Abstract dialectical frameworks (ADFs) have recently been proposed as a versatile generalization of Dung''s abstract argumentation frameworks (AFs). In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the computational complexity of ADFs. Our results show that while ADFs are one level up in the polynomial hierarchy compared to AFs, there is a useful subclass of ADFs which is as complex as AFs while arguably offering more modeling capacities. As a technical vehicle, we employ the approximation fixpoint theory of Denecker, Marek and Truszczyński, thus showing that it is also a useful tool for complexity analysis of operator-based semantics.

Humans invest a substantial amount of time in the creation of artworks. For generations, humans around the world have learned and shared their knowledge and skills on artistic traditions. Albeit large experimental settings or online databases have brought considerable insights on the evolutionary role and trajectory of art, why humans invest in art, what information artworks carry and how art functions within the community still remain elusive. To address these unresolved questions, this present thesis integrates ethnographic accounts with data governance and statistical approaches to systematically investigate a large corpus of art. This thesis specifically focuses on a large corpus of Tamil kolam art from South India to provide an exemplary case study of artistic traditions. The foundation for the projects presented in this thesis was the design and construction of a robust data infrastructure that enabled the synthesis of raw data from various sources into one database for systematic analyses. The data infrastructure on the kolam artistic system enabled the development of complex statistical methods to explore the substantial investments and information complexity in art. In the first chapter, I examine artists’ strategic decisions in the creation of kolam art and how they strive to optimize the complexity of their artworks under constraints using evolutionary signaling theory and theoretically guided statistical methods. Results revealed that artists strive to maintain a stable and invariant complexity measured as Shannon information entropy, regardless of the size of the artwork. In order to achieve an optimal artistic complexity “sweet spot”, artists trade-off two standard measures of biological diversity in ecology: evenness and richness. Additionally, results showed that although kolam art arises in a highly stratified and multi-ethnic society, artistic complexity is strategically optimized across the population and not constrained by group boundaries. Instead, the trade-off can most likely be explained by aesthetic preferences or cognitive limitations. While artistic complexity in kolam art can be strategically optimized across the population, distinct styles and patterns can still be employed by artists. Thus, in the second chapter, I focus on how artistic styles in kolam art covary along cultural boundaries. I employ a novel statistical method to measure the mapping between styles onto group boundaries on a large corpus of kolam art by decomposing the system into sequential drawing decisions. In line with Chapter 1, results demonstrate limited group-level variation. Distinct styles or patterns in kolam art can only be weakly mapped to caste boundaries, neighborhoods or previous migration. Both chapters strongly suggest that kolam art is primarily a sphere where artists differentiate themselves from others by displaying their unique skill set and knowledge. Thus, variability in kolam art is largely dominated by individual-level variation and not reflective of group boundaries or narrow socialization channels. This thesis contributes to an emergent understanding of how artists conceptualize what they are doing and how art functions within the community. Taken together, this thesis serves as an example approach that demonstrates an optimized workflow and novel approaches for the evolutionary study of a large corpus of artistic traditions.

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<p>Interdisciplinary education has been viewed as a way to give an edge to graduates in terms of developing creativity, innovation, ability to synthesize knowledge, and develop a range of professional skills (Haynes, 2017). However, the push towards interdisciplinarity as opposed to a disciplinary field is a challenge due to strong educational traditions, power dynamics, academic freedom, as well as the power faculty has to form their areas of research interest and disciplines (Ashby & Exter, 2019; Becher & Trowler, 2001; Klein, 2006). Likewise, the diversity of members of an interdisciplinary team can lead to negative forces that can only be overcome with open communication and understanding of both boundaries and ways to address them. This means that an interdisciplinary team may need to have a translator to help build common knowledge, facilitate engagement, and address tacit issues. Instructional designers have the potential to play a translator role. Rooted across the author’s three publications, the focus of this dissertation is to establish the vision for instructional designers getting a more proactive role on an interdisciplinary program design team (translator agency), where mediation of knowledge is needed across faculty to build a successful program. </p>

Hermatypic, or reef-building, corals (Order Scleractinia) are the foundation of coral reefs, providing a diversity of structurally complex habitats for the myriad species in these biologically diverse ecosystems. However, both local and global anthropogenic stressors threaten the persistence of these corals. For this thesis, thirty 16m2 permanent photoquadrats at 10 shallow forereef sites around Kiritimati (Christmas Island, Republic of Kiribati) were monitored across a four-year study encompassing the 2015-2016 El Niño derived marine heatwave, and subsequent mass coral mortality event. Sites were exposed to either low, medium, or high levels of local anthropogenic disturbance. My objective herein was to examine the effects of a mass coral mortality event on reef structural complexity, from the end of the event to three years afterwards. To do so, I digitally quantified six metrics of structural complexity for each photoquadrat sampled across three resolution scales for each of the five expeditions. Plots from 2015, 2017, and 2019 were later annotated based on the morphological structure present. I found that while significant declines in multiple of habitat metrics occurred by the end of the heatwave, no further significant declines occurred thereafter. However, this trend was lost as resolution scale increased, indicating the trends seen in the habitat metrics at 1.0 cm were likely documenting the shift from live coral towards abiotic dominated reefs. Anthropogenic disturbance compounded the El Niño’s effect, ensuring high disturbance sites had the lowest structural complexity values throughout the study. Lastly, live branching, tabulate, foliose, and submassive coral morphologies were found to be most closely associated with the different habitat complexity metrics. These results highlight the importance live coral structure has on reef structural complexity, illustrate the importance of model resolution when quantifying trends in structural complexity, pinpoint coral morphologies creating reef structural complexity, and further emphasize the need to limit the effects of local anthropogenic disturbance on coral reefs. / Graduate / 2023-04-15

AbstractThe aim of this study is to illustrate, discuss and problematize goal-aiming in preschool practice. The study focus on the didactic work of preschool teachers, at a practice action level that includes planning and action. The study could be considered important in times of changes in the context of preschool education with high expectations on the performance of preschools and preschool teachers. The process has been explorative with a hermeneutic approach and the result of the study has emerged in the interaction between preunderstanding, data, theories and new understanding.The study has a critical didactic approach with focus on what may occur as multiple understandings of curriculum goal aiming at a practice action level. The data consist of seven preschool teachers’ narratives about their goal aiming work and the research questions are: •Which different ways to do goal-aiming at a didactic action level occurs in the narratives of preschool teachers?•Which different aspects of complexity in relation to goal-aiming occurs in the narratives of preschool teachers?•Which different norm didactic and critical didactic ideas about goal-aiming occurs in the narratives of preschool teachers?Four different ways of goal-aiming occurs at a didactic action level: pre goal-aiming, post goal-aiming, present goal-aiming, child goal-aiming and environmental goal-aiming. The goal-aiming actions can be understood in the form of a process and emerge like goal-aiming chains.Three different complexity aspects are identified: goal-complexity, learning-complexity and individual-complexity and are being discussed in the result chapter.Norm didactic ideas and critical didactic ideas emerge from the narratives at the same time, which can be understood as multiple understanding. The norm didactic believes emerge in the context of evaluation and the critical didactic believes emerge in goal- aiming action level considering planning and teaching.

Svensson, Elisabeth (2018). Rektors ledarskap och organisation i Montessori- friskolor – enintervjustudie av tre rektorer. (Principals leadership and organization in Montessori-schools - aninterview study of three principals). Pedagogik, Institutionen för Skolutveckling och ledarskap,Fakulteten för Lärande och samhälle, Malmö universitet.The research that has taken place has consisted of interviews with principals in two Montessorischools(F-6, F-9) and one Montessori-inspired school (F-6). My purpose with this study was toinvestigate how principals pedagogically lead and organize the daily work connected with how theschool structurally is built and lead. The interviews have been accomplished by a manual withquestions and are semi-structured. I have with a phenomenologically approach tried to describe,interpret and analyze the principals daily work from respondents own perspective. In my analysis,I have used the complexity theory in order to understand and interpret the complexity of the schoolorganization and two models of leadership, transformational and transactional leadership. Theresult of the analysis shows that the Montessori-school principals strategically consciously workwith attitudes and methods of working in the context of learning and teaching. I have identified abasis for how school leadership can be practised within the Montessori pedagogy. I have also in myanalysis established the fact that many of the characteristics of the Montessori pedagogy correspondwith what is stated in the curriculum of the compulsory school (Lgr 11). In relation to theleadership of the principals I have been able to state the fact that both a transformational and atransactional leadership are represented in the three schools. I have made the complexity in theprincipal’s leadership evident in the relation to the organization of the schools and have identifiedan obvious challenge and conflict of interest between the main organization, that is controlled bythe committee, and the principal and the staff of the the schools. My analysis clearly shows that theopinion of all three principals is that the daily work in the school organization is complex. I make acomparison with the complexity theory, which indicates that when the abstract and the simplifiedissues in the daily work meet with the more concrete and complex issues, this will cause difficultiesin the organization. .The study can hopefully increase the knowledge of principals’ leadershiprelated to the organization in Montessori-schools and be complementary to further research in thisfield.

A growing number of organizations developing complex innovation projects face the dilemma that complexity demands more stability, resulting in increased sensemaking efforts, whilst innovation requires instability which encourages the organization to breakdown meaning. The aim of this study is to shed light on the simultaneous need for a strong sensemaking process and a breaking down in meaning in complex innovation projects by analyzing the collective sensemaking process through a storytelling lens. By conducting an explorative case study, we investigated a long-term development project in the Swedish defense industry. The qualitative study is based upon ten in-depth interviews with technical experts occupying key positions in the investigated project (JAS39 Gripen E-series development). We followed a process study approach to investigate the dynamic attributes and effects of a changing dominant story on the sensemaking process of project sub-teams. We propose that the dual attributes of arising dominating narratives allow sub- collectives to "escape" the dangerous downward spiral of a collapsing sensemaking process, as they enable individuals with cause maps contradictory to an organization's dominant story to remain in action. The acceptance of temporal relaxed stability can therefore be seen as an important step in the creation of radical innovation.

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Climate change is one of the most important challenges of today’s societies and poses serious global threats on the world’s environment and societal structures (UN, n.a.b). Providing a novel and adaptive approach to lead and organize for sustainability are self-organized movements (Atkinson et al., 2018). One of those is the Transition movement, which tries to counter the twin threats of climate change and peak oil with local, community-led, bottom-up action. This research aims to explore leadership in self-organized movements at the example of the Transition movement by collecting and analyzing leader’s perceptions about leadership, its relevance but also challenges within the Danish and Swedish Transition region. Hence, a qualitative approach is used. Even though leadership plays a subordinate role in the minds of the leaders, who see it as informal and relate it to tasks of coordination and empowerment, it is evident and present in all of the movements actions. Leadership can thus be considered as relevant and of importance for the movements development and for self-organized movements in general with a community-centered approach. It is also shown that the intangible leadership perception in the Transition movement can pose challenges in relation to systemic boundaries, engaging people and acquiring funds which can collide with the core values of the movement. Nevertheless, self-organization in connection with leadership findings of this study present a way to lead and organize for sustainability.