Thesis advisor: Lauri Johnson / District leadership has been found to have a measurable effect on student achievement by creating conditions within which teachers and administrators frame their daily work with children. The superintendent is uniquely poised to build the needed infrastructure of support and assure its alignment with the philosophy and mission of the district and, in turn, with the work of the school. By attending to the habits and conditions that allow a staff to work as a unit, superintendents are able to contribute to the development of a community of professional learners within and among district schools. This qualitative case study analyzed district leadership practices that support ongoing teacher growth in a Massachusetts school district by examining the work of the superintendent and the impact of his leadership on the ongoing development of a community of professional learners at the district and school level. Data included interviews with teachers and administrators, artifact analyses, and observations of district meetings. Findings reveal the superintendent's use of a PLC process to model and provide support to school-level leaders by encouraging broad-based participation in the skillful work of leadership; establishing a clear vision which resulted in program coherence; fostering a system of inquiry-based accountability that informed decision making and practice; and nurturing organizational relationships that involved high district engagement and low bureaucratization which supported school-based collaborative teacher growth. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

In the fast changing world of a new, democratic South Africa (S.A.), the political, economic and social arenas are rapidly moving in new directions. In order to impact on important new policy developments as they are being developed and to impact on the planned changes in their fields, many adult education organisations saw the need to band together to form networks or associations and the like, through which to present their viewpoints or ideas at policy debates. In this way their views were backed by recognisable stakeholder or constituency groupings. One such networking organisation was established in 1989, well before the fastmoving, radical changes were so extreme in South Africa, namely, the Forum for the Advancement of Adult Education (FAAE). The aim of the FAAE was to inform, support and professionalize the field of Adult Education and Training via their networking activities. A t times it also acted as a structure to support: policy development. These aims continue today, although the work of the FAAE has broadened. This study looks at the role of “Networking” in Adult Education in South Africa to examine its process and its impact. The study explores the views and opinions of practitioners in different parts of South Africa and examines the case study of the FAAE as part of its data gathering, as it asks the questions: how, why, when and where does or should networking occur. What are the potential gains or problems involved in such an activity? The research design, which is a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, attempts to provide quantitative details which accurately portray elements of the data gathered, as well as qualitative data which reflects the rich detail of the data explored. Although networking is being explored within a specific sector or community (adult continuing education), it is hoped that this study will open up ideas and possibilities to assist networking activities in other sectors or communities. It is hoped th at this study will catalyse other studies to explore the concept of “networking” and as a consequence, that more publications addressing this issue might arise.

The core purpose of school leadership is to provide leadership and management in all areas of the school to enable the creation and support of conditions under which high quality teaching and learning can take place and which can promote the highest possible standards of learner achievement. This study aimed to examine the roles of the school principals in monitoring teaching and learning in inner-city and township secondary schools in the Gauteng province. The study used a case study research design in which one inner-city and township secondary schools were purposely selected as cases for the study. The school principals, deputy school principals, heads of departments and educators were observed over a period of fourteen days in each school after which were interviewed. Both the observation and interview protocols were piloted. All interviews were tape recorded and confidentiality was assured. Interviews were transcribed and analysed through content analysis (Strauss1987).Emerging themes were used to create a comparative data set across the stakeholders’ content analysis. The analyses were then triangulated as a means of establishing the trustworthiness of the accounts. Observations and questions focussed upon the roles of the school principal in monitoring teaching and learning with reference to the school curriculum, the tools school principals use in monitoring teaching and learning and how school principals monitor teaching and learning in such schooling contexts. They indicate that the role of school principals as instructional leaders in monitoring teaching and learning is supervision which involves leadership roles in educator professional development, curriculum supervision, collegiality, care and response. They not only indicate the complex contextual roles of school principals in monitoring teaching and learning in the challenging circumstances in the inner-city and township secondary schools, but the mechanisms school principals use to monitor teaching and learning in such contexts. School principals minimally participate in the monitoring of teaching and learning and rely on feedback from classroom observations and learner data collected by the deputy school principals’, heads of departments/ subject heads and class educators to monitor learner performances in the schools.

This thesis deals with selected institutes of legislation related to tenancy under recent Civil code No. 89/2012 Sb. With respect to a limited extend, the thesis focuses only on selected issues, such as definition of basic principles and concepts or unclear provisions. The thesis consists of 4 connected chapters, leading reader from past to present to gain historical and practical view on the matter First chapter is focused on legal history of lease of immovable since antiquity to nineties of last century. Second chapter covers basic principles and concepts of tenancy such as object of a lease (suitability of a rented space is now determined by agreement not by some official decision), parties of agreement, determination of rent (if it is not agreed in contract). This chapter also contains an explanation, why legal entity can not lease a flat for living and why a subsequent sublet is not a sublet but regular lease. Third chapter describes provisions considered unclear by professionals or laymen. These provisions contains new conception of surety, limits of making business or working in a flat without of consent of the landlord, receiving new members to the household (and of course definition of household) and sublet. This chapter also contains rules for maintaining order in a building. Provisions...

There is a growing trend that businesses are expected to address economic, social, as well as environmental issues and operate in a manner that contributes both to the organisation as well as the society (Elkington, 1998), which commonly is referred to as Corporate Social Responsibility. Porter and Kramer (2006) highlight that the business’s primary concern is to run a profitable business, and therefore developed the framework Creating Shared Value.  This study examines how Swedish companies that changed from working with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to working with Creating Shared Value, experience differences in their sustainability work and what advantages and challenges the change emerged in.  The methods used are semi-structured interviews together with content analyses of four Swedish companies’ sustainability reports.  This thesis argues that companies’ sustainability work changed between 2010-2018 from focusing on philanthropy to a focus on sustainability through profitability. Also, the change to CSV for these companies resulted in an increased focus on the environmental aspects, and a decreased focus on the major social aspects. The companies spent more resources on innovation related to environmental issues, which generated profit, and on beneficial collaborations. An advantage of adopting CSV is that a focus on profitability may drive change regarding environmental issues, which in turn leads to long-term economic sustainability. However, shared value can be problematic in some ways, especially when it comes to gaining profit from social value, and thus social global issues might be overlooked for activities within their own business environment.

According to innovation literature, between 50% and 90% of innovations fail. An explanation for failing innovations is offered by scholars in the field of innovation resistance, who argue that it is more relevant to pay attention to the reasons why consumers reject an innovation, rather than learning about their motivations to adopt a new product or service. At the same time, previous marketing literature has devoted little attention towards design, despite its strategic importance and its role as a driver of innovation and competitive advantage. The purpose of this study was to investigate how companies perceive innovation resistance towards service innovations and how it is reflected in the service design. The major takeaways in this study revealed that companies were aware of all the barriers, except for social risk and perceived security risk. Furthermore, companies made most service design adaptations based on the usage and value barrier both prior and post launch. Also, although the tradition and norm barrier and image barrier were considered critical for an innovation’s success, companies did not change the service design accordingly. Finally, it was revealed that companies followed a hybrid approach of innovation, where more of a design-driven innovation strategy was used to generate innovation ideas and a user-centered approach was applied by involving consumers in pilot studies and listening to the consumer voices post launch.

How would future vehicle ownership evolve as car sharing becomes dominant in urban scenario? How may we recreate the sense of emotional attachments to personal vehicles? How can we utilize the car even when it's idle and thus making ownership more sustainable? Imagine a future model of vehicle ownership which challenges the concept of personal vehicle and its role nowadays. This project envisions such a future to inspire the people and spark discussions about the subject. The inspirations of the project is partly the development of autonomous driving technology and the heated discussion of a car sharing future that comes with it. The other part of the it comes from the idea of open source development for creating an ecosystem that facilitates itself in the long run. The author believes the answer to a changing landscape of mobility might not come from within but could be lying in another field. The author took a speculative approach to set the future scenario based on research and interviews. After carefully analysis of the information gathered, a realistic future mobility model was generated, on the base of which the story and the interior design was developed further through the common vehicle design process. The process involves collecting image boards, loops of ideation, sketching, modelling, prototyping as well as feedbacks sessions along the way. The steps were not in chronological order as the validation of the ideas requires some steps to overlap. After the final design freeze, there was also a period of time for the making of the physical model. The result is Volvo Project Mirror - an ecosystem that goes beyond mobility solutions. The main focus is the modular interior concept that’s highly customisable for reflecting personal characteristics, making sustainable incremental updates according to different needs and different stages of life, and more importantly, sharing furnitures and gears in between home space and car to maximize usage, thus blurring the line between the two.

How can reductionism lead to a greater experience and add to the appeal of a product? The Land Rover BackPacker is a minimalistic travel vehicle that questions the space and the complexity needed in a vehicle while exploring the world 4x4 inspired by the necessity of reduction in today's consumerist world to fight climate change and the freedom of travelling light. Its open design creates an interactive space with it's surroundings for 2 people which is created in a multifunctional approach to be more then a car but a space to hang out and a place to sleep in the wild. The project is highly inspired by the global adventures of the very first Land Rover Series 01 and it’s modular and highly functional design.  To reinterpret this spirit and to bring it into a future context was the main goal besides combining it with the approach and philosophy of modern minimalists and the efficiency of tiny house lifestyles. Living in a compressed space, how this affects the interaction with nature and what reduction adds to the user in the travel context are key points. Finding the right balance between the amount of space and comfort needed on a trip and the openness and simplicity of the vehicle to guarantee and unfiltered experience was a major challenge.After understanding the future context of the vehicle, the design process started with exploring different packages of the car and prototyping different ways to create a space in nature in the most minimal way using Virtual Reality and quick 2D doodles.  This led to optimising the proportions and the chosen theme of the design in developed 2D renderings and early CAS models.  The final design concept was developed in 3D software to translate the digital data into a physical scale model in the end.All in all the Land Rover BackPacker is a reductive travel vehicle concept targeting the future needs of more sustainable and more flexible experiences. It’s designed to be part of an on-demand car sharing service which is setup globally to reach people of different regions, different cultures and different backgrounds. It provides a space for two people to move freely, to hang out and to sleep in nature. To make travelling a no-brainer, the vehicle service includes modular equipment kits which provide the things needed during different trips in nature.  The user can choose from e.g. weather protection, cooking equipment, a water tank or a solar sun sail, depending on where the next journey starts.

Thesis advisor: Curt Dudley-Marling / This qualitative dissertation, informed by sociocultural theory (Gee, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978), examines how a fourth grade teacher and his students learned to participate in Shared Inquiry, a discussion practice where students learn how to build an evidential argument, including a claim that is supported by evidence and justified by a warrant (Toulmin, 1969). Students also learn how to weigh the merits of opposing arguments and how to modify their initial opinions as evidence demands. Over the course of ten weeks, the fourth grade teacher implemented Shared Inquiry as part of the Junior Great Books (JGB) program, offered as a supplement to a district mandated reading program. The teacher was observed while using the JGB program and while providing instruction through the mandated reading program. He participated in action research (Stringer, 2007) to examine how to make Shared Inquiry most successful. This dissertation describes how the teacher's action research enabled his students to become successful with Shared Inquiry, after they initially struggled with the practice. Over time, they learned a new way of engaging, not only with literature, but also with fellow classmates. This dissertation also describes how the fourth grade students learned a different set of literacy practices through the mandated reading program. The argument is made that Shared Inquiry has the potential to be a far more substantively engaging (Nystrand, 2006; Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991, 1997) literacy practice compared to the mandated reading program. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Desde o surgimento das escolas de Educação Infantil, o desenho da criança já foi interpretado de diversas maneiras e as situações didáticas planejadas pelos educadores têm variado a depender da concepção de aprendizagem e de desenho que se adota. Mesmo sendo o desenho tema de análise frequente, os educadores pouco fazem uso das teorias mais recentes para planejarem situações didáticas significativas que contribuam para o seu desenvolvimento. É comum, nas instituições desse segmento, que o desenho se constitua como atividade que não requer reflexão ou planejamento. Tomando o desenho como uma linguagem utilizada para diferentes finalidades a depender do meio circundante , entende-se que ele se desenvolve, em parte, graças ao contato das crianças com as imagens do entorno, tanto aquelas produzidas por artistas, quanto as produzidas por seus pares. Com base em pesquisas realizadas anteriormente, que constatam que, ao longo do processo de aprendizagem em desenho, as crianças tomam emprestadas imagens produzidas por parceiros mais experientes e recriam seus esquemas aprimorando o que são capazes de produzir, buscou-se investigar como ocorrem os processos de intercâmbio entre as crianças enquanto desenham na escola a fim de compreender em que medida eles colaboram para o desenvolvimento de seus esquemas gráficos. Mais do que analisar os produtos, ou seja, os desenhos, procurou-se observar e analisar as ações das crianças nessas situações, numa tentativa de compreender que movimentos realizam para aprender umas com as outras e como incorporam esquemas gráficos de colegas aos seus próprios desenhos para aprimorá-los. Foi utilizado o método clínico de Piaget como base para os procedimentos adotados por se entendê-lo o mais adequado e útil para guiar as observações e análises realizadas. Como critério para selecionar a escola, pesquisou-se um espaço que empregasse uma concepção de educação alinhada àquela adotada pela pesquisa que valorizasse o desenho das crianças como eixo de aprendizagem e entendesse que as situações de intercâmbio entre elas colaboram para o seu desenvolvimento. Quanto à faixa etária, estipulou-se observar crianças de 4 e 5 anos por se entender que seus desenhos se modificam com frequência e também por possuírem uma linguagem mais clara e eficiente se comparadas às mais novas no segmento da Educação Infantil. De acordo com o objetivo da pesquisa, ao longo das observações e análises foi possível conhecer como as crianças trocam informações e aprendem a desenhar umas com as outras aprendizagem compartilhada e de que maneira incorporam esquemas gráficos em seus desenhos, aprimorando o que já sabem. Concluiu-se que situações de aprendizagem compartilhada contribuem significativamente para o desenvolvimento do desenho e que as atitudes dos professores podem colaborar para que aconteçam com mais intensidade, auxiliando as crianças a enriquecer seus esquemas gráficos e torná-los cada vez mais complexos. / Since the emergence of kindergarten schools, childrens drawing has been interpreted in several ways, and the didactic situations planned by educators vary according to the learning and drawing conception that is adopted. Even though the drawing can be considered a topic of frequent analysis, educators still make restrict use of the latest theories in order to plan meaningful didactic situations that contribute to its development. It is common in this kind of institutions that the drawing is seen an activity that requires no thought or planning. Taking the drawing as a language used for different purposes depending on the environment in which it is we understand that its development happens also through the contact between children and the images of the surroundings, either those produced by artists as those produced by their peers. Basing ourselves on previous research which note that throughout the process of learning to draw, children borrow images produced by more experience partners and recreate their own schemes improving what they are able to produce, we aimed to investigate how the process of exchange between children occur at school while drawing in order to understand to what extent they contribute to the development of their graphic schemes. Rather than analyzing the products, in other words, the drawings we seek to observe and analyze the childrens actions in these situations in an attempt to understand what kind of movements they perform to learn with each other and how they incorporate graphic schemes from their colleagues to the improvement of their own drawings. We used Piagets clinical method as the basis for the procedures adopted by the most suitable and useful to guide the observations and analysis. As a criterion to select the school, we looked for an institution that had a concept of education that would align to that adopted by the research which valued the childrens drawing as the hub of learning axis and understand that situations of exchange between children collaborate for their development. Regarding the age, we chose to observe children of four and five years old since we understand that during this period their drawings change frequently and also by having clearer and more efficient language if compared to younger kids in preschool. According to the research objective, along the observations and analysis was possible to know how children exchange information and learn to draw with each other what we call shared learning and how they incorporate graphic schemes in their drawings improving what they already know. We concluded that shared learning situations collaborate significantly to the development of the drawing and that the attitudes of teachers can collaborate to make then happen with more intensity, helping children to enrich their graphic schemes and make then increasingly complex.