Although a concern for gender equity provided the framework for this research, the results of this study highlighted the fact that the question of equity should be broadened to include concern for the tier of talented women and men who currently choose not to persist in an undergraduate computer science major. This investigation captured the experience of three male and two female first year undergraduate computer science majors (and two instructors) over the course of their first two college terms. Sources of data included interviews, classroom observations, electronic mail journal comments, and casual conversation. Subtle elements of potential gender discrimination were a part of the rich data collected but the students did not mention such factors. Rather, in faithfully portraying the students' perspectives, this research presented the students' candid discussion of the function of more obvious factors in their experiences. Difficulties with concepts of mathematical proof and computer programming were significant factors in the students' experiences. Students not experienced with mathematical proof or computer programming failed to develop an understanding of the basic principles in the respective course. Student difficulties were matched by the struggles of teaching faculty as they looked for input to support improvement in their teaching. Many of the factors identified by the students were found in the general undergraduate experience. All of the students knew little about careers in computer science and were anxious to learn more. The female students wanted their career to involve work they enjoyed. The male students wanted assurances that they could compete and find financial security in their career. The students valued support they found in a variety of forms and were disappointed in the lack of support found in advising sessions. Students struggled with inadequate study skills to meet demanding course expectations. This research identified factors in the culture of undergraduate computer science education that impacted students' decisions to persist, or not persist, in the field. The results indicate changes and provide a basis for the design of interventions aimed at creating an environment that will equitably support all persons in pursuit of an undergraduate computer science degree. / Graduation date: 1996

No description available.

The epistemological works of Gaston Bachelard (1884- 1962), written and published between 1928 and 1953 try to make traditional philosophers of science aware of the discontinuous structure of scientific change and the dynamics of the scientific mind. Bachelard often argued that the historical and technical progress of the sciences show that the purely descriptive and classificatory features of past science are sooner or later substituted for epistemic models which rely mainly upon the scientist’s power to technically construct the objects of scientific inquiry. The relationships that Bachelard saw between scientists, theories, experimentation, and scientific technology in science led him to coin the philosophical concept of ‘'phenomenotechnique.' This concept reflects the historically contingent, artificial, constructed, social character of both scientific knowledge and scientific entities. Bachelard claimed the instruments are materialized theories. Just like mathematics, they are products of technique. Technique, on the other hand, is the rational expression of the scientist’s world view. Scientific knowledge is what ends up being technically objectified in scientific instrumentation. Groups such as the social constructivists argue that ‘phenomenotechnique’ expresses their own claims regarding the strictly rhetorical nature of science. However, to Bachelard, the presuppositions behind the concept preserve the rational essence of scientific thought. ‘Phenomenotechnique’ is one of the most potentially rich concepts that Bachelard has to offer to contemporary science studies. The purpose of this dissertation is to offer a full account of the history and implications of ‘phenomenotechnique.’ Part I is an explanatory analysis of the concept as it appears in all the epistemological works of Gaston Bachelard. It also shows how ‘phenomenotechnique’ relates with other Bachelardian concepts such as ‘technical materialism,’ ‘epistemological rupture,’ ‘psychoanalysis of scientific thought,’ ’applied materialism,’ and ‘social consensus.’ Part II deals with the intellectual and scientific context of France in the first half of the twentieth century which led Bachelard to coin the term. Finally, Part III will attempt to incorporate ’phenomenotechnique’ into today’s science studies. / Ph. D.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

Abstract not available. / Thesis (M.Ed.)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2008.

M.A. (Applied Linguistics) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

This study tries to delineate the paradigms of opinion among Colombian Computer Industrialists with respect to the role of informatics in national development especially (1) their estimation of the performance of the informatics in the modernization process, (2) the perceptions on which this attitude was based, (3) their ability to integrate the informatics instruction into the development process, (4) their ability to establish the need of doctoral programs in informatics into the development process, and (5) their ability to recognize the importance of the network communication as a medium of knowledge exchange among higher education institutions.

Submitted in partial fulfilment of an M.Com. degree in Information Systems, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, March 2017 / Purpose – The aim of this research is to examine one case of the adoption and contextualisation of an international computing curriculum at a South African university in order to improve the understanding of this process for literature as well as practice. An international computing curriculum is a curriculum developed by international professional and scientific bodies such as the Association for Information Systems (AIS), Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) or the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts an interpretivist approach and follows an exploratory research design using qualitative methods to gather data and directed content analysis for data analysis. The research site is a traditional South African university which has used the IS2010 curriculum as a guideline for their undergraduate Information Systems degrees. The site was chosen using convenience sampling. Data was obtained through interviews with staff at the Information Systems department as well as university documentation. Findings - The research indicates that university objectives, university context and industry skills needs have shaped the way the university has adopted and contextualised the IS2010 curriculum. The research also indicates that there are two types of challenges that were encountered: challenges caused by IS2010 and existing challenges that affected IS2010. The major challenges caused by IS2010 were the absence of important elements related to teaching and learning, particularly pedagogy. The challenges that affected the adoption of IS2010 but were not caused by IS2010 were challenges that the university was already facing. These include the language of instruction, institutional culture, staff shortages and students’ cultural and educational background. Originality and Practical contribution – Most of the research on this area focuses on African countries other than South Africa. Researchers have argued that it is important to conduct this kind of research on an individual country level because of the unique nature of the challenges facing each country. This research is an attempt to conduct such research specifically for South Africa. The research findings have shed light on how a South African university may adopt and contextualise an international computing curriculum and the challenges the university might face in doing so. This will in turn help computing educators in addressing such challenges and provide some guidance on how to go about doing so. The research also puts forward a conceptual framework that can be used to research computing curriculum contextualisation in South Africa. / GR2018

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Orientador: Washington Luiz Pacheco de Carvalho / Banca: Eugenio Maria de França Ramos / Banca: Luiz Gonzaga Roversi Genovese / Resumo: Neste trabalho, procuramos verificar quais as contribuições formativas dos laboratórios didáticos que compõem o curso de Licenciatura em Física da Universidade Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho", UNESP, campus de Bauru. Para isso, realizamos entrevistas que buscaram compreender como quatro alunos do último ano desta licenciatura concebem questões relacionadas ao desenvolvimento das práticas experimentais desenvolvidas nestes laboratórios. A partir destas entrevistas, elencamos algumas categoriais que foram obtidas a partir de uma análise fenomenográfica. Tais categorias compuseram os nossos espaços de resultados e nos permitiram levantar algumas conclusões a cerca das concepções dos alunos no que diz respeito à postura dos professores responsáveis pelo desenvolvimento das práticas experimentais, a postura tomada por eles mesmos e seus colegas frente a estas práticas, assim como a cerca das características atribuídas por eles aos laboratórios didáticos. A partir destes espaços de resultados, caracterizamos as racionalidades relacionadas às concepções dos alunos, a fim de inferirmos sobre as contribuições formativas dos laboratórios didáticos a partir destas racionalidades. A partir das conclusões alcançadas, procuramos expor algumas reflexões a cerca de novas perspectivas para os laboratórios didáticos de Física, procurando apontar possibilidades para que este ambiente contribua de forma significativa para a formação inicial de professores. Para que os objetivos da pesquisa pudessem ser alcançados, nos embasamos em alguns referenciais da área de ensino de ciências que trabalharam com assuntos relacionados ao laboratório didático de Física. Também procuramos comparilhar da filosofia de Jürgen Habermas, assim como da fenomenografia de Ference Marton. Tendo em vista estes referenciais, apresentamos este trabalho... / Abstract: In this paper we try to verify the formative contributions of the educational laboratories that are part of the course of Licence in Physics of the Universidade Estadual Paulista "Julio de Mesquita Filho", UNESP, Bauru campus. We realized interviews trying to comprehend how four students of the last year of the license course deal with questions related to the process of experimental practices developed in these laboratories. From these interviews we list some categories gotten from the phenomenongraphic analysis. These catergories composed our "results spaces" and allowed us to reach some conlusions about the students conceptions over the behavior of the teachers responsible for the development of experimental practices, the behavior of the students themselves and of their colleagues facing these practical, as well as about the characteristics they themselves assign to the educational laboratories. From these "results spaces" we characterized the rationalities related to the students conceptions aiming to infer about the educational laboratories formative contributions coming from the rationalities. From these conclusions we look for showing some reflections about some new perspectives for the Physics educational laboratories trying to point possibilities that make these ambient help the initial formation of teachers. To achieve the research results were based it in some references of the science studies that searched about some subjects related to educational laboratories of Physical. Also we tried to use the Jürgen Habermas philosophy as well as the ference Marton's phenomenographic method. In view of these references we present this paper with four chapter that aim to show the used references as well as our vision about the contributions they gave to the science studies and as they fit to the context of this research / Mestre