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Today’s international and connected environment has amplified the frequency of project business as a means to realize large transnational and global investments in world infrastructure. However, to realize an international infrastructure project, large collaboration among the right actors must be formed. A common and pressing issue is communication barriers and misunderstandings, hampering a single company’s capabilities to take full advantage of the opportunities auctioned or mutually created. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to explore the potential impact the organizational culture within a particular MNC had in regards to effective project formation and how to overcome these communication barriers. This thesis has been conducted with NKT, which provides turnkey cable solutions worldwide to connect various places and infrastructures. They are, therefore, active within a project business setting where they, together with other actors, collaborate intensively to deliver the solutions to their customers, i. e. nations. In 2021, they have set the work culture high on the agenda to connect a better world, a safer and more inclusive work environment, and advance more value to their stakeholders. We believe NKT provides an extraordinary opportunity to research in-depth how the organizational culture can be effectively utilized in project business since this is a unique scenario and NKT shows a high degree of cultural awareness. Thanks to our cooperation, we could conduct a multi-method case study to investigate the phenomenon thoroughly. The theoretical framework displays project business through collaboration, communication, and organizational culture using a constructionist perspective. The chapter concludes with a theoretical synthesis portraying the cohesion between these concepts. The methodology chapter illustrates how we performed this study, followed by the empirical chapter showing the rich material we have gathered. The analysis chapter links the findings to our theoretical framework, followed by the concluding chapter answering our research question and stating implications, recommendations, and suggestions for future research. The outcome of this thesis showcases the strength and importance of a harmonious organizational culture, coupled with open and highly systematic communication and documentation as a solid foundation for more collaborations using the network approach, which in turn increases trust, reputation, and capabilities to act on opportunities within project business. Significant implications are the importance of common vocabulary and interest, the significance of contexts and co-creation of meaning for communication, and the perfect alignment to mega-trends, in this case, sustainability.

This dissertation examines the public construction of gay and lesbian adoption by looking at the public discourse surrounding the issue. A discourse analysis was conducted of five print news publications and twenty interviews were conducted with participants in the issue. The goals of this research project included assessing how participants in the gay and lesbian adoption issue sought to influence its public construction, what frames they employed, how they interacted publicly with other participants, and how they constructed their identities and the identities of other participants. Other goals included assessing how the print news media covered the issue and how the participants strategized to garner media attention. The results indicate that the discourse of gay and lesbian adoption includes dominant themes, including the best interests of children, the definition of family, civil rights, and social science research. Within these themes, participants sponsor opposing frames, interacting with each other through their discursive strategies. Overall, print news coverage of the issue tended to reflect the opposing discourses of proponents and opponents of gay and lesbian adoption although more recent coverage tended to favor proponents. This dissertation contributes to the research areas of British cultural studies, social constructionism, media studies, and framing. The results have implications for those who advocate for political and social change as they indicate that proponents of gay and lesbian adoption are finding success through a negotiation strategy of advocating for change while upholding existing American cultural values. / Mass Media and Communication

Computing education for learning to program has made great strides in the current century. Exciting educational technologies are now available and active learning pedagogies are increasingly used. Interest is strong, but the longstanding problem remains: learning to program as an analytical endeavor is quite frustrating for many. The purpose of this study is to discover ways to mitigate this frustration. It researches ways to help students comprehend code by guiding them to take it apart (through reading, tracing, completing, and debugging) as they learn to write code on their own. This study contributes to the understanding of learning from errors. It also builds upon and further develops the emergent pedagogy of de-constructionism. The de-constructionist approach involves taking things apart, practice, and learning from errors. This study applies a de-constructionist approach in an experiment with ~80 undergraduates learning Python in an introductory programming class. During weekly lab periods, students engaged with web-based interactive practice problems that emphasize reading, tracing, completing, and in some cases, debugging code. Students also wrote code for lab and homework assignments. Approximately half of the students were given some that involved learning from bugs that were intentionally placed in the provided code, while the others were not. Learning gains were assessed using pre/post tests and exams. Surveys were used to measure attitudes. Learning gains and attitudes were compared according to condition (Bugs, NoBugs), prior experience, gender, minority status, and class size. This study demonstrates that bugs can be intentionally incorporated into practice problems that students like to solve, without detrimental effects on learning or attitudes about computing. It also contributes to the literature on code comprehension. / Math & Science Education

No / Gerard Egan's problem management and opportunity development model is currently in use training prospective counsellors, social workers, nurses, managers, etc. the skills of helping. This essay attempts, experimentally, to depict in three different ways Egan's work and its relationship to operations of power: (1) from a relatively uncritical stance, (2) from a personal experience stance, and (3) from a social constructionist perspective. The whole piece, taken together, attempts to tackle the issue of theory as practice ¿ to ground/unmask/make present the ways in which we are socialised into a profession and the problems inherent in that process. Two themes run through the work: the double bind created for a student on a counselling course which makes some claim to train around Rogers' core conditions, and which is also assessed/accredited; the connections between theory, training and practices.

Why did we ever purchase computers and place them along the wall or in the corner of a classroom? Why did we ever ask students to work individually at a computer? Why did we ever dictate that students should play computer games or answer questions built from a narrow data set? And why are we still doing this with computers in classrooms today? This approach has contributed to a systemic problem of low student engagement in course materials and little inclusion of student voice, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students. New transformational tools and pedagogies are needed to nurture students in developing their own ways of thinking, posing problems, collaborating, and solving problems. Of interest, then, is the predominance in today’s classrooms of programmed learning and teaching machines that we dub 21st century learning. We have not yet fully harnessed the transformational power and potential of the technology that schools already possess and that many students are bringing on their own. This dissertation aims to address what is missing in best practices of technology in the classroom. Herein these pages will be performed a document analysis of cornerstone books written by John Dewey, Paulo Freire, and Seymour Papert. This analysis will be in the form of annotations comprised of the author’s experience as an experienced educator and researcher, and founded in the extant relevant theories of critical theory, technology, and constructivism. The three philosophers were selected for their contributions to constructivism and their urgings to liberate the student from an oppressive system. With a different approach to educational technology, students could be working towards something greater than themselves or the coursework, something with a passionate purpose derived from student inquiry. Instead of working at the computer and having a “one and done” experience, students could be actively transforming their studies and their world. And instead of reifying existing social and racial inequities outside of the classroom through the large computer purchases and the dominant culture attitudes and beliefs found in many software products and databases, we could be examining our practices and programs with a critical lens that allows us to question and seek more inclusive community strategies. The final chapter is about asking for, pushing for, and dreaming for new kinds of schools, classrooms, software, hardware, and new ways to think about and create new opportunities for students. Mixed reality, sometimes called augmented reality, is likely the anticipated future of computers in the classroom. We need to, very deeply and purposefully, mix up electronics with people. We are in a new era with new understandings of old issues showing up in old problems. A unified learning theory for computers, computing, and digital learning environments could help to redefine classroom spaces and class time, as well as graduation outcomes. The revolution will indeed be live on the Internet, but it will also be remixed and recreated by students organically and authentically pursuing their own truth.

In this study I assessed a causal model between caregivers’ prior relationship to care-receivers, commitment to the relationship, and depression in parental and spousal caregiving, based on social exchange and commitment theory. Data (N=695) from the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) were used to test a path model examining the effects of relationship quality and commitment, as well as ace, gender, income, education, health, living arrangement, emotional support, and adult children's marital status on depression. This study began the process of combining the social psychological concept of commitment and the gerontological caregiving literature. The expected effects of commitment on depression were not statistically significant for either spousal caregiving or parental caregiving. As for spousal caregiving, caregivers’ health and relationship quality were negatively associated with caregivers’ depression. In parental caregiving, caregivers’ education and health had negative effects on caregivers' depression. The quality of the relationship with spouse or parent was notable for explaining commitment to the relationship. The predicted positive effect of relationship quality with parent on moral commitment was contradicted by a statistically significant finding of a negative effect. Spousal caregivers’ structural commitment to marital relationship was positively affected by the quality of the relationship with spouse. / Ph. D.