A cross-disciplinary literature review returns conflicting renditions on the nature of science, science’s place in society, and the public understanding of science. The phenomenon of science appears as many things to many people—a situation consistent with a phenomenographic non-dualist ontology that accepts a single, but variably experienced, real world. This study begins a process for comprehensively charting the landscape of Public Understanding of Science. In foregrounding the reflexive interplay of science and society, the resultant typography of science could, in turn, inform a mindful evolution of science curricula. In this study, a phenomenographic analysis of Public Understanding of Science journal article, “Fantastically reasonable: Ambivalence in the representation of science and technology in super-hero comics” (Locke, 2005) illustrates the phenomenographic process and provides a model for the application of phenomenographic methodology to systematically chart the nature of science as publicly experienced and understood. / x, 225 leaves ; 29 cm. --

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This thesis examines the role of broadcasting in Canada with regard to developing and maintaining a national identity in the face of United States influence via the media. The subject is examined within the theoretical framework provided by the science of cybernetics and the Laws of Thermodynamics. A historical overview of Canadian broadcasting policy and institutions is provided. The work of the various royal commissions and other investigatory bodies is analyzed. The most important contemporary institutions, the CRTC, the CBC and the federal Department of Communications, are situated within the context. The effects of the most recent technologies, cable television, satellites, Pay-TV and VCRs are examined. Canadian broadcasting is also viewed in the context of the 1989 Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement and the New World Information and Communication Order. Our conclusion suggests that the future of Canada's identity depends primarily on the quality of domestic broadcasting. Finally, we suggest that Canadians and Europeans, who are facing some comparable problems in a united Europe, can learn from each others's experiences.

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This dissertation is concerned with surveillance, which refers to the monitoring and supervision of populations for specific purposes. Of special interest we the ways in which new technologies are augmenting the power of surveillance in the late twentieth century, and therefore influencing the privacy debate. Three things are noted about this. First, large-scale surveillance by bureaucratic organizations is a product of modernity, not of new technologies. This is evident from Part I of the dissertation, which argues that increased surveillance capacity comes as a result of specific economic and political circumstances that favour the use of technological systems of particular kinds, which invariably feature enhanced capacities. Second, surveillance has two faces; advantages appear alongside serious disadvantages. This is also evident in Part I of the dissertation which suggests that much surveillance theory is dystopian and therefore, an incomplete paradigm. Finally, new technologies facilitate some major magnification of surveillance power; some even argue that they change its character qualitatively. As such, privacy features prominently alongside discussions of electronic surveillance. This is evident in the final two parts of the dissertation which evaluate privacy as a strategy for limiting electronic surveillance. In this regard, Part II examines technical challenges to electronic surveillance, expressed through privacy law in particular, and Part III analyses mobilization challenges, which have to do with the role played by social movements in attempting to bring about broader-based change than mere legislation. Throughout the dissertation, the argument is made that surveillance has become a central feature of contemporary advanced societies and as such, it should be a major concern of both social analysis and political action. This is why the dissertation is divided into distinct, but overlapping, parts, with the first part focusing on social and critical

This inquiry is about the sense-making of students in a technology education class as they build a prototype electric car in a secondary school manufacturing shop. I make sense of their sense-making by examining their talk and interaction in the interplay of the social, material, institutional, and organizational resources constituting what I call "distributed practice." This involves a move away from defining understanding and learning as self-contained structures in the minds of people, but instead sees learning as spread out in the broad social context of activity and participation. Distributed practice theorized in this way is about the interplay among "complex social relations, technologically constituted." Technologies and their use in practice provide us with a realm through which we can discuss issues related to the understanding of learners. In many respects, this dissertation is an exploration of how "the way things are done" becomes understanding and alternately, how understanding becomes "the way things are done." The analysis moves towards a social and cultural practice view of learning I call "practical negotiation."

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