@phdthesis{Blankovsky2014,
  author    = {Blankovsky, Yuval},
  title     = {עבירה לשמה},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-87158},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {A Transgression for the Sake of God -'Averah li-shmah: A Tale of a Radical Idea in Talmudic Literature All cultures, religions, and ethical or legal systems struggle with the role intention plays in evaluating actions. The Talmud compellingly elaborates on the notion of intention through the radical concept that "A sin committed for the sake of God [averah li-shmah] is greater than a commandment fulfilled not for the sake of God [mi-mizvah she-lo li-shmah]." The Babylonian Talmud attributes this concept—which challenges one of rabbinic Judaism's most fundamental dogmas, the obligation to fulfill the commandments and avoid sin—to R. Nahman b. Isaac (RNBI), a renowned 4th century Amora. Considering the normative character of the rabbinic culture in which Halakhah (Jewish religious law) plays such a central role, this concept, seems almost like a foreign body in the Talmudic corpus. The study focuses on the linguistic stratum of RNBI's statement. By tracking the development of the meanings and uses of the word 'li-shmah' the research locates RNBI's statement as part of the broader Talmudic discourse evaluating two levels of performing religious actions 'li-shmah/she-lo li-shmah'. Since we wish to explain the word 'li-shmah' consistently both times it appears in the statement, the best translation would be 'for the sake of God'. This translation is based on the linguistic connection between the word 'li-shmah' and the term 'le-shem shamayim' (for the sake of God) that appears in several rabbinic sources. This linguistic connection is also the key to identifying the possible root of RNBI's concept. RNBI bolsters his idea by quoting a verse about Jael, thus implying that Jael sinned for the sake of God. The research describes at least five statements in Sages' Literature that attribute sins for the sake of God to other biblical figures, all the while using the term 'le-shem shamim'. Therefore we may presume that RNBI's concept has evolved from the exegetical notion of attributing sin for the sake of God to biblical figures. To understand the way RNBI's statement was accepted in Talmudic culture, we must explore the textual witnesses to the literary frame of RNBI's statement: the Talmudic sugya (Nazir 23a; Horayot 10b). We possess five versions of the sugya's dialectical structure. Comparison of these versions, allows us to reconstruct the earlier dialectical structure, from which the familiar versions developed. The radical potential of RNBI's statement led to cultural activity, in the transmission of the sugya, in an effort to mitigate it. This activity is reflected in late additions to the sugya identified by our research—which should be viewed as a process of self-censorship for ideological reasons. This research explores a fundamental issue in rabbinic world: the immanent contradiction between law and intention. The research depicts in detail the movement of a radical idea from the margins culture to mainstream - in this case into the Babylonian Talmud. Therefore, the findings of this research provide substantial insight into our understanding of the interpretive process and of conceptual adaptation in rabbinic culture.},
  language  = {mul}
}
@phdthesis{Gurman2014,
  author    = {Gurman, Avraham I.},
  title     = {איסור נישואי "מעוברת חברו ומנקת חברו" במשפט העברי},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-77081},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {XIX, 343, P},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {The Period of the Sages 1. The stringent approach in the early halakhah: we assume that a pregnant or nursing widow was forbidden to remarry because such a marriage would be considered trespassing on the domain of her late husband. This prohibition was perceived as quite severe since it stemmed from biblical verses. 2. The lenient approach: A different rationale was given for the prohibition, and significant exceptions were made to the prohibition. Furthermore, many rabbinic scholars maintained that the prohibition's duration should be less than twenty-four months. 3. Choosing stringency with the closing of the Talmud: At the end of the amoraic period, or, perhaps, even in the saboraic period, the rabbis decided to adopt the more stringent positions pertaining to the marital prohibition. They ruled that there were to be no exceptions to the law, except if the child died. Likewise, the rabbis ruled that the duration of the waiting period would be twenty-four months from the birth of the child. The Geonic period 4. In the Geonic period differences of opinion between the Babylonian Jews and the Jews living in the Land of Israel were preserved. These differences had their roots in sources in the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, respectively. Ultimately, the Babylonian Geonim ensured that the Babylonian Talmud's approach became the consensus opinion among the rabbinic decisors. The Period of the Rishonim (Early Authorities) 5. Broadening the scope of the prohibition: In the period of the Early Authorities, the rabbis decided that the prohibition also applied to divorcees who had children from their previous marriages and to single women who had children out of wedlock. These rulings greatly expanded the scope of the prohibition. 6. Exceptions to the prohibition - the case of R. Jacob ha-Kohen of Cracow and its impact on the Spanish sages: R. Jacob of Cracow believed that exceptions could be made to the prohibition. By hiring a wet nurse for the child and creating a mechanism that would prevent her from breaking her commitment, the mother could remarry. This position was vehemently rejected by the sages of Ashkenaz, but Spanish sages seemed to have accepted it. When R. Asher b. Yehiel (Rosh) fled to Spain, he revolutionized the Spanish approach, leading the Spanish sages to adopt the stringent approach that originated in Ashkenaz. The Modern period 7. In the Modern period, with the shortening of the average nursing period, the rabbinic decisors faced a dilemma: on the one hand the classical halakhic literature adopted a stringent approach to the prohibition, but on the other hand, the rationale to the prohibition almost disappeared. The Halakhah reacted to this new reality by adopting two contradictory approaches: the stringent one and the lenient one. 8. The stringent approach fashioned by the Chatam Sofer: The Chatam Sofer and his disciples were only willing to annul the prohibition if forbidding the marriage was likely to cause the child to ultimately forsake religion. The Chatam Sofer's stringent approach was influenced by the fact that one of the early religious reformers, R. Aharon Churin argued that the marital ban should be abrogated. In order to strengthen the prohibition's legitimacy, Sofer's student, the Maharam Schik, argued that the prohibition was biblically mandated and he suggested a new rational to the prohibition. 9. The lenient approach: This approach is the product of a number of lenient rulings issued by various rabbinic decisors. These leniencies reflect the tremendous openness of the text to interpretation. Sources that had been interpreted stringently for hundreds of years were suddenly interpreted in a far more lenient fashion. We presume that the change in interpretation was a result of the change of the surrounding environment. 10. The Chatam Sofer's school's stringent opinion influenced the lenient rabbinic decisors too, vitiating their willingness to cross certain boundaries. Thus, the lenient decisors were willing to adopt lenient interpretations to the ancient sources, but they were not usually willing to recognize the need for a dramatic change in the law's status in light of the changing reality.},
  language  = {mul}
}
@phdthesis{Senyuk2014,
  author    = {Senyuk, Ulyana},
  title     = {Zum Status relativ{\"a}hnlicher S{\"a}tze im Fr{\"u}hneuhochdeutschen},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-91673},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {vi, 276},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit den sogenannten relativ{\"a}hnlichen S{\"a}tzen im Fr{\"u}hneuhochdeutschen und leistet somit einen Beitrag zur Subordinationsforschung des {\"a}lteren Deutsch. Relativ{\"a}hnliche S{\"a}tze sind formal durch ein satzinitiales anaphorisches d-Element und die Endstellung des finiten Verbs gekennzeichnet. Semantisch gesehen beziehen sie sich auf den vorangehenden Satz als Ganzes, indem sie ihn in bestimmter Weise weiterf{\"u}hren oder kommentieren. In der bisherigen Forschung werden diese S{\"a}tze satztypologisch als Haupts{\"a}tze mit Verbendstellung analysiert (vgl. dazu Maurer 1926, Behaghel 1932 und L{\"o}tscher 2000). Nach der ausf{\"u}hrlichen Diskussion der formalen Abh{\"a}ngigkeitsmarker im {\"a}lteren Deutsch sowie anhand einer umfangreichen korpusbasierten Untersuchung wird in dieser Arbeit gezeigt, dass relativ{\"a}hnliche S{\"a}tze im Fr{\"u}hneuhochdeutschen auch als abh{\"a}ngige S{\"a}tze - analog zu den weiterf{\"u}hrenden Relativs{\"a}tzen im Gegenwartsdeutschen - analysiert werden k{\"o}nnen. Die weiterf{\"u}hrenden Relativs{\"a}tze im Gegenwartsdeutschen enthalten satzinitial auch ein anaphorisches Element, das sich auf das Gesagte in dem vorangehenden Satz bezieht. Verbendstellung weisen sie ebenfalls auf (mehr zur Grammatik der weiterf{\"u}hrenden Relativs{\"a}tze vgl. insb. Brandt 1990 und Holler 2005). {\"U}ber die Untersuchung relativ{\"a}hnlicher S{\"a}tze hinaus befasst sich diese Arbeit ausf{\"u}hrlich mit formalen Abh{\"a}ngigkeitsmarkern des {\"a}lteren Deutsch, wie Verbendstellung, Einleiter und afinite Konstruktion.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Dahlsten2014,
  author    = {Dahlsten, Ulf},
  title     = {World market governance},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-70168},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Democratic capitalism or liberal democracy, as the successful marriage of convenience between market liberalism and democracy sometimes is called, is in trouble. The market economy system has become global and there is a growing mismatch with the territoriality of the nation-states. The functional global networks and inter-governmental order can no longer keep pace with the rapid development of the global market economy and regulatory capture is all too common. Concepts like de-globalization, self-regulation, and global government are floated in the debate. The alternatives are analysed and found to be improper, inadequate or plainly impossible. The proposed route is instead to accept that the global market economy has developed into an independent fundamental societal system that needs its own governance. The suggestion is World Market Governance based on the Rule of Law in order to shape the fitness environment for the global market economy and strengthen the nation-states so that they can regain the sovereignty to decide upon the social and cultural conditions in each country. Elements in the proposed Rule of Law are international legislation decided by an Assembly supported by a Council, and an independent Judiciary. Existing international organisations would function as executors. The need for broad sustained demand for regulations in the common interest is identified.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Ermeydan2014,
  author    = {Ermeydan, Mahmut Ali},
  title     = {Wood cell wall modification with hydrophobic molecules},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-71325},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Wood is used for many applications because of its excellent mechanical properties, relative abundance and as it is a renewable resource. However, its wider utilization as an engineering material is limited because it swells and shrinks upon moisture changes and is susceptible to degradation by microorganisms and/or insects. Chemical modifications of wood have been shown to improve dimensional stability, water repellence and/or durability, thus increasing potential service-life of wood materials. However current treatments are limited because it is difficult to introduce and fix such modifications deep inside the tissue and cell wall. Within the scope of this thesis, novel chemical modification methods of wood cell walls were developed to improve both dimensional stability and water repellence of wood material. These methods were partly inspired by the heartwood formation in living trees, a process, that for some species results in an insertion of hydrophobic chemical substances into the cell walls of already dead wood cells, In the first part of this thesis a chemistry to modify wood cell walls was used, which was inspired by the natural process of heartwood formation. Commercially available hydrophobic flavonoid molecules were effectively inserted in the cell walls of spruce, a softwood species with low natural durability, after a tosylation treatment to obtain "artificial heartwood". Flavonoid inserted cell walls show a reduced moisture absorption, resulting in better dimensional stability, water repellency and increased hardness. This approach was quite different compared to established modifications which mainly address hydroxyl groups of cell wall polymers with hydrophilic substances. In the second part of the work in-situ styrene polymerization inside the tosylated cell walls was studied. It is known that there is a weak adhesion between hydrophobic polymers and hydrophilic cell wall components. The hydrophobic styrene monomers were inserted into the tosylated wood cell walls for further polymerization to form polystyrene in the cell walls, which increased the dimensional stability of the bulk wood material and reduced water uptake of the cell walls considerably when compared to controls. In the third part of the work, grafting of another hydrophobic and also biodegradable polymer, poly(ɛ-caprolactone) in the wood cell walls by ring opening polymerization of ɛ-caprolactone was studied at mild temperatures. Results indicated that polycaprolactone attached into the cell walls, caused permanent swelling of the cell walls up to 5\%. Dimensional stability of the bulk wood material increased 40\% and water absorption reduced more than 35\%. A fully biodegradable and hydrophobized wood material was obtained with this method which reduces disposal problem of the modified wood materials and has improved properties to extend the material's service-life. Starting from a bio-inspired approach which showed great promise as an alternative to standard cell wall modifications we showed the possibility of inserting hydrophobic molecules in the cell walls and supported this fact with in-situ styrene and ɛ-caprolactone polymerization into the cell walls. It was shown in this thesis that despite the extensive knowledge and long history of using wood as a material there is still room for novel chemical modifications which could have a high impact on improving wood properties.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Lorey2014,
  author    = {Lorey, Johannes},
  title     = {What's in a query : analyzing, predicting, and managing linked data access},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72312},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {The term Linked Data refers to connected information sources comprising structured data about a wide range of topics and for a multitude of applications. In recent years, the conceptional and technical foundations of Linked Data have been formalized and refined. To this end, well-known technologies have been established, such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a Linked Data model or the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) for retrieving this information. Whereas most research has been conducted in the area of generating and publishing Linked Data, this thesis presents novel approaches for improved management. In particular, we illustrate new methods for analyzing and processing SPARQL queries. Here, we present two algorithms suitable for identifying structural relationships between these queries. Both algorithms are applied to a large number of real-world requests to evaluate the performance of the approaches and the quality of their results. Based on this, we introduce different strategies enabling optimized access of Linked Data sources. We demonstrate how the presented approach facilitates effective utilization of SPARQL endpoints by prefetching results relevant for multiple subsequent requests. Furthermore, we contribute a set of metrics for determining technical characteristics of such knowledge bases. To this end, we devise practical heuristics and validate them through thorough analysis of real-world data sources. We discuss the findings and evaluate their impact on utilizing the endpoints. Moreover, we detail the adoption of a scalable infrastructure for improving Linked Data discovery and consumption. As we outline in an exemplary use case, this platform is eligible both for processing and provisioning the corresponding information.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Burdack2014,
  author    = {Burdack, Doreen},
  title     = {Water management policies and their impact on irrigated crop production in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-306-0},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72245},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {307},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {The economic impact analysis contained in this book shows how irrigation farming is particularly susceptible when applying certain water management policies in the Australian Murray-Darling Basin, one of the world largest river basins and Australia's most fertile region. By comparing different pricing and non-pricing water management policies with the help of the Water Integrated Market Model, it is found that the impact of water demand reducing policies is most severe on crops that need to be intensively irrigated and are at the same time less water productive. A combination of increasingly frequent and severe droughts and the application of policies that decrease agricultural water demand, in the same region, will create a situation in which the highly water dependent crops rice and cotton cannot be cultivated at all.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Riemer2014,
  author    = {Riemer, Martin},
  title     = {Vom Phenol zum Naturstoff : Entwicklung nachhaltiger Mikrowellen-vermittelter SUZUKI-MIYAURA-Kupplungen und Tandem-Reaktionen},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72525},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Ziel dieser Arbeit war die Entwicklung von Methoden zur Synthese von auf Phenol basierenden Naturstoffen. Insbesondere wurde bei der Methodenentwicklung die Nachhaltigkeit in den Vordergrund ger{\"u}ckt. Dies bedeutet, dass durch die Zusammenfassung mehrerer Syntheseschritte zu einem (Tandem-Reaktion) beispielsweise unn{\"o}tige Reaktionsschritte vermieden werden sollten. Ferner sollten im Sinne der Nachhaltigkeit m{\"o}glichst ungiftige Reagenzien und L{\"o}sungmittel verwendet werden, ebenso wie mehrfach wiederverwertbare Katalysatoren zum Einsatz kommen. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wurden Methoden zum Aufbau von Biphenolen mittels Pd/C-katalysierten Suzuki-Miyaura-Kupplungen entwickelt. Diese Methoden sind insofern {\"a}ußerst effizient, da der ansonsten gebr{\"a}uchliche Syntheseweg {\"u}ber drei Reaktionsschritte somit auf lediglich eine Reaktionsstufe reduziert wurde. Weiterhin wurden die Reaktionsbedingungen so gestaltet, dass einfaches Wasser als vollkommen ungiftiges L{\"o}sungsmittel verwendet werden konnte. Des Weiteren wurde f{\"u}r diese Reaktionen ein Katalysator gew{\"a}hlt, der einfach durch Filtration vom Reaktionsgemisch abgetrennt und f{\"u}r weitere Reaktionen mehrfach wiederverwendet werden konnte. Dar{\"u}ber hinaus konnte durch die Synthese von mehr als 100 Verbindungen die breite Anwendbarkeit der Methoden aufgezeigt werden. Mit den entwickelten Methoden konnten 14 Naturstoffe - z. T. erstmals - synthetisiert werden. Derartige Stoffe werden u. a. von den {\"o}konomisch bedeutenden Kernobstgew{\"a}chsen ({\"A}pfeln, Birnen) als Abwehrmittel gegen{\"u}ber Sch{\"a}dlingen erzeugt. Folglich konnte mit Hilfe dieser Methoden ein Syntheseweg f{\"u}r potentielle Pflanzenschutzmittel entwickelt werden. Im zweiten Teil dieser Arbeit wurde ein Zugang zu den sich ebenfalls vom Phenol ableitenden Chromanonen, Chromonen und Cumarinen untersucht. Bei diesen Untersuchungen konnte durch die Entwicklung zweier neuer Tandem-Reaktionen ein nachhaltiger und stufen{\"o}konomischer Syntheseweg zur Darstellung substituierter Benzo(dihydro)pyrone aufgezeigt werden. Durch die erstmalige Kombination der Claisen-Umlagerung mit einer Oxa-Michael-Addition bzw. konjugierten-Addition wurden zwei vollkommen atom{\"o}konomische Reaktionen miteinander verkn{\"u}pft und somit eine {\"u}beraus effiente Synthese von allyl- bzw. prenylsubstituierten Chromanonen und Chromonen erm{\"o}glicht. Ferner konnten durch die Anwendung einer Claisen-Umlagerung-Wittig-Laktonisierungs-Reaktion allyl- bzw. prenylsubstituierte Cumarine erhalten werden. Herausragendes Merkmal dieser Methoden war, dass in nur einem Schritt der jeweilige Naturstoffgrundk{\"o}rper aufgebaut und eine lipophile Seitenkette generiert werden konnte. Die Entwicklung dieser Methoden ist von hohem pharmazeutischem Stellenwert, da auf diesen Wegen Verbindungen synthetisiert werden k{\"o}nnen, die zum einem {\"u}ber das notwendige pharmakologische Grundger{\"u}st verf{\"u}gen und zum anderen {\"u}ber eine Seitenkette, welche die Aufnahmef{\"a}higkeit und damit die Wirksamkeit im Organismus betr{\"a}chtlich erh{\"o}ht. Insgesamt konnten mittels der entwickelten Methoden 15 Chromanon-, Chromon- und Cumarin-Naturstoffe z. T. erstmals synthetisiert werden.},
  language  = {de}
}
@phdthesis{Truemper2014,
  author    = {Tr{\"u}mper, Jonas},
  title     = {Visualization techniques for the analysis of software behavior and related structures},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72145},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {Software maintenance encompasses any changes made to a software system after its initial deployment and is thereby one of the key phases in the typical software-engineering lifecycle. In software maintenance, we primarily need to understand structural and behavioral aspects, which are difficult to obtain, e.g., by code reading. Software analysis is therefore a vital tool for maintaining these systems: It provides - the preferably automated - means to extract and evaluate information from their artifacts such as software structure, runtime behavior, and related processes. However, such analysis typically results in massive raw data, so that even experienced engineers face difficulties directly examining, assessing, and understanding these data. Among other things, they require tools with which to explore the data if no clear question can be formulated beforehand. For this, software analysis and visualization provide its users with powerful interactive means. These enable the automation of tasks and, particularly, the acquisition of valuable and actionable insights into the raw data. For instance, one means for exploring runtime behavior is trace visualization. This thesis aims at extending and improving the tool set for visual software analysis by concentrating on several open challenges in the fields of dynamic and static analysis of software systems. This work develops a series of concepts and tools for the exploratory visualization of the respective data to support users in finding and retrieving information on the system artifacts concerned. This is a difficult task, due to the lack of appropriate visualization metaphors; in particular, the visualization of complex runtime behavior poses various questions and challenges of both a technical and conceptual nature. This work focuses on a set of visualization techniques for visually representing control-flow related aspects of software traces from shared-memory software systems: A trace-visualization concept based on icicle plots aids in understanding both single-threaded as well as multi-threaded runtime behavior on the function level. The concept's extensibility further allows the visualization and analysis of specific aspects of multi-threading such as synchronization, the correlation of such traces with data from static software analysis, and a comparison between traces. Moreover, complementary techniques for simultaneously analyzing system structures and the evolution of related attributes are proposed. These aim at facilitating long-term planning of software architecture and supporting management decisions in software projects by extensions to the circular-bundle-view technique: An extension to 3-dimensional space allows for the use of additional variables simultaneously; interaction techniques allow for the modification of structures in a visual manner. The concepts and techniques presented here are generic and, as such, can be applied beyond software analysis for the visualization of similarly structured data. The techniques' practicability is demonstrated by several qualitative studies using subject data from industry-scale software systems. The studies provide initial evidence that the techniques' application yields useful insights into the subject data and its interrelationships in several scenarios.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Vu2014,
  author    = {Vu, Dinh Phuong},
  title     = {Using video study to investigate eighth-grade mathematics classrooms in Vietnam},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-72464},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {273},
  year      = {2014},
  abstract  = {The International Project for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) was formed in the 1950s (Postlethwaite, 1967). Since that time, the IEA has conducted many studies in the area of mathematics, such as the First International Mathematics Study (FIMS) in 1964, the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) in 1980-1982, and a series of studies beginning with the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) which has been conducted every 4 years since 1995. According to Stigler et al. (1999), in the FIMS and the SIMS, U.S. students achieved low scores in comparison with students in other countries (p. 1). The TIMSS 1995 "Videotape Classroom Study" was therefore a complement to the earlier studies conducted to learn "more about the instructional and cultural processes that are associated with achievement" (Stigler et al., 1999, p. 1). The TIMSS Videotape Classroom Study is known today as the TIMSS Video Study. From the findings of the TIMSS 1995 Video Study, Stigler and Hiebert (1999) likened teaching to "mountain ranges poking above the surface of the water," whereby they implied that we might see the mountaintops, but we do not see the hidden parts underneath these mountain ranges (pp. 73-78). By watching the videotaped lessons from Germany, Japan, and the United States again and again, they discovered that "the systems of teaching within each country look similar from lesson to lesson. At least, there are certain recurring features [or patterns] that typify many of the lessons within a country and distinguish the lessons among countries" (pp. 77-78). They also discovered that "teaching is a cultural activity," so the systems of teaching "must be understood in relation to the cultural beliefs and assumptions that surround them" (pp. 85, 88). From this viewpoint, one of the purposes of this dissertation was to study some cultural aspects of mathematics teaching and relate the results to mathematics teaching and learning in Vietnam. Another research purpose was to carry out a video study in Vietnam to find out the characteristics of Vietnamese mathematics teaching and compare these characteristics with those of other countries. In particular, this dissertation carried out the following research tasks: - Studying the characteristics of teaching and learning in different cultures and relating the results to mathematics teaching and learning in Vietnam - Introducing the TIMSS, the TIMSS Video Study and the advantages of using video study in investigating mathematics teaching and learning - Carrying out the video study in Vietnam to identify the image, scripts and patterns, and the lesson signature of eighth-grade mathematics teaching in Vietnam - Comparing some aspects of mathematics teaching in Vietnam and other countries and identifying the similarities and differences across countries - Studying the demands and challenges of innovating mathematics teaching methods in Vietnam - lessons from the video studies Hopefully, this dissertation will be a useful reference material for pre-service teachers at education universities to understand the nature of teaching and develop their teaching career.},
  language  = {en}
}