In recent years educational researchers have expressed a growing concern about both increased rates of attrition from doctoral programs and the increased time required to compete the doctorate. Many researchers have estimated that upwards of 50% of doctoral students withdraw from their programs prior to completion of degree requirements. Although women’s rates of enrollment have grown significantly over the past decade there is also much evidence to show that women withdraw from doctoral programs of study at higher rates than men. Given these trends there is good reason to examine more closely, factors that influence women’s doctoral degree progress. This study provides an in-depth qualitative examination of the challenges women encounter in pursuing the Ph.D., and the meanings they attribute to their experiences, with the purpose of identifying critical factors that influence women’s doctoral persistence. The study breaks new methodological ground by demonstrating how the Internet, often thought to be a cold and impersonal medium, can be used to conduct in-depth personal interviews that are rich in meaning despite separation of interviewer and interviewees in both place and time. Utilizing grounded theory methodology for analyzing the data, five women Ph.D. candidates and two recent Ph.D. recipients were interviewed over the course of one year (1995). A critical feminist perspective provides the theoretical framework for understanding the women’s learning experiences within the contexts of their institutional and departmental milieux. Findings relating to women’s doctoral persistence emerge through an analysis of electronic mail transcripts and face-to-face interviews. Central to the findings is the illumination of a complex interaction of personal, social and institutional factors that both enhance and detract from women’s doctoral persistence. Eleven elements of a theory of women’s doctoral persistence are put forward. The benefits and limitations of using electronic networks to conduct qualitative inquiry are examined. / Graduate

This research is about a shared journey of being together. It involved thirteen women nurses (including myself) in a process approach to working with data collected through audio transcriptions of conversations during group get-togethers, field notes and journalling over twelve months. The project was conducted in a large acute care metropolitan hospital where the ward staff interests lie in a practice history of the medical specialty of gynaecology and women's health. Prior to commencement ethical approval was gained from both the University and hospital ethics committees. Accessing the group was complicated by the political climate of the hospital, possibly exaggerated further by the health politics across the state of Victoria, at a time of major upheaval characterised by regionalism, rationalisation and debt servicing. In order to ascertain women clinical nurses' constructions of collegiality I adopted an ethnomethodological approach informed by a critical feminist lens to enable the participants to engage in a process of openly ideological inquiry, in critiquing and transforming practice. I felt the choice of methodology had to be consistent with my own ideological position to enable me to be myself (as much as I could) during the project. I wanted to work with women to illuminate the ways in which dominant ideologies had come to be apprehended, inscribed, embodied and/or resisted in the everyday intersubjective realities of participants. The research itself became a site of resistance as the group became aware of how and in what ways their lives had become distorted, while at the same time it collaboratively transformed their individual and collective practice understandings, enabling them to see the self and other anew. Set against the background of dominant discourses on collegiality, women's understandings of collegiality have remained a submerged discourse. Revealed in this work are complex inter-relationships that might be described by some as collegial!, but for others relations amongst these women depict alternative meanings in a rich picture of the fabric of ward life. The participants understand these relations through a connectedness that has empathy as its starting point. In keeping with my commitment to engage with these women I endeavoured to remain faithful to the dialogical approach to this inquiry. Moreover I have brought the voices of the women to the foreground, peeling away the rhizomatic interconnections in and between understandings. What this has meant in terms of the thesis is that the work has become artificially distanced for the purposes of academic requirements. Nevertheless it speaks to the understandings the participants have of their relationships; of the various locations of the visible and invisible voices; of the many landscapes and images, genealogies, subjectivities and multiple selves that inform the selves with(in) others and being-in-relation. Throughout the journey meanings are revealed, revisited and reconstructed. Many nuances comprise the subtexts illuminating the depths of various moral locations underpinning the ways these women engage with one another in practice. The process of the research weaves through multiple positions, conveying the centrality of shared goals, multiple identities, resistances and differences which contribute to a holding environment, a location in which women value one another in their being-in-relation and in which they stand separately yet together.

Background: Due to their abstract nature and lack of real-world application, theory development and testing are often difficult concepts for PhD students to embrace, especially within a virtual learning environment. Although experiential learning is a preferred method, there is a lack of evidence regarding its use in online PhD programs. Method: Four PhD nursing students enrolled in a Foundations of Theory course participated in an innovative experiential learning project designed to introduce the process of theory development and testing. Participants, led by a faculty-researcher, tested the applicability of a conceptual model using the Framework Method with the diary of a Holocaust survivor. Results: This experience increased the learners’ understanding and appreciation of theory development and testing processes as they relate to the nurse scientist’s role. Conclusion: Experiential learning in an online theory course is a viable option to promote learning, student engagement, and professional socialization.

This investigation into certain elements of critical Latin American Literature was prompted by the apparent post-1980s neglect by academics of Anglo-Saxon origin to engage with the state and social class, in the contextual framework of the political economy, as central elements of social analysis. This analytical perspective of the state was marginalised by post-modernism and post-structuralism during the 1980s and 1990s with the state re-defined by contemporary globalisation theorists according to a notion of the nation-state. This constitutes one element of an overaching configuration of power relationa and networks comprising a variety of transnational players who assume political and economic roles to pursue their interests. This designation of players detracts from the centrality of class as an analytical tool, preferring to dwell on notions of power and conflict without pursuing tha analysis to its fundamental origin in a system of control and ownership of resources by dominant transnational corporations. An abandoning of the state as a central conceptual tool has coincided with changes , in the way the role performed by the university is conceptualised, foregrounding symptoms of an ideological intrusion by neoliberal discourse concerning the role of the University, rather than locating the cause. Hence the greater struggle for ideological hegemony that occurs within society, waged by the mass media, as mouthpiece of implementation by agents of transnational financial capital, and progating a neoliberal discourse, seems overlooked.

This investigation into certain elements of critical Latin American Literature was prompted by the apparent post-1980s neglect by academics of Anglo-Saxon origin to engage with the state and social class, in the contextual framework of the political economy, as central elements of social analysis. This analytical perspective of the state was marginalised by post-modernism and post-structuralism during the 1980s and 1990s with the state re-defined by contemporary globalisation theorists according to a notion of the nation-state. This constitutes one element of an overaching configuration of power relationa and networks comprising a variety of transnational players who assume political and economic roles to pursue their interests. This designation of players detracts from the centrality of class as an analytical tool, preferring to dwell on notions of power and conflict without pursuing tha analysis to its fundamental origin in a system of control and ownership of resources by dominant transnational corporations. An abandoning of the state as a central conceptual tool has coincided with changes , in the way the role performed by the university is conceptualised, foregrounding symptoms of an ideological intrusion by neoliberal discourse concerning the role of the University, rather than locating the cause. Hence the greater struggle for ideological hegemony that occurs within society, waged by the mass media, as mouthpiece of implementation by agents of transnational financial capital, and progating a neoliberal discourse, seems overlooked.

Magister Educationis - MEd / This investigation into certain elements of critical Latin American Literature was prompted by the apparent post-1980s neglect by academics of Anglo-Saxon origin to engage with the state and social class, in the contextual framework of the political economy, as central elements of social analysis. This analytical perspective of the state was marginalised by post-modernism and post-structuralism during the 1980s and 1990s with the state re-defined by contemporary globalisation theorists according to a notion of the nation-state. This constitutes one element of an overaching configuration of power relationa and networks comprising a variety of transnational players who assume political and economic roles to pursue their interests. This designation of players detracts from the centrality of class as an analytical tool, preferring to dwell on notions of power and conflict without pursuing tha analysis to its fundamental origin in a system of control and ownership of resources by dominant transnational corporations. An abandoning of the state as a central conceptual tool has coincided with changes , in the way the role performed by the university is conceptualised, foregrounding symptoms of an ideological intrusion by neoliberal discourse concerning the role of the University, rather than locating the cause. Hence the greater struggle for ideological hegemony that occurs within society, waged by the mass media, as mouthpiece of implementation by agents of transnational financial capital, and progating a neoliberal discourse, seems overlooked. / South Africa

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T14:16:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fumikazu Saito.pdf: 10989609 bytes, checksum: 339ee2687abdfdc808fbb99663c1ebfb (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-05-19 / Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo / This work discusses the relationship between instrument and sensorial or perceptive experience in the light of Giambattista della Porta s natural magic and the 17th century natural philosophy. It points out to factors that made of the telescope a natural magic device, by approaching to the design of Galileo Galilei s instrument. Analysis is centered on De telescopio, De refractione optices parte libri novem and Magiae naturalis libri XX by Della Porta and Sidereus nuncius by Galileu, as primary sources. This study allowed to realize that the expansion of the visual capacity achieved through instruments and devices was not merely related to philosophical strategies that would lead to mistrust naked-eye observation or mathematization of seeing by 15th century linear perspective. Among other features involved in the change of views regarding the observation of nature, the recognition of the sharper visual perception achieved through instruments was also associated to natural magic s manipulation of seeing / Este estudo discute a relação do instrumento com a experiência sensória ou perceptiva sob a perspectiva da magia natural de Giambattista della Porta e da filosofia natural do século XVII. Aponta-se, desse modo, para os indícios que fizeram do telescópio um aparato de magia natural, dialogando com a concepção do instrumento de Galileu Galilei. Foram selecionados para análise o De telescopio, o De refractione optices parte libri novem e a Magiae naturalis libri XX de Della Porta e o Sidereus nuncius de Galileu, como fontes primárias. Por meio deste estudo, observou-se que a ampliação da capacidade visual, por meio de aparatos e instrumentos, não estava apenas relacionada a certas estratégias de natureza filosófica, que fizeram desacreditar na observação a olho nu, nem à matematização do olhar proposta pela perspectiva linear do século XV. Além de outros aspectos relacionados à mudança de atitude em relação à observação da natureza, o reconhecimento de uma percepção visual mais aguda, por meio de instrumentos, estava também relacionado com a proposta da magia natural de manipular o olhar