Vilken historisk kunskap räknas som värdefull kunskap när det kommer till skolsammanhang och läroplansteori? Hur tolkar och använder skolans personal dessa kunskapsformuleringar i läroplanen i sin undervisning? Förra hösten presenterade Skolverket sina revideringsförslag av den nuvarande läroplanen: Läroplan för grundskolan, förskoleklassen och fritidshemmet 2011, reviderad 2019. Det första syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vad personalen i skolan ansåg om dessa revideringar och det tilltänkta implementeringsarbete de skulle innebära, med huvudfokus på historieämnet. Det andra syftet var att jämföra revideringsförslagen med den nuvarande läroplanen ur ett läroplansteoretiskt perspektiv, för att markera eventuella förskjutningar gällande kunskapssynen dem emellan. I denna studie användes kvalitativa intervjuer med skolpersonal samt kvalitativ textanalys av kursplanen i historia som metoder för att besvara studiens forskningsfrågor. Resultatet visade att skolpersonalen var väldigt positiva och trodde att det avsedda syftet med revideringen, att den skulle fungera som ett ännu bättre stöd och verktyg för dem i deras arbete, skulle uppnås. Resultatet visade också att för att utvecklas framåt har läroplanens formuleringar tagit ett steg tillbaka till att återigen betona begreppen kunskap om och förståelse för i flera skolämnen som exempelvis historia. I vilken utsträckning Skolverkets revideringsförslag når sin målsättning återstår dock att se. / What kind of knowledge about history counts as valuable knowledge when it comes to school context and curriculum theory? How does school staff interpret and transform these writings of knowledge and the curriculum framework into their teaching? Last fall, The Swedish National Agency for Education presented their revised version of the current curriculum: Curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and the leisure-time centre (2011). The first purpose of this study was to investigate what school staff thought about this revised version and the implementation work that would follow, in particularly when it came to the syllabus about the history subject. The second purpose was to compare the revised curriculum with the current one from a curriculum theoretic perspective, in order to highlight potential differences between how they visualize their epistemic beliefs. For this study, I used qualitative interviews with school staff as well as a qualitative analyse of the writings in the syllabus for history as methods to answer the both issues of this study. The results show that the school staff were very positive and believed that the intended purpose for the revised version, to work as an even better tool and support for them in their work, would be achieved. The results also show that in order to move forward, the writings in the curriculum has taken a step back in development, to once again enhancing the terms knowledge- and understanding about in several subjects such as history. In what extent this revision will reach its aim is not yet evaluated.

abstract: Bivariate responses that comprise mixtures of binary and continuous variables are common in medical, engineering, and other scientific fields. There exist many works concerning the analysis of such mixed data. However, the research on optimal designs for this type of experiments is still scarce. The joint mixed responses model that is considered here involves a mixture of ordinary linear models for the continuous response and a generalized linear model for the binary response. Using the complete class approach, tighter upper bounds on the number of support points required for finding locally optimal designs are derived for the mixed responses models studied in this work. In the first part of this dissertation, a theoretical result was developed to facilitate the search of locally symmetric optimal designs for mixed responses models with one continuous covariate. Then, the study was extended to mixed responses models that include group effects. Two types of mixed responses models with group effects were investigated. The first type includes models having no common parameters across subject group, and the second type of models allows some common parameters (e.g., a common slope) across groups. In addition to complete class results, an efficient algorithm (PSO-FM) was proposed to search for the A- and D-optimal designs. Finally, the first-order mixed responses model is extended to a type of a quadratic mixed responses model with a quadratic polynomial predictor placed in its linear model. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Statistics 2020

Orientador: Ana Cláudia Moreira Almeida-Verdu / Resumo: A deficiência auditiva sensorioneural, de grau severo-profundo, bilateral e pré-lingual pode comprometer a aquisição de repertórios verbais. O implante coclear (IC) é um dispositivo auditivo que habilita o acesso aos sons da fala e permite a aprendizagem de habilidades de ouvinte e de falante. Estudos entre a Fonoaudiologia e a Análise do Comportamento têm adotado o modelo das relações de equivalência e investigado as condições de ensino sob as quais essa população aprende as habilidades auditivas e as relações que o ouvir estabelece com o falar, de palavras às sentenças. O procedimento de matching to sample (MTS) tem sido utilizado para ensinar relações condicionais entre estímulos. Procedimentos associados ao MTS minimizam a ocorrência de erros durante a aprendizagem do reconhecimento auditivo de sentenças, como o fading out. O objetivo geral desta pesquisa foi controlar o efeito do procedimento de fading out no ensino de discriminações condicionais entre sentença de quatro termos ditadas e figuras de ações, de modo a verificar qual rotina de ensino (fading blocado ou fading randomizado) é mais eficaz. Foram avaliados também os efeitos desses procedimentos sobre a formação de classes de estímulos equivalentes, a precisão da fala na nomeação de figuras e os desempenhos recombinativos. Participaram duas alunas, com idade entre sete e nove anos, com deficiência auditiva sensorioneural, bilateral, de grau moderado a profundo, e usuárias de IC. As sentenças foram organizadas em ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Sensorineural hearing loss, severe-profound, bilateral and pre-lingual, can compromise the acquisition of verbal repertoires. The cochlear implant (CI) is an auditory device that enables access to speech sounds and allows the learning of listening and speaking skills. Studies between Speech-Language Pathology and Behavior Analysis have adopted the equivalence relations model and investigated the teaching conditions under which this population learns the auditory skills and the relationships that listening establishes with speaking, from words to sentences. The matching to sample (MTS) procedure has been used to teach conditional relations between stimuli. Procedures associated with the MTS minimize the occurrence of errors during the learning of auditory recognition of sentences, such as fading out. The general objective of this research was to control the effect of the fading out procedure in the teaching of conditional discriminations between sentences of four dictated terms and action figures, in order to verify which teaching routine (blocked fading or randomized fading) is more effective. The effects of these procedures on the formation of equivalent stimulus classes, the accuracy of speech in the naming of figures and the recombinative performances were also evaluated. Two students participated, aged between seven and nine years, with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, of moderate to profound degree, and CI users. The sentences were organized in two matrices (Sets 1 ... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

Sidman's (2000) theory of stimulus equivalence predicts an interaction between the development of analytic units and the development of equivalence relations. Previous research has documented these interactions (stewart, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, & Smeets, 2002; Vaidya & Brackney, 2014), therefore the current study attempted to replicate the effects seen in Vaidya & Brackney, 2014 (Experiment 2). Baseline conditional discriminations were trained for two sets of three, three-member classes, while participants simply observed stimuli in the third set which was arranged identical to those of Sets 1 and 2. Following equivalence tests where performance met the accuracy criterion of 85% for Sets 1 and 2, participants then entered a simple successive discrimination training phase where common responses were then trained with an equivalence class (pressing the Q key in the presence of A1, B1, or C1), cross equivalence classes (pressing the R key in the presence of A4, A5, or A6), or for stimuli where the participants had experience with them, but the contingencies were never arranged to facilitate equivalence class formation. Results showed a facilitative effect for common responses drawn from within equivalence classes (Set 1), and a retardation effect for common responses drawn from across equivalence classes (Set 2), for three of the five participants. Results for Set 3 showed an acquisition that fell intermediate to that of Sets 1 and 2, respectively, suggesting an interaction occurring between existing equivalence relations and the development of analytic units.

The current study examined the effects of bite blocks on articulatory kinematics when producing /r/ within a phrase. Participants consisted of 20 young adults (10 males, 10 females) with no speech, language or hearing disorders. Participants produced the carrier phrase, I say __ with the nonsense words /əri/ (high front vowel), /əræ/ (low front vowel), /əru/ (high back vowel), /ərɑ/ (low back vowel). A Northern Digital Instruments Wave electromagnetic articulograph measured the articulatory movements while the speaker produced the stimuli in two conditions (Pre bite block and post bite block). Bilateral bite blocks were made using Express dental putty, which is a silicone impression material, in order to create an inter-incisal gap of 10 mm. The hull area (i.e., a boundary enclosing the total distance the sensor traveled during the target phrase) of the data for each sensor (i.e., tongue back, tongue mid, tongue front, lower lip, mandibular central incisor) was calculated for the individual nonsense words /eɪərɑ/, /eɪəræ/, /eɪəri/, and /eɪəru/. Results revealed kinematic differences across vowel phrases and between genders. The hull area of the tongue and jaw were significantly different for the vowel phrases /eɪəræ/, /eɪəri/, and /eɪəru/ compared to /eɪərɑ/. The hull area for the jaw for /eɪərɑ/ was significantly larger than the other vowel phrases. The between-gender analyses showed larger hull areas for males than females. Different motor equivalent strategies for tongue movements were observed when speakers produced /eɪərɑ/ and there were individual differences in compensating for the presence of the bite block

Following the mechanisms, where the coarse geometric properties of a space with bounded geometry can induce properties on the related coarse (boundary) groupoid and vice versa, we prove that a sequence of bounded degree graphs being hyperfinite is equivalent to the equivalence relation induced by the coarse boundary groupoid associated to this sequence being hyperfinite. Even more, we introduce a coarse and weaker notion of Property A in a sequence of graphs, called Property A on average, that also turns out to be equivalent to the hyperfiniteness of a sequence of bounded degree graphs. Furthermore, we show that if the coarse boundary groupoid is topologically a-T-menable, then the related sequence of bounded degree graphs is asymptotically coarsely embeddable into a Hilbert space. In the measurable case, we also have the asymptotic coarse embeddability of the sequence of graphs after discarding small subgraphs along the sequence and looking at this new sequence of graphs with the induced length metric of original graph. Afterwards those result are applicable to sofic groups. When we take the sequence of graphs to be a sofic approximation of an amenable discrete finitely generated sofic group, we know that this sequence is hyperfinte, has property A on average and property almost-A. If the group is a-T-menable then the sequence of graphs is weakly asymptotically coarsely embeddable into a Hilbert space.

Pre-Charge Half Buffers (PCHB) and NULL convention Logic (NCL) are two major commercially successful Quasi-Delay Insensitive (QDI) asynchronous paradigms, which are known for their low-power performance and inherent robustness. In industry, QDI circuits are synthesized from their synchronous counterparts using custom synthesis tools. Validation of the synthesized QDI implementation is a critical design prerequisite before fabrication. At present, validation schemes are mostly extensive simulation based that are good enough to detect shallow bugs, but may fail to detect corner-case bugs. Hence, development of formal verification methods for QDI circuits have been long desired. The very few formal verification methods that exist in the related field have major limiting factors. This dissertation presents different formal verification methodologies applicable to PCHB and NCL circuits, and aims at addressing the limitations of previous verification approaches. The developed methodologies can guarantee both safety (full functional correctness) and liveness (absence of deadlock), and are demonstrated using several increasingly larger sequential and combinational PCHB and NCL circuits, along with various ISCAS benchmarks. / National Science Foundation (Grant No. CCF-1717420)

Sleep Convention Logic (SCL) is an emerging ultra-low power Quasi-Delay Insensitive (QDI) asynchronous design paradigm with enormous potential for industrial applications. Design validation is a critical concern before commercialization. Unlike other QDI paradigms, such as NULL Convention Logic (NCL) and Pre-Charge Half Buffers (PCHB), there exists no formal verification methods for SCL. In this thesis, a unified formal verification scheme for combinational as well as sequential SCL circuits is proposed based on equivalence checking, which verifies both safety and liveness. The method is demonstrated using several multipliers, MACs, and ISCAS benchmarks.

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the use of imagery in vocal professionals' efforts to achieve optimal performance based on research from sport psychology. The four Ws of imagery use: where, when, what, and why have been applied to this study from the fields of athletics (Munroe, Giacobbi, Hall, & Weinberg, 2000) and dance (Nordin & Cumming, 2005). These were adopted after many years of research in athletic performance excellence, with particular reference to the Analytic Framework of the Cognitive and Motivational Functions of Imagery (Paivio, 1985; Hall, Mack, Paivio, & Hausenblas, 1998). This theoretical framework was combined with those of previous interview studies investigating professional musical performers in their use of imagery (Bellon, 2006; Carter, 1993; Trusheim, 1987) and provided a foundation for this study. Theories from psychology explaining the effects of imagery were also integrated, including functional equivalence and neuroimaging. An exploratory design was chosen to investigate the comprehensive nature of this inquiry using a purposeful sample (N = 15). A semi-structured interview based on the four Ws was conducted with 15 solo classical vocal professionals, 10 females (sopranos and mezzos) and 5 males (tenors and a baritone) ranging in age from late twenties to late sixties, residing in several major cities of the United States. Vocalists used imagery during practice, before performance, at home, traveling, and a range of other times. Imagery content was divided into types and characteristics. Vocalists' use of imagery types encompassed execution, metaphorical, context, body-related, musical sound, and character/role images. Imagery was employed to perfect vocal production and quality, embody the character's qualities and emotional aspects for performance, visualize metaphorical and anatomical images to achieve proper vocal execution, achieve goals, and communicate with the audience. Imagery characteristics of vocalists involved visual, auditory, and kinesthetic senses, using primarily internal and some external perspectives. These professionals' imagery abilities were deliberate, controllable, and positive. Similar to competitive athletes, solo vocal performers engaged in imagery for many cognitive and motivational functions. Vocalists replicated dancers in artistic, and healing functions of imagery use in preparing for and achieving optimal performance.

While assessing emotions, behaviors or performance of preschoolers and young children, scores from adults such as parent psychiatrist and teacher ratings are used rather scores from children themselves. Data from parent ratings or from parents and teachers are often nested such as students are within teachers and a child is within their parents. This popular nested feature of data in educational, social and behavioral sciences makes measurement invariance (MI) testing across informants of children methodologically challenging. There was lack of studies that take into account the nested structure of data in MI testing for multiple adult informants, especially no simulation study that examines the performance of different models used to test MI across different raters. This dissertation focused on two specific nesting data types in testing MI between adult raters of children: paired and partial nesting. For the paired data, the independence assumption of regular MI testing is often violated because the two informants (e.g., father and mother) rate the same child and their scores are anticipated to be related or dependent. The partial nesting data refers to the research situation where teacher and parent ratings are compared. In this scenario, it is common that each parent has only one child to rate while each teacher has multiple children in their classroom. Thus, in case of teacher and parent ratings of the same children, data are repeated measures and also partially nested. Because of these unique features of data, MI testing between adult informants of children requires statistical models that take into account different types of data dependency. I proposed and evaluated the performance of the two statistical models that can handle repeated measures and partial nesting with several simulated research scenarios in addition to one commonly used and one potentially appropriate statistical models across several research scenario. Results of the two simulation studies in this dissertation showed that for the paired data, both multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and repeated measure CFA models were able to detect scalar invariance most of the time using Δχ2 test and ΔCFI. Although the multiple-group CFA (Model 2) was able to detect scalar invariance better than the repeated measure CFA model (Model 1), the detection rates of Model 1 were still at the high level (88% - 91% using Δχ2 test and 84% - 100% using ΔCFI or ΔRMSEA). For configural invariance and metric invariance conditions for the paired data, Model 1 had higher detection rate than Model 2 in almost examined research scenario in this dissertation. Particularly while Model 1 could detect noninvariance (either in intercepts only or in both intercepts and factor loadings) than Model 2 for paired data most of the time, Model 2 could rarely catch it if using suggested cut-off of 0.01 for RMSEA differences. For the paired data, although both Models 1 and 2 could be a good choice to test measurement invariance, Model 1 might be favored if researchers are more interested in detecting noninvariance due to its overall high detection rates for all three levels (i.e. configural, metric, and scalar) of measurement invariance. For scalar invariance with partially nested data, both multilevel repeated measure CFA and design-based multilevel CFA could detect invariance most of the time (from 81% to 100% of examined cases) with slightly higher detection rate for the former model than the later. Multiple-group CFA model hardly detect scalar invariance except when ICC was small. The detection rates for configural invariance using Δχ2 test or Satorra-Bentler LRT were also highest for Model 3 (82% to 100% except only two conditions with detection rates of 61%), following by Model 5 and lowest Model 4. Models 4 and 5 could reach these rates only with the largest sample sizes (i.e., large number of cluster or large cluster size or large in both factors) when the magnitude of noninvariance was small. Unlike scalar and configural invariance, the ability to detect metric invariance was highest for Model 4, following by Model 5 and lowest for Model 3 across many conditions using all of the three performance criteria. As higher detection rates for all configural and scalar invariance, and moderate detection rates for many metric invariance conditions (except cases of small number of clusters combined with large ICC), Model 3 could be a good candidate to test measurement invariance with partially nested data when having sufficient number of clusters or if having small number of clusters with small ICC. Model 5 might be also a reasonable option for this type of data if both the number of clusters and cluster size were large (i.e., 80 and 20, respectively), or either one of these two factors was large coupled with small ICC. If ICC is not small, it is recommended to have a large number of clusters or combination of large number of clusters and large cluster size to ensure high detection rates of measurement invariance for partially nested data. As multiple group CFA had better and reasonable detection rates than the design-based and multilevel repeated measure CFA models cross configural, metric and scalar invariance with the conditions of small cluster size (10) and small ICC (0.13), researchers can consider using this model to test measurement invariance when they can only collect 10 participants within a cluster (e.g. students within a classroom) and there is small degree of data dependency (e.g. small variance between clusters) in the data.