Excursions is a single movement piece for full orchestra based on a seven-note germinal motive. Its excursive qualities are produced by continuous variations. The form, therefore, is not derived from any particular sectional or formal organization, but is the result of continual motivic development. Transpositional combination of pitch class sets creates transformations of the germinal motive. / School of Music

The present licentiate thesis comprises a review of Swedish and Anglo-Saxon literature on excursions and their history, followed by a study on three one-day excursions and two neighbourhood excursions, conducted by pupils at upper secondary school. The primary purpose of the thesis was to highlight the development of excursion procedures, aiming at increasing the interest of the pupils, improving their inner motivation, but also to develop the learning process. Thus, the work also attempted to identify learning models and excursion methods, furnishing pupils with a positive attitude during excursions and field studies. Article no 1 consists of a survey of Swedish (particularly in Geographical Notices) and Anglo-Saxon literature, describing and discussing how the excursion procedures have been developed, influenced, and designed. Excursions became a practiced teaching method at the beginning of the last century. The urbanization and instigation of a public school are described as incitements for arranging excursions. British as well as Swedish teaching authorities emphasized excursions in school activities in different curricula or school documents. The present study shows that arranging excursions and other activities in the field was in the interests of the teaching authorities and a number of different society instances. Excursion methods and their extent and incorporation into the school activities have been amply discussed in the excursion literature. Qualitative interviews with 50 pupils from five upper secondary schools were conducted after excursions. Observations were carried out during four of these excursions. Article II comprises one-day excursions in geography or biology, conducted by pupils in the social and natural science programs at three upper secondary schools. The methods applied in this study were group interviews and observations during two of the excursions. Two neighbourhood excursions in geography and science, performed by two upper secondary schools, were investigated, and form the foundation for article II. The neighbourhood excursions were examined by observations, 25 individual interviews, and a smaller questionnaire. The interviews generated information about how pupils perceive, experience, and interpret the applied excursion methods. Pupils have in interviews and in their questionnaire answers reported their motivation, which ranged from non-existent to a deep inner motivation. Preparations were identified as a key factor for pupils as well as teachers. The observations yielded knowledge about the focus of pupils, their attitudes and concentration level, and also how they use digital media in the field. Furthermore, the relevance of location, along with pupils’ comprehensions and experiences, created an applicable backdrop for future excursions. Careful selection of excursion locations, where pupils are able to discern correlations, was identified as important to their capability of interpreting their observations, which they afterwards might be able to transform into knowledge, inner motivation, or even flow.

This master thesis focuses on technical monuments in Tyn nad Vltavou region and their use in primary school education. The theoretical part of the thesis describes the technical education and the excursion method and their use at primary school. It also deals with the characteristics of technical monuments, their categorization and the ways of their preservation. The end of the theoretical part focuses on the description of selected technical monuments in Tyn nad Vltavou region. The practical part of the thesis introduces seven proposed excursions to selected technical monuments, which are intended for pupils of the first grade of primary school. The effectivity of the proposed excursions is verified at the end of the practical part by a survey research.

Geomagnetic excursions, brief deviations in geomagnetic field behaviour from that expected during 'normal' secular variation, remain some of the most enigmatic features of geomagnetic field behaviour. This thesis presents high-resolution records of geomagnetic excursions recorded at the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge in the Western North Atlantic. The highest resolution record yet of the Blake geomagnetic excursion (~125 ka) is measured in three cores from Ocean Drilling Program Site 1062 (ODP Leg 172). These cores have sufficiently high sedimentation rates (>10 cm ka^-1) to allow detailed reconstruction of the field behaviour at these sites during the excursions. Previous reconstructions of geomagnetic field behaviour during excursions from marine cores have been limited by low-resolution age models. This thesis discusses a new approach, whereby measurements of excess ²³⁰Th (²³⁰Th_xs) are used to constrain relative variations in sedimentation rate. Modifications are suggested to the methods previously used to calculate the concentration of ²³⁰Th_xs and a new MATLAB® program is developed and described that allows rapid and flexible calculation of ²³⁰Th_xs. Using this new approach, the duration (6.5±1.3 kyr) and age (129-122 ka) of the Blake excursion are accurately constrained. A palaeomagnetic study is also conducted on two ODP Sites, 1061 and 1062 on the Blake-Bahama Outer Ridge to obtain a high-resolution record of the Laschamp geomagnetic excursion (~41 ka). The Blake excursion is found to be of 'long' duration (6.5±1.3 kyr) whilst the Laschamp excursion is relatively short (<400 years) showing that excursions do not have a characteristic duration, linked to the conductivity of the inner core, but instead occupy a continuous range of durations. The records of both the Blake excursion and the Laschamp excursion from the Blake-Bahama Ridge sites also show rapid transitions to excursional geomagnetic pole positions (less than 500 years), much faster than often quoted for full geomagnetic reversals. Based on current estimates for reversal durations, this would imply that excursions and reversals are controlled by different processes.

The aim of this Master's Thesis called The Nature Trail of Selected Manors of Prague 5 in Terms of the Regional History Learning Programme for Upper Secondary School Students is the creation of the historical study with the didactic overlap primarily focused on the regional history knowledge in case of the upper-secondary school students. The thesis is divided into the theoretical and practical part. The former is interested in the description, comparison and introdcution of the particular homesteads. It also covers their development in the area of Prague 5 in its historical and cultural context. The latter, practical, part deals with the didactic aim to make the upper- secondary school students become familiar with the historical, social and culturally historical aspects of people's life in the given area, taking into account their mutual context. The didactic focus is given on the knowledge of the region with the respect to the educational area A Man and Society. This part also includes the draft of the worksheets intended to the upper-secondary school students in accordance with the outcomes required by Framework Educational Programme for Basic Education. KEYWORDS Regional History, Development, Homestead, Košíře, Cultural Heritage, Excursions

Learning in 'communities of practice' is a new way of describing and investigating how people learn and has not been applied extensively in research in early childhood or in art galleries. This thesis is a critical case study undertaken with preschool children as they prepared for, participated in and followed up a series of excursions to the National Gallery of Australia. The study explores and analyses children's induction into the practices of the art gallery and their negotiation of the meanings around these practices in the gallery and in their preschool. Children's engagement in practices is analysed using a sociocultural framework for learning called 'communities of practice' (Wenger, 1998) in combination with a multilevel analysis of the artefacts of practice derived from the philosophical writings of Wartofsky (1979). Multiple data sources included photographs of children, their drawings, tape recordings of their incidental talk and group discussions, and results of play activities as children participated in the practices of the art gallery and the preschool. Data was also collected through semi-structured interviews with gallery and preschool staff. In a study involving such young children, the use and juxtaposition of these multiple sources of data was important because it allowed for the inclusion and privileging of the material and non-verbal resources as well as verbal resources that children used as they engaged in practices. Outcomes of this research have been used to illuminate and problematise early childhood as a site for the intersection of multiple communities of practice. Learning to make sense of experience is portrayed as more than language-based 'scaffolding' and the representation of experience through child-centred play activity. The study provides a detailed descriptive account of children's learning and sees it as a fundamentally unpredictable and emergent process. It shows that relations of power are always a part of learning and can be seen through an analysis of the resources available to children, those they took up and were constrained by in the local situation and those they brought from other communities of practice. In this process, the children, as well as their teachers, were active negotiators. They participated in complying with community-constituted views of knowledge as well as shaping, resisting and contesting what counted as knowledge. This study makes a contribution to understanding children's learning in early childhood as fundamentally social, unpredictable, productive and transformative rather than individually constructed, stable, predetermined and representational of experience.

Cette thèse propose une rencontre entre un objet stochastique, le processus de Langevin, c'est-à-dire l'intégrale du mouvement brownien, et une équation différentielle, celle du rebond ''au second ordre'', laquelle, à ma connaissance, a été étudiée jusqu'ici presque exclusivement dans un cadre déterministe. Historiquement, le processus de Langevin était un modèle concurrent du mouvement brownien pour décrire les trajectoires erratiques de particules comme celles observées par Brown. Au même titre, les processus de Langevin réfléchis au second ordre sont un modèle concurrent des mouvements browniens réfléchis, lesquels sont toujours réfléchis au premier ordre, selon notre terminologie. Si le processus de Langevin - respectivement le processus de Langevin réfléchi au second ordre - ne prétend pas rivaliser avec le mouvement brownien -- respectivement le mouvement brownien réfléchi -- pour ce qui est de son rayonnement et de son champ d'applications dans des domaines variés, il se prétend néanmoins être un modèle physique plus pertinent. Par ailleurs, pour la réflexion au second ordre déterministe, lorsque la force a un caractère fortement oscillant, l'équation différentielle admet, de manière assez générique, plusieurs solutions. Lorsque c'est un processus de Langevin qui est réfléchi, nous devons considérer l'équation différentielle, stochastique maintenant, lorsque la force est un bruit blanc... Nos prouverons néanmoins toujours l'existence d'une unique solution, au sens faible. Ces résultats contrastent fortement avec les résultats de non-unicité pour l'équation déterministe. Cette thèse s'articule autour de quatre chapitres. Le premier est une large partie introductrice, rédigée en français, dans un style discursif. Les trois suivants sont, tels quels, les articles que j'ai écrits (en anglais) au cours de cette thèse, publiés ou en voie de publication. Dans le premier chapitre, je commence par décrire le contexte historique, ancien comme récent, motivant cette étude. J'introduis d'une part la réflexion au second ordre, d'autre part le processus de Langevin et en particulier ses excursions, rappelant des résultats connus auxquels nous ferons appel. Je donne alors un aperçu de plusieurs notions et outils techniques que nous utiliserons. Il s'agit d'abord, en plus de la célèbre mesure d'excursion d'Itô d'un processus markovien, de la mesure d'excursion de Pitman d'un processus stationnaire. Il s'agit ensuite du principe des h-transformées, au sens de Doob, utilisées pour définir des processus de Markov conditionnés. Enfin, je résume en détail (et en français) les trois chapitres suivants. Le deuxième chapitre comporte d'abord une introduction au processus de Langevin stationnaire, puis une étude de sa mesure d'excursion de Pitman. Ce travail est alors appliqué à l'étude du processus de Langevin réfléchi sur une barrière totalement inélastique. Le troisième chapitre commence l'étude du processus de Langevin réfléchi sur une barrière partiellement élastique. Nous mettons en évidence l'existence de deux régimes bien distincts, selon la valeur du coefficient d'élasticité de la réflexion, comparée à la valeur critique c~0,163. En régime surcritique et critique, la principale difficulté est liée au cas où le processus réfléchi part de zéro avec vitesse nulle. Nous montrons que le processus reste alors bien défini de manière unique. Le quatrième chapitre s'attaque au régime sous-critique, plus difficile. En particulier, quelle que soit la condition initiale, en un temps fini le processus se retrouvera en 0 avec vitesse nulle. Nous montrons encore l'existence d'un unique processus réfléchi, décrit cette fois-ci via sa mesure d'excursion d'Itô.

Cette thèse est constituée de 5 chapitres. Le chapitre 1 est divisé en deux parties; la première autour des généralités sur les processus de Lévy et la deuxième sur le cas particulier des processus symétriques stables. Le chapitre 2 porte sur la théorie des fluctuations dans le cas stable et concentre la plupart des résultats originaux de cette thèse. Dans ce chapitre, on s'intéresse premièrement à la loi conjointe du premier temps de passage au-dessus d'une barrière et de la position du processus en cet instant ainsi qu'à des questions autour de l'absolue continuité de la loi du supremum. Dans un deuxième temps, dans le cas stable, on s'intéresse à la loi conjointe du processus au temps t, de son supremum avant t et du dernier temps d'atteinte du supremum avant t. Le chapitre 3 est aussi constitué des deux parties, une partie sur les temps locaux et une autre partie sur la théorie des excursions. Les deux parties sont traitées dans le cas des processus symétriques stables d'indice supérieur à 1. Concernant les temps locaux, on rappelle leur définition et leurs principales propriétés. Concernant la théorie des excursions, on présente la théorie de façon semblable aux cas classiques en passant entre autres par les définitions d'excursion normalisée et de méandre, et en donnant des constructions simples pour ces objets. On présente aussi quelques développements récents de la théorie dus à K.Yano, Y. Yano et M. Yor. Les chapitres 4 et 5 portent sur des applications (dans le cas symétrique stable) de la théorie des excursions à l'étude respectif des temps passés positif et négatif et des valeurs principales généralisées.

Dans le premier chapitre, nous étudions le conditionnement d'un processus de Lévy complètement asymétrique à demeurer dans un intervalle fini. <br /><br />Les deux suivants sont consacrés aux processus de branchement à espace d'états continu, qui sont des processus de Lévy sans saut négatif changés de temps : généalogie (deuxième chapitre), dont nous dérivons des théorèmes de type Ray-Knight, et conditionnement à ne jamais s'éteindre (troisième chapitre). <br /><br />Enfin, le dernier chapitre traite de théorie du renouvellement multivariée dans deux cas naturels d'ensembles aléatoires emboîtés.

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