Current attempts to answer the questions of how learning can be nurtured within projects; and, how it can be shared within the supply chain make a conscious stance in support of one of two seemingly conflicting perspectives. These are; a first generation knowledge management systems perspective, or a second generation socialisation perspective. This study shrewdly identifies that to categorically anchor to simply one perspective is fundamentally flawed. It is a strategy which regards each as mutually exclusive and therefore negates the advantages of its opposition. Each perspective is suited to differing needs. A first generation perspective satisfies the desire of organisations to create a tangible representation of their knowledge base. However, purely focusing on this need ignores the requirement of socialisation, which is essential for effective tacit knowledge transfer. This has astutely been identified as causing cycles of disillusionment due to its inevitable inability to perform effective knowledge sharing. In comparison, a purely second generation approach fails to satisfy the desire to produce a tangible resource base, which thus reduces the incentives for organisations to provide vital socialisation opportunities. It has been widely acknowledged that learning within projects is needed to make strides towards continuous improvement. If this is not the case, the industry will continue to repeat flawed practices or continuously reinvent solutions unnecessarily. This is resulting in significant inefficiencies within the industry, reduced quality outputs and supplying reduced value. Furthermore, it is not simply the case that learning within individual phases of the construction lifecycle, or within organisations will realise these benefits. For true efficiency benefits to be realised, knowledge and learning from projects has to be shared throughout the supply chain. This research s contribution has been established through the development of a feedback framework predominantly between construction and design teams throughout a project s lifecycle. The framework provides the capability to transfer lessons to not only individual organisations, but across organisational boundaries also. It seeks to improve internal knowledge management through incorporating critical facets such as live capture, multimedia formats and the ability to network with other knowledge owners/seekers. Accordingly, this project has made a significant theoretical contribution through identifying the ability and need to combine first and second generation knowledge management perspectives.

Trust is an intrinsic component of any loyal “consumer friendship” between customers and service providers, and is a by-product of shared understanding. Nowhere is the notion of trust more relevant than in technical service—such as professional legal practice, architecture, medical care and auto repair—where the primary commodities exchanged are specialized knowledge, equipment and skills. A common challenge in dialogue between expert providers and novice customers in this context is meaningful sharing of technical information. A successful exchange requires care in representation, language, attitude, delivery and timing. Furthermore, with communication breakdowns, trust falters, and business relationships run the risk of falling apart. Rather than relying on simple transactional exchanges of information in service, a customer’s journey could be enriched by framing service touchpoints as individual opportunities for learning. Learning activities occur in everyday life via interactions with society, artifacts or programs, and often involve the pursuit of knowledge or skills without the structure of a formal curriculum. This study explores how learning might function as a channel for strengthening multi-faceted trust relations in service through integration into programs and artifacts. In this project, an auto repair shop was investigated as a case study in technical service, given its long inglorious history of customer mistrust. Through exploration in the context of a local mechanic shop, prototypes for experiential and transformative service learning were implemented, tested, and re-shaped into a four-part framework designed to improve technical communications

Thesis advisor: Richard M. Jackson / The diversity of the student population in K-12 settings has steadily increased over the past few decades. While students who are of a racial/ethnic minority background have increased (Villegas & Lucas, 2007), teachers are increasingly young, female, and white (Goldenberg, 2008; NCES, 2013). In acknowledging these demographic discrepancies between teachers and students, many studies and reports have put forward an array of frameworks that teachers can employ in their practice to address diversity. Among these frameworks are Teaching for Social Justice (TSJ) and Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This dissertation seeks to examine the potential relationship among the two frameworks as viewed by undergraduate teacher candidates as they develop their dispositions for teaching diverse learners through a 17-week course attached to a one-day-per-week pre-practicum experience. This multi-case study examined how the beliefs of 19 participants regarding TSJ and UDL changed over the course of a 6-month study within the context of a course. This study investigated how these participants connected UDL and social justice as a cohesive framework for addressing diversity in the classroom. Using daily and weekly journals, online discussion forums, and pre- and post- surveys, this study analyzed all 19 participants to identify four representative cases. Findings from this study reveal that most participants were impacted by the course to the extent that they were able to identify the importance of aspects of social justice in the practice of an educator. Fewer participants were able to identify the role of UDL in the classroom. Only one participant viewed social justice and UDL as a cohesive framework for impacting classroom practice. Analysis of the representative case studies suggests that participants at this level of development may need more time to engage in complicated abstract concepts. They may also need course-attached field placements in classrooms that align with the mission and vision of the preparation program, consistency in messaging through the duration of a preparation program, and differentiated supports based on their background experiences. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Simulation games may increase student engagement in the social studies classroom. Papert (1991) states that constructionism allows students to build, whether tangible or intangible objects, and that the building and conversation around the building allows student to learn best. In this study, the researcher observed and interviewed participants, as well as wrote in a journal about the experience, regarding playing a simulation game about the Electoral College. The researcher utilized en vivo coding to facilitate data interpretation. The participants were 18 year-old students at a suburban high school in a metropolitan area in the southeastern United States. These participants were selected by self-identifying themselves as ‘social studies haters.’ The researcher gathered data to determine if the simulation game has a relationship to engagement in the social studies classroom and examined with the simulation game, eLECTIONS, exercised elements of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) theory to engage the participants. The researcher determined that self-identified social studies haters at this school more strongly engaged in the social studies content when they participated in the simulation game on the Electoral College. The research also determined UDL enhanced engagement in the simulation game.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Carnegie Mellon University, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-244).

As widespread as Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) initiatives and reforms are today in education, a rudimentary problem with these endeavors is being overlooked. In general, education programs and school districts are failing to ensure that elementary teachers who provide children's early academic experiences have the appropriate knowledge of and proclivity toward STEM subjects. This issue is further compounded by the focus centered on mathematics due to accountability requirements leaving very little emphasis on science, and most often, the exclusion of technology and engineering instruction from the curriculum (Blank, 2012; Cunningham, 2009; Lederman and Lederman, 2013; Lewis, Harshbarger, and Dema, 2014; Walker, 2014). At the elementary level, the lack of science instruction and professional development generates a weakness for both pre- and in-service teachers and prompts elevated concerns about teaching science (Goodrum, Cousins, and Kinnear, 1992; Anderson, 2002). Research (Lewis, 1999/2006; Wells, 2014) suggests that one way to address this weakness is through the technological/engineering designed-based approach within the context of integrative STEM education. The purpose of the study was to gain an understanding of change in science instructional content and practice through professional development that educates elementary teachers to implement Technological/Engineering Design Based Learning (T/E DBL) as part of teaching science. The research design was a multiple case study which adhered to a concurrent mixed method approach (Teddlie, and Tashakkori, 2006; Yin, 2003),with four participants who were recruited because of their availability and their grade level teaching assignment that correlated to an analysis of the 2013 science state accountability test, Standards of Learning (Pyle, 2015). Data collected from surveys were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. These data were corroborated with a sweep instrument and assessment rubric analyses, and interview responses to validate the results. Findings from this study revealed that professional development model used in this study was clearly effective in getting elementary teachers to implement T/E DBL. The participants were better able to integrate T/E DBL when planning and designing instructional units and had an improved understanding of the science concepts they were teaching. / Ed. D.

<p>The information and communication technology, ICT, is opening new possibilities for the educational arena. Previous research shows that achieving positive educational outcomes requires more than simply providing access to computer hardware and software. How does this new technology affect the teaching and learning of physics? This thesis focuses on the field of geometrical optics. It reports two studies, both in Swedish upper secondary school. Important for the use of the ICT in physics education is the teaching strategy for using the new technology. The first study investigates with a questionnaire, how 37 teachers in a region of Sweden use computers in physics education and what intentions they follow while doing so. The results of this study show that teachers’ intentions for using ICT in their physics teaching were to increase students' interest for physics, to increase their motivation, to achieve variation in teaching, and to improve visualization and explanation of the phenomena of physics. The second study investigates students’ conceptual change in geometrical optics during a teaching sequence with computer-assisted instruction. For this purpose we choose the computer software "Constructing Physics Understanding (CPU)", which was developed with a base in research on students conceptions in optics. The thesis presents the teaching sequence developed together with the teacher. The study is based on a constructivist view of learning. The concepts analysed in this study were vision, image, ray and image formation. A first result of this study is a category system for conceptions around these concepts, found among the students. With these categories we found that students even at this level, of upper secondary school, have constructed well-known alternative conceptions before teaching, e.g. about a holistic conception of image. The results show also some learning progress: some alternative conceptions vanish, in some cases the physics conceptions are more often constructed after teaching. The students and the teacher also report that the CPU program gave new and useful opportunities to model multiple rays and to model vision.</p>

Syftet med föreliggande examensarbete är att undersöka och kritiskt granska hur specialpedagogisk handledning används för att skapa en inkluderande skola för elever med Autsimspektrumtillstånd (Autism Spectrum Disorder - ASD).  Studien avser att särskilt undersöka hur fyra specialpedagoger arbetar med handledning som syftar till att bidra till att lärare utvecklar strategier/arbetssätt som skapar förutsättningar för lärande och delaktighet hos elever med ASD.    Resultaten i den tidigare forskning som granskas i föreliggande examensarbete hänvisar till att lärare generellt har sämre attityder gentemot elever med ASD ju högre upp i skolålder de undervisar. Samtidigt pekar andra studier på att lärares attityder och förhållningssätt gentemot sina elever och i synnerlighet de med ASD, är essentiellt för elevens akademiska framgång och sociala inkludering i gruppen. De visar även betydelsen av ett systematiskt tänk i lärande organisationer och de positiva effekterna av att ha ett mångfaldsperspektiv (som exempelvis i Universal Design for Learning).   Det teoretiska perspektiv jag utgår från är systemteorin med utgångspunkt i Antonovskys begrepp Känsla av sammanhang, KASAM, och i komplexitetsteorin. Metoden är kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer med fyra specialpedagoger i form av en kombination av samtal och intervju. Resultaten visar att den specialpedagogiska handledningen spelar en central roll i ett förändringsskapande av attityder och förhållningssätt gentemot elever. Resultaten visar även vikten av ett systematiskt helhetstänk i en organisation för att kunna arbeta framgångsrikt med inkludering av elever med ASD och deras förutsättningar för en tillgänglig undervisning.

This case study examined learning components and outcomes of the UDL Virtual Classroom project, a web-based professional development program that was a collaboration between educators in the United States and Jamaica. The study applied the HPL lens (NRC, 2000) in order to understand the ways that Jamaican educator-participants perceived the integration of learner-centered learning, knowledge-centered learning, assessment-centered learning, and community-centered learning in the program itself, and also examined the impact of these components, despite numerous hurdles, on teachers’ mindsets and practices and the engagement and performance of students in their schools and classrooms. The researcher’s intent was to address the contextual nature of teacher learning, which must contend with the challenges of meeting the needs of individual teacher-learners, as well as obstacles and real-world situations impacting the implementation of theories and strategies. A multi-case study design was used to gather data through observations, interviews, group meetings, and surveys. Findings were analyzed using qualitative methods, focusing on the experiences of participants both as adult-learners in the professional development program and as educators themselves as they returned to their own educational contexts to implement what they had learned. This study provided insights about strengths and challenges of hybrid learning, international resource-sharing, and long-term impacts of teacher learning.

The research described in this thesis is grounded in the fields of independent adult learning, user experience for mobile applications and game design. It considers the case for mobile game-based learning in the context of informal microlearning and investigates the potential of mobile games to assist the independent skills development of adults. Initial research found that adults expressed positive attitudes towards the idea of learning with a mobile game, while even those who did not use mobile games recreationally appeared positive to using them if they perceived them as an effective way to develop their skills. Guidelines were then developed to inform the design of effective mobile learning games based on theories of adult learning, game-based engagement, mobile usability and mobile game design. These guided the development of a mobile game prototype aimed at assisting adults, speakers of English as a second language, to build their academic vocabulary. To evaluate the effectiveness of the prototype, a mixed methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data collection instruments was utilised. Player engagement and system usability were measured rather than direct measures of learning outcomes. Overall the results were encouraging since evaluation participants were found to be engaged by the activity and able to easily pick up the game and play. Additionally, qualitative data on participants’ experiences and perceptions were collected, which supported initial research findings on the positive attitudes of adults towards using mobile games for learning. Though caution is recommended when generalising the evaluation results, the potential of mobile games for the independent learning of adults was supported. Overall this research offers a rationale for the use of mobile game-based learning, an insight into the nature of adult learners’ needs and their mobile devices usage patterns, a critical discussion on the type of learning that would be appropriate for the context, a set of guidelines for the design of mobile learning games, and finally a discussion of evaluation methods along with a collection of empirical data on the post-experiential attitudes of adults with regards to mobile games for learning.