During the last several years, a fast growing interest in minimalist chic has been observed among fashion bloggers around the world. Many of them mention being tired of trends, a shift to inner values and a desire for more simplicity as a moving cause. Buying behaviour that is assumed to be sustainable requires a paradigm shift away from unbridled consumerism towards more mindful consumption. Understanding the current minimalist trend is a key to determining if in fact a paradigm shift is taking place, since that would have direct relevance for future fashion business models. This research aims to research and identify the motivations behind the changed way of dressing. It is discussed whether the new aesthetic is an indicator of an actual cultural shift. Finally, real minimalism is differentiated from the phenomenon of “faux-minimalism”. Specific attention is paid to the question whether a more simplistic wardrobe can lead to emotional liberation and increased happiness. 30 fashion blogs associated with minimalist style were observed to gather data that can give insights into the motivating causes for the phenomenon. To answer further questions, eight bloggers were interviewed. The gathered data from both observations and interviews was analysed and showed that the main reasons for minimalist style are both practical as well as emotional. On one hand, the bloggers cited limited space and finite financial resources. On the other hand, they discussed a desire to live a decelerated, simpler, more “authentic” life that prioritizes “being” rather than “having”.

The work has basically three aims: 1st to map the wide range of various approaches in the current debate about madness, 2nd to formulate a specific theory of madness, 3rd to identify general philosophical problems the topic brings about, (a 4th aim is also outlined: to understand the presented theory in terms of therapeutic potential). The central thesis of this work is that insanity is an inherently ambiguous and elusive phenomenon and that trying to understand it we are using various metaphors borrowed from other areas, and consequently forget their metaphorical nature. The work is generally motivated by an effort to reconcile conflicting approaches, to understand them as complementary. It also wants to avoid creating an all-embracing synthesis on the one hand, and purely relativistic and pragmatic viewpoint on the other hand. The first part identifies four levels on which particular approaches understand madness as a problem: the level of the individual, the level of the collective, the transpersonal level and the existential level. At the end of the part, I discuss the possibilities and risks of creating a theoretical framework that would enable to understand various contradictory approaches on a common basis. In the second part, I develop my own analysis of madness. It is based on a...

One of the overarching goals for military aircraft sustainment is to keep a high proportion of aircraft available despite the need for maintenance. Traditional solutions to this problem require conservative resource estimates, but this is costly. In recent years an overall paradigm shift towards affordability has created pressure to find other options for achieving high values of fleet level metrics. Past efforts at increasing affordability have had mixed success, and as a result such strategies need to be tested early on in the lifetime of a product, ideally before the product is ever fielded. In order to provide the ability to evaluate the effects of sustainment decisions such as different maintenance paradigms and cost goals, this thesis develops a sustainment modeling environment, known as Sustain-ME, to facilitate open analysis based on the best information available. The goal of creating Sustain-ME is to allow decision makers to define a sustainment scenario and compare different decisions of interest on a common basis. Sustain-ME is a discrete event simulation, which means it efficiently provides a reasonable prediction of operational behavior. This thesis describes the information used to construct Sutain-ME, including the assumptions made for many of the parameters of the modeled sustainment process. It next verifies the behavior of the different elements that make up the sustainment model including operations, maintenance, maintenance paradigms, and the supply chain. Finally a methodology for using SustainME is defined and a demonstration of the types of studies Sustain-ME was built to perform is shown. The demonstration compares three different maintenance paradigms: reactive maintenance, condition based maintenance, and a novel CBM paradigm known as CBM-MiMOSA.

Sustainability has become a buzz word of our time, although our developed world community is still coming to terms with what the word really means. Universities and polytechnics in Aotearoa New Zealand will have to change in many ways before sustainability can be considered to occupy a meaningful place in the tertiary education sector. However the change process that sees an organisation moving towards sustainability is complex, and agency for change can be considered on many different levels including the individual identities of staff and students, the identity of managers, and the programme and wider organisational identities constructed by the communities that comprise them. This qualitative research explores education for sustainability within the context of outdoor education using the Bachelor of Adventure Recreation and Outdoor Education (BRecEd) at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT) (the programme into which the author teaches) as a case study. Participatory action research forms the overarching methodology for a multiple method approach to data collection. The research leans heavily on the lived experiences of staff and students within the programme, is woven with my own reflections, and incorporates many examples of students’ work. The weaving together of these experiences grounds the research and helps bring theory to life. The research reveals the complexity of change towards more sustainable ways of practising outdoor education in an organisational setting. It explores the tensions that are encountered and mechanisms that have allowed for staff and students to engage in education for sustainability in a more meaningful way. The key themes of the research explore the intersection of identity construction processes and change agency, and it is argued these processes are inseparable for those concerned with organisational change towards sustainability.

A higher share of renewable energy in power generation is one of most ambitious goals for sustainable development under the increasing pressure of climate change. On the deregulated electricity market in Sweden, the consumers are able to choose their electricity from a specific supplier and a specific energy source, which gives them the opportunity to execute their consumer power to have positive impacts on increasing energy efficiency and renewable electricity generation by stopping buying electricity produced from fossil fuels. A new paradigm is thus proposed in this paper which provides a new perspective on purchase of the product electricity. The new paradigm makes electricity a specified product for a specific customer, the electricity audited is never mixed with that not audited, because all electricity which is audited can be traced. The aim of this study is to provide a greater understanding of the new paradigm on the deregulated electricity market. By conducting a willingness to pay survey and several deep interviews, it analyzed the main factors hindering the customers’understanding of the new market dynamics in terms of active choice in ‘green’ electricity and stopping buying fossil electricity. The results and discussions show that the new paradigm could facilitate shedding light on some important implications for strategic decision making in power companies, for policy-makers as well as customers.

This thesis investigates and discusses the current design approaches and development trends of urban streets in China. As the methodological focus, multiple case studies and interviews are used to examine actual street design practice to identify the development policy bias of local governments. Since the 1990s, the great economic achievement in most Chinese cities has evoked significant growth in the number of automobiles, as well as the increasingly serious problems of road casualties and congestion. The traffic-engineering-based design approach which used to be widely adopted and implemented in western countries has dominated the development patterns of urban streets in modern China. The conventional paradigm exclusively focuses on the traffic function in urban streets resulting in morphological changes to the urban circulation environment and keeps on neglecting non-vehicular movement and non-traffic needs. The automobile- dominated urban circulation environment has had negative economic, social and public health impacts. Thus, a paradigm shift which calls for a more inclusive design approach for urban streets which balances functions of place and movement is urgently needed in China. To determine the challenges and opportunities for the new paradigm, this research identifies the cultural, political and technical factors for the traffic-centred design trends and the policy bias. Based on this, policy recommendations and an agenda for revolutionary change for achieving better design practice for urban streets in post-modern China are suggested.

This study addresses the extent to which feminist jurisprudence literature has developed the potential to initiate a legal paradigm shift leading to legal and consequent social change that would alleviate gender inequality. Drawing upon Kuhn's (1970) and Stacey and Thorne's (1985) arguments, I theorized that for a paradigm shift centered upon women and women's experiences to occur, feminist jurisprudence, particularly second- and third-phase feminist jurisprudence, needs to be incorporated into, and accepted by the mainstream. Through quantitative analysis I evaluated, first, the publication and citation patterns and the diffusion of feminist jurisprudence litearature as evidenced in articles published between the years 1983 and 1994 in legal journals assigned impact factors by the Social Science Citation Index. Second, using content analysis, I classified feminist jurisprudence articles published in the subfields of family and penal law --theorized to differ in degree of androcentrism-- according to the three phases of feminist jurisprudence theory. My quantitative analysis showed that the number of feminist jurisprudence articles published in mainstream legal journals is increasing over time. Further, feminist jurisprudence articles published in legal journals with higher impact factors tend to receive larger numbers of citations than articles published in journals with lower impact factors. Finally, although the overall impact factor of journals publishing feminist jurisprudence articles is declining, feminist jurisprudence literature is present among a wide spectrum of legal specializations. My qualitative analysis showed that there was an equivalent number of family and penal law articles which exhibited second- and third-phase characteristics. However, family law articles tended to cover a wider range of topics than penal law articles. Furthermore, family law scholars were more likely than penal law scholars to address issues of differences among women and feminists, thus, exhibiting third-phase characteristics. In constrast, penal law scholars tended to focus upon differences between feminists and non-feminists and the practical difficulties resulting from the structure, organization and practitioners of the criminal justice. Overall, my analysis showed that feminist jurisprudence appears to have developed the potential to initiate a paradigm shift within the legal discipline. However, in addition to feminist theorizing, feminist activism is important for the realization of legal and social changes that will alleviate gender inequality. / Ph. D.

The shift of educational paradigm, analyzed in the dissertation, is determined by the cultural changes, globalization and the reality of vocational training in independent Lithuania, which are inherent for the present epoch. At an institution of higher education this context is manifested by the modernization of studies, which is qualified as a strategy of educational paradigm shift and analyzed in terms of the peculiarities of vocational training theory and practice. The latter two factors are revealed by exploring the peculiarities and relations of the theory and practice of vocational training. The practical purposefulness of studies is emphasized in college training of future specialists. In the dissertation it is qualified as a strategy of the modernization of studies. The peculiarities of vocational training, teaching of art subjects and art education are analyzed with regard to the shift of educational paradigms. It appears that in the modernization of studies it is relevant to withdraw from conventional teaching, which is oriented towards narrow subject aims, and switch to profession-oriented art education. Therefore, profession-oriented art education is presented as a strategy of modernizing art subject studies. Theoretical models of a future specialist’s vocational training, traditional teaching of a subject (music) and contemporary art (music) education are presented, which cover the areas of subject studies, environment, scope of roles and activities. The... [to full text] / Disertacijoje nagrinėjamą edukacinių paradigmų virsmą lemia dabartiniam laikotarpiui būdingi kultūros pokyčiai, globalizacija ir profesinio rengimo tikrovė nepriklausomybę atkūrusioje Lietuvoje. Aukštojoje mokykloje toks kontekstas pasireiškia studijų modernizavimu, kuris disertacijoje vertinamas kaip edukacinių paradigmų virsmo strategija ir nagrinėjamas profesinio rengimo teorijos bei jos įgyvendinimo praktikos plotme. Tai atskleidžiama nagrinėjant profesinio rengimo teorijos ir praktikos ypatybes bei ryšius. Rengiant būsimus specialistus kolegijoje akcentuojamas praktinis studijų kryptingumas. Disertacijoje jis vertintas kaip studijų modernizavimo strategija. Išnagrinėtos laikotarpiui būdingos profesinio rengimo, meno dalykų mokymo ir meninio ugdymo ypatybės atsižvelgiant į edukacinių paradigmų virsmą parodė, kad modernizuojant meno dalykų studijas tikslinga atsisakyti į siaurus dalyko pažinimo tikslus orientuoto tradicinio mokymo ir jį keisti į profesiniu požiūriu orientuotą meninį ugdymą. Todėl profesiniu požiūriu kryptingas meninis ugdymas pristatytas kaip meno dalykų studijų modernizavimo strategija. Pristatyti būsimo specialisto profesinio rengimo, tradicinio dalykų (muzikos) mokymo ir šiuolaikiško meninio (muzikinio) ugdymo teoriniai modeliai, apimantys dalyko studijų, aplinkos, vaidmenų spektro ir veiklos sritis. Ištirtos galimybės ugdymo dalyviams koreguoti meno dalykų studijas ir profesiniu požiūriu aktualų veiklos kontekstą taikant šiuos modelius, o studijų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Disertacijoje nagrinėjamą edukacinių paradigmų virsmą lemia dabartiniam laikotarpiui būdingi kultūros pokyčiai, globalizacija ir profesinio rengimo tikrovė nepriklausomybę atkūrusioje Lietuvoje. Aukštojoje mokykloje toks kontekstas pasireiškia studijų modernizavimu, kuris disertacijoje vertinamas kaip edukacinių paradigmų virsmo strategija ir nagrinėjamas profesinio rengimo teorijos bei jos įgyvendinimo praktikos plotme. Tai atskleidžiama nagrinėjant profesinio rengimo teorijos ir praktikos ypatybes bei ryšius. Rengiant būsimus specialistus kolegijoje akcentuojamas praktinis studijų kryptingumas. Disertacijoje jis vertintas kaip studijų modernizavimo strategija. Išnagrinėtos laikotarpiui būdingos profesinio rengimo, meno dalykų mokymo ir meninio ugdymo ypatybės atsižvelgiant į edukacinių paradigmų virsmą parodė, kad modernizuojant meno dalykų studijas tikslinga atsisakyti į siaurus dalyko pažinimo tikslus orientuoto tradicinio mokymo ir jį keisti į profesiniu požiūriu orientuotą meninį ugdymą. Todėl profesiniu požiūriu kryptingas meninis ugdymas pristatytas kaip meno dalykų studijų modernizavimo strategija. Pristatyti būsimo specialisto profesinio rengimo, tradicinio dalykų (muzikos) mokymo ir šiuolaikiško meninio (muzikinio) ugdymo teoriniai modeliai, apimantys dalyko studijų, aplinkos, vaidmenų spektro ir veiklos sritis. Ištirtos galimybės ugdymo dalyviams koreguoti meno dalykų studijas ir profesiniu požiūriu aktualų veiklos kontekstą taikant šiuos modelius, o studijų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The shift of educational paradigm, analyzed in the dissertation, is determined by the cultural changes, globalization and the reality of vocational training in independent Lithuania, which are inherent for the present epoch. At an institution of higher education this context is manifested by the modernization of studies, which is qualified as a strategy of educational paradigm shift and analyzed in terms of the peculiarities of vocational training theory and practice. The latter two factors are revealed by exploring the peculiarities and relations of the theory and practice of vocational training. The practical purposefulness of studies is emphasized in college training of future specialists. In the dissertation it is qualified as a strategy of the modernization of studies. The peculiarities of vocational training, teaching of art subjects and art education are analyzed with regard to the shift of educational paradigms. It appears that in the modernization of studies it is relevant to withdraw from conventional teaching, which is oriented towards narrow subject aims, and switch to profession-oriented art education. Therefore, profession-oriented art education is presented as a strategy of modernizing art subject studies. Theoretical models of a future specialist’s vocational training, traditional teaching of a subject (music) and contemporary art (music) education are presented, which cover the areas of subject studies, environment, scope of roles and activities. The... [to full text]

This study is centred on transformation towards sustainable living. It investigated how global education prepares learners to live a sustainable lifestyle. To explore this area, the concept of sustainability, global education and transformative learning were critically examined, with a view to finding their relationships. Literature on sustainability, transformative learning and global education were reviewed to find out how their relationships impact on international students learning about sustainable living. The focus of the thesis is on environmental sustainability, especially through management of anthropogenic factors. The mixed methods research, involving the collection of quantitative and qualitative data was employed for the study. Quantitative data collection was done using survey instruments while qualitative data collection was through face-to-face interview of research participants. Each set of data was collected and analysed separately. The outcomes of the analysis of the two sets of data were integrated at the stage of discussion of findings. The aim of the study was to find out whether global education transforms learners towards sustainable living. Findings from the study showed that global education field transforms students towards sustainable living. Evidence from the study suggests that global education help students to acquire the skills and knowledge required for living sustainably. Also, the actions and behaviours of international students were found to be influenced more towards sustainable lifestyle than those from the host country. The degree of transformation students experience was measured by attitude change, intention to change and actions of students toward the environment. This study contributed to the conceptual understanding of the relationship between global education and transformation of learners towards sustainable living. It made both theoretical and practical contribution to knowledge. The findings from the study will be of benefit to different impact groups. These groups include business organisations, policy makers in government, educational institutions, and individuals.