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The following is a report of a qualitative inquiry regarding a team of novices and their journey in developing shared expertise and social creativity in the domain of group facilitation and process consultation. Using the format of public reflection, the participants engaged in an intensive collaborative process of meaning making, along with the university instructor as expert, while being teaching assistants in a course about group dynamics. Using the framework of evolving systems, the methodology employed an instrumental case study approach, with the case defined as the group. Data sets included videotaped debriefing and planning sessions, individual and group interviews, and written reflection diaries, covering the entire lifespan of the team. These sets were transcribed and subjected to an examination of the unfolding cognitive and metacognitive, creative, value, and social processes embedded within the team interactions. The process patterns do demonstrate that under the conditions created within this context, novices can pool together expert thinking skills that can collectively compare favorably to those of an expert. Social creativity also emerged as a property of the system, and these processes seemed to piggyback onto the socially shared expert thinking skills. Values acted as tacit rules governing and shaping the social interactions. Ones that showed a strong association to the development of shared expertise were: supportiveness, care, listening/questioning for clarity, helpfulness, openness to disagreement/feedback, and plurality. Values that showed a strong association to the development of social creativity were: supportiveness, listening/questioning for clarity, helpfulness, and openness to disagreement/feedback. Humor was an ever present element to the system and acted as a lubricant producing social ease. The patterns that emanated from this inquiry were placed into two larger theoretical frameworks, socially shared cogni

Social change strategies grounded in theory help change agents to be more effective in their efforts. This study attempts to make explicit the links between public education efforts and the social change goals of non-profit organizations through an examination of both radical humanist thought and various social change theories. / This thesis maintains that public education is an essential component of lasting change, serving eleven identifiable roles in the social change process. Of particular note, education can serve to challenge the dominant corporate paradigm and to develop an informed, critical, and more active citizenry. Education can also help create an environment conducive to achieving systemic changes. It is argued that civil society organizations are well situated to play a leading role in the creation of a more just and healthy society. Public education is proposed here as an approach that shows considerable promise to move us in that direction.

The inspiration for this study was the work of Karl Polanyi. The study therefore looks to an economics of which market economy is only part of a special case. On the basis of evidence from economic historians and economic anthropologists, it seeks to show that the wider economics of Polanyi can be given a unified basis that operates equally in simple and complex communities, ancient and modern communities, and in communities on either side of the "great transformation". A first charge on economic surplus is invariably the resources to perpetuate the social structure itself, and may be a charge so large as to exhaust almost all of the surplus and so variable in its expression that the charge on resources often passes unnoticed or is mistaken as irrational and non-economic. In its particulars, this study examines social, cultural and political determinants of economic activity from a selection of social systems and historical periods. It argues for a much expanded analytical framework than that of market-focussed theory. It draws attention to rarely noticed contributions by earlier writers, notably Carl Menger, and to important contemporary contributions by the substantivist school in economic anthropology.

This dissertation draws from and contributes to many traditions within the (interdisciplinary) discipline of communication studies. Serving the two primary objectives of the examination of the figure of the BMX freestyle cycling Pro and the analysis of the role of the magazines within this particular culture or field in the construction and maintenance of this figure, this project brings together studies of cultural intermediaries, magazine history, advertising history and theory, subcultures, audiences, commodification, cultural industries, celebrity, stars and professional athletes. The culture of BMX freestyle cycling is an interesting and heretofore unexamined phenomenon, and a focused examination allows the exploration and investigation of larger questions within the discipline. As such, this dissertation provides an informed interpretation of the culture of BMX freestyle, allows the examination of a number of other issues concerning the mediation of cultural practices, and suggests a theory of the special-interest magazine, thus contributing substantively to various literatures. / Special-interest magazines are a part of a larger system and industries within which the ultimate goal is the sale of commodities. At the same time, they function as a site of credibility within a larger field, both conferring star status on particular individuals and approving particular commodities that are being offered to the readers. Special-interest magazines construct and sell audiences to advertisers, create star systems, propose candidates for stardom, help build image careers, contribute substantially to a "star currency" within the particular field, negotiate (i.e.; mediate) tensions between the advertisers, the stars, and the readers, help organize the time of a culture and work to infuse it with a sense of vitality through the punctual and ritualistic appearance of novel content, assist the consumer with their desires for commodities and stars by standing as catalogues of commodities (serving to educate newcomers in the protocol of the culture), provide new financial opportunities (such as the commodity form of the photo contingency), and in their complicity with the needs of those that provide their primary source of revenue, give more value to the advertising dollar in the construction of editorial content that could be seen as advertising.

The thesis explores the materiality of communication environment in Cyberspace illustrating both the problem of disembodied rationalism and the benefits of emphasizing the phenomenological sense of presence in virtual spaces. Interactive realism is offered as an approach to explain how our sense of embodied existence is supported and threatened in a technologically mediated situation. Language and other artifacts are tools with which we build social reality. In particular, metaphors are the rink between language and other, non-linguistic skills that shape our sense of self and reality. / The metaphors of the computer as an electronic brain and of the networked computer as an electronic frontier serve as unconscious, cognitive models that guide our interactions with the world. Objects also work as models to embody ways of thinking about the world. It will be argued that social construction involves a sedimentation of language and a naturalization of the constructed environment. I argue that perception, as the bodily foundation of experience, involves a somatagnosis or body-knowledge, and that this knowledge is influenced by the particular devices we use to represent images of the world. The affective communities of Cyberspace are rule-governed communicative assemblies. Cyber-communities provide examples of the ways the body threatens and supports group formation and maintenance on the Internet . / Cyberspace highlights the process of construction and sedimentation through which we construct the social world. In the construction of symbolic embodiments Cyberspace presents the paradox of places that encourage emplacement and disembodiment. Disembodied spaces are utopian in nature. Such Digkopian places abstract us from the world. Heterotopian spaces illustrate playful experiments. Such materializations of metaphors and ideas dramatize the ways we model the world and build it. My interest is with the creative element my aim is to make clear the significance of constructed, digital reality and its tensions with bodily experience.

<p>The aim of the present study was to explore the subjective experiences and perceptions of mothers diagnosed with depression. The study investigated mothers' understandings of the extent to which their illness had impacted on their appraisal of their mothering and associated roles within the family. Furthermore, it investigated mothers' coping skills with regard to their illness.</p>

This thesis explores the construction and experience of racial identity among eight grade eleven learners at a desegregated school in Chatsworth. The possible challenges and threats faced by these learners in terms of racial identity were also examined. Semi-structured interviews were utilized as qualitative method to interrogate the ways in which the eight grade eleven learners construct their racial identities. There were many contradictions which emerged from my study. This points to the fact that research is never clear-cut; results do not always fall neatly into place. Nonetheless, the primary findings of the interviews reflect that learners are comfortable with the idea of racial integration and expressed positive views about interacting with learners from different race groups. However, the participants made reference to pockets of racism and threads of interracial conflict evident at the school. The data in my study also shows that the Indian learners, forming the majority in the school, enjoy a more advantaged position as the school adopts an assimilation policy. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

South Africans have had a passionate affair with cellular telephony since its launch in June 1994. But, by far the networks contract-less prepaid service has been an outstanding success, attracting hundreds of thousands of users who could not have otherwise been part of the subscriber base. The prepaid service has made cellular telephony accessible to all, especially the youth/student market. The author investigated the reasons into why students at Cape Technikon chose the prepaid service over the contract service and whether student allowance/ income affected the choice exercised. The prepaid system was voted as being most popular. Income levels had a direct bearing on the choice that students made but other factors such as perception, culture and socio-economic play a role in shaping the choices made. The most important factor to students was that no monthly bills were involved and total control over spending could be exercised. Recommendations to the cellular operators included, projecting a brand personality that attracted the youth and embracing the challenge of building long- term relationships with these customers. / Thesis (M.B.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003.

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