Alternative Provision, as a sector, is well positioned to offer a remarkable opportunity to cultivate a young person’s humanity through care and challenge. Where practitioners embrace responsibility for young people and their environment, and honour context and complexity, they can mobilise the present as a rich source of possibility and agency. There needs to be a clear understanding of the contribution that Alternative Provision can make to young people’s lives and how this relates to practice and policy perceptions of effectiveness. Yet because it is difficult to know, track, manage and regulate, Alternative Provision remains largely uninspected and unregulated, with lack of clarity in purpose holding back the potential to inspire change in pupil perception and experience. On top of these issues, schools face the challenge of being held directly accountable for Alternative Provision they commission for their pupils, and responsible for ensuring that it is suitable, safe and effective. Research into current practice and theory is needed to help schools and policy makers fulfil their mandates at a time when policy makers are at the cusp of re-designing the field. At these key beginnings of re-design for Alternative Provision in England, this ethnographic study offers to fill that research gap through a conceptualisation of practitioner approaches in one Alternative Provision site over an academic year, that led to pupil well-being, a sense of belonging and further training or employment. These outcomes, alongside the practitioner approaches of mutually transforming empathic engagement and mission, I argue, are central to sound thinking about Alternative Provision. The process involved – licensed chaos – with its authorised release of pupils into play, immersion, risk taking and ownership, is presented as one way of embodying this journey and is offered here as a model of process on which other schools could build their own. Methodological contributions are made through the exploration of life writing as ontology and as a way of communicating the ever-present realities for many pupils attending Alternative Provision. Critical reflection and acknowledgement of the researcher’s role and transformation through the research process is shared. Reciprocal virtual ethnography is explored and put forward as an effective means of researching young people in Alternative Provision. This thesis tells a story of lives and learning that further humanises and empowers the field of Alternative Provision and its commissioning schools.

This thesis deals with "empathic panentheisim". Precisely, we look into a comparative study between the panentheism of John B. Cobb Jr.'s idea of God and Nonmun Im Seong-Ju's idea of Ultimate Reality. By doing so, we can find out that the relationship between God and the world shows us an "empathic" relationship. However, we can identify many problems in Korean churches. The core problem is "the dualistic view of God and the world." Most churches teach the divide of "the holy and the secular" or "things of God and things of the world." This dichotomy causes indifference and apathy toward the social justice or social problems. For solving this problem, we should deal with the panentheistic vision of God in Process Theology. In Alfred North Whitehead and John B. Cobb Jr.'s idea of God, actual occasions transit to the final concrescence through the mutual correspondence of God and the world. In this point, this relationship and correspondence between God and the world can be the empathic vision. Also, we should look into Nongmun Im Seong-Ju's idea of Ultimate Reality in the Neo-Confucian tradition. Nongmun Im Seong-Ju argues that li and qi are equally real. Under this major premise, Nongmun establishes his theory of li-qi unlike other Neo-Confucian scholars who separate li with qi and consider the li-qi dichotomy. In this point, Nongmun Im Seong-Ju considers the correspondence between li and qi as life-giving intention (生意, Saeng-ui). Nongmun Im Seong-Ju regards the life-giving intention as the heart-mind of empathy. The life-giving intention is an ontological and cosmic creativity to connect the human heart-mind and the Great Ultimate. For overcoming the dichotomy of Ultimate Reality (or God) and the world, both John B. Cobb Jr. and Nongmun Im Seong-Ju focus on the relationship and the correspondence. After all, both two scholars try to establish the empathic relationship between Ultimate Reality (or God) and the world.

As mulheres têm sido retratadas como inertes, sem vida e despojadas de seus lugares de sujeitos-históricos, dizem-nos isso os estudos sobre as relações de gênero em Moçambique. No entanto, os mesmos estudos ao construírem narrativas transversais dominantes sobre os gêneros, tendem a essencializar as mulheres como o único sujeito, oprimido pela cultura/tradição calcada pelo patriarcado. Com efeito, a mulher de que falam tais narrativas é sempre vitimizada, oprimida mesmo pelos estudos que têm a intenção de tornar sua voz audível. Sendo assim, nesta tese, objetivo traçar uma outra alternativa analítica que, a partir de uma corporalidade especifica – ubiquidade dos corpos – retrata-as de forma regenerada, como tendo agência feminina. / Women have been portrayed as inert, lifeless and deprived of their places as subjects of history, we are told about studies of gender relations in Mozambique. However, the same studies, when constructing dominant cross-narratives about gender, tend to essentialize women as the only subject, oppressed by the culture/tradition traced by patriarchy. Indeed, the woman of whom such narratives speak about always is victimized, oppressed even by the studies that are intended to make her voice audible. Thus, in this thesis, the objective is to outline another analytic alternative that, based on a specific corporality – the ubiquity of bodies – portrays them in a regenerated way, as having a female agency.

abstract: Study in user experience design states that there is a considerable gap between users and designers. Collaborative design and empathetic design methods attempt to make a strong relationship between these two. In participatory design activities, projective `make tools' are required for users to show their thoughts. This research is designed to apply an empathetic way of using `make tools' in user experience design for websites clients, users, and designers. A magnetic wireframe tool has been used as a `make tool', and a sample project has been defined in order to see how the tool can create empathy among stakeholders. In this study fourth year graphic design students at Arizona State University (ASU), USA, are participating as users, faculty members have the role of clients, and Forty, Inc., a design firm in the Phoenix area, is the design team for the study. All of these three groups are cooperating on re-designing the homepage of the Design School in Herberger Institute for Design and Art (HIDA) at ASU. A method for applying the magnetic tool was designed and used for each group. Results of users and clients' activities were shared with the design team, and they designed a final prototype for the wireframe of the sample project. Observation and interviews were done to see how participants work with the tool. Also, follow up questionnaires were used in order to evaluate all groups' experiences with the magnetic wireframe. Lastly, as a part of questionnaires, a sentence completion method has been used in order to collect the participants' exact thoughts about the magnetic tool. Observations and results of data analysis in this research show that the tool was a helpful `make tool' for users and clients. They could talk about their ideas and also designers could learn more about people. The entire series of activities caused an empathetic relationship among stakeholders of the sample project. This method of using `make tools' in user experience design for web sites can be useful for collaborative UX design activities and further research in user experience design with empathy. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Design 2014

As mulheres têm sido retratadas como inertes, sem vida e despojadas de seus lugares de sujeitos-históricos, dizem-nos isso os estudos sobre as relações de gênero em Moçambique. No entanto, os mesmos estudos ao construírem narrativas transversais dominantes sobre os gêneros, tendem a essencializar as mulheres como o único sujeito, oprimido pela cultura/tradição calcada pelo patriarcado. Com efeito, a mulher de que falam tais narrativas é sempre vitimizada, oprimida mesmo pelos estudos que têm a intenção de tornar sua voz audível. Sendo assim, nesta tese, objetivo traçar uma outra alternativa analítica que, a partir de uma corporalidade especifica – ubiquidade dos corpos – retrata-as de forma regenerada, como tendo agência feminina. / Women have been portrayed as inert, lifeless and deprived of their places as subjects of history, we are told about studies of gender relations in Mozambique. However, the same studies, when constructing dominant cross-narratives about gender, tend to essentialize women as the only subject, oppressed by the culture/tradition traced by patriarchy. Indeed, the woman of whom such narratives speak about always is victimized, oppressed even by the studies that are intended to make her voice audible. Thus, in this thesis, the objective is to outline another analytic alternative that, based on a specific corporality – the ubiquity of bodies – portrays them in a regenerated way, as having a female agency.

Motivation: Today’s sustainability challenges are increasingly being addressed by Product Service Systems to satisfy customers needs while lowering their overall environment impact. These systems are increasingly complex containing diverse artifacts and interactions. To provide a holistic solution centered on the human experience element, design of product-service systems are best driven by data gathered from design thinking methods.     Problem: When considering innovation challenges, such as the deployment of autonomous electric machines on future construction sites, data driven design can suffer from a lack of available tangible user feedback upon which to make design decisions.   Approach: In the case of this study, the development of a scaled down construction site structured around generally applicable operations was built as a prototype for involving various users in early phase development of a HMI for interacting with prototype machines built by Volvo CE called the HX01. Qualitative data acquisition methods were derived from Design Thinking approaches to needfinding including: a questionnaire, unstructured interviews and observations.   Results: The prototype scale site became a 5 meter x 5 meter semi-portable site with 1:11 scale ratio machines including: excavators, wheeled loaders and autonomous haulers. The product tested with the site was an augmented reality interface to provide a communication platform between workers and the autonomous haulers designed at building trust to enable collaboration. Test users and observers provided feedback confirming the effectiveness of the scale site scenario to convey the necessary context of a realistic interaction experience. Beyond HMI testing, the site served as a tangible artifact to instigate conversations across domain boundaries.   Conclusions: The tangible experiential scenario platform developed displayed the capability to go beyond one-way concept communication of concepts to customers, by including customers as integral participants in the testing of new products/services. For design teams, the site can facilitate deeper learnings and validation via a shared contextualization of user feedback. The further implications may also include: the ability to increase rationale at design decision gate’s assessment of risk in new products and enable the identification of emergent issues in complex future scenarios.

Mirror neurons are very specific nerve cells that are both motor and sensory in nature. Mirror neurons are a relatively new discovery first identified by a team of neurophysiologists at the University of Parma. These neurons were first observed in primates, and then later in humans in several regions of the cerebral cortex. A large amount of research on mirror neurons have shown that they play an important role in imitation, language acquisition and empathy. The theoretical part of this work summarizes what is currently known about mirror neurons. It emphasizes the relationship between mirror neurons, autism, empathy, and its training. This theoretical framework is followed by pilot research, which consists of two components: the quantitative part consisted of a questionnaire survey to ascertain the level of empathy of the participants using the Index of Interpersonal Reactivity. The participants were the parents of autistic children who were compared with a control group. A statistically significant difference in empathy levels between the two groups was not observed but there was a tendency for higher scoring in some questionnaire scales in experimental group The second part of this work is an analysis of observations of the interactions between parents and autistic children. Additionally, two...

The current review aims to unravel what is known regarding the neural substrates of empathicdistress and compassion fatigue. Empathic distress is a self-oriented feeling of anxietyexperienced in response to the suffering of another. It has been related to, and theorized to bea precursor of, compassion fatigue. This is a form of caregiver burnout received by secondaryexposure to trauma. In the current thesis, Scopus, Web of Science and PsycINFO weresearched identifying 301 articles that were subsequently screened. In the end, five studieswere included that measured either empathic distress or compassion fatigue in relation tobrain structure or function. Findings are largely inconsistent but areas involved in theory ofmind and that are important for the self-other distinction are discussed. A need for moreresearch is identified, together with a desire for conceptual clarification between compassionfatigue and burnout.

This project aims to challenge preconceptions of mental health and attempts to conceptually dissect the popular phrase “mental health is a luxury”. The dissection is grounded on a theoretical background related to the inefficiencies of the health care system, advocacy movements of health care rights, material culture and luxury consumption, in order to conceptualize design strategies for sociocultural change.The concept challenges the perception of mental health care as luxury through the invitation of other mental health sufferers into a collaborative co-design space that generates information about their subjective lived experiences and needs, through participatory and empathic design methods. Jewelry has been selected as a design medium that combines possibilities of self-expression, involvement in co-crafting, similarities to other devices for self-regulation and preconceptions of status. The socioeconomic issues of the accessibility of mental health care reveals inequalities related to social status, and jewelry with its historical connotation as a social status symbol is used in this project as a critical tool to portray and question the correlation between socioeconomic privilege and mental health care. The collaborative process of co-designing and translating real people’s needs into customized jewelry works as an attempt to redefine jewelry as a manifestation of human needs and to cultivate mental health sufferers’ agency and power towards their own health.

We investigate an approach to apply Genetic Programming for the evolution of optimal escaping strategies of a team of caribou agents in the wolf-caribou predator prey problem (WCPPP) where the WCPPP is comprised of a team of caribou agents attempting to escape from a single yet superior (in terms of sensory abilities, raw speed, and maximum energy) wolf agent in a simulated twodimensional infinite toroidal world. We empirically verify our hypothesis that the incorporation of empathy in caribou agents significantly improves both the evolution efficiency of the escaping behavior and the effectiveness of such a behavior. This finding may be viewed as a verification of the survival value of empathy and the resulting compassionate behavior of the escaping caribou agents. Moreover, considering the fact that a single caribou cannot escape from the superior wolf, the ability of a team of empathic caribou agents to escape may also be viewed as an illustration of the emergent nature of a successful escaping behavior – in that the team-level properties are more than the mere sum of the properties of the individual entities. Within this context, we also present empirical results that verify the complex (nonlinear) nature of the relationship between the size of team of caribou agents and the efficiency of their escaping behavior. / 博士(工学) / Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University