The purpose of this research report is to record and analyse the school initiation and implementation of Professional Development for teachers in South African schools. The literature review highlights a number of key terms, namely: professionalism, the status of teachers, teacher appraisal and accountability and instructional improvement. Two significant findings are 1) that teachers find that the new curriculum intensifies their work, leading to some form of de-professionalization, and 2) that teachers prefer professional development related to discipline and classroom management rather than instructional improvement.

Thesis advisor: Andy Hargreaves / After a decade of large-scale educational reform there is now a growing interest in grass-roots self-initiated change (Datnow et al., 2002; Hargreaves, 2009; Hargreaves & Shirley, 2009; Shirley, 2009). Yet, self-initiated change (SIC) remains largely undertheorized in the literature of educational change. Even the advocates of self-initiated change do not clearly specify the underlying mechanisms and the multi-dimensional processes by which SIC occurs. Utilizing a qualitative case study approach and a conceptual framework that draws from incremental institutional change theory and the literature on social movements within institutions, this study explored the following research questions: * What mechanisms do the change agents of SIC employ, How do they implement these mechanisms and why do they employ these mechanisms? * What are the characteristics of the processes of SIC? What is the pacing and sequencing of the change? * How does SIC unfold over time, and why? In answering these three initial questions a fourth research question emerged that summates the other three: *What implications does an investigation of self-initiated change in one school have for understanding existing theories of self-initiated and imposed educational change? Findings from this study revealed that self-initiated change involved a recombination that embodied the ideal of "change without pain" by balancing change and stability (Abrahamson, 2004). The process of self-initiated change turned out to be slow-moving (Pierson, 2004; Thelen & Mahoney, 2010). Mindful juxtaposition (Huy, 2001) and a dialectical perspective (Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2009) were required to address the multiple and contradictory dimensions of change. Based on these analyses, I propose ways of conceptualizing SIC as: "change without pain"; "slow-moving change"; and "dialectical/ cyclical change." / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

A autoexpatriação é o processo onde o indivíduo, por iniciativa própria, decide sair de seu país para trabalhar e viver em outro país por um período, a priori, previamente estabelecido (THORN, 2008; CERDIN, 2012; ALTMAN; BARUCH, 2012; ROGERS, 2013; DICKMANN, 2014). Este estudo exploratório teve por objetivo analisar como ocorre a autoexpatriação de brasileiros e como ela se relaciona com a construção de carreira destes indivíduos. No contexto desta pesquisa, compreendemos carreira em consonância com Hall (2002), que a considera um processo que envolve todas as experiências de vida, dentro e fora do trabalho. Por se tratar de uma mobilidade internacional, utilizamos, também, a teoria das carreiras globais (DICKMANN; BARUCH, 2011). A coleta de dados se deu através de entrevistas semiestruturadas, realizadas presencialmente ou a distância através do Skype e Messenger, com brasileiros que já passaram ou que estavam passando pela autoexpatriação por um período mínimo de seis meses. Foram entrevistados 5 homens e 10 mulheres, com idade entre 26 e 53 anos, variado grau de escolaridade, provenientes de diferentes regiões do Brasil e com história de autoexpatriação em países da América do Norte, Europa, Oceania e Ásia. A maior parte dos entrevistados se autoexpatriou na faixa dos 20 e 30 anos de idade, e partiu para o exterior sozinho ou acompanhado por familiares (cônjuges e/ou filhos). A apresentação e análise dos resultados foi realizada através da análise de conteúdo (BARDIN, 2004). Como resultados o estudo mostra que as principais razões para a autoexpatriação destes brasileiros referem-se à falta de perspectiva profissional e desemprego no Brasil, a busca por desenvolvimento e aprimoramento profissional, à fuga da violência urbana e ao desejo de conhecer e vivenciar novos países e culturas. A intenção de sair do país foi motivada especialmente para trabalhar no exterior e ter experiências pessoais e de vida que vão além das experiências relacionadas exclusivamente ao trabalho. A pesquisa, ainda, apresenta os diferentes caminhos que levaram estes brasileiros à autoexpatriação, elemento importante para compreender com mais profundidade este complexo processo, desde a escolha do país, o planejamento da viagem, o papel das redes de contato, a barreira do idioma e as estratégias encontradas para entrar e permanecer no país estrangeiro. Em algumas situações a autoexpatriação se converteu em um projeto permanente, na medida em que muitos destes brasileiros não têm mais a intenção de voltar a viver no Brasil. Nesse sentido, o contexto social e econômico do Brasil, marcado por desigualdades, falta de oportunidades e altos índices de violência urbana, contribuiu para a decisão de alguns autoexpatriados de permanecer por mais tempo, ou até permanentemente, no exterior, transformando o projeto inicial de autoexpatriação em imigração. Muito além de ganhos relacionados à conquista de bens materiais e de trabalhos considerados de maior status social, os entrevistados relataram que aspectos relacionados à qualidade de vida e lazer, segurança, sensação de inclusão social e de pertencimento ao país estrangeiro marcaram sua experiência de mobilidade internacional. / Self-initiated expatriation is a process where the individual, on his own initiative, decides to leave his country to work and live in another country for a period, a priori, previously established (THORN, 2008; CERDIN, 2012; ALTMAN; BARUCH, 2012; ROGERS, 2013, DICKMANN, 2014). This exploratory study aims to analyze how self-initiated expatriation of Brazilians occurs and how it relates to their careers. In the context of this research, we will understand career in line with Arthur and Rousseau (1996), who consider it as a process that involves all aspects of our life, both inside and outside of work. Because it is an international experience, we will also use the theory of global careers (DICKMANN; BARUCH, 2011) to understand this phenomenon. The data collection was done through semi-structured interviews, carried out in person or at a distance through Skype and Messenger, with Brazilians who have already passed or were undergoing self-initiated expatriation for a minimum period of six months. Five men and 10 women, ranging in age from 26 to 53 years of age, were interviewed, with varying degrees of education, from different regions of Brazil, with a history of self-initiated expatriation in North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia. Most of the interviewees went abroad in their 20s and 30s, alone or accompanied by relatives (spouses and / or children). The presentation and analysis of the results was performed through content analysis (BARDIN, 2004). As results the study shows that the main reasons for the self-initiated expatriation of these Brazilians refer to the lack of professional perspective and unemployment in Brazil, the search for professional development and improvement, the escape of urban violence and the desire to know and experience new countries and cultures. The intention to leave the country was motivated especially to work abroad and have personal and life experiences that go beyond experiences related exclusively to work. The research also presents the different paths that led these Brazilians to self-initiated expatriation, an important element to understand in more depth this complex process, from the choice of the country, the planning of the trip, the role of the networks, the language barrier and the strategies found to enter and stay in the foreign country. In some situations self-initiated expatriation has become a permanent project, since many of these Brazilians no longer intend to return to live in Brazil. In this sense, the social and economic context of Brazil, marked by inequalities, lack of opportunities and high rates of urban violence, contributed to the decision of some self-initiated expatriates to stay longer or permanently abroad, transforming the initial project of self-initiated expatriation in immigration. In addition to gains related to the acquisition of material goods and work considered to be of a higher social status, respondents reported that aspects related to quality of life and leisure, security, social inclusion and foreign ownership have marked their experience of international mobility.

abstract: Timing performance is sensitive to fluctuations in time and motivation, thus interval timing and motivation are either inseparable or conflated processes. A behavioral systems model (e.g., Timberlake, 2000) of timing performance (Chapter 1) suggests that timing performance in externally-initiated (EI) procedures conflates behavioral modes differentially sensitive to motivation, but that response-initiated (RI) procedures potentially dissociate these behavioral modes. That is, timing performance in RI procedures is expected to not conflate these behavioral modes. According to the discriminative RI hypothesis, as initiating-responses become progressively discriminable from target responses, initiating-responses increasingly dissociate interval timing and motivation. Rats were trained in timing procedures in which a switch from a Short to a Long interval indexes timing performance (a latency-to-switch, LTS), and were then challenged with pre-feeding and extinction probes. In experiments 1 (Chapter 2) and 2 (Chapter 3), discriminability of initiating-responses was varied as a function of time, location, and form for rats trained in a switch-timing procedure. In experiment 3 (Chapter 4), the generalizability of the discriminative RI hypothesis was evaluated in rats trained in a temporal bisection procedure. In experiment 3, but not 1 and 2, RI enhanced temporal control of LTSs relative to EI. In experiments 1 and 2, the robustness of LTS medians to pre-feeding but not extinction increased with the discriminability of initiating-responses from target responses. In experiment 3, the mean LTS was robust to pre-feeding in EI and RI. In all three experiments, pre-feeding increased LTS variability in EI and RI. These results provide moderate support for the discriminative RI hypothesis, indicating that initiating-responses selectively and partially dissociate interval timing and motivation processes. Implications for the study of cognition and motivation processes are discussed (Chapter 5). / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2018

The purpose of this study was to test the effects of graduated guidance procedure on teaching imitation of manual signs to students with moderate to severe disabilities. Sessions began with student initiation and were embedded across already established reinforcement routines across the student’s day. A multiple baseline across participants design was used to evaluate these effects.

The time from onset of a cardiac arrest to defibrillation is crucial hence access to and use of a defibrillator by all nurses essential. The purpose of this study was to use an established theoretical framework to examine and describe the defibrillation practices and beliefs of rural registered nurses in the Australian state of Queensland. The Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) guided the research processes for this two phase study. In the first phase, focus group (n = 13) discussions identified the salient beliefs of the population. By eliciting nurses' beliefs, the subsequent quantitative study (n = 434) was conducted to determine the influences of these beliefs on nurses' use or non-use of defibrillators. The results showed that: (1) less than half of the cohort of participants were permitted to defibrillate; (2) the defibrillation beliefs of those nurses permitted to defibrillate were significantly more positive than those not permitted to do so; (3) the direct measures of TPB and selected variables external to the model predicted a significant portion of the variance in the measure of nurse-initiated defibrillation intention; and, (4) subjective norm emerged as the strongest predictor of intention. In conclusion, Queensland rural hospital nurses and employers still have some distance to travel down the path of nurse-initiated defibrillation. The TPB is a viable framework on which to base interventions designed to promote defibrillation by rural nurses. Understanding the role of social norms is of central importance to ensure all nurses can initiate the chain of survival expeditiously whenever the need arises.

Polymer brushes represent a relatively new class of materials and are referred to an assembly of polymer chains tethered by one of their extremities to a surface by a chemical bond. Different techniques to produce polymer brushes exist but our privileged choice was about the ¡§grafting from¡¨ method due to the better control over the types of grafted polymer, the surface-grafting density, and the chain-lengths. In our project, we focused on polymerizations from self-assembled monolayers of thiol chemisorbed on gold surface, bearing end-group functions as anchoring sites. The main objective of this work is to develop multifunctional polymeric surfaces composed by micro-domains of diverse compounds, which contain opposite features. Poly(ƓÕ-caprolactone) and poly(L,L-lactide)-based brushes both known for their high degree of crystallinity and hydrophobicity, and poly(dimethylamino ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA)-based brushes for their hydrophilicity and external stimuli responsive characteristics were investigated. Moreover, the design of these advanced materials can be achieved with patterning technique such as micro-contact printing, leading to a spatial confinement of the polymer brushes. In order to reach our objective, the thesis was decomposed in different parts. First, the preparation of homogeneous and heterogeneous monolayers derived from thiols on gold surface will be investigated. Secondly, the ¡§grafting from¡¨ synthesis of homo-polymers from thiol end group will be carried out. This part required the development of synthesis conditions for both types of homopolymer brushes. Subsequently, these parameters were applied to the creation of a binary system by the growth of two different macromolecular chains on the same substrate. Finally, upon the ¡§smart¡¨ behavior of PDMAEMA, the potential of the polymer as chemical sensor was evaluated with single walled and multi walled-carbon nanotubes (SW- and MW-CNTs) as interesting conductive (nano)fillers.

Syftet med denna studie var att ta reda på hur mycket biologi man kan få in i verksamheten genom att uppmärksamma när ämnet naturligt visar sig hos barnen under utomhusvistelse, i deras egna lekar, upptäckter och utforskande. Bakgrunden till min undersökning är att den svenska förskolan sägs befinna sig i en brytningstid, med större fokus på ämneskunskaper och att läroplanen samtidigt poängterar vikten av att ta tillvara barns perspektiv, frågor och idéer. För att få svar har jag gjort observationer på två olika förskolor/avdelningar. Även enkäter har skickats till de medverkande pedagogerna. Resultatet av mina observationer visar att barnen ofta uppmärksammar olika djur och växter och andra områden inom ämnet biologi när de vistas ute i naturen. Att vistas i naturmiljö tycks alltså skapa bra förutsättningar för ett lärande inom ämnet biologi som är barninitierat. Att även pedagogerna från de två deltagande förskolorna anser det, framgår av deras svar på enkätfrågorna. / The intention with this study was to investigate how much biology you can implement into the pre-school activities by recognizing when the subject naturally appears when the children are outdoors, through their own games, discoveries and explorations. The background to my investigation is that the Swedish pre-school is said to be in a transition state with more focus on subject knowledge at the same time as the curriculum points out the importance of taking care of the children's perspective, questions and ideas. To get answers I have done observations at two different pre-schools/departments. Also, questionnaires have been sent out to the teachers who participated in the study. The results of my observations show that the children often pay attention to various kinds of animals, plants and other parts of biology when they are out in the nature. Being outside in the nature seems to create a good basis for education within the subject, which is initiated by the children themselves. That even the teachers from the two participated pre-schools think. So was made clear through their answers on the questionnaires.

Citizen participation includes those activities by citizens who are not public officials that are more or less intended to influence the actions taken by government (Verba & Nie, 1972). Citizen initiated contacts are one such form of participation. In 1999, the volume of complaint and service related calls received by the Department of Public Works and Engineering equaled almost 20 percent of the city's population. Via Houston's Customer Response Center, these contacts are logged in, directed to the appropriate department and incorporated into the department's infrastructure management system (IMS). The goal of the IMS is to provide a systems approach to making cost-effective decisions about the design, rehabilitation, construction, retrofitting, maintenance or abandonment of the city's infrastructure (Grigg, 1988). To date, the effectiveness of this program is perceived as less than ideal and the public is critical of the results (Graves, 2002). Residents express concerns that infrastructure projects are targeted towards business and industrial areas while neighborhood needs are being ignored. Politicians are concerned that projects are not equally distributed among the districts. Meanwhile, public works' staff are concerned because there isn't enough money to address citizen calls, business and industrial needs and political concerns in addition to the problems they have identified. The purpose of this research is twofold: to determine if citizen initiated contacts have been a significant factor in the selection of water and sewer projects and, to identify other factors that may play a role in the decision making process. This study is longitudinal in nature, covering the time period between 1992 and 1999. Univariate, bivariate and multivariate analysis were applied to the various data sets provided by the City of Houston. The results of the analysis supports the following: - Citizen contacts have been significant in determining the allocation of water and sewer CIP projects; however, that has not been consistent through the years. - Factors such as race, class, line type, material, size, age and location also factor into the decision making process.

Clinical research is conducted to advance human medicine by developing efficacious treatments and improving patient outcomes when new therapies are developed and implemented. Clinical trials are a subset of the types of clinical research conducted on human volunteers in the development of new drugs, devices and other therapies. Prior to the start of a trial, a country’s regulatory authority must review the trial to ensure it is scientifically and ethically sound. In Canada, the regulatory authority is Health Canada. The International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) of technical requirements for the registration of pharmaceutics for humans aims to provide ethical and scientific quality standards for design, conduct, data collection and reporting in clinical trials. The Good Clinical Practice (GCP) Guidelines were created by the ICH Steering Committee to assure the public that rights, safety and well being of subjects are protected according to the Declaration of Helsinki, and the clinical data obtained in a ICH/GCP compliant clinical trial will meet regulatory requirements. Health Canada has adopted the ICH/GCP Guidelines and therefore, in Canada, all clinical trials involving humans must comply with these Guidelines. The clinical trial coordinator is an important and central position on the research team executing many trial duties and communications. Regulatory authorities, Research Ethics Boards and the sponsor, overlook the role and responsibilities of a highly trained clinical coordinator, despite their vital and central position. The GCP Guidelines also fail to address the role and responsibilities of a clinical coordinator. Disconnect between guidelines, regulatory expectations and actual trial conduct provides an apparent need to formalize and clearly define the role and scope of a clinical coordinator. The Registered Nurse (RN) brings professionalism, knowledge, skill and a holistic perspective to the expanded role of a clinical coordinator and to the clinical trial. Highly trained health professionals are capable of assuming more responsibilities and executing clinical trial design, setup and management as compared to the traditional administrative roles of the clinical coordinator. The expanded role of the clinical coordinator is especially beneficial for Principal Investigator initiated trials due to limited research personnel and resources. Postoperative adhesions are a common complication following pelvic surgery, therefore, this clinical trial is relevant and a response to a healthcare need. My graduate studies focused on the development and set up of the clinical trial Protocol ADE002-2013 Phase I Trial of L-Alanyl-L-Glutamine for the Reduction of Peritoneal Adhesions in Adult Females Undergoing Myomectomy. My thesis is a discussion of general Canadian clinical trial research information followed by an explanation of how we executed the information to design and set up our PI initiated clinical trial. The value of the expanded role of the clinical coordinator as a member of the research team will also be discussed.