TITLE: Understanding of Society by Czech Pre-school Children AUTHOR: Nikol Tomášková DEPARTMENT: Institute for Research and Development of Education SUPERVISOR: RNDr. Dominik Dvořák, Ph.D. ABSTRACT: The society's need to teach financial literacy to children of as early as pre-school age is ever increasing. Since there is number of methodologies currently being developed on this topic, the author considers crucial to explore a child's conception of socioeconomic phenomena associated with financial literacy before these guidelines are introduced in Czech nursery schools for practical use. In this thesis pre-school children's perception of such phenomena as profession, employment and associated financial flows, as well as the concept of poverty and wealth are being examined. Theoretical basis of this research uses certain principles of the constructivist model of development and education within the general framework of pre- school education. Our work has been also influenced by the ideas of J. Piaget and L. S. Vygotsky, in particular by those on children's thinking and thought processes. As a method to examine the above mentioned perceptions of children, an in-depth clinical interview has been used. The interview aimed to explore not only what knowledge of the selected socioeconomic phenomena the respondents...

The purpose of this study was to investigate factors influencing teachers' decisions to use textbooks in United States history classrooms. Textbook use was investigated in terms of planning and preparing classroom instruction, student assignments, teachers' attitudes toward reading and student comprehension abilities, textbook quality, and alternative resources. A chi-square analysis was conducted to determine significant relationships between factors.

This research focuses on designing with indigenous communities. The use of design raises concerns in this context. Because of the aim to ‘improve’ lives and the emphasis on innovation, design approaches have the probability to colonise. As designers, we have to find ways to deal with such concerns. Approaches that do this within the context of indigenous communities are Sheehan’s respectful design and Tunstall’s culture-based innovation. Both approaches acknowledge that the community should benefit from projects. In this, the role of the designer becomes to spark the resourcefulness of the community members to find such benefit. However, neither approach states in pragmatic terms how such a space can be reached. Therefore, this research aims to: explore the dynamics of a respectful design space in co-creative and co-reflective encounters with indigenous communities; and to provide recommendations to reach such a space. The explorations were performed by introducing co-creative design methods during a case study with three indigenous communities. Some co-creative processes led to respectful design spaces, others did not. All processes were analytically studied by combining annotated portfolios and content analysis in timelines. The aim was to find patterns of dynamics essential for respectful design. The dynamics that arose were: 1) ownership through the type of design participation, 2) indicators of ownership, 3) the type of novel expressions made and 4) the type of material culture introduced. This led to contributions of this research being, firstly, a framework of a respectful design space and recommendations of how to reach such a space. Secondly, the concept of constellations of design initiatives, to understand respectful design in situ. Thirdly, the importance of inclusion of the community’s own material culture to facilitate dialogical spaces, and, finally, the analytical approach used to find the dynamics.

While there is significant interest in the lives of looked-after young people, little attention has been given to the way these young people are depicted onscreen. The aim of this study is to explore looked-after young people's perceptions of these fictional depictions and the impact these depictions have on them. Drawing on Freire’s seminal text, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I adopt a participatory approach throughout. Research methods involved viewing and discussing TV and film content depicting looked-after characters with a group of young people in care, followed by semi-structured interviews with group members. The data is analysed using a modified Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis protocol. My research highlights that these young people perceive onscreen fictional depictions to be “unrealistic” and negative. These depictions have significant impact, particularly in terms of “presumed media influence”, on how these young people perceive negative depictions to influence others. The young people offer a range of suggestions in terms of better depicting looked-after characters, drawing on their own experiences of care. My research also highlights the benefit of utilising a Freirean empowerment model, in terms of raising critical consciousness, for a group of looked-after young people.

Taking hoarding as a model for amassing materials within art practice, this research questions the borders of a productive or rational relationship to collation and the development of pathology. In practice, I focus on how materials can be manipulated to reflect or imply attachments and value systems within disorder, collection and their interpretations/ analyses. Using historical examples, I question how disorder is formed, spatially, aesthetically and through clinical record-keeping, making specific reference to written/visual case-studies from Charcot and Freud. I question whether disorder can ever be seen as a culturally produced phenomenon in parallel to its clinical counterpart and suggest its uses to knowledge production within the fields of Fine Art and critical theory. I suggest hoarding – and the cultural construction of disorder - as collagist and create works, which reflect on the borders of psychopathological attachments to ‘stuff’; psychologies inherent to accumulation; and conscious and unconscious spaces occupied by both object and analysis. Creating new collagist and fictive methodologies out of the construction of case histories, and through the cooption of diagnostic tools and narratology used in psychoanalysis, I write about the work and within the work. This research questions how psychological disorder is re-narrated through fictive and visual forms within culture and via collective understandings of psychoanalytic subjectivities. I suggest how these fictions connect, accumulate and reflect back on themselves, affecting research and crossovers within psychoanalytic, spatial and cultural fields. I make links between the modern city and psychological disorder, drawing on the psychical affects of changes in urban space. Examining collation, the construction of psychological spaces and temporality in art practice (from Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbau to Michael Landy’s Break Down and Tomoko Takahashi’s collation of objects) alongside new clinical research into Hoarding Disorder, I relate compulsion and space to a rationalisation of clutter in contemporary practice.

This Thesis explores the nature and practice of ‘Ethical Hacking’. Ethical Hackers are individuals who use hacking skills, knowledge and techniques within legitimate authorised practice; they are employed to Hack. A Critical Realist methodological approach is employed in order to gain a qualitative understanding of a real phenomenon through a range of key informants who provide personal narratives within semi-structured interviews, commenting upon their own realities, and their perceptions of the field in which they work. A Bounded Rational Model of decision making reveals that decisions relating to involvement in criminality and individual Hacking events are made through a process of reasoning, of approximating the net gains and losses of a particular course of action, and that these decisions are ‘bounded’ by social norms, ethical approaches and the personal motivations and social circumstances within which the decisions and behaviour are framed.

This thesis explores how the nature of engagement in formal volunteering by older adults is shaped by experiences across the lifecourse and into older age. It utilises the Total Social Organisation of Labour theoretical approach to situate volunteering within the wider work context, looking at how volunteering is undertaken alongside other work commitments - paid and unpaid - at different times across the lifecourse. This synthesis of TSOL and lifecourse approaches allows this research to take a holistic approach to understanding volunteering by older adults; rather than approached in isolation, the nature of volunteering in older age is considered in context. Analysis of this was undertaken through qualitative semi-structured interviews with 26 older volunteers who engage with voluntary and community organisations in England. This data was used to develop further a heuristic proposed by Davis Smith and Gay (2005), which presents three categories of older volunteer lifecourse; constant, serial and trigger volunteers. In doing so, the differences in lifecourse experiences between individuals in the three categories are explored, and differences examined. This allows for the impulses to engage in formal volunteering in older age to be explored in light of these differences, and this thesis looks at how internal and external impulses to engage in formal volunteering are shaped by previous life experiences. It concludes by arguing that, while all volunteers have unique pathways to engagement and unique reasons for engaging, in understanding the different categories of older volunteer we can better understand how previous life experiences affect the ways in which older adults engage in formal volunteering.

In the 21st century, increasing demand for energy stimulated by high rates of economic development has pushed China to increase imports, leaving the country highly dependent on foreign energy sources. China’s energy security is therefore under threat from the constant risk of supply falling short of demand. Historically, various approaches have been proposed to attempt to resolve or, at least relieve, this security issue but those discussions focus on either competition or cooperation. The combined approach, co-opetition has been applied in business and this research has attempted to combine these two approaches when dealing with energy security issues, thus the original contribution of this research is to take a unique approach, combining the co-opetition approach with the added benefits of a traditional Chinese philosophy known as ‘Hehe culture’. In addition, the ‘Chinese characteristics’inherent in the energy security strategy, advocated by the Chinese government, has contributed a specific viewpoint in the academic field. Moreover, this research employs the PARTS model from game theory, an analytical tool originally applied in the field of business and economics, to build a framework for evaluating Chinese co-opetition in energy relations. Three case studies of China’s energy co-opetition with Japan, Russia and Africa are analysed according to the framework, revealing how co-opetition affects China’s energy security. The findings of this research include the prerequisites for successful co-opetition, and the value and function of incorporating Hehe culture into co-opetition. The research identifies the impact of thesen prerequisites on the strategic value of co-opetition, generating a new model for Chinese energy security, which will allow for accurate determination of the best approach to the game of energy co-opetition with different players.

This thesis comprises three chapters; a literature review, an empirical paper, and a commentary and reflective review. The literature review critiques stress management interventions for staff working in adult intellectual disability services. There is recognition that working in intellectual disability services can be stressful for staff members. Stress management interventions tended to focus on reducing stress rather than on preventing it. Interventions were categorised as cognitive-behavioural approaches, acceptance and commitment approaches or collaborative approaches where staff members were involved in developing person-centred interventions. Considerations and implications for future stress management interventions are discussed. The empirical element of this thesis focused on investigating predictors of burnout in 86 staff working in intellectual disability services. The paper explored the role of emotional intelligence, exposure to violence and self-efficacy in burnout development. The findings from the empirical paper demonstrated that low self-efficacy and high exposure to violence predicts burnout as measured by the emotional exhaustion (EE) and depersonalisation (DP) components of the burnout measure. Self-efficacy was found to moderate the relationship between violence and burnout (EE and DP). Emotional intelligence was found to predict personal accomplishment (PA) which can protect against burnout development. Emotional intelligence was not found to moderate the relationship between exposure to violence and burnout. Lower levels of emotional intelligence did not predict EE or DP. The commentary and reflective review provides an account of the research process critiquing the decisions made throughout. This includes the process of the literature review searches and topic selection; the empirical paper design, variables, method, data collection and measures. Reflective discussion in this review includes consideration of the ethical issues, clinical and theoretical implications and personal reflexivity.

As ciências sociais e humanas historicamente desconsideraram as perspectivas das crianças na produção de conhecimento. Estas, quando ouvidas, tiveram suas vozes interpretadas à luz de uma suposta incompetência para fazerem julgamentos ou para informarem adequadamente pesquisadores. Os estudos sociais da infância, no entanto, vêm se constituindo com força em contexto internacional tendo como importante eixo temático o abafamento da voz de crianças na produção acadêmica e nas demais práticas sociais, bem como a tentativa contrária de dar-lhe realce. Temse assistido, assim, a ampliação do espaço outorgado à voz e à participação das crianças nas pesquisas. Este trabalho se propôs investigar como tal participação vem sendo incorporada em contexto brasileiro. Para dar conta de seus objetivos, a pesquisa se apoiou nos aportes dos estudos sociais da infância. No plano metodológico, buscou articular o referencial da hermenêutica de profundidade, tal como proposto por John B. Thompson, às técnicas de análise de conteúdo. Foram analisados 179 artigos das áreas de antropologia, educação, psicologia e sociologia, que relatam pesquisas com o envolvimento de crianças e que foram publicados entre os anos de 2000 e 2012 em periódicos classificados como A1 ou A2 pela CAPES. Diferentemente do que tem sido visto em contexto internacional, observouse que a escuta de crianças na produção acadêmica brasileira em ciências sociais e humanas restringe-se ainda à psicologia e, em menor grau, à educação. Há predominância da perspectiva da criança como sujeito entre os trabalhos analisados, ainda que também tenham sido identificados trabalhos que abordam as crianças como objetos e outros que as reconhecem como atores sociais. Ressaltam-se ainda, entre os resultados, lacunas referentes à caracterização das crianças que participam das pesquisas nessas áreas: crianças pequenas, crianças que vivem em áreas não urbanas e as que se localizam nas regiões Norte, Nordeste e Centro-Oeste do país permanecem silenciadas nas pesquisas / Social and human sciences have historically disregarded childrens perspective in the production of knowledge. When children were heard they had their voices interpreted in the light of a supposedly inability to make judgments or properly inform researchers. However, social studies of childhood in the international context have constructed a critique of the silencing of childrens voices in the academic literature and in other social practices as one of the fields strand, as well as the opposing attempt to give their voices emphasis. Therefore, we have witnessed an expansion of the space granted to the voice and participation of children in research. This study aimed to investigate how such participation has been incorporated into the Brazilian context. In order to achieve that goal the research used contributions from social studies of childhood. Methodologically, it articulates John Thompsons depth hermeneutics with content analysis techniques. We have analyzed 179 research reports articles in the fields of anthropology, education, psychology and sociology with the involvement of children that was published between the years 2000 and 2012 in journals classified as A1 or A2 by CAPES. Differently from the international context it was observed that the hearing of children in Brazilian academic production in social and human sciences is still restricted to psychology and to a lesser degree, to education. Among the articles analyzed children as subjects is the predominant perspective, although papers that address children as objects or recognize them as social actors have also been identified. It is worth to mention that we also identified gaps among the results regarding the characterization of children who participate in research in the following areas: small children, children living in non-urban areas and those located in the North, Northeast and Midwest regions of the country. Those still remain silenced in the studies