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Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of this study was to explore the connection between teacher ideologies/beliefs and the teacher's use of cooperative/collaborative learning in the high school English classroom. An overview of the elements of educational philosophy and their interaction with innovative teaching methodology was presented to afford a better understanding of the connection between the individual teacher's epistemological ideologies/beliefs and implementation of cooperative/collaborative learning. This study utilized quantitative research methodology. Data were collected through use of survey responses and informal discussions with department chairpersons and teachers. The data analysis revealed that teacher's individual educational philosophy influences use of innovative methodology such as collaborative learning. In addition, data revealed that the collaborative learning is a type of methodology that can easily be incorporated into any teacher's pedagogical repertoire, despite the educational philosophy stance of the teacher. / 2031-01-01

This thesis explores how mentoring was perceived and experienced as a professional development strategy for two teachers in a Maldivian primary school. It reports on how the mentoring relationship between the two teachers and the researcher evolved over the period of the data collection process. The research also explores the two teachers perceptions of the existing professional development activities. Further, report on the existing barriers which restricted establishing continuous professional developmental opportunities in the primary schools of Maldives. Data collection was through action research using concept maps for formative assessment purposes. The concept map was planned as an intervention at mentoring sessions to incorporate new pedagogy to create student-centred learning opportunities. The intervention was evaluated intensively through observation and feedback in the mentoring process. The researcher had dual roles in this action research. One role was that of researcher: collecting data on the progression of the mentoring relationship and the pedagogical changes by the participants. The second was that of mentor: coaching and assisting the two teachers to reflect on the planning and executing of the intervention in their respective classrooms. Through the action research process, data was collected on changes that the two teachers brought to their teaching. Data was also gathered on the mentoring relationship that evolved in the data collection process. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate the two teachers‟ willingness to engage in their own learning. The semi-structured interviews also explored the two teachers‟ perception on mentoring to establish a culture of learning in the school. The study indicated that one-off professional development sessions and a system of in-school clinical supervision to be the main professional development activities for the schools. Further the findings indicated that these activities did not meet the teachers‟ learning needs. ii Findings also indicated that the participants favoured the learning opportunities mentoring process created. The study further established both participants as keen learners, and willing participants in planning and re-planning the intervention in the mentoring process for the action research. The findings also report that the collaborative work atmosphere in the mentoring relationship assisted the two teachers to eliminate the fears associated with introducing new pedagogy. In conclusion, the study reports on barriers that may restrict creating effective mentoring relationships in primary schools of Maldives. The barriers identified were associated time for mentoring, mismatch of mentoring partners, poor collaborative relationships and mentor knowledge and experience. In addition recommends exploring how the supervisors‟ current role of evaluator can be changed to mentor role and the possibilities of group mentoring. Further study is recommended to explore how long term mentoring relationships can be developed considering the time constraints in Maldivian two session primary schools.

In the competitive environment, the manufacturing companies must focus on the requirements of the customers, short time-to-market, superior product quality and reducing manufacturing cost. Facing the tendency of global competition, it is impossible and uneconomic to satisfy the all demands of customers by enterprise¡¦s own resources. To survive and make profits, concurrent engineering and collaborative design have become popular approaches to product development among supply chains. Concurrent engineering and collaborative design are two systematic approaches to the integrated, concurrent design of products and their related process. According to the past study, R&D will take an expenditure of fifty percent to ninety percent of the whole product life cycle. For considering product design, manufacturing and assembly, it will improve the communication and coordination in the concurrent engineering environment, and reduce the engineering design change. In this paper we focus on the requiring of product design. We propose a process model to support collaborative product development (CPD). The required multi-disciplinary information for CPD will be handled via the processes of classification, transformation, analysis and optimization to assist the product development. This study can to reduce the conflict of different professional knowledge, and possibility the communication problem with the project, to promote the efficiency of collaborative development.

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The research findings presented in this portfolio share the situated experiences of five independent music teachers (IMTs) within a collaborative action research project contextualized within a critical analysis of the field of independent music teaching in Canada. IMTs work in isolation in their studios and except for occasional meetings organized by Registered Music Teachers' Associations (RMTA), they rarely meet professionally. The Independent Music Teachers' Research Group, (IMTRG) was formed from members of the Halifax Chapter of the Nova Scotia Registered Music Teachers' Association with the purpose of developing collaborative research, breaking professional isolation and enhancing the usual ways in which IMTs gain knowledge. The research program reported in this portfolio was undertaken by a founding member of the IMTRG with the aim of investigating how IMTs engaged in research and the changes this made not only to their own professional practice but to the field more broadly. / PhD Doctorate

Localization is one of the most important capabilities of mobile robots. Thanks to the fast development of embedded computing hardware in recent years, many localization solutions, such as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), have been vastly investigated. However, popular localization solutions rely heavily on the working environment and are not applicable to scenarios such as search and rescue in the wild, where the working environment is not accessible before the localization operation or where the environment lacks information on features and textures. The thesis thus proposes a design for an innovative localization sensor and a collaborative pose estimation scheme using the localization sensor in order to alleviate the reliance on information from the environment, while providing reliable and accurate pose estimates for mobile robots. The proposed collaborative pose estimation scheme is comprised of individual and collaborative landmark position estimation, localization sensor inter-calibration, and collaborative sensor pose estimation, among which the inter-calibration process ensures that the sensor provides capability to also estimate orientations. In the collaborative scheme, multiple instances of the proposed sensor collaborate to estimate their respective poses by measuring the relative distance and angle among them, where the measurement errors are characterized as Gaussian white noise. Two instances of the proposed localization sensor are implemented, and the collaborative scheme is tested with the instances in the thesis. Both sensor instances reliably and accurately estimate the position of a stationary landmark, and it is demonstrated that the collaboratively estimated position estimate is more accurate than its individual counterpart. Additionally, the two instances also demonstrate their ability to track and estimate the position of a moving landmark. Lastly, the inter-calibration is experimentally validated with the instances with satisfactory performance. The experimental results presented in this work confirm the feasibility and usability of the proposed collaborative pose estimation scheme in a wide range of robotic applications.

abstract: Louis Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) was a pioneer of 19th century Romanticism in France. In the mid-19th century, he broke the traditional mold by connecting poetry and music through French song. This development transformed French song from the simple and structured Romance of the 18th century into the structural freedom of what he established as the a Mélodie. His song cycle Les nuits d’été, op 7 was composed first for voice and piano in 1841 and later arranged for voice and orchestra in 1856. After the 1856 orchestral version was completed, Les nuits d’été received greater recognition than it had from its original scoring for voice and piano. This paper examines three major aspects to Les nuits d’été. First, it will discuss the reasons why Berlioz re-scored the work for orchestra and transposed the vocal part for various voice types in this later orchestral version. Second, it examines the difference between musical interactions in these two versions by comparing the existing scores of each version with its respective accompaniment based on Berlioz's use of word painting. Finally, this paper provides the author's original transcription of Les nuits d’été in a version for voice and piano that incorporates the later orchestral versions which were not included in the original version for voice and piano. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Music 2017

Libby Larsen’s The Birth Project (2015) is a groundbreaking song cycle which centers around pregnancy and childbirth. Until this song cycle, no art song had dealt with this topic in first-person narrative. This is surprising, given the total fertility rate of about 2.5 children per woman. After a brief biographical background of Libby Larsen and her output, the sociological implications of such a song cycle in the canon of music is explored. The topic is contextualized among other art forms, modern and ancient, showing that art song is the only place where such a dearth in pregnancy and childbirth stories exist. The texts are explored fully: author biographies, text sources, meaning, and Larsen’s text settings. An analysis of Larsen’s compositional features within the cycle is then presented, connecting text meaning to the theoretical elements in the music. An interview with Libby Larsen offers unique insight into the project’s genesis. This interview, combined with the author’s contributions, unite to form a guide to interpretation in order to assist performers as they prepare the work.