This thesis is the study of experiences of a group of mainstream secondary pupils identified as having additional support needs within the terms of the Education (Additional Support For Learning ) (Scotland) Act (2004). This means that they have been categorised as having entitlements to whatever support they require to ensure that they can attain good educational outcomes. Prior to the 2004 legislation, practices were based on categorisation of such pupils into separate, often segregated, provision which reflected assumptions about their restricted potential. The 2004 legislation is part of a policy agenda concerned with social justice and equity of educational provision for all pupils. It requires that all barriers to learning are removed for each individual pupil. Such a policy shift, and the move towards an inclusive person-centred approach, seem consistent with Scottish education as it is widely regarded, that is, with a strong tradition of, and a commitment to, egalitarianism. However, there is research which also suggests that Scottish education has been, and continues to be, meritocratic and with a strong focus on academic attainment, and that the belief in the tradition of egalitarianism, which is now regarded as a myth, can still influence perception and policy. It has also been argued that the neo-liberal reforms of the public services since the 1980s have narrowed teachers‟ work, led to a focus on its measurable aspects and led to less time being available for other areas of work, including supporting non-academic learning and attainment. In this thesis I discuss how the influence of the „myth‟, a tradition of meritocracy, and a performativity focus on attainment, shape teachers understandings and practices as they are required to reconcile them with a concurrent policy agenda which has a focus on social inclusion and equity of educational opportunity. To enable the voices of pupils and their teachers to be heard, I use semi-structured interviews and an interpretivist approach to study the experiences and attitudes of 8 teachers and 17 pupils in 2 comprehensive schools in a Scottish local authority. Through doing this I identify factors which might prevent teachers from developing inclusive approaches and support for learning practices which are helpful and acceptable to pupils. I also consider any apparent tensions between a person-centred inclusive policy agenda and a tradition of meritocracy. I found that pupils were generally positive about their experience of learning and identified practices they thought would be both helpful and acceptable to them: peer working; teachers mediating learning through discussion/questioning; work which was interesting to them and/or relevant to life beyond school. There was also a degree of consensus that difficulties associated with the reading/writing tasks they were required to do could be barriers to fully accessing the curriculum. The study also found that the teachers interviewed showed a commitment to provide support to pupils with additional support needs and that they provided a range of in-class arrangements to achieve this. However, they seemed also to be influenced by academic traditions/assumptions and felt that what they were able to do was limited by the agenda created by national examination requirements and it was that which drove the curriculum. The study concludes that the practices and power relations in schools are influenced by the conservative thinking which characterises Scottish education, that these practices and power relations can be oppressive and disempowering to teachers and pupils and that pupils are still labelled, sometimes segregated and treated differently from their peers. It also emerged that while there are no real opportunities for pupils to express their views and challenge the identities ascribed to them, when they are given that opportunity they can have well formed views about their education and what changes to existing practice would better help them to improve their attainment and develop useful skills. Not all of the pupils did express such views, and this may link to effect of the power relations in schools. Of those who did express views about what they would like to see change, the changes they identified seem to be generally possible within the pedagogical and curriculum framework changes as suggested in Curriculum for Excellence documents. However, given the findings of this study about power relations and the persistence of academic traditions and assumptions, it is relevant to note that these changes in themselves will require alterations to existing in-school power relations, working arrangements and conceptualisations of what constitutes educational success and how it is measured.

There are in excess of one million people across the UK people living with atrial fibrillation (AF), a long term condition that can lead to stroke and other complications, costing the NHS over £2,200 million per year. However little is known about the experience of living with AF and what patients' perceptions are of the support they receive from health professionals. In order to ensure that patients have the best possible experience of care, healthcare professionals need to have an understanding of how patients view their condition and the type of support they would like to receive from the professionals involved in their care. Although there has been a significant amount of work investigating social support for people with health conditions, there has been little work exploring support provided by healthcare professionals, defined in this study as professional support. This study aimed to investigate and assess the professional support needs of people with AF to develop knowledge and understanding in this field. A theoretical framework for professional support was developed based on the tri-dimensional model of social support and was used to direct the research. Using an exploratory sequential design, a two phase mixed methods study was undertaken. Initially, qualitative interviews were undertaken with patients recruited from outpatient arrhythmia clinics at one National Health Service (NHS) hospital and identified from the perspective of the patient how, when and where healthcare professionals did/did not provide support. Key components of emotional, informational and tangible professional support were identified from thematic analysis of the interview data and used to inform the development of a quantitative questionnaire. Physical activity, exercise and the impact of AF on activity levels were identified by participants as important and so were also included. The quantitative online questionnaire was completed by patient members of the Atrial Fibrillation Association (AFA). To examine relationships between variables, statistical analyses were performed using Fisher's exact test and indicated that people with AF had a range of emotional, informational and tangible professional support needs. Different subgroups of people with AF had different professional support needs: People with more severe symptoms needed more emotional support as well as more tangible support and people with paroxysmal AF needed more informational support. People undergoing ablation as treatment for their AF had specific informational and emotional needs for support. AF played a significant part in the lives of people with AF by modifying activities of daily living and shaping physical activity behaviour and choice of activities. People with AF therefore needed professional support in maintaining and/or increasing their levels of activity. Considering the specificity of professional support, GPs, cardiologists and arrhythmia nurse specialists were identified as most supportive, with GPs and cardiologists also considered as the least helpful at providing support, indicating a variation in professional support. The findings from this study contribute to the limited body of knowledge describing the experience of living with AF and provide healthcare professionals with a unique understanding of how best to provide professional support. The tri-dimensional model provides detailed knowledge of the components of informational, emotional and tangible support that people with AF would like to receive from the healthcare professionals involved in their care. The findings indicate there are differing support needs for different subsets of people with AF demonstrating a need for individualised professional support. The theoretical framework for professional support used in this study provides a model that could be used in future research studies to identify the types of professional support required by patients and to identify subgroups of patients who may require additional professional support. By accurately identifying the needs of patients, this will ensure that healthcare professionals are able to deliver effective patient centred services, leading to an improved patient experience and the delivery of high quality patient care.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The purpose of this thesis is to develop a prototype web-enabled database to improve the process flow of data collection and manipulation in support of Army aviation operations. Data collection is focused around routine aviation operations and aviation maintenance with the intention of identifying a feasible replacement for the existing redundant manual and automated collection procedures. The web interface has the potential to reduce the logistical burden on unit's data collection procedures and provides tailorable, near real time information about aircraft maintenance status, individual training, and unit training to decision makers at all levels as a decision support tool. This thesis will describe the design considerations for a web-enabled database to include the development of detailed data and process models. / Major, United States Army

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / This thesis presents a Markov model, which, given an indirect fire weapon system's parameters, yields measures of the weapon's effectiveness in providing fire support to a maneuver element. These parameters may be determined for a variety of different scenarios. Any indirect fire weapon system may be a candidate for evaluation. This model may be used in comparing alternative weapon systems for the role of direct support of a Marine Corps infantry battalion. The issue of light gun vs. heavy gun was the impetus for the study. The thesis also provides insight into the tactic of frequently moving an indirect fire weapon to avoid enemy detection, and possible subsequent attack. / http://archive.org/details/markovmodelforme00guzi / Captain, United States Marine Corps

Resilience refers to the capacity to quickly return to normal levels of functioning in the face of adversity. This capacity has previously been linked to social support. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of social networks in the association between resilience and social anxiety in a clinical group with social anxiety disorder (n = 41) and a control group of university students (n = 40). The results showed that controls were significantly more resilient than the clinical group. Controls had significantly larger, more diverse and active social networks than the clinical group. Resilience was negatively associated with social anxiety in both groups. In the clinical group, there was a significant partial mediation effect of resilience on social anxiety through the size of the social network, a x b = –0.33, 95% CI [–0.718, –0.111]. Potential clinical applications of these results were discussed.

Transport infrastructure constitutes one of the key factors to a country’s economic growth. Investment in new transport infrastructure might cause potential environmental impacts, and if a project has several alternative corridors open for suggestion then each alternative corridor will have a different impact on the environment. The European Commission has stated that the natural resources are important to the quality of life. Therefore, the efficient use of resources will be a key towards meeting future climate change and reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This implies that in an evergrowing global society the resource efficiency as well as the choice of transport infrastructure corridor becomes even more important to consider. The aim of this research project was to contribute to early transport infrastructure planning by the development of methods for and implementation of easy understandable geological criteria and models for decision support. Moreover, the intention was to assess how geological information can be developed and extracted from existing spatial data and coupled with other areas of interest, such as ecology and life cycle assessment. It has previously been established that geological information plays an important role in transport infrastructure planning, as the geological characteristics of the proposed area as well as the possibilities of material use influences the project. Therefore, in order to couple geological information for early transport infrastructure planning, four studies (Paper I-IV) were undertaken where methods were developed and tested for the inclusion of geological information. The first study (Paper I) demonstate how optional road corridors could be evaluated using geological information of soil thickness, soil type and rock outcrops, bedrock quality and slope in combination with ecological information. The second study (Paper II) shows how geological information of soil thickness and stratigraphy can be combined with life cycle assessments (LCA) to assess the corresponding greenhouse gas emission and energy use for the proposed road corridors. The difficulty of using expert knowledge for susceptibility assessment of natural hazards, i.e. flooding, landslide and debris flow, for early transport infrastructure planning was presented in the third study (Paper III). In this study the expert knowledge was used in a multi-criteria analysis where the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was chosen as a decision rule. This decision rule was compared to the decision rule weighted linear combination (WLC) using two different schemes of weighting. In all the mentioned studies the importance of soil thickness information was highlighted. Therefore, the fourth and final study (Paper IV) presented a new methodology for modelling the soil thickness in areas where data is sparse. A simplified regolith model (SRM) was developed in order to estimate the regolith thickness, i.e. soil thickness, for previously glaciate terrain with a high frequency of rock outcrops. SRM was based on a digital elevation model (DEM) and an optimized search algorithm. The methods developed in order to couple geological information with other areas of interest is a tentative step towards an earlier geo-environmental planning process. However, the methods need to be tested in other areas with different geological conditions. The combination of geological information in GIS with MCA enabled the integration of knowledge for decision making; it also allowed influencing the importance between various aspects of geological information as well as the importance between geological information and other fields of interest, such as ecology, through the selected weighting schemes. The results showed that synergies exist between ecology and geology, where important geological considerations could also have positive effects on ecological consideration. Soil thickness was very important for GHG emission and energy whereas stratigraphical knowledge had a minor influence. When using expert knowledge the consistency in the expert judgements also needs to be considered. It was shown that experts tended to be inconsistent in their judgements, and that some consistency could be reached if the judgements were aggregated instead of used separately. The results also showed that the developed SRM had relatively accurate results for data sparse areas, and that this model could be used in several projects where the knowledge of soil thickness is important but lacking. It was concluded that geological information should be considered. By using GIS and MCA it is possible to evaluate different aspects of geological information in order to improve decision making. / Environmental assessment of road geology and ecology in a system perspective

Online social support is reported to be used by a number of people to obtain social interaction and exchange communication as a way to buffer stressful situations. Breastfeeding women experience a significant change in their lives and routine which a number of women find it stressful for various reasons. Research shows that breastfeeding women use the Internet to obtain support, however little is known about how breastfeeding women use online social support and their perceptions, concerns and expectations about using it. An interpretive approach using qualitative methods was adopted in this research to obtain and analyse the data acquired through interviews and observations. The framework proposed by the Social Cognitive theory was used to conduct this research and to provide insights into online social support in a breastfeeding peer support context. The results in this research indicate that in spite of face-to-face interventions being favoured, online social support is perceived as a helpful alternative support with the potential to positively influence breastfeeding self-efficacy. A number of similar characteristics of face-to-face support were found to be present in online social support, such as emotional and informational support, empathy and empowerment. Online social support was perceived as offering additional features to traditional support including convenience of use, connection with peers and supporters at any time of the day, and the opportunity to express emotions and issues textually. Certain concerns were also associated to using online social support to support breastfeeding women, which need to be taken into consideration by providers of online social support. These included the need for training volunteers in this type of media, confidentiality and trustworthiness of the information available online and issues related to digital divide. These findings are useful to further the understanding of the implications of online social support in self-efficacy and the associated outcomes. Policy makers, social scientists and breastfeeding support organisations can use the findings in this research to develop future breastfeeding promotion strategies and interventions. Ultimately, breastfeeding women benefit from the findings of this research, through the implementation of online social support interventions addressing the issues raised in this research. These women will consequently have access to more services and applications, as well as engage with volunteers or clinicians trained to fulfil their needs over an alternative channel.

Despite socioeconomic disadvantages, less acculturated Mexican Americans tend to exhibit better mental health than their more acculturated counterparts. However, in the case of older Mexican American adults, research has demonstrated the opposite to be true (Gonzalez, Haan, & Hinton, 2001). A variable of interest potentially responsible for this difference is social support. Thus, the current study proposed to investigate the mediation and moderation effects that social support has on the relationship between acculturation and depression in older Mexican American adults age 60 or older. Data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) was analyzed. Results showed that the mediating effect of contact with one’s children (-.109*) and the moderating effect of total social support and contact with one’s children (-.127*; -.103*) were statistically significant in the relationship between acculturation and depression. Although these effects are small they may still hold important implications for better understanding this population.

In the study of team-based organizations most of the research has focus on the internal make-up and structure of teams. Recently there has been more interest in the effects that environment has on teams. With this new focus Support Systems in organizations have become an area of interest. Examining the perceptions of workers with respect to support systems of organizations could give insight into performance. This study specifically examines the interaction between a team's shared perception of the support in their environment and the level of support in their environment. The interaction between the two does seem to have a strong relationship with perceived performance. How do the two concepts interact, and what does this mean for organizational designers? Both questions are discussed.

This study investigates the perceptions surrounding the role Virginia elementary school principals play in supporting the induction of new teachers. Attention is given to the type of the principal’s support, the frequency of support, and the perceived importance assigned that support. Because the Virginia Department of Education has encouraged the use of one of three specific models of induction (the ETS Pathwise model, Fairfax Virginia’s Great Beginnings model, or the New Teacher Center “Santa Cruz” model) or a locally, research-based model, additional attention is placed on the impact training and experience in one of these models has and the degree to which varying levels of that training influences those perceptions. In this non-experimental, comparative study, a census of new teachers and principals throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia was conducted, using an adaptation of an instrument developed by Gurule-Gonzales (1995). Follow-up telephone interviews were conducted to confirm findings from the survey. Results indicate there are statistically significant differences in some principal and new teacher perceptions of the Virginia elementary principals’ role in supporting programs of induction. These are found more often in the perceptions regarding frequency than regarding importance. Statistically significant differences were found among principals’ perceptions of certain categories of support when considering the amount of training and the type of induction program utilized. While statistically significant differences in teachers’ perceptions could not be determined because of the small n, there appear to be practical differences based upon the type of induction program and the amount of new teacher program training. There are a number of implications resulting from this study. New teachers need to be integrated into the life of the school, and programs of induction should be certain to include the careful pairing of mentors with new teachers. Frequent observation and feedback by the principal are necessary to support new teachers. Principals must maintain a frequent presence throughout the work with the new teachers and must be more transparent regarding support efforts. The type of program and the amount of training provided principals and new teachers alike are also critical aspects of induction.