Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1944. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 169-173).

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) modelling has simulated developmental learning across a range of domains such as reading (e.g. Seidenberg & McClelland,1989) or Semantics (e.g. Rogers et al. 2004). However aside from two notable exceptions (Plaut, 1996; Welbourne & Lambon Ralph, 2005b) modelling research has not addressed the simulation of relearning during spontaneous recovery or rehabilitation after brain damage, and no research has considered the effect of the learning environment. This thesis used an established PDP model of semantic memory (Rogers et al., 2004) to simulate the influence of the learning environment. A novel quantitative measure (called representational economy) was developed to monitor efficiency during learning. Developmental learning is considered to be multimodal (e.g. Gogate et al., 2000) whereas rehabilitation is normally carried out through therapy sessions employing unimodal learning tasks (Best & Nickels, 2000). This thesis hoped to discover whether multimodal rehabilitation may be more efficient (as suggested by Howard et al., 1985). Three sets of simulations were conducted: The first set contrasted multimodal and unimodal learning in development and recovery, and tested internal representations for robustness to damage finding multimodal learning to be more efficient in all cases. The second set looked at whether this multimodal advantage could be approximated by reordering unimodal tasks at the item level. Findings indicated that the multimodal advantage is dependent upon simultaneous item presentation across multiple modalities. The third set of simulations contrasted multimodal and unimodal environments during rehabilitation while manipulating background spontaneous recovery, therapy set size and damage severity finding a multimodal advantage for all conditions of rehabilitation. The thesis findings suggest PDP models may be well-suited to predicting the effects of rehabilitation, and that clinical exploration of multimodal learning environments may yield substantial benefits in patient-related work.

Only two years after graduating themselves, speech and language therapists are asked to act as placement educators and supervise student speech and language therapists. The role of the placement educator is to supervise, teach, support and assess the student in the clinical environment and as such is a complex and demanding role. Some previous research has suggested that the training and support provided to developing placement educators does not adequately prepare them for the role. However, the development of speech and language therapists as placement educators is a relatively under-researched area in the UK. This interpretive study explores how ten speech and language therapists feel they develop the necessary skills to be successful as placement educators, through the stories they tell about their experiences. This exploration of clinical education and professional development is set within a social constructivist perspective on learning. The participants talked at length of their own early experiences as students and described these as the starting point for their own enactment of the placement educator role. They also emphasised the importance of continuing to learn and develop their skills as they gained experience in the placement educator role itself. The themes of talk, collaboration, reflective practice and experiential learning were central to the stories told by the participants and underpin how these speech and language therapists learnt to be placement educators. It is suggested that in describing how she felt she learnt to be a placement educator each participant created a unique and dynamic map of that learning. This study contributes to the on-going discussion about the role of critical reflection in understanding and challenging established practice and reinforces the place of reflective practice as integral to both the clinical and placement educator aspects of the SLT’s role. The findings highlight the importance of peer support and shared opportunities for critical reflection with colleagues in ensuring that placement educators do not feel isolated or disillusioned.

The focus of this research is on the collaboration relationships of teachers and therapists working in school-based provision for pupils with language and communication disorders. The research is concerned with how the collaboration relationship operates as a power relation for these individuals. There is an attempt to work out something of the effects of changing notions of professionalism in its historical and current versions. The research reveals individuals' identifications with the powerful discourses in this contingent context, manifested in their metaphors and discursive moves. It analyses the complex interaction of discourses and cultural discourses/practices, attempting to grasp the effects of the powerful discourses as individuals construct and re-construct multiple professional and cultural identities and subject positions. In its examination of the political and cultural functioning of the forces of power-knowledge-selves-desire, the research analyses the operation of five dimensions of power at work in these relationships. The analysis subsequently suggests some implications for teacher/therapist co-practice. The research attends to the discourses of inter-professional collaboration in government policy documentation at the macro level, within local authority and school-institution policy statements at the meso level and in the way that participants write and speak of their collaborations at a micro leveL. Macro level discourses were examined in the relevant speech and language therapy and education agencies' policy documentation including Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Schools (HMI) Report (1996) and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists (RCSLT) (1996) statement of professional standards. Meso level discourses were sought in the relevant local education authority and school policy documentation. Micro level discourses were explored in instances of individuals' talk about their collaborative practice. Participants' accounts were gathered in semi-structured interviews, audiotaped collaborators' meeting talk and written texts. Individual experiences within specific collaboration relationships have not perhaps been grasped or understood in research into teacher/therapist co-working which draws upon positivist methodology and uses positivist methods. There is much previous research which theorizes collaboration at interagency or interprofessionallevels or that takes a systems theory approach that seeks to generalize norms of 'effectiveness' at either or both of these levels. This research was concerned to explore individuals' experiences of co-practice in an analysis which questioned co-practice norms and attempted to unsettle certainties. Participants' accounts in this analysis suggested a more continuous, fluid process of construction and re-construction of individuals' subject positions characterised by unstable identifications. Analysis of individuals' accounts revealed their subjection to the powerful discourses and their active exploitations of those discourses as resources, their subject positions manifested in their discursive choices, ambivalences, oscilations, evasions and miscalculations. Certain of the ways were uncovered in which multiple, unstable practice and co-practice related discourses interplay and compete, working to produce individuals subject to their power; and providing the discursive resources which individuals deploy as they constitute and reconstitute discourse/practice identity positions in their struggles for domination within their relationships. This analysis suggests certain of the effects of the powerful discourses as the participants constitute and re-constitute acceptable power sharing practices, positions within the dimensions of power which, at times collide with positions acceptable to the other. A number of possibilities for the co-practice of teachers and therapists in school-site provision for pupils with language and communication disorders are identified and discussed. These suggest how school institutions' and agencies' policy makers might attend to the diversity and plurality of teachers' and therapists' discursive resources and co-practices. These also suggest that spaces for the exploration of teacher/therapist discourse/practice differences as these relate to the notion of shared discursive resources and co-practice should be opened-up. These further suggest the need to question current policies and practices using a wider variety of conceptual and analytical tools and the need for shared learning spaces which might promote more personally acceptable practices underpinned by knowledge of each other's aspirations.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 1982.

<p> Anecdotal evidence suggests interdisciplinary ideas receive significant, positive press. The prevailing commentary details the promises and theoretical benefits of interdisciplinarity, yet countervailing viewpoints are noticeably absent from the conversation in major media sources. Moreover, there is a lack of empirical data exploring the values associated with the term, interdisciplinary. The study examined what ideological assertions are supported through interdisciplinarity in undergraduate education discourse published in <i> The Chronicle of Higher Education </i> from 1993-2013. Employing a critical framing, the study utilized document analysis to examine ideological building blocks (i.e. values, assumptions, symbols, and ideographs) in 177 articles over a 20-year period. Exploring the evolution of interdisciplinarity in the discourse provided an opportunity to present a rich, contextualized meaning of an important higher education concept. The findings suggested a positive, solution-orientation are associated with the term, and offered evidence for an emergent micro-ideology in the higher education community.</p>

<p>This dissertation examines the linguistic practices 9&ndash;13 year-old African American students who attended an after school program in Washington, D.C. used to negotiate schooling and achievement. It builds on existing anthropological research on how young people are socialized into their communities, classrooms, and the wider society via language. It renders this process particular to the students&rsquo; lived experiences of race, poverty, and contemporary schooling reform. By focusing on linguistic practice and the language ideologies held by the students, the dissertation explores the difficulties racially identified minority students face in school when they are asked by the wider society&rsquo;s major socializing agents and institutions to exchange cultural identity for academic success. </p><p> The dissertation is based on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork that was conducted from October 2010&ndash;June 2011. During these months, over 108 hours of data were recorded from 30 preadolescents who served as research subjects. Informal interviews with after school staff and adults from the local community were also conducted. In the third and final phase (April&ndash;June 2011), focus groups were conducted with 12 of the students. </p><p> The dissertation provides evidence that among same- and similar-age peers, the students often repurposed the linguistic practices they learned from adults, and in ways that did not always align with the dominant expectations of the more socially powerful members of either the community or the after school program. It argues that the types of AAVE-based &ldquo;conflict&rdquo; talk students test in peer contexts perform positive socializing functions but that these discourse styles were nevertheless often interpreted, by adults as well as the students themselves, as unpreparedness or unwillingness to achieve in school. </p><p> This study revisits major theorizing of hegemony, critical consciousness, and &ldquo;the Black underclass.&rdquo; It suggests that while preadolescent-age African Americans try to construct &ldquo;achievement&rdquo; on their own terms via linguistic practice, they are not always successful because they are not empowered in the classroom, situationally or in the long term. It concludes by recommending ways in which educational practitioners and theorists can better understand how academically marginalized students engage with schooling and how they can support these students&rsquo; negotiated achievements. </p>

This study concerns the decisions and expertise of speech and language therapists (sits) working with preschool children, in particular, the selection and prioritisation of newly referred youngsters for therapy. The literature review covers three aspects: the difficulties of identifying communication disorders in preschool children; the nature of speech & language therapy knowledge; the nature of the selection and prioritisation task. These three aspects provide the theoretical foundations of the study and gave rise to the selection of a multimethod and predominantly qualitative methodology. Using a series of knowledge elicitation tasks, the selection and prioritisation decision was explored. A small group of expert slts participated in semistructured interviews, case history analyses, focus group discussions and card sorting exercises. The results are summarised under three headings: the child, the process and the expertise. The study identifies areas considered significant in the discrimination of priority children. In particular, the co-consideration of the child's communication skills and the supporting communicative context emerged as the key categories. Features within these categories associated with priority and nonpriority children were identified. The process emerged as one whereby sits collected and evaluated baseline descriptions of the child and context. As these findings accumulated, they were judged as to their diagnostic and prognostic significance, as evidence of progress and as potential causes for sit concern. Substantial consensus was demonstrated between sits suggesting that the knowledge elicited emanated from a body of knowledge rather than being idiosyncratic. Even where variation occurred, patterns were evident, reflecting the possible existence of theories-of-action related to differing working contexts. The results are presented as theories-of-action which underpin slts decisions. As such they will be of support to junior sits in their understanding of the selection and prioritisation task and to more experienced slts in making their own decisions explicit.