Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 39-03, Section: A, page: 1280. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1978.

The purpose of this study was to develop a systematic approach for planning and implementing new educational programs and revise existing ones based on more and better information which could assist educational planners in decision making regarding curriculum planning. The Venezuelan Community College System served as a frame of reference for this study; the Caracas Community College within the system, as the pioneer of the community college movement in Venezuela, was used as the specific reference point. / The methodology used in this study was reported in four parts. First, the general framework for the study, the systems analysis approach, was discussed. Second, from extensive research of curriculum development models an eight-step model was developed. Third, the simulation technique was used as a device to assist planners in decision making regarding curriculum planning before implementation could take place. Fourth, sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine how sensitive the model was to changes introduced in some variables and how these changes might affect the final results. / The computer program--SAMPIC--designed for this study was useful in first, creating a model (Model C) from which a number of reports were generated for decision-making purposes; second, in conducting the sensitivity analysis in which changes in job opportunities were made for five selected industries and several jobs within those industries. / The reports provided by this model should be useful to planners in determining (1) the educational programs and courses that should be offered or eliminated, (2) the adequate number of students to be enrolled in each educational program given demand and supply in order to avoid subemployment and unemployment among the graduates, (3) the necessary number of faculty, (4) the total cost per educational program regarding instructional and non-instructional cost, and (5) the effect on the total educational program or part of it when some conditions are changed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 43-08, Section: A, page: 2537. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1982.

This thesis examines the politics of twenty-first century ???guerrilla??? performance. It historicises site-specific, political performance by examining ???guerrilla??? art forms from the 1960s to the present. It argues that recent community-based, site-specific performance events can be seen as a ???new??? type of guerrilla work, as they utilise techniques which challenge public space, authorship and control without resorting to traditional guerrilla forms of didactic street protest. The author establishes two main political tactics of the community-based guerrilla artist. The first is the utilisation of a problematised definition of ???community??? and the second is an understanding of physical, conceptual and experiential ???space??? as open to intervention. Community-based performance and site-specific art practices are investigated and space and community are placed into critical theoretical frameworks using post-structural and spatiality theory. The author then argues that post-structured communities which are based on an ethics of difference can trouble and create site, conceptual space and place (site/concept/place) through contemporary guerrilla performance events. Three examples of community-based guerrilla performance in Australia are examined. The first case study explores Western Sydney based Urban Theatre Projects and their 1997 performance event TrackWork. The second focuses on community-based hip-hop artist Morganics and his facilitation of two hip-hop tracks Down River and The Block in 2001. The third considers US theatre director Peter Sellars??? problematic curation of the 2002 Adelaide Festival of the Arts. In all three case studies, guerrilla artists are shown working with post-structured communities to challenge and trouble site/concept/place in order to improve the lives of their participants and audiences. This thesis proposes new post-structural frameworks for the powerful presence of community and site in performance events, thus contributing to performance and cultural studies and to the emerging field of community-based performance scholarship.

[Abstract]:Community is one of those ‘slippery terms’, something that is ‘nice to have’ as Zygmunt Baumann (2001) notes, but something that we don’t often stop to think about- it is just there. The significance of community can’t be overstated however, and the ways that human interactions and connections to space are mediated have much to do with how we understand and interact with our communities. The project that underpinned this dissertation sought toexplore how ideas of community were constructed, represented and consumed by residents of a new ‘edge city’ located in south- east Queensland, Australia. Applying a cultural studies approach and drawing on Anthony Cohen’s (2004) ideas of the boundary of community, thisdissertation suggests that mediations of community in the late-capitalist, postmodern world have taken on new meanings resulting in a shift in the way that individuals experience each other and the places they inhabit. In particular, the operation of public pedagogies deployedin consumer oriented mass communication artefacts including billboards, sales brochures and magazines, carry significant influence in determining how community is expressed and lived. Following an exploration of how various image and text-rich public pedagogical artefactsdeploy ideas of community and a survey of discussions with residents of this new urban space, ideas on what community means in the current era are proffered.

My experience as a development aid worker has brought to the fore the incongruence between the rhetoric and practice of community development in India, more so in relation to women. Historically, the practice of community development in India has also been imposed and could be considered as an 'imperialist' relic of the colonial rule. This has been traced through an extensive literature review and discourse analysis of the five year plan and other related documents. The research aimed to uncover the manner in which rural Indian women engaged with structures and processes of community development and to explore what benefits or otherwise accrued to them. It further sought to explore the reasons for the failure of a particular program as envisaged by local women. The thesis used the framework of structuration, everyday life and community development theories (Giddens, Lefevbre, de Certeau, Ife) and an ethnographic methodological approach. One rural community of 52 households, in the state of Orissa (India) was the subject of study and in-depth interviews were conducted with three key informants. Participant observation was the cornerstone of this research in order to gain an in-depth view of the everyday lives of women, with the researcher spending seven months in the community. Themes were developed around the community development program (Mahila Mandals) and the key informants were interviewed regarding the same, its formation, structure, processes, the reasons for its initial success and subsequent failure and finally women's agency in engaging with various aspects of the program. The findings showed that this program would not have developed unless it had been driven from the top; women had no say in the structures and processes, and while it was successful initially for instrumental reasons, not taking into account women's agency was the reason for its downfall. Despite these lessons, it is recognised that the practice of community development continues to remain top-down. Till date, international aid agencies, government's (national, state and local), and/or INGOs/ NGOs that determine the needs of the communities and the approaches to addressing and evaluating them. Conclusions include a policy discussion on the attempt by international agencies, especially DFID, and governments (of India and Orissa) to address gender issues in their existing and new programs taking into account women's agency as constructed in their everyday lives. There is an agreement with the international, national and local debates that gender issues have to be addressed with great urgency in view of the changing roles of women.

This thesis is an examination of rehearsal processes and aesthetic outcomes in community theatre practice. It is a qualitative study, focusing on a community theatre project in a small outer suburban primary school near Melbourne, Australia. The researcher is a highly involved reflective practitioner, taking on the multiple roles of researcher, community artist and community member. / At the heart of the thesis is a novella embodying a range of perspectives and experiences from the case study. / The study began with the questions: how is it possible for a community theatre project to satisfy the participants’ artistic and community needs and what are the factors which contribute to the achievement of these ends? The tension between the contrasting needs and experiences of different participants, ranging from theatrically trained artistic facilitators to the children who struggle to be heard, to the parents looking to connect with the school community, informed the study. The inevitable challenges and difficulties of the fieldwork propelled the study into a wider exploration of questions of community participation in the arts as a means of individual and collective expression and as an experience of cultural democracy. / Drawing on an extensive review of theoretical foundations underpinning the practice of community theatre, and a review of practice itself (both the researcher’s own and a range of exemplars), the study proposes an analysis of the key stages of development of community theatre practice. / This analysis has been synthesised into a Community Theatre Matrix. At the core of the matrix is the notion that collective community art-making takes place within an Engaged Space, where key elements of Artistry, Agency, Pedagogy, Pragmatics and Critical Reflection shape and inform the practice. Those who choose to participate in the collective art-making process become a temporary community of art-makers. / This Engaged Space is based on the conceptualisation of a ‘community aesthetic’ - participants engage in collective art-making processes predicated on an invitation to aesthetic and social engagement. Such a space is charged with the potential for a politicising experience as well as a community one. This new understanding is framed by an appreciation of the interplay between artistic invention (and intervention) and pedagogy. In order to give voice to the silent community, the artist employs the tools of emancipatory pedagogy along with modernist and post-modernist theatre understandings. / The thesis concludes with the proposition that community theatre offers individuals and communities the possibility of a shared experience of art-making and the social and artistic possibilities associated with ‘giving voice and being heard’.

Thesis (M.Ed. (Education for Community Building))-University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

<p>A conflict known for being played out between Catholics and Protestants has affected Northern </p><p>Ireland deeply as a country and society, leaving a divided and segregated society. What happened after the Belfast Agreement in 1998? A bachelor degree thesis about community relations in Belfast between Catholics and Protestants, written by Ana Maria Panescu.</p>

<p>Fish is considered to be a keystone predator in freshwater habitats. Several studies have shown that the species composition of odonates (Odonata) is different between habitats with and without fish, and that odonates depending on the behaviour and physical characteristics of the individual species react differently to the presence of fish, some positively, some negatively and others not at all. This study aims to study the effect of fish as predators on the odonate community, and especially the little studied effect of the presence and composition of different ecological groups of fish in lakes. 92 Swedish lakes were surveyed for abundances and species compositions of odonates. The composition of fish species in the lakes was determined from official sources and divided into seven ecological groups. While several of the tests for potential interactions between fish and odonates resulted in no significance, the discrimination analyses of the different ecological groups of fish tested against odonate species composition did reveal high classification coefficients, indicating that different ecological groups have different odonate communities. Number of species of fish did also have a fairly high classification coefficient in a discriminant analysis. A combined plot show that two categories of lakes are separating from the others in odonate composition. Both these categories lacked some littoral groups of fish, indicating that littoral fish species may have a strong influence on the odonate community. The study also concluded that both lake size and latitude are potential confounding variables.</p>

This study is a critical ethnography of my professional career as an educator born and raised in the Shona culture in Zimbabwe. In this metaphysical study I reconstruct a worldview that I consider to be representative of Shona customs and beliefs. Doing this project has challenged my own ethnic identity as I struggled to position myself on the emic-etic continuum. As a young educator, I believed my professional practice was rooted in the high professional ethics of "modern science." Today as I come to the end of this particular journey, I have raised more questions than answers. To what extend does "modern science" represent the worldviews of indigenous people like me? More still, to what extent does the development of knowledge and technology engage rural indigenous communities? Is it possible for rural indigenous communities to achieve sustainable development as outsiders to the "scientific" community? The questions I have raised in this study have led me to understand that the current state of "development" as a concept and discourse needs to be redefined from the perspective of ordinary rural people. Universal notions of development have failed to inform policy makers and researchers on how to solve social problems of poverty and access to basic services like clean water, food, shelter, and affordable health care and education. Globalization as the new manifestation of "modernity" is leading to increased exclusion of disadvantaged communities, mostly women and indigenous rural people, from enjoying the benefits of new knowledge and advanced technology. In this dissertation, I review the main paradigms of community development from 1884 when Africa was officially "christianized" at the Berlin Conference. The epistemology of community development gave me a unique opportunity to propose a grassroots model to community development that I refer to as the "G Community Development" theory (or simply the GCD theory). The GCD theory is grounded in the Zimbabwean context and my woridview. This theory is my tentative approach to make sense of the state of the development of indigenous communities in rural Zimbabwe. Under no circumstances do I seek to generalize the application of this theoretical artifact. / Graduation date: 2004