rugged high-altitude environment of the Everest area of Nepal, lacked Western style medical services and so iconic New Zealander, Sir Edmund Hillary, 'hero' of Everest, built them a small hospital in 1966. He administered Khunde Hospital through the Himalayan Trust, but with substantial support, since the late-1970s, from the Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation in Canada. Overseas medical volunteers assisted by local staff provided a range of outpatient and inpatient, curative and preventive services. The history of Khunde Hospital, therefore, provides a case study for the introduction of modern medicine, as Sherpas referred to Western or biomedicine, and for the implementation of an overseas aid project. In my analysis I have moved away from a binary, oppositional examination of a cross-cultural encounter and have situated Khunde Hospital in a conceptual device of 'worlds'. I argue that the hospital existed and operated simultaneously within multiple separate yet interconnected worlds, but do not privilege one discourse over another. These worlds work beyond culture, encompassing institutions, political structures and knowledge communities and were physical, social and intellectual spaces within which there were rules and norms of behaviour that structured action. In order to explore the histories of Khunde Hospital I set it within four distinct but overlapping worlds: that of Sir Edmund Hillary, the Sherpa, Western medicine and international aid. These are worlds that I have identified as being important for the questions I am looking at. My central discussion is the ongoing encounter between Sherpa beliefs and practices about sickness and modern medicine, particularly looking at the individual patient�s use and non-use of the hospital and how staff there responded. The response was neither a one-way diffusion of Western medical practice, nor a collision between the spirit-suffused system of the Sherpa and scientific biomedicine. People used the hospital for some things but not others, based on their perception as to whether the hospital was the effective, appropriate option to take. Over the years, the hospital and community became used to each other in a relationship that was in practice a coexistence of difference. Each acknowledged and could incorporate aspects of the other�s beliefs and practices when dealing with a person�s sickness, but remained separate. Using the conceptual device of worlds, however, suggests the need for this example of the introduction and spread of Western medicine to be grounded in a consideration of Hillary�s particular form of aid, the shifting discourse of international medical aid between the 1960s and the 1990s and the unique world of the Sherpa of Khumbu. All of these worlds influenced the provision of health care at and from Khunde Hospital in different ways, sometimes separately but often simultaneously, and at some times and for some issues more than others. People, place and relationships often had as much influence as - and sometimes more than - the medicine. If the key to understanding Khunde Hospital is the relationship between Sherpas and Hillary and the respect that began in a partnership on the mountains in the 1950s, then the multiple worlds of Khunde Hospital underscore the complexities of implementing Sherpa requests to build a hospital in their rugged home near the world�s highest mountain.