Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / Throughout the relatively short history of American social studies education, its purposes have shifted in response to social and educational changes. The contest for the American social studies curriculum has continued since its inception, influenced by various stakeholders and educational theorists. Given widespread socio-political turbulence, particularly in the years following the 2016 election, this dissertation takes place at an opportune time to revisit the purposes of social studies. This dissertation explores the perceptions of 21 pre-service and in-service teachers and asks the question, “how do teachers perceive the purposes of social studies education?” To approach this question I adopted a constructivist grounded theory methodology. I conducted 21 interviews and allowed theory to emerge from the data to answer two sub-research questions: “How do pre-service and in-service teachers perceive the purposes of social studies education?”, and “How do teachers make sense of complex internal and external pressures and relate to the purposes of social studies education?” Several notable findings emerged from the results. I found teachers adhered to no singular, unifying purpose of social studies education. I argue for a fluid approach to purpose that allows for greater teacher professionalism and autonomy. When faced with pressures such as state policy, teachers exhibited varying degrees of resistance and prioritized their autonomy and the needs of their students. Teachers that resisted state policy were most commonly experienced in-service teachers. Notably, teachers perceived a debate between the importance of skills versus content in social studies education which I framed within existing educational sociology debates on the various dichotomies underpinning educational purpose; between neoconservatism and postmodernism, between instrumentalism and intrinsic meaning, between top-down policy and bottom-up context-driven instruction, between teacher alienation and self-actualization. The majority of teachers believed that developing specific social studies related skills was more important than content knowledge which highlighted a trend away from the intrinsic value of social studies knowledge and towards the instrumentalization of education. Social studies was increasingly defined by its utility. Finally, teachers noted the changing ontology of teaching itself given the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and rapid technological change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Uppsatsen fördjupar sig i användningen av personlighetstester. Idag förekommer det endiskussion i forskarsamhället kring personlighetstesters validitet och förmåga att mätapersonligheter. Studier har dock även visat att det finns ett starkt stöd för testerna inomHR-världen. Vårt syfte var att undersöka vilken roll testet kan ha i förhållande till demeningsskapande organiseringsprocesser som bidrar till att skapa organisationskulturen.Detta för att bidra till ökad kunskap kring hur testerna kan fungera som mer än ettrationellt verktyg. Metoden som ligger till grund för uppsatsen är en fallstudie och data inhämtades genom kvalitativa intervjuer tillsammans med tre personer från HR-avdelningen, två chefer och två medarbetare inom organisationen. I kapitlet “empiri & analys” belyses intressanta delar ur empirin med hjälp av olika teorier som är avrelevans för frågeställningen. Vad vi har kunnat se är att personlighetstesterna, utöverdess roll som instrumentellt verktyg, blivit en slags kulturell artefakt. Detta genom attorganisationsmedlemmarna översatt idén till handling i den lokala praktiken och isamband med det gett testet mening. Genom att betrakta vår empiri utifrån AndreasWerrs studie har vi kunnat visa på att testerna också kan få en roll som kulturbärare,begreppsapparat och osäkerhetsreducerare i samband med användningen.

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Socialtjänsten i Sverige har blivit påverkade av hotfulla och våldsamma situationer. Det finns i vårt intresse att studera hur socialtjänsten hanterar och har hanterat dessa situationer och händelser. De teorier som används påvisar den komplexa miljö som socialtjänsten befinner sig i där de blir påverkade både av samhällets individer och regelverk från den politiska sidan. Komplexiteten har lett till ett ramverk kring acceptabelt beteende i ärenden men alla situationer kanske inte är säkra att behandla utifrån ramverket. Erfarenheten från medarbetare spelar stor roll i deras vardagliga liv kring hur situationer uppfattas. / The social services in Sweden have been affected by threats and violent situations. Therefore it is in our interest to study how they handle these situations. The proposed theories point out the complexity of the environment surrounding the social services combined with human interference and rules from the political side. This complexity has caused a framework of how to act but every situation may not be safe to handle from the framework. Hence does the experience of the employees play a big role in their everyday life and how situations are perceived.

Complexity and uncertainty have long been problems for organizations of all types. Organizational members do not do a very good job of dealing with the complexity and uncertainty as research shows that when faced with complex situations humans often turn to the same sources of information repeatedly (a practice that will eventually betray them), and/or reduce the amount of scanning that they do (Weick 1995; Boyd and Fulk 1996). Organizations often turn to information systems to help them deal with the complexity, but they often take a techno-centric view of knowledge that does not incorporate the human qualities needed for unstructured decisions (Malhotra 1997; Courtney 2001; Malhotra 2001). Additionally, there are times when the information systems that we are using may hinder the processes of dealing with the complexity (Weick and Meader 1993). Weick's (1995) concept of sensemaking is believed to help us to deal with this complexity. In his work with Meader (1993) he wonders what the effects of a sensemaking support system would have, but he does not have the answer because they state that it has not been asked. This dissertation answers the call of Weick and Meader as well as other scholars that have called for sensemaking and human intuition to be included in our information systems. This is accomplished by viewing sensemaking from an inquiring systems perspective (Churchman 1971) to develop a kernel theory that will be used in the context of design science to develop design requirements and principles for a sensemaking system. These design principles are then used to build an instantiation of the system in the form of SenseMan, a system designed to help a local government agency deal with complexity in the context of software updates. Finally the design is evaluated for its effectiveness in dealing with the complexity of in this context using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the processes of the psychological contract during organisational socialisation. Research on psychological contract tends to focus more on the content and breach of the contract. Very little is known about the formative stages of the contract. Very little attention has also been given to investigating the psychological contract together with organisational socialisation. Linking the two research areas would further our understanding of both the dynamic nature of the psychological contract. This is achieved by investigating the temporal changes of the psychological contract of new employees, pre-entry up to six months post entry into employment. The research also investigates the psychological contract from the employer`s perspective. It utilises Weick`s (1995) sensemaking properties as a methodological framework to better understand these processes. Consistent with the research aim and objectives and social constructionism, a qualitative methodology was adopted. The research used in-depth semi structured interviews to collect data supplemented with sitting in during recruitment interviews in one of the organisations, and data were analysed using template analysis. Periodic interviews were carried out every four to six months post entry. The research consists of two organisations, where each provided two groups for analysis. The findings show that after entry into the organisation, the psychological contract changes in a variety of ways influenced by socialisation into the organisation. A model based on the findings is presented and discussed in the discussion chapter. The research also makes a contribution (methodology) by adopting the sensemaking framework.

Access to high quality, reliable freshwater resources has been recognized as a global issue for decades and as the demand for water continues to grow, water management and sustainability issues have been pushed into the limelight. Despite this mounting pressure, variation in water use practices continues to persist, which contributes to both local and global water security challenges. Drawing on the environmental management literature, I noticed that the majority of the existing research focuses on the role of managerial demographics rather than on the process of how managers think, interpret, and act in strategic situations. Thus, in an effort to address this gap I adopted a qualitative research approach, conducting semi-structured interviews with managers at craft breweries in Alberta and California. My findings indicate that managerial sensemaking acts as a mediating process in a manager’s choice of water management strategy, ultimately influencing their brewery’s water use performance. And, that these relationships are affected by managerial characteristics as well as contextual factors. As the world’s demand for fresh water, and the number of people living in water stressed conditions continues to rise, these findings have important implications. By both extending and contributing to existing sensemaking and cognitive frame theory, my findings shed light on alternative cognitive determinants driving water use variation and thus support the development of more sustainable water management practices.

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Sensemaking of large textual information is a cognitively intensive task. Prior work has shown the value of large 2D high-resolution-display spaces in supporting the sensemaking process, by providing a "Space to Think" in which analysts can organize information and externalize their thought process. In this paper, we investigate how analysts use 3D immersive spaces for the same task. To this end, we conducted a user study where participants were asked to solve an intelligence analysis task using an Immersive Space to Think (IST) in a 3D virtual environment using an HMD. The study results show that the concepts of Space to Think extend naturally to 3D immersive space and that the 3D space offers some additional opportunities. With immersive space, analysts i) organized in a surrounding virtual sphere, ii) exploited the depth dimension for encoding relevance, and iii) traded-off between physical navigation and occlusion. / Master of Science / Sensemaking of large textual information is a cognitively intensive task. Prior work has shown the value of large 2D high-resolution-display spaces in supporting the sensemaking process, by providing a "Space to Think" in which analysts can organize information and externalize their thought process. In this paper, we investigate how analysts use 3D immersive spaces for the same task. To this end, we conducted a user study where participants were asked to solve an intelligence analysis task using an Immersive Space to Think (IST) in a 3D virtual environment using an HMD. The study results show that the concepts of Space to Think extend naturally to 3D immersive space and that the 3D space offers some additional opportunities. With immersive space, analysts i) organized in a surrounding virtual sphere, ii) exploited the depth dimension for encoding relevance, and iii) traded-off between physical navigation and occlusion.

The increasing volume and complexity of text data are challenging the cognitive capabilities of expert analysts. Machine learning and crowdsourcing present new opportunities for large-scale sensemaking, but it remains a challenge to model the overall process so that many distributed agents can contribute to suitable components asynchronously and meaningfully. In this work, I explore how to crowdsource sensemaking for intelligence analysis. Specifically, I focus on the complex processes that include developing hypotheses and theories from a raw dataset and iteratively refining the analysis. I first developed Connect the Dots, a web application that implements the concept of "context slices" and supports novice crowds in building relationship networks for exploratory analysis. Then I developed CrowdIA, a software platform that implements the entire crowd sensemaking pipeline and the context slicing for each step, to enable unsupervised crowd sensemaking. Using the pipeline as a testbed, I probed the errors and bottlenecks in crowdsourced sensemaking,and suggested design recommendations for integrated crowdsourcing systems. Building on these insights and to support iterative crowd sensemaking, I developed the concept of "crowd auditing" in which an auditor examines a pipeline of crowd analyses and diagnoses the problems to steer future refinement. I explored the design space to support crowd auditing and developed CrowdTrace, a crowd auditing tool that enables novice auditors to effectively identify the important problems with the crowd analysis and create microtasks for crowd workers to fix the problems.The core contributions of this work include a pipeline that enables distributed crowd collaboration to holistic sensemaking processes, two novel concepts of "context slices" and "crowd auditing", web applications that support crowd sensemaking and auditing, as well as design implications for crowd sensemaking systems. The hope is that the crowd sensemaking pipeline can serve to accelerate research on sensemaking, and contribute to helping people conduct in-depth investigations of large collections of information. / Doctor of Philosophy / In today's world, we have access to large amounts of data that provide opportunities to solve problems at unprecedented depths and scales. While machine learning offers powerful capabilities to support data analysis, to extract meaning from raw data is cognitively demanding and requires significant person-power. Crowdsourcing aggregates human intelligence, yet it remains a challenge for many distributed agents to collaborate asynchronously and meaningfully. The contribution of this work is to explore how to use crowdsourcing to make sense of the copious and complex data. I first implemented the concept of ``context slices'', which split up complex sensemaking tasks by context, to support meaningful division of work. I developed a web application, Connect the Dots, which generates relationship networks from text documents with crowdsourcing and context slices. Then I developed a crowd sensemaking pipeline based on the expert sensemaking process. I implemented the pipeline as a web platform, CrowdIA, which guides crowds to solve mysteries without expert intervention. Using the pipeline as a testbed, I probed the errors and bottlenecks in crowd sensemaking and provided design recommendations for crowd intelligence systems. Finally, I introduced the concept of ``crowd auditing'', in which an auditor examines a pipeline of crowd analyses and diagnoses the problems to steer a top-down path of the pipeline and refine the crowd analysis. The hope is that the crowd sensemaking pipeline can serve to accelerate research on sensemaking, and contribute to helping people conduct in-depth investigations of large collections of data.