Covert conversations: disciplined improvisation and meaning-making in the masters (MA) supervisory relationship

This research asks the question: “What are the relational dynamics in Masters (MA) supervision?” It does so by focusing upon the supervisory relationship itself. It does this through dialoguing with the voices of both MA supervisors and supervisees in the Humanities using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework. In so doing, this research argues for a re-evaluation of how MA supervision is conceptualised and proposes a new theoretical framework for conceptualising MA supervision as a relational phenomenon. The research design was derived from an Activity Theory-influenced methodology. Data collection procedures included the administration of Activity Theory Logs, individual semi-structured interviews with both supervisors and supervisees and the completion of reflective journals. Grounded Theory was used to analyse the data. The sample for the study consists of three supervisor-supervisee dyads from three disciplines in the Humanities. Data was collected over the course of one academic year, 2010-2011. This research found that both individual and shared relational dynamics play an important role in MA supervision. Individual dynamics, such as supervisors’ iterative negotiation of ambiguity/clarity and supervisees’ boundary work, revealed that both parties attempt to negotiate a separation between their professional-academic identities and personal identities. However, an inherent paradox emerged when the shared relational dynamics of MA supervision were investigated. It was found that the shared space created by the supervisory relationship did not only exist in a physical setting, but was also psychoactive in nature and held strong emotional resonances for both parties involved. This served to undermine the separation between professional-academic and personal identities. As a result, this research argues that the interaction between the individual and shared relational dynamics in MA supervision enables, for both supervisors and supervisees, a disciplined improvisation of academic identity.

A policy analysis of key employability interventions for the educationally disadvantaged in further education: Comparative insights for Irish education

The aim of this study is to garner comparative insights so as to aid the development of the discourse on further education (FE) conceptualisation and the relationship of FE with educational disadvantage and employability. This aim is particularly relevant in Irish education parlance amidst the historical ambiguity surrounding the functioning of FE. The study sets out to critically engage with the education/employability/economy link (eee link). This involves a critique of issues relevant to participation (which extends beyond student activity alone to social relations generally and the dialogic participation of the disadvantaged), accountability (which extends beyond performance measures alone to encompass equality of condition towards a socially just end) and human capital (which extends to both collective and individual aspects within an educational culture). As a comparative study, there is a strong focus on providing a way of conceptualising and comparatively analysing FE policy internationally. The study strikes a balance between conceptual and practical concerns. A critical comparative policy analysis is the methodology that structures the study which is informed and progressed by a genealogical method to establish the context of each of the jurisdictions of England, the United States and the European Union. Genealogy allows the use of history to diagnose the present rather than explaining how the past has caused the present. The discussion accentuates the power struggles within education policy practice using what Fairclough calls a strategic critique as well as an ideological critique. The comparative nature of the study means that there is a need to be cognizant of the diverse cultural influences on policy deliberation. The study uses the theoretical concept of paradigmatic change to critically analyse the jurisdictions. To aid with the critical analysis, a conceptual framework for legislative functions is developed so as to provide a metalanguage for educational legislation. The specific contribution of the study, while providing a manner for understanding and progressing FE policy development in a globalized Ireland, is to clear the ground for a more well-defined and critically reflexive FE sector to operate and suggests a number of issues for further deliberation.

Dealing with emergent design science research projects in IS

Multiple models, methods and frameworks have been proposed to guide Design Science Research (DSR) application to address relevant classes of problems in Information Systems (IS) discipline. While much of the ambiguity around the research paradigm has been removed, only the surface has been scratched on DSR efforts where researcher takes an active role in organizational and industrial engagement to solve a specific problem and generalize the solution to a class of problems. Such DSR projects can have a significant impact on practice, link theories to real contexts and extend the scope of DSR. Considering these multiform settings, the implications to theorizing nor the crucial role of researcher in the interplay of DSR and IS projects have not been properly addressed. The emergent nature of such projects needs to be further investigated to reach such contributions for both theory and practice. This paper raises multiple theoretical, organizational and managerial considerations for a meta-level monitoring model for emergent DSR projects.

Counterstories: who counts as lesbian?

Coming out midlife is a profound and life‐changing experience—it is an experience of self‐shattering that entails the destabilisation of identity, and of family relationships. Entailing a displacement from social insider to outsider, it is a difficult, but also exhilarating, journey of self, and sexual, discovery. This thesis is an examination of the experiences of nine women who undertook that journey. This dissertation is very much a search for understanding—for understanding how one can be lesbian, and how one can not have known, following a lifetime of heterosexual identification—as well as a search for why those questions arise in the first place. I argue that the experience of coming out midlife exposes the fundamental ambiguity of sexuality; and has a significance that ranges beyond the particularity of the participants’ experiences and speaks to the limitations of the hegemonic sexual paradigm itself. Using the theoretical lens of three diverse conceptual approaches—the dynamic systems theory of sexual fluidity; liminality; and narrative identity—to illuminate their transition, I argue that the event of coming out midlife should be viewed not merely as an atypical experience, but rather we should ask what such events can tell us about women’s sexuality in particular, and the sexual paradigm more generally. I argue that women who come out midlife challenge those dominant discourses of sexuality that would entail that women who come out midlife were either in denial of their “true” sexuality throughout their adult lives; or that they are not really lesbian now. The experiences of the women I interviewed demonstrate the inadequacy of the sexual paradigm as a framework within which to understand and research the complexity of human sexuality; they also challenge hegemonic understandings of sexuality as innate and immutable. In this thesis, I explore that challenge.

Towards a model for exploring the relationship between managerial decision problems and decision support opportunities

The organisational decision making environment is complex, and decision makers must deal with uncertainty and ambiguity on a continuous basis. Managing and handling decision problems and implementing a solution, requires an understanding of the complexity of the decision domain to the point where the problem and its complexity, as well as the requirements for supporting decision makers, can be described. Research in the Decision Support Systems domain has been extensive over the last thirty years with an emphasis on the development of further technology and better applications on the one hand, and on the other hand, a social approach focusing on understanding what decision making is about and how developers and users should interact. This research project considers a combined approach that endeavours to understand the thinking behind managers’ decision making, as well as their informational and decisional guidance and decision support requirements. This research utilises a cognitive framework, developed in 1985 by Humphreys and Berkeley that juxtaposes the mental processes and ideas of decision problem definition and problem solution that are developed in tandem through cognitive refinement of the problem, based on the analysis and judgement of the decision maker. The framework facilitates the separation of what is essentially a continuous process, into five distinct levels of abstraction of manager’s thinking, and suggests a structure for the underlying cognitive activities. Alter (2004) argues that decision support provides a richer basis than decision support systems, in both practice and research. The constituent literature on decision support, especially in regard to modern high profile systems, including Business Intelligence and Business analytics, can give the impression that all ‘smart’ organisations utilise decision support and data analytics capabilities for all of their key decision making activities. However this empirical investigation indicates a very different reality.

The object binary interface: C++ objects for evolvable shared class libraries

Object-oriented design and object-oriented languages support the development of independent software components such as class libraries. When using such components, versioning becomes a key issue. While various ad-hoc techniques and coding idioms have been used to provide versioning, all of these techniques have deficiencies - ambiguity, the necessity of recompilation or re-coding, or the loss of binary compatibility of programs. Components from different software vendors are versioned at different times. Maintaining compatibility between versions must be consciously engineered. New technologies such as distributed objects further complicate libraries by requiring multiple implementations of a type simultaneously in a program. This paper describes a new C++ object model called the Shared Object Model for C++ users and a new implementation model called the Object Binary Interface for C++ implementors. These techniques provide a mechanism for allowing multiple implementations of an object in a program. Early analysis of this approach has shown it to have performance broadly comparable to conventional implementations.

Retrieval of grassland biophysical parameters using multitemporal optical and radar satellite data

The amount and quality of available biomass is a key factor for the sustainable livestock industry and agricultural management related decision making. Globally 31.5% of land cover is grassland while 80% of Ireland’s agricultural land is grassland. In Ireland, grasslands are intensively managed and provide the cheapest feed source for animals. This dissertation presents a detailed state of the art review of satellite remote sensing of grasslands, and the potential application of optical (Moderate–resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)) and radar (TerraSAR-X) time series imagery to estimate the grassland biomass at two study sites (Moorepark and Grange) in the Republic of Ireland using both statistical and state of the art machine learning algorithms. High quality weather data available from the on-site weather station was also used to calculate the Growing Degree Days (GDD) for Grange to determine the impact of ancillary data on biomass estimation. In situ and satellite data covering 12 years for the Moorepark and 6 years for the Grange study sites were used to predict grassland biomass using multiple linear regression, Neuro Fuzzy Inference Systems (ANFIS) models. The results demonstrate that a dense (8-day composite) MODIS image time series, along with high quality in situ data, can be used to retrieve grassland biomass with high performance (R2 = 0:86; p < 0:05, RMSE = 11.07 for Moorepark). The model for Grange was modified to evaluate the synergistic use of vegetation indices derived from remote sensing time series and accumulated GDD information. As GDD is strongly linked to the plant development, or phonological stage, an improvement in biomass estimation would be expected. It was observed that using the ANFIS model the biomass estimation accuracy increased from R2 = 0:76 (p < 0:05) to R2 = 0:81 (p < 0:05) and the root mean square error was reduced by 2.72%. The work on the application of optical remote sensing was further developed using a TerraSAR-X Staring Spotlight mode time series over the Moorepark study site to explore the extent to which very high resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data of interferometrically coherent paddocks can be exploited to retrieve grassland biophysical parameters. After filtering out the non-coherent plots it is demonstrated that interferometric coherence can be used to retrieve grassland biophysical parameters (i. e., height, biomass), and that it is possible to detect changes due to the grass growth, and grazing and mowing events, when the temporal baseline is short (11 days). However, it not possible to automatically uniquely identify the cause of these changes based only on the SAR backscatter and coherence, due to the ambiguity caused by tall grass laid down due to the wind. Overall, the work presented in this dissertation has demonstrated the potential of dense remote sensing and weather data time series to predict grassland biomass using machine-learning algorithms, where high quality ground data were used for training. At present a major limitation for national scale biomass retrieval is the lack of spatial and temporal ground samples, which can be partially resolved by minor modifications in the existing PastureBaseIreland database by adding the location and extent ofeach grassland paddock in the database. As far as remote sensing data requirements are concerned, MODIS is useful for large scale evaluation but due to its coarse resolution it is not possible to detect the variations within the fields and between the fields at the farm scale. However, this issue will be resolved in terms of spatial resolution by the Sentinel-2 mission, and when both satellites (Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B) are operational the revisit time will reduce to 5 days, which together with Landsat-8, should enable sufficient cloud-free data for operational biomass estimation at a national scale. The Synthetic Aperture Radar Interferometry (InSAR) approach is feasible if there are enough coherent interferometric pairs available, however this is difficult to achieve due to the temporal decorrelation of the signal. For repeat-pass InSAR over a vegetated area even an 11 days temporal baseline is too large. In order to achieve better coherence a very high resolution is required at the cost of spatial coverage, which limits its scope for use in an operational context at a national scale. Future InSAR missions with pair acquisition in Tandem mode will minimize the temporal decorrelation over vegetation areas for more focused studies. The proposed approach complements the current paradigm of Big Data in Earth Observation, and illustrates the feasibility of integrating data from multiple sources. In future, this framework can be used to build an operational decision support system for retrieval of grassland biophysical parameters based on data from long term planned optical missions (e. g., Landsat, Sentinel) that will ensure the continuity of data acquisition. Similarly, Spanish X-band PAZ and TerraSAR-X2 missions will ensure the continuity of TerraSAR-X and COSMO-SkyMed.