The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of ambiguous visual stimuli in art instruction with ninth grade girl art students on the four divergent thinking abilities of fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration, as measured by Torrance's Tests of Creative Thinking, Figural Forms (1966).The research hypothesis was formulated as follows: Students exposed to ambiguous visual stimuli in art will exhibit a greater increase in divergent thinking abilities than students exposed to non-ambiguous visual stimuli.A group of 40 freshmen high school girls studying art at West Philadelphia Catholic Girls' High School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the 1969-1970 school year, constituted the sample of subjects for the study. These subjects were matched for IQ and previous art teacher, then randomized into two treatment groups. The assignment of the ambiguous stimuli treatment to one group was done at random by the researcher. The second group thus became the non-ambiguous stimuli treatment group.The art instruction given to both treatment groups consisted of projects in design, watercolor painting, print-making, and the production of 2 x 2 acetate transparencies. A variety of materials were used. The study lasted nine weeks, averaging 4 meetings weekly, with 42 minutes per meeting.Each treatment group was exposed to a separate set of slides during the art classroom activities. One set, the ambiguous visual stimuli, contained 51 slides of the Rorschach "projective" and the Gestalt "figure-ground" ambiguity types. The non-ambiguous visual stimuli set of 45 slides was composed of representational or non-abstract pictures, paintings, designs, etc.The two art instructors for the study exchanged places with each other several times during the nine weeks in order to minimize any possible differences due to teacher "style" and/or personality.The results of the study showed high positive correlations between the factors of fluency and flexibility, moderate to high correlations between fluency and originality, and between flexibility and originality, with low positive correlation between elaboration and the other three factors.There was no statistically significant difference between the scores of the two treatment groups on Torrance's Tests of Creative Thinking, Figural Forms. The ambiguous visual stimuli-treatment group, however, showed significant net mean gains on fluency and originality. No significant net mean gains were made by the non-ambiguous visual stimuli treatment group.The conclusions drawn from the findings are:1. Torrance's Tests do not seem to be measuring four distinct factors; to know an individual's flexibility score is to know her fluency and originality scores.2. A Gestalt-like figural flexibility factor, similar to the "spontaneous" flexibility of Guilford, seems to be the factor or ability being measured by the Tests.3. The use of Rorschach "projective" ambiguity and Gestalt "figure-ground" ambiguity in art instruction with ninth grade girls does not inhibit growth in divergent thinking abilities.4. High school girl subjects in an art instructional setting are not adversely affected on divergent thinking measures by either ambiguous or non-ambiguous visual stimuli.Recommendations for further research included:1. Replication of this study, employing a randomized sample of boys and girls (or boys only), restricting the visual stimuli to the Gestalt "figure-ground" ambiguity, administering several measures of divergent thinking, increasing the treatment time and exposure to the visual stimuli, and evaluating the art products of the subjects.2. Continued utilization in art education research of Guilford's "Structure-.of-Intellect" model, with particular emphasis on the figural content of the divergent thinking (production) operation.

The purpose of the study was to determine the effects of body posture, task time, and attitudes toward drawing and problem-solving on the ideational fluency of two experimental groups and one control group of student draftsmen. The drawings produced were assessed on the basis of the quantity and quality of ideas generated during a specific drawing task.Five major questions were under investigation. Hypotheses were developed to determine whether significant differences existed (1) in the quantity or quality of ideational fluency between the three groups; (2) in the groups' attitudes toward drawing and problem-solving or their background experiences in art and teaching; (3) between the judges' responses to a series of fifteen bipolar scales which were used to assess judge strategies; (4) between the rate of idea generation for' any group; (5) in the interaction between time interval and posture for any group. Drawings produced for a forty-five minute task session and responses to a two-part questionnaire designed for the study provided the data. A team of five expert judges individually rated the quantity and quality of production of a seven-point scale and responded to the drawings via fifteen bipolar scales of the semantic differential type.A random sample of fifty-seven subjects was drawn from a population of seventy-three students enrolled in three sections of a personal development course in art for non-art elementary education majors. Sections were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups.The statistical treatments employed were: (1) One-way analyses of variance were computed to determine whether variances were in effect for (a) the groups' responses to the questionnaire, (b) groups' quantitative production, and (c) groups' qualitative production. (2) A two-way analysis of variance was computed to determine whether any variances occurred between the groups' production rates for nine time intervals and to test interaction between interval and group. (3) T tests for unequal means were used to determine which between group comparison(s) contributed to differences obtained for (a) quantity and (b) quality of production. (4) Multiple regressions were computed for each judge's quantity and quality ratings with the samples' responses to the questionnaire. (b) Pearson product-moment correlations were obtained for each judge's quantity and quality ratings with his responses to scales of the semantic differential.Significant differences in both the quantity and quality of ideation were found between the groups. The effects of posture and task time, and the interaction effects of time and posture were significant. These effects were confounded, apparently by teacher factors that were not detectable through the questionnaire. The draftsmen rated high on the quantity measure were, for the most part, not the same draftsmen as were rated high on quality.The multiple regression analyses indicated the following factors have significant predictive value for the quantity of ideation: (1) exposure to art programs at the senior high level and exposure to certain college-level art courses; (2) an approach to problem-solving that is neither chaotic nor doggedly systematic; (3) an indication that the draftsman does not react irritably to persons who are more ideationally fluent. These factors had significant predictive value for the quality of ideational fluency: (1) the draftsman's indication that his approach to problem-solving is relaxed and systematic, is not aided by isolated meditation but rather by involvement in other activity; (2) an indication that it is unwise or unproductive to plunge oneself into problem situations; (3) an indication that the draftsman would react both with admiration and irritability to someone more ideationally fluent.

This essay examines how female authors are described in the literary canon of two different editions of the Swedish education material on the history of literature: Svenska Timmar – litteraturen. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the depiction of female authors has changed from the first edition (1991) to the last edition (2012), and how these changes correspond with the curriculums Lgy70 and Lgy11. The study is quantitative as well as qualitative. The quantitative part of the study shows that the percentage of female authors has increased in the 2012 edition. A greater number of female authors are also portrayed with pictures and headings. This increase is partly explained by the new curriculum, Lgy11, which demands that female authors should be included in the history of literature. This was not the case with Lgy70. The qualitative part of the study contains a feminist and gender analysis, examining how a “gender system” produces and reproduces a dichotomy and hierarchy between the sexes, where the male is norm and the female deviates from this norm. This section shows that, despite the increased number of female authors, their portrayal still differs from that of the male authors. For example, the literary work of women is likely to be categorized as “female literature”, which signals that it is not considered as general as the men’s work. This is, in my conclusion, a way to reproduce the gender system of the literary canon.

Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school. The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils’ reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon. The pupils also had to complete a questionnaire about their reading habits, how they go about understanding the texts better, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons. The pupils were interviewed to yield a little more information about how they comprehended the two different types of text. The study was conducted at two high schools geared to pupils with ASD, including a total of twelve pupils. Four of these pupils were also interviewed. The result of the reading comprehension tests show that the majority of the pupils found it easier to answer the questions about the factual text. The pupils who read a lot and are interested in reading achieved better results in both text assignments. There was a clear association between the pupils who have difficulties concentrating and finishing a book and their results on the reading comprehension tasks, which can be explained by their functional impairment. The result of the pupils’ questionnaire showed that they use different strategies when reading factual texts and literary texts. There were also differences in how the pupils work with different texts in school, both individually and together with other pupils, depending on which type of text it is. The help that pupils receive from their teachers can be limited by the pupils’ functional impairment, but according to the study this help is significant for the pupils’ reading comprehension, especially of literary texts.

A large part of the extant criticism of Evelyn Waugh's fiction is orientated towards either a biographical or a literary-historical interest: there are comparatively few detailed surveys of the novels themselves. This study attempts such a survey, and in particular examines the tension which inheres in the relationship of Waugh's poised, urbane narrators to the social and moral chaos they depict. I have been interested in the source and management of that poise, the testing, as it were to destruction, of a series of narrative positions. There is a very modern equation to be observed in Waugh's fiction, between the potentially anarchic mode of fiction and what Waugh felt to be the actual anarchy of contemporary civilisation. His novels can with interest be read in terms of a comic exploitation of this equation, and subsequently, as the writer aged, of his attempts to evade its logic, to discover a 'voice of authority'. Apparently secure narrative stances are repeatedly undermined, and a succession of 'realities' compromised - Tony Last's, William Boot's, John Plant's, Guy Crouchback's. It is this awareness and exploitation of the reflexive quality of fiction, and its use in disclosing the nature of his age which lends Waugh's writing its real and enduring interest. I seek to draw out this awareness through detailed examination of the different novels' precise narrative stance, the source of their 'voice', and have been largely content to let stand other commentators' descriptions of Waugh's broader thesis. My method involves close attention to Waugh's language, from the conviction that nuances of tone and the development of marginal allusions and metaphors are the keys to many of his characteristic effects.

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This master's thesis in creative writing is divided into two parts. The first constitutes a critical analysis of "minimalist" writing, a term which has been used to describe the work of certain contemporary American writers but which might equally be applied to a portion of the world literature. This literary form has two fundamental characteristics from an aesthetic point of view: brevity and realism. In fact, it could be defined as the short story taken to its ultimate expression. Furthermore, it represents one of two poles by which we can evaluate all literature. The second part of the thesis is a collection of short stories which embody the minimalist aesthetic with everyday life and relationships between couples as their central theme.

This thesis represents the first full-scale, English commentary on the opening book of Lucan�s epic poem, De Bello Ciuili, in sixty-five years. Its fundamental purpose is to explain the language and content of the Latin text of the book. The subject matter of the thesis beyond the introduction is naturally dependent upon the content of each individual line under consideration, but the following questions may help establish some of the larger issues I have prioritised throughout my response to the Latin text of book one. These questions may be variously relevant to an episode within book one of De Bello Ciuili, or else a sentence, a line, a word, a metrical issue, or a combination of these. How does it help locate the text within the genre of epic? What does it contribute to the overall meaning of the poem? What does it contribute to our understanding of epic narrative technique? What does it contribute to our understanding of Lucan�s poetic usage and technique? How does it interact with the rest of the poem (i.e. what are the structural or intratextual markers advertised and what do they contribute to the meaning of the passage under consideration or the structure of the book or poem as a whole)? How does it interact with its (especially epic) models (i.e. what intertextual markers are at work and how does the invocation of earlier models affect the meaning of the passage under consideration)? How does it behave in relation to what we know of the norms espoused by Classical literary criticism? What are the programmatic issues, themes, and images explored or established by book one?

Narratives of place have always been crucial to the construction of Australian identity. The obsession with identity in Australia betrays longstanding uncertainty. It is not difficult to interpret in this uncertainty a replaying of the deeper insecurities surrounding the settler community's legal and more broadly cultural claims to the land. Such insecurities are typically understood negatively. In contrast, this thesis accepts the uncertainty of identity as an activating principle, appropriate to any interpretation of the narratives and themes that inform what it means to be Australian. Fundamental to this uncertainty is a provisionality in the post-colonial experience of place that is papered over by misleadingly coherent spatial narratives that stem from the imperial inheritance of Australian mythology. Place is a model for the tension between the coherence of mythic narratives and the actual rhizomic formlessness of daily life. Place is the ???ground??? of that life, but an ambivalent ground. An Ambivalent Ground approaches postcolonial Australia as a densely woven text. In this text, stories that describe the founding of a nation are enveloped by other stories, not so well known, that work to transform those more familiar narratives. ???Re-placing Australian literature??? describes the process of this transformation. It signifies an interpretative practice which seeks to recuperate the open-ended experience of place that remains disguised by the coherent narratives of nationhood. The process of ???re-placing??? Australian literature shifts the understanding of nation towards a landscape that speaks not so much about identity as about the constitutive performances of everyday life. It also converges with the unhomely dimension that is the colonist's ambiguous sense of belonging. We can understand this process with an analogy used in this thesis, that of music ??? the colonising language, and noise ??? the ostensibly inchoate, unformed background disruptive to cultural order yet revealing the spatial realities of place. Traditionally, cultural narratives in Australia have disguised the much more complex way in which place noisily disrupts and diffracts those narratives, and in the process generates the ambivalence of Australian identity. Rather than a text or a narrative, place is a plenitude, a densely intertwined performance space, a performance that constantly renders experience ??? and its cultural function ??? transgressive. The purpose of this thesis is not to displace stereotypical narratives of nationhood with yet another narrative. Rather, it offers the more risky proposition that provisionality and uncertainty are constitutive features of Australian social being. The narrative in the thesis represents an aggregation of such an ambivalent ground, addressing the persistent tension between place and the larger drama of colonialist history and discourse.

This research has taken place at a time when governments in Australia, like governments throughout the Western world, have given higher priority to funding teachers’ professional learning. This support for teachers’ learning tends to be informed by standards-based ‘reforms’ of schooling, underpinned by narrowly individualistic paradigms of teacher knowledge and enacted in managerial models of professional development. The effectiveness of this ‘PD’ for individual teachers tends to be measured in rigid accountability regimes. My study is a conceptual, grounded and reflexive inquiry into teachers’ professional learning in Victoria, Australia. Central to the study is a multi-levelled account of a small group of English-literature teachers at Eastern Girls’ College, in Melbourne, Australia, learning about literary theory over a period of fourteen months. These teachers operate within an institutional setting in which they are certainly expected to be accountable in managerial terms, and yet they can be seen negotiating a very different paradigm of professional learning. In my account of their learning in this study, I develop a model of inquiry-based professional learning that offers a richly dialogic alternative to narrowly individualistic paradigms of professional knowledge and professional development.