Climate change advocates and deniers? Triangulating methods to investigate the language of left- and right-leaning Twitter users

This thesis examines left- and right- leaning users on Australian Twitter in an effort to understand the language use of the different parties to online climate change discourse. The data are taken from Australian Twitter users between 2020 and 2022, and split up via a political affiliation metric in order to create two distinct politically-opposed user groups. Three main techniques are used to identify linguistic differences between the two groups: sentiment analysis, multiple correspondence analysis, and keyword analysis. The findings of this thesis are threefold. Firstly, text data collected on left- and right-leaning metrics are found to be an apt proxy for examining the language of climate change activism and denial. Secondly, climate change activists and deniers on Australian social media speak similarly in terms of grammatical style, but significantly differently in terms of lexical content. Thirdly and finally, triangulating between the three aforementioned methods provides a much clearer picture of language use. In this way, this thesis offers methodological innovations in examining online discourses, as well as important findings on the language use of the various parties to climate discourses on Australian Twitter

An Intervention to Promote Growth Mindset and STEM Self-Efficacy of High School Students: Exploring the Complexity of Beliefs

The marginalization of women in engineering is a persistent problem. The overall goal of our collaborative project was to promote interest and participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), particularly for high school girls. We took an action research approach with a local high school science teacher to develop, implement, and research the impact of a classroom-based intervention designed to encourage growth mindset and STEM self-efficacy beliefs using mixed methods. We analyzed pre- and postsurvey data collected using a control-treatment design to determine the impact of the intervention on high school boys’ and girls’ self-efficacy and mindset beliefs. We also conducted semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with purposefully selected participants from the treatment group to further explore students’ mindset and STEM self-efficacy beliefs qualitatively. We found that the intervention did result in a statistically significant change towards more growth-oriented beliefs for the high school girls who received the intervention as compared to the control group. We found that the intervention did not result in any statistically significant change in the girls’ self-efficacy beliefs, the boys’ mindset beliefs, or the boys’ self-efficacy beliefs. The qualitative analysis revealed that after receiving the intervention, students held contradictory beliefs about the role of effort and the role of innate ability in STEM achievement. Further, we found that context and gender mattered in how students justified their self-efficacy: boys and girls both expressed the belief that effort would lead to their ability to succeed in science classes, but the girls were less likely than the boys to express the belief that effort would lead to their ability to succeed in the context of a science career. By connecting our findings to broader cultural narratives, we suggest that for the continued success of intervention efforts aimed at promoting a growth mindset and STEM self-efficacy, particularly for girls, such efforts should include opportunities for students to reflect upon and unpack the broader cultural narratives about effort, innate ability, and the gendered stereotypes about STEM ability that inform their beliefs. Finally, from the perspective of a high school science teacher, we also advocate for more representation of women among science teachers and classroom speakers and the importance of explicitly connecting class content and success in classrooms to real-world contexts

A simple, biologically plausible feature detector for language acquisition

Language has a complex grammatical system we still have to understand computationally and biologically (Hauser et al., 2002; Yang, 2013). However, some evolutionarily ancient mechanisms have been repurposed for grammar (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007; Endress, Cahill, et al., 2009; Endress, Nespor, et al., 2009; Fitch, 2017) so that we can use insight from other taxa into possible circuit level mechanisms of grammar. Drawing upon recent evidence for the importance of disinhibitory circuits across taxa and brain regions (Chevalier & Deniau, 1990; Letzkus et al., 2015; Hangya et al., 2014; Xu et al., 2013; Goddard et al., 2014; Mysore & Knudsen, 2012; Koyama et al., 2016; Koyama & Pujala, 2018), I suggest a simple circuit that explains the acquisition of core grammatical rules used in 85% of the world’s languages (Rubino, 2013): grammatical rules based on sameness/difference relations. This circuit acts as a sameness-detector. Different items are suppressed through inhibition, but presenting two identical items leads to inhibition of inhibition. The items are thus propagated for further processing. This sameness-detector thus acts as a feature detector for a grammatical rule. I suggest that having a set of feature detectors for elementary grammatical rules might make language acquisition feasible based on relatively simple computational mechanisms

UNBOUND

UNBOUND showcases the graduating class from the fashion design school at Fanshawe College. We are pleased to present Unbound 2017! Our 11th Unbound theme embraces the concept of Craft and Machine , a blend of couturier techniques with technology. Unbound describes the creative spirit and achievements of our eighteen emerging Canadian fashion designers. Unbound 2017 is a professional collaboration between Fanshawe College, community and professionals in the fashion industry. As you turn the pages, admire their accomplishments - the results of three years of passion, hard work, and dedication.https://first.fanshawec.ca/famd_design_fashiondesign_unbound/1004/thumbnail.jp

Work-family conflict: An exploration of the differential effects of a dependent child's age on working parents.

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of life cycle stage, specifically parenting stage, on work-family conflict among working parents to determine whether discernible differences are evident among those individuals at the early stage of their parenting cycle compared with those with older children. Design/methodology/approach – An explorative study was undertaken among parents employed within the Irish hotel sector. The questionnaire was distributed to 22 hotels and 76 individuals who reported having children responded. A number of measures were used to assess the impact which a number of factors, namely job stress, job involvement, managerial support and colleague support, may have on working parents' work-life conflict. Correlation and regression analysis are performed to test the hypotheses proposed. Findings – The research findings provide initial support for the possibility that the factors influencing work-family conflict differ for each of the parenting groups analysed. For all parents with dependent children it was found that job involvement, job stress and colleague support all have predictive powers in terms of explaining the antecedents of work-family conflict. Research limitations/implications – The findings provide a compelling case for the need to begin to address work-family conflict in a more holistic manner, examining both the immediate and long-term consequences for employees with childcare responsibilities. Practical implications – The ability to design and implement specific, targeted responses to employees' work-life needs is an area where HRD can make a real and significant contribution. Strategic HRD has the potential to reduce the misappropriation of organisational resources by ensuring a focused and targeted response, thereby minimising the fruitless pursuit of “one size fits all” approaches to this complex issue. Originality/value – The paper seeks to lay the first key foundation-stones in framing the debate in relation to work-life balance in terms of the entire working lives of individuals and not just specific snapshots during the course of that employment. The paper is critical of current organisational thinking in relation to employees' work-life balance needs and challenges HRD professionals to begin to examine this important and complex issue in a more holistic manner

Memorandum: Administration of Clean Water Programs in Light of the Stay of the Clean Water Rule; Improving Transparency and Strengthening Coordingation

This memorandum outlines the administration of the Clean Water Programs of the Clean Water Rule