This thesis investigates how various text-talks, i.e. text-focused classroom discussions, may scaffold students’ reading of specialised texts in upper secondary school. The study consists of qualitative case studies based on classroom observations of two teachers’ History instruction, focusing on parts defined as text-talks. An intervention study was conducted where one teacher worked with two text-talk approaches. The research questions regard how students move in relation to the text in the text-talks and how text content is incorporated, what scaffolding structures emerge, and whether and how the text-talks differ. A secondary aim is to generate theories concerning the potentials and limitations of text-talk as a reading scaffold. Analyses were done in terms of text movability to show reading positions, intertextual cohesion to show relations between source text and text-talk, and scaffolding which includes peer scaffolding, teacher scaffolding and the text-talks as a scaffold per se. A methodological contribution is the development of a model for content-based analyses of authentic text-talks. The results show that in text-talks that work as a scaffold, students take the expected positions toward the text, and the talks are clearly related to the source text, by means of lexical and conjunctive cohesion that is often varied and built-out. For more demanding texts, the students show dynamic text movability and move between exploring contents, subject field and context. Other characteristics are either peer scaffolding showing dialogicity and negotiation of meaning, or teacher scaffolding enabling students to progress and develop tools for text reception. The intervention approaches seem to scaffold reading to a greater extent than text-talks within ordinary instruction where the framing is weak. In conclusion, the results suggest that both student- and teacher-led text-talks may scaffold reading, but they need to be well planned and prepared with a structured framing.

Poststructuralist and other critical analyses of sexuality, gender and identity are used to examine how New Zealand and Danish young adults drew on and challenged available discourses as they responded to representations of sexual interactions in the film Chasing Amy. The conversations about sexual practices in mixed gender, women only and men only focus groups illustrate the complex ways in which people construct their identities using subject positions available to them in different contexts as they responded to the movie, the talk of others and the researcher. The strengths and limitations of this approach to facilitating talk are examined as well as the conversations that occurred. The ways in which researchers in New Zealand and Denmark are themselves discursively positioned as theorists and investigators of gender and sexuality is also examined. The thesis illustrates how multiple connections and differences emerge across national and local environments. Talk about sexual negotiations among young adults recruited through university student networks suggests that assumptions about agency, sexual autonomy, reciprocity and women’s and men’s equal right to enjoy sex are still gendered while also challenging traditional understandings about men, women and sexual pleasure. This was, for example, highlighted in talk about receiving and giving oral sex in long-term heterosexual relationships and the ‘need’ for women to explore their bodies and become ‘capable (s)experts’ through masturbation. The thesis finally explores how gendered collective and individual identities sometimes intersect with social identities associated with ethnicity, religion, nationality and sexual identification. These intersections disrupt attempts in cross-national projects – including this thesis research – to form conclusions about national differences and other social identities.

Talking Story about Art and Life: Narratives of Contemporary Oceanic Artists and Their Work takes a narrative, biographical approach to examine the lives and selected works of five contemporary Oceanic artists living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand – Ioane Ioane, Ema Tavola, Brett Graham, Robin White, and Siliga David Setoga. The narrative methodology, inspired by the Hawaiian notion of “talking story,” utilises informal conversations as sites of knowledge production. This approach allowed more personal and varied information to emerge, which speaks to the pluralities of identity. Instead of focusing primarily on visually analysing the creative output of the artists, their artworks and practices are incorporated as aspects of their voices that contribute to the narratives of their lives. The participants told stories that engage with the complexities intrinsic to their lives, revealing areas to research for the purpose of supporting their narratives. The supporting research investigates the notion of vā, Oceanic curatorial practices, trickster discourse, insider/outsider discourse, and fa‘a Sāmoa. In carrying out this investigation, this thesis illustrates choices artists are making to express their voices on their own terms. Bringing to light these choices also reminds viewers/readers that we can actively shape our own narratives. By privileging the artists’ stories told in their own words, this thesis honours Oceanic oral traditions and moves forward our understanding of these contemporary Oceanic artists and their artistic practices.

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration of institutions for small children, i.e. the pre-school institution.The overall aim of the study is to investigate what is characteristic for some Swedish preschoois,and how childhood is formulated and realized within those institutions. Of centralimportance are questions. which concern how pre-schools are constructed, negotiated andmaintained by the actors within the pre-school settings. Another aim is to explore contemporarymeanings of pre-school and pre-school children as they appear in interviews and everyday talk. Thedata were collected by participant observations for almost one year in two pre-schools. Data consistof audio- recordings of everyday life and parental talks, interviews with children, pre-schoolteachers and parents. Points of departure are ideas from interactionism and social constructionism.The analyses draw upon concepts from integrative theories; agency-structure, social practice, socialorder and normality in relation to the institution. The results show that pre-school is takcn for granted and is almost considercd as compulsory andpart of normal childhood. Pre-school is legitimated as an interest of and a question for society,families and parents, but also in the best interest of children here and now and for the future. Inaddition, pre-school is also understood as a social and a social pedagogical question for individualsand for society. Moreover, the study shows howeveryday life in pre-school is zoned andpedagogized in time and space. The institution is characterized by schedules, routines and predefinedrooms and artifacts, as weil as by planned activities and unplanned, occasional and situatedactivities, respectively. Children and adults have to deal with the social order of the institution, andthis study shows that the actors constantly break and negotiate the social order - they are doing preschool.The institutions and the interactions are characterized by complexitics and hybridities andthere are different activitics and discourses in action at the same time. This also concerns theintermediate domain between private and public and the relations between parents and pedagogues.None of them are in controi of children's everyday life, and they have to share information. viewsand sometimes also decisions. Parents have to contribute to the construction of a pre-school chiid,by delivering a child ready for prc-school, a chiId with certain competences. In everyday activitiesand in parental talks, the adults articulate and negotiate the picture of a "normal" pre-school chiId,i.c. demands related to a situated institutionaI normality . The study shows how children act indifferent ways in relation to social context and social order in different situations. They act as "normal pre-schoolchildren" but they also construct their own social order in relation to theinstitution, alone or together with other children and adults.

While the story of teaching makes plenty of room for academic and social learning, the telling often leaves out some of the most important details. In this thesis, I tell the stories of four teachers — how they practice and make sense of the caring relationship in the school and how such relationships lead to moral good in people, schools, communities, and the world. The moral is centered in the ongoing dialogue about what is best in schools and the world — the good, and the relationships in which the stories are set. The method is narrative analysis and the format is a series of free verse poems. The characters tell stories of knowing and being known, meaningful dialogue, modeling, authentic care, struggle and tension, individualized attention, hope, and transformation. The conclusion is a deep imagining of possibilities, implications, and outcomes.

The objective of this research is to presents new acoustic echo cancellation design methods that can effectively work in the nonlinear environment. Acoustic echo is an annoying issue for voice communication systems. Because of room acoustics and delay in the transmission path, echoes affect the sound quality and may hamper communications. Acoustic echo cancellers (AECs) are employed to remove the acoustic echo while keeping full-duplex communications. AEC designs face a variety of challenges, including long room impulse response, acoustic path nonlinearity, ambient noise, and double-talk situation. We investigate two parts of echo canceller design: echo cancellation algorithm design and control logic algorithm design. In the first part, our work focuses on the nonlinear adaptive and fast-convergence algorithms. We investigate three different structures: predistortion linearization, cascade structure, and nonlinear residual echo suppressor. Specifically, we are interested in the coherence function, since it provides a means for quantifying linear association between two stationary random processes. By using the coherence as a criterion to design the nonlinear echo canceller in the system, our method guarantees the algorithm stability and leads to a faster convergence rate. In the second part, our work focuses on the robustness of AECs in the presence of interference. With regard to the near-end speech, we investigate the double-talk detector (DTD) design in conjunction with nonlinear AECs. Specifically, we propose to design a DTD based on the mutual information (MI). We show that the advantage of the MI-based method, when compared with the existing methods, is that it is applicable to both the linear and nonlinear scenarios. With respect to the background noise, we propose a variable step-size and variable tap-length least mean square (LMS) algorithm. Based on the fact that the room impulse response usually exhibits an exponential decay power profile in acoustic echo cancellation applications, the proposed method finds optimal step size and tap length at each iteration. Thus, it achieves faster convergence rate and better steady-state performance. We show a number of experimental results to illustrate the performance of the proposed algorithms.

This thesis examines the role of intuition in the way that people operate unfamiliar devices, and the importance of this for designers. Intuition is a type of cognitive processing that is often　non-conscious and utilises stored experiential knowledge. Intuitive interaction involves the use of knowledge gained from other products and/or experiences. Therefore, products that people use intuitively are those with features they have encountered before. This position has been supported by two initial experimental studies, which revealed that prior exposure to products employing similar features helped participants to complete set tasks more quickly and intuitively, and that familiar　features were intuitively used more often than unfamiliar ones. Participants who had a higher level of familiarity with similar technologies were able to use significantly more of the　features intuitively the first time they　encountered them, and were significantly quicker at doing the tasks. Those who were less familiar with relevant technologies required more　assistance. A third experiment was designed to test four different interface designs on a remote control in order to establish which of two variables - a feature's appearance or its location - was more important in making a design intuitive to use. As with the previous experiments, the findings of Experiment 3 suggested that performance is　affected by a person's level of familiarity with similar technologies. Appearance (shape, size and labelling of buttons) seems to be the variable that most affects time spent on a task and intuitive uses. This suggests that the cues that people store in memory about a product's features depend on how the features look, rather than where on the product they are placed. Three principles of intuitive interaction have been developed. A conceptual tool has also been devised to guide designers in their planning for intuitive interaction. Designers can work with these in order to make interfaces intuitive to use, and thus help users to adapt more easily to new products and product types.

This thesis presents a study of the production of literacy practices in Year 10 English lessons in a culturally diverse secondary school in a low socio-economic area. The study explored the everyday interactional work of the teacher and students in accomplishing the literacy knowledge and practices that count for subject English. This study provides knowledge about the learning opportunities and literacy knowledge made available through the interactional work in English lessons. An understanding of the dynamics of the interactional work and what that produces opens up teaching practice to change and potentially to improve student learning outcomes. This study drew on audio-recorded data of classroom interactions between the teacher and students in four mainstream Year 10 English lessons with a culturally diverse class in a disadvantaged school, and three audio-recorded interviews with the teacher. This study employed two perspectives: ethnomethodological resources and Bernsteinian theory. The analyses of the interactional work using both perspectives showed how students might be positioned to access the literacy learning on offer. In addition, using both perspectives provided a way to associate the literacy knowledge and practices produced at the classroom level to the knowledge that counted for subject English. The analyses of the lesson data revealed the institutional and moral work necessary for the assembly of knowledge about literacy practices and for constructing student-teacher relations and identities. Documenting the ongoing interactional work of teacher and students showed what was accomplished through the talk-in-interaction and how the literacy knowledge and practices were constructed and constituted. The detailed descriptions of the ongoing interactional work showed how the literacy knowledge was modified appropriate for student learning needs, advantageously positioning the students for potential acquisition. The study produced three major findings. First, the literacy practices and knowledge produced in the classroom lessons were derived from the social and functional view of language and text in the English syllabus in use at that time. Students were not given the opportunity to use their learning beyond what was required for the forthcoming assessment task. The focus seemed to be on access to school literacies, providing students with opportunities to learn the literacy practices necessary for assessment or future schooling. Second, the teacher’s version of literacy knowledge was dominant. The teacher’s monologues and elaborations produced the literacy knowledge and practices that counted and the teacher monitored what counted as relevant knowledge and resources for the lessons. The teacher determined which texts were critiqued, thus taking a critical perspective could be seen as a topic rather than an everyday practice. Third, the teacher’s pedagogical competence was displayed through her knowledge about English, her responsibility and her inclusive teaching practice. The teacher’s interactional work encouraged positive student-teacher relations. The teacher spoke about students positively and constructed them as capable. Rather than marking student ethnic or cultural background, the teacher responded to students’ learning needs in an ongoing way, making the learning explicit and providing access to school literacies. This study’s significance lies in its detailed descriptions of teacher and student work in lessons and what that work produced. It documented which resources were considered relevant to produce literacy knowledge. Further, this study showed how two theoretical approaches can be used to provide richer descriptions of the teacher and student work, and literacy knowledge and practices that counted in English lessons and for subject English.

Young children’s peer interactions involve their use of interactional resources to organise, manage and participate in their social worlds. Investigation of children’s employment of interactional resources highlights how children participate in peer interaction and their social orders, providing insight into their active construction and management of their social worlds. Frequently, these interactions are described by adults as ‘play’. The term play is often used to describe children’s activities in early childhood education, and constructed in three main ways: as educative, as enjoyable, and as an activity of children. Play in educational settings is often constructed, and informed by, adult agendas such as learning and is often part of the educational routine. This study shows how children work with a different set of agendas to those routinely ascribed by adults, as they actively engage with local education orders, and use play for their own purposes as they construct their own social orders. By examining children’s peer interactions, and not describing these activities as play, the focus becomes the construction and organisation of their social worlds. In so doing, this study investigates some interactional resources that children draw upon to manage their social orders and organise their peer interactions. This study was conducted within an Australian, non-government elementary school. The participants were children in a preparatory year classroom (children aged 4 – 6 years). Over a one month period, children’s naturally occurring peer interactions within ‘free play’ were video-recorded. Selected video-recorded episodes were transcribed and analysed, using the approaches of ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis. These methodologies focus on everyday, naturalistic data, examining how participants orient to and produce social action. The focus is on the members’ perspectives, that of the children themselves, as they interact. Ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis allow for in-depth examination of talk and action, and are used in this study to provide a detailed account of the children’s interactional strategies. Analysis focused on features of children’s situated peer interaction, identifying three interactional resources upon which the children drew as they constructed, maintained, and transformed their social orders. The interactional resources included: justification; category work, in particular the category of mother; and the pretend formulation of place. The children used these interactional resources as a means of managing peer participation within interactions. First, the children used justification to provide reasons for their actions and to support their positions. Justifications built and reinforced individual children’s status, contributing to the social organisation of their peer group. Second, the children negotiated and oriented to categories within the pretend frame of ‘families’. The children’s talk and actions jointly-constructed the mother category as authoritative, enabling the child, within the category of mother, to effectively organise the interaction. Third, pretense was used by the children to negotiate and describe places, thus enabling them to effectively manage peer activity within these places. For a successful formulation of a place as something other than it actually was, the children had to work to produce shared understandings of the place. Examining instances of pretense demonstrated the highly collaborative nature of the children’s peer interactions. The study contributes to sociological understandings of childhood. By analysing situated episodes of children’s peer interaction, this study contributes empirical work to the sociology of childhood and insight into the interactional work of children organising their social worlds. It does this by closely analysing social interactions, as they unfold, among children. This study also makes a methodological contribution, using ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and membership categorization analysis in conjunction to analyse children’s peer interactions in an early childhood setting. In so doing, the study provides alternative ways for educators to understand children’s interactions. For example, adult educational agendas, such as the educative value of play, can be applied to examine children’s family play, highlighting the learning opportunities provided through pretend role play, or indicating children’s understanding of adult roles. Alternatively, the children’s interaction could be subjected to fine-grained analysis to explicate how children construct shared understandings of the category of mother and use it to organise their interaction. Rather than examining the interaction to discern what children are learning, the interaction is examined with a focus on how children are accomplishing everyday social practices. Close analysis of children’s everyday peer interaction enables the complex interactional work of managing, and participating in, social order within an early childhood setting to be explicated. This offers educators insight into children’s social worlds, described not as play, but as the construction and negotiation of social order.

Cytomegaloviruses (CMVs) are ubiquitous in nature, having evolved over many millenia with their hosts. While in healthy hosts most infections with CMV are asymptomatic, the virus can cause severe disease in immunocompromised hosts. Thus, the increase in organ transplantation and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have established human CMV (HCMV) as a clinically important pathogen. Indeed, HCMV infections are now the major cause of morbidity and mortality among immunocompromised patients, which has led to more research targeting CMV for effective anti-viral treatment. The discovery that cytomegaloviruses encode several genes which are involved in immune escape has prompted a new area of research, aimed at understanding immune escape mechanisms for exploitation as potential anti-viral therapeutics. By targeting the viral proteins directly, or their receptors in the host, it may be possible to treat CMV disease by agonistic/antagonistic therapy. The first part of this thesis describes the first demonstration of anti-NK1.1 staining in situ to identify NK cells using a modified in vivo perfusion/fixation method. Using this method, we have compared the acute NK1.1+ cellular response to wild-type MCMV infection in the visceral organs of genetically susceptible intra-NK complex recombinant BALB.B6-CT6 (Cmv1s, NK1.1+) mice with resistant C57B⁄J (Cmv1r, NK1.1+) and BALB.B6-Cmv1r mice (Cmv1r, NK1.1+). Expression of viral antigens and the consequences of infection on other cellular subsets, were also analyzed in this study. The data show that in susceptible mice (Cmv1s) MCMV infection is predominent in the marginal zone of splenic white pulp, resulting in local changes in various cellular constituents, including macrophages, NK cells and DC. In the liver, distinct foci of infection were comprised of large numbers of macrophages and NK1.1+ cells surrounding infected cytomegalic cells. In resistant mice (Cmv1r), 6 MCMV infection predominantly affected the red-pulp of the spleen and was associated with increased accumulation of NK1.1+ cells and macrophages at sites of viral infection