As part of their mathematical knowledge for teaching (Ball et al., 2008), teachers must have a well-connected understanding of the subject matter they teach and must know this content in deeper and different ways than other adults. This is essential for quality teaching and learning, as teachers’ knowledge and understanding impact the nature and effectiveness of instruction (e.g., Hill et al., 2005). Since decimal concepts are part of elementary curriculum (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010), and can be difficult for children and adults (e.g., Jacobson et al., 2020; Kastberg & Morton, 2014; Steinle & Stacey, 1998), mathematics teacher educators must consider how we can strengthen support for prospective teachers of elementary school (PTs), to deepen their mathematical knowledge for teaching decimals. This is of particular importance as existing research provides few rich characterizations of PTs’ decimal understanding and is limited in explorations into connections and mechanisms that may improve that understanding. In this dissertation, I attend to the research question, following engagement with rich conceptually focused decimal instruction, how may PTs’ conceptualizations of decimal place value and magnitude, and factors which have influenced this understanding, be characterized? I address some gaps in current literature by considering how robust decimal understanding for PTs may be connected to and grounded in their broader knowledge of the base-ten place value system, and to the decimal models which they use. Following an introduction to the problem in Chapter One, and a review of relevant literature in Chapter Two, Chapter Three reports on a study in which I examined how PTs characterized the base-ten place value system, distinguishing between responses crafted by PTs who had demonstrated different levels of decimal understanding. This allowed me to identify elements of base-ten place value understanding which likely supported PTs’ thinking about decimal place value and magnitude. In the study in Chapter Four, I explored the nature of PTs’ decimal understanding and its relationships with decimal square or number line models that they used, finding that certain model features facilitated PTs’ ability to think about decimal place value and magnitude in ways that are more likely to be productive and appropriate for teaching. These two empirical studies are both qualitative content analyses (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) carried out in the context of the Elementary Mathematics Project (Chapin et al., 2021). Though implications for teachers and teacher educators are incorporated in Chapters Three and Four, Chapter Five is a practitioner article in which I focus more directly on these implications, making recommendations about important model features and areas of emphasis for decimal instruction. Chapter Six looks across the dissertation, discussing overarching themes and directions for future research. Results of this research may be used to support mathematics teacher educators in carrying out effective decimal instruction with their PT students, since better understanding of PTs’ thinking can help mathematics teacher educators to make informed curricular and pedagogical decisions to foster PT development. This is of high importance, since as PTs increase and enrich their decimal understanding, their students’ opportunities to learn will also expand. / 2027-04-30T00:00:00Z

The trail of the artifact is an anonymous line on a tourist map of Manhattan. It delimits the boundary, separates the inner and outer, and occupies space. This occupied space juxtaposing the edge of Greenwich Village is an invisible and a undetermined line in the city. Architecture is the result of thinking of object as act, as transformation, and as invention. The project searches, explores, and makes this line present. / Master of Architecture

A structured and disciplined Systems Engineering process is essential for the effective and efficient design and development of products and systems which are both responsive to customer needs and competitive in the global economy. The emphasis of this research is on the conceptual design phase of the Systems Engineering process. Conceptual system design is characterized by imprecision and vagueness. Designers make significant commitments to system-level design requirements and the system design concept in the face of this vagueness. Accordingly, the primary goal of this research is to develop an aid to facilitate the definition of system-level design requirements. During conceptual design, needs analysis and requirements definition is facilitated by the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) method. Quality Function Deployment is a design methodology chosen as the central focus of this research effort. Consistency within the QFD procedure must be maintained in order to accurately translate customer specified requirements into design requirements. This research, leading to the development of an expert system based advisor for system designers, is unique. A rule-based expert system was implemented to parse a completed QFD matrix and to identify occurrences of inconsistencies and strategic opportunities. / Master of Science

In this research, I set out to elucidate the relationships that might exist between students' conceptual understanding upon which they draw in their proof activity. I explore these relationships using data from individual interviews with three students from a junior-level Modern Algebra course. Each phase of analysis was iterative, consisting of iterative coding drawing on grounded theory methodology (Charmaz, 2000, 2006; Glaser and Strauss, 1967). In the first phase, I analyzed the participants' interview responses to model their conceptual understanding by drawing on the form/function framework (Saxe, et al., 1998). I then analyzed the participants proof activity using Aberdein's (2006a, 2006b) extension of Toulmin's (1969) model of argumentation. Finally, I analyzed across participants' proofs to analyze emerging patterns of relationships between the models of participants' understanding of identity and inverse and the participants' proof activity. These analyses contributed to the development of three emerging constructs: form shifts in service of sense-making, re-claiming, and lemma generation. These three constructs provide insight into how conceptual understanding relates to proof activity. / Ph. D.

Learning of threshold concepts in engineering science courses such as statics has traditionally been a difficult and critical juncture for engineering students. Research and other systematic efforts to improve the teaching of statics in recent years range widely, from development of courseware and assessment tools to experiential and other "hands-on" learning techniques. This dissertation reports the findings from a multi-year, dual-institution study investigating possible links between short writing assignments and conceptual knowledge development in statics courses. The theoretical framework of the study draws on elements from cognitive learning theory: expertise, procedural and conceptual knowledge development, and conceptual change. The way that students approach learning in statics with regard to procedural and conceptual knowledge is explored qualitatively, and the relationship between the writing assignments and conceptual knowledge development is examined using a mixed-methods approach. The results show that students approach learning in statics with varying emphasis placed on procedural and conceptual knowledge development and that a student's learning approach influences their perception of the written problems and the ways that they utilize them in learning. Thus, they provide evidence that the learning approach of students may be an important factor in the success of interventions designed to improve conceptual knowledge in statics. Increases in conceptual knowledge as a result of completing the written problems are also empirically supported though limited by problems with data collection. Areas for future work in light of these findings are identified. / Ph. D.

Yes / Provision of care and support for people with dementia and family carers is complex, given variation in how dementia manifests, progresses and affects people, co-morbidities associated with ageing, as well as individual preferences, needs, and circumstances. The traditional service-led approach, where individual needs are assessed against current service provision, has been recognised as unfit to meet such complexity. As a result, people with dementia and family members often fail to receive adequate support, with needs remaining unmet. Current research lacks a conceptual framework for explaining variation in satisfaction of care needs. This work develops a conceptual framework mapped onto the care delivery process to explain variations in whether, when and why care needs of people with dementia are met and to expose individual-, service-, system-level factors that enable or hinder needs satisfaction. METHODS: Data collected through 24 in-depth interviews and two focus groups (10 participants) with people with dementia and family carers living in the North East of England (UK) were analysed thematically to develop a typology of care needs. The need most frequently reported for people with dementia (i.e. for support to go out and about) was analysed using themes stemming from the conceptual framework which combined candidacy and discrepancy theories. RESULTS: The operationalisation of the framework showed that satisfaction of the need to go out was first determined at the point of service access, affected by issues about navigation, adjudication, permeability, users' resistance to offers, users' appearance, and systems-level operating conditions, and, subsequently, at the point of service use, when factors related to service structure and care process determined (dis)satisfaction with service and, hence, further contributed to met or unmet need. CONCLUSION: The conceptual framework pinpoints causes of variations in satisfaction of care needs which can be addressed when designing interventions and service improvements. / We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Health Foundation (grant number 1274233).

Focusing on Darwinism, David Hull argues that the protean character of conceptual systems is explained by their nature as historical entities which evolve. If they evolve as biological species do, Hull argues, then they cannot have an "essence" — a set of tenets that all and only instances of the conceptual system has throughout all time. There are no tenets a scientific research program must retain to count as an instance of a particular program. I advance two considerations against this view. First, research programs require a critical cohesiveness among their tenets to inspire and guide research. Second, it is the function of such programs to guide the search for answers to families of questions in a particular domain in a particular spirit. These factors dictate that conceptual systems must retain certain key tenets. This re-emergence of a sort of essentialism does not bar the evolution of conceptual systems, provided we recognize that there are patterns of evolution other than the one Hull considers (anagenesis). It also implies that conceptual systems simply evolve differently than species do. I defend this position by illustrating two episodes of conceptual evolution: the dispute between William Bateson and the British biometricians over discontinuous evolution, and the formation of Neo-Lamarckism in 19th century America. / Master of Arts

The evaluation of how Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package may be incorporated into a conceptual design method is performed. The repeatability of the CFD solution as well as the accuracy of the calculated aerodynamic coefficients and pressure distributions was also evaluated on two different wing-body models. The overall run times of three different mesh densities was also evaluated to investigate if the mesh density could be reduced enough so that the computational stage of the CFD cycle may become affordable to use in the conceptual design stage. A farfield method was derived and used in this analysis to calculate the lift and drag coefficients. The CFD solutions were also compared with two methods currently used in conceptual design - the vortex lattice based program Vorview and ACSYNT. The unstructured Euler based CFD package FELISA was used in this study. / Master of Science

No / The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework that helps to investigate how the internal audit function (IAF) responds to both the introduction of the control logic of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and corporate governance’s (CG) institutional pressures. Furthermore, the paper aims to articulate the concurrence between the external pressures of CG and internal control logic of ERP systems. The paper presents a review of the normative literature pertaining to the increase in significance of CG in the light of the worldwide economic crisis. The paper highlights a literature gap related to the lack of studies focusing on the impact of ERP systems implementation on the IAF practices. The authors articulate institutional theory to formulate a conceptual framework that explains the reciprocal interplay between the macro external governance pressures, micro internal institutional logics inscribed in the ERP systems and their effect on IAF practices and structure within organisations. The paper is conceptual in nature and therefore the proposed framework will be subsequently validated using a qualitative research approach in future research. The conceptual framework would offer the internal auditors some strategies for enabling adaptation to the different internal and external pressures. Also the paper provides a platform for research community to investigate the influence of CG and ERP systems implementation on IAF adaptation. The paper provides a clearer articulation of the various constructs that affect the IAF, which has gained great attention for assuring good CG.

Yes / The aim of this paper is to examine and clarify the nomological network of change and innovation (CI)-related constructs. A literature review in this field revealed a number of interrelated constructs that have emerged over the last decades. We examine several such constructs—innovation, creativity, proactive behaviours, job crafting, voice, taking charge, personal initiative, submitting suggestions, and extra-role behaviours. Our conceptual analysis suggests each one of these constructs represents a specific component of CI-related behaviours. However, we also found that on occasion these concepts have been dysfunctionally operationalized with evidence of three dysfunctional effects: (a) construct confusion, (b) construct drift, and (c) construct contamination. Challenges for future research to enhance conceptual and operational clarity are discussed. / The British Academy: [Grant number SG110409] awarded to the first author and by UK Leverhulme Trust: [Grant number IN-2012-095] awarded to the second author.