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<p>Preceptorship is an experiential learning approach whereby a senior B.Sc.N. student, a direct care Registered Nurse (preceptor), and a faculty member collaborate to successfully facilitate a students’ learning in a clinical course. Preceptors act as both clinical teachers and professional role models to students. Role modelling can be a powerful experiential teaching-learning strategy. The objective of this cross-sectional survey was to examine students’ viewpoints about role modelling by their preceptors during senior clinical courses, as viewed through faculty members’ reflections. A conceptualization of preceptors as stage role models was developed, providing a unique perspective that includes role modelling typology, re-examination of “negative” role modelling, and intentionality. Data were collected and analyzed using Q-methodology procedures. By-person factor analysis revealed that students’ priorities for role modelling by preceptors vary. Four distinct student viewpoints emerged: the importance of explicit teaching (Factor 1), the significance of socialization behaviours (Factor 2), the foundations of practice knowledge and skills (Factor 3), and the pivotal role of preceptor authenticity (Factor 4). The findings also highlighted the importance of harnessing role modelling as an intentional teaching-learning strategy, including use of critical reflection on the part of the role model and the learner, and being explicit about what is being role modelled. Implications for education, clinical practice, and future research are discussed.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Payments for ecosystem services (PES), or conservation incentives, are an increasingly popular approach to encouraging natural resources conservation on private lands. The goal of PES approaches is to motivate conservation by private landowners that would not otherwise take place by providing an economic incentive. To achieve this goal, incentive programs must be available to landowners who can provide the desired services; supportive policy structures must be in place; landowners must be willing to participate as sellers of ecosystem services; and the program itself must have an institutional structure that effectively regulates the production, sale, and maintenance of targeted ecosystem services. This dissertation uses a combination of case study and comparative research methods to develop new knowledge and tools for assessing each of these necessary conditions for success. The potential development of an incentive program to conserve habitat for endangered jaguars in southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico is used as a case study to understand the attitudes of ranchers toward participation in PES programs and related policies and regulations. Results show that ranchers have strong intrinsic conservation motivations unrelated to economic incentives, coupled with significant concerns about the impacts of government regulations that could accompany participation in a PES program. Comparative research of the institutional structures of existing PES programs is carried out using the Institutional Analysis and Development framework. Focusing on water quality trading, one of the most common types of PES program, a classification system for PES program institutional arrangements is developed and the utility of the classification system for analyzing institutional diversity is demonstrated. Together, the case study and comparative research provide a means of linking empirical assessment of PES governance models with the preferences of targeted participants, increasing the likelihood of successful conservation outcomes.

O objetivo desta tese é compreender a produção da qualidade quando aplicada no campo de atividade do professor universitário. A questão da qualidade é um dos desafios centrais da educação universitária no Brasil pelo caráter estratégico de seus resultados para a nação. Dessa educação emerge a capacidade das futuras gerações. A definição de qualidade é uma tarefa difícil dentro de quase todas as ciências sociais e muito mais difícil dentro do contexto da educação universitária que é frequentemente dividida por ideologias, tradições e critérios ontológicos. Esta tese produziu um resumo da literatura tentando responder a questão do que é qualidade no ensino superior quando aplicada ao desempenho do docente universitário. A literatura não apresenta consenso a essa questão, mas oferece cinco dimensões para a consideração do problema. O conceito do ensino superior, a gestão do professor, o comportamento do professor, o desenvolvimento e atualização do professor e as condições do trabalho constituem as fontes de ações para a produção de qualidade no desempenho rotineiro do professor. Este estudo foi complementado com uma investigação empírica dirigida para a identificação dos fatores que estão disponíveis e acessíveis aos coordenadores e professores da universidade e para contribuir para a produção da qualidade. Esta investigação empírica foi desenhada e realizada através da escala Q que é um método frequente nos estudos das teorias e ideologias que estão implícitas em papéis, identidades, fatores e critérios. A escala Q foi construída sobre as proposições encontradas na literatura que identificavam as cinco dimensões e aplicada a uma população de professores e coordenadores das instituições universitárias. Os resultados revelaram fatores que contribuem com a qualidade do ensino universitário em quatro das cinco dimensões. Conceito do ensino superior, comportamento do professor, desempenho e atualização do professor e condições de trabalho. A única dimensão que não alcançou significância na produção de qualidade foi a gestão dos professores por parte dos coordenadores. Futuras investigações deverão ser dirigidas para aprofundar a força destas dimensões / The objective of this thesis is the understanding of the production of quality when applied to the realms of the higher education institution. The issue of quality became one of the central challenges of Brazilian higher education institutions because of the strategic character of its outcomes to the nation. Out of it emerge the skills, competencies and knowledge of future generations. The definition of quality is a difficult task in most of the social sciences fields and even more difficult within the context of education which is often split by ideologies, traditions and ontological criteria. This thesis summarized the discussion presented by the literature trying to answer the question what is quality when that concept is applied to the performance of lecturers at the any university degree. The literature has hardly a consensual view and offers five dimensions to figure it out. The concept of higher education, the management of the lecturers, the lecturers behavior, the lecturers development and updating and the working conditions were understood as the main sources of actions for the production of quality in lecturers ordinary performance. This study was complemented by an empirical research directed to the investigation of the factors that are at the hands of managers and lecturers and contribute significantly to the quality of lecturers` performance. That investigation was designed and achieved through the Q Scale as a method quite popular for the study of theories and ideologies underlying roles, identities, factors and criteria. A Q-Scale was build out of the literature on the grounds of the five dimensions above mentioned and applied to a population of lecturers and pedagogic supervisors taken from two institutions. The results came across with factors related to the conception of higher education, faculty performance, working conditions and the faculty development. The only dimension which did not reach level of significance in its contribution to quality was the faculty management. Future research should investigate deeper on those dimensions

The curriculum for ICT in UK schools was discontinued in September 2012 and replaced by a 'rebranded' subject of Computing, divided into three sub domains: Computer Science; Information Technology; and digital literacy. The latter was positioned as basic technical skills. There were concerns in the education community that the new curriculum promoted programming and computer science topics to the detriment of digital literacy and applied uses of technology. Much of the Computing education literature perpetuates the hegemony of the logical and abstract, and implies computational thinking and rationality are synonymous with criticality. During the same period, a maker culture was growing rapidly in the UK, and discourses around these activities promoted an entirely different notion of digital literacy, aligned with the wide body of literacy literature that focuses on notions of empowerment and criticality rather than basic functional skills. A digital maker tool called the Raspberry Pi was released with the intention of supporting the development of computer science and digital making competence, and thus sat at the boundary of the academic and maker communities. This thesis argues that developing 'criticality' is a vital component of Computing education and explores how learning activities with the Raspberry Pi might support development of 'criticality'. In setting the scene for the investigation, I will first explore the notions underpinning discourse around both computational and critical thinking and digital literacy, suggesting that the frictions would be best overcome by abandoning abstract constructs of knowledge and assumptions that it is possible to separate theory and practice. I show how the term 'critical' is itself problematic in the literature and I look to Wenger's social theory of learning to avoid the individualistic limits of Papert's constructionism, a popular learning theory in Computing education. Wenger's constructs of knowledgeability and competence help tell a different story of what it means to be a learner of the practice of Computing, both in learning for academic purposes and with intentions towards becoming a practitioner. In concert with learning citizenship, these constructs offer a more ethical framing of 'criticality'. Informed by this theoretical position, I suggest an original, exploratory implementation of Q methodology to explore learning with technology in school settings. I qualitatively compare 'before' and 'after' Q studies that represent perspectives at the individual and collective level, with reference to observations of classroom learning. The methodology facilitates a nuanced and complex investigation and the findings of the project suggest that where pupils are already predisposed to the subject, working with the Raspberry Pi develops a broader knowledgeability, but where there is no such predisposition, a pedagogy of expressibility influences how participation in Raspberry Pi learning activities may impact knowledgeability.

In the field of organizational behavior, it has been a long-range debate whether personality attributes or situations impact individuals¡¦ behavior more significantly. Actually, person and work environment both can not be ignored, researcher have noticed the concept of person-environment (P-E) fit proved to influence various work outcomes significantly. Furthermore, there is an emerging issue about common method variance (CMV) in the field of fit researches. As a result, this research intends to develop four Q-sort profiles to apply Q-methodology for measuring P-O, P-J, P-S as well as P-G fit such that the bias of common method variance can be reduced. We proposed five research objectives in this research: (1) to develop four valid and manageable Q-sort profiles as indirect measures of P-O, P-J, P-G, and P-S fit; (2) to test the correlation between direct and indirect measures of P-E fit such that the criterion-related validity of the four Q-sort profiles can be verified; (3) to test the individual relationships between four main types of P-E fit and their outcome criteria so as to verify the criterion-related validity; (4) to understand the overall and relative impacts of four types of P-E fit on their outcomes; (5) to manifest the most desirable and undesirable organizational culture, job contents, supervisor leadership behaviors, and workgroup characteristics of employees in Taiwan. Thus, the four Q-sort profiles (i.e., condensed OCP, Job Characteristics Profile, Supervisor Leadership Profile, and Workgroup Characteristics Profile) have been developed, and validated by two categories of criteria (i.e. direct measures and work0related outcomes). Despite that the correlation between indirect and direct measures of P-E fit is not significant, indirect measure of P-O, P-J, P-G, and P-S fit are significantly correlated with at least three work-related outcomes. Next, we test our hypotheses with a regression analysis, and the result reveals that P-O and P-S fit have strong impacts on their work-related outcomes, but the impacts of P-J and P-G fit are not salient. Finally, we present the preferences of employees in Taiwan through their own rankings.