The development of the culture of non-Aboriginal government workers in remote Aboriginal settlements in Central Australia

The successes and failures of interventions to close the disadvantage gap for remote Aboriginal communities have been well documented but the role of the non-Indigenous advisers tasked with carrying out those interventions has remained obscure. This study explores the development of the culture of non-Indigenous government staff living and working in remote Aboriginal settlements in Central Australia in the 1960s and early 1970s. Elements of Constructivist Grounded Theory Methodology and its methods were used to analyse interviews of a representative group of workers. Three core themes were identified: Confronting disconnectedness, Finding our own space within the institution, and We formed a new social framework. Further analysis led to a descriptive narrative that incorporated personal characteristics, social processes, reactions to ambiguous governance structures, and the creation of a new social structure. From this analysis, three propositions can be drawn: (1) Remote communities with an absence of governance structures attracted workers characterised by a preference for autonomy and self-organisation, workers who sought difference, meaning and adventure. (2) Remote Aboriginal settlements with inadequate governance structures resulted, paradoxically, in social connectedness being contingent on the ability to maintain and navigate distance from other people. (3) The stronger the governance structures, the more cohesive the group. This led to less need for external networking, which, in turn, lessened the likelihood that remote workers would be influenced by other external factors. The relationship between the strength of governance structures and the workers’ personal characteristics determined how, and with whom, non-Indigenous workers formed meaningful connections. Conclusions: The ongoing heterarchical network – an unranked collective of absent, unclear or frequently changing hierarchies - that is identified in this thesis, would likely benefit from the development of a national peak body which could aggregate and maintain an organisational structure, and formalise training and the maintenance of professional standards of workers in remote settlements

The Lived Experiences of Mexican Heritage Mothers Caring for Overweight Preschool Children

Mexican heritage children are at greater risk to become overweight or obese than children of other ethnic or racial groups. The objective of this study was to gain insight into the lived experiences of Mexican-heritage mothers caring for overweight or obese preschool children. A qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological design was selected for this study. Saturation was achieved with 12 mothers of Mexican heritage. Data collection and analysis was guided by the phenomenological approach of Max van Manen. Six themes and sixteen subthemes emerged from the data. Maternal caring practices were influenced by their Mexican heritage, emotional burdens, perceptions of child\u27s weight status, disconnectedness and connectedness with family and health care professionals, being resourceful, and the linking of past family history and practices with present needs in order to protect children from untoward consequences of overweight

A sociometric analysis of the informal networking patterns of Iowa\u27s public school superintendents

The purpose of this study was to describe the informal communication network of public school superintendents in the state of Iowa. This investigation was initiated because the literature on the superintendency remains silent to the topic of communication relationships among superintendents. For purposes of this study, networking was defined as activities leading to the formation of peer relationships resulting in the acquisition of useful information, advice, moral support, or socializing and mentoring opportunities. The collection of data was made possible by means of a self-reporting survey mailed to all public school superintendents in Iowa. The survey reflected the standard approach taken by sociometric researchers in that respondents were asked to identify other Iowa superintendents they perceived of as admired colleagues, as effective leaders, and as direct sources of information or support. A multi-step analysis of the data, highlighted by the computation of numerous connectedness ratios, was undertaken to determine the extent to which the informal communication network of Iowa public school superintendents was influenced by the attributes of group affiliation, accessibility, status, and task relationship. Group affiliation was operationalized as age, ethnicity, gender, and graduate school attended. Accessibility meant geographic proximity as determined by the area education agencies (AEAs) serving the districts of the superintendents studies. Status included salary, years of experience as a superintendent, and school district enrollment. Task relationship assumed that some superintendents influence other superintendents because of their personal qualities rather than as a result of the performance skills they possess. Findings associated with the four research questions included in this study revealed differences in networking patterns among Iowa public school superintendents because of age, gender, geographic proximity, salary, enrollment, and personal qualities. In addition, 23 individuals were identified as networking stars because of the high frequency of namings attributed to them

The relationship between childhood attachment, parenting styles and social development in autism spectrum disorder

Although social deficits are a defining feature in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), not enough is known about the origin and impact of these impairments. Current research agrees that deficits in Theory of Mind (ToM) contribute to the social disconnectedness evident in children with ASD. Furthermore, studies in neurotypical populations have found significant links between attachment security and ToM acquisition, and some have posited parenting behaviours as predictors of social development. Less is known about these construct in children with ASD. This study aimed to form a foundational view of the relationships between parenting style, attachment, and Theory of Mind development in a sample of ASD children compared to a sample of neurotypical children. 80 parent-child pairs were included in the study. The sample was comprised of 40 verbal children with an ASD diagnosis and 40 neurotypical children. Children between the ages of 6 and 16 years were included in the study. Parenting style and attachment were measured using scaled response parent-report questionnaires while ToM was assessed using the University of Cape Town Theory of Mind Battery. ASD diagnoses were confirmed using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (ADOS2). Results showed that while both the ASD group and the neurotypical group reported significantly more Authoritative parenting than the other two styles (Authoritarian and Permissive), there was also more of the less positive parenting styles reported in the ASD group. Furthermore, none of the three parenting styles in question were significant predictors of Theory of Mind. The results further indicated that the ASD group reported less secure attachment, and also more insecure attachment (Ambivalent and Avoidant) than the neurotypical group. Attachment classification, specifically insecure attachment, showed to be a significant predictor of Theory of Mind. Associations between parenting style and attachment showed different patterns in the ASD sample compared to the neurotypical sample. Results, limitations, and futher directions were also discussed

Toward a theory of cultural transparency : elements of a social discourse of the visible and the invisible

This dissertation develops a number of analytical categories for investigating what people know about the world in which they live. It is an attempt to open up a universe of discourse about learning that does justice to the social character of human life. The argument of the dissertation is developed in the context of an ethnographic study of a claim processing center in a large insurance company.The basic argument is that knowledge does not exist by itself in the form of information, but that it is part of the practice of specific sociocultural communities, called here "communities of practice." Learning then is a matter of gaining a form of membership in these communities: this is achieved by a process of increasing participation, which is called here "legitimate peripheral participation." Learning thus is tantamount to becoming a certain kind of person.Visible objects such as artifacts, symbols, language, gestures, also belong to the practice of these communities. Therefore, seeing the cultural significance of these objects, something I call "cultural transparency," requires access to the practices to which they belong. This in turn requires membership in the relevant communities. The relation between artifacts and persons, which one may describe as understanding or not understanding, is therefore never a direct relation between them, but one that is mediated by a person's specific forms of membership in specific communities and by an object's being part of the social practices of some communities, which may or may not be the same. To the extent that these communities are different, such an object can be called a "boundary object" that mediates the articulation of these communities. This dissertation investigates the nature of one such object and analyzes both the relations that it can mediate and the forms of knowledge and senses of self that can result.The availability of an analytical discourse such as the one explored here is important because technological advances and the division of labor imply that we deal more and more with objects that do not primarily belong to our communities of practice. This is especially relevant to the design of computer systems

Occupational stress amongst offshore workers in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria

This thesis uses labour process analysis to consider occupational stress in the Nigerian oil and gas industry (OGI). Rather than taking a narrow, positivist/psychological approach to occupational stress, which encourages a focus on workplace-level “problems” and “solutions”, this study drew inspiration from Thompson’s (2003) disconnected capitalism thesis to investigate how various forms of disconnections can lead to stress, thus giving a sociologically grounded investigation into occupational stress. According to this approach, whilst the workplace remains significant as a location for occupational stress, the world “beyond the factory gates” is also viewed as causally significant in determining occupational stress outcomes. The study uses multiple embedded case studies and survey data to explore occupational stress outcomes in the Nigerian OGI. One of the key findings is that the regional political economy, in which oil companies differentially shape the development of Nigeria and the Niger Delta, is important to understanding occupational stress. More specifically, whilst the Nigerian Government and the agencies of the OGI cooperate in the redistribution of oil revenues in relation to capital and National interests, the terms and conditions of the workforce are less favourable when compared to OGI workers elsewhere and comparatively few resources are returned to the Niger Delta. This toxic combination results in various forms of social, geographical and economic disconnectedness, including, in extremis, devastating local pollution and the kidnapping and murder of OGI workers by Niger Delta indigenes. The idea of disconnected capitalism is not novel, as Thompson’s (2003) often cited paper argues: the tie-in between the interests of managers and shareholders can result in HR managers’ failure in making credible commitments to workers. This study broadens the scope of the disconnected capitalism thesis by considering how occupational stress outcomes, in particular, are affected by a range of interacting labour markets, geographical and socioeconomic forms of disconnectedness within a broader political economy framework. Nigerian OGI labour markets included clear distinctions between contract/permanent, expatriate/local, and male/female workers. Contract, female and local workers, in particular, had less favourable terms and conditions of employment and the resultant resentments between workers worsened workplace relations. Individual position in relation to this disconnected labour market was the strongest predictor of stress. At the geographical level, disconnection from home and communities had an impact on stress outcomes, particularly for those who were married and had dependants. Finally, at the socio-economic level, insecurities within in the Niger Delta led to disconnections from host communities and a culture of dependency within Nigeria more broadly were also both sources of stress to offshore workers. Overall, this study offers a ground-breaking attempt to develop a multi-level approach to the study of occupational stress that develops and extends Thompson’s disconnected capitalism thesis. In this case, a triple-bind, between managerial, capital and state interests, created a series of local disconnections that both caused occupational stress and, perhaps more worryingly, apparently undermined the productivity of the industry as a whole. In these circumstances a raft of policy and regulation directed at tackling both the employment conditions of the OGI and Niger Delta environmental and socio-economic concerns is badly needed to tackle the problems of the industry as a whole

Connectedness in education as a social critique of individualism: an analysis of cultural foundations course

In this qualitative research the author explores, investigates, and analyzes dis/connectedness—and the many ways it manifests within the individual, social, and political spheres—by drawing on multiple perspectives (philosophy, history and sociology). This research also examines the relationship between dis/connectedness, critical pedagogy and social justice education; and how interjecting dis/connectedness discourses into cultural foundations in education course might advance a better understanding of social justice issues in U.S. society, and in the school system in particular. By employing multi-dimensional methodology approach, the empirical portion of this research examines how pre-service teachers and school social workers responded to a Pedagogy of Connectedness — which emphasizes community, identity, and social responsibility. Using five sections of a cultural foundations in education course, including more than 120 reflection papers written by the students and 11 interviews, the results of this study show that a pedagogy that is grounded in investing in relationships, cultivating a sense of community, understanding the ways identity markers function within power structures, and realizing one’s social responsibility to the communities one belongs to are key components in becoming social change agents. Furthermore, emphasizing community, identity and social responsibility becomes a vehicle that assists students to ask new questions about the social constructs, norms and values while assisting educators’ efforts to facilitate students’ transformation

Inside The Lines: Essays on the Performance of Whole Organizational Networks

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2019. Major: Business Administration. Advisors: Akbar Zaheer, Russell Funk. 1 computer file (PDF); xv, 155 pages.This dissertation is focused on the study of heterogeneous network performance. For decades, most strategy and organizational research has focused on understanding how networks influence a single “node,” typically an organization or individual. In contrast, I shift my perspective to view a whole network as the unit of analysis. This approach is designed to deepen scholarly understanding of strategic outcomes and collective performance that only exist at the higher level – the whole network level. The motivation for this dissertation is the realization many of society’s most complex problems and Grand Challenges require the concerted efforts of organizations towards shared goals, which may not always coincide with local (organization level) incentives. As such, I use the context of healthcare reform in the United States to examine how analyzing the complex patterns of interorganizational patient care may help us better understand the determinants of emergent outcomes at the whole network level. Specifically, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 led to the formation of hundreds of new interorganizational networks, called Accountable Care Organizations, within the Medicare system. Using patient treatment networks based on claims data, I examine two research questions. First, what are the relationships among various network level properties and collective performance? Second, how did the formation of Accountable Care Organizations alter existing patient care patterns and outcomes, if at all? In sum, this dissertation makes theoretical contributions to the study of organizational networks, particularly with regards to network level outcomes. Moreover, this research offers insights into how network studies may inform policy and practice in healthcare

INFORMATION SEEKING AND SHARING IN RURAL SRI LANKA: IDENTIFICATION OF CENTRAL INDIVIDUALS IN WILDLIFE, LIVESTOCK, AND HUMAN HEALTH INFORMATION NETWORKS

Low-resource countries are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases and residents living in rural areas in these countries are more likely to experience geographic or infrastructural barriers that limit their access to formal health care or information. For health interventions in these areas to be most effective, information should be tailored for their audience and then disseminated through relevant communication channels. Interventions that utilize existing social networks and that learn about how their audiences talk about the topic of interest are more effective than those that do not. This thesis used a case study in Sri Lanka to 1) identify central actors in wildlife, livestock, and human health information networks and 2) to examine themes and topics that arise during discussions about wildlife, livestock, and human health. One-hundred and forty-three rural residents were interviewed to identify their main sources of wildlife, livestock, and human health information and to identify to whom they would report these health issues. Social network analysis of the responses revealed that government agency staff, such as the Grama Niladhari and government physicians, were the most frequently cited source of wildlife and human health information and the most common place to report health cases. A local indigenous healer was the most common source of livestock health information, the most common person to report livestock health cases to, and best positioned in each of the health networks to disseminate information and receive reports within the community. Women were more likely to be unsure of who to talk to and were considerably less likely to be nominated as a source of health information than men. Locally relevant and central leaders that are seen as key contacts for wildlife, livestock, and human health issues should be engaged and used to effectively disseminate information to and from the community. Government agencies should also engage with and maintain relationships with rural communities to facilitate information sharing. The gender differences shed light on the importance of engaging and accommodating all groups within a Sri Lankan community, perhaps by identifying group-specific opinion leaders that will appropriately communicate information to and from the group. To learn about health discussion topics, a structural topic model was used to identify main topics that emerged in 7,412 survey responses and to examine gender differences among the topics. Seven topics were identified by the topic model: 1) Cost/benefits of living near forest, 2) Reporting/asking about animal health, 3) Diseases caused by animals, 4) Wildlife visits and consequences, 5) Issues and needs of the village, 6) Village societies, and 7) medicine. There were small but significant gender differences for Topics 1-6 which indicated that men and women were spending different amounts of time on different topics. However, given the small gender effect sizes, which ranged from 0.3%-1.6%, it was concluded that gender has a relatively very small influence on these topics. Further research should investigate the specific words and rhetoric males and females use to describe health topics to uncover small nuances that broader methods cannot

EFL listening development through diagnosis: an assessment-based study of listening sub-skills using Rasch measurement

The lack of informed knowledge about listening subskills and their relationships has hindered the development of the diagnostic English language track assessment (DELTA) in three participating Hong Kong universities. This study investigates English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' listening proficiency development in understanding different spoken genres in the Hong Kong Chinese tertiary contexts. It aims to: i) identify the subskills and/or cognitive processes that underlie student performance on the DELTA listening component; ii) examine the difficulty levels of the DELTA listening subskills, and, consequentially, their hierarchical order; iii) investigate the impact of text type on difficulty level and the hierarchical order of the subskills; and iv) infer principles underlying the development of listening proficiency in the Hong Kong tertiary education contexts. A multi-method approach was employed for data collection and analysis. The primary quantitative data were derived from the DELTA listening component items answered by 2830 Chinese ELF learners who studied in their first or second year in the DELTA participating universities in the 2013-14 academic year. The item pool included 207 multiple-choice questions (MCQ) from 33 texts of three text types – conversation, interview and lecture. Each MCQ is intended to measure a particular listening subskill, including: 1) identifying specific information (SSK1); 2) understanding main idea and supporting ideas (SSK2); 3) understanding information and making an inference (SSK3); 4) interpreting a word or phrase as used by the speaker (SSK4); 5) inferring the attitude or intention of the speaker (SSK5); and 6) inferring the speaker's reasoning (SSK6). By adopting inter-related Rasch analyses using Winsteps and Facets, all test items were calibrated and analysed to determine their difficulty measures and their respective difficulties across the three text types. Qualitative Stimulated Recall Protocol (SRP) discussions were then conducted with 62 examinees of varying estimated listening abilities one month later, in a simulated test situation, where the test-taking process was video-recorded and the participants were asked to recall and to verbalise their thought processes and strategies they used to answer each question. The SRP results reveal an array of both cognitive processes and test-taking strategies in the listening comprehension and test-answering process. Firstly, various combinations of cognitive processes were utilised by both the high and low ability examinees to answer questions targeting the same listening sub-skill; however, the dominant cognitive process that was reported to have been used to answer each question corresponded with the particular listening subskill intended by DELTA item writers. Secondly, an array of test-taking strategies best identified as elimination, and guessing, were reported as used by examinees during the test. While this finding might not be surprising given the exam-oriented atmosphere prevailing in Hong Kong secondary school education, it alerted the researcher to scrutinise the validity of the DELTA listening component. The most striking observation from the listening test analysis is that, the DELTA listening subskills are measurably separable from each other, and a hierarchical pattern is established. In terms of their interaction with text type, the results showed that SSK1 and SSK6 were, respectively, the easiest and the most difficult subskills, whereas the hierarchical orders of the other four subskills varied across the three text types. More generally, these findings provide empirical evidence for the proposition that EFL listening comprehension is composed of multiple listening subskills, which operate interactively and interdependently in the listening process. The results regarding the difficulty level and the hierarchy of listening subskills corroborate the findings of prior research that low-level processing, such as identifying specific information, poses less challenge than high-level processing, such as summarising and inferencing. Because of the complexity in the interaction between text type and listening subskills, it is difficult to identify an overarching hierarchical order of the six listening subskills across the three text types. A general pattern, however, is that the difficulty increased from SSK1, SSK2 to SSK6 irrespective of the text type, and this corresponds to the general subskill hierarchy. The study will benefit teachers and students with diagnostic profiling and bridge the gap in diagnostic test design with targeted items of appropriate difficulty for predicting learners' listening development. It will extend second language acquisition theory with a hierarchical trajectory of listening proficiency growth. Limitations and future research recommendations are discussed