1522 research outputs found
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Developing Academic Communities through Fulbright Programs
No full textThis study began with the premise that faculty in higher education use varying degrees of learning partnerships, communities of practice and social networks, in academic work role performance, which has implications for their research work experiences. A qualitative study of faculty recipients of an international scholarly award was conducted to explore how they evolve in their thinking and understanding in respect of the relevance of their research interests both to their academic community and to the practice community. The study builds on the transformative learning spaces conceptual framework through an exploration of how scholarly networks can support the social, personal and situational contexts of an evolving professional research identity for faculty in higher education.
Findings from thirty-two qualitative interviews with Fulbright Scholars in America and Ireland shed light on (a) nature of individual transformative learning and the underlying structure and contexts (personal, professional and situational) of an international scholarly network, (b) informs current debate on how scholarly networks impact on evolving faculty professional identity and orientation toward scholarly partnerships and research collaborations, and (c) how HEI support for learning transfer influences the engagement or dis-engagement of faculty to maintain the relevance of their research interests both to their academic community and to the practice community. The study highlights the importance of international mechanisms or incentives from universities and scientific communities, together with international collaboration through research exchanges and visits. Finally, the results of this study have implications for faculty core research, networked relationships and inter-disciplinary orientations
Children’s Spirituality and the Practice of Meditation in Irish Primary Schools: A Phenomenological Exploration
Get PDFThis thesis explores the child’s experience of meditation in the context of a whole-school practice in Irish primary schools and its impact on children’s spirituality. There has been limited research into the impact of meditation on children, in particular on its spiritual fruits in their lives. This research seeks to discover and describe how children experience the practice of meditation, the practical benefits, if any, they consider they gain from it, and the nature of its impact, if any, on their spirituality. The research uses a phenomenological, hermeneutic, mystagogical methodology. Using purposive sampling, seventy children, aged from 7 to 11 years, were interviewed. The study is original in that the interview protocol contained novel processes designed to elicit from children their experience, if any, of the transcendent in the practice of meditation and in its depth of analysis of the spiritual fruits of the practice. These processes include photo-elicitation and an original method, the Selection Box, designed to enable children to reflect on the comments of their peers. These methods proved to be very effective in giving voice to the views of the children, enabling them to give metaphorical expression to their experience of the transcendent through the practice of meditation. These methods may have application in other areas of human sciences research. The research identifies four themes linked to the experience of meditation: simplicity, serenity, self-awareness and heart-awareness and presents a phenomenological description of the child’s experience of meditation. It identifies three pragmatic benefits: that meditation calms and restores, generates energy and confidence, and improves decision-making. Regarding spiritual fruits of the practice, the work presents a heuristic model showing how meditation deepens children’s self-awareness, awakens the heart to the true-self, nourishes their spirituality and inspires them toward more authentic living. The study stresses the importance of personal spiritual experience and concludes that the regular practice of meditation has the capacity to enkindle and nourish the innate spirituality of children, counter the tendency toward ‘true-self denial’ and build community self-presence. It supports the introduction of meditation in primary schools on a whole-school basis
A Stage Model of Social Media Adoption
Get PDFThere is very little understanding of how organisations manage social media. In particular, there is no
established path of activities that guide a company down the path of social readiness, and the management and
organisation of social media is under-researched. Consequently, many organisations experience significant problems
with their social media business profiles (SMBP). Stage of growth (SoG) models represent a picture of evolution, where
the current stage can be understood in terms of history and future, providing an opportunity to identify the stages, paths
of evolution, benchmark variables, and dominant problems experienced by organisations at each stage. Following a
review of four decades (1974-2014) of SoG model research, and a review of existing social media research and
practitioner insight across multiple domains, the authors adopt Gottschalk and Solli-Saether’s (2010) [1] five step Stage
Modelling Process as a research methodology to develop a stage model of SMBP implementation and management.
The paper analyses the findings from Step 1 (Suggested Stage Model) and Step 2 (Conceptual Stage Model) of the
Stage Modelling Process, before concluding with the key findings. This research contributes to academia by enhancing
the existing four decades of knowledge of SoG models, extending it to the management of social media in an
organisational context. This research is also a critical piece of research from a practitioner perspective, as organisations struggle to devise tactics and strategies to manage social media adoption and use
Normative values of functional competence, speed and lower body power for youth football players at different stages of biological maturity
Get PDFProfessional football clubs place great emphasis on development of young players to attain first team squad membership, yet despite extensive research on senior teams there is limited knowledge the assessment of functional competence and the development of elite youth players (Brownlee, et al. 2015). This study aimed to assess normative values of functional competence, speed and lower body power for elite youth players at different stages of biological maturity as these factors have significant value in the planning and implementation of football specific training programmes (Lloyd, et al. 2014). One hundred and thirty male soccer players (n=130) from 7 different age groups within an Elite English Premier League Academy participated in the study. Participants were assessed using the countermovement jump test, 0 to 10 meter speed test and the FMS (Cook, et al. 2006). Percentage of adult height was attained using the Khamis-Roche method (Khamis & Roche, 1994). Subjects were classified as Pre pubertal growth spurt when assessed to be 89% or less of predicted adult height, during pubertal growth spurt when between 89% and 95% of predicted adult height and Post pubertal growth spurt when past 95% of adult height. The Pre pubertal growth spurt group had forty six subjects (n=46), the Pubertal Growth Spurt group had thirty six participants (n=36), and the Post Pubertal growth spurt group had forty eight subjects (n=48).
Results indicated that during the Pre Pubertal Growth Spurt there is a correlation between speed and power (r = -.706) but not between speed and FMS (r = -.233) or between jump and FMS (r = .126) results. The Pubertal Growth Spurt group showed a correlation with speed and jump (p = -.587) and FMS and jump (r = .465) but found no correlation with speed and FMS (p = -.264). There were correlations with all three elements in the final post pubertal growth spurt stage. FMS and Jump (r = -.341), jump and speed (r = -.585) and FMS and speed (r = .521). The study concluded that functional competence and movement pattern ability follow different developmental patterns to speed and power and that the higher the FMS score the greater the chance of positive longitudinal performance change in areas such as speed and power. There are also implications for the planning and implementation of football specific, maturational appropriate, training programmes
An Alternative Banking Inquiry: A Grand Narrative of Organisation Culture and Change from 1960 to 2000
Get PDFThe point of departure for this inductive study is to explore the often unseen side of banking organisations by drawing on the lived experiences of bank workers. The research is driven by recent public and political discourse that appears to contain little in-depth knowledge of the inherent culture of banking organisations and the changes they have gone through since 1960. This leads to concerns and queries regarding what is known about the culture of the whole organisation, what changes it has gone through and the social relations that exist between workers in banks.
The research is approached from a phenomenological ontology and an epistemology of social constructionism, which aims to give an uninterrupted voice to the workers understanding of their working life experiences. Often workers are considered passive entities in organisation change, a claim that this method of research shows to be untrue. Through organisation storytelling the workers narrate their experiences of working in a major Irish bank (the Bank) between 1960 and 2000. Their experiences provide a unique perspective of their culture and the changing organisation which they embraced and helped shape.
The stories are analysed in the form of a grand narrative that reveals much about culture and change in the Bank over forty years. The grand narrative is explored through theories and concepts related to work, identity, social relations and modernity. Commencing with the initial break with past traditions the research continues by exploring and describing how the changes affected working life. Nostalgic reflections conclude the grand narrative and provide scope to discuss the meanings attributed by the workers to the transformation of the Bank.
The research contributes to theories of organisation culture by presenting it as reflexive of happenings in the external and internal environment of the bank. Although considered as important in the development of organisational culture models, the use of the models often play-down the importance of reflexivity in the creation, change and maintenance of culture in an organisation. In terms of organisation change the research contributes by providing an emerging ‘model of discovery’, that could potentially feed into much needed new perceptions of organisation change in the contemporary environment. The contribution to change comments on the lack of agency that managers have in controlling change and finding and ‘end’ once it has been unleashed. In a contribution to practice, the research notes that banks should consider becoming less reactive to external influences and to provide a strong ethos and boundary for worker identity
Making growth-focused small service firms in Ireland more viable through strategic learning plans
Get PDFLearning in a small firm setting is based around contextualized social experiences; wherein the owner/ manager (OM) is the medium through which much of the learning success relies. While prior studies established a link between learning, performance and growth in small service firms, empirical evidence on the subject is scant and the relationship between small firm growth orientation and learning activity is worthy of exploration. The small service firm sector is the largest in Ireland, accounting for almost 48 per cent of all enterprises and 42 per cent of the labour population employed (CSO, 2011). Small firms are also commonly referred to as an important source of innovation, economic growth and employment streams (Action Plan for Jobs, 2016, Kenny, 2015; CSO, 2011; GEM, 2014; Forfás, 2013), and according to GEM (2014, ‘established businesses are the core of the economic canvas of any country’ (p.46) A review of the extant literature yields limited research that explores the effects of learning on small service firm business growth. While there are conceptual frameworks available that explore learning in an organisation (Crossan et al., 1997; Nonaka, 1994), many assume deployment in a large organisation complete with the necessary resources (human, capital and time) to implement such a framework. This project seeks to investigate the perceived impact of a strategic learning plan intervention on growth-focused small service firms’ viability in the Irish context and present an initial strategic learning plan framework for use in growth-focused small service firms. This research adopts a social learning theory view as the optimum lens through which to understand the dynamism of small firm learning and an adapted strategic learning plan framework that might be used to facilitate owner/manager learning and in turn, facilitate enterprise growth. Applying an action research (AR) methodology, findings present valuable insights into the ways in which small service firms who wish to grow can be facilitated to learn strategically. These findings have implications for future studies of the link between learning and small firm growth
Public service, APRS and the Internet of Things
Get PDFIn this paper we outline a prototype system assembled to improve situational awareness during a large
public-safety event. This was done by integrating the use of SIGFOX TM devices into a pre-existing Amateur
Packet Reporting System (APRS) systems and infrastructure. As the use of APRS mapping is well established
at this event already, the most straightforward way to present the data was through existing systems. Lastly,
we explain how ultra-low-power embedded systems based on SIGFOX devices were integrated and how they
performed during a live trial
Resource aware placement of data analytics platform in fog computing
Get PDFFog computing is an extension of cloud computing right to the edge of the network, and seeks to minimize service latency and average response time in applications, thereby enhancing the end-user experience. However, there still is the need to define where the service should run for attaining maximum efficiency. By way of the work proposed in this paper, we seek to develop a resource-aware placement of data analytics platform in fog computing architecture, that would adaptively deploy the analytic platform to run either on the cloud, or the fog, thus reducing the network costs and response time for the user
Examining Ethics for an Action Research Project in an Enterprise Social Network Enabled Virtual Communities of Practice Environment
No full textThe implementation of social media tools in organisations, known as enterprise social networking (ESN), provides a convenient means for staff to share knowledge in informal settings. ESN are used to support a knowledge management technique called communities of practice (CoP), and the use of ESN and CoP for organizational knowledge sharing is the subject of increasing interest and research as awareness of the benefits grows. Action research (AR) is seen as a suitable approach for studies in this field. However, given the people-centric nature of these systems, AR in this area presents considerable ethical dilemmas; brought about by the nature of AR and its research methods, and the nature of use of the ESN tools. This paper addresses how these ethical issues might be dealt with in the course of an AR study that examines how ESN can enable staff knowledge sharing in virtual CoP in a higher education context
