Investigating the home literacy environment and emergent literacy skills of children as they start school in New Zealand : a thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Home literacy environment (HLE) has been consistently linked with children’s early literacy skills in international research, and is argued to be an important variable influencing the development of children’s emergent literacy. However, there is very limited New Zealand research investigating this relationship. Therefore, to address this gap in the literature, the present study sought to explore whether there is a relationship between HLE and children’s emergent literacy at school entry within the New Zealand context. Additional research aims involved exploring the impact of years spent in early childhood education (ECE) on emergent literacy, and exploring the role of parent education level on both HLE and children’s emergent literacy within the New Zealand context. The study used a correlational research design to explore these research aims. A total of 35 five-year old children and their parents participated in this study. Children were assessed using a range of emergent literacy assessments and HLE was measured through parental questionnaire. Results showed that there was some correlation between HLE and children’s emergent literacy. However the nature of these correlations differed depending on the component of HLE used in the analysis. Additionally, ECE attendance was not positively associated with any measure of children’s emergent literacy. Further, parent educational level showed little or no correlation with children’s emergent skills and HLE. Two particular implications associated with the present study include the importance of using a wide conceptualisation of HLE in research and the importance of considering proximal variables of influence, such as HLE, over distal variables of influence, such as socioeconomic status

On the Representation Theory of Negative Spin

We construct a class of negative spin irreducible representations of the su(2) Lie algebra. These representations are infinite-dimensional and have an indefinite inner product. We analyze the decomposition of arbitrary products of positive and negative representations with the help of generalized characters and write down explicit reduction formulae for the products. From the characters, we define effective dimensions for the negative spin representations, find that they are fractional, and point out that the dimensions behave consistently under multiplication and decomposition of representations.Comment: 21 pages, no figures, Latex2

Finite [q-Oscillator] Description of 2-D String Theory

We present a simple physical representation for states of the two-dimensional string theory. In order to incorporate a fundamental cutoff of the order 1/g we use a picture consisting of q-oscillators at the first-quantized level. In this framework we also find a representation for the (singular) negatively dressed states representing nontrivial string backgrounds.Comment: 13 pages, phyzzx forma

An Algebra of Pure Quantum Programming

We develop a sound and complete equational theory for the functional quantum programming language QML. The soundness and completeness of the theory are with respect to the previously-developed denotational semantics of QML. The completeness proof also gives rise to a normalisation algorithm following the normalisation by evaluation approach. The current work focuses on the pure fragment of QML omitting measurements.Comment: To appear in ENTCS, 3rd International Workshop on Quantum Programming Languages, 2005. 21 Page

Marinari-Parisi and Supersymmetric Collective Field Theory

A field theoretic formulation of the Marinari-Parisi supersymmetric matrix model is established and shown to be equivalent to a recently proposed supersymmetrization of the bosonic collective string field theory. It also corresponds to a continuum description of super-Calogero models. The perturbation theory of the model is developed and, in this approach, an infinite sequence of vertices is generated. A class of potentials is identified for which the spectrum is that of a massless boson and Majorana fermion. For the harmonic oscillator case, the cubic vertices are obtained in an oscillator basis. For a rather general class of potentials it is argued that one cannot generate from Marinari-Parisi models a continuum limit similar to that of the d=1 bosonic string.Comment: 45 page

Cohomology and Decomposition of Tensor Product Representations of SL(2,R)

We analyze the decomposition of tensor products between infinite dimensional (unitary) and finite-dimensional (non-unitary) representations of SL(2,R). Using classical results on indefinite inner product spaces, we derive explicit decomposition formulae, true modulo a natural cohomological reduction, for the tensor products.Comment: 22 pages, no figures, Latex2e Added section on product of finite and continuous serie

Gangs, councillors and the apartheid state: The Newclare Squatters Movements of 1952

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 23 October 1989. Not to be quoted without the Author's permission.They were bloody clashes but ... in the context of the time and the circumstances in that part of the world, they were relatively minor. Fighting was an absolutely common feature there every weekend without exception... Periodically these became more serious... instead of one or two murders, there'd be say, half a dozen, perhaps even more. But the violence was not exceptional.. .This was the normal feature of life in Sophiatown and particularly in Newclare...Newclare was a yery tough area and like any slum ... you accept that there is violence constantly ... One must ... [also] ... remember that rioting and fighting was a form of amusement ... Young people stiff with boredom (1). This was the judgement of W.J.P. Carr, former Manager of the Non- European Affairs Department of the Johannesburg City Council, when asked about the violence in Newclare during the 1940s and 50s. Yet, in 1952, this "relatively minor" type of clash erupted into one of the largest suburbian squatter movements that Johannesburg has ever experienced. Not only did some 300 African families move across the railway line to Northern Newclare to squat on Council-owned land, but they remained there for seven months while the Johannesburg City Council and the Central Government deliberated on ways of removing them

"Type change" : the perceived structure of organizational change events

Sustainable development and global prosperity hinge substantially on healthy, progressive organizations. The liability of change, which manifests in the dismal success rates of large scale organizational change initiatives, however threatens the advancement of this agenda. While the reasons for this are complex, a starting point for reversing this trend is a greater understanding of the phenomenon of organizational change, which is reified and enacted at the level of the individual employee. The current study empirically explored the under researched area of 'types of change', which influences employee perceptions and responses and which ultimately holds the key to organizational adaptation. Several structural dimensions were extracted from the 663 respondents' perceptions of change events, which suggest a more considered but also a potentially more effective approach to dealing with organizational change