The purpose of this inquiry was to retell and represent the life that I have lived as I explore how I adapted my professional practice for students in an alternative program. This naturalistic inquiry is positioned as a self narrative. Retrospection and reflection enabled me to bring together my construction of self and my journey of teaching as I attempted to explain how I know what I know about working with at risk students and alternative programming. <p>The collection of data comes from my personal experience; thus I am observer, participant, and narrator. Threaded throughout this thesis are interwoven stories which create the fabric of my teaching experience. Each narrative represents justification of teacher knowledge and a refocusing of the lens through which I viewed at risk students and their marginalized position in our education system. As teachers we must first establish a relationship with our students and develop an empathetic understanding of the circumstances of the life experiences each one brings to the classroom. By understanding their past, we can make the school experience a positive influence in their lives and hopefully smooth out their way to a successful future.

4-H members quit. It is part of every 4-H program, and according to the research, it is even part of growing up. If only we knew why they quit, we could possibly do something about it. To date, the reasons youth join 4-H have been more thoroughly researched than the reasons they quit. This study explores why youth choose to discontinue membership in 4-H, and goes a step further, asking current members what they know about the discontinuers, to explore whether current 4-H members can provide information to guide programmatic adjustments to decrease discontinuance. This study identified a need for better communication and implementation of 4-H enrollment procedures, as 51.9% of discontinuers indicated they were in 4-H, while Texas 4-H enrollment records indicated otherwise. This study also revealed a divergence from the literature. The more active a 4-H member is the more likely they are to re-enroll, according to the literature. In contrast, this study found that 54% of discontinuing 4-H members described themselves as active in their 4-H club, and another 45% describe themselves as active at the county level. The literature also suggests that youth may not be interested in 4-H programs, finding them un-cool or old fashioned, while this study found less than 8% of discontinuing 4-H members described 4-H as un-cool or old fashioned. This study asked whether any or all of nine different factors influenced the discontinuer to leave, and none was found to be a significant trigger for discontinuance on its own. Most discontinuers agreed with one to four of the factors, implying it takes no more than four factors for a decision to discontinue. There is no one single reason for discontinuance, but it only takes a few reasons to decide to leave. Responses from current 4-H members about why others leave statistically failed to accurately identify the reasons for discontinuance. This study developed a model of "knowingness" that provides a foundation for understanding how well a current member needs to know a discontinuer in order to accurately describe their reasons for leaving.

Transnational Mexican-origin Families is a qualitative study of four working class, Mexican-origin families who resided in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. region and who also made return visits to Mexico at least every two years. Through critical ethnographic case studies, the researcher worked with the families for over two years in multi-sited ethnography, with locations in the U.S. and Mexico. The dissertation examines the following question: What are the ways of knowing of Mexican-origin transnational students and their families in the Washington, D.C. area, and how do these transnational families experience their ways of knowing regarding education in formal schooling contexts? Using transnational theory and Gloria Anzaldúa’s theory of conocimiento, or knowing, this study shows how transnational families’ ways of knowing are situated in three mutually-constituted domains. They are: 1) chained knowing, including the ways participants are chained to the Mexican-U.S. border and to their communities in Mexico and the U.S., 2) sobrevivencia or survivalist knowing, in terms of how the families both survive and thrive, highlighting what I call their “underdog mentality” as well as the matters of life and death on both sides of the border, and 3) Nepantlera knowing, or an in-between knowing, which allows for attempts at bridge buildings and creation of Third Spaces. In regards to schooling, the transnational aspects of these families’ lives remained hidden, despite the students’ eagerness to share about their transnationalism. Schools tended to respond to their transnational families along the “continuum of the comfortable,” or a line where schools increased their outreach to these families only moderately and only along their terms. The intention of this research is to disrupt assimilationist discourses about immigrants, particularly in light of the need to be able to navigate an increasingly globalized world. Preliminary findings suggest the need to begin to reframe immigrants as transnational, value their language heritages, disrupt the comfort of educators in their outreach to transnational families, and for educators, in particular, to learn to do the work of border crossing in their outreach to transnational families. / text

Sepsis is a devastating, life-threatening disease and a major problem for many newborns; it develops rapidly and requires expertise to identify the early, subtle signs to prevent death or disability. Evidence from nursing practice and philosophic inquiry indicates that nurses use diverse ways of knowing in their assessments. The purpose of this research was to address research questions concerning two areas: 1) Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurses’ patterns of knowing in the assessment of infants with sepsis as related to dimensions of nursing practice; and 2) Test the psychometric properties of the Newborn Scale of Sepsis (SOS) as a diagnostic or assessment tool. The theoretical framework incorporated the epistemological theories of nurses Carper and Benner and philosopher of science Nagel. This study employed a prospective, correlational design with a convenience sample of 119 NICU nurses. Twenty-eight of these nurses also completed the Newborn SOS to document their assessments of 62 newborns for sepsis. Two instruments were used: 1) The 16-item norm-referenced Nursing Patterns of Knowing (POK) scale (ɑ = .82 and item-scale correlations ≥ 0.33), and 2) The 13-item Newborn Scale of Sepsis (SOS), developed to assist the novice nurse to assess for signs of sepsis (ɑ = .65 and interrater reliability of 96.3%). Descriptive, psychometric, and correlational analyses were applied to the research questions. Results indicated that the more clinically experienced NICU nurses used a more integrated pattern of knowing when assessing newborns for signs of sepsis. The more experienced and competent nurses incorporated empirical, aesthetic and personal knowing in their assessments. More experienced nurses also used less authority-based knowing. More diversity in work experiences was negatively correlated with the sociopolitical pattern of knowing. Psychometric properties of the Newborn SOS indicated that, while its sensitivity was very good, its low specificity limited its usefulness as a diagnostic tool. It was concluded that the Newborn SOS can be used to assist novice nurses in developing pattern recognition of newborn sepsis. The Nursing POK has strong potential for use in a wide variety of studies examining nursing patterns of knowing in assessment of critical health conditions.

Abstract   The purpose of this study was to explore how knowledge and management of knowledge is experienced and perceived at a consultancy firm and derive from the experiences of the participants when portraying the phenomenon of knowledge in such a setting. Aspects covered in this research are individual and collective knowledge, the complexity of project-based organisations and the different ways of perceiving knowledge (structural and practice). All of these aspects were accounted for in order to gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of the consultants, the knowledge environment at a consultancy firm, and how knowledge can be managed in such a setting.   The research was inspired by my personal/professional experience of knowledge at a consultancy firm where I, prior to this research, was given the task of re-designing the content management system. In the initial planning phase I recognised a need to find out more about the way the consultants were working, how they used knowledge and how they perceived the knowledge had been managed.   Qualitative data was collected through individual and group interviews and the philosophical tradition of phenomenology was derived from.   The findings from the interviews showed three main themes of how knowledge was perceived; 1) ways of working (differing experiences depending on the context of internal or external work or individual or group project assignments), 2) the knowledge culture and 3) the process and structure of knowledge management at the firm.   Based on the findings it is concluded that regardless of practice based knowledge sharing the project-based setting of consultancies requires more, it requires some documentation in order to enable collective knowledge through embedded artefacts. It can also be concluded that the lack of structure or processes contributes to further complexity which would suggest that implementing structure through for example a process oriented approach would ease the process of knowledge management and improve the perception of knowledge at the consultancy firm.

Woolum Bellum KODE (Koorie Open Door Education) School is located at Morwell in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria. The school is unique in that its curriculum is centred on the Gunnai/Kurnai language and culture of the traditional owners. The aim of this thesis is to describe and tell the history of Woolum Bellum School. My research questions are: 1. what led to the establishment of the Woolum Bellum KODE School? What are the critical success factors of the school attaining autonomy within the Victorian State Education system? The story of Woolum Bellum and its journey is important in the context of sharing knowledge. It exemplifies how a school like Woolum Bellum can be autonomous and how it presents a challenge as it comes to terms with what works and why. As a community we can assess the overall success of the school in terms of outcomes for the community. The benefits are seen in the generation of young people who attended the school over the past fifteen years. Their experience of schooling at Woolum Bellum as opposed to their experiences in the mainstream system amounts to significant successes. My ways of knowing have informed how I have used a method of research that respects my knowledge gifted from my Elders and Ancestors. My indigenous ways respected in using Dadirri as a methodology for narrative inquiry in research underpins and informs respect for honouring an indigenous paradigm; with tools within that paradigm to guide and shape my research. My cultural ways of knowing, my guidance in reciprocal and respectful relationships, talking together in circles, telling stories in conversations, and understanding community are at the core of these ways of knowing. My quilts crafted with multiple layers of knowledge offer the community a visual representation of the journey. They share the narrative and knowledge in conversations and in stories. They are relational and interrelated and they interpret the issues from my ways of knowing. This is a story I have shared with others already who believed in the possibilities for a Woolum Bellum School. Like me, they welcomed the challenges, the responsibilities that came with it to our community and Elders. And like me, the community held on to the dream that time and through listening, through learning and with knowledge, the possibility remains.

Le Feeling-of-Knowing (FOK) traduit l'expérience subjective de posséder une information en mémoire alors que l'on ne peut pas y accéder actuellement. Le jugement de FOK est une fonction métamnésique permettant d'évaluer l'état de sa mémoire lors de la récupération. Les capacités d'évaluation mnésique sont centrales pour guider la régulation du fonctionnement mnésique. L'objectif de ce travail était d'étudier les mécanismes à la base de la précision des jugements de FOK en mémoire épisodique. Trois expériences ont été menées afin d'examiner les effets de l'âge et de la division de l'attention lors des phases d'encodage, de rappel et de jugements de FOK sur la précision du FOK. Nos résultats révèlent que l'évaluation mnésique est coûteuse en ressources attentionnelles et suggèrent que les différences liées à l'âge sur la précision du FOK seraient dues à une réduction des ressources attentionnelles avec l'âge. La qualité de l'encodage et de l'évaluation mnsésique contribueraient au FOK / Feeling-of-knowing (FOK) represents the subjective experience that information is available in memory while this information cannot be currently accessed. The FOK judgement is a metamemory function that allows monitoring one's memory state in the course of retrieval. The ability to monitor stored information in memory is central to guide the regulation of memory functionning. The aim of this work was to study mechanisms underlying the accuracy of FOK judgements about information stored in episodic memory. Three experiments were conducted in order to examine effects of both aging and divided attention in each phase of an episodic FOK task on metamemory processes. Our findings indicated that monitoring required attentional resources, and supported the idea taht the age-related decline in episodic FOK accuracy was depending on attentional resources limitation associated with aging. The quality of memory encoding and the quality of memory monitoring eem essential to predict accurate FOK

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2007-07-27Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T18:54:36Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 andia_r_me_mar.pdf: 468476 bytes, checksum: d5591c966c80225dbcfe9f9ca0f8582a (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

While (big) data promises immense opportunity, initiatives focused on using data to pursue insight have mixed outcomes. The Management Support Systems (MSS) model summarises what we currently understand within Information Systems (IS) about the implementation and use of systems to improve organisations’ use of data. Adopting an ethnographic approach to observe how practitioners in two contrasting organisations actually generate insight from data, this research challenges the implicit information processing and implementation logics of the MMS model. The pragmatic messiness of pursuing insight is described in two monographs, which reveal the socially constructed nature of data in relation to phenomena, and the importance of data engagement to produce insight. Given that this PhD study also seeks to generate insight from data, it is compared and contrasted reflexively to the two cases observed. While the inquiry logic pursued in this study was made explicit, and was regularly reviewed and challenged, the two cases left this largely implicit. The use of tools is shown to facilitate and constrain inquiry, with related data acting as boundary objects between the different practitioner groups involved. An explanatory framework is presented and used to suggest various enhancements to the MSS model. First, the Problem Space is reframed to reflect the distinct, though interdependent logics involved in inquiry versus realising envisaged benefits from insights. Second, the MSS artefact itself is contextualised and Data Engagement rather than MSS or Tool Use is positioned as central. Third, Data are disentangled from the wider MSS artefact, as a critical, distinct construct. Fourth, an Alignment construct is introduced to address the boundary spanning nature of data initiatives. The thesis also highlights the value of using Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice (CoP) situated learning framework to study data initiatives, and the related value of mapping groups as a technique for further development. Some questions are provided for practitioners to gain a better understanding of data initiatives. Wider implications are also noted for the socio-material theorising of Data, and distinguishing between Data, Information and Knowledge concepts within the IS discipline.

Recent innovation research has paid more attention to investigating innovation in KIBS. The KIBS sector is widely reported to be more innovative than most other services. However, many past studies in this area have focused on R&D when analysing service innovation in KIBS. While some KIBS (typically those classified as Technological-KIBS or T-KIBS) do made substantial investment in R&D, this is however much less the case in many other KIBS (especially in Professional-KIBS/P-KIBS and Creative-KIBS/C-KIBS). This implies that other activities –apart from conventional R&D– may be applicable to understanding service innovation in KIBS. Knowledge management approaches have been introduced in several previous studies of service innovation in KIBS - but these typically see ‘knowledge’ as an object or property. This study argues for, and develops, an alternative ‘knowing’ perspective, which viewing knowledge as embedded in practice. This approach is underpinned by the interactivity and knowledge-intensity characteristics of KIBS. Their services are typically solutions to specific client problems. Knowledge is thus context-dependent and much relevant knowledge is learned in the very local context of practice. This theoretical standpoint is applied in this qualitative research study, exploring the role of knowing in service innovation in KIBS. In so doing, we employ four data sources (i.e. in-depth semi-structured interviews, expert interviews, observation and archival data) and apply the techniques of template analysis to the rich qualitative data that has been generated. We then delve into three analytical exercises. First, we depart from the current theories of service innovation, framing the exploration in the light of the concepts of service innovation dimensions and dynamic capabilities (introduced in the literature review). Second, we analyse what forms of knowing are involved in the process of service innovation. Third, we synthesise the first two analytical exercises to probe on the interrelation between service innovation and knowing in KIBS - what roles do forms of knowing play in service innovation?One major finding of this research is that service innovation and managing knowing in KIBS are interrelated by the fact that knowing is seen as enacted capability, forms of knowing are constituted in the process of service innovation, and this requires particular capabilities. We identify four ways of knowing in which KIBS engage for service innovation. Here, we incorporate the knowledge relatedness factor and the strategic focus to knowing (i.e. exploration or exploitation). These aspects enable this research to put forth the argument that the more the members of KIBS enact their knowing in practice, the better understanding they have towards the practice, the firm and the environment. Such ultimately becomes important for the sustainability of KIBS, not only to meet current market demands, but also to be able to construct new frameworks and thus to influence market development.