This thesis explores how we understand and articulate the idea of ‘absorption’ as a necessary aspect of an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer. By drawing upon pertinent aspects of the fields of phenomenology, consciousness studies, cognitive neuroscience and play theory coupled with Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of ‘flow’, the study develops a lexicon of terminology with which to articulate and understand the nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in the context of ‘dance theatre’. By developing a focused articulation of the actual nature of ‘absorption’ for the performer in performance, seen as necessary to an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’, the study intends to contribute to the language of discourse in this area of performance studies, and, importantly become a useful resource for the enquiring performer and practitioner. Consequently, in developing an understanding of ‘absorption’ for the performer, in order to edge closer to articulating an ‘optimal’ ‘mode of being/doing’ for the performer, the work and actions of the performer remain the focus of the study. The study is anchored in practice through examination of the work of three companies working within the genealogy of ‘dance theatre’. This multi-company approach gives a chronological and genealogical overview of ‘dance theatre’ practices useful in understanding ‘absorption’ for the performer, whilst also facilitating examination of individual points of practice within that overview. The companies profiled are: Pina Bausch, DV8 and Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT). The examination of work by Bausch and DV8 draws upon and reframes extant documentation of performance currently in the public domain. Examination of VDT’s work draws on original footage and interviews undertaken by the researcher during fieldwork.

While (big) data promises immense opportunity, initiatives focused on using data to pursue insight have mixed outcomes. The Management Support Systems (MSS) model summarises what we currently understand within Information Systems (IS) about the implementation and use of systems to improve organisations’ use of data. Adopting an ethnographic approach to observe how practitioners in two contrasting organisations actually generate insight from data, this research challenges the implicit information processing and implementation logics of the MMS model. The pragmatic messiness of pursuing insight is described in two monographs, which reveal the socially constructed nature of data in relation to phenomena, and the importance of data engagement to produce insight. Given that this PhD study also seeks to generate insight from data, it is compared and contrasted reflexively to the two cases observed. While the inquiry logic pursued in this study was made explicit, and was regularly reviewed and challenged, the two cases left this largely implicit. The use of tools is shown to facilitate and constrain inquiry, with related data acting as boundary objects between the different practitioner groups involved. An explanatory framework is presented and used to suggest various enhancements to the MSS model. First, the Problem Space is reframed to reflect the distinct, though interdependent logics involved in inquiry versus realising envisaged benefits from insights. Second, the MSS artefact itself is contextualised and Data Engagement rather than MSS or Tool Use is positioned as central. Third, Data are disentangled from the wider MSS artefact, as a critical, distinct construct. Fourth, an Alignment construct is introduced to address the boundary spanning nature of data initiatives. The thesis also highlights the value of using Wenger’s (1998) Communities of Practice (CoP) situated learning framework to study data initiatives, and the related value of mapping groups as a technique for further development. Some questions are provided for practitioners to gain a better understanding of data initiatives. Wider implications are also noted for the socio-material theorising of Data, and distinguishing between Data, Information and Knowledge concepts within the IS discipline.

O presente estudo apresenta indícios de um aprender como ato a partir de um trajetar da pesquisadora nos ambientes escolares e, em especial, em turmas do segundo ano do Ensino Fundamental, numa escola municipal localizada no Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brasil. Com uma proposta vinculada ao projeto Civitas – LELIC/PPGEDU/UFRGS, as tessituras do escrito dialogam com a produção do filósofo russo Mikhail Bakhtin, tendo como objeto de análise os enunciados produzidos pelos sujeitos atuantes na pesquisa (alunos/as; professorapesquisadora). Nessa perspectiva, a metodologia utilizada, singularmente, se apresenta como um ato ético-estético que se entrelaça, acolhe e enuncia modos singulares de ver, conceber e sentir o processo de aprendizagem e, mais precisamente, ao ato de aprender, revelando o inusitado de novas vizinhanças: e, neste sentido, aponta para as possibilidades da invenção fugindo do hábito para leituras originais do que se dá “às vistas” e “às escutas”, aos acabamentos estéticos provisórios possibilitados pelos excedentes de visão, também, como plano de produção de si numa arquitetônica coletiva de produção do conhecimento. Uma tessitura ao mesmo tempo ética (pelo encontro com o outro) e estética (na busca de lhe dar, à experiência, um acabamento) pelos quais os sujeitos situados se relacionam e produzem a sala de aula como lugar coletivo. / This study presents evidence of learning as an act from the researcher's transit in school environments and in particular in the second year classes of an elementary school, a public school located in the Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. With a proposal linked to the Civitas project - LELIC / PPGEDU / UFRGS, the interwoven of the written dialogues with the production of the Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, which has as object of analysis the utterances produced by the acting subjects in this research (students; the teacher-researcher). From this perspective, the methodology used is uniquely presented as an ethic-aesthetic act that intertwines, welcomes and sets unique ways of seeing, and feeling the learning process development, and more specifically the act of revealing the unusual learning of new neighborhoods. And in this sense it points to possibilities of the invention escaping from the current, original readings of what gives "the sights" and "the listenings" the provisional aesthetic completion made possible by the exceding vision as well as a production plan in itself, an architectural collective production of knowledge. A fabric that is at the same time ethic (in the meeting with the other) and aesthetic (in the quest of giving the other the experience, a completion) in which situated subjects relate and produce a classroom as a collective place.

What constitutes a quality solution to an authentic task from industry? This study seeks to address this question through the examination of two expert solutions to an authentic engineering task used in the Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering curriculum at Oregon State University. The two solutions were generated by two teams of expert engineers with varying backgrounds. The experts solved a process development problem situated in the semiconductor manufacturing industry. Transcripts of audio recordings, design notebooks, and other work products were analyzed to identify common features in the two expert solutions. The study found that both experts placed a large focus on information gathering, modeling before experimentation, and fine tuning of the process. These solution features define a core set of expert competencies and facilitate understanding of high quality solution traits. An additional goal of the study was to identify competencies unique to each expert solution. It was observed that the expert teams used different proportions of first principles modeling and statistical experimental design to solve the problem. This proportion was dependent on the problem solver’s background and therefore should be expected to vary among student solutions. Implications of the work regarding instruction and assessment in engineering education are discussed. / Graduation date: 2012

This paper analyzes the suitability of reinforcement learning (RL) for both programming and adapting situated agents. We discuss two RL algorithms: Q-learning and the Bucket Brigade. We introduce a special case of the Bucket Brigade, and analyze and compare its performance to Q in a number of experiments. Next we discuss the key problems of RL: time and space complexity, input generalization, sensitivity to parameter values, and selection of the reinforcement function. We address the tradeoffs between the built-in and learned knowledge and the number of training examples required by a learning algorithm. Finally, we suggest directions for future research.

This study aims to investigate the consequences for feminist sex therapy that it is promoted as an alternative to a mainstream approach. Analytically I focus on the relation between normativity, claims to knowledge and professional legitimacy. I study sex therapeutic academic texts, and the material is approached through a framework developed by combining Donna Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges with elements from Karen Barad’s agential realism My analysis starts in feminist sex therapists’ criticism of how masculine norms in mainstream sex therapy lead to a flawed theory of sexual matters. Feminist sex therapists, however, allege that it is specifically feminist norms that grant a more complete theory of sex and sexual problems within feminist alternatives in sex therapy. To that effect, feminists discern sexual problems in relation to the impact a patriarchal society has on particularly women’s sexualities, and treatment is articulated as seeking to liberate women from constraints associated with gendered social positions. In mainstream sex therapy, allegedly value-neutral insights into human physiology are called upon for the establishment of professional legitimacy. Nevertheless, normative investments are relied upon implicitly to discern sexual problems and sexual well-being with the consequence that sexual problems are understood as conditions that interfere with the ability to have sex, largely equated with coitus, and with the motivation to form coupled sexual relations. By alleviating sexual problems, these abilities and motivations are allegedly restored in the form of natural, already present, capacities for sexual functioning. Comparing my analysis to feminist critiques, I argue that the latter have not fully theorized the significance of normative investments, and have left unchallenged assumptions in mainstream therapy that enable a restorative and liberationist construal of sex therapy’s objective. Although feminist alternatives contain a markedly different theorization of sexual problems, they have retained, from the mainstream approach, the notion that sex therapy seeks to liberate its clients. This notion stands in conflict with feminist theorizations of sexual problems, and in my conclusion I argue that feminist sex therapy would benefit from abandoning its liberationist element.

This dissertation is about learning as changing understanding in social and situated activities. It takes part in the development of a reconceptualization of learning initiated within participationist perspectives. Multiparty interaction in situated activities is a primordial site for the exploration of human action and cognition. Through the theoretical framework of Conversation Analysis (CA), a method for the analysis and description of trajectories of learning is proposed. Departing from a view of learning, interaction, and cognition as closely related, learning is argued as gradually changing understanding in situated activities. The empirical material consists of video recordings from an elementary school and pilot training. The recordings are analyzed using CA methods, including detailed attention to embodied features of interaction. The analyses focus the development of trajectories of learning through the participants’ orientations. The trajectories are based on topicalizations and co-constructions of contents of learning, where interactional organization and content are interrelated. Participants are shown to make relevant relations between past, present, and future actions and material settings, and their ways of aligning and resisting participation and change are explored. A framework for the analysis of learning as embodied interaction in change is developed. The dissertation shows the fruitfulness of CA work for the understanding of learning processes. The results underline the importance of including embodied action, as constitutive of the co-constructions of contents, into learning studies. The value of highlighting learning as co-construction and of anchoring the analyses in the participants’ orientations is underscored. The results further the understanding of how people learn, and of how they make relevant knowledge and experiences in activity. The understanding of learning and change as action, which can be initiated, aligned with and resisted, opens up for future developments within CA, where learning researchers might be able to describe more precisely how human learning is constituted.

Becoming Expatriate Entrepreneurs: A Phenomenological Exploration of Entrepreneuring in Taiwan The purpose of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of an important but under-researched domain of expatriate entrepreneurs¡¦ lived-experience. Heideggerian existential-phenomenology of being-in-the-world was explored as an alternative, departing from the dominant mainstream economic, personality, and behavioral perspectives in entrepreneurship and migration research. Through the phenomenological inquiry, four themes emerged from the expatriate entrepreneurs cases in Taiwan. These intriguing themes are a) adapting and engaging in the local context by enterprising, b) entrepreneuring as brokering in diverse contexts, c) the mutuality of business ventures: Co-creating with the localpreneurs, and d) constructing an entrepreneurial identity, which contribute to both migration and entrepreneurship research. Furthermore, it is proposed that the expatriate entrepreneurial becoming could be understood as situated entrepreneuring which illustrates connecting past and present, connecting to the new context, and also connecting to the material world. Finally, Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications, as well as potential areas for the pursuit of a wide array of further inquires in the field of expatriate, migration and entrepreneurship, are identified. . Keywords: Expatriate Entrepreneur, Migration, Phenomenology, Lived Experience, Situated Entrepreneuring, Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mathematics enrichment activity used to improve the mathematics performance of students relative to participation in the State Agricultural Mechanics Career Development Event (CDE) and in mandated assessments. The treatment group (13 schools, 43 students) participated in a mathematics enrichment activity situated in an agricultural mechanics context. The control group (16 schools, 56 students) did not participate in the enrichment activity. Both groups, as part of the CDE, were tested with a 100-question word problem examination, completed a individual skill and team activity, and completed a demographic instrument regarding participation in agricultural mechanics CDEs, scholastic performance, use of graphing calculators, enrollment in STEM, agricultural science, and fine arts courses, and other information. After the survey was conducted, schools were asked to provide TAKS exit scores on participating students. These scores were compared between schools and against statewide TAKS scores. Results of the study showed a significant improvement in scores on the individual written examination and teams scores for the agricultural mechanics CDE and on the TAKS exit level mathematics assessment. Mean written examination scores for the treatment group were 69.53; non-cooperators were 57.16. Mean total team scores for cooperating teams were 420.39; non-cooperators had a mean score of 368.13. Mean TAKS exit level mathematics scores for cooperators were 2336.78; non-cooperators had a mean TAKS exit level score of 2331.77. Participation in the enrichment activity improved both CDE and mathematics achievement scores.

This research aims to construct a brand-new teaching and learning environment called Transportable Digital Learning Center (TDLC) which contains three important features: mobility, ready-made and self-contained features. TDLC is constructed for providing learning opportunities to (a) people in disaster areas with a temporary teaching and learning environment before their reconstructions finished; (b) people in undeveloped countries who do not have learning opportunities due to the lack of financial resources; (c) people in geographically isolated places like deserts or high mountain areas who do not have learning opportunities due to the isolation of their geographic locations. The mobility feature means that it can be transported to different geographic locations easily; The ready-made feature means that all the components of a TDLC such as access point, TDLC Server, power supply, Tablet PCs and charging devices used to provide a teaching and learning environment are all equipped inside the TDLC in advance; Self-contained feature means that it is unnecessary to provide it with any other resources like network connections and electricity to sustain its operation. Therefore, once a TDLC has been transported to its destination, it can be used to conduct teaching and learning activities immediately. In this paper, we describe the overall concepts, main components, system design and implementation, and teaching & learning activity design of TDLC. We also conducted an experimental English Situated Learning activity to evaluate the effects of using TDLC in the teaching and learning activity. Finally, some future research topics of TDLC are proposed.