Abstract is available to download.

archives@tulane.edu / My dissertation applies diffusion of innovations and post-development theories to an actor-oriented analysis of design thinking uptake at the frontlines of international development. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working directly with the poor face challenges in delivering interventions. Their operating conditions stimulate demand for new approaches like “design thinking,” which is promoted as a human-centered innovation tool to address problems like energy poverty or infant mortality. Through a multi-year case study of a rural Kenyan NGO undergoing training, I explore the interactions and responses of organizational actors as they adopt, reject and remake design thinking. Qualitative methods include in-depth interviews and group discussions with 66 informants, plus document review and participant observation. My findings reveal how uptake is dynamic and socially-embedded. Participants encountered design thinking through workshops, applications and conversations. Training messages, work-life conditions, and institutional locations and relationships informed how intended adopters trialed design thinking. The social interactions and perceived outcomes of encounters fed back into assessment and learning so that over time, partial changes to individuals and the organization emerged along with novel interpretations of design thinking. Staff adopters developed new problem-solving mindsets and adapted design thinking to everyday challenges. They saw it as a tool for enhancing agency and participation rather than a technical innovation process to design solutions for beneficiaries. Others did not perceive design thinking’s compatibility or relative advantage and rejected it. The organization exhibited new language and groupwork practices but not structural and cultural shifts to support design. The contradictory institutional workings of the “developmental configuration,” the assembly of actors, institutions and resources that produce development action, shaped these diverse uptake logics. The configuration simultaneously practices top-down management while demanding bottom-up empowerment. These pressures spurred felt-need for design thinking, constrained adoption, encouraged reinvention and led to internal power struggles. My research has theoretical and practical implications. I add to theories on the diffusion of knowledge innovations in organizational settings and contribute to socio-anthropological understanding of how development actors make sense of design thinking. I challenge assumptions about design thinking for aid effectiveness by offering insights into its actual value and fitness in frontline NGO settings. / 1 / Maille Faughnan

This is a qualitative research study that investigated the understanding of the concept of “critical consciousness” by female teachers teaching Arabic in Saudi Arabia’s high schools, the opportunity they have to develop critical consciousness, and how and why they develop it. The researcher engaged in semi-structured interviews with 25 female teachers who have at least nine years teaching experiences. The findings revealed that these teachers: (a) have a collective sense of the importance of critical consciousness skills to better themselves and Saudi Arabian society; (b) they are interested in and motivated to develop their critical thinking skills; (c) they develop critical consciousness in informal ways; and (d) the teaching practice in Saudi Arabia mostly relies on “banking education.” This is an unprecedented study in the field of students’ critical consciousness development in Saudi Arabia. The results have a number of important implications for future work and research in Saudi Arabia, as well as in neighboring countries that share similar complications related to the role and status of women in society.

No description available.

Theory of mind has been described in philosophical and psychological literature as "folk psychology", and is the tacit understanding that our behaviour is driven by our thoughts, desires and beliefs (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). Children are widely considered to have attained theory of mind understanding when they are able to pass the test of false belief understanding devised by Wimmer and Perner (1983), at around 4 years of age. There are many theories as to how a child comes to hold a folk psychology, including innate modularism (Leslie, 1987, 1988, 1994), theory change (Gopnik & Wellman 1992), developing representational understanding (Perner, 1991, 1995, 2000), and experiential understanding developed in a socio-linguisitic context (Nelson, 1996). In addition, theory of mind has been linked to the development of symbolic understanding (Deloache & Smith, 1999; Perner, 1991), pretend play (Leslie, 1987; Taylor & Carlson, 1997; Youngblade & Dunn, 1993), language (Astington & Jenkins, 1999; Nelson, 1996; Olson, 1988) and executive function (e.g. Hughes, 1998a; Kochanska et al., 1996; Reed et al., 1984). The present study sought to bring together these diverse findings and to attempt to provide an integrated account of the emergence of theory of mind understanding during the preschool years. Sixty-four New Zealand children were assessed on their mental state understanding, deceptive abilities, symbolic functioning, language, and executive skills, when they were aged 30, 36, 42 and 48 months of age. There were a number of key findings in the present study. Language was a powerful predictor of false belief performance both within and across time, and was also related to many of the other variables included in the study. Performance on the scale model test of symbolic functioning was related across time to children�s concurrent and later false belief understanding. Scale model performance was also intertwined in a bidirectional relationship with language, and language appeared to play an increasingly important role in mediating the relationship with false belief understanding across time. False belief understanding and scale model performance were also related within and across time to executive function. There was evidence to suggest that the importance of working memory was due to its role in conflict inhibition. Although deception has sometimes been posited to be a precocious manifestation of theory of mind (Chandler, Fritz, & Hala, 1989), in the present study deceptive ability lagged false belief understanding. Furthermore, false belief understanding was related to children�s subsequent (but not earlier) responses to a protagonist�s intention. This supports the hypothesis that false belief understanding allows a qualitative change in the execution of deception, whereby children can move from simple physical strategies to more sophisticated mentalist strategies. Overall, the present study provides some evidence to suggest that symbolic functioning, language, and later theory of mind may form part of a single developing skill set of symbolic representation. In dynamic interaction with social understanding, and supported by cognitive abilities such as executive function, and the socio-linguistic context, it is argued that understanding of one�s own and other minds emerges. Children�s ability to solve the false belief problem at 4 years of age is presented as a milestone on a developmental continuum of social understanding.

The key purposes of this study were to determine the extent that people purport to utilise critical thinking in educational and organisational settings; second, to examine the forces that encouraged and discouraged critical thinking and third, to identify strategies and environments that encourage and foster critical thinking. The literature examined shows that the use and teaching of critical thinking has been well represented in educational settings. However, upon an initial review of literature within organisations it appeared that the term critical thinking was not commonly used. While critical thinking occurred within organisations it tended to be defined as problem solving and decision making approaches. The model of critical thinking which underpinned this research was that of Stephen Brookfield (1987). Brookfield's model was tested through the design of the methodology. A total of ninety three surveys were completed by students at the University of Canberra from the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Management. Thirteen individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a selection of these students. The data suggested that critical thinking occurred both within educational and organisational environments. One of the main impediments to the use of critical thinking was the availability of ample time and the respondents claimed that they had more time to apply critical thinking during their studies rather than at work. The respondents identified strategies such as brainstorming, role playing and modelling behaviour as some of the approaches that would increase the likelihood of the use of critical thinking at work and study. An unanticipated finding was that individuals applied a different interpretation in the application of critical thinking within organisations compared to educational settings.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 15, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 231-245).

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University-San Marcos, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-107).

This study examined questions embedded in four high school world geography textbooks to evaluate the degree to which the three components of spatial thinking were incorporated: concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. A three-dimensional taxonomy of spatial thinking to assess the questions was developed and validated via a survey of a group of spatial thinking experts. The spatiality of the concepts featured in 3,010 questions sampled from the textbooks was analyzed. The degree to which spatial representations and stimuli for reasoning were presented was also measured. Every question was compared against the taxonomy and coded. Inter-coder reliability was measured on about one percent of the sample questions. The results indicated that most questions that required knowledge about spatial concepts could be answered by knowing only simple concepts, such as location and place-specific identity, rather than complex concepts that require the identification of spatial patterns and associations. Not many questions asked students to incorporate spatial representations to answer the questions. Few questions did require creating a new representation. Students were asked to recall memorized geographic knowledge and terms rather than to infer, hypothesize, and generalize. Little difference was found among the four textbooks in that they rarely integrated the three components of spatial thinking into the questions. The research found that page-margin questions involved aspects of spatial thinking more than section- and chapter-assessment questions. Relatively simple concepts and lower level cognitive processes, however, were required in most questions that integrated the three components. The development of questions to help students practice complex processes of spatial thinking is necessary. The taxonomy developed in this research can be used as a guide to design curricular, instructional materials, and questions that incorporate aspects of spatial thinking.