In this dissertation two studies are reported to explore the relation between parents’ goals for, beliefs about, and behaviour during parent-child shared book reading. In the first study, 92 parents rated the importance of potential reasons for reading with their children using the Parent Goals for Shared Reading Questionnaire (Evans & Williams, 2003). Ratings were completed longitudinally each year from their child’s junior kindergarten to grade 1 year. Factor analysis largely confirmed previous cross-sectional findings that the questionnaire items reflect distinct parent goals for shared book reading, including fostering reading skills, stimulating development, engaging in an enjoyable activity, and experiencing closeness with their child. The second study used data from the senior kindergarten year of this same sample of children to investigate the relation between parents’ beliefs about how to teach reading, how highly they rated fostering reading skills as a goal versus non-reading goal subsets, and their behaviour during shared book reading (i.e., the nature of the extratextual comments and error corrections made). Results demonstrated that, as parent goals to foster children’s reading skills increase, their tendency to provide the correct word in response to their child’s miscues decreases. When goals to foster reading skills were high, parents were more likely to use strategies that help their child to read misread words, regardless of their ratings of goals to engage in a positive experience with their child. However, when goals to foster reading skills were low, increasing ratings of the goal to engage in a positive experience related to decreasing instances of parents helping their child to read misread words. Furthermore, the goal to engage in a positive experience with one’s child was positively related to extratextual conversation not related to teaching reading but only when goals to foster reading skills were also low. Finally, goals to foster reading and constructivist beliefs both made independent contributions to the prediction of parents’ use of context cues to correct reading errors. Implications of these findings for literacy intervention programs targeted at the shared-book reading interaction are discussed.

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Background: The process of shared decision making (SDM), a key component of interprofessional (IP) practice, provides an opportunity for the separate and shared knowledge and skills of care providers to synergistically influence the client / patient care provided. The aim of this study was to understand how different professional groups perceive IPSDM, their role as effective participants in the process and how they ensure their voices are heard. Methods: A sequential explanatory mixed methods design was used consisting of a realist review of the literature about IPSDM in intensive care, a survey of the IP team (n=96; RR-81.4%) about collaboration and satisfaction with the decision making process in NICU, semi-structured interviews with a sample of team members (n=22) working in NICU, and observation of team decision making interactions during morning rounds over a two week period. A tertiary care NICU in Canada was the study setting. Findings: The study revealed a number of key findings that are important to our increased understanding of IPSDM. Healthcare professionals’ (HCP) views differ about what constitutes IPSDM. The nature of the decision (triage, chronic condition, values sensitive) is an important influencing factor for IPSDM. Four key roles were identified as essential to the IPSDM process: professional expert, leader, synthesizer and parent. IPSDM involves collaboration, sharing, weighing and building consensus to overcome diversity. HCPs use persuasive knowledge exchange strategies to ensure their voices are heard during IPSDM. Buffering power differentials and increasing agreement about best options lead to well-informed decisions. A model was developed to illustrate the relationships among these concepts. Conclusions: Findings from this study improve understanding of how different members of the team participate in the IPSDM process, and highlight effective strategies to ensure professional voices are heard, understood and considered during deliberations.

This research investigates computer-based collaborative design environments, in particular issues of real-time collaborative 3D CAD. The thesis first presents a broad perspective of collaborative design environments with a preliminary case study of team design activities in a conventional and a computer mediated setting. This study identifies the impact and the feasibility of computer support for collaborative design and suggests four kinds of essential technologies for a successful collaborative design environment: information-sharing systems, synchronous and asynchronous co- working tools, project management systems, and communication systems. A new conceptual framework for a real-time collaborative 3D design tool, Shared Stage, is proposed based upon the preliminary study. The Shared Stage is defined as a shared 3D design workspace aiming to smoothly incorporate shared 3D workspaces into existing individual 3D workspaces. The addition of a Shared Stage allows collaborating designers to interact in real-time and to have a dynamic and interactive exchange of intermediate 3D design data. The acceptability of collaborative features is maximised by maintaining consistency of the user interface between 3D CAD systems. The framework is subsequently implemented as a software prototype using a new software development environment, customised by integrating related real-time and 3D graphic software development tools. Two main components of the Shared Stage module in the prototype, the Synchronised Stage View (SSV) and the Data Structure Diagram (DSD), provide essential collaborative features for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. These features include synchronised shared 3D representation, dynamic data exchange and awareness support in 3D workspaces. The software prototype is subsequently evaluated to examine the usefulness and usability. A range of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to evaluate the impact of the Shared Stage. The results, including the analysis of collaborative interactions and user perception, illustrate that the Shared Stage is a feasible and valuable addition for real-time collaborative 3D CAD. This research identifies the issues to be addressed for collaborative design environments and also provides a new framework and development strategy of a novel real-time collaborative 3D CAD system. The framework is successfully demonstrated through prototype implementation and an analytical usability evaluation.

A key debate within leadership research is whether leadership can be conceptualized as a specialized role occupied by individuals or as a shared influence process amongst all members of a group (Yukl, 2006). Since the mid-­‐ 1990s some leadership scholars, as a counterpoint to the dominance of the former and using terms such as shared and distributed leadership, have attempted to elaborate new ‘post-­‐heroic’ leadership models (Badaracco, 2001) of the latter, in which leadership is something that involves all group members. These new forms of leadership are often positioned as something that organizations can implement as part of an adaptive response to a rapidly changing world. Despite a 50-­‐year tradition of construing leadership as a group level construct, little attention has been paid in these emerging debates to the systems psychodynamic perspective. From this perspective there are grounds for suspecting that attempts to implement shared leadership may compound rather than ameliorate issues related to adaptive challenges (Huffington, James and Armstrong, 2004). This thesis engages with the shared and distributed leadership literatures and examines how a systems psychodynamic perspective can contribute not only to debates within these literatures but to the wider controversies in the leadership literature. This thesis reports on the findings of a single, 18-­‐month, longitudinal case study of a senior team whose managing director attempted to implement shared leadership. Using a clinical fieldwork methodology (Schein, 1987) in the systems psychodynamic tradition (Miller, 1993b; Miller and Rice, 1967), this study advances a number of contributions to theory. These include: findings that challenge existing approaches to conceptualizing leadership – shared or otherwise; the elucidation of complex unconscious team processes that are mobilized as a senior team undertakes adaptive work; and thirdly, a more sophisticated and theoretically robust conceptualization of leadership as a group level phenomenon.

Shared ride systems match the travel demand of transport a client with the supply of vehicles, or hosts, so that the client find rides to their destinations. A peer-to-peer shared ride system allows a client to find rides in an ad-hoc manner, by negotiating directly with nearby hosts via radio-based communication. Such a peer-to-peer shared ride system has to deal with various types of hosts, such as private cars, taxicabs and mass transit vehicles. Agents, i.e. a client and hosts, have diverse behaviors in such systems. Their different behaviors affect the negotiation process, and consequently the travel choices. Preliminary research (Winter et al. 2005) has investigated peer-to-peer shared ride systems with homogeneous hosts and immobile client. This thesis extends their work to multiple types of agents. It focuses on what are typical agent behaviors in peer-to-peer shared ride systems, and how these behaviors affect negotiation processes in a dynamic transport environment. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (M.Eng.). / Written for the Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/01/14). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 156-159).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (M.Arch)--Unitec New Zealand, 2009. / Statement of responsibility from cover. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 54 & 56).