Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Researcher'

The purpose of this study was to explore the academic researcher decision-making processes related to participant compensation. Compensation for research participants is a complex issue nested within human subjects research, involving potential ethical pitfalls, such as undue influence and coercion. Regulations require researchers possess sufficient understanding of their subject population to make informed decisions with respect to compensation issues. Despite the key role compensation practices play in the research process, few researchers have considered these practices from the perspective of the academic researcher. The researcher collected data via semi-structured interviews to understand factors academic researcher consider when electing to compensate or not compensate research participants, the ethical challenges faced by academic researchers when determining research compensation for their studies, and, from the perspective of academic researchers, how compensation practices be improved. Compensation is an integral part of human subjects research, but it involves ethical considerations due to its potential impact on the participant’s voluntarism. Researcher decision making about compensation is complex and is influenced by myriad factors, including budgetary constraints, the type of study, perceptions of participant burden, institutional and departmental factors, and more. This study expanded the understanding of participant compensation by exploring the researcher decision-making processes.

Aquesta tesi pretén analitzar la supervisió del doctorat mitjançant l'abordatge d'alguns temes rellevants sobre la seva conceptualització, experiències i pràctiques relacionades amb el desenvolupament de l'investigador. Comprèn una revisió i tres estudis empírics realitzats des d'un enfocament sociocultural. El disseny va ser transversal i combina dades quantitatives i qualitatives. Els principals instruments van ser un qüestionari dirigit a avaluar a les experiències significatives dels estudiants de doctorat, desenvolupat en un projecte més ampli sobre la identitat dels investigadors novells [I+D+i La formació de l'investigador en Ciències Socials impulsat pel Ministeri d'Economia i Competitivitat de l'Estat Espanyol (ref .: CSO2013-41108-R)] (Castelló, Pardo, Sala-Bubaré i Suñe-Soler, 2017, Castelló, McAlpine i Phyältö, Phyältö i McAlpine, en premsa), i un qüestionari obert per examinar les percepcions dels supervisors. Les anàlisis es van realitzar utilitzant un disseny de mètode mixt. L'estudi 1 comprèn una revisió integrativa de les característiques, propòsits i aportacions de la investigació sobre supervisió realitzada entre 2005 i 2016. Els resultats refereixen les característiques de la investigació sobre la supervisió del doctorat que els autors han desenvolupat durant l'última dècada i indiquen que la majoria dels estudis revisats es centren en l'anàlisi de les percepcions. L'estudi 2 aborda les experiències significatives dels estudiants de doctorat relacionades amb la supervisió i les estratègies que tenen per fer front a aquestes experiències quan són percebudes com desafiants o negatives. Es van identificar cinc categories d'experiències: 1) supervisió del procés d'investigació; 2) coaching; 3) prerequisits centrals per a la supervisió; 4) gestió i supervisió del projecte; i 5) elecció del supervisor. Els resultats també van indicar una variació entre els estudiants, en termes de les estratègies per manejar els problemes relacionats amb la supervisió i la prevalença dels estudiants orientats al problema sobre els orientats a l'estratègia. A més, els resultats van suggerir una relació entre les experiències de supervisió i la satisfacció dels estudiants amb la seva trajectòria doctoral. L'estudi 3 se centra en les concepcions i pràctiques dels supervisors pel que fa a l'escriptura de la investigació. Els resultats van mostrar que els supervisors atribueixen diferents funcions a l'escriptura -des del procés fins al producte- que es relacionen amb pràctiques centrades en: 1) produir textos acadèmics apropiats, 2) generar activitat epistèmica i 3) promoure la comunicació i la socialització. Es van identificar tres categories de suport per a l'escriptura, això basat en el tipus d'activitats reportades pels supervisors: 1) dir als estudiants què fer, 2) revisar i editar els textos dels estudiants, i 3) discutir de manera col·laborativa dels textos dels estudiants. Els resultats també suggereixen relacions complexes entre les funcions que els supervisors atribueixen a l'escriptura i el tipus de suport d'escriptura que ofereixen als estudiants. Aquestes relacions semblen estar intervingudes pel coneixement i els recursos que els supervisors tenen pel que fa a l'escriptura de la investigació. L'estudi 4 examina les relacions entre les percepcions dels supervisors sobre les seves experiències doctorals des de dues posicions com a estudiants i supervisors. Les experiències significatives dels participants reportades en ambdues posicions es van relacionar amb cinc categories: 1) habilitats de recerca, 2) suport de supervisió, 3) agència, 4) interacció i 5) recursos. Aquestes categories integren els aspectes més significatius que els supervisors consideren ajuden o dificulten el procés doctoral. Els resultats van revelar que els participants tenen percepcions més positives pel que fa a les seves experiències actuals com a supervisors. També es van confirmar relacions interessants entre l'experiència prèvia dels participants com a estudiants i la seva experiència actual com a supervisors. Aquesta tesi contribueix a ampliar i aprofundir el nostre coneixement sobre la conceptualització i pràctiques de la supervisió de doctorat, mitjançant l'anàlisi de les percepcions i experiències dels que considerem són els principals protagonistes de la supervisió: supervisors i estudiants. D'altra banda els resultats revelen la importància de promoure el coneixement i reflexió crítica dels supervisors sobre les seves concepcions i pràctiques de supervisió. En general, posen de manifest l'important paper de la supervisió en el desenvolupament de l'investigador. Esperem que aquesta tesi ampliï el nostre coneixement sobre la supervisió i contribueixi a conceptualitzar com un procés dialògic, relacional i multidimensional sostingut per la interacció entre els estudiants, els supervisors i els seus contextos acadèmics i de desenvolupament.
La presente tesis pretende analizar la supervisión del doctorado mediante el abordaje de algunos temas relevantes sobre su conceptualización, experiencias y prácticas relacionadas con el desarrollo del investigador. Comprende una revisión y tres estudios empíricos realizados desde un enfoque sociocultural. El diseño fue transversal y combina datos cuantitativos y cualitativos. Los principales instrumentos fueron un cuestionario dirigido a evaluar a las experiencias significativas de los estudiantes de doctorado, desarrollado en un proyecto más amplio sobre la identidad de los investigadores noveles [I+D+i La formación del investigador en Ciencias Sociales impulsado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad del Estado Español (ref.: CSO2013-41108-R)] (Castelló, Pardo, Sala-Bubaré y Suñe-Soler, 2017, Castelló, McAlpine y Phyältö, Phyältö y McAlpine, en prensa), y un cuestionario abierto para examinar las percepciones de los supervisores. Los análisis se realizaron utilizando un diseño de método mixto. El estudio 1 comprende una revisión sistemática de las características, propósitos y aportes de la investigación sobre supervisión realizada entre 2005 y 2016. Los resultados refieren las características de la investigación sobre la supervisión del doctorado que los autores han desarrollado durante la última década e indican que la mayoría de los estudios revisados se centran en el análisis de las percepciones. El estudio 2 aborda las experiencias significativas de los estudiantes de doctorado relacionadas con la supervisión y las estrategias que tienen para hacer frente a estas experiencias cuando son percibidas como desafiantes o negativas. Se identificaron cinco categorías de experiencias: 1) supervisión del proceso de investigación; 2) coaching; 3) prerrequisitos centrales para la supervisión; 4) gestión y supervisión del proyecto; y 5) elección del supervisor. Los resultados indicaron una variación entre los estudiantes, en términos de las estrategias para manejar los problemas relacionados con la supervisión y la prevalencia de los estudiantes orientados al problema sobre los orientados a la estrategia. Además, los resultados sugirieron una relación entre las experiencias de supervisión y la satisfacción de los estudiantes con su trayectoria doctoral. El estudio 3 se centra en las concepciones y prácticas de los supervisores con respecto a la escritura de la investigación. Los resultados mostraron que los supervisores atribuyen diferentes funciones a la escritura -desde el proceso hasta el producto- que se relacionan con prácticas centradas en: 1) producir textos académicos apropiados, 2) generar actividad epistémica y 3) promover la comunicación y la socialización. Se identificaron tres categorías de apoyo para la escritura, esto basado en el tipo de actividades reportadas por los supervisores: 1) decir a los estudiantes qué hacer, 2) revisar y editar los textos de los estudiantes, y 3) discutir de manera colaborativa los textos de los estudiantes. Los resultados también sugieren relaciones complejas entre las funciones que los supervisores atribuyen a la escritura y el tipo de apoyo de escritura que ofrecen a los estudiantes. Estas relaciones parecen estar mediadas por el conocimiento y los recursos que los supervisores tienen con respecto a la escritura de la investigación. El estudio 4 examina las relaciones entre las percepciones de los supervisores sobre sus experiencias doctorales desde dos posiciones como estudiantes y supervisores. Las experiencias significativas de los participantes reportadas en ambas posiciones se relacionaron con cinco categorías: 1) habilidades de investigación, 2) apoyo de supervisión, 3) agencia, 4) interacción y 5) recursos. Estas categorías integran los aspectos más significativos que los supervisores consideran ayudan o dificultan el proceso de doctorado. Los resultados revelaron que los participantes tienen percepciones más positivas con respecto a sus experiencias actuales como supervisores. También se confirmaron relaciones interesantes entre la experiencia previa de los participantes como estudiantes y su experiencia actual como supervisores. Esta tesis contribuye a ampliar y profundizar nuestro conocimiento sobre la conceptualización y prácticas de la supervisión del doctorado, mediante el análisis de las percepciones y experiencias de quienes consideramos son sus principales protagonistas: supervisores y estudiantes. Además, los resultados revelan la importancia de promover el conocimiento y reflexión crítica de los supervisores sobre sus concepciones y prácticas de supervisión. En general, ponen de manifiesto el importante rol de la supervisión en el desarrollo del investigador. Esperamos que esta tesis amplíe nuestro conocimiento sobre la supervisión y contribuya a conceptualizarla como un proceso dialógico, relacional y multidimensional sostenido por la interacción entre los estudiantes, los supervisores y sus contextos académicos y de desarrollo.
This thesis aims to analyze doctoral supervision by means of addressing some relevant issues of its conceptualization, experiences and practices related to the researcher development. It integrates a review and three empirical studies, carried out from a sociocultural approach. Design was cross-sectional and combines quantitative and qualitative data. Main instruments were a questionnaire addressed to assess PhD students’ significant experiences, developed in a related and larger project on early career researcher identity [I+D+i Researcher’s Identity Education in Social Sciences funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ref.: CSO2013-41108-R)] (Castelló, Pardo, Sala-Bubaré and Suñe-Soler, 2017; Castelló, McAlpine and Phyältö, 2017; Castelló, Phyältö and McAlpine, in press), and an open-ended survey designed to prompt supervisors’ perceptions. Mixed-method analyses were conducted. Study 1 consists of an integrative literature review of the characteristics, purposes and contributions of the research on supervision conducted between 2005 to 2016. Results allowed us to describe the path that authors have taken to study supervision during the last decade and indicated that the reviewed studies focused on the analysis of perceptions that surround doctoral supervision. Study 2 addresses doctoral students’ significant experiences related to supervision and the strategies they have to cope with these experiences when they are perceived as challenging or negative. Five categories of experiences were identified: 1) supervision of the research process, 2) coaching, 3) central prerequisites for supervision, 4) project management and supervisor, and 5) supervisor choice. Results also indicated a variation among students, in terms of the strategies to handle problems related to supervision and the prevalence of problem-oriented than strategy-oriented students. Furthermore, results suggested a relation between specific supervision experiences and students’ satisfaction with their doctoral trajectory. Study 3 focuses on supervisors’ conceptions and practices regarding research writing. Results showed that supervisors attributed different roles to doctoral writing, ranging from process to product-oriented, which relate to practices focusing on 1) producing appropriate academic texts, 2) generating epistemic activity, and 3) promoting communication and socialization. Three categories of supervisory writing support were identified based on the type of activities reported by the supervisors: 1) telling the students what to do, 2) reviewing and editing students’ texts, and 3) collaboratively discussing students’ texts. Results also suggest that there were complex relationships between the role that supervisors’ attributed to writing and the type of writing support supervisors were able to offer. These relations appear to be mediated by supervisors’ awareness and resources regarding doctoral writing. Study 4 examines how supervisors perceive their doctoral experiences both as students and supervisors and the relationships between these perceptions. Participants’ significant experiences from both positions –as students and supervisors- were related to five categories: 1) research skills, 2) supervisory support, 3) agency, 4) interaction and 5) resources and affordances. These categories integrate the most significant aspects they considered help or hinder the doctoral process. Results revealed that participants hold more positive perceptions regarding their current experiences as supervisors. Interesting relationships between participants’ students’ experience and their current experience as supervisors were also confirmed. This thesis contributes to enlarging and deepening our knowledge of the conceptualization and practices embedded in doctoral supervision, by analyzing perceptions and experiences from who we consider the main protagonists of supervision: supervisors and students. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of enabling supervisors’ awareness and critical reflection regarding their supervision conceptions and practices. Overall they bring to visibility the significant role supervision plays in the researcher development. We hope this thesis enlarges our knowledge on supervision and contribute to conceptualize it as a dialogical, relational and multidimensional process sustained by the interplay between the students, supervisors and their academic and developmental contexts.

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
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O objetivo desta investigação é mostrar a maneira com que os professores concebem seus próprios conceitos de leitura e se os mesmos influenciam sua prática em sala de aula e também discutir o conteúdo metafórico da fala de uma professora se tornando pesquisadora, enquanto implementa materiais novos em uma turma avançada de inglês da primeira série do ensino médio em um colégio público em Florianópolis, refletindo sobre seus conceitos de leitura e conflitos na presença de novos paradigmas. A coleta de dados se deu através de câmera de vídeo e gravadores e foi feita em três fases: durante reuniões prévias à intervenção em sala de aula, bem como durante as aulas e em reuniões posteriores à implementação da prática em sala de aula. Para a coleta de dados, além das gravações, a pesquisadora fez uso de diários de campo que foram transcritos e analisados e um mapa explanatório sobre metáforas conceituais sobre leitura foi construído. À partir desse mapa, estabeleceu-se uma comparação/contraste entre a fala da professora e a maneira implícita que estas concepções influenciavam sua prática pedagógica. As metáforas encontradas foram 1)LEITURA É UM JOGO 2)O PROFESSOR É UM TREINADOR/ DIRETOR E MAESTRO 3) ALUNOS SÃO JOGADORES E ATORES, refletindo assim a maneira pela qual esta professora concebe respectivamente a leitura, a prática em sala de aula e seus alunos. Este estudo fornece um método de pesquisa de análise de crenças dos professores através destas metáforas conceituais, levando professores a uma reflexão sobre seus conceitos, no caso específico sobre leitura, e como estes influenciam sua prática implicitamente. The objective of this research is to show in which way teachers conceive their own reading concepts and if they influence these teachers' practice in the classroom. This study intends to discuss the metaphorical content in the speech of a teacher becoming a researcher reflecting on her reading concepts and conflicts in the presence of new paradigms while implemented new materials in one advanced English group from high school in a public school in Florianópolis. The data collection was based on video camera and tape recorders and it was made in three phases: during pre counseling meetings before classroom intervention as well as pos-counseling meetings after classroom practice implementation. Besides video and tape recorders, the researcher also made use of research diaries which were transcribed and analyzed and an explanatory map about conceptual metaphors on reading was built. From this map, a comparison was established between the teacher's speech and the implicit way these conceptions influenced her pedagogical practice. The metaphors found were: 1) READING IS A GAME 2) THE TEACHER IS A TRAINER/DIRECTOR AND ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR 3) STUDENTS ARE PLAYERS AND ACTORS reflecting the way this teacher conceives respectively reading, her classroom practice and her students. This study provides an analysis of teachers' beliefs research method through these conceptual metaphors, fostering teachers to reflect about their concepts, in this specific case about reading and how these concepts influence implicitly their practice.

This thesis examines the issue of ethnicity and kinship and explores the advent of identity formation, specifically in a Reformn Jewish context, via youth movement participation. Through the mediums of informal education, focus group discussion and individual semi-structured interviews, I engage in an exploration of identifying what it means to be Jewish, how youth movements augment and abet Jewish identity formation, and the boundaries that exist between young Jews and their host communities. Youth movement youngsters are observed in situ and Grounded Theory (Strauss, 1987; Glaser, 1978; Glaser, 1992; Giaser, 1998; Glaser, and Strauss, 1968) is employed to elucidate their engagements and interactions. Three case studies (Stake, 1995) are then presented to illustrate the experience of youth movement "graduates". Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (Smith, 2004; Smith and Osborn, 2003) is used to consider the dimensions of their relationship to Judaism, their youth movement and mainstream society.

Purpose: The main purpose of this study/thesis is to, through an interview with researchers in medical field in Jönköping,  provide an empirical analysis of the link or relationship between medical researcher and patient through social networking sites specifically for collaboration in order to improve relationships, dissemination of information and knowledge sharing. Background: The importance of social networking websites as a means of interaction between groups of individuals cannot be underestimated. Their impact on daily life activities and activities cannot be underestimated. Because  millions of individuals are making use of Social Network Sites (SNSs) to build or reinforce relationships, connect, disseminate and share information as well as sharing of knowledge whether personal or non-personal experiences with people they already know offline or new people online. Therefore, the authors are interested basically in how social networking web sites are being utilized in terms of collaborations, information and knowledge sharing and particularly in what benefits and challenge are connected to improving inter-groups collaboration in research study between researchers and ordinary citizens. Method: A review of literature gives us insight about the subject terms, critical and sensitive issues in regards to collaboration through social networking sites designed for research purpose. We apply in general networking theories such as social capital and two of its components couple with Putman´s theory of bonding and bridging social capital as a theoretical framework to synthesize the concept of  ties (strong or weak) . Our analysis based on the empirical data gathered through surveys, interviews and observation provide us with interesting preliminary results and with blueprints to guide the analysis of the thesis. Conclusion: Social networking platforms are valuable and useful in our generation being part of daily life and activity to keep up with people within our networks. However, the authors discovered that the advantages of involving ordinary citizens to participate in improving researcher-patient collaboration through dynamic social networking actually outweigh the disadvantages despite all odds and sensitive issues such as trust, privacy issues and sceptics of some researchers. In others words, some of the researchers were enthusiastic to collaborate in terms of disseminating useful information and sharing valuable knowledge with ordinary citizens. Overall, the study revealed positive result that despite weak ties relationships, the willingness to collaborate is far more than the obstacles perceived in the course of establishing such collaboration.

Research is about knowing and understanding. It is about re­ examining issues, problems or questions of which we seek further knowledge or answers (NWSK 3555 Class Notes, September 18, 2001). First and foremost, First Nations research is a different way of knowing which involves understanding people and their perspectives. Who would understand better these "ways of knowing" than someone from the same community? Hiring Native researchers from outside one's own community has, in past experience, resulted in lack of a trust relationship and poor (or skewed) research results. A vital aspect of any First Nations Researcher is to obtain community permission. What needs to be addressed from the outset may include western ethics of "doing" research but not to the neglect of community and cultural-specific ways of "finding out things." An effective and culture-based approach to research ought to be grounded in a holistic methodology. By holistic, I mean understanding the concept of the topic from the physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional aspects, not only from the researcher's point of view, but also from the community members themselves. Personal attributes of the researcher also ought to be taken into consideration. Allocation of time and place is another important aspect of consideration when it comes time for interviews. Face-to-face interviews, in my experience, seem to work best in First Nations communities, likely due to the lack of trust issue.

Current literature claims that the graduate students’ personal aspects not only influence research training outcomes, but they also serve as a mediator between students’ research activity and research training environment. In previous studies, key predictors of scholarly/research productivity among counseling graduate students have been investigated (Brown, Lent, Ryan, & McPartland, 1996; Kahn, 2001; Kahn & Scott, 1997). However, only 17% of the variance in three factors—research self-efficacy, research interests, and number of years in a program—predicted student research activities directly and research training environment indirectly. Bandura’s social cognitive theory was utilized as the conceptual framework for the study. Data was collected through SurveyMonkey™, an online source that surveyed 292 counseling doctoral students currently enrolled in 90 counseling doctoral programs across the United States. The findings from a factor analysis conducted in the present study indicated, the RIFPQ-R developed by the researcher was a reliable and valid instrument. Additionally, the findings showed that counseling doctoral students’ researcher identity correlated significantly with students’ research activity and research training environment; however, the correlations were weak. Finally, using two multiple regression analyses, students’ research experiences before admission to program, number of credit hours completed in qualitative and quantitative research, number of years enrolled in their program, and weekly hours spent doing research predicted a small portion of variance in students’ reported researcher identity and research activity.

For the last fifteen years, research on students' conceptions of physical phenomena has been directing our attention to the value of knowing and considering children's prior ideas in science teaching. Although many who are concerned with science education are aware of and see wisdom in this perspective of teaching, there are many realities, including the content of the discipline, that pose great challenges in translating it into practice in science classes. Currently, in collaboration with teachers, science educators are actively conducting classroom studies. In this process, teachers as researchers are making reflective inquiries into their own students' learning. This study followed a similar framework of research at a microcosmic level. It entailed elicitation of thirteen Grade 11 students' individual prior conceptions of solubility and a teacher-researcher collaboration to incorporate these conceptions in the instruction of a unit on solution chemistry. Consequently, the study presents a phenomenography of solubility, narrates a story about classroom instruction which took students' conceptions into consideration, reports four case studies on students' conceptual growth and changes, and outlines some of the factors that facilitate or constrain collaborative teaching that focuses on student understanding of subject matter. The students' prior conceptions of solubility were categorized into six categories of description: 1. physical transformation from solid to liquid 2. chemical transformation of solute 3. density of solute 4. amount of space available in solution 5. properties of solute 6. size of solute particles With regard to learning chemistry, these conceptualizations made clear four issues: (1) students' explanations were bounded by their perceptions, (2) students extended macroscopic explanations to a microscopic level, (3) students made inappropriate links to previous chemistry learning, and (4) students used the language of chemistry non-discriminately. After studying a unit on solution chemistry, two more categories of description were added to the pre-instructional categories: 1. chemical structure of components 2. solution equilibrium After instruction, the students attributing to the initial six categories of description' diminished in number. The newly acquired conceptions of solubility reflected insufficient explanatory power and were merely overlaid with the chemical language. Learning the language of solution chemistry and acquiring some theoretical understanding of it were reflected in the change between pre- and post-instructional conceptions. This conceptual change can be considered as evolutionary. It was inferred that the abstract and ambiguous nature of chemical theories and principles sets limits to conceptual change teaching. The influences that facilitated the collaborative efforts include: (1) the teacher's attempts to incorporate students' conceptions, (2) the teacher's openness and willingness to assess her own methods of teaching chemistry, (3) the teacher's reflections about the researcher's constructivist teaching, and (4) the researcher's active participation in the classroom interactions. The four most important influences that seriously constrained the collaborative efforts to link students' conceptions with formal chemistry were: (1) the lack of time to devote to the topic of solution chemistry, (2) the lack of teacher time to plan lessons together in order to incorporate students' conceptions, (3) the lack of practical experience on the part of both the researcher and the teacher in developing specific teaching strategies which acknowledged students' prior belief in this content area, and (4) the lack of time to develop common perspectives and a shared language. This study has implications for both teachers and researchers. Specifically, it implies that students' conceptions form an integral component of chemistry instruction—as points of origin for lesson planning and development of curricular materials It also implies that through science educators' modelling and practising in their "teaching and learning" courses, pre- and in-service teachers be challenged to seek answers for epistemological questions such as: What is chemical knowledge? and, How is it acquired? A general implication is that both teachers and researchers, rather than being fence-makers, must strive to be bridge-builders so that they can be learners of each other's theoretical and practical experiences.
Education, Faculty of
Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of
Graduate

Accompanying materials housed with archival copy.
The purpose of this study is to research the role of documentation in a cycle-two, year one classroom (Grade 3) in a suburban community in Quebec. As the teacher-researcher, my overarching question is to come to a better understanding of how documentation is carried out in the classroom. There are several questions that guide this research: (1) What kinds of documentation are used and what purposes do they serve? (2) What role(s) does the teacher play in the documentation process? (3) What role(s) do the children play in documentation? For the purpose of this study documentation is any recording of or about classroom activities, students, or events influencing learning (Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999). Data forms included fieldnotes, video tapes, and classroom artifacts. I used complementary categorizing (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994) and contextualizing (Erickson, 1986, 1992; Merryfield, 1990) approaches for analysis, aided by the computer software program Atlas.ti (Muhr, 1997).
Three main categories of documentation were uncovered in the data. These are interactive documentation, reflective documentation, and process-oriented documentation. The activities that supported and sustained the creation of this documentation are explored in detail. The consequences of the documentation process resulted in what is described as an interactive classroom. The major conclusions concern the importance of communication cycles, flexible teacher roles, and the space provided for student participation.

The purpose of this research was to explore how postdoctoral researchers and principal investigators (PIs) in scientific disciplines experience researcher development, following the implementation of the Roberts researcher development policies. This doctoral research used a qualitative methodology with a dual approach of “at-home ethnography” (Alvesson, 2009, p. 174) and semi-structured interviewing to explore the experiences of being and developing as a postdoctoral researcher, as well as being an academic employing postdoctoral researchers, within the structural context of a research- intensive institution. Data from 9 Postdoctoral researchers and 12 Principal investigators (academics) interviewed between 2013-14 is presented in this analysis. The Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992) have been used to frame the analysis of researcher development, as a practice within the field of postdoctoral research. An ethnographic exploration permitted to narrate the institutional implementation of researcher development policies; it also allowed to identify objective structures contributing to shaping the Postdoc habitus and the positioning of researchers within the institutional context. From this small-scale explorative study emerged 6 domains of postdoctoral researcher positioning (projecting, grafting, hopping, stepping, resisting and bobbling) within the field of postdoctoral research. These domains were conceptualised on the basis of volumes and configuration of capital, particular habitus, modes of entry into the postdoctoral field and trajectory within the field. The study identifies instances of symbolic violence that pertain to the lack of capital afforded to postdoctoral researchers. An exploration of PIs’ habitus highlights particular stances in approaching researcher development, that point to a reproduction of the field doxa. The findings bring to the fore that researcher development policies have had limited impact in reconfiguring the postdoctoral field logic and challenge researcher developers in their role within the postdoctoral field.

Abstract Despite favorable job-growth predictions for many engineering occupations(NSB, 2010), researchers and government agencies have described a crisis in education in the United States. Several simultaneous events have conspired to sound this alarm. First, when compared to other countries, the United States is losing ground in educational rankings, and research and development output and expenditures (NSB, 2014). Second, within the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) the ranks of engineering education have been identified as one of the most unwelcoming, inequitable, and homogeneous (Johri & Olds, 2014). Third, engineering educators at the university level has historically been select individuals from the dominant culture considered to be content experts in their fields, but having little or no background in educational theory (Froyd & Lohmann, 2014). Researchers and government agencies have recently claimed the changing demographics and need for more engineers in the United States signal a need for revolutionary changes in the way engineers are prepared and the need for a more welcoming and collaborative environment in engineering education (Jamieson & Lohmann, 2012; NSF, 2014). Understanding how to improve the culture of engineering education is an important and necessary ingredient for addressing national concerns with engineering and innovation.

My study seeks to explore the manifestation of the culture of engineering education in the experiences of five long-time engineering professors, who enrolled as part of a STEM PhD cohort, in a School of Education at a large research university in the northeastern United States. The overarching problem I will address is the persistent culture of engineering education that, despite decades of rhetoric about reform aimed at increasing the number of those historically underrepresented in engineering, continues to promote a hegemonic culture and has failed to take the necessary systemic steps to become more welcoming and more effective for all learners. This research involves the story, and the history, of an engineering education culture quick to identify the haves and the have-nots and dismissive of those individuals “not cut out” to become engineers.

My study is driven by the following research questions: (1) What are engineering educators’ perceptions of teaching and learning? (2) In what ways, if any, have participant experiences with constructivism and social constructivism influenced espoused beliefs, perceptions, and enactments of teaching? (3) What may be potential strategies for shifting the culture of veteran engineering educators toward reflective teaching practices and equitable access to engineering education?

En mettant en œuvre une démarche éthique rigoureuse et en m’appuyant sur mon propre passé de chercheur océanographe, j’explore dans cette thèse les différents aspects du travail de recherche, depuis le choix des sujets de recherche, en passant par l’élaboration de la connaissance, jusqu’aux conséquences des découvertes, et montre qu’ils sont tous le lieu de tensions éthiques. Je tente d’en cerner les contours, et de leur apporter des réponses argumentées. Cela me conduit enfin à proposer un certain nombre de pistes pour développer la vigilance éthique des chercheurs
In this thesis, using a rigourous ethical approach and relying on my own experience of a researcher in oceanography, I explore all the aspects of research - the choice of a research field, the development of knowledge, the consequences of the findings- to show that they are all subject to ethical tensions. I try to circumvent them, and to bring arguments to answer them. I eventually propose several ideas to develop the ethical carefulness among the scientists

Hepatitis C is known as the ??silent epidemic??. Globally 170 million people live with chronic hepatitis C, yet it receives little policy, media or public attention. In developed countries the blood-borne virus is primarily transmitted through illicit drug injecting practices, aiding its silenced and stigmatised status. In this thesis I uncover some of these silences by exploring the narratives of forty people living with hepatitis C in New Zealand and Australia. My status as a person living with hepatitis C informed all aspects of this research project; I therefore also include my own experiences, foregrounding researcher reflexivity and the co-constructed nature of the interview process. My aims are both practical and theoretical. On a practical level I explore the experiences of people living with hepatitis C in order to inform recommendations for policy, research and practice, while also working to elucidate and employ an approach that allows for an analysis of the ill body as a lived experiencing agent, located in a substantive web of connections whereby discourse, corporeality and sociality, inform and mediate one another. To this end I employ a ??political phenomenology?? influenced by phenomenological and poststructuralist theoretical approaches. The central, previously under-researched, issues that arose in participants?? narratives structure the chapter outline, with results chapters focusing on participants?? experiences of diagnosis, living with hepatitis C, stigma, support group membership, alcohol use, and hepatitis C treatment. For many participants, it was found that living with hepatitis C was a liminal experience where distinctions between what it was to be healthy or ill were not clear-cut. Indeed, many of the participants?? narratives exposed the inadequacy of Western binary categorisations to speak to their experiences of living with hepatitis C. Throughout this thesis it can be seen that the meanings that participants ascribed to health, illness, and their hepatitis C were fluid and contextual, informed by the interplay of corporeality and discourse. From this interplay comes the ability to speak into the gaps of dominant discourses, creating the potential for the disruption, or subtle realignment, of normative ways of knowing.

The developing knowledge economy affects organizations within the innovation system where higher education institutions (HEI) are regarded as a significant part. There is a large amount of research that focus on different aspects of collaboration such as the outcome, the process and its infrastructure. To emphasize HEIs role in the national and regional innovation systems concepts such as Mode 2 and Triple helix, and the Knowledge triangle, have developed. These concepts have also heavily influenced Swedish innovation policy.   This thesis is set to analyze collaboration work between Swedish HEIs and the public and private sectors, and to understand how collaboration: i) occurs in practice in research and undergraduate education; ii) is influenced by policy efforts, and; iii) influence HEI’s internal and external social capital building. Firstly, research and teaching links is analyzed to highlight the integration of collaboration, research and education within specific research profiles. This is because previous research has neglected collaboration and its effect on undergraduate education. Secondly, social capital theory is used as a framework for the analysis. Social capital theory is used to obtain a thorough understanding of individual researchers’ attitude to collaboration and participation in collaboration activities.   The results indicate that short term projects had long-term effects since it established new education programs and projects. Collaboration also effects undergraduate education through research profiles with their integration of research and education in groups within as well as outside the HEI. The results also show that social capital building through top steered initiatives is complex. In the HEIs there was no relation between researchers expressing a positive attitude towards different forms of collaboration and a high participation level in collaboration activities. This suggests that building of external social capital within HEIs is not related to the nature of the internal social capital. There was interfaculty differences in both the researchers’ attitude to collaboration activities and participation in collaboration activities. As expected, professors had more opportunities and ability for collaboration. They also indicated a resistance to use a central infrastructure for collaboration to build external social capital. The opposite was demonstrated for professors from the humanities who had little experience of collaboration. They still did not to use the infrastructure to a large extent. Suggestively policy makers should encourage a more efficient external social capital building through earmarked funding for collaboration on a department level rather than on the HEIs’ central level.

The academic success of students depends, among several factors, on the school's learning environment and the teacher's classroom management skills. In recent years creative solutions to curb poor behavior by establishing proper class discipline have come to the forefront of the teaching profession. With that in mind, the present research topic was chosen to foster appropriate student conduct in establishing and sustaining a productive learning environment through the use of the Positive Behavior Support model. This teacher-as-researcher study took place over a one-year period (2010-2011) in a secondary two class of twenty-five students at a Quebec high school. The collection of the data by means of daily observations of the whole class and three preselected case students was intended to examine the effectiveness of the methods of behavior management used in the field with the teacher's application of them in the classroom. The research results conclude that the Positive Behavior Approach model contributed to a reduction in the number of incidents of poor behavior and an overall improvement of the learning environment in the class. Furthermore, the study enabled personal growth in teaching philosophy, style and enrichment of pedagogical methods and techniques through a process of reflection, analysis and adjustments.
Le succès académique des étudiants dépend de nombreux facteurs tels que l'environnement d'apprentissage et l'aptitude du professeur à contrôler le comportement des étudiants de sa classe. Depuis quelques années plusieurs solutions créatives ont été mises de l'avant par la profession pour établir une bonne discipline de classe. Le présent sujet de recherche fut choisi pour favoriser un comportement étudiant adéquat en établissant et en promouvant un environnement d'apprentissage productif à l'aide du modèle appelé Support Positif du Comportement. Cette recherche comme professeur fut réalisée sur une période d'un an (2010-2011) dans une classe de secondaire deux de 25 étudiants. La collecte de données réalisée à l'aide d'observations journalières de la classe et de trois étudiants avait pour but d'examiner l'efficacité des méthodes de contrôle du comportement utilisées dans le domaine et par le professeur. Les résultats de la recherche démontre que le modèle de l'approche du Support Positif a contribué à une réduction du nombre d'incidents de comportements inappropriés et il permet une amélioration générale de l'environnement d'apprentissage dans la classe. De plus, l'étude permit un développement personnel dans la philosophie d'enseigner, dans le style et l'enrichissement des méthodes et techniques pédagogiques par un procédé de réflexions, d'analyse et d'ajustements.

During this session, three education game developers funded by the ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research (ED/IES SBIR) program to create commercially viable learning games will discuss why and how they have partnered with outside education researchers to build capacity for their project. The session will feature short video demonstrations of the education technology games that are being developed and brief presentations on the iterative research that are being conducted to inform refinements to the technology and the pilot studies that are being performed to evaluate the promise of the games to increase student learning. The discussion will center on the benefits and challenges related to game developer-researcher collaborations.

This ethnographic case study documents the joys and challenges of a Research in Practice (RIP) project conducted by five adult literacy instructors that led to the report Hardwired for Hope: Effective ABE/Literacy Instructors. (Battell, Gesser, Rose, Sawyer, & Twiss, 2004). As the practitioner-researchers were nearing retirement, they set out to conduct a research project that would put the experience of long-term instructors on record, describing the background, beliefs and strategies they bring to their work. The resulting study serves as a legacy to instructors who are committed to effective practice, student success and social justice. I had the privilege of participating in this project over a three-year period. The experience gained as participant-observer is one source of data, along with document analysis (minutes, emails, reports and the study itself, Hardwired for Hope) and interviews (with project participants and two other informants). Three sensitizing concepts influence this study: the centrality of gender (Code, 1991, 1995; Luttrell, 1996), the notion of “field” (Bourdieu, 1985, 1989, 1993), and the concept of “communities of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991, 1999; Wenger, 1998b). But more importantly, the research was shaped by the rich body of practitioner research that has blossomed in BC over the past decade, and by my own participation in the Hardwired for Hope project, the Research in Practice movement and the Adult Basic Education field over a 25-year period. Thus “insider research” is a key feature of the methodology. Five themes emerged: collaboration, knowledge creation, recognizing and valuing practitioners as researchers, supporting practitioner-research and promoting a research-in-practice culture. I also found that ABE practitioners bring to their work leadership, innovation, commitment to collaboration, an adventurous spirit and a willingness to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions about what research is and who has the right to create knowledge. I provide recommendations to practitioner-researchers and university-based researchers who want to contribute to the RIP movement.

This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way to care for self, objects, and others.

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008.
Title from screen (viewed on June 3, 2009). Department of English, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Ulla Connor, William V. Rozycki, Thomas A. Upton. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-99).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Curriculum and Instruction, School of Education, 2008.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 22, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-10, Section: A, page: 3842. Adviser: David J. Flinders.

This study is about the troubles encountered by one researcher in getting qualitative research on partnerships between families, in disadvantaged situations and educators in toddler day care settings and how they affect the quality of care as perceived by parents and educators. The study focuses on the conflicts and tensions as perceived by families and educators. A secondary goal of the study is to develop a greater understanding of how day care training programs might incorporate the findings to prepare day care educators to work with families in disadvantaged circumstances. The study is done through a qualitative lens using an ecological framework. The study spans a three month period and is set up in a non-profit, parent-controlled day care center. Detailed 'narratives of experience' are constructed from the participants' reflections on the events. Three main barriers or conflicts have emerged from the study. They are time, fear and a difference in perceptions between the families and the educators. The thesis concludes with advice to researchers who may be contemplating setting up a similar study and some suggestions are proposed for day care training programs. These suggestions include reflections of the researcher and how she implemented changes in her own teaching.

CITE/Mathematics and Science Education
Ed.D.
Implementing research-based practices in classrooms as a means of increasing achievement in mathematics for all students requires an understanding of many complex factors that influence classroom change. Situating the role of the teacher as critical to these efforts, teacher inquiry provides a theoretical framework from which to understand the importance of teacher-created knowledge in implementing new instructional practices. A teacher-researcher partnership may provide the support system for teacher inquiry to occur. This study investigated the effects of a research partnership on the implementation of research-based practices, specifically considering the views of teachers participating in the partnership, the differences in implementation based on interactions with researchers, and the features of the partnership that supported the implementation of new practices. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of secondary data was used to understand the experiences of twelve teachers who participated in a research partnership among a research-based non-profit, a national coalition of public schools, and two universities. Results from observation, survey, and interview data found teachers had a complex self-perception of their own roles in the teacher-researcher partnership including being a collaborator, a learner, and an agent of change. Additionally, teachers who interacted with researchers embraced the new materials and instructional practices more so than those who did not. Features of the partnership that were supportive of the implementation process included a focus on the teacher, evolution and responsiveness, and collaboration and integration. Implications for teachers, researchers, administrators, and others are discussed.
Temple University--Theses

In this workshop, we present a model of problem that we call Research Situation for the Classroom (RSC). The aim of a RSC is to put students in a role close to a mathematical researcher in order to make them work on mathematical thinking/skills. A RSC has some characteristics : the problem is close to a research one, the statement is an easy understandable question, school knowledge are elementary, there is no end, a solved question postponed to new questions... The most important characteristic of a RSC is that students can manage their research by fixing themselves some variable of the problem. So, a RSC is completely different from a problem that students usually do in France. For short : there is no final answer, students can try to resolve their own questions : a RSC is a large open field where many sub-problems exist; the goal for the students is not to apply a technique: the goal is, as for a researcher, to search. These type of situations are particularly interesting to develop problem solving skills and mathematical thinking. They can also let students discover that mathematics are “alive” and “realistic”. This workshop will be split into two parts. First, we propose to put people in the situation of solving a RSC to make them discover practically what is it. After, we present the model of a RSC and some results of our experimentations.

In recent years, Fine Art practice has become assimilated into the framework and culture of academic research. 1bis move has not been an easy process and practice itself hovers uneasily (as it should), around the edges of acceptability as research per se. Debates continue around the wording of descriptors to qualify this type of research: 'practice-based', 'practice-led', 'contextualised practice'. Practice, within this search for sufficient terms to define and contain it within a research culture with strictly defined parameters, becomes a secondary endeavour. My thesis questions whether the work of the artist is primary in terms of research, in the sense not only of the production of objects, or events in time, but also taking into account the processes through which the artwork is conceived, processes of thinking and intuition, which often remain beyond description. The role of creative practice in research has the potential, through questioning different types of 'knowledge', to include experiential knowledge within research. My text, somewhere between artwork and academic text is one of fragmentation and dissembling, reflecting the 'attempt' or 'essay', which ultimately remains more concerned with the openness of process than any definitive answer.

The purpose of the study was to explore researcher experiences of community engagement as part of a long-term higher education community engagement (HECE) partnership with rural schools. The theoretical framework that guided the study was grounded in the construct global citizenship. The instrumental case design followed the qualitative approach from a constructivist epistemology. Semi-structured questionnaires were used for data collection with purposively sampled researchers (n=16), comprising male (n=3) and female (n=13) researchers, including local (n=14) and international (n=2) researchers, who completed their research in the conveniently sampled HECE project. Following thematic analysis, two main themes emerged, namely: researcher perspectives on capacity development in higher education community engagement, and researcher perspectives on higher education community engagement as a core function of higher education institutions. Findings indicated, from researchers’ perspectives, that HECE benefits from collaborative partnerships, and that researchers have opportunities for personal and professional development. Researchers felt that such capacity development was necessary to ensure project sustainability. According to researchers, HECE project challenges or barriers need to be addressed to ensure project sustainability. Higher education requires a community engagement policy that guides the establishment of platforms for knowledge generation, human capacity development and collaborative partnerships in order that the core functions of higher education institutions could be performed.
Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2017.
Educational Psychology
MEd
Unrestricted

The purpose of this study was to examine the responses of third grade students to literature discussions. The theoretical framework of this study is embodied in a transactive theory of reading as explained by a reader-response perspective. The design was descriptive to provide insights concerning the instructional setting, teacher-researcher role, students, and teacher-colleagues. Ten third grade students, identified by their classroom teachers as "remedial" readers, participated in this study. The students, from three classrooms, attended a 45 minute weekly literature discussion session for a period of 16 weeks. Texts for the discussions included multiple copies of traditional folk tales. Data for this study were gathered through participant observation, formal and informal interviews, miscue analysis, field notes, and audio recordings of the literature discussions. The data were analyzed using a constant comparison process; that is, a process of developing initial coding categories from the data and refining or adding to the categories as the data were evaluated for "fit." The findings suggest that the students had a difficult time, initially, engaging in the literature discussions. Not having been involved in literature discussions, the students knew little of the social conventions of discussing with their peers. After a few sessions, however, the students were able to more fully engage each other with the literature. Although some students remained quiet throughout the discussions, all of the students had at least one evaluative response to make for each of the stories. Results from the miscue data suggest that these "remedial" readers improved dramatically in their ability to read and retell stories. In addition, I discovered that I needed to balance my role of teacher and researcher and expand my views of response. The teacher-colleagues noted that the students were more confident readers in their classrooms, and in one case, a teacher described how she changed her interactional patterns with the students. The findings suggest that the role of the teacher is crucial in facilitating response. How the teacher organizes literature discussions, what factors are highlighted, and the freedom students feel in discussing issues are positively or negatively influenced by the teacher.

Mi trabajo de investigación se centra en el estudio de problemas organizacionales en situaciones de colaboración. En particular, esta tesis se compone de tres capítulos en los que analizo problemas de incentivos en la investigación interdisciplinar y en acuerdos de colaboración entre empresas y universidades.
El primero capitulo de mi tesis, "Incentives for Interdisciplinary Research", es (hasta el momento y según mi conocimiento) el primero trabajo que caracteriza formalmente la investigación interdisciplinar a través de complementariedad en la producción y desventaja innata en los costes para el desarrollo de una nueva área científica. Mi trabajo demuestra que cuando los objetivos de la investigación son suficientemente exigentes, la investigación interdiciplinar es preferible a la investigación especializada.
En el segundo capítulo de la tesis, "Business-Science Research Collaboration under Moral-Hazard", analizo cómo las características de acuerdos de colaboración son el resultado de un contrato óptimo entre las partes contratantes. Además, el tipo de acuerdo puede ser un importante instrumento de incentivo cuando algún (algunos) de los recursos importantes para la colaboración no son contratables. El análisis se hace en dos dimensiones: de la estructura del gobierno del acuerdo (descentralizada o centralizada), y de los problemas de información que esa estructura enfrenta. Aunque una estructura descentralizada siempre elije proyectos que están más cercanos a los intereses de la parte gobernante, las dos estructuras podrán utilizar el proyecto como mecanismo para reducir el efecto de riesgo moral.
El tercero capítulo de la tesis, "Patents and Business-Science Research Partnership" (escrito en conjunto con Walter Garcia-Fontes), presenta un estudio empírico que relaciona las características de patentes con el proceso de investigación que las precedieron. Utilizando datos de patentes europeas, los resultados de este capítulo están de acuerdo con las predicciones teóricas del capítulo anterior de esta tesis: la identidad institucional de las organizaciones que hacen la investigación se hacen visibles en las características de las patentes.
The research of my PhD dissertation focuses on the study of organizational problems, in the context of collaborative relations. In particular, the dissertation is composed by three chapters, in which I analyze incentives problems in interdisciplinary research and in collaboration agreements between firms and universities.
The first chapter of the thesis, "Incentives for Interdisciplinary Research", is (up to the moment and to my knowledge), the first article that formally characterizes interdisciplinary research: through the presence of complementarities in the production and through an innate cost disadvantage, when developing a new scientific area. My work shows that when the goals for the research are sufficiently demanding, interdisciplinarity is preferred to specialization.
In the second chapter of the thesis, "Business-Science Research Collaboration under Moral-Hazard", I analyze on how the characteristics of a research agreement can be the optimal outcome of a contract between the parties. Furthermore, the type of project can also be an importance incentive tool when some of the resources that are important for the success are non-verifiable and non-contractibe. The analysis is developed in two dimensions: the structure of partnership governance (decentralized and centralized), and the informational constraints that such structures may face. Even if a decentralized structure chooses a type of project that is closer to the interests of the governing party, both structures may optimally use the project as a mechanism to reduce the impact of moral-hazard.
In the third chapter of the thesis, "Patents and Business-Science Research Partnership" (jointly written with Walter Garcia-Fontes), I present an empirical study that relates the characteristics of the patents with the research process that lead to the inventions. Using data from the European Inventors Survey, PatVal-EU, the results of this chapter are aligned with the theoretical predictions of the previous chapter of the thesis: the institutional identity of the research organizations are associated with different basicness levels of the patens.

This doctoral dissertation is concerned with an exploratory study on how emerging learning ecologies enabled by Web 2.0 and social web are affecting the self-organized practices and dispositions in the digital settings of individual PhD students. The research endorses a constructivist grounded theory approach, where data collection has been undertaken across three Italian and one UK universities and has included a sequence of online questionnaires, individual interviews and focus groups. The findings being generated provide a repertoire of social media practices for research purposes; a framework conceptualizing the trajectories in the digital, in terms of Space, Time, Socialization, Digital identity, Stance and Tensions; the forms of resilience and the tensions underlying the PhD researchers’ digital engagement. The affordances of PhD e-researchers’ emerging ecologies are therefore understood as multi-dimensional and transitional trajectories intentionally undertaken by the individuals and generating a range of reactions toward the opportunities provided by the open Web.

This study re-presents an open-ended process of coming to know through designing, conducting and analysing an action research project with youth and adult education teachers in Khartoum, Sudan. The inquiry responds to the overarching question: What knowledge can I generate about teaching, its development and my researcher practice through collaborative action research with teachers in Sudanese youth and adult education schools? This multifaceted focus encompasses reconnaissance into teaching practices and adult education, the processes of action research and teacher development and reflexive analysis of epistemological positioning and knowledge construction through our collaborative investigation. The action research forms the substantive basis of this thesis, constituting diverse processes of coming to know by the participating teachers and myself. Our interactions as practitioners and researchers interrogated the teachers' contextualised, practical knowledge through academic mechanisms of data collection and analysis. The teachers reflected upon their taken-for-granted understandings of education, their school contexts and their practice, and re-cast them as more complex. Participation in the study resulted in the teachers becoming ‘learners-focused' by developing greater focus on their practice, by being mufetih (observant and analytical), by being close to learners and by increased experimentalism. These dispositions were combined with a shift in the teachers' epistemological positions towards ‘authoritative uncertainty', in which partial, contextualised and contingent knowledge was recognised as legitimate, facilitating re-construction of their knowledge to develop their practice. In this narrative account, the field research is framed by my evolving theoretical understandings which informed the design, analysis and re-presentation of the study. An autobiographical introduction to my experience in Sudan outlines my nascent professional stance towards education development. I then explore my increasingly critical understanding of research on teachers and pedagogy in Africa and discourse on education quality in low-income countries. I discuss the formation of my specific researcher identity through postcolonial theorisation of my ethical stance towards making a difference in the field of practice, namely Sudanese schools. In this thesis, layered re-viewing, which derives from an epistemological stance of the partiality and contingency of knowledge, facilitates re-presentation of moments in which understanding is challenged and re-formed by theorisation and experience. Re-viewing literature and theoretical analyses brings new epistemological, ontological and ethical understandings, as my focus on ‘the practical' in field research has been supplemented in the post-fieldwork period by ‘the practical' in the academy, a contested domain of knowledge production. To conclude this thesis, the position of ‘authoritative uncertainty' is applied in the reflexive deconstruction of the study, as the action research process and outcomes are re-viewed through postcolonial and feminist theories to unpick the situated complexities of cross-cultural practitioner research and its representation. While coming to know is a continuous process, its representation in this thesis reaches an arbitrary conclusion by proposing how coming to know teaching practices, action research processes and reflexive researcher analysis might bring new perspectives to academic and policy initiatives for teacher development.

Action research has become a widely accepted and popular form of teacher professional development/learning, within the UK and internationally, and forms part of the professional actions of the Scottish Chartered Teacher. Whilst action research may be a valuable form of professional development supported through awardbearing courses (such as the Scottish Chartered Teacher programmes), funded projects or partnerships with university colleagues, it is questionable to what extent this is continued or even valued by teachers beyond the parameters of CPD courses. If Chartered Teachers are to engage meaningfully in action research then it is vital we understand how they perceive the nature and purpose of such activities and explore the opportunities and limitations they may face. This is not just an issue for Chartered Teachers in Scotland but one that may concern any teacher attempting to engage in action research as part of their practice. To explore teachers’ lived experience of engaging in post-award non-funded action research a case-study approach was adopted. The case study comprised six qualified Chartered Teachers with this thesis focusing on the stories from three of the teachers. In-depth loosely structured interviews were held with participants at three intervals over the course of a year to discuss their current and ongoing action research work. In addition visual data was created by participants to explore, share, (re)present and negotiate their understandings of action research. Documentary data was also collected. A broadly inductive approach to the analysis was taken, coding both within and across cases. A thematic narrative analysis of the individuals’ stories was also undertaken because I believe teachers’ individual stories are critically important and was keen not to reduce these to ‘codes’ and ‘categories’. Emerging from the data are three significant themes - the importance of understanding the nature and purpose of action research; the teachers’ evolving identities as Chartered Teachers/action researchers; and the need to develop and promote a Third Space – creating a conceptually different way of being a teacher. The data shows that traditional notions of research are influencing these teachers’ understanding of action research and this limits their action research work. How teachers understand the nature and purpose of action research is deeply interrelated with their identity as a teacher/Chartered Teacher/action researcher. Their identity(ies), I suggest, is/are a site of struggle, contestation and negotiation and Chartered Teachers are, arguably, in an in-between space: they are simultaneously teacher and researcher, yet they are neither one nor the other. It is possible, then, to understand Chartered Teacher as a hybrid identity and I draw upon Third Space theory as a heuristic to understand Chartered Teacher as a distinctly different way of being a teacher. I argue that a more complex view is needed that promotes the dynamic and fluid nature of action research. The insights drawn from this study offer some understandings that may help us to (re)consider and (re)frame the way in which we understand the teacher as researcher.

Este texto é resultado de encontros. Encontros de sala de aula, encontros de História, encontros de debate, encontros de vidas. Estes encontros produziram novos fios que foram tecendo-se juntos e unindo-se a uma rede que associava questões acerca do cotidiano escolar, do ensino de História, da formação do professor, da escola noturna e da pesquisa em sala de aula. Desejava-se compreender se a escola é um espaçotempo de pesquisa e se os estudantes são estudantes-pesquisadores e os docentes, professores-pesquisadores. Ao final da pesquisa realizada em uma escola noturna da rede estadual do Rio de Janeiro, pudemos compartilhar experiências vividas no cotidiano de seus praticantes e discutir se a escola proporciona ações de pesquisa entre os estudantes e se a mesma busca desenvolver atividades que partam dos interesses do grupo discente. A escola é um lugar de pesquisa e nós somos estudantes-pesquisadores e professores-pesquisadores mesmo que, muitas vezes, a escola, da forma como está organizada e sofrendo pressões internas e externas diversas, como, por exemplo, a falha formação de professores e as políticas públicas de ensino, negligencie os interesses dos estudantes e que os mesmos não consigam reconhecer-se enquanto condutores de seu processo de aprendizagem, estudantes e professores pesquisadores. É a experiência da pesquisa, de atividades que estimulem o estudante a fazer escolhas, buscar informações, analisá-las, criticá-las, organizar o seu pensamento, apropriar-se dos conhecimentos reunidos e colocar-se diante da sociedade, modificando-se, que formará os cidadãos críticos que a escola e o ensino de História devem auxiliar a form
This text is the result of some meetings. Classroom meetings, History meetings, discussion meetings, life meetings. Those meetings produced some new threads, which have woven together and joined a net that associated questions about school routine, History teaching, teachers training, evening school and research in the classroom. The aim was to understand if school is a research time-space and if pupils are researcher-students and also if teachers are researcher-teachers. By the conclusion of the research, developed in an evening public school in Rio de Janeiro, we could share the daily experiences of its practitioners and discuss if school provides research actions among students, and also if it tries to develop activities from the pupils interest. The school is a research place and we are researcher-students and researcher-teachers, even though, in many circumstances, school, as it is organized, under various internal and external pressures, such as, for instance, the failure in teachers training and the teaching public politics, denies pupils interests. In this kind of organization, students are not able to recognize themselves as conductors of their own learning-teaching process, researcher students and teachers. It is the research experience, from activities which stimulate students to make choices, search for information, analyze and criticize them, organize their thought, appropriate themselves of the gathered acknowledgment and have a position in society, changing themselves, the final result will be the critical citizens, who should be educated under the assistance of school and History teaching.

This study examines policy and procedure documents related to Disability at 3 U.S. institutions of higher education over a 25-year time frame. Policy and procedure documents are the foundation that govern how institutions "handle" Disability, outlining expectations and guidelines for providing services and establishing bureaucratic channels used to determine who has access to those services. This research employs a comparative case study mixed methods approach. The found documents and their online contexts are analyzed according to four qualities: findability, cohesion, consistency, and transparency. A document's findability refers to the ability of a user to locate the original document, and a document's cohesion, consistency, and transparency, refer to respectively where, what, and how these documents persist from their original creation date. As I collected these documents, I constructed comparative matrices to track these qualities within and across three different universities. The initial findability of documents demonstrates two key results: 1) during the overall 1990– 2015 time frame, there was a marked change in the availability of materials in a digital format, and 2) the emergence of a way to describe documents via the phrase "Does Not Exist." These materials definitively did not exist prior to a given time frame, but later versions of such documents included an earlier start date. Cohesion results indicate that the documents most likely to be presented in a single source were broadly usable to a large portion of the university population: the general student body. Consistency results address a major issue with the document search: while these materials were likely to exist, at each of these institutions and time frames (barring the DNE documents), they are very difficult to track down. Transparency across found, single-source documents was ubiquitous; if it could be found, it had searchable text. Beyond the findings of my document collection, I created two major products as a result of this dissertation work: key recommendations for different stakeholder groups and a curated exhibit of VT-specific materials collected for this study.
Doctor of Philosophy
This study examines policy and procedure documents related to Disability at 3 U.S. institutions of higher education over a 25-year time frame. Policy and procedure documents are the foundation that govern how institutions "handle" Disability, outlining expectations and guidelines for providing services and establishing bureaucratic channels used to determine who has access to those services. This research employs a comparative case study mixed methods approach. The found documents and their online contexts are analyzed according to four qualities: findability, cohesion, consistency, and transparency. A document's findability refers to the ability of a user to locate the original document, and a document's cohesion, consistency, and transparency, refer to respectively where, what, and how these documents persist from their original creation date. As I collected these documents, I constructed comparative matrices to track these qualities within and across three different universities. The initial findability of documents demonstrates two key results: 1) during the overall 1990– 2015 time frame, there was a marked change in the availability of materials in a digital format, and 2) the emergence of a way to describe documents via the phrase "Does Not Exist." These materials definitively did not exist prior to a given time frame, but later versions of such documents included an earlier start date. Cohesion results indicate that the documents most likely to be presented in a single source were broadly usable to a large portion of the university population: the general student body. Consistency results address a major issue with the document search: while these materials were likely to exist, at each of these institutions and time frames (barring the DNE documents), they are very difficult to track down. Transparency across found, single-source documents was ubiquitous; if it could be found, it had searchable text. Beyond the findings of the document collection, there are two major products as a result of this dissertation work. First, key recommendations for different stakeholder groups (SEEKERS, WRITERS, and KEEPERS) are outlined; these recommendations are intended for the entire audience as practices that they can incorporate within their own documents. Second, the work undertaken to create a repository using materials from my document collection, utilizing the Qualitative Data Repository (based in Syracuse University) as the host for a curated exhibit of VT-specific materials, is described.

This research describes the relationship between several social network characteristics and knowledge creation outputs in the form of patented intellectual property of researchers by investigating the case of the University of Waterloo. Based on a literature review in the domains of social networks and knowledge creation, this research focuses on the position of knowledge creation between social closure theory and structural hole theory. These are the two seminal theories of the creation of social capital through social networks. From this body of literature, this thesis develops the research question involving five hypotheses. These hypotheses test whether network density, strength of relationships, diversity of relationships, and amount of research funding have a positive correlation with the number of patents held by the researcher, and whether network size has a negative correlation with number of patents held by a researcher. The data for this research comes from a variety of secondary sources including the University's Office of Research, UWDIR online directory, NSERC research awards search engine, and CIPO patent database. Using a combination of social network analysis and statistical regression analysis, this research shows that network density, diversity of relationships, and amount of research funding have a positive correlation with knowledge creation outputs, while network size has a negative relationship with knowledge creation outputs. Understanding the relationship that these social network factors have with the knowledge creation outputs can help the University develop strategies to help improve their knowledge creation processes, thereby putting the University in a stronger position to facilitate the development of patentable ideas and innovations by encouraging the development of research centres and institutes that intersect disciplinary boundaries.