Poor learner performance in mathematics is consistently observed throughout the education system in South Africa and starkly pronounced in historically disadvantaged schools in historically disadvantaged environments. Despite interventions such as nofee paying policy, a National Strategy for Mathematics, Science and Technology and National School Nutrition Programme, poor learner mathematics performance remain endemic. Learner achievement studies have mainly focused on identifying individual characteristics, ignoring the protective processes that promote mathematical resilience. This study aims to explore how disadvantaged learners in disadvantaged environments learn mathematics in the Further Education and Training band. A two-stage or phased sequential exploratory mixed-method design, with the qualitative phase preceding the quantitative phase was anchored within the socioecological resilience perspective. The study framework that draws from the work of Vygotsky, Carroll and Skovsmose, focuses on the dynamic interactions between learners and the connection between the home and the school. In this framework, learner mathematics achievement is a means towards the learner’s foreground. Mathematical learners who displayed improvement in their mathematical achievement, as identified by their previous achievements within the Further Education and Training band were targeted in this study. A total of nine Grade 12 learners (five boys and four girls) learning mathematics in disadvantaged environments from Johannesburg West and Johannesburg Central Education Districts were purposively selected for Phase 1 and one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with them. A questionnaire that was supported by findings from the interviews was administered to 461 respondents (55% (253) female and 45% (208) male) learning mathematics in Grade 10, 11 or 12 in Phase 2 to develop a Mathematical Resilience Scale within a South African context. Thematic analysis and exploratory factor analysis are the two main data analysis techniques sequentially utilised in the study. Results of this study reveal a variety of processes undertaken by mathematical learners to develop mathematical resilience. These processes include access to social-relationships that give rise to the use of assessment feedback as a learning strategy for learning mathematics. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / PhD / Restricted

This dissertation provides empirical and theoretical support for the antecedents and consequences of cyber resilience via three essays on cyber resilience. Essay 1 comprises 2 studies using a multi-method empirical research effort to determine whether emphasizing suppliers' implementation and use of business continuity management (S-BCM) is actually beneficial to buyers. In Study 1, data from 150 managers was collected via a survey-based questionnaire to determine whether buyers' adoption of monitoring supplier operational performance (MS-OP) and monitoring S-BCM (MS-BCM) enhances S-BCM implementation and use. Evidence from Study 1 suggests that MS-BCM is more effective than MS-OP. Moreover, the results suggest that while buyer power positively augments the effectiveness of MS-BCM, it actually has a diminishing effect on the effectiveness of MS-OP. Study 2 uses the data of 114 managers from a vignette-based experiment to determine whether S-BCM leads to improved buyer operational and financial performance. Study 2 offers evidence that confirms the positive link between S-BCM and buyer operational and financial performance. The results also suggest that the use of reward power further enhances the association between S-BCM and buyer performance. Using two studies, Essay 2 examines how supply chain power and learning can be related to cyber resilience capability. Study 1 indicated that powerful buyers and supply chain learning from new knowledge contribute to visibility to build cyber resilience while dominant suppliers are reluctant to share information. The results of Study-2 show that supply chain and operations managers believe that companies and their suppliers would have better operational performance if they invest in the accuracy of visibility. Moreover, supply chains properly can avoid, maintain, and recover from cyber disruption when real-time information is available. Essay 3 focuses on the role of downstream complexity along with enterprise resource planning (ERP) in building cyber resilience in supply chains. The results reveal that ERP systems help supply chains to mitigate the negative effect of downstream complexity on the impact of information sharing in a secure system needed to build cyber resilience in times of data breaches and cyber-attacks. Although the use of information technology increases cyber risk, supply chain managers should take advantage of ERP systems to mitigate the negative effect of complexity in supply chain cyber resilience.

Evaluating the resilience of transportation infrastructures, including bridges, roads, and tunnels, is a critical aspect of ensuring the ongoing functionality and reliability of urban or regional areas in the face of various disruptive events. Such infrastructures are susceptible to a range of disruptions which can have significant impacts on their ability to function effectively. Resilience refers to the capacity of an infrastructure or a system to withstand and recover from these disruptions. This research presents a framework to evaluate the resilience surface for assessing the resilience of various transportation infrastructure components. This comprehensive approach involves several steps. First, the framework identifies unique damage configurations by performing a fragility analysis. This analysis allows for a better understanding of how susceptible the infrastructure is to different hazards. Next, the framework focuses on the restoration of the affected infrastructure by developing recovery curves for each identified damage configuration. This is done by taking into account relevant restoration data and considering the specific characteristics of each configuration. Additionally, the framework acknowledges the inherent uncertainty that exists within various aspects of infrastructure resilience assessment. These uncertainties include hazard intensity, modeling uncertainty, and the restoration process itself. By incorporating these uncertainties into the framework, a more accurate and reliable assessment can be achieved. The utility of this framework is demonstrated through its application to a real-world case study involving a highway bridge located in Canada. The goal of this research is to offer decision-makers a valuable tool for evaluating the resilience of transportation infrastructure. This can contribute to more robust and reliable transportation infrastructures, capable of withstanding and recovering from a wide range of disruptive events. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Resilience quantification of infrastructures is the assessment and measurement of their ability to withstand and recover from disruptive events. However, there is a significant research gap in this field, with limited studies and standardized methodologies available. This research presented a framework to quantify the hazard resiliency of infrastructures through development of resilience surface. The framework and the procedure were then numerically tested on a real bridge in Canada as a case study.

This interdisciplinary, qualitative study is an in-depth look at Orthodox Christian lay ministry experience and resilience in the United States. Thirteen Orthodox Christian women and men—all who identify with a vocation in lay ministry and have Orthodox theological education—were interviewed for this exploration. Their insights into the struggles and supports in ministry reveal a climate in the Orthodox Church in the United States that can be ambivalent, at times even hostile, to lay ministry. The research findings suggest that despite the stark environment for lay ministry in the Orthodox Church, emerging themes of resilience can help explain how people continue to dedicate their lives to lay ministry, persevere through hardship, and still produce “good fruit.” This investigation is important for both lay ministry in the Orthodox Church as well as the study of resilience. Common themes of support and struggle point to an emerging charism of “lay vocational ecclesiastical ministry” as well as distinct features of Orthodox Christian Resilience. Building on Michael Ungar’s theoretical framework known as the “social ecology of resilience,” the author introduces a “social-spiritual ecology of resilience” conceptual model. This can explicitly account for spiritual and religious components of people’s environments that might constitute significant factors of resilience. Study findings, then, lead to suggestions on how to better support Orthodox Christian lay ministry resilience in the United States while encouraging the dignity of the laity as a whole.

Water distribution system (WDS) is very critical to human health and societal welfare. Maintaining the quality of the water so that potable water gets distributed to consumers has always been a challenge in the water industry. Deterioration of water quality can happen either accidentally or deliberately and the widespread geography of the water system makes it even more vulnerable to contamination. In this respect, researchers and utilities have some response action to flush out the contaminants when they are detected. But not all networks have reliable sensors to detect the contamination and lack of guidelines for sensor deployment has made the situation even more serious. Given this context, framework for decision-making in the case of WDN against contamination is a much-needed approach. Understanding the capability of the water system to handle the contamination event could provide ample insight on how to better protect the system and how to handle if the contamination does enter the system. In this regard, this study explores the concept of resilience to define the system performance when a disruption occurs, which in this case is the intrusion of contaminants. Resilience of a system can be viewed from different perspectives, each highlighting different aspect of the system. With this insight, the objective of this research is to characterize the resilience of the water system against contamination for multiple aspects of performance or functionalities and use that concept to further elucidate the decision-making process. Hydraulic and quality simulation to emulate the contamination intrusion in WDN is performed by using EPANET-MATLAB Toolkit which has the needed package for both EPANET and EPANET-MSX. EPANET-MSX is widely used for simulating multiple intrusions in the system. The result from the MATLAB simulation gives the quality at each node which is then used to draw the performance time-series curve. Resilience is then computed for each of the performance metrics using the area under the curve method. This study makes a comparison study for multi-dimensional resilience and describes in detail the need of considering the attributes of resilience which are resistance, loss rate, recovery rate, failure duration, and recovery ability. To perceive the concept of resilience with respect to the failure scenarios, a sensitivity analysis was performed for four failure contexts namely, intrusion time, intrusion duration, intruded contaminated mass, and the number of intrusion nodes. Furthermore, a system measure is defined to aggregate different individual resilience to overcome the challenge of multi-objective decision-making. Application of both integrated and multi-dimensional resilience was conducted for optimal sensor placement in the network to maximize the resilience of the whole system. The goal of this thesis is to introduce the multi-dimensional resilience concept as a tool for decision-making based on multiple aspects of system performance by characterizing the WDS resilience and water quality sensor optimization based on different aspects of system functionality under contaminant intrusion events.

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Children living in risk environments can experience traumatic events that could affect their future life. Providing these children with the necessary strategies to cope with adversity and to develop in an optimal way is needed in order to avoid trauma or being damaged for the rest of their lives. Because of this reason, a systematic literature review was performed with the aim to examine how resilience is defined and implemented in studies focusing on young children at risk. The search was done through five electronic databases and conducted during the spring semester of 2016. During the research process, inclusion and exclusion criteria were taken into account and different search words were used for each database. According to the inclusion/exclusion criteria a title/abstract screening was performed. Thereafter, for the articles which were not excluded a full text review screening was conducted, which led to the inclusion of 14 articles in total. Articles were analysed using a data extraction tool (protocol). All the articles were about resilience, aimed at children between 0 and 12 years old. Eight out of the fourteen were studies that evaluated the resilience degree in young children, while seven were aimed at developing resilience with specially designed intervention programmes. A range of definitions of the term resilience were found, showing that resilience can be understood as a process or as ability. On this basis, studies focused on resilience were found to be mainly of two kinds: related to observation or intervention, using different methodologies and tools to measure or develop resilience in children. The outcomes found were in line with previous research, showing the great importance of supportive relationships, developing within a certain environment and having a positive self-perception as facts that can influence the development of resilience.

The current paper reviews the recent literature on grief and resilience. Specific limitations are noted, namely the lack of attention in the grief literature given to traditional-age college students. The personality characteristics and coping strategies associated with resilient grievers are discussed, followed by a review of the issues and barriers specific to grieving college students. Finally, this paper provides suggestions for how universities and college counselors can promote resilience in grieving students in order to allow for better adjustment during bereavement. / text

In this professional report LEED for neighborhood development (LEED-ND) is analyzed through the lens of disaster resilience and mitigation. The new LEED-ND certification system recently created by the U.S. Green Building Council looks to be a popular method to create sustainable developments. LEED-ND as a system does not take hazards into account when certifying projects. Using HAZUS and hazard assessment methodologies LEED-ND is shown to do almost nothing to mitigate hazard losses. This is seen using the example of two hazard types (fire and earthquake). Since LEED-ND does not address hazards within the context of its system it is shown that LEED-ND is neither truly sustainable nor disaster resilient. Given the current trend of increasing hazard losses initiatives such as LEED-ND will have to address the issue of hazards moving forward. / text

Much research about the adaptation of Chinese international students focuses on challenges and stresses they experience in their adjustment to the host country, a perspective that is largely negative and pessimistic (Yeh & Inose, 2003). Although resilience, highly congruent with positive psychology and broadly defined as successful adaptation to adversity, has been studied among several populations, it has not been widely applied to these students. This study employs the cultural-contextual theoretical framework of resilience to gain an understanding of the resilience of 16 Chinese international students by examining: (1) How do these Chinese international students view challenges? (2) What resources do these Chinese students view as helpful in overcoming challenges? (3) How have their individual identities been negotiated and transformed? (4) What are their subjective views of success? The interviews revealed four leading challenges for these Chinese international students across different contexts: English, loneliness, relationships, and academic challenges. The participants identified intrinsic and extrinsic, cultural, and contextual resources they perceived helpful and important for them in overcoming challenges. They additionally described their transformed identities in personal, social, and cultural dimensions. The study revealed students’ patterns of navigation and negotiation, and their personal views on success, views that were dramatically different from what they saw as traditional Chinese success. This study expands the conceptualization of resilience from a cross-cultural to a more contextual understanding. This understanding might be helpful to provide more efficient assistance, build more effective intercultural communication, or even design more updated intervention programs for Chinese international students. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-29 19:53:56.25