This thesis speculates on the relationship between adults’ perceptions of children and the types of environments adults have traditionally provided for children. Its examination includes the ramifications of human perceptions on the environment. This study places special emphasis upon those ramifications in regard to their effects on the environment’s ability to fulfill children’s developmental needs. The outcome of the study is the proposal of new attitudes and perceptions by which the environment could be more responsive to and respectful of children. / Department of Landscape Architecture

In December 1925, Vladimir Nabokov said that "everything in the world plays" and that "everything good in life - love, nature, the arts and domestic puns - is play." This thesis argues that, after December 1925, play was Nabokov's leading idea. Previous critics have spoken of Nabokov as a playful writer but have not drawn on the untranslated early Russian texts; have rarely discussed the actual games depicted in his novels; and have been vague on what it means to call Nabokov a playful writer. This thesis argues that Nabokov's novels after 1925 are all playful or game-like in different ways related to the games they depict, and become ever more radically so. It provides a chronological narrative of play as the evolving subject and style of Nabokov's writing. The first chapter discusses the sources of Nabokov's idea of aesthetic play in Kant, Schiller, and Nietzsche. The second chapter traces the emergence of play in Nabokov's earliest writings, from 1918 to 1925, isolating the themes of play of self, play as make-believe, and play as violence. The third chapter looks at how in King, Queen, Knave (1927) and The Luzhin Defense (1930), Nabokov adopted the scheme of Lewis CarrolPs two Alice books, first using cards as an image of play and freedom, then chess as an image of rule and game. The fourth chapter shows that in the 1930s Nabokov wrote about play in contrast to work, and deals with Glory (1931), Despair (1934), Invitation to a Beheading (1935-6), and The Gift (1937-8; 1952). The fifth chapter is about free play in Nabokov's American writing, and emphasises the influence of Joyce's Finnegans Wake. It covers Bend Sinister (1947), Speak, Memory (1951; 1967), Lolita (1955) and Ada (1969). The sixth chapter argues that Pale Fire (1962) belongs to the genre of the literary game, and is in complex intertextual relation to a previous literary game, Pope's Dunciad.

This thesis is about the role played by story telling in a Metropolitan Police Probationer Classroom in South London in the early 1990s. The method used is one of discourse analysis of the type advocated by Potter and Wetherall, 1987):The form and function of themes, role-plays, case studies, anecdotes and hypothetical accounts are considered in this setting. The central argument here is that all these types of story are used to introduce an element of work place practice into the classroom context. This serves to motivate the students to learn by emphasising the relevance of the lesson material. Such motivation gives rise to student involvement in the classroom activity. In this way, the pedagogical goals of experiential learning and student involvement are achieved and a broader cultural value favouring practice over theory is realised. As with all stories, themes, role-plays, case studies and hypothetical accounts are subject to the constraint of verisimilitude. This thesis suggests that the way in which verisimilitude is defined and applied in any given setting is highly context dependent. In this setting, verisimilitude focuses on the cognitive and task oriented elements of experiences that the students are thought to be likely to encounter in their work place. Stories that deviate from this focus might result in the students becoming bored or distracted; this may result in a situation in which the objectives of the curriculum are not met. For these reasons, trainers endeavour to control the use of stories by influencing every aspect of their telling. The rigour with which this definition of verisimilitude is applied in this setting varies according to the type of the story to be told and the lesson material in which it is to be used. Judgements of verisimilitude are more rigorous when stories that are likely to exert high attentional or emotional demands on the students are used.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 88-97). Also available via the World Wide Web; access restricted to SCU.

Thesis (MA--Art and Design) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2005. / Also held in print (93 leaves, col. ill., 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection. (T 004.019 SOE)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Dec., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1991. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 27-30). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 448-460). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 149-156). Also available online (PDF file) by a subscription to the set or by purchasing the individual file.