No description available.

The purpose of this study was to describe the current schedules employed, teaming practices, and curricula used by the middle-level schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and it was conducted through the use of descriptive statistics. A questionnaire was sent to experts in the area of middle school education for review and field-tested with practicing administrators in middle-level education. The questionnaire was revised and mailed to 237 principals of the public schools in Virginia which have at least three grade levels drawn from five, six, seven, or eight but not grade levels four or nine. Principals from 134 schools, 57 percent of middle schools in Virginia, returned the questionnaire. Data collected from these questionnaires were used to describe the types of schedules employed, teaming practices, and curricula utilized by the participating middle schools. The number of middle schools in Virginia has continued to grow since their reported existence in the 1970's and the Virginia Department of Education's emphasis on the use of middle school practices in 1986. In 1985, Jessie Charles Zedd reported that there were 110 middle schools in the state. By 1996, the Virginia Educational Directory listed 237 middle schools, a percentage gain of 46. An increased use of middle school flexible scheduling and interdisciplinary teaming has occurred since that study. Most of the middle-level schools that participated in this study were mid-sized schools with 501 to 1,000 students and housing grades six, seven, and eight. The majority of middle-level schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia was found to utilize interdisciplinary teaming and a core curriculum. Flexible scheduling is utilized in most middle schools at grades six and seven but traditional schedules are used more frequently at grade eight. The use of flexible scheduling and teaming decreases from the sixth grade to the eighth grade in middle schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Ability grouping was reportedly used in more than 75 percent of middle schools participating in the study. Students are required to take all core subjects in most middle-level schools in Virginia and are offered high school level classes even before the eighth grade. The emphasis on the importance of middle-level education continues to be stressed nationally as well as within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Middle-level practices such as flexible scheduling and interdisciplinary teaming have served as examples of effective practices being considered and utilized by high schools. Advocates, practitioners, administrators, and teachers of the middle-level schools need to continue their emphasis on effective middle-level programs and practices for the continued improvement and success of middle schools. Improvement in the use of flexible scheduling, interdisciplinary teaming, and fewer grouping practices should be a goal of many middle-level schools to become exemplary schools. Middle schools should have high expectations for all and make their programs accessible to all students. Recommendations and data reported from this study may be used as a resource by administrators and other interested practitioners to restructure their programs in order to better serve middle-level children. / Ed. D.

No description available.

This thesis studies household waste prevention from a social scienceperspective. Swedish waste management is efficient in handling wastebut has not succeeded in reducing its quantities, even though theissue of waste prevention is being raised at both international andnational levels.The aim of this thesis is to study and analyse the practice ofhousehold waste prevention. I seek to understand and explainhow it may be possible for households in their everyday to reducethat waste. With understanding comes an aspiration to mitigatewhatever impedes households from reducing their waste. A secondaim is therefore to apply these new understandings and make policysuggestions as to how household waste prevention can be promotedand supported. My research questions are:• How is everyday household waste prevention as a practicenarrated and discussed? And how can this practice andthe activities in it be understood in connection with socialstructures?• What obstacles and opportunities do households experience inconnection with the practice of everyday waste prevention?• What policy suggestions can be drawn from these findings? Household waste prevention has in earlier research often beenstudied from a waste management perspective, juxtaposing it withrecycling. These studies has identified a need to approach the areafrom a consumption perspective. Sustainable consumption has,however, in general failed to incorporate disposal as a practicesin itself, in that disposal involves competence in knowing what todo with certain things, as well as relation between things and theirmeanings. This runs the risk of leaving waste and waste preventionas part of consumption scarcely researched. It is in this identified gapthat I place my study.In order to address my questions, two studies were carried out.The first is presented in Article I, ‘Household practices of disposal –Swedish households’ narratives for moving things along’. The datawas gathered using in-depth interviews with Swedish households not explicitly devoted to waste prevention. The study focused oneveryday disposal activities. The second study, presented in Article II,is called ‘The practice of household waste minimisation’. This studycollected data from Swedish bloggers engaging in waste-minimisationpractices, sometimes called ‘zero-waste bloggers’, focusing on howthese forerunners describe practising waste minimisation in theireveryday.In both studies I used sociological theories of how humans asactors relate to the social structures and how humans act in theireveryday. The theories applied were derived from the extensive workof Anthony Giddens on structuration and late-modernity. As I placehousehold activities at the centre of my study, I have also appliedtheory of practice. My analysis starts off with the claim that waste is an unintendedconsequence of keeping up shared practices: in other words, thathousehold waste production is neither deliberate nor completelyvoluntary. For waste prevention practices to happen, the prevailingidea that recycling alone is good enough needs to be challenged.There need to be other opportunities to act, such as buying secondhandclothes, unpackaged groceries, repairable electronics etc. Theseopportunities need to be normalised, meaning that they need tobe socially spread and accepted. They also need to be reasonablyconvenient, as in not demanding too much time and effort. The studyof the minimising forerunners reveals that these households have tostruggle in their everyday to minimise their waste. This implies thathousehold waste prevention is not supported by the social structuresin Sweden and, therefore, will not increase by itself.I move on to suggest a new model for the understanding ofsustainable consumption. This model takes the perspective of practicetheory and presents four stages of consumption: need, obtain, use anddispose. All four stages should be recognised as possible situationsfor interventions. There is also a need for a holistic perspective onconsumption, where none of the stages is studied in isolation fromthe rest.I conclude the thesis by pinpointing the identified major obstaclesto household waste prevention, and by suggesting necessary changesin order for household waste prevention to become a shared practice.

Tourism destinations are implementing policies based on global sustainability agreements. Countries are taking different approaches to fulfilling their sustainability goals. Collaboration was considered an important ingredient to implementing policies and achieving targets. The city of Uppsala in Sweden has been awarded most sustainable city and recognized for its collaboration efforts. In this study I evaluated the collaboration both within public and private organisations. The research was designed as an inductive and qualitative case study. Data was collected by interviewing 12 organisations and analyzing 7 documents. To evaluate the intra- organisational relationship of the municipality, documents were analysed. Timeline of policy development and implementation was compared to Gary’s Collaboration theory (1989) and Selin’s Strategic Bridging (1995). Results indicate that Uppsala’s municipal government (MO) has successfully developed sustainability policies with strong collaboration. This is especially the case intra-organisation. However, most of these partnerships were collaborative in nature with larger organisations. Smaller businesses with more direct contact with the tourists are not having their problems effectively addressed. This was the case with marketing material and information sites. This leads us to believe that Uppsala has the common characteristics of trust, commitment and communication with the larger players in tourism; but not the smaller ones. Furthermore, this study indicates that collaboration efforts are more different in cities; factors such as resources availability and economic contribution of organisations affect the strength of the partnership.

Abstract In the last years the refugee inflows towards Europe was striking, particularly in 2015 approximately 1 million refugees crossed the European borders, among the refugee population there were many children, amid those children there were also a special category; the unaccompanied children. The topic of this work is based on the highlighted issue of the unaccompanied minors in Greece. I present the context and the humanitarian response of the Greek refugee crisis including the humanitarian action which aimed to cover the unaccompanied minors needs. Moreover, I tried to identify the figure of the unaccompanied minor in Greece after 2015 and I examine the humanitarian response through the humanitarian governance concept and the Agambenian “bare life” theory. I conclude that humanitarianism as it is structured reduces the unaccompanied minors in “bare life” while the “bios” the political life is excluded. Key words: unaccompanied minor, Greece, humanitarian action, bare life, humanitarian governance, humanitarianism

Communication deficiencies within interdisciplinary teams are known to reduce the effectiveness of those teams by causing erroneous behaviors (Alvarez & Coiera, 2006; Reader, Flin, & Cuthbertson, 2007). Also, many design defects have been attributed to communication breakdowns across disciplines (Chen & Lin, 2004). As the number of interdisciplinary teams in industry grows in order to adapt to dynamic business environments of the twenty-first century, providing an appropriate environment to improve interdisciplinary team effectiveness is critical for many organizations. In spite of its importance, little is known about what kind of environments support interdisciplinary team interactions. There were three objectives of this dissertation: 1) to investigate the influence of physical environment on the effectiveness of interdisciplinary engineering design teams, 2) to investigate the influence of interaction strategy design support on the effectiveness of interdisciplinary engineering design teams, 3) to construct behavioral indicators of successful interdisciplinary teamwork to design testing and design guidelines for interdisciplinary team collaboration spaces. To achieve these goals, the study was conducted in two phases. In Phase 1, the researcher conducted a direct observation of industry teams operating in the novel design space, the Kiva, at a design-consulting firm based in Pittsburgh, PA. The observation data provided 1) a list of significant participant behaviors to be examined and 2) interaction strategy design support (ISDS) procedures to be used during phase 2. Phase 2 was a laboratory-based 2x2 experimental study with physical room condition (Kiva vs. conference room) and interaction strategy design support (present vs. absent) as independent variables. The dependent variables were categorized as team process and output that measured team effectiveness. Overall, a significant interaction effect between the physical conditions and interaction strategy design support was found from all dependent measurements except for product evaluation. A significant main effect of physical conditions and interaction strategy support were found to a lesser extent. Based on the findings, testing methodology guidelines and design guidelines were developed. / Ph. D.

Thesis. 1977. B.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Interdisciplinary Science. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND SCIENCE. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Mark P. Abbate. / B.S.

Innovation has been widely discussed as being extremely important for our drive towards the attainment of the sustainable development goals. This is because, as embed in its definition, sustainable development requires that we shift away from business as usual to find new ways of doing things, that take into consideration the preservation of the three pillars of sustainable development; the economic, social and ecological pillars. Since the publication of the Brundtland Report, there have been more focus, both in terms of research and policy, on the economic and ecological pillars of sustainability than on the social pillar.  The thesis carried out a research to determine how Jonkoping Municipalit is working to achieve the sustainable development goals, taking into perspective, the three pillars of sustainability: the ecological, economic, and social pillars. The research found that, even though the Municipality is working with all the goals and dimensions of sustainable development, more progress has been made with the ecological and economic dimensions than the social dimension. Using the Quadruple Helix Model of Innovation Cooperation, this research examines what kind of social innovations that are taking place within Jonkoping Municipality that are tailored for the attainment of the sustainable development goals located within the social pillar of sustainability, and who are kind of actors and activities involved. The research finds that there are some social innovations going within the municipality that are specifically geared towards the 2030 agenda.

In Sweden the healthcare sector is the profession with the highest amount of sick leave. There is also an ongoing trend of work-related health issues and high staff turnover in this sector, which includes the elderly care. Hence, it is important to develop working conditions that supports job satisfaction among coworkers. One way to work towards a higher level of job satisfaction within coworkers is to increase their motivation at work. For this to be realized, leaders play a crucial part. The purpose of this study was therefore to examine how leaders within the elderly care work with motivation to foster job satisfaction among their coworkers. The question of interest was which work methods leaders use to foster motivation among coworkers. The study was conducted using a qualitative method where the data was collected through semi-structured interviews. The sample consisted of eight unit managers from two different municipalities. The results showed that there were several work methods that the unit managers frequently used in their work to foster motivation among their coworkers. These were; systematic efforts, feedback, self-determination, participation, operational leadership, building relationships and trust. Of these, feedback, participation and building relationships were identified as the most important work methods. Furthermore, the result showed a distinction within the perception on operational leadership.