M.Ed. / Despite the substantial body of Educational Information and Communication Technology (ICT) research there is very little evidence that the theoretical frameworks that underpin research studies have been considered, or applied optimally. The central argument of this dissertation is that theoretical frameworks serve as epistemological guides that account for the knowledge that is produced in a study. The purpose of this inquiry is to explore how theoretical frameworks are evident in selected masters dissertations and doctoral theses at selected South African universities. A blended theoretical framework, situated in interpretivist theory, with an element of critical theory and positivist theory frames this study. A review of components of research dissertations required both quantified and qualitative data. A mixed methods approach was used to conduct a methodological inventory - cum survey review of 103 texts. A research template was devised in order to record and analyse the data that would be isolated in a reading of the texts, with specific reference to the sections of texts that showed the use of terms related to theoretical frameworks. The findings reveal that studies that were theoretically developed yielded data that could be interpreted in more depth, while a substantial majority of authors that employed their theoretical frameworks in a very limited way, presented findings that were no more than descriptive in nature. I conclude that the reason for the theoretically impoverished studies is possibly, more broadly speaking, located in the wider South African socio-economic, political and localised context. South African Higher Education Institutions face pressures of having to produce masters and doctoral studies in order to secure funding, while supervisors face pressures of having to publish to secure promotion and employability. In the process, students are not given enough opportunity for theoretical emancipation.

The standard method for presenting information in the military and political establishments of the US government is through the projection of data in bullet-style and/or graphical formats onto an illuminated screen, using some sort of first analogue, or now, digital media. Since the late 1990s, the most common and expected form of presentation is via the most commonly pre-installed software of presentation genre: Microsoft PowerPoint. This style of presentation has become the norm of communication, and in doing so, has replaced other methods of discursive and presentation. The art of the brief and in particular, the art of the PowerPoint has become a new standard of what was once group communication through oratory. This paper will attempt to show that PowerPoint slide-ware has reduced communication to mere presentation, negatively influencing the decision-making and critical thinking processes of individuals and organizations, particularly within the military and government. This is accomplished through the visual reception of the briefings themselves, where and when the theatrical nature of the presentation takes precedence over the content. And, in fact, this dramatic twist determines which ideas gain acceptance among audiences. This simple style of presentation is becoming indicative of a visual and leadership style of our era. This is the effect of a PowerPoint method of leadership, now de rigueur in the military and demonstrated by the current president and administration. The style of PowerPoint, both at the micro-level in particular presentations, and the macro-level, as demonstrated by people and organizations, ultimately works today as a form of control and discipline. And, in the end, it can become a convenient vehicle for furtherance of a specific ideology and propaganda campaigns. / Master of Arts

Considerable research, policy, and programmatic efforts have been dedicated to addressing the participation of particular populations in STEM for decades. Each of these efforts claims equity- related goals; yet, they heavily frame the problem, through pervasive STEM pipeline model discourse, in terms of national needs, workforce supply, and competitiveness. This particular framing of the problem may, indeed, be counter to equity goals, especially when paired with policy that largely relies on statistical significance and broad aggregation of data over exploring the identities and experiences of the populations targeted for equitable outcomes in that policy. In this study, I used the mixed-methods approach of critical discourse and critical quantitative analyses to understand how the pipeline model ideology has become embedded within academic discourse, research, and data surrounding STEM education and work and to provide alternatives for quantitative analysis. Using critical theory as a lens, I first conducted a critical discourse analysis of contemporary STEM workforce studies with a particular eye to pipeline ideology. Next, I used that analysis to inform logistic regression analyses of the 2006 SESTAT data. This quantitative analysis compared and contrasted different ways of thinking about identity and retention. Overall, the findings of this study show that many subjective choices are made in the construction of the large-scale datasets used to inform much national science and engineering policy and that these choices greatly influence likelihood of retention outcomes.

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Orientador: Ari Fernando Maia / Banca: Angelo Antonio Abrantes / Banca: Fernando Bastos / Resumo: O presente trabalho visa um estudo sobre as novas tecnologias em sala de aula. Essa questão vem sendo amplamente discutida principalmente no campo educacional, já que os aparatos tecnológicos têm adentrado cada vez mais em nossas escolas, pautados em um discurso pedagógico muitas vezes enviesado. Trazemos em nosso trabalho a relação que o professor tem para com a lousa digital como objeto de estudo. A princípio, iniciamos nossos estudos utilizando as reflexões que Marcuse traz sobre técnica e tecnologia, perpassamos outros autores como Flusser e Feenberg, que trazem reflexões importantíssimas sobre as novas tecnologias. No decorrer do trabalho analisamos nove artigos que falassem especificamente sobre lousas digitais presentes na sala de aula e que falassem sobre outros aparatos tecnológicos como o computador e o tablet. Para essa análise, fundamentamo-nos nas quatro categorias sobre tecnologia apresentadas por Feenberg (instrumentalismo, substantivismo, determinismo e teoria crítica), uma vez que a hipótese é de que elas sejam fundamentais para este fim. Objetivamos identificar as características da literatura sobre lousa digital em relação à inserção de tecnologias digitais na educação, tendo como referencial teórico a crítica da tecnologia realizada pela Teoria Crítica da Sociedade. Com a finalização do trabalho identificamos a restrição de uma perspectiva teórica. E isso deve-se ao fato de termos poucas produções no campo da teoria crítica que falem especificamente sobre ... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: This paper aims a study about new technologies in the classroom. This issue has been widely discussed mainly in the educational field, as the technological apparatuses have entered more and more in the schools, based on an often skewed pedagogical discourse. We bring in our work the relation that the teacher has to the digital slate as object of study. At first we started our studies using the reflections that Marcuse brings about technique and technology, we pass other authors like Flusser and Feenberg that bring important reflections on the new technologies. In the course of the study we analyzed nine articles that specifically talked about digital slates present in the classroom and that talked about other technological devices like the computer and the tablet. For this analysis, we are based ourselves on the four categories of technology presented by Feenberg (instrumentalism, substantivism, determinism and critical theory), since the hypothesis is that they are fundamental for this purpose. We aim to identify the characteristics of the literature on digital slate in relation to the insertion of digital technologies in education, having as theoretical reference the criticism of technology carried out by the Critical Theory of Society. With the completion of the work, we identify the restriction of a theoretical perspective. And this is due to the fact that we have few productions in the field of critical theory that speak specifically about the digital blackboard in the classroom. Therefore the need to reflect on the importance of having a critical theory of technology, especially in the educational field, where increasingly these devices are gaining strength. / Mestre

This dissertation examines the limits of the figure of democracy as a critical category in contemporary political philosophy. I frame the analysis around a structural tension in the work of several authors who rely on democracy as a theoretical foundation, which I call “the elitist-populist ambivalence.” This theoretical tendency regards democracy as a categorical imperative—a foundational normative principle and an end in itself—but simultaneously delimits the composition of the demos by disqualifying certain political actors from the status of the political, thereby violating the parameters of a categorical imperative by specifying conditions. In other words, the democratic turn appeals to formal concepts but decides the political content in advance. It advocates democracy on its own terms, democracy in spite of the demos. But if democracy has normative purchase only under certain conditions, then our critical political theory must be based on these conditions rather than the figure of democracy. The project focuses on three main bodies of literature: the work of Hannah Arendt, the tradition of radical democracy (exemplified by Jacques Rancière, Chantal Mouffe, and Ernesto Laclau), and early Frankfurt School critical theory (Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse). Though Arendt betrays no particular attachment to the term “democracy,” her work is of interest to this project because it represents a stark expression of the elitist-populist ambivalence: a political ontology based on democratic iconography and a simultaneous delimitation of who should count as the demos. The discussion of Rancière, Mouffe, and Laclau explores the ways in which these figures reproduce not only Arendt’s democratic motifs but also her constitutive exclusion. Albeit with divergent political commitments, they both appeal to democracy in spite of the demos. Finally, Adorno and Marcuse provide an alternative to the categorical imperative of democracy. By critically confronting the social mediations of pervasive popular ignorance and irrationality, the early Frankfurt School displaces the normative force of the figure of democracy by a critique of the actually existing demos. This critique, I argue, allows us to steer a theoretical course between the perils of elitism and the equivocations of populism.

Some three decades ago, post-positivists working in International Relations rejected the positivist separation of the knowing subject and the object known. In doing so, they established a new ‘critical’ paradigm in which truth has been understood primarily in terms of social and political practices and norms rather than the Archimedean detachment of the scientist. This new paradigm is typically thought to have brought a new theoretical pluralism to IR. However, focusing on the work of Critical Theorists and poststructuralists, this thesis shows that the work of post-positivist IR scholars has in fact been defined by responses to a specific set of questions which emerge from the ‘socialisation’ of truth. It demonstrates, moreover, that both Critical IR Theorists and poststructuralists have addressed these questions by understanding truth as a matter of intersubjective epistemic practices and idealisations about the conditions in which they take place. This ‘epistemic’ understanding of truth is the source of significant problems for Critical Theorists and poststructuralists in IR, especially in their accounts of political practice and proposals for international political transformation. The thesis considers whether the work of Critical Realists in IR, who have advocated the scientific pursuit of objective truth, might offer a solution. However, whilst they rightly reintroduce the subject-object relationship to critical IR, Critical Realists lapse into a scientism as a result of which they reject legitimate post-positivist claims about the inherent normativity and practicality of truth. The thesis introduces Theodor Adorno’s materialist theory of truth as a way of combining post-positivists’ normative concerns with the realists’ emphasis on the subject-object relationship. On this view, truth is a matter of the relationship between subjectivity and objectivity because it is matter of the needs and practices of partly objective human subjects. It is, therefore, both objective and normative.

The title of this thesis gives away little beyond an engagement with the visual and the implication of some sort of trouble: Agitating images. In many ways it is a project defined by trouble: trouble that is analyzed and historicized but also trouble that is expected and invited. The agitation refers initially to the project of communist agitators working in the 1920s and 30s among indigenous Siberian peoples. Soviet society was at war with illiteracy, at war with backwardness and, in central Siberia it was at war with shamans and wealthy reindeer herders. In relation to images, agitation is something altogether different and my metaphorical leap from a communist agitator to image as agitator can only exist through analytical fiat. What are agitating images? I argue that all photographs are actually agitating, even the most mundane and transparent images are agitating. They pose as media amenable to interpretation and the ascription of meaning; in fact they undermine meaning and they undermine interpretation. I demonstrate this in three distinct parts of the thesis. Part I offers a comprehensive articulation of my project. It is illustrated in a more or less conventional manner with archival photographs from Siberia. Part II is a demonstration of history and photography in conflict. I show how the Soviets—faced with an enormous inland territory and what was perceived as a culturally anterior population—developed the Culturebase, a unique technology to facilitate the shaping and manipulation of indigenous cultures. Part III of the thesis presents an altogether different approach. In this section I eschew the conventions and limitations of the printed page and offer a digital alternative. The format of Part III is agitating as well. As a website it is a performative act of perpetual openness. Agitating images is ultimately not about the end of interpretation, ethnography, or history. Rather, it is a generative work that reflexively apprehends its own place in the production of knowledge.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 466-494). Online version available via Dissertation Abstracts.

Revideret udgave af disputats 1999. / Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral)--Universität Hamburg, 1999.