Recent research at Japanese manufacturers in the UK has tended to simply focus on their employee relations practices, arguing that where they operate effectively they result in a loyal and highly productive workforce. It often goes on to point out that there is a link between these practices and the companies' production systems, suggesting that employee relations practices are an integral part of the production system at a Japanese company. However, the research fails to adequately show the implications of this link. Its attempts to examine the issue have remained descriptive, devaluing its results and conclusions. This research remedies this deficiency. The research's central argument and findings are that production systems vary considerably between Japanese manufacturers in the UK and that contrary to popular belief some of these companies' production systems display serious shortcomings. It argues that employment relations practices at these companies though an integral part of their production systems are only one of several sets of characteristics necessary to the successful operation of the company. It is also important to consider a company's organizational structure and managerial effectiveness. Strengths and weaknesses in these other production system characteristics affect employee responses to a company's employment relations practices, impeding or assisting the intended improvement of individuals in the performance of their work. Either a vicious or virtuous circle can therefore emerge since employee responses to a company's employment relations practices will further contribute to its production performance. Testing this argument involves the design and use of an innovative model that identifies the key characteristics necessary for the production system at a Japanese manufacturing transplant in the UK to perform efficiently. Identification of these characteristics allows the model to be used as a benchmark against which to compare the production systems of Japanese manufacturers. The research applies the model to the production systems of nine Japanese companies in the UK's consumer electronics sector and identifies a number of differences in their production system characteristics. Two of these nine companies are then selected as case studies and their production systems are examined in detail. In addition, workforce reactions to the employee relations practices at these two companies are also measured using questionnaire and interview data. The results confirm the research's argument that the closer a company's manufacturing system comes to displaying the model's full set of production system characteristics, the more likely it is that its employee relations practices will elicit workforce attitudes and behaviour desired by the company.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute knowledge about pedagogical change in Swedish vocational education and training (VET). The study focuses on vocational schools between 1918 and 1971, and discusses the educational practices that balanced on the border between school and work. The practices under study are probation periods, production work, and “diligence allowance”. By focusing on these practices, which ceased when the vocational training was integrated with upper secondary school in 1971, this study seeks to illustrate how shifts in work and school traditions in the VET discourse are relevant to pedagogical change in vocational training. The central questions of the thesis seek to pinpoint the ways in which the traditions manifested themselves and how the pedagogical content of the educational practices were renegotiated. The study is based on extensive empirical data consisting of public enquiry reports, an organisational journal, archive material, and memory books from vocational schools from the relevant period. The VET discourse has been analysed using Johan Asplund’s concept of “figures of thought”. The central figures of thought in vocational training – school and work – have been used to see how the practices’ pedagogical content and aims were renegotiated. This renegotiation made it possible to adapt to school structures in a way that made these practices problematic. Consequently, they could be removed when vocational training was integrated with upper secondary school. In the period leading up to the 1950s, the pedagogical foundations were largely inspired by work practices. Thereafter, it became increasingly common for tensions between the logics and structures embedded in work and school to arise in the VET discourse. This process led to a shift in emphasis in the discourse, from the “work” figure of thought to the “school” figure of thought.

This thesis examines the contemporary forest landscape of northern Värmland in Sweden in terms of practices, meanings and time-space relations. The increasing urbanization worldwide also affects the countryside landscape to produce what is generally referred to as  “new ruralities”, which are the result of changed conditions for livelihood and leisure. What does the concept new ruralities mean in relation to the sparsely populated forest landscape of northern Värmland, Sweden? The thesis adopts a relational approach to landscape, which means that landscape entails and forms relations between the material, the immaterial, and the human. Landscapes stretches out in time and space, which means that they rests on and progresses from layers of earlier and contemporary activities. Landscape practices and meanings are therefore important for understanding changes as well as continuities in the context of new ruralities. Inspired by the Heideggerian basic assumption about dwelling the thesis methodologically draws on phenomenology, but also on ethnography to clarify the relation between the individual and the society. Interviews, field studies and participant observations with special focus on the settlement, community engagement, and forest and hunting were conducted in four parishes in northern Värmland. Proximity and distance turn out to be the common denominators in the meanings of the forest landscape that emerge from the study, but attention is also clearly drawn to the problems of depopulation, changing social relations, and the tension between the private and the common good. The new ruralities of the northern Värmland forest landscape seem to rest on the tension between flow and fixity, between change and continuity, as traditional practices are performed with new meanings and extended time-space relations. / I den här avhandlingen studeras det samtida nordvärmländska skogslandskapet och nya ruraliteter utifrån praktiker, betydelser och tidsrumsliga sammanhang. I takt med en tilltagande urbanisering i Sverige och världen uppstår nya relationer till och inom landsbygder som har sin grund i förändrade betingelser för försörjning och fritid, något som brukar beskrivas som nya ruraliteter. Vad innebär då nya ruraliteter i det glesbebyggda nordvärmländska skogslandskapet? Vilka praktiker, upplevelser och betydelser framträder i fast- och fritidsboendes relationer till det individuella, skogen och det kollektiva, och hur kan dessa förstås i förhållande till tidsrumsliga sammanhang? I avhandlingen behandlas särskilt praktiker knutna till det egna boendet och fastigheten samt jakten och jaktmarkerna. Närhet och avstånd visar sig vara gemensamma nämnare för vad som ger skogslandskapet betydelser, men rymmer såväl möjligheter som svårigheter. Frihet, gleshet och oberoende framträder som positiva upplevelser bland intervjuade i studien, men uppenbarar samtidigt en avfolkningsproblematik, förändrade sociala relationer och spänningsfält mellan det privata och det gemensamma. Nya ruraliteter i det nordvärmländska skogslandskapet syns vila i skärningsfältet mellan bevarande och förändring.

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The cinema, as originally an analogue apparatus of representation, has a particularly complex and contradictory relationship to the incursion of new digital practices and potentialities. This thesis examines this relationship through a study of the impact of computer-generated images (CGI) on the Hollywood mode of production, and on its visual and narrative filmic codes. Computer animation is unquestionably a technology of digital simulation, and its initial presence is necessarily based on an aesthetics of simulation, visually separating, and diegetically demarcating, the digital image as virtual and artfficial. Consequently, most previous accounts of CGI have focused predominantly on films depicting cyberspace and VR, such as Tron and The Lawnmower Man, within the parameters of debates on special effects, the generic conventions of science fiction, and postmodern concerns with virtuality and simulation. In the early 1 990s, however, technological innovations facilitated the transition to an aesthetics of photorealism, emphasising the seamless compositing and integration of CGI characters, objects and environments with live-action. The thesis argues that the this shill is fundamental in establishing the commercial and aesthetic credibility of CGI as a production tool, and it is closely examined through a case study of Jurassic Park. The processes by which the first organic, photorealistic CG characters were created are analysed, with particular reference to the role of procedural and hand methods of computer animation in constructing a new virtual aesthetics. The integration of CGI as a production tool is also related to the diegetic presence of information technologies as narrative devices, and the extra-textual commercial and professional discourses through which CGI is explicated and celebrated. The thesis argues that the cinema is able to exploit the potential of digital methods, whilst simultaneously displaying a fundamental anxiety over the status of its own representational codes. Finally, strategies of visibility and virtuality in computer animation are further examined in the context of the emerging digital mode of production in Hollywood, and of the high concept film's role in multimedia marketing and distribution strategies

This thesis explores teachers' current knowledge and practice about classroom assessment processes in the Mauritian primary schools and reports the results of a case study, the data of which were collected during the three terms of the school year in 1998 from four primary schools that included thirty-five teachers. The interest of the case study is not to appraise the teachers' work or the school in any way; rather it is to accurately describe classroom assessment practices within the context of Mauritian primary schools. The research addresses three main questions: why teachers conduct classroom assessment, how it is conducted and what is assessed. The findings of the study indicate that teachers assess their pupils for three main reasons: providing feedback to the pupils and to themselves, reviewing the teaching methods and for diagnostic purposes. Another minor purpose noted is for communicating information to Parents. Questioning and observation are the two methods most common in the conduct of classroom assessment. Questioning techniques are mostly closed ones, with a view to seeking a specific answer from the pupils. Teachers interpret the information collected with reference to three general standards: criterion -referenced, norm-referenced and self-referenced. In general, the findings indicate that teachers' practices are oriented more towards the traditional pedagogy in terms of emphasis on the lower level objectives, whole class teaching and focusing on the product. No provision is made for the able or the less able. All the pupils are treated the same and are given the same tasks. Almost a decade after the introduction and implementation of the Learning Competencies and the scheme for Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation, it is found that Mauritian primary teachers do not have the relevant training in assessment to fully apply the progressive reforms. Despite the education system being very centralised, it seems that teachers assess their pupils independently and without any support from the government. There is no monitoring, moderating or policing of policies. Assessment practices are derived from their habit and ideology rather than from the official directives.

This thesis is an exploration of the institutional engagement between farmers and government, as well as a discourse about the development process in Ethiopia. The discussions are based on the fieldwork conducted from January 2012 to March 2012 in the eastern Ahmara region of the Dewa Chefa district (woreda). The ethnographic material will show how the public’s opinion is altered by the government and national media in terms of the discourse on development, economic growth and change of a farmer’s life. The discourses portray an unrealistic view of real, existing practices and engagements among the farmers and the agricultural bureau in the woreda. The main argument of the thesis is to show how the government's development discourses have multiple purposes that are not only attributed to the development practices and engagements, but also to the political realities and relations which exist between the government and the rural agricultural people. The thesis will explain how engagements, practices and discourses are strategized by the government and its institutions to assert power and to ensure farmers’ compliance. Also, it will explain the farmers' engagements and practices, and their strategies to deal with the development process and the government's strategies to assert power.   The theoretical framework is based on the deconstructive, or anthropological development critique. It will argue that understanding development as governmentality and discourses will be vital in discussing development as a power relationship and way of controlling others and extending government's power over its subjects. In such a view of development as nation state construction, the thesis will explain how development knowledge and discourse are reworked, reformulated and multiplied as new forms of knowledge and discourses to serve the purpose of the government in power within the nation.

This study examines the case of one Canadian family with a child with a learning disability to better understand ways in which social and cultural interactions enable multiple literacies to be constructed and to exist within many settings. It considers how three contextual factors, self-motivation, expectations, and medical conditions, affect the childs literacy. Using an ethnographic case study methodology, this study explores and analyzes the familys literacy events (observable episodes in which literacy has a role) and literacy practices (what people do with literacy). Key findings include identifying ten sociotextual domains of literacy the family employs; the most prevalent are school-based, entertainment, and social cohesion. These ten domains show how the family works together to build literacy for many purposes, such as individual, social, or interpersonal. This study also presents data suggesting parental influence, specialized support, and home/school relationship may affect the construction of literacy for children with learning disabilities.

Thirty-eight clinicians were surveyed regarding their current clinical practices in assessing, tracking treatment and determining discharge criteria for clients with resonance disorders. When these results were compared with recommendations from the literature for best practices, it was found that: (a) most clinicians were using low-tech assessment tools (such as perceptual assessment) at least some of the time, (b) many clinicians were not using high-tech assessment tools (such as videofluoroscopy) simply because they lacked access to such tools, and (c) clinicians are remarkably similar in their clinical practices across a wide variety of circumstances (such as age, and employment setting). The primary recommendation accruing from these findings was that more high-tech assessment tools should be routinely available to clinicians practicing in this area. More consistent use of sophisticated assessment devices would exemplify contemporary thinking about transfer of knowledge to practice in the area of resonance disorders assessment and improve patient outcomes.

The principal contribution of the study is a conceptual account of classroom activities in school science, which incorporates both ethical and conventional science understandings within a single conceptual framework. In order to illustrate and explore the strengths and limitations of the conceptual framework developed, an exploratory case study involving 7 science classes was conducted at 2 schools. The 'classroom practices and understandings' conceptual framework presents a novel approach for understanding activities of students and teachers in the science classroom. According to this framework 'understanding' is a grasp of inferential connections as part of either practical or cognitive types of activity, whereas a 'practice' is a set of activities organized by understandings, rules and characteristic aims, emotions, and projects. On this basis the grounds for a given understanding are described in terms of a unifying structure for both ethical and science understandings. In both cases 'authority in understanding' refers to the specific sources of authority for a given understanding, which may include authoritative individuals in addition to more conventional grounds such as reasons or evidence. Finally, 'richness' of understanding refers to the quality of such connections to sources of authority in understanding, and is thus is a measure of the strength of understanding generally. Classroom lessons developed for the exploratory case study focused on ethical questions of sustainability. These were implemented in the science classroom at two research sites, with the researcher acting as guest teacher. One site focused on study of ecology in grade 11; the other site focused on study of genetics in grade 10. At both sites student interviews were conducted to supplement the findings of the classroom-teaching component. The findings support the integrity of the conceptual framework, while highlighting significant challenges for seeking to make explicit the sources of authority in science students' ethical understandings. Building from the conceptual framework and cases studies, a number of further directions for empirical and theoretical research are suggested.