Early Education Foundation: Portuguese Canadian Mothers' Preferences and Choices

The purpose of this study was to explore Portuguese-Canadian mothers' preferences and choices regarding their children's early care and education. The findings revealed that Portuguese-Canadian mothers value early care and education and are conscious of their role in their children's lives. Regardless of the type of care setting, the participants' responses revealed that the caregiver's care, emotion, and responsiveness are most important. More than developing "savvy" children, we need to nourish "happy" children. The study's participants include 9 Portuguese Canadian mothers without any assumption of a hyphenated identity and who have moved away from their immigrant parents' script. They embraced the vision of their children's success and cultivated their vast potential. Their responses revealed that the family, culture, and traditions are important factors in their child's academic and social growth and played a critical role in establishing the foundations for learning. The research study findings showed that the field of early care and education is undergoing a paradigm shift and that other practices, ideologies, and theories are surfacing. This study aimed to help develop a new grounded theory that contributes to a better understanding of this arena. The present findings reveal important issues for further discussion and lay a theoretical and empirical framework for future research in early education and care.

Conceptualizing Institutional Capacity Building Through a Learning Process Set in Motion by a Foundation

Employing critical pedagogy and transformative theory as a theoretical framework, I examined a learning process associated with building capacity in community-based organizations (CBOs) through an investigation of the Institutional Capacity Building Program (ICBP) initiated by a Foundation. The study sought to: (a) examine the importance of institutional capacity building for individual and community development; (b) investigate elements of a process associated with a program and characteristics of a learning process for building capacity in CBOs; and (c) analyze the Foundation’s approach to synthesizing, systematizing, and sharing learning. The study used a narrative research design that included 3 one-on-one, hour-long interviews with 2 women having unique vantage points in ICBP: one is a program facilitator working at the Foundation and the other runs a CBO supported by the Foundation. The interviews’ semistructured questions allowed interviewees to share stories regarding their experience with the learning process of ICB and enabled themes to emerge from their day-to-day experience. Through the analysis of this learning process for institutional capacity building, a few lessons can be drawn from the experience of the Foundation.

Evaluation in Sport for Development: A Case Study of the Gansbaai Project, Football Foundation of South Africa, From A Critical Perspective

The purpose of this case study was to determine the effectiveness of sport for development (SDP) evaluation within one program in Gansbaai, South Africa through critical, independent participant inclusive program evaluation. Qualitative research was conducted on the Football Foundation of South Africa (FFSA), where semi-structured interview data were collected from administrators and participants, as were data from direct participant observations and organizational documents. Data analysis followed, according to Kvale and Brinkman’s (2008) methodology. FFSA goals were found, as were themes of social impact (i.e., regarding coach-player relationships, trust, and coaching impact on social integration). A further theme related to evaluation components and procedures. Further themes included life skill development, competition within programming, participants’ home life and social integration. Findings contribute to the SDP literature relating to program evaluation research and to FFSA administrators by providing an understanding of SDP program shortcomings, limitations, and suggested improvements.

Foundation studies in literature

UANL

The Foundation of Latin : a book for beginners

UANL

Toward a rational-choice foundation of non-additive theories

A classical argument of de Finetti holds that Rationality implies Subjective Expected Utility (SEU). In contrast, the Knightian distinction between Risk and Ambiguity suggests that a rational decision maker would obey the SEU paradigm when the information available is in some sense good, and would depart from it when the information available is not good. Unlike de Finetti's, however, this view does not rely on a formal argument. In this paper, we study the set of all information structures that might be availabe to a decision maker, and show that they are of two types: those compatible with SEU theory and those for which SEU theory must fail. We also show that the former correspond to "good" information, while the latter correspond to information that is not good. Thus, our results provide a formalization of the distinction between Risk and Ambiguity. As a consequence of our main theorem (Theorem 2, Section 8), behavior not-conforming to SEU theory is bound to emerge in the presence of Ambiguity. We give two examples of situations of Ambiguity. One concerns the uncertainty on the class of measure zero events, the other is a variation on Ellberg's three-color urn experiment. We also briefly link our results to two other strands of literature: the study of ambiguous events and the problem of unforeseen contingencies. We conclude the paper by re-considering de Finetti's argument in light of our findings.

Order and the literary rendering of chaos : children's literature as knowledge, order, and social foundation

Depuis que l'animal humain a conçu un système de technologies pour la pensée abstraite grâce au langage, la guerre contre le monde sauvage est devenu une voie à sens unique vers l'aliénation, la civilisation et la littérature. Le but de ce travail est d'analyser comment les récits civilisationnels donnent une structure à l'expérience par le biais de la ségrégation, de la domestication, de la sélection, et de l'extermination, tandis que les récits sauvages démontrent les possibilités infinies du chaos pour découvrir le monde en toute sa diversité et en lien avec sa communauté de vie. Un des objectifs de cette thèse a été de combler le fossé entre la science et la littérature, et d'examiner l'interdépendance de la fiction et la réalité. Un autre objectif a été de mettre ces récits au cœur d'un dialogue les uns avec les autres, ainsi que de tracer leur expression dans les différentes disciplines et œuvres pour enfants et adultes mais également d’analyser leur manifestations c’est redondant dans la vie réelle. C'est un effort multi-disciplinaires qui se reflète dans la combinaison de méthodes de recherche en anthropologie et en études littéraires. Cette analyse compare et contraste trois livres de fiction pour enfants qui présentent trois différents paradigmes socio-économiques, à savoir, «Winnie-l'Ourson» de Milne qui met en place un monde civilisé monarcho-capitaliste, la trilogie de Nosov sur «les aventures de Neznaika et ses amis» qui présente les défis et les exploits d'une société anarcho-socialiste dans son évolution du primitivisme vers la technologie, et les livres de Moomines de Jansson, qui représentent le chaos, l'anarchie, et l'état sauvage qui contient tout, y compris des épisodes de civilisation. En axant la méthodologie de ma recherche sur la façon dont nous connaissons le monde, j'ai d'abord examiné la construction, la transmission et l'acquisition des connaissances, en particulier à travers la théorie de praxis de Bourdieu et la critique de la civilisation développée dans les études de Zerzan, Ong, et Goody sur les liens entre l'alphabétisation, la dette et l'oppression. Quant à la littérature pour enfants, j'ai choisi trois livres que j’ai connus pendant mon enfance, c'est-à-dire des livres qui sont devenus comme une «langue maternelle» pour moi. En ce sens, ce travail est aussi de «l’anthropologie du champ natif». En outre, j’analyse les prémisses sous-jacentes qui se trouvent non seulement dans les trois livres, mais dans le déroulement des récits de l'état sauvage et de la civilisation dans la vie réelle, des analyses qui paraissent dans cette thèse sous la forme d'extraits d’un journal ethnographique. De même que j’examine la nature de la littérature ainsi que des structures civilisées qui domestiquent le monde au moyen de menaces de mort, je trace aussi la présence de ces récits dans l'expression scientifique (le récit malthusien-darwinien), religieuse, et dans autres expressions culturelles, et réfléchis sur les défis présentés par la théorie anarchiste (Kropotkine) ainsi que par les livres pour enfants écrits du point de vue sauvage, tels que ceux des Moomines.

The Capabilities Approach as a Foundation for an Ethical-Political Theory of the Good

L’approche des capabilités a été caractérisée par un développement fulgurant au cours des vingt-cinq dernières années. Bien que formulée à l’origine par Amartya Sen, détenteur du Prix Nobel en économie, Martha Nussbaum reprit cette approche dans le but de s’en servir comme fondation pour une théorie éthico-politique intégrale du bien. Cependant, la version de Nussbaum s’avéra particulièrement vulnérable à plusieurs critiques importantes, mettant sérieusement en doute son efficacité globale. À la lumière de ces faits, cette thèse vise à évaluer la pertinence théorique et pratique de l’approche des capabilités de Nussbaum, en examinant trois groupes de critiques particulièrement percutantes formulées à son encontre.

Engineering Foundation Year - Sustaining Success - Lecture 1 - slides

These materials are used in student tutorials as part of the routes to success course. The tutorials are typically delivered to a large group (~50) in an interactive manner, with the slides serving as reference/check materials. Some of the questions in the slides can also be used as individual handouts

Engineering Foundation Year - Sustaining Success Portfolio Template

Template - word processed document for 'Routes to Success' Coursework 3 'Sustaining Success'

Engineering Foundation Year - Sustaining Success Week 1

Slides for first week of teaching

Engineering Foundation Year - Sustaining Success Week 1

Slides for first week of teaching, PDF 6 up

Engineering Foundation Year - Sustaining Success Week 1

Slides for first week of teaching, PDF

Engineering Foundation Year - sustaining success portfolio summary

single sheet containing all the section headings for the portfolio, providing overview

Collection Engineering Foundation Year, Sustaining Success, Week 1

slides, notes, and background information covered in first week of this six week set of classes