The purpose of this research was to explore how post-visit action resources, such as printed handouts and email updates, impact environmental free-choice learning and sustainable behaviour after a visit to an environmental free-choice learning centre. Free-choice learning, which occurs in places like zoos, is an increasingly popular and effective experience to communicate environmental sustainability and climate change issues to the public. This research specifically explored how post-visit resources provided after a visit to the International Polar Bear Conservation Centre in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Park Zoo in Manitoba, Canada affected environmental learning and sustainable behaviour change over a two-month period. Questionnaire and personal meaning mapping interview responses revealed that post-visit resources can be an effective way to improve environmental learning, increase awareness, and encourage some sustainable behaviour change. The implications for environmental free-choice learning experiences are discussed and recommendations for future practices explained.

Motivation is an important aspect of learning in educational leisure settings because it affects the choices visitors make regarding what to attend to, the amount of effort they devote to learning, and the extent to which they enjoy the experience. Commonly, however, visitors seek entertainment, social or restorative experiences as well as, or in preference to, a learning experience. This research investigates the impact of motivational factors on the experience of learning in educational leisure settings. Motivational factors are considered in terms of four components - personal goals, capability beliefs, context beliefs and situational incentives. The experience of learning is considered in terms of visitors’ perceptions of the experience, rather than objective measures of learning outcomes, as the experience itself is seen as the desired outcome of the visit. Visitors to six different educational leisure settings in South East Queensland were invited to participate in the research, including a museum, an art gallery, a wildlife centre, an aquarium, and guided tours of natural and cultural heritage sites. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires (499 participants) and interviews (52 participants) in order to ascertain the importance to visitors of different types of learning experiences; identify the extent to which motivations for learning vary across sites and visitor groups; investigate the relationships between the educational, entertainment, social and restorative aspects of the visitors’ experience; and examine the impact of motivational factors on visitors’ experience of learning in leisure settings. The findings support the importance of learning to visitors in a range of educational leisure settings. Visitors seek an experience that combines elements of learning and discovery, and is perceived to be both effortless and fun. It is concluded that the characteristics of learning in educational leisure settings contribute to a synergy between the educational and entertainment aspects of the experience. Situational factors are more important than personal factors in motivating visitors to engage in and experience this type of learning. This is of great significance to educational leisure settings as it implies that sites have a reasonable degree of control over the motivational factors that influence visitor engagement in learning.

Para considerar o livre-arbítrio da vontade, Agostinho deve mobilizar concepções já estabelecidas sobre a natureza divina, sobre a natureza do mal e também sobre a natureza da alma humana. À medida que tais concepções se modificam, o livre-arbítrio da vontade assume contornos diversos até obter sua forma mais acabada, na qual se revela como raiz do mal moral sem nada referir à autoria divina e na qual se revela também como essencialmente viciado sem ter outra alternativa senão a de aceitar a ajuda divina. Assim, se de um lado o livre-arbítrio da vontade não exige relacionar Deus com a causa do mal, de outro lado exige relacionar Deus com a única forma de corrigir o mal. Nosso trabalho tem o objetivo de analisar as tramas conceituais supostas na concepção de livre-arbítrio, vendo nesta uma chave de leitura com força de evidenciar certa lógica interna no movimento envolvendo a conversão de Agostinho ao cristianismo. / In order to consider the free choice of the will, Augustine has to mobilize concepts already established about the divine nature, the nature of evil and also the nature of the human soul. As such concepts change, the free choice of the will takes on different features until it reaches its most defined form, in which it is revealed as the origin of moral evil without reference to the divine authorship and in which it is also revealed as essentially vicious without any alternative but to accept divine aid. Therefore, if on the one hand the free choice of the will does not entail a relationship between God and the cause of evil, on the other hand it requires the relationship between God and the only way to stop evil. The objective of this work is to analyse the conceptual webs entailed in the concept of free choice, viewing it as a reading key capable of evidencing a certain internal logic in the movement involving Augustine\'s conversion to Christianity.

Wildlife ecotourism is becoming a well-established industry due to its ability to contribute to local economies and the growing tourist demand for opportunities to observe endangered or rare species. Wildlife ecotourism is also recognized for its ability to provide free choice-learning settings for visitors, through the use of environmental interpretation programs. The process of environmental interpretation is a communication phenomenon thought to hold the potential to contribute to conservation by educating and raising awareness amongst tourists about environmental issues. Using a qualitative phenomenological research design, this research examined the environmental interpretation programs of great white shark ecotourism operators in Gansbaai, South Africa, from the perspective of tourists. Findings indicated that while tourists did not primarily choose to embark on shark tourism excursions to learn more about the species, many participants became slightly more informed about great whites and the surrounding environment after their experience. It was also found that most participants did not experience nervousness or fear when in the water with great whites, but instead felt an emotional connection and appreciation for the animal, causing a shift towards pro-conservation attitudes.

Este trabalho tem por objetivos, além de apresentar uma tradução da primeira parte do De libero arbitrio libri tres, de Agostinho de Hipona, empreender um estudo, dos três livros, em seus diferentes aspectos, retóricos e filosóficos. O De libero arbitrio, apesar de seu sentido de unidade, tem características específicas em cada uma de suas três partes. O livro I, de forte influência estóica, apresenta-se um diálogo; o livro II, se mantém a mesma estrutura dialógica, apresenta, porém, evidentes características neoplatônicas. Se as duas primeiras partes podem dizer-se dialéticas, a terceira, no entanto, sofre grave transformação, tanto em sua dispositio, quando Agostinho abdica da forma dialogal para empreender um longo discurso contínuo, como em sua elocutio, ao lançar mão de uma linguagem que, de modo inequívoco, evidencia uma mudança não só de auditório como de pensamento. O De libero arbitrio, em seu livro III, torna-se, a certa altura, uma obra de teologia, em que a concepção platônicosocrática de mundo, do Agostinho dos primeiros dois livros, cede espaço a uma visão mais cristã, influenciada sobremodo pela teologia do apóstolo Paulo, uma visão menos otimista do ser humano como ser autônomo e capaz de soerguer-se, por sua livre iniciativa. Essa mudança conceitual considerável, em seus aspectos discursivo e filosófico, evidencia uma alteração muito mais profunda, uma espécie de turning point, não apenas na obra e na vida do próprio homem, então não mais o filósofo e sim o presbítero de Hipona; não mais o pensador neoplatônico, e sim o doutor eclesiástico; mas também um turning point para a época, demarcando, de certo modo, o fim de toda uma civilização, o fim do mundo antigo, com a derrocada da visão clássica do homem, e o conseqüente princípio da era medieval. / This work has as main objectives, besides offering a translation of the first part of the De libero arbitrio libri tres of Augustine of Hippo, undertake a study of the three books, in its different aspects, rhetorical and philosophical. The De libero arbitrio, in spite of its sense of unity, has specific characteristics in each of its three parts. Book I, predominantly influenced by Stoicism, shows itself a dialog; book II, although maintaining the same dialogical structure, shows, nevertheless, evident Neoplatonic characteristics. If the two first parts may be called dialectical, the third, however, is the object of a severe metamorphosis, as in its dispositio, when Augustine resigns the cross-examination form to undertake a long uninterrupted discourse; as in its elocutio, when he adopts a style that undoubtedly makes clear a change not only in his auditory, but in his thought as well. The De libero arbitrio, then, in its third book becomes at a certain point a theological work, in which the Platonic-Socratic comprehension of the world of the young Augustine (of the first two books) yields to a more Christianized view, much influenced by the theology of the apostle Paul, which sustains a less optimistic image of man as a autonomous being, capable of raising himself through his free choice of the will. This remarkable conceptual change, in its discursive and philosophical aspects, shows a still deeper mutation, a kind of \"turning point\", not only in the works and life of the man, no longer the philosopher, but the presbyter of Hippo; no longer the Neoplatonic thinker, but the Doctor of the Church; but also a \"turning point\" to the epoch, delimiting, to a certain extent, the end of a civilization, the end of Antiquity, with the overthrow of the classical view of man and the consequential beginning of the mediaeval era.

The normal forced-choice Structured-Objective Rorschach Test (SORT) and a modified free-choice SORT were administered to sixty high school students to determine the effects of response set (e.g. social desirability). The results were inconclusive. The following trends, however, were observed: (1) The free-choice modification was more resistant to response set distortion than the normal forced-choice SORT. (2) The free-choice administration showed greater flexibility in enhancement and resistance to social desirability. (3) There was little sex difference in factor scores with respect to choice administration. Females, however, gave more responses than males on the free-choice SORT.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to explore the meaning of leisure among women in the developing East African nation of Uganda. In this study, I evaluated the leisure experiences of 38 Ugandan women of various backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses through semi-structured interviews. I analyzed the data using the constant comparative method. Themes for the meaning of leisure include fortifying leisure, enjoyment, and rest and relaxation. Results point to free choice as the core variable. Finally, I discuss the implications and suggestions for future research.

A disjunction is an expression using ‘or’, such as ‘Anne has a Ford or a Tesla’. From such a statement, we cannot usually infer either disjunct, for example, that ‘Anne has a Ford’. However, in choice situations like ‘You may have coffee or tea’ we can infer either option. The problem of free choice disjunction is to determine why these choice inferences are legitimate (von Wright 1968, Kamp 1973, Meyer 2016). Central to this discussion is the observation that a modal possibility operator ranging over a disjunction sometimes implies a conjunction of possibilities. In the case of permission, we express this as the choice principle ‘May (P or Q)’ entails ‘May P and May Q’ (Zimmerman 2000). Unfortunately, this inference cannot hold in a logical language without significant modification of the systems involved. I explore the history of proposed solutions to this problem, including semantic solutions that assign a distinctive meaning to free choice disjunctions and pragmatic solutions that use features of their utterance to solve the problem. I draw connections between semantics and pragmatics and, using the tools of dynamic logic (Baltag et al. 1998, van Benthem 2010), I present a formal account of one major (Gricean) approach to the problem (Kratzer & Shimoyama 2002). Ultimately, I explore the role of logic in this debate and argue that we should formally represent the meaning of these expressions directly as conjunctions of possibilities. Thus, rather than trying to account for the choice principle within a logical system, we must instead account for the fact that, in choice situations, the meaning of ‘May (P or Q)’ translates into logical formalism as (May P & May Q). / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / A disjunction is a statement using ‘or’, like ‘Anne has a Ford or a Tesla’. From such a statement, we cannot infer either disjunct—e.g. ‘Anne has a Ford’. In choice situations like ‘You may have coffee or tea’ we can infer either option. Why this choice inference is legitimate is the problem of free choice disjunction. I explore the history of solutions to the problem, including semantic solutions that propose a special meaning to choice disjunctions and pragmatic solutions that appeal to the circumstances in which they are uttered. I draw connections between semantics and pragmatics and present a formal account of one major pragmatic approach to the problem. Where others have sought to explain how 'May(P or Q)' entails 'May P and May Q', I argue instead that the meaning of ‘May (P or Q)’ in choice scenarios translates directly into logical formalism as ‘May P & May Q’.

The H.R. MacMillan Space Centre is a multi-faceted organization whose mission is to educate, inspire and evoke a sense of wonder about the universe, our planet and space exploration. As a popular, Vancouver science centre, it faces the same range of challenges and issues as other major attractions: how does the Space Centre maintain a healthy public attendance in an increasingly competitive market where visitors continue to be presented with an increasingly rich range of choices for their leisure spending and entertainment dollars?This front-end study investigated visitor attitudes, thoughts and preconceptions on the topic of space and astronomy. It also examined visitors’ motivations for coming to a space science centre. Useful insights were obtained which will be applied to improve future programme content and exhibit development.