Thesis (M.L.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes special study report entitled : Solar applications to landscape design. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print.

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In the global world, cultural issues relating to the subject of English as Foreign Language (EFL) have become important. This is especially the case when considering the EFL curriculum for Chinese Primary Education. Many writers have addressed the nature of curriculum design as knowledge and cultural reproduction, but usually in the North American and European literature. This research takes these debates and relocates them in the context of China as it enters a new market economy, embedded in its own version of ‘internationalism’. The 2001 national curriculum marked the beginning of China’s educational reform. From a reading of this literature, two main questions emerged: 1) what cultural values are transmitted through EFL textbooks for Chinese Primary Education?; 2) how do curriculum-making processes impact upon textbook production? The findings provide an important insight into knowledge and cultural reproduction in Chinese Education, especially in the subject of EFL. Two volumes of EFL textbooks, which were used in primary schools, were selected to examine the delivery of cultural values. Based on these initial findings, the researcher conducted a series of interviews and focus groups in order to trace the process of textbook production and curriculum creation. Participants included educational administrators in the Ministry of Education in China, curriculum designers, textbook editors from both Chinese and foreign publishers as well as classroom teachers. Research findings suggest that, the production of EFL textbooks should be recognised as a part of curriculum-making processes in the context of Chinese Primary Education. The ‘textbook’ can be seen as the ‘official’ interpretation of the Chinese culture. Indeed, the EFL curriculum is recognized as a vehicle for moral education by policy makers and educators. EFL textbooks include many moral messages promoting expected behaviour in contemporary China – ‘diligence, independence, respect and obedience, patriotism and collectivism’. The processes of generating this ‘production’ have spaces for less ‘official’ and more ‘hidden’ curriculum messages. Indeed, ‘lacunae’ – hidden spaces – in EFL curriculum design and textbook production have been identified. Various key players are involved in the curriculum-making process, including the State, its agencies, and intellectuals. However, instead of being a straight top-down structure led by the political elites, the strict control of the State over curriculum policy-making is finely nuanced. In fact, it was found that the practices of curriculum-making involve a complicated State-intellectuals partnership. Further, it is mainly the culture of the intellectual group which is reproduced through the EFL subject in Chinese Primary Education. Textbook editors and censors, inherently part of the intellectual elites, and key players in the curriculum designing process, rely heavily upon their own version of ‘common sense’. This thesis therefore concludes that the ‘hidden spaces’ through which curriculum design, development and delivery take place, generate a more nuanced understanding of Chinese cultural reproduction, than has previously been thought.

Worldwide, externally supported craft development initiatives aim to enhance the capability of local craft producers to succeed in globalized markets. However, the contribution that these organizations make towards the abilities of local actors remains unclear. Following a hermeneutic reflection on literature, empirical field experience derived from the African and South Pacific contexts and a multiple case study analysis of craft development organizations, the research investigates the pre-conceptions that lie behind approaches adopted in craft development initiatives. Two emerging elements of particular importance have been identified. Firstly, the Western ideological notion of craft, influenced particularly by the Arts and Crafts movement, and secondly the ethos of social design, built on the legacy of the appropriate technology movement. It is argued that both of these have a constraining impact on the development of indigenous design skills that underpin successful participation in global markets. Noting that craft covers a wide range of practices, the research at hand furthermore identifies a category of craft that has become the epitome of Non-Western craft. These decorative and exotic artifacts are labor-intensive to produce, making them only marginally profitable for the makers. Yet there is an apparent emphasis on the promotion of this category within international craft development initiatives. The research concludes that the current practice of craft development initiatives cannot fully contribute to the development of the response capability of the local craft producers. Enhancing the impact of these initiatives would require serious reconsideration of product strategies and a re-think of the premises under which initiatives are undertaken. A new approach is suggested, one that examines design within a framework of social, economic and ecological sustainability, taking into consideration such socio-cultural issues as the peoples’ right to economic freedoms and the use of capabilities, building on the work of the economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.

<p> The purpose of this study was to design a grammar curriculum that could help college age students in basic writing classes to identify and correct grammatical errors in their own writing. After reviewing literature in best practices in grammar instruction as well as other kinds of instructional best practices, the grammar curriculum, <i>Effective MUGs</i> (MUGs stands for mechanics, usage, and grammar), takes advantage of these best practices including sentence combining, sentence revision, sentence creation, grammar in context, strategies instruction, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The study was designed to measure how effective the grammar curriculum was (by examining student writing in essays as well as grammar exercises), how students used tools in the curriculum (by examining results from cognition labs), and how students and instructors perceived the curriculum (through interviews). The data on student grammatical error from this study must be viewed with reservations because of the lack of statistical significance. The most significant findings were qualitative and offered insight into the strengths of the Effective MUGs curriculum as well as which aspects that need revision. Both students and instructors thought that the gradual release of strategies instruction was one of the most effective tools and they both enjoyed using BYOD in conjunction with Google Docs. Students were most challenged by subject-verb identification and feeling confident about use of unfamiliar sentence elements; instructor interviews confirmed these student challenges. The data from the study will prompt revision to the curriculum as well as enhanced professional development.</p><p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-178).

Upon identifying the multifaceted and disparate array of ever-changing environmental informants to architectural discourse, one is confronted with how to unite this dialogue in meaningful ways to current modes of thought and action. The question gains more significance as our knowledge of the greater environmental domain becomes more systemic and complexly heterogenic, while at the same time, approaches to the issues have proved to be progressively more reductivist, disconnected, overtly abstracted or theorized, and universally globalized in regard to multifaceted and content-rich human particularities in situ. This research focuses on the implications and applications of Critical Environmentalism (CE) to propose a corresponding epistemological framework to wide-ranging socio-environmental complexities occurring across architectural endeavors, primarily within urban and community developments as comprising the greatest number of intersections between human constructions and the greater environmental domain. CE addresses environmental issues reciprocally emerging across numerous disciplines and theoretical stances and fosters critical and systemically collective approaches to knowledge integration, amalgamating multiple stakeholder perspectives within an interconnective and operational goal of creative communal development and betterment of the human condition in relation to environmental concerns. Situating the environment (Umwelt) as an interconnecting catalyst between divergent points-of-views, CE promotes a multi-methodological, co-enabling framework intended to foster increased ethical and participatory dynamics, communal vitality, co-invested attention, and productive interchanges of knowledge that cultivate an overall quality of knowing and being within the intricacies of the greater domain. As such, it engages broader definitions for architecture within its social community, significantly embodied and epistemologically co-substantiating within a shared, environmental life-place. Fundamentally a hermeneutic standpoint, this investigation elucidates conceptual connections and mutual grounds, objectives, and modes-of-operation across knowledge domains, initiating an essential, socio-environmentally oriented framework for architectural endeavors. In this, it brings together common threads within critical social theory and environmentalist discourse to subsequently promote distinct interconnective components within a framework of socio-environmental thought for architecture. The research then provides case examples and recommendations toward stimulating progressive environmental initiatives and thus increased capacity to improve existing epistemic conditions for architecture, urban design, and community development within the broader scope of Critical Environmentalism.

Volvo Cars Corporation (VCC) is devoted to Lean and Six Sigma, and has lately considered an imple-mentation of Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) with the purpose of improving their product design process and production. The goal for this project work is therefore to investigate if DFMA is a beneficial method for VCC to use, how DFMA can be used and suggest a DFMA method. A literature study is performed as a starting point to understand DFMA methods and its possibilities. Scientific articles, technical books and online sources is used during the study in order to gather in-formation regarding DFMA implementations, application areas, approaches and potential risks that need to be eliminated for a successful implementation. In order to map the product development and manufacturing processes of VCC interviews are per-formed. The interviews also gathered information regarding what VCC employees thinks of DFMA and how they wish to use it. This information is compiled into a demand specification where the de-mands are weighted after importance by the interviewees. After the pre-study, three idea generation sessions is performed with three different focus groups. The generated ideas are then evaluated and classified. The remaining ideas are classified with the purpose of enabling the possibility to use a morphological chart to build whole concepts from the single ideas. Three concepts are chosen amongst the generated concepts. These concepts are then evaluated against the weighted demand specification. The concept considered most suitable is further devel-oped which resulted in a proposed DFMA method for VCC. A case study on a product is performed in order to communicate, test and evaluate the final DFMA method. The project is rounded off with discussions regarding DFMA and the suggested method from sustain-ability point of view and how to motivate usage. All results and discussions from the project are handed over to the company, enabling further research on a possible implementation of DFMA in the organization. / Volvo Cars Corporation arbetar hängivet efter metoderna Lean och Sex Sigma och har avsikt att im-plementera Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) i syfte att förbättra deras produkt- och produktutvecklingsprocess. Målet med detta arbete är att undersöka om DFMA är en värdefull me-tod för VCC att använda och hur metoden kan tänkas användas och implementeras inom organisat-ionen. Som utgångspunkt för att förstå DFMA metoden och dess möjligheter genomförs en litteraturstudie. Under studien granskades aktuella vetenskapliga artiklar, tekniska böcker och webbkällor i syfte att samla information om DFMA-implementeringar, användningsområden, tillvägagångsätt och potenti-ella risker som behövs elimineras för en lyckad implementation av metoden. Vidare utförs intervjuer i syfte att kartlägga produktutvecklings- och tillverkningsprocessen samt samla information om hur anställda ställer sig till, och önskar använda DFMA. Denna information sammanställs sedan till en kravspecifikation där kraven i sin tur viktas av intervjuobjekten efter hur viktiga de anses vara. Tre idégenereringssessioner utförs därefter med tre olika fokusgrupper. Dessa idéer gallras sedan ut och klassificeras för att sedan kombineras med hjälp av en morfologisk tabell i syfte att bygga kon-cept av de enskilda idéerna. Tre koncept väljs ut bland de genererade koncepten. Dessa koncept utvärderas sedan mot varandra med kravspecifikationen som bedömningsskala. Det koncept som bedöms som mest lämpligt vidare-utvecklas och en föreslagen metod för VCC tas fram. För att testa och illustrera den slutgiltiga meto-den genomförs en fallstudie på en produkt. Arbetet rundas av med diskussioner kring DFMA och den föreslagna metoden ur både hållbarhets-synpunkt och motivationssynpunkt. Samtliga resultat och diskussioner överlämnas sedan till företa-get för att möjliggöra vidare undersökningar kring en eventuell implementation av DFMA. / DFMA FMEA DFM DFA Lean Produktdesign Metodutveckling

Thesis (Masters Diploma (Technology)-- Cape Technikon, Cape Town,1988 / Brown Davis and McCorquodale is one of the major suppliers of cheques to the banking industry. To produce these cheques they use a number of different print systems, one of which comprises of a minicomputer, an industry standard tape deck and two printers, a Diablo daisywheel and a Control Data Corporation (CDC) printer which was extensively modified to cater for the requirements of the cheque printing industry. The CDC printer is used to print the code line on the cheques using magnetic ink. After each line is printed the computer sends a form feed command which causes the printer to throw paper. This throw is controlled by a paper tape, known as a Vertical Format Unit tape, or rather a VFU tape. This tape has holes punched into it at specific places which determine the amount of paper throw also known as vertical feed. The holes are sensed by brushes which are pulled up to 5 volt when they pass over a hole and touch a roller connected to the 5 volt line. This system, being of an electro-mechanical nature, is prone to faults and causes much down time due to mechanical wear on the brushes and dirt on the roller. This means that the brushes have to be adjusted and therefore also means that the timing has to be readjusted each time. The timing relationships are discussed in Section 2.B

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / The primary intent of this study was to seek solutions to the practical problems experienced by practitioners in their management of child abuse cases. A fundamental problem regarding the current management of child abuse is that there is no guarantee that a child entering the child protective system will be dealt with in terms of a set procedure and/or protected against further abuse. To address this problem in the Western Cape, the Intervention Research (IR) methodology (Rothman & Thomas, 1994) was used to develop a Protocol for the Multi-Disciplinary Management of Child Abuse and Neglect. The protocol was designed for agencies that intervene in instances of child abuse. It establishes criteria and procedures for interdisciplinary co-ordination and effective case management, delineates the professional roles and responsibilities and provides step-by-step intervention procedures.