Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Appendix C in Korean. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-151). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Appendix C in Korean. Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 142-151). Also available on the Internet.

The Party-state's popular legitimacy is difficult to assess. This study aims to do so via a two- step methodology that aims to reveal the political belief sets through which the Chinese public evaluates the present regime and imagines possible alternatives. I focus upon the emerging middle class, as conceptualized by the Party-state, because the Party-state views this segment's support as a priority for its legitimation efforts. And I focus upon Beijing, because theory and evidence suggests that Beijing's emerging middle class should be especially persuaded by the Party-state's ideological work. Ideological diversity discovered in Beijing is a baseline of what one would hypothesize to exist elsewhere in China. First, I distil the main ideological traditions to which the emerging middle class is exposed - including Official Ideology, Liberalism, New Left and Political Confucianism - down into their essential convictions. Second, via Q Methodology, I present statements representing these distilled convictions to a sample of the emerging middle class and ask them, using these statements, to answer: 'What should the guiding values and principles of Chinese politics be?' From the patterns of their responses, I elucidate the variety of ways they evaluate the question - and hence, evaluate the legitimacy of the present regime. Four discourses emerge. Social Welfarism and Liberal Idealism form orthogonal boundaries between which most members of the emerging middle class situate themselves. Regression analysis suggests that the former is the default view, but a variety of factors can rotate people toward the latter. Authoritarian Reformism and Critical Realism are minority discourses that reveal more radical possibilities. My research suggests that the Party-state's efforts to contain public conceptions have had mixed success. The range of public political preferences is sufficiently constrained that a single Party can coherently claim to represent their fundamental shared interests. A corollary finding is that the 'middle class' is emerging into the role the Party-state envisages for it, as a stabilizing force. However, while its members may be 'allies of the state', only some are devotees, in the sense that they share substantially in the Official Ideological perspective. The bounded diversity of ideological discourses reveals the exquisite complexity of the Party-state's legitimation task, and many potential pitfalls and missteps. The present study reveals both the reach of the state (i.e., a bounded discourse weighted toward a Social Welfarist default) and its limits (i.e., popular drift toward problematic alternatives). More broadly, I find that popular legitimacy can be subjected to direct investigation. I show that while state-centric approaches to investigating China are compelling for their explanatory power, a balanced approach offers richer insight.

Orientador: Linda Gentry El Dash / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-05T08:58:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Cunha_MariaCarmenKhnychala_D.pdf: 33581470 bytes, checksum: 1c035d481fd263de716eb581aa7895b5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: Este estudo investiga as concepções de aprendizes sobre o ambiente de aprendizagem de suas salas de aulas de língua estrangeira. A Metodologia Q, em combinação com entrevistas qualitativas, foi utilizada para tornar visíveis estruturas escondidas em situações comunicativas e apresentar convergências, assim como variações, nas maneiras de pensar e construir a realidade. Os participantes pertencem a dois grupos de alunos cujos professores possuem perfis diferentes. Uma Amostra Q de 81 itens, adaptados a partir de oito instrumentos tradicionais utilizados na avaliação de percepções sobre ambientes de aprendizagem, foi estruturada com referência a categorias usadas na conceituação de ambientes psico-sociais. Os participantes foram instruídos a distribuir os itens ao longo de uma escala variando de "concordo totalmente" (+3) a "discordo totalmente" (-3). As distribuições foram intercorrelacionadas e as matrizes de correlação de 18 x 18 e 42 x 42 foram analisadas fatorialmente. Cada análise produziu três fatores, sendo que cada um desses representa um ponto de vista peculiar de um grupo de indivíduos em relação ao tema investigado. Os resultados apontam para a ocorrência simultânea de múltiplos fatores de ordem afetiva, social e cognitiva que podem influenciar o tipo de ambiente de aprendizagem de uma língua estrangeira. O ambiente em uma sala de aula parece ser o resultado de formas de interações entre variáveis que se relacionam ao aprendiz, ao professor e ao tipo de instrução proporcionada. Os resultados poderão se mostrar úteis para a área de Lingüística Aplicada, na busca de abordagens abrangentes que busquem articular as dimensões intelectuais e afetivas da constituição humana e que possam, assim, entender o sujeito em sua totalidade. Poderão, além disso, contribuir para a compreensão de fenômenos subjetivos envolvidos na aprendizagem de uma língua estrangeira, tais como a relação entre o ambiente e as atitudes de aprendizes, o que, por sua vez, poderá fornecer intravisões para a avaliação do professor, de sua prática, para a preparação de professores, o desenvolvimento de materiais instrucionais e enfim, ser de valia para os aprendizes na percepção e compreensão de sua maneira de aprender / Abstract: This study investigates the learners' conceptions of their foreign language classroom learning enviromnent. Q Methodology in combination with interviews was used to bring out hidden structures in communicative situations and present convergences, as well as variations, in ways ofthinking and constructing reality. The subjects belong to two groups of students whose teachers seemed to bear different profiles. An 8I-item Q-sample adapted from eight traditional instruments for assessing perceptions of classroom learning enviromnent was structured with reference to categories used for the conceptualization of psychosocial enviromnents. The participants were asked to Q-sort the items from "most agree" (+3), to "most disagree" (-3). The Q-sorts were intercorrelated and the 18 x 18 and 42 x 42 correlation matrixes were factor analyzed. Analyses produced three factors. Each of these represents a peculiar point of view of a group of respondents concerning the question being investigated. The results indicate the simultaneous occurrence of multiple factors, affective, social and cognitive ones that may influence the kind of learning enviromnent in a foreign language class. The enviromnent in a classroom seems to be the result of type of interaction among variables that are related to the learner, the teacher and to the kind of instruction provided. The findings should prove useful to the area of Applied Linguistics in the quest of approaches that aim at the articulation of the intellectual and the affective dimensions, which constitute the human being. The fmdings might also contribute to a better understanding of subjective phenomena involved in learning a foreign language such as the relationship between the enviromnent and students' attitudes, which may, in turn, provide insights for the assessment of the teacher' s own practice, for teacher training and for instructional material development; finally it may be useful for learners in the perception and understanding of their way of learning / Doutorado / Ensino-Aprendizagem de Segunda Lingua e Lingua Estrangeira / Doutor em Linguística Aplicada

The education of intellectually disabled (ID) people is constructed within mass education systems as a problem requiring specialised intervention, separation from “normal” school contexts and the application of professional expertise. A social model of disability resists these practices from a human rights perspective and underpins an inclusive education approach. In this study, a post-structuralist disability studies theoretical framework, drawing particularly on the work of Foucault, was used to examine discourses that construct the intellectually disabled person as a subject of education. The study was conducted in Buffalo City, South Africa at a time when an inclusive education policy is being implemented in the country. The research questions were: What discourses are deployed in the representation and educational practices of those identified as ID? What are the effects of these discourses in constructing the ID subject and associated educational practice? The study utilises Q-methodology, a factor analytic method that yields whole patterns of responses for analysis. A process of sorting selected statements along the dimension of agree to disagree was completed by three groups of participants, namely adults with ID, parents of people with ID and professionals working with ID. Discourses of representation and of educational practice were identified through statistical and interpretive analysis, following the discourse analysis school of Q-methodology. The findings of this study reveal the operation of power in a medico-psychological gaze that makes ID visible and supervises disability expertise within education. Representations of ID suffused with religious notions support the exercise of pastoral power by disability experts. Human rights discourses in education can marginalise ID people if applied uncritically. Fixed notions of impairment constrain an intellectually disabled subject who is vulnerable and incompetent. This study argues instead for a theory of (poss)ability, underpinned by an understanding of the situational and shared nature of competence and a fluid conception of impairment. Human rights should be supplemented by an ethics of care and belonging in the community (ubuntu). A research agenda supporting this effort would examine the ways in which ID people work on themselves as subjects (subjectivisation) and explore the potential for resistance in this process.

Performance measures have been used throughout the business sector as a means to assess productivity, allocate resources, and increase profitability. More recently, they have been utilized to answer increasing calls for accountability in public education. Legislation has been passed in both the United Kingdom and the United States that implements performance measures as a means to measure student achievement and assess school performance. This study, conducted both in the United States and the United Kingdom, examined the perceptions of 15 primary and 15 elementary school leaders with regard to the transnational issue of school performance measures. Q methodology was used to examine the opinions and perceptions of these leaders for the purpose of providing insight for stakeholders and identifying future areas of research. The data from the participants revealed patterns of opinion within the head teacher group, the principal group, and the participants as a whole. Common opinions included the balanced use of performance measures, the political nature of school performance measures, the appropriate use of standardized test scores, and the consideration of economic and social factors. This study also demonstrated the use of Q methodology in qualitative educational research by both obtaining and analyzing rich and insightful participant data.