Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:32:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-02-23Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:03:12Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 berti_ml_dr_assis.pdf: 530715 bytes, checksum: 3898e59d8cc563b376b6a8d3af2c6d1d (MD5) / O trabalho procura investigar os mecanismos de referenciação usados em produções de alunos de Ensino Médio para deixar pistas para que seu leitor faça inferências durante a leitura para produzir sentidos ao que lê. A reconstrução por inferenciação permite estabelecer o elo entre as informações explícitas e as implícitas no co-texto, em um determinado contexto. A inferência é uma estratégia muito importante para que se tome um texto como coeso e coerente, em termos de progressão referencial, colaborando de maneira decisiva para a produção de sentidos.A partir dos pressupostos da Lingüística textual e das teorias sobre leitura, apresenta a relação autor-texto-leitor no processo de produção e recepção do texto. Analisaram-se quantitativa e qualitativamente produções de textos de alunos de Ensino Médio nas quais se verificou o uso de seqüências pronominais, de repetições lexicais, das expressões nominais definidas, anáforas indiretas no texto ou referentes ao contexto, as quais permitem ao leitor fazer inferências e aturar como co-autor na produção dos sentidos. / The work investigates the mechanisms of reference used in High School student s productions in order to leave hints so that the reader com make inferences during the reading to produce meanings of what is being read. The reconstructions through inference permits to stablish the link among the explicit and implicit pieces of information in the co-text, in a determined context. The inference is a very important strategy to make a text cohesive and coherent, in terms of reference progression, contributing in a essencial way in the meaning production. From the textual linguistic and the theories about reading. The work presents the relationship author-text-reader in the process of text production and reception. It was analysed High School student s productions in quality and amount in which it was verified the use of pronominal sequences, of lexical repetitions, of defined nominal expressions, indirect anaphora in the text or referred to the context, wich allow the reader to make inferences and act as co-author in the production of meanings.

The aim of the this small scale empirical research study was to shed a discursive light on the leadership that was experienced within two primary school settings in the North West of England and the constraints of context that shaped the discourses of leadership within those schools. Contextual factors have been defined as being on three levels: institutional, cultural and governmental. So using this framework as a sorting category for posing situated questions of the participants and Gee’s (1999; 2005; 2011) interconnected one to explore and question the data and the taken-for-granted assumptions, it has been possible to garner an understanding of how these contexts interacted in framing an individual’s understanding of the leadership they were experiencing and implications for their practice. The research questions which this study addressed were: What are the contextual factors that shape discourses of educational leadership? What does the discursive analysis reveal of how stakeholders talk about ways of becoming in the leadership they are experiencing within a socially situated practice? What are the implications of this analysis for the practice of leadership within school? The research was influenced by two particular approaches to discourse analysis, a ‘practice approach’ and a ‘critical approach’. As educational practices are communicative events, this study has adopted a critical discourse analysis in making visible the ways that individuals talk about leadership they are experiencing within their settings. Through a Foucauldian lens it was possible to question the basis for the assumptions and norms of educational leadership in school and examine the ways in which individuals within school were both constructed and shaped by that discourse. This study takes the view that the school as an organizational context for leaders is both complex and under explored as it is in a constant state of flux. Various complexities are acknowledged concerning the contextual nature of leadership; it is complex, context specific, socially constructed, negotiated and hierarchical. Analysis of 18 in-depth semi-structured interviews and 18 cognitive maps reveals a range of Discourses of contextual factors of leadership such as the Discourse of the pivotal role of the headteacher; Discourse of leadership activity; Discourse of identity-work; Discourse of power relations and Discourse of commodification of education all made visible by the individuals within the school to which they endeavour to belong.

This article shows the more salient characteristics in bornes from low economic status, which affect children's normal cognitive and psychosocial development as well as their school performance. It is suggested that in order to improve children's chance for a better performance at school, mothers should be trained in strategies and practices to assist in the learning process their children to successfully achieve their goals. / El artículo trata sobre las características más evidentes en hogares de nivel socioeconómico bajo, que afectan tanto el desarrollo cognitivo y psicosocial de los niños, como su desempeño escolar. Se sugiere que para mejorar las oportunidades de lograr un mejor desempeño escolar, las madres deberán ser entrenadas en estrategias y prácticas que apoyen el proceso de enseñanza/aprendizaje de sus niños.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:49:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / O processamento de consultas tem sido abordado como um problema central em ambientes dinâmicos e distribuídos. O ponto crítico do processamento, no entanto, é a reformulação da consulta submetida em um ponto origem em termos de um ponto destino, considerando as correspondências existentes entre eles. Abordagens tradicionais, em geral, realizam a reformulação utilizando correspondências de equivalência. Entretanto, nem sempre conceitos de um ponto origem têm correspondentes equivalentes no ponto destino, o que pode gerar uma reformulação vazia e, possivelmente, nenhuma resposta para o usuário. Neste caso, se o usuário considera interessante receber respostas relacionadas, mesmo que não precisas, é melhor gerar uma reformulação adaptada ou enriquecida e, por consequência, respostas aproximadas, do que nenhuma. Dentro deste escopo, o presente trabalho propõe um enfoque baseado em semântica, denominado SemRef, que visa integrar técnicas de enriquecimento e reformulação de consultas de forma a prover usuários com um conjunto de respostas expandidas. Reformulações exatas e enriquecidas são produzidas para permitir alcançar esse conjunto. Para tal, usamos semântica obtida principalmente de um conjunto de correspondências semânticas que estendem as normalmente encontradas na literatura. Exemplos de correspondências não usuais são closeness e disjointness. Além disso, usamos o contexto do usuário, da consulta e do ambiente como meio de favorecer o processo de reformulação e lidar com informações que somente são obtidas dinamicamente. Formalizamos as definições propostas através da Lógica Descritiva ALC e apresentamos o algoritmo que compõe o enfoque proposto, garantindo, através de propriedades aferidas, sua corretude e completude. Desenvolvemos o algoritmo SemRef através de um módulo de submissão e execução de consultas em um Sistema de gerenciamento de dados em ambiente P2P (PDMS). Mostramos exemplos que illustram o funcionamento e as vantagens do trabalho desenvolvido. Por fim, apresentamos a experimentação realizada com os resultados que foram obtidos

This thesis investigates the interplay of context with culture on strategic investment decision (SID) making practises in strategic management accounting, strategic management, cross cultural management and global strategic management research in Singapore using three research questions. These research questions commence from an inter-country perspective on SID making and narrow down to the theme of foreign versus domestic investments. The three research questions are: Research question 1(RQ1): Do strategic management accounting, strategic management and cultural aspects vary across Singaporean companies in SID making? Research Question 2 (RQ 2): Can SID differences be explained by using a four way categorisation of firms? Research Question 3 (RQ3): Do decision making practises for international SIDs differ from domestic SIDs? The first research question aims to determine country versus context specific SID making practises using Singapore as the research context. Having acknowledged unique country specific influences on SID making practises in the analysis conducted using the first research question, the second research question segments the Singaporean SIDs in conjunction with the international SIDs into four contextual categories using unique contextual differences that are highlighted in the analysis. The third research question aims to ascertain unique aspects of SID research that can be applied to global strategic management research. To address RQ3, the findings from RQ1 and RQ2 are consolidated in tandem with global strategic management research in order to distinguish between foreign direct investments versus domestic investments in SID making. Drawing on Singapore as the empirical focus for fieldwork, a multi-tiered case analysis system is used. The methods chapter illustrates the pilot study and thirty case studies that are conducted over two years over three stages with representative companies from the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors. In the detailed case study approach taken by the researcher; web-based research, questionnaire modifications, interviews, field visits, factory observations and financial reports collection are duplicated in Stages one to three to ensure comparability with the previous phases. In the discussion section, the dominating themes from the results chapters are used as comparison with multi-country research in order to investigate the three research questions in detail. In total, nineteen expectations that are derived from the literature review covering the dimensions of strategic management accounting, strategic management, cross cultural management and global strategic management are extracted and compared with actual SID making practises exhibited in the 30 case studies. Cultural similarities within the thirty Singaporean SIDs are contrasted with unique cultural features of U.S, U.K, Japanese and German firms using RQ1. Beyond financial variables, culture specific differences are specifically highlighted for the dimensions of intuition, power distance relationships, long term orientation and minimum financial versus strategic emphasis in the Singaporean sample. In RQ1’s analysis, it is found that Singaporean firms exhibit the highest degree of future orientated behaviour, power distance relationships in conjunction with lower levels of assertiveness and in-group collectivism when contrasted with U.K, U.S, Japanese and German firms. However, some contextual differences are apparent within the Singaporean sample which RQ2 seeks to explain. In RQ2’s analysis, the thirty firms are structured into Market Creators, Value Creators, Refocusers and Restructurers where marked distinctions in financial flexibility, financial expectations and attitude towards financial targets are found. Further observations found that firms in the tertiary sector favour readiness in SID making, as compared to planned SID making approaches in the secondary and primary sectors. Hence, it is concluded that culture and context both play important roles in different aspects in SID making. RQ3’s analysis aims to show subtle distinctions between overseas and domestic SIDs. It is found that firms investing in overseas SIDs are inclined to be longer-term in their SID making approach than firms who have a higher propensity to invest in domestic SIDs. The approaches for host country selection differ for the 4 contextual categories. The Market Creators tend to be influenced by the availability of closeknitted partners when investing overseas. In contrast, the Refocusers and Restructurers are highly customer-driven whereas the Value Creators are attracted by the host country’s market potential. From the literature summary of the four unique dimensions pertinent to SID making, a pre-conceptual framework is derived. In the discussion section, the pre-conceptual framework is restructured into a post-conceptual framework where themes common to the Singaporean and multi-country SIDs that have been used for comparative analysis are emphasised. This framework concludes the thesis by combining both contextual and cultural themes using research from the eastern and western contexts.

Magister Educationis - MEd / The study was located within the project : Relevance of school mathematics Education (ROSME) of the Department of Dicactics at the University of the Western Cape. The research was undertaken in the belief that mathematics enables creative and logical reasoning about contextualised problems in the realm of the physical and social world as well as in the discipline mathematics itself. This research attempted to investigate the contextual issues that teachers have to deal with in mathematics education. / South Africa

Serious games show promise as an effective training method, but such games are complex and few guidelines exist for their effective evaluation. We draw on the design science literature to develop a serious game evaluation framework that emphasizes grounding evaluation in each of four key areas-theoretical, technical, empirical, and external. We further recommend that serious game developers assume an iterative, adaptive approach to grounding an evaluation effort in these four areas, emphasizing some areas more than others at different stages of the development cycle. We illustrate our framework using a case study of a large-scale serious game development project. The case study illustrates a holistic approach to serious game evaluation that is valuable to both researchers and practitioners.

Undergraduates rated scripts describing the performance of different instructors in the following order: two positive or negative scripts followed by an average script; or two average scripts followed by a positive or a negative script. Context effects were assessed by comparing ratings of the target stimulus in the context and in the context-free control conditions. Several individual difference variables were measured as possible moderators of this phenomenon. Results indicated robust contrast effects mediated by beliefs in the variability of human nature in the extreme context conditions. In the positive context condition, high scorers in Variability were not affected by context, whereas medium or low scorers in Variability exhibited contrast effects. In the negative context condition, high scorers in Variability exhibited a more extreme contrast effect than medium or low scorers in Variability. In the average context conditions, contrast was observed only when the target was positive.

Context-aware computing enables mobile applications to discover and benefit from valuable context information, such as user location, time of day and current activity. However, determining the users’ context throughout their daily activities is one of the main challenges of context-aware computing. With the increasing number of built-in mobile sensors and other input sources, existing context models do not effectively handle context information related to personal user context. The objective of this research was to develop an improved context-aware model to support the context awareness needs of mobile applications. An existing context-aware model was selected as the most complete model to use as a basis for the proposed model to support context awareness in mobile applications. The existing context-aware model was modified to address the shortcomings of existing models in dealing with context information related to personal user context. The proposed model supports four different context dimensions, namely Physical, User Activity, Health and User Preferences. A prototype, called CoPro was developed, based on the proposed model, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. Several experiments were designed and conducted to determine if CoPro was effective, reliable and capable. CoPro was considered effective as it produced low-level context as well as inferred context. The reliability of the model was confirmed by evaluating CoPro using Quality of Context (QoC) metrics such as Accuracy, Freshness, Certainty and Completeness. CoPro was also found to be capable of dealing with the limitations of the mobile computing platform such as limited processing power. The research determined that the proposed context-aware model can be used to successfully support context awareness in mobile applications. Design recommendations were proposed and future work will involve converting the CoPro prototype into middleware in the form of an API to provide easier access to context awareness support in mobile applications.

Online information access on mobile devices is increasing as a result of the growth in the use of Internet-enabled handheld (or pocket-size) devices. The combined influence of recent enabling technologies such as Web 2.0, mobile app stores and improved wireless networks have driven the increase in online applications that allow users to access various types of information on mobile devices regardless of time and location. Examples of such applications (usually shortened to app) include: social media, such as FacebookTM App and TwitterTM App, banking applications such as (Standard Bank South Africa)TM Mobile Banking App and First National Bank (FNB) BankingTM App, and news application such as news 24TM App and BBCTM News App. Online businesses involved in buying, selling and business transaction processing activities via the Internet have exploited the opportunity to extend electronic commerce (e-commerce) initiatives into mobile commerce (m-commerce). Online businesses that interact with end user customers implement business to consumer (B2C) m-commerce applications that enable customers to access and browse product catalogue information on mobile devices, anytime, anywhere. Customers accessing electronic product catalogue information on a mobile device face a number of challenges such as a long list of products presented on a small screen and a longer information download time. These challenges mainly originate from the limiting and dynamic nature of the mobile apps operating environment, for example, dynamic location, bandwidth fluctuations and, diverse and limited device features, collectively referred to as context. The goal of this research was to design and implement a context-aware model that can be incorporated into an m-commerce application in order to improve the presentation of product catalogue information on m-commerce storefronts. The motivation for selecting product catalogue is prompted by literature which indicates that improved presentation of information in m-commerce (and e-commerce) applications has a positive impact on usability of the websites. Usable m-commerce (and e-commerce) websites improve efficiency in consumer behaviour that impacts sales, profits and business growth. The context-aware model aimed at collecting context information within the user environment and utilising it to determine optimal retrieval and presentation of product catalogue in m-commerce. An integrated logical context sensor and Mathematical algorithms were implemented in the context-aware model. The integrated logical context sensor was responsible for the collection of different types of predetermined context information such as device specification or capabilities, connection bandwidth, location and time of the day as well as the user profile. The algorithms transformed the collected context information into usable formats and enabled optimal retrieval and presentation of product catalogue data on a specific mobile device. Open-source implementation tools were utilised to implement components of the model including: HTML5, PhP, JavaScript and MySQL database. The context-aware model was incorporated into an existing m-commerce application. Two user evaluation studies were conducted during the course of the research. The first evaluation was to evaluate the accuracy of information collected by the context sensor component of the model. This survey was conducted with a sample of 30 users from different countries across the world. In-between the context sensor and main evaluation surveys, a pilot study was conducted with a sample of 19 users with great experience in mobile application development and use from SAP Next Business and Technology, Africa. Finally an overall user evaluation study was conducted with a sample of 30 users from a remote area called Kgautswane in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The results obtained indicate that the context-aware model was able to determine accurate context information in real-time and effectively determine how much product information should be retrieved and how the information should be presented on a mobile device interface. Two main contributions emerged from the research, first the research contributed to the field of mobile Human Computer Interaction. During the research, techniques of evaluating and improving usability of mobile applications were demonstrated. Secondly, the research made a significant contribution to the upcoming field of context-aware computing. The research brought clarity with regard to context-aware computing which is lacking in existing, current research despite the field’s proven impact of improving usability of applications. Researchers can utilise contributions made in this research to develop further techniques and usable context-aware solutions.