Aims: The aim of this research was to engage with the experiences of professionals, parents, and young people in order to develop an understanding of the current diagnosis and management of ADHD. This research will be of interest to Counselling Psychologists working with the child and adolescent population and the clinical area of ADHD. Method: Nine semi- structured interviews were conducted with two young people, three parents, and four professionals. The interviews were transcribed and analysed using the principles’ of grounded theory methods. A constructivist version of grounded theory was implemented, as outlined by Charmaz (2006) and a social constructionist epistemology was adopted. Analysis: A central story line of ‘investing in ADHD’ emerged. This involved the investment of resources in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD as existing within the child’s brain. A number of categories emerged which contributed to this position, including the ‘battlegrounds’ which were fraught with struggles to gain control of children’s difficult to manage behaviours and ‘knowledge and understanding’ which highlighted the need to understand the nature of the perceived problems. In addition, ‘social expectations’ and ‘personal conflicts’ depicted the social and personal factors which served to construct the perceived problems. Conclusion: The investment in the ‘simple truth’ of ADHD appeared to hold the most meaning for those involved in the study. These findings offer utility for Counselling Psychologists wishing to engage clients in psychological formulation and management approaches which aim to address the underlying factors which influence ADHD.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation presents the delineation of a research for Master's Degree involving students of the first year of High School, which has the objective of analyzing the potentialities of the software Scratch for the elaboration of learning objects in the construction process of functional relationships involving functions. This is a qualitative research. The activities developed deal with the idea of function, inverse function and Cartesian Plane and were dynamized with three groups of students at a school in the city of Santa Maria/RS. As theoretical support it was adopted the Theory of Conceptual Fields of Gerard Vergnaud and the Theory of Constructionism developed by Seymour Papert due to the important role for the study of cognitive functioning of the subjects- in-situation and the contribution of the computer in the comprehension of Mathematical concepts. In order to promote the construction of functional relationships, activities have been planned with the use of the Scratch software, allowing the student to perform several trials involving concepts of function. The results show that the use of the Scratch for learning functions enables students to make deductions, anticipations, control results, conclusions, assisting in the formalization and abstraction of these concepts, when inserted into an environment of resolution of situations and research. / Esta dissertação apresenta o delineamento de uma pesquisa de mestrado envolvendo alunos do primeiro ano do Ensino Médio, a qual tem por objetivo analisar as potencialidades do software de programação Scratch na elaboração de objetos de aprendizagem no processo de construção das relações funcionais envolvendo funções. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de cunho qualitativo. As atividades elaboradas versam sobre a ideia de função, função inversa e o plano cartesiano e foram dinamizadas junto a três turmas de alunos de uma escola da cidade de Santa Maria/RS. Como aporte teórico adota-se a Teoria dos Campos Conceituais de Gerard Vergnaud e a Teoria do Construcionismo de Seymour Papert devido ao papel importante no estudo do funcionamento cognitivo do "sujeito-em-situação" e da contribuição do computador na compreensão dos conceitos matemáticos. Com o intuito de propiciar a construção das relações funcionais, as atividades foram planejadas com o uso do software Scratch, permitindo que o aluno realize diversas experimentações envolvendo conceitos da função. Os resultados apontam que a utilização do Scratch para a aprendizagem de funções oportuniza ao aluno fazer deduções, antecipações, controlar resultados, tirar conclusões, auxiliando na formalização e abstração desses conceitos, quando inserido em um ambiente de resolução de situações e investigação.

Much current literature on management and strategy still describes strategy work as a linear, top-down, management-based, rational, logical, structured and planned change activity with clear and predictable goals. It is described as an activity in which individual managers are addressing key questions and implementing an important, management-based plan. By using the right tools and techniques, skilled managers can transform plans into reality through good leadership and systematic rollout. This way of thinking about leadership is based on an understanding of leaders as rather powerful, knowing, heroic individuals who can stand outside of their organization to plan an ideal future, and who are equipped to make employees follow their instructions in order to reach desired goals. In this thesis I research into my experiences of what is happening in an organization, taking seriously the experience of developing a new strategy. It is an organization working in the public sector in Denmark which is right now trying to find a strategy and its way through a series of 'wicked problems' not easily handled. Through the use of autobiographical narrative-based inquiry and a focus on everyday local interactions between people working together, I research into what is 'really' going on in strategy work. Drawing on the theory of complex responsive processes of relating and reflexivity, I describe and analyse the interactions in our leadership team's efforts to change the organization's strategy. In doing so themes of power, power games and power differentials, politicking and some of the paradoxes in management - such as inclusion/exclusion, local interaction and global patterning, unpredictable predictability, and conflict and cooperation - are investigated. The complex responsive process perspective views organizations as patterns of interaction and conversations between people working together. By analogy from complex adaptive systems models, sociology, psychology and philosophy, it argues that generalizable population-wide patterns emerge in unpredictable ways through exactly these local complex interaction and interplays of people's intentions, thoughts and actions. This leads me to propose generalizable new contributions to knowledge about strategy work. Examining my own experience, I problematize the 'heroic', individualistic, view of what leaders do when working with strategy, preferring to see strategy as a co-created activity that emerges in complex and paradoxical interactions between people in the organization, in the leadership team, in daily cooperation with employees, and through the interface with customers. The understanding of co-creation here being that together we co-create our social life and our social life is co-creating us, our selves, our personalities at the same time. This inseparable paradox of the individual and the group, of the one and the many is investigated. Finally, I suggest that strategy work is inseparable from the everyday messy conflictual power games of organizational life, and that leaders - through actively engaging in ongoing conversations and co-creating meaning - participate in developing new understandings of identity and culture. In talking with one another about what it is we are doing, in influencing and being influenced, and reflecting on this, we are already changing what is going on; this itself is strategy work. The narratives show that to work with strategy effectively, we need to negotiate our intentions in convincing ways through forming strong power alliances. Taking experience seriously also demonstrates a close connection between power, ethics and action, and that it is impossible to decide the 'good' thing to do before acting. Developing reflexivity, both as an individual and in collaborative work, is a prerequisite for working in an ethical way, aware of our mutual interdependence. Finally, the thesis describes some of the consequences of taking experience seriously as a strategy. It has changed the way our staff understand what they are doing, and is beginning to change the kind of assignments we take on, and how we deal with them. One spin-off has been producing two books (with more to come). We also have new and more reflexive contacts in business and knowledge-creating environments, such as universities and business schools. The thesis shows a number of results from working with strategy in this way. This indicates that the act of taking your experience seriously in itself implies a kind of transforming causality, and hereby a strategy of change.

The thesis is focused on the construction of conflict situations of social workers of OSPOD (Authority of Social and Legal Protection of Children). The first part explains what conflict is from the perspective of helping professions and social constructionism. This section explains the Relational Dialectics Theory (construction of meanings related to individual identity and relationships through the use of language) and the structure of discourse construction using Gee categories. The aim of this ork was to examine the construction of conflicts between clients and social workers who work at OSPOD. The results showed what is the structure of the construction of conflict situations and what kind of struggles of discourses can be called conflict.