Upon hearing a beautiful piece of music, one can find it difficult to express in words the most appropriate assessment of it. More challenging would be to quantify the performance with a numerical value. Assessment assists learning, while evaluation judges and assigns a grade to it. Secondary school band teachers are faced with this dilemma of quantifying musical achievement and knowledge in schools. It was from an interest in how music teachers can use assessment (as opposed to evaluation) to guide their teaching, and to learn more about how they do assign a number to students’ music, that I posed the following questions: (a) What are the participants’ rationales for the assessment strategies they choose and the evaluative measures they make for students? (b) What influences have led teachers to have these particular rationales? This study used interviews within a grounded theory method to conduct qualitative research. The research sample was limited to a selection of secondary band teachers in Saskatchewan. Eight teachers volunteered to participate in interviews which inquired into their current assessment and evaluation practices. Research revealed several themes impacting teachers’ rationales. Themes emerging through analysis were: the impact of the set-up of the band, performance versus best practice, issues around subject legitimacy, impact of school division policy, and held values specific to instrumental music education. The theory arising from data analysis is that when a band teacher is reluctant to fully adopt best practice methods, this is based on fears of producing less than adequate group performances which is a response to a fear of losing the band program all together. The significance of these findings lies in the implication that existing underlying issues need to be addressed that best practice expectations and/or policy cannot fully encompass.

Univ., Diss.--St. Gallen, 2002.

No description available.

Mass., Harvard Univ., Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Diss.--Cambridge, 2003. / Kopie, ersch. im Verl. UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Parent training is an effective intervention for parents of children with a variety of childhood disorders, and parents often view behavioral parent training as acceptable. Explanations and rationales for parent training are commonly provided at the beginning of treatment. However, there is little research regarding how rationales may influence acceptability. There is also limited information on whether fathers and mothers judge the acceptability of parent training differently. The purpose of this study was to determine whether changing the description of a behavioral parenting intervention influenced parents’ acceptability ratings and whether mothers and fathers differed in their ratings. Participants viewed one of two descriptions of parent training that focused on either addressing deficits in parenting skills or enhancing existing parenting skills. The results indicated that there was not a significant difference in the acceptability of the two parent training descriptions. However, mothers rated both treatment descriptions as more acceptable than did fathers. Results also indicated that parents’ beliefs about their influence as parents significantly predicted acceptability of the parent training descriptions. The results of the current study suggested that treatment acceptability was not influenced by the way that the interventions were described. Future research should focus on how to increase acceptability of parent training for fathers and parents who do not feel that they have control and influence over their children.

<p>The purpose of this study was to examine the goals, possibilities and rationales that could be found in the discussions concerning the digging of ditches by governmental subsidiaries in order to drain the peat bogs of late nineteenth century Sweden. A further aim was to look at the effect on the landscape on a local level i.e. Släthults moss in Bäckaby parish, Småland in the south eastern part of Sweden. </p><p>In order to be able to explain the connections between politics and landscape changes in a local population and its deciding bodies, influenced by ideas, science and production, a quadruple helix model developed from a triple helix model by Björn-Ola Linér was used. As a model of environmental history, three step thought was used, borrowed from Donald Worster. </p><p>The three steps are firstly nature itself, working without human intervention, in this study, the bog; secondly, the socioeconomic level, here the village and landowners and thirdly, human ideas, culture etc., in this case the parliament. </p><p>Primary sources were used and critically evaluated. Statements and arguments expressed by the members of the parliament were collected and divided into five main groups. Other materials were relatively scarce even though the planning itself was in force and acted as a starting point. </p><p>The study has shown how ideas, utility and scientific results affected a local landscape through the landowners themselves, supported by governmental subsidiaries administrated by a regional bureaucracy. The digging of ditches in the peat bogs was not a way to gain agricultural land; it was supposed to be a way to make the local climate better. In fact, projects where not even entitled to subsidies if the digging of the ditches positively affected agricultural land because of a difficulty in identifying the actual eneficiaries. </p><p>The study context suggests that subsidiaries rather were a way to help the people and strengthen the state by bypassing a local democracy. During this period, the Swedish state transformed from pro free trade to prorotectionism which implied, among other things a conflict between the old conglomerate of parts that constituted the whole and the new thought of a responsible central governing body. There are similarities between the reasoning around the ditch digging in Sweden and that of Linth Valley, Switzerland. The landowner in this case appeared to have wished to make the area better and invest in the land, something that might have been a way to get a better price for it. The area was sold as a farm thirteen years later. There seem to have been two other people directly interested in the project, the head of Bäckaby municipality and the responsible bureaucrat. The first had areas of land which benefited directly from the ditch digging and was said to have been the inspiration. The second was still in his learning period and seems, according to the material, to be eager to finish his education. The focal point of this study was the changing of a landscape for what seems to be political rather than absolutely practical reasons, such as obtaining agricultural land. This change has, in some sense, been reversed but the landscape has now turned into forest, from what was probably a rather flat open space. To get a glimpse of the situation today from a relevant point of view, the environmental programme of the social democrats is presented in one chapter, something meant to point ahead.</p>

Empirical research findings on the consequences of post-M&amp;A performance have generated several result, although most of which are inconsistent. The relation of such post-M&amp;A performances to non-listed and listed companies can be relative especially when considering the companies economic and financial structure and other prevailing factors associated to the host country. However, most of these have been attributed to the choice of performance measurement indicators. This paper analyses and evaluates existing performance indicators that have been employed in the literature. It is argued that to overcome the limitations found in financial indicators of performance, a need to pursue multiple measures of performance in post-M&amp;A research is needed. It also argues that the motives for the transaction should also be included as performance indicators. This hybrid approach will allow researchers and practitioners to measure the overall success of merger and acquisitions.

Research has observed an ever-increasing emphasis which is placed on the international dimension in higher education. This thesis is particularly interested in the question, why internationalisation? It constitutes a case study of the rationales driving the national policies for the internationalisation of higher education in New Zealand, the findings of which are compared with those of the seven European countries (Austria, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom) analysed as part of a recent European Union 5th Framework Programme project. The available research suggests that economic rationales increasingly drive internationalisation and the first phase of the above project reaffirmed that this was the case at the national level in those countries analysed. This thesis provides an opportunity to corroborate this research and assess whether the same is true in New Zealand. Above all, it intends to contribute to an improved conception of the phenomenon of increasing internationalisation in higher education from which informed discussion and critical debate about its future can take place.

Univ., Diplomarb.--Linz, 2006.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of St. Gallen, 2008.