Evaluating Improvisation As A Technique For Training Pre-service Teachers For Inclusive Classrooms

Improvisation is a construct that uses a set of minimal heuristic guidelines to create a highly flexible scaffold that fosters extemporaneous communication. Scholars from diverse domains: such as psychology, business, negotiation, and education have suggested its use as a method for preparing professionals to manage complexity and think on their feet. A review of the literature revealed that while there is substantial theoretical scholarship on using improvisation in diverse domains, little research has verified these assertions. This dissertation evaluated whether improvisation, a specific type of dramatic technique, was effective for training pre-service teachers in specific characteristics of teacher-child classroom interaction, communication and affective skills development. It measured the strength and direction of any potential changes such training might effect on pre-service teacher’s self-efficacy for teaching and for implementing the communication skills common to improvisation and teaching while interacting with student in an inclusive classroom setting. A review of the literature on teacher self-efficacy and improvisation clarified and defined key terms, and illustrated relevant studies. This study utilized a mixed-method research design based on instructional design and development research. Matched pairs ttests were used to analyze the self-efficacy and training skills survey data and pre-service teacher reflections and interview transcripts were used to triangulate the qualitative data. Results of the t-tests showed a significant difference in participants’ self-efficacy for teaching measured before and after the improvisation training. A significant difference in means was also measured in participants’ aptitude for improvisation strategies and for self-efficacy for their implementation pre-/post- training. Qualitative results from pre-service teacher class iv artifacts and interviews showed participants reported beneficial personal outcomes as well as confirmed using skills from the training while interacting with students. Many of the qualitative themes parallel individual question items on the teacher self-efficacy TSES scale as well as the improvisation self-efficacy scale CSAI. The self-reported changes in affective behavior such as increased self-confidence and ability to foster positive interaction with students are illustrative of changes in teacher agency. Self-reports of being able to better understand student perspectives demonstrate a change in participant ability to empathize with students. Participants who worked with both typically developing students as well as with students with disabilities reported utilizing improvisation strategies such as Yes, and…, mirroring emotions and body language, vocal prosody and establishing a narrative relationship to put the students at ease, establish a positive learning environment, encourage student contributions and foster teachable moments. The improvisation strategies showed specific benefit for participants working with nonverbal students or who had commutation difficulties, by providing the pre-service teachers with strategies for using body language, emotional mirroring, vocal prosody and acceptance to foster interaction and communication with the student. Results from this investigation appear to substantiate the benefit of using improvisation training as part of a pre-service teacher methods course for preparing teachers for inclusive elementary classrooms. Replication of the study is encouraged with teachers of differing populations to confirm and extend results

Persona based marketing strategies:creation of personas through data analytics

Abstract. In this study, we purposed a novel approach of using data analytics for persona generation. We design a process which can be adoptable for companies to enhance their marketing efforts, specifically, enabled them to focus real potential audience. To carry out our research we use company’s sales data and digital analytics to generate consumer personas. These personas can be used in various actions like content creation, UX designing and creation of marketing strategies. The research focuses on the development of marketing strategies and analyzes the impact of those marketing strategies on conversion rate. Previously researchers worked on customer segmentation by using customer data from Google Analyticsand data originated from social media analytics, however, this research focuses on giving the action-based approach to companies in order to find out their real customers and enhance their conversion rate by using all means of analytical data i.e. companies own sales data, social media analytics, and Google Analytics. This study adopts persona development to recognize and define potential customers. Personas are fictional but with the help of data, we can develop them more closely to a real audience. The rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape required more and more technicalities to drive result-oriented marketing strategies. In this study, we employed a qualitative methodology, which includes designing a process (framework) from digital data analytics. Some of the features of personas were extracted from data analytics obtained from Facebook insights, Google Analytics, and company’s sales database while some of the qualitative feature like Bio, motivation and taglines of personas were extracted from specially designed workshop with people from company’s sales and marketing department. This research is conducted in a company named “Quieton Oy” and the results of this research depicts the effectiveness of the process, its validity and the reliability of the process. The main objective of this thesis is to enable the creation of consumers personas based on data analytics and the efficient utilization of those personas for defining the marketing strategies

Working through tradition alone : Joyce's mythic return

Though much has been written on Joyce and mythology, this thesis explains the necessary link between myth-oriented literature and Joyce's appropriation of materials from external sources. The study focuses primarily on Finnegans Wake but devotes significant attention to Ulysses as well. Though Joyce was an individualistic twentieth-century writer, his last book integrates with older traditions of collective authorship, and in particular we find many recurrences of elements from Irish mythology and folklore. The strange words ofFinnegans Wake often prove alterations of other authors' sentences. Much as each bard of an oral tradition would overhear and then reuse the stories, motifs, and even wordings of other bards in the production of his/her 'own' songs, Joyce seems to have regarded any and all texts he read as potential precursors to portions ofFinnegans Wake, which he likened to 'pure music'. Chapter 1 investigates Joyce's reappropriation of pre-existent elements, situates his work in relation to various myth-oriented literatures, and parallels aspects of his authorship with the roles ofthe Irishfili and druids. Chapter 2 explores how the returns of myth in Finnegans Wake depend upon felicitous states of knowledge-deficiency. Joyce's readers must use their imaginations to make sense of the difficult text much in the way that Vico's ignorant 'first people' created gods to explain their world. Chapter 3 discusses Joyce's affinity with James Clarence Mangan regarding Irish tradition, and also differentiates Joyce's work from the project of the Irish Literary Revival. Chapter 4 examines the dichotomy between orality and writing in Finnegans Wake. The fox of Irish fables becomes an allegory for the poet who mediates between oral culture and tradition-binding literature. Lastly, Chapter 5 discusses themes of plagiarism and piracy in Finnegans Wake, noting that the appropriation of readymade materials is often considered criminal in the present age

Sacred Nakedness Narraphor: The Untold Story of Shame & Glory

Shame and glory appear to be binary opposites inextricably tied within Scripture. As such, addressing one without the other is comparable to addressing slavery without mentioning freedom. Accordingly, the only way a counselee’s shame and glory can be healed and revealed is if both are held open to God and other people. Herein lies the problem: counselees hide vulnerability for fear of being ashamed, thus veiling the glory of their life. How, then, can a counselee feel more trusting of God and safer with people so their shame and glory can be healed and revealed? The thesis of this dissertation asserts that the story of shame and glory as told through the biblical semiotic of nakedness offers Christian therapists and counselees a safer way of addressing vulnerability, so a counselee’s shame and glory can be healed and revealed. Chapter 1 explicates the problem of why people in general hide themselves for fear of being ashamed. Chapter 2 provides a survey and summary overview of how influential theologians and psychologist have addressed shame (and glory?). Chapter 3 explains why biblical symbolic language speaks so deeply to the human heart and soul. Chapter 4 begins the triadic presentation of shame and glory as told through three beginnings of naked vulnerability: Noah, Adam and Eve, and God. Chapter 5 presents the second part of the triadic tale as seen through the naked vulnerability of a prophet (Elisha), king (David), and priest(ess) (The Adulterous Woman). Chapter 6 presents the third part of the triadic tale as symbolized through the nakedness of Jesus’ birth, baptism, and crucifixion. Lastly, Chapter 7 summarizes and concludes why the sacred story of shame and glory offers Christian therapists and counselees a safer way of addressing vulnerability, so a counselee’s shame and glory can be healed and revealed

"At the edges of perception": William Gaddis and the encyclopedic novel from Joyce to David foster Wallace

"Longer works of fiction," a character in William Gaddis's JR complains of the current literary scene, are now "dismissed as classics and remain . . . largely unread due to the effort involved in reading and turning any more than two hundred pages" (527). This study argues that despite most literary critics constructing American postmodernism as a movement that privileges short works, in contrast to the encyclopedic masterworks of modernism, there are in fact a large number of artistically sophisticated contemporary novels of encyclopedic scope that demonstrate often ignored lines of continuity from works like James Joyce's Ulysses. In arguing this, I attempt not just to draw attention to a neglected strain in contemporary American fiction, but also to provide a more accurate context in which those few recent encyclopedic novels that have assumed centrality, like Gravity's Rainbow, might be evaluated. In doing so, this thesis also seeks to demonstrate the pivotal position of William Gaddis who, despite publishing four impressive novels that engage with the legacy of modernism and pre-empt elements of postmodernism, has been excluded from most studies dealing with the transition between the two movements. Through detailed readings of four encyclopedic novels - Gaddis's The Recognitions, Don DeLillo's Underworld, Richard Powers's The Gold Bug Variations, and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest - I show Gaddis's continuation of encyclopedic modernism, the importance of his example to later writers, and the continuing vitality of the encyclopedic novel beyond the defined limits of modernism. However, as these novels try to encompass the full circle of knowledge, in order to do justice to their diverse learning I have adopted a different approach in each chapter. Very broadly, they attempt to encircle art, psychology, science, and literature, which, taken together, attempt to synthesise a defence of the contemporary encyclopedic novel. While minimalist writers from Raymond Carver to Ann Beattie have affirmed that less is more, this thesis argues that, in some cases, more really is more

A study of an 'African aesthetic' in character designs for animation through an analysis of the work by Kenneth Shofela Coker

Research Report for Master of Arts in Digital AnimationThis research paper attempts to define what constitutes towards an ‘African aesthetic’ and how this can be applied to character designs so as to have an African identity in animation. The African continent has a multitude of diverse cultures that have a distinct visual language. The research investigates how culture and religion influence these motifs and how they are given meaning. The Yoruba people are an ethnic group that resides in West Africa and they have one of the oldest art histories on the continent making them ideal to reference in this paper. There is a very limited amount of archived information on African art in the pre-colonial era especially when it comes to specific visual reference, so the research also explores how mythology and oral tradition can be used by an artist as inspiration. There are difficulties in defining an African aesthetic due to the diverse number of cultures; however, many scholars like Susan Vogel and Rowland Abiodun, have come up with elements that they found common in most in African art. These elements are also investigated as part of this report and analysed to see how they can be implemented in character design. Psychologists believe that people can identify an individual’s personality from their behavioural traits that create a general impression. This is due to human social interaction. Part of this research will look at the theoretical principles of character design and how visual stereotypes are a great tool for an artist to use, to get an idea across. The paper will break down a character’s physical features in terms of shape, colour and proportions and discuss how these can contribute to a character’s visual design. The case study in this research paper will examine the work of Kenneth Shofela Coker, who is an African character designer and animator who is currently based in the United States of America. It will mainly concentrate on the character designs in his two animated short films entitled Oni Ise Owo (2007) and Iwa (2009), and how he implemented some of the principles discussed in this paper. This research provides a platform for African artists to explore the possibility of an African character design style and encourages more scholars to study what constitutes an African aesthetic so as to build a more comprehensive visual archive

Social tensions within XVth century Hispano-Jewish communities

The purpose of this study is to explore the relations between certain social groups within the xvth century Hispano-Jewish communities. The main emphasis is on the analysis of the leadership strata, local and supralocal, as targets of criticism and, at the same time, as a centralizing force. The configurations of social tension are examined and attention is drawn to the recurrence of conflict between various groups on socio-economic issues. Some exponents of literary expressions of this tension, in the form of criticism of the leadership and its ideals are investigated and seen within both their literary and historical backgrounds. Part I deals with the expressions of social thought in the works of Jewish thinkers writing in Hebrew and voicing social grievances. Chapter 1 deals with social criticism in the 'Iggeret Musar' by Solomon Alami setting it against its historical and literary context. Chapter 2 is devoted to a study of ideas of social criticism to be found in a group of poems by the Saragossan poet Solomon Bonafed and to an analysis of the forms of social conflict in his community on the basis of archival records collected from the works of Serrano y Sanz and Fritz Baer et al (where they are published in different contexts). Part 2 is devoted to a study of conflict in the Hispano-Jewish communities of the xvth century and to the centralizing role of one of the social groups in these conflicts: the leadership stratum. Chapter 3 is devoted to a study of social tension within the Jewish communities of the Crown of Aragon and the existence of a trend towards centralization which is denied in modern historiography. Chapter 4 is concerned with the forms of social conflict amongst groups in the Castilian-Jewish communities of the xvth century. Chapter 5 deals with Abraham Seneor, Chief Rabbi of Castille, under the Catholic Monarchs, as a representative of central Jewish supralocal institutions and as a target of social criticism and conflict. The evidence adduced leads to the conclusion that fiscal, socio-economic and administrative issues, and not only religious ones, were at the root of much of xvth century Hispano-Jewish social tensions forming tae background to xvth century Hebrew authors who have been dismissed as exaggerated, isolated or embittered

From Onegin to Ada: Nabokov's Canon and the Texture of Time

The library of existing scholarship on Vladimir Nabokov circles uncomfortably around his annotated translation Eugene Onegin (1964) and late English-language novel Ada, or Ardor (1969). This dissertation juxtaposes Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin (1825-32) with Nabokov's two most controversial monuments and investigates Nabokov's ambitions to enter a canon of Western masterpieces, re-imagined with Russian literature as a central strain. I interrogate the implied trajectory for Russian belles lettres, culminating unexpectedly in a novel written in English and after fifty years of emigration. My subject is Nabokov, but I use this hermetic author to raise broader questions of cultural borrowing, transnational literatures, and struggles with rival canons and media. Chapter One examines Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin, the foundation stone of the Russian canon and a meta-literary fable. Untimely characters pursue one another and the latest Paris and London fashions in a text that performs and portrays anxieties of cultural borrowing and Russia's position vis-à-vis the West. Fears of marginalization are often expressed in terms of time: I use Pascale Casanova's World Republic of Letters to suggest a global context for the "belated" provinces and fashion-setting centers of cultural capital. Chapter Two argues that Nabokov's Eugene Onegin, three-quarters provocation to one-quarter translation, focuses on the Russian poet and his European sources. Nabokov reads Onegin as a masterpiece of theft and adaptation: the lengthy notes painstakingly examine precedents, especially in Byron and Chateaubriand, and evaluate for originality by comparison. When does Pushkin engage in derivative "native" imitations, and when in subtle and brilliant parody? Chapter Three concludes that Nabokov attempts his own timeless masterpiece with Ada, or Ardor. Planet Antiterra, Nabokov's personal "world republic of letters," transplants and conflates his beloved literatures. To create this Russo-Franco-Anglophone world, Ada lifts lines, characters, and fabula from Onegin but also from works by Byron and Chateaubriand. A pattern emerges of great English, French, and Russian triads; it repeats more faintly with Dickens, Flaubert, and Tolstoy (Nabokov hoped one day to translate Anna Karenina); but the most fraught iteration is Joyce, Proust, and Nabokov himself. Chapter Four looks at traces of Joyce and Proust in Ada. The two modernists serve as signs by which great readers recognize one another, as indexes to the "real" and the beautiful, and as carriers of tradition; but Ada subsumes its rivals through imitation and parody. However, the incestuous lovers Ada and Van Veen, heirs to the greatest literary traditions in the world, die childless. Is Ada a dead end, Nabokov's Finnegans Wake? Or can masterpieces interbreed indefinitely? Chapter Five examines Ada in the context of its working title, The Texture of Time. Van is a scholar of Henri Bergson, of the duration of the past into the present, and of spatial metaphors for time. Van aspires to an eternal present, but the one-way time of ordinary mortality threatens to take over the narrative. The structure of the novel mimics Zeno's paradox, famously refuted by the French philosopher: Part Two is roughly half the size of Part One, and so on. The arrow (Ardis in Greek, the name of the Veens' lost paradise) speeds towards the final target, but the Veens aim for immortality and to die into their book. Chapter Six turns to the visual arts. Nabokov's novel reads like a gallery, with Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights in pride of place. Ada animates the Old Masters, but there are also no fewer than three film adaptations depicted in the novel, betraying an ongoing struggle between the media (and echoing Stanley Kubrick and Nabokov's skirmishes over Lolita the film). If it is to survive beyond inbreeding with diminishing results, the novel form must subsume more than its own recent greats. I conclude with Nabokov as an image in the work of contemporary novelists, a source and a transcultural precursor to a new generation of international writers

Crafting the 613 Commandments

Rabbinic tradition has it that 613 commandments were given to Moses on Mount Sinai, but it does not specify those included in the enumeration. Maimonides methodically and artfully crafts a list of 613 commandments in a work that serves as a prolegemenon to the Mishneh Torah, his monumental code of law. This book explores the surprising way Maimonides put this tradition to use and his possible rationale for using such a tradition. It also explores many of the philosophical and ethical ideas animating the composition of such a list. In the book's second half, Friedberg examines the manner by which Maimonides formulated positive commandments in the Mishneh Torah, leading him to suggest new dimensions in Maimonides' legal theory