The aim of the present study was to investigate the role of metacognition as a mediator of the relationship between smoking dependence and depression/anxiety/ negative impact of life experiences. A sample of 202 adult smokers completed the following questionnaires: Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Life Experiences Survey (LES), Meta-Cognitions Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30), and Fagerstr&ouml / m Test of Nicotine Dependence (FTND). The path analyses were used to test a mediation model in which depression, anxiety, or negative impact of life experiences was the predictor of metacognition, which in turn was a predictor of smoking dependence. Twelve mediation models were tested using total scores of metacognition, and its factors including positive beliefs about worry, negative beliefs about worry, lack of cognitive confidence, beliefs about need to control thoughts, and cognitive self-consciousness as mediator variables. The models included depression, anxiety, or negative impact of life experiences as independent variables / and smoking dependence as dependent variable. The results suggested that neither total metacognition score nor the individual metacognitive dimensions did mediate the relationship between smoking dependence and depression/anxiety/negative impact of life experiences. The results and limitations, as well as the implications of these findings, were discussed by referring to the relevant literature.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Dr. Gary Burnett, Florida State University, School of Information Studies. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 06, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Over the past two decades researchers have analyzed motivating factors and institutional barriers that influenced a professor's initial decision to utilize a service-learning pedagogy. The majority of this research has been quantitative in nature, surveying faculty members' initial attitudes around service-learning. However, the extant literature fails to qualitatively examine the experiences of faculty members who successfully integrate service-learning, especially at a public research institution with civic-engaged mission. Because a public institution relies upon a critical mass of faculty members to support its civic engagement mission, this study focused on explaining the lived experience of exemplar professors in service-learning to understanding their motivations, barriers, and experiences. Faculty members are important to study because service-learning is a form of community engagement that cannot happen without sustainable efforts from professors. Moreover, students and communities cannot derive the benefits of service-learning, nor can civically minded institutions achieve their goal, if faculty members do not incorporate service-learning into their classrooms. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study is to understand the experiences of service-learning faculty members at a four-year public research institution where community engagement is a stated priority. Utilizing a recently developed faculty engagement model (Demb & Wade, 2012) as the guiding theoretical framework, this research study seeks to understand the lived experience of faculty members at The University of Texas at Austin by inquiring 1) how faculty members implement meaningful community engagement through their service-learning classes, 2) how service-learning may shape a faculty members' professional and personal identity at a research institution, and 3) how service-learning fits into faculty members' larger scholarship agenda. / text

In response to competitive and economic pressures, an increasing number of manufacturing firms are adding services to their traditional product offerings. However, companies are confronted with an arduous undertaking, and find it difficult to servitize successfully and profitably. This thesis investigates the transformation that traditional manufacturers undergo to become providers of integrated products and services, a phenomenon known as servitization. Servitization is considered a strategic re-direction of the manufacturing organisation and a major challenge for senior management. The purpose of this study is to provide better understanding of the change that occurs when a manufacturer attempts servitization. The study adopts a qualitative theory building approach to investigate an under-researched phenomenon and a major managerial challenge. It follows a strategy of engaged scholarship to understand a complex organisational problem. The research utilised multiple case studies, action research, and focus groups to tackle a problem with significance to industry. The findings reveal the nature of servitization as a complex transformative change which exposes the manufacturing company to its environment in new ways, and closely interlinks the organisation with a network of stakeholders through new dependencies. The transformation of traditional manufacturers towards servitized organisations is multi-dimensional and goes through eleven dimensions of transformation across the organisation and its network. In addition, thirty nine forces of change were found to influence the outcome of servitization, and were categorised into three sets of change drivers for servitization. The results of the study led to the formation of a model for transformation towards a servitized organisation for use by industry practitioners to roadmap and facilitate their organisation‟s shift towards services. The model represents a novel approach to managing servitization. This research has addressed a literature gap and met an industrial need, and has made a significant contribution to knowledge about the change that traditional manufacturers experience to become servitized organisations.

No description available.

This two years master´s thesis examines how books and literature can strengthen the contact between imprisoned fathers and their children, and the connection between the treatment of offenders and education in Sweden. The methods used are interviews and textual analysis. The theoretical starting points are influenced by Bernt Gustavssons works concerning the concept of education (the Swedish term “bildning”) and Foucaults thoughts on the subject of power and its relation to knowledge and resistance. Through history many attempts have been made to “cure” those who commit criminal acts by educating them, at first to enable them to get employed after serving their sentence, the education thus being for the greater good of the society in general, but since the 1940’s the aim has shifted towards education for the individuals own personal development and readjustment to society. The findings indicate that the service provided to prisons by public libraries play an important role for the inmates, as a source of books for amusement and diversion as well as providing the means for education. This thesis examines four reading programmes in prison, in order to establish their place in the tradition of education within the Swedish penal system. In the prison reading programs the fathers choose a children’s storybook and either reads it during the child’s visits or make a recording on DVD or CD to send to their child on the outside. The Swedish example, Godnattsagor inifrån, is influenced by its English and American precursors in its attempt to create or strengthen the bonds between fathers and children through the reading experience. Many fathers taking part in the study circle organized by Malmö public library claim the experience has taught them not only to dare read aloud to their children, but also to appreciate literature for themselves. My conclusion is that the reading programmes have effects beyond the individual inmate, as it to a certain extent can be a bond to keep a broken family together and as such actually prevent the father from committing further crime. The library service in prison is also greatly needed and appreciated by the incarcerated fathers.

No description available.

21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations.

Twenty percent of Canadians do not speak English as their first language. This is the highest reported proportion of non-native English speakers to comprise Canada’s national demographic in 75 years (Statistics Canada, 2011). Factoring into Canada’s classrooms, this demographic contrasts sharply with a public school professoriate comprised mainly of white middle class females (Bascia, 1996; Cone, 2009; Cooper, 2007; Gambhir, Broad, Evans, Gaskell, 2008; Hodgkinson, 2002). The resulting gap that exists culturally and linguistically between many of Canada’s teachers and many of Canada’s most vulnerable students is cause for concern, especially in regards to the low level of achievement many ESL students experience in the classroom (Watt & Roessingh, 2001). Despite a discourse steeped in advocacy and empowerment, there is little agreement on how to most effectively prepare preservice teachers to work with diverse learners (Cochran-Smith, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 2001). There is however, a general consensus that preservice teachers need experience working with diverse populations in order to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to assist minority students to reach their full potential (Goodlad, 1990; Phillion; Malewski, Sharma & Wang, 2009). My research attempted to address these gaps by investigating how incorporating community-based learning (Dallimore, Rochefort & Simonelli, 2010) into a teacher education course informed preservice teachers’ understandings of ESL learners, their lives, and ultimately, the pedagogical approaches necessary to most effectively support them. Subjugating the needs and perspectives of community members in community-university partnerships is a criticism recycled throughout the discourse on community-based engagement (Bortolin, 2011; Giles & Cruz, 2000; Howard, 2003; Stoecker & Tryon, 2009; Vernon & Ward, 1999; Ward & Wolf-Wendel, 2000). For this reason, this research sought to pay particular attention to the principles of reciprocity in community engagement, as well as how community partners experienced the partnership. Data was collected from students, community partners, and the instructor and analyzed using a qualitative, open-coding approach to inform a holistic understanding of how all participants experienced the project, how community members could be incorporated as co-educators in a teacher education course, and how assumptions of student participants were challenged. The findings suggest a number of advantages to participants in participating in a community-based learning experience, ways to improve the design and implementation of community-based courses, and recommendations for future research. These directions include assessing and challenging existing attitudes and assumptions about ESL learners by practicing teachers by looking at projects that bring community partners and school-based practitioners together to encourage reflection on these attitudes and assumptions. / Graduate / 0530 / 0745