How Critical is Talk? Discourses of Development Education among Facilitators in Ireland

In this thesis I explore discourses of development education (DE) in Ireland with specific reference to DE facilitators' talk about DE and the meanings they ascribe to it. Building on existing research on discourses 'in' and 'of' DE, as well as debates about the politics of DE, I address the need for research which focuses on how DE is understood by those who support and promote it, and on the implications of their understandings for practice. Drawing on questionnaires, interviews and workshops with 21 facilitators who support and promote DE across a range of sectors, as well as interviews with nine key informants, I develop a framework for understanding different discourses of DE that they draw upon. In this framework, the DE dimensions of knowledge and understanding, skills, learning processes and action are identified as important, as are the aims, values and politics of DE. Drawing on the work of Vanessa Andreotti (2014), the framework identifies different discursive positions when it comes to DE - technical, liberal, North-South, critical and post-critical discourses. The thesis highlights that though DE facilitators largely draw on a critical discourse of DE, they also draw on each of the other discourses. While no particular discourse of DE appears hegemonic, findings suggest that there is a hegemonic style in talk about DE in Ireland, where facilitators talk about DE in idealised, abstract and apolitical terms. In opening up different positions and their implications and in highlighting the prevalent discursive style, this thesis questions any apparent consensus about what DE means and the criticality of its politics. How discourses of DE are shaped is also a focus of this thesis which offers insight into the politics of DE in Ireland. Findings highlight the hegemonic position of Irish Aid as funder and DE as a site of discursive struggle. They suggest that a discursive culture of restraint is prevalent in the DE sector in Ireland. This is characterised by discursive contradictions, consensual relations of non-confrontation and policies and practices which constrain criticality. Thus, though DE facilitators often talk in critical terms about DE, this thesis argues that such talk does not fully capture the contradictions or the constraints involved. In focusing on DE discourses and their implications, as well as on power relations in the DE sector in Ireland, this research aims to inform debates about the politics of DE in Ireland. It calls on DE organisations and facilitators to 'turn the gaze back on ourselves' and to 'constructively deconstruct' DE in an effort to reimagine a post-critical politics of DE. While specifically relevant for the Irish DE sector, the broader relevance of this thesis to research in DE lies in its focus on the experiences and meanings attached to DE among DE facilitators, in its advancing of understanding of different discourses of DE and in its focus on the institutional and relational factors which shape them. Beyond DE, this research highlights the value for critical pedagogy of not taking critical talk for granted. Understanding talk and delving beneath it to explore meanings and their implications, as well as the institutional factors which shape discourses, offers deep insight into the complex challenges facing educators who strive to be critical and relevant in an increasingly unequal world

Integrated adaptive skills program model (IASP)

Integrated Adaptive Skills Program Model (IASP) is designed to offer supportive services to disabled students seeking to integrate into a local after-school program. IASP Model focuses on teaching adaptive skills to disabled students that would prepare them to be fully included into an after-school program with their same age peers. The program offers support, training, and consultation to the students and staff involved in the program. A variety of research-methods and assessment screening tools are used to determine eligibility and program implementation. The IASP Model was piloted during the 2011-2012 school year, in California, United States, but due to limited local and state funds the program could not continue. Students with disabilities deserve to be involved in the community and should not be excluded based on funds. Teaching and educating others on how to integrate students with disabilities into programs will minimize and/or eliminate exclusion of participating in recreation programs within residing communities.https://scholar.dominican.edu/books/1179/thumbnail.jp

Entrepreneurial versus managerial marketing decision making processes in the context of uncertainty from the perspective of the effectuation theory

Doctoral thesis in Marketing and strategyEntrepreneurial marketing has been attracting growing interest, although it is a fairly young research subject. Its relevance results, on the one hand, from the evidence that small and entrepreneurial firms’ marketing practices often differ from the generally accepted textbook prescriptions, adapting marketing concepts so as to make them more adjusted to their needs. On the other hand, managerial marketing has been the target of some criticism for losing topicality in the complex and fast changing and sometimes chaotic, current business environment. Therefore, developments in marketing/entrepreneurship interface not only can help entrepreneurial firms benefiting more from marketing, but can also offer marketing new perspectives to regain significance in a broader context. The current study aims at contributing to deepen the understanding about the entrepreneurial marketing concept, which is still underdeveloped. Previous research has been focusing mainly on describing the entrepreneurial marketing practices and their characteristics. We propose shifting the focus from the marketing activities themselves to what shapes them, that is, the entrepreneurial marketing decision making process and its cognitive conditions. Based on such conceptualization, the study draws on the cognitive approach to entrepreneurship, particularly the effectuation theory, which inverts the causal rationality underlying the mainstream marketing thought. The Critical Incident Technique was used to collect rich contextualized data about marketing decisions made by entrepreneurs. Results allowed designing an entrepreneurial marketing framework that differs in a great extent from the typical managerial marketing process. Furthermore, we were able to understand how entrepreneurs make marketing decisions and that different types of marketing practices are associated to different decision logics. We also found that the cognitive conditions to decide, namely the level of information available and the processing capacity, affect the marketing decision process and its effects on business development. The study offers several contributions for theory, practice, marketing teaching and policy making. Particularly, it contributes for advancing the understanding of the notion of marketing-incontext by proposing that entrepreneurial marketing and managerial marketing can work in a complementary manner or alternatively in different circumstances.O marketing empreendedor tem vindo a atrair interesse crescente, pese embora ser um tópico de pesquisa relativamente jovem. A sua relevância resulta, por um lado, da evidência de que as pequenas empresas e, particularmente, os novos negócios, distanciam-se muitas vezes das prescrições dos manuais de referência, ajustando os conceitos de marketing às suas necessidades. Por outro lado, o marketing tradicional tem sido acusado de estar a perder atualidade no ambiente de negócios, complexo, por vezes caótico e em rápida mudança em que vivemos hoje. Desta forma, a evolução do conhecimento na zona de interface marketing/empreendedorismo não só pode contribuir para que as empresas empreendedoras beneficiem mais do marketing, como também pode oferecer novas perspetivas ao marketing para que possa reativar a sua relevância num contexto mais amplo. O presente estudo visa contribuir para aprofundar a compreensão sobre o conceito de marketing empreendedor, o qual está ainda subdesenvolvido. Investigação anterior tem-se focado principalmente na descrição das práticas de marketing empreendedor e das suas características. Nesta investigação propomos mudar o foco das atividades de marketing para o que lhes dá forma, ou seja, para o processo de decisão de marketing pelos empreendedores e as suas condições cognitivas. O estudo baseia-se na abordagem cognitiva ao empreendedorismo, em particular na teoria da efetivação, que inverte a racionalidade causal subjacente ao pensamento de marketing predominante. A Técnica do Incidente Crítico foi utilizada para recolher informação rica e contextualizada sobre decisões de marketing tomadas por empreendedores. Os resultados oferecem uma proposta de processo de marketing empreendedor, que realça importantes diferenças relativamente ao típico processo de gestão de marketing. Além disso, foi possível compreender o modo como os empreendedores tomam decisões e que diferentes tipos de marketing estão associados a diferentes lógicas de decisão. Identificamos também que as condições cognitivas para tomar decisões, particularmente o nível de informação disponível e a capacidade de processamento da mesma, afetam o processo de decisão de marketing e os seus efeitos no desenvolvimento do negócio. O estudo oferece várias contribuições para a teoria, para a prática, para o ensino do marketing e para as políticas de apoio ao empreendedorismo. Particularmente, os resultados contribuem para o avanço da compreensão da noção de marketing-em-contexto, propondo que o marketing empreendedor e o marketing tradicional podem funcionar de forma complementar ou alternativamente, em diferentes circunstâncias

Proceedings of Braga 2014 Embracing Inclusive Approaches for Children and Youth with Special Education Needs Conference

This e-book, which is published under the title Braga 2014: Embracing Inclusive Approaches for Children and Youth with Special Education Needs contains a set of papers submitted by the authors in an international conference during July 2014 with the same name. Practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and NGOs from around the world joined their international colleagues to engage in lively and informed discussions about the current state of the art in meeting the needs of children and youth with special educational needs. Topic areas included research, practice, policy, advocacy, and the arts in special education. The conference was co–hosted by The Division of International Special Education and Services (DISES) and the University of Minho in cooperation with the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). As more and more countries around the world strive towards the goals of the Education for All initiative, education systems are turning to increasingly inclusive approaches in order to meet the needs of children and youth who have traditionally been excluded from mainstream education. Research and practice have shown abundant benefits, both academic and social, to all children and youth involved in inclusive education programs. However, simply placing children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms without appropriate planning, commitment, and support does not guarantee positive outcomes. In this exciting and prestigious international event, participants will share and learn about evidenced–based practices with an emphasis on access, quality, and equity; creative, comprehensive inclusive education approaches; innovations in creating inclusive schools; and integrating research into practice to create stronger links with stakeholders. A special strand focusing on the Arts in Special Education provides a rich forum for special education professionals to build upon innovative practices that encourage creative thinking, draw upon diverse abilities expressed through the arts and develops the individual in ways that traditional academic instruction fails to do so. Finally, the organizers want to emphasize the commitment and systematic work of Paula Frapiccini Ferreira in preparing this e-book.This edition is funded by National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology for the Research Center on Education- PEst-OE/CED/UI1661/2014, CIE

SIS 2017. Statistics and Data Science: new challenges, new generations

The 2017 SIS Conference aims to highlight the crucial role of the Statistics in Data Science. In this new domain of ‘meaning’ extracted from the data, the increasing amount of produced and available data in databases, nowadays, has brought new challenges. That involves different fields of statistics, machine learning, information and computer science, optimization, pattern recognition. These afford together a considerable contribute in the analysis of ‘Big data’, open data, relational and complex data, structured and no-structured. The interest is to collect the contributes which provide from the different domains of Statistics, in the high dimensional data quality validation, sampling extraction, dimensional reduction, pattern selection, data modelling, testing hypotheses and confirming conclusions drawn from the data