'When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi he put this question to his disciples, "Who do people say the Son of man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the Prophets." "But you," he said, "who do you, say I am?" Then Simon Peter spoke up and said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (Matthew, 16: 13-16)'. This thesis reports the findings of an empirical study conducted in England investigating young people's conceptions of Jesus. The study, which adopted a qualitative approach, employed an open ended questionnaire completed by over five hundred students, and follow up semi-structured interviews with twenty four of those students. Findings from this study confirmed those of previous studies in the field (Alves, 1968; Astley & Francis, 1996; Claerhout & Declercq, 1970; Cox, 1967; Francis & Astley, 1997; Hyde, 1965; Loukes, 1961; Madge, 1965, 1971; Savin-Williams, 1977). As in previous research, the majority of young people in this sample expressed generally favourable views towards Jesus; emphasised Jesus’ humanity rather than his divinity; and expressed reservations regarding the miracles of Jesus and the reliability of the Gospel accounts. In addition, this study extended the findings of previous studies by demonstrating that the conceptions of Jesus held by participants were largely determined by their predominantly scientific and positivist world-views. Moreover, responses from young people participating in this study indicated that students were often unaware that the views they held were contingent and grounded in particular ontological and epistemological assumptions. So whilst religious beliefs were subject to critical scrutiny, the assumptions underpinning the students’ own positions were not. Consequently, this thesis argues that to engage fully with the beliefs of others, students need to be more cognisant of the principles underlying their own beliefs, religious or otherwise. Furthermore, drawing upon the hermeneutical framework of Hans-George Gadamer (2004), this thesis proposes that commitment to genuine dialogue should be at the heart of contemporary religious education. Finally, this thesis concludes by making recommendations for future research in religious education.

The confrontation with difference is an especially large challenge when it comes to religion and religious beliefs. Because religion is integral to so many, it becomes a sticking point in negotiations, conversations, and policy development. Even for those without particularly strong religious convictions, religion must be considered in their interactions with those who do. It is precisely that interaction that I seek to further understand. Engaging in dialogue with those of different faiths or value systems brings to the surface myriad difficulties, chief among which is the challenge of simply coming together to begin the conversation. The most appealing approach to that challenge is often to find some sort of common ground on which everyone can agree, a foundation upon which relationships can be built. That common ground, however, can be just as harmful to the end-goal of dialogue as not having dialogue in the first place. Common ground approaches focus on similarities, ignoring or discounting the differences which both make us who we are and make conversations difficult to have. In ignoring differences, participants are forced to relegate salient aspects of their beliefs to a private (unseen) arena, where they may wither away, dulled from disuse, eventually no longer relevant as an identifier. The foremost question I seek to answer, then, is the following: How can religious identity be maintained in light of such approaches to dialogue?

This thesis advocates that young people’s participatory theatre in Britain is an important site for dialogue - both internally between young people and externally with those in positions of power and authority who have decision-making responsibilities in young people’s lives. Contextualising the work within the field of critical pedagogy, the thesis asks questions about how devised theatre with young participants can be an effective method to start conversations about young people’s identity and role in society. The research was conducted within a Participatory Action Research methodology, and involved about 600 young people from across Devon in a variety of pilot projects which became increasingly dialogic in form over the three years of study. Looking first at the complex issue of ‘youth’ identity within sociology, cultural studies, ethnography and geography, the thesis posits that the fields of theatre and performance studies have important contributions to make to an understanding of how identity is a performed and constructed concept. Building upon this premise, the second chapter overviews the existing field of young people’s participatory theatre in the UK, stipulating that a pedagogical framework built on an historicized understanding of educational theatre is essential to mapping the existing state of practice. This pedagogical framing allows for navigation through the increasingly impact-driven criteria which can profoundly shape the aesthetics and authorship of such work when conducted in the field. These (often silent) shaping forces are analysed through a set of case study examples. Chapter III defines and defends the framing of this work as a form of critical pedagogy, specifically exploring the definitions of dialogue and literac(ies) through case study examples of dialogic practice with young participants. Chapters IV and V examine the PAR research conducted over three years under the heading Vital Spaces/Vital Signs, which moved from small-scale pilot projects in youth centres to larger-scale ‘devised dialogues’ within more traditional theatre spaces. The praxis and findings encountered within the action research are detailed, and recommendations for future extended dialogic work are made.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Les récents progrès dans le domaine du traitement du langage ont apporté un intérêt significatif à la mise en oeuvre de systèmes de dialogue parlé. Ces derniers sont des interfaces utilisant le langage naturel comme medium d'interaction entre le système et l'utilisateur. Le module de gestion de dialogue choisit le moment auquel l'information qu'il choisit doit être échangée avec l'utilisateur. Ces dernières années, l'optimisation de dialogue parlé en utilisant l'apprentissage par renforcement est devenue la référence. Cependant, une grande partie des algorithmes utilisés nécessite une importante quantité de données pour être efficace. Pour gérer ce problème, des simulations d'utilisateurs ont été introduites. Cependant, ces modèles introduisent des erreurs. Par un choix judicieux d'algorithmes, la quantité de données d'entraînement peut être réduite et ainsi la modélisation de l'utilisateur évitée. Ces travaux concernent une partie des contributions présentées. L'autre partie des travaux consiste à proposer une modélisation à partir de données réelles des utilisateurs au moyen de l'apprentissage par renforcement inverse / Recent advancements in the area of spoken language processing and the wide acceptance of portable devices, have attracted signicant interest in spoken dialogue systems.These conversational systems are man-machine interfaces which use natural language (speech) as the medium of interaction.In order to conduct dialogues, computers must have the ability to decide when and what information has to be exchanged with the users. The dialogue management module is responsible to make these decisions so that the intended task (such as ticket booking or appointment scheduling) can be achieved.Thus learning a good strategy for dialogue management is a critical task.In recent years reinforcement learning-based dialogue management optimization has evolved to be the state-of-the-art. A majority of the algorithms used for this purpose needs vast amounts of training data.However, data generation in the dialogue domain is an expensive and time consuming process. In order to cope with this and also to evaluatethe learnt dialogue strategies, user modelling in dialogue systems was introduced. These models simulate real users in order to generate synthetic data.Being computational models, they introduce some degree of modelling errors. In spite of this, system designers are forced to employ user models due to the data requirement of conventional reinforcement learning algorithms can learn optimal dialogue strategies from limited amount of training data when compared to the conventional algorithms. As a consequence of this, user models are no longer required for the purpose of optimization, yet they continue to provide a fast and easy means for quantifying the quality of dialogue strategies. Since existing methods for user modelling are relatively less realistic compared to real user behaviors, the focus is shifted towards user modelling by means of inverse reinforcement learning. Using experimental results, the proposed method's ability to learn a computational models with real user like qualities is showcased as part of this work.

Lors du sommet extraordinaire qui s’est déroulé à Barcelone en novembre 1995, vingt-cinq pays de l’Union Européenne et douze pays méditerranéens ont décidé de lancer un partenariat global euro-méditerranéen, l’idée des partenaires étant d’arriver à tourner une page de rupture qui a marqué les relations entre les deux rives pendant plusieurs années. En effet, ce pont, érigé sur une mer où, de part et d’autre, on assiste à un nombre croissant de tensions et de conflits, a constitué l’unique enceinte de dialogue et d’échanges entre les États du bassin méditerranéen. Malgré la domination des Européens en matière de décisions, ce choix demeure inéluctable pour le bon voisinage dans la région.Toute fois, sans un réel engagement de la part des deux partenaires méditerranéens, notamment la forte implication de l’Union Européenne pour construire un véritable projet d’intégration régionale, le processus euro-méditerranéen risque de se trouver dans la corbeille de l’histoire humaine. / At the time of the extraordinary summit which proceeded in Barcelona in November 1995, twenty-five countries of the European Union and twelve Mediterranean countries decided to launch a euro-Mediterranean total partnership, the idea of the partners being to manage to turn a page of rupture which marked the relations between two banks during several years. Indeed, this bridge, set up on a sea where, on both sides, one attends a growing number of tensions and conflicts, constituted the single enclosure of dialogue and exchanges between the States of the Mediterranean basin. In spite of the domination of Europeans as regards decisions, this choice remains inescapable for the good neighborhood in the area. Any time, without a real engagement on behalf of the two Mediterranean partners, in particular the strong implication of the European Union to build a true project of regional integration, the euro-Mediterranean process is likely to be in the basket of the human history.

Le dialogue des juges recouvre plusieurs réalités. L'aspect qui est étudié ici est le dialogue qui s'instaure entre la Cour de cassation et les autres juges : nationaux, européens, internationaux et étrangers. Ce dialogue se fait à travers la décision de justice, qui est désormais accessible et diffusée dans le monde entier grâce à internet et aux sites de la juridiction. Ce phénomène, appelé aussi « influence croisée des jurisprudences », prend naissance avec l'expansion de la science comparative et commence à se manifester dans la jurisprudence de la Haute juridiction judiciaire. Encore en voie de développement, le dialogue des juges n'est pas sans produire certaines conséquences quant à la place de la Cour de cassation sur la scène nationale, mais aussi sur la scène internationale. Par ailleurs, il devrait se révéler prochainement comme un nouvel instrument au service des magistrats. / The dialogue between judges covers several realities. The aspect studied in this thesis is the dialogue between the French Court of Cassation and the other judges: national, European, international and foreign judges. This dialogue between judges takes place through the courts decisions which can be available and read on internet. This phenomenon is recent and was born with the growth of the comparative science. We can establish that the dialogue between judges in France is going to grow in a near future. We can also see that the dialogue between judges as already made some consequences. First, it has given a new place for the French court in the national and international stage. Then, it can be used as an actual instrument for judges.

This study examines the educational and interpersonal benefits of dialogue journal writing within the Cambodian context. The research plan involved, first, a thorough survey of the literature on journal writing, which then provided the theoretical framework for the construction of hypotheses. These hypotheses asserted that dialogue journal writing brings about educational as well as interpersonal benefits. In educational terms, this task enables learners to attain proficiency in speaking, reading and writing, gain functional competence, and develop critical thinking skills. In interpersonal terms, dialogue journal writing helps in the development of the relationship between the teacher and the learner and offers a source of cultural information. The next stage involved assigning and collecting the journals and then analysing them to check for the presence of particular features which were asserted to bring about the benefits as stated in the hypotheses. The writer conducted her research with a class of Cambodian students at Phnom Penh University. Within the journals of the eighteen learners, most of these features were discovered, thus supporting the hypotheses that journal writing offers particular educational and interpersonal benefits. Where the features were absent or variant, explanations for this based on the culture of the learners, the conditions of the country during the period of the study, and the culture of the teacher were offered. Finally, the writing in the dialogue journals of the subjects provided strong evidence that dialogue journal writing offers learners a scope for genuine studentteacher communication and for personal communication and mutual understanding between each individual student and teacher.

The work in progress, Pick Up Styx, investigates re-sensing and extra-sensing of the world. It is an exploration of communications with reference to quantum theory which challenges current sense perceptions, while engaging and exploring the notion of communications as signals. The methodology is a winding, coiling motion between research and creative practice based on the way my grandmother used to wind wool from a skein into a ball. The project investigates the game as a tool to examine the ciphers of perfumes that have been designed for love and happiness since 2001. The project aims to develop aesthetic pleasure in game play beyond the industry focus on games technology. Picking up the sticks and experiencing the perfumes in them is procedural to encountering the War on Terror, and the perfumes that have accompanied its progression over the last 8 years. In a materialist culture where technologies are enabling psycho kinesis, via the transmission of information signals, and where thought can influence matter in a variety of ways, we are training ourselves out of separatist thinking and fixation on the Western scientific paradigm. This project has grown from my curiosity regarding anomalous forms of cognition and paranormal perception, motivated by the need to address current issues of human relationship and environmental concerns.

Social constructivism, known as Vygotskian theory, has been implicated in improving spoken language skills of upper-secondary school students. This qualitative study aims to investigate the perspectives of students regarding the teachers’ use of humour in ESL lessons both in Italy and Sweden. A secondary aspect of the study was to assess the use of humour in second language acquisition related to language learning and communicative competence based on dialogism and interaction. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 participants (5 males and 5 females from each of the respective countries). After analysis using phenomenography, results indicate that humorous dialogic instruction and interaction, as well as non-verbal forms of humour such as gesticulation and facial expression, have the possibility to dramatically increase the focus and interest in lesson content which facilitates better communicative understanding of English. Immediacy is perceived to improve feelings of well-being and harmony within the classroom. Humour and openness are considered important and necessary factors in improving motivation and self-belief during oral tasks as facilitated an effective, communicative learning climate. The study also proposes that there are four factors (teacher, student, subject and task) which affect learning processes, and moderation of humour, the fifth factor, acts as a scaffold to assist in stretching students’ knowledge within the ZPD.