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The intent of thesis is to explore pre-service teachers' perceptions of using a form of professional development to promote teacher autonomy. Current evidence shows that autonomy is a recurring element desired by American teachers in their profession. However, research advocates for teachers who are initiating and carrying out research in their schools (as a form of professional development) to have the potential to promote autonomy. For American teachers to gain a sense of autonomy in their profession there needs to be a change in the way professional development is directed. One form of professional development that promotes teachers as researchers is Lesson Study. Teachers who participate in lesson study are given the opportunity to research, collaborate, and learn. A sample population of five Pre-service teachers were interviewed to discover their perceptions of using Lesson Study as a means to promote teacher autonomy. The results of this thesis are that lesson study was regarded, by three out of five of the participants, as an effective way to strengthen teacher autonomy. The implications of the results are discussed, and the descriptions and implications of Lesson Study are provided.

The purpose of this research is to examine the legislative process that led to the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act of 1988. This research will look at the original intent of the law, as well as its possible irrelevance today. This research will compare the environment that existed during its creation, and compare it to the drastically different landscape that exists now in the new car market. From this comparison, this paper will recommend a route for the United States to better open trade with other countries and allow more consumer freedom. This research will look at the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act from a political science viewpoint. This analysis will take into consideration the legislative process that led to this act and show that it is an example of the legislative process helping large companies while hurting ordinary consumers. The history of this legislation will show that the justification presented represents protecting consumers from a harmful product. However, the recent history will reveal a government that is quick to make assumptions without regard to facts that disprove the reasoning for this act. This research will seek to use the Imported Vehicle Safety Compliance Act as example of a law that is in need of an update, but has not had any meaningful reform. The goal of this research will be to illustrate why laws that are no longer effective remain without reform.

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Organizational research about the autonomy paradox –the discrepancy between workers' increased level of autonomy in carrying out their work and their increased self-imposed constraints– is limited in two ways. First, our understanding of the role of technology in perpetuating the paradox of autonomy is limited to the influence of relatively simple features of technology (e.g., email devices' portability and ubiquity) in amplifying the expectations of near-constant availability. However, human-computer interaction research and practice increasingly show that design features of advanced technology, too, can play an important role in cultivating the culture of constant connectivity. Second, organizational research on the autonomy paradox has primarily focused on organizational shared expectations and has not examined social forces and cultural images that might contribute to the autonomy paradox in the individualized context of independent work. Thus, our understanding of socio-cultural processes that might contribute to the tension between autonomy and discipline in the context of platform work is incomplete. In this dissertation, I explore these issues through a review study and two empirical studies that draw on 50 semi-structured interviews with Instagram content creators, four years of participant observation, and a walkthrough analysis of the platform’s features. The first study integrates the literature on sociomateriality, identity control, and autonomy paradox to explore the interconnected cultural, social, and material mechanisms that contribute to the autonomy paradox. I discuss how we can extend our understanding of autonomy in technology use by attending more explicitly to material features of digital technology and how mechanisms identified in organizational contexts can guide our understanding of platform workers’ autonomy. In so doing, this study maps out pathways for examining autonomy and discipline outside traditional organizational contexts. The second paper examines how through a recurring process that I label identity baiting, evaluative metrics provided by digital platforms function as habit-forming identity affirming opportunities for desired identities which motivate work effort and sustain underpaid future oriented labor. By attending to workers’ desired identities rooted in cultural ideals of independent work, this study sheds light on entanglement of cultural ideals and technological features in shaping the tensions of autonomy and self-imposed constraints in platform work. Finally, the third study explores how people navigate the tensions arising from the collocation of externally prescribed authenticity in the discourse of personal branding with the internal desire to be and feel authentic in contemporary work. I find that tensions arise from the consistency required to maintain a personal brand and the inconsistency of the authentic self over time. Further, practices induced by the rhetorical invocations of authenticity sometimes contradicted workers’ internal needs for a strategic balance between authentic and image management. This study shows that tensions of autonomy remain even if the external prescription demands individuality and authenticity rather conformity and collective assimilation. / Thesis / Candidate in Philosophy / How and why might workers (choose to) constrain their own autonomy in the context of platform work? Animated by this overarching research question, this thesis explores the tensions between autonomy and self-imposed constraints through three essays. The first essay integrates multiple streams of organizational research to portray the constellation of three structural forces (social norms, cultural discourses, and material features of technology) that interact with workers’ identity to shape the autonomy paradox. The second essay demonstrates how evaluative metrics provided by digital platforms function as habit-forming identity baits that control workers’ behavior and sustain underpaid labor. Finally, the third essay demonstrates how prescribed authenticity (e.g., the ethos of ‘just be yourself’) prevalent in the discourse of personal branding ironically constrain workers’ autonomy by turning the once protective fender of personal brand into a system of radical self-revelation. The second and third essays draw on an inductive qualitative inquiry of Instagram content creators.

Mobility modeling is a critical step in the ground vehicle acquisition process for military vehicles. Mobility modeling tools, and in particular the NATO Reference Mobility Model (NRMM), have played a critical role in understanding the mission-level capabilities of ground vehicles. This understanding via modeling supports not only developers during early vehicle design but also decision makers in the field previewing the capabilities of ground vehicles in real-world deployments. Due to decades of field testing and operations, mobility modeling for traditional ground vehicles is well-understood; however, mobility modeling tools for evaluating autonomous mobility are sparse. Therefore, this dissertation proposes and derives a Reference Autonomous Mobility Model (RAMM). The RAMM leverages cutting-edge modeling and simulation tools to build a mobility model that serves as the mission-level mobility modeling tool currently lacking in the unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) community, thereby filling the current analysis gap in the autonomous vehicle acquisition cycle. The RAMM is built on (1) a thorough review of theories of verification and validation of simulations, (2) a novel framework for validating simulations of autonomous systems and (3) the mobility modeling framework already established by the NRMM. These building blocks brought to light the need for new, validated modeling and simulation (M&S) tools capable of simulating, at a highidelity, autonomous unmanned ground vehicle operations. This dissertation maps the derivation of the RAMM, starting with a history of verification of simulation models and a literature review of current autonomous mobility modeling methods. In light of these literature reviews, a new framework for V&V of simulations of autonomous systems is proposed, and the requirements for and derivation of the RAMM is presented. This dissertation concludes with an example application of the RAMM for route planning for autonomous UGVs. Once fully developed, the RAMM will serve as an integral part in the design, development, testing and evaluation, and ultimate fielding of autonomous UGVs for military applications.

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