| 1. |
- Andersson, Ninnie
(författare)
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Communication and Shared Understanding of Assessment : A phenomenological study of assessment in Swedish upper secondary dance education
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to describe and explore the phenomenon of assessment in dance education within the Swedish upper secondary schools’ dance orientation. The phenomenon was researched based on teachers’ experiences of assessment in dance education and formulations in the syllabi for upper secondary school. Life-world phenomenology constituted a base for the study. The methods used in the investigation were document analysis, observations, teachers’ written and verbal reflections and interviews. Documentation of observations was made through field notes, video recordings and sound recordings. The generated material was analysed based on Spiegelberg’s (1960) seven stages of phenomenological analysis. Syllabi from Lpf94 and Gy11 were researched to describe and analyse in what ways dance knowledge becomes visible. In total, five teachers and three schools were involved in the study. Within the framework of the course Dance technique 1, observations of dance education in ballet, contemporary- and jazz dance were made as well as of ten grade conferences. The teachers read the field notes and were able to change formulations in case something was misunderstood or it needed to be commented on in the form of teachers’ written or verbal reflections. Interviews with four of the observed teachers were made and the conversations related to what appeared in the observations. Comprehension of teachers’ experiences resulted in a description of the phenomenon and answers to the research questions. The study is communicated through four intertwined papers. The result reveals various conditions for assessment in dance education. Two themes appeared in the overall findings of the study, namely: The design of the assessment practice and Communication within the assessment practice. The syllabi appeared as one condition among others for dance education in upper secondary school including views of dance knowledge that appeared through analysis of the syllabi. In the assessment practice, it was seen that teachers’ conduct of assessment involved conditions for formative assessment to emerge. Conditions in order for communicated assessment to become meaningful for the students also emerged, including shared understanding. The teachers expressed various conditions for the assessment practice to became visible, namely the students’ participation, their own actions, as well as the overall school context. The study contributes to the dance educational research field through making teachers’ experiences of assessment in Swedish dance education visible. The thesis discusses dance teachers’ various approaches to syllabi, how the teachers’ conceptions of quality influence the assessment practice, and finally the importance of shared understanding of communicated assessment is emphasised. Furthermore, collegiate discussions are brought to the attention as a way to improve and reflect upon assessment.Keywords: upper secondary school, dance education, assessment, life-world phenomenology
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| 2. |
- Bjuhr, Åsa, 1973-
(författare)
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Avslut och fortsättning : En studie om övergången från introduktionsprogrammet språkintroduktion till nationellt program vid gymnasieskolan
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis highlights elements of the schooling for newly arrived students aged 16-19 within the Swedish school system in six different municipalities, where the transition between the language introduction programme and national programme at upper secondary school is central. The main purpose is to provide knowledge of pupils' experiences of the aforementioned transition. In this thesis, the concept of transition has a broader and more abstract meaning than just the actual move from one activity to another, and the thesis also focuses on the time spent in the language introduction programme and the first months in a national program at upper secondary school.Three studies are included in this thesis, where discourse analysis, curriculum theory and organizational theory of the school are used as a theoretical framework. The first study is an analysis of syllabuses from 1980 to 2011 for the subject Swedish as a second language within primary and secondary schools. The second is a study that interviews teachers in the language introduction programme, and the third study is based on interviews with pupils who have studied language introduction programme, but at the time of the interviews were studying in their first semester on a national programme.The analyses show that the transition is governed by curriculum and regulations that teachers and students must adhere to. The teachers carry out their everyday work on the basis of curriculum and regulations, such as the Education Act, but also on the basis of the individual school's organization. From an organizational perspective, this gives teachers limited personal room for manoeuvre. It also appears that the choice of national programmes and other choices that students can make within the framework of their schooling are sometimes obvious to the students and made by the students themselves. Nevertheless, other times teachers and study counsellors make the choices without the students’ knowledge. An additional result shows that the students say they experience a discrepancy when it comes to teaching of the various school subjects in the language introduction programme and the national programme at upper secondary school. The linguistic support that the students received during the time at the language introduction programme is not perceived by the students to be at the same level as the national programme. A development of linguistic support in various subjects within the national programme could, from a didactic perspective, lead to a less abrupt transition for the students
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| 3. |
- Konietzny, Jirka, 1987-
(författare)
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You Bet! : An Investigation of Market Positioning by Online Gambling Firms and Drivers of their Customers’ Gambling Intention
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Online gambling is a global multibillion dollar business that dwarfs all other forms of entertainment, and yet business and marketing research about it is scarce (Mizerski, 2013). The focus of gambling research has been on problem gamblers who ultimately represent a rather small, albeit important percentage of the gambling population. However, in the current Age of Chance (Reith, 2002) gambling, whether as a game of chance or taking risky action in the hope of a desired result (Lexico.com, 2019), is said to be at the very heart of our society. Indeed, business often operates in an environment of uncertainty that is increasingly online. This thesis seeks to address the paucity of marketing and business research in online gambling to better understand aspects that customers consider when gambling online. In doing so, the thesis commences by investigating semantic differences in the text used to achieve market positioning on the websites of online gambling firms. It proposes a new methodology that employs a combination of lexical and statistical analyses to understand how customers view content and how this is related to market positioning. Results show that firms that emphasise low certainty (or risk) are better positioned in customers’ mind than those that put emphasis on action or certainty. The thesis proceeds to explore the literature for drivers of customers’ online gambling intention and identifies perceived fairness and enjoyment, particularly anticipated enjoyment, as overlooked concepts. Anticipated enjoyment is defined as the enjoyment felt prior to the actual experience while perceived fairness encompasses procedural, distributive and interactional fairness. The research employs the theoretical frameworks of the Theory of Reasoned Action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology – UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003; Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2012). Anticipated enjoyment and perceived fairness are used as additional motivational drivers to enhance the models and better understand customers’ online gambling intention. Data are collected via surveys and analyses using mediated regression and PLS-SEM suggest that both anticipated enjoyment and perceived fairness strongly impact customers’ online gambling intention, whereas some of the UTAUT constructs fail to exhibit significance. Shorn of irrelevant relationships, a new Gambling Intention Model (GIM) is put forward. While the context of this study is online gambling, the resultant GIM may have broader application and can also potentially be applied to stock market traders and the insurance industry.
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| 4. |
- Linde, Stefan
(författare)
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Communication and Cooperation : A Study of the Relationship Between Political Communication and Large-scale Collective Action
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates the importance of communication for individual cooperation in large-scale collective action dilemmas. In small-scale collective action, where participants have the possibility to meet face-to-face, communication has been shown to drastically increase levels of cooperation. These positive effects are generally believed to be related to the possibilities of exchanging mutual commitments, sharing strategic information, creating and enforcing shared norms, developing trust, and creating a common group identity that communication offers. In large-scale dilemmas, involving thousands or even millions of participants, possibilities for communication are highly restricted beyond the immediate social vicinity of individuals. Participants are therefore unable to reap the positive benefits of communication that are available at the small-scale. Furthermore, as the public goods on which individuals cooperate in large-scale dilemmas often are both distant and abstract in nature (climate change, ozone depletion, overpopulation), the role of communication as an informational-shortcut might be even greater in large-scale dilemmas. That is, individuals need information about the characteristics of the resource in question, the relevant set of other actors participating, and the individual costs and benefits of cooperation.To compensate for the lack of communication and first-hand information, individuals in large-scale dilemmas are generally assumed to rely on different forms of judgmental and behavioral ‘heuristics’ (e.g. generalized trust and internalized norms) to make cooperative decisions. In this thesis I focus on one type of heuristic that generally has been overlooked in research on collective action; the individual reliance on information from trusted elite sources. Specifically, I study the extent to which individuals use communications from political parties when making cooperative decisions. The aim of the thesis is thus to investigate the relationship between political communication and large-scale collective action, and how this relationship varies with individual and contextual factors. This is studied in the context of climate change mitigation, which is a typical case of large-scale collective action, characterized by the large number of anonymous actors, the negligible impacts and high costs of individual cooperation, and a general lack of face-to-face communication and first-hand information.Using a country comparative approach, and cross-sectional survey data, the results show that: 1) political communications both directly and indirectly (by shaping perceptions of collective efficacy and collective benefits) influences individuals’ cooperative/non-cooperative decisions, and that this effect goes beyond other individual level factors, e.g. ideology, income, education; 2) not only specific communications, but also perceptions of the overall political climate (degree of polarization and the average party stance) affects attitudes both directly and indirectly; 3) these effects are not isolated to certain environments, but (to varying degree) can be found across political contexts and parties. The results have important implications both practically for policy makers, by creating a deeper understanding of the formation of individual climate change attitudes, and theoretically, by creating a better understanding of how individuals make decisions in large-scale collective action dilemmas. Future research should both validate the results from this study using other research designs (e.g. longitudinal or multilevel data, experimental designs), and expand on them, for example by exploring how different sources of communication and different types of information interact and influence the reception of communication content.
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| 5. |
- Poelzer, Gregory A
(författare)
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Extracting Legitimacy : Input, Throughput, and Output Legitimacy in the Mining Industry
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Legitimacy affects questions on constitutional design, international political regimes, and specific policy sectors. Although it permeates society at various levels, legitimacy becomes particularly crucial when decisions hold long-term or permanent consequences. In democratic societies, decisions on electoral reform or constitutional amendments typically include various checks and balances to increase the legitimacy of the outcome and similarly, on a smaller scale, resource development also undergoes of series of checks and balances to improve legitimacy. I investigate one such resource development, mineral extraction, to look at key factors of input, throughput, and output legitimacy in a policy sector with long-term or permanent outcomes.If the strength of the input legitimacy (democratic, participatory quality) is high, then a deficit of output legitimacy (decisions, outcomes) can be overlooked –and vice-versa. This interpretation of legitimacy focuses on the decision-making process and the outcomes, but with the active role companies take in mining operations it becomes critical to consider the non-state actors involved in the process. To address this additional piece of this equation, throughput legitimacy is utilized to analyze the effect of relationships in policy decisions. By looking at the quality of interaction, this thesis investigates where throughput fits within the three dimensions of legitimacy in the mining sector.Using interview and survey data from Sweden and Canada, this research in this thesis addresses both theoretical and empirical issues. Theoretically, the effect of multiple actors on the policy process legitimacy of policy processes are explored. Using the input, throughput, and output legitimacy trichotomy provides a basis through which to investigate the changes engendered by different governance arrangements and their effect on legitimacy. When support for policy also depends on activity outside the formal processes of government, the implications for legitimacy change –creating a new theoretical criterion. Empirically, the qualities and factors that affect the legitimacy of a process are identified. The findings of this thesis provide insight on future process designs; understanding the relationship between participation, interaction, and outcomes inresource development processes and the factors critical to legitimacy emerges and endures.
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| 6. |
- Gama, Fabio, 1980-
(författare)
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Managing the Collaborative Front End of Innovation in Manufacturing Firms : Requirements, Capabilities, and Conditions
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The front end of innovation is critical to innovative efforts in firms yet it remains to be poorly understood. This especially important since innovation efforts in the front end are becoming increasingly open in line with the era of open innovation. Although the literature on the front end of innovation is well developed, prior studies have largely focused on bilateral agreements and have overlooked conditions for collaborations with science-based partners (universities and research institutes). This is especially true for manufacturing firms, for which a continuous stream of new product ideas are a key source of competitiveness. To make things worse, the front end of innovation in this setting is often characterized by incongruent practices by partners, different magnitudes of fuzziness, and high risks in revealing new ideas. Developing new product definitions with different partners is thus a risky endeavor that may seriously compromise competitive advantages if mishandled. Therefore, there is a need for greater knowledge to facilitate the collaborative front end with different types of partners. Accordingly, the purpose of this dissertation is to understand how to manage the collaborative front end in manufacturing firms, with a particular focus on requirements, capabilities, and conditions.To fulfill this research purpose, data on manufacturing firms were collected through four case studies and one survey. In total, this dissertation is based on empirical data from 81 interviews with R&D members across 10 medium-sized and large manufacturing firms, as well as a survey of 146 small and medium-sized manufacturing firms. Respondents were based in Brazil or Sweden. The key theories and literatures covered in this dissertation include coordination modes, control mechanisms, organizational routines, the resource-based view, and appropriability mechanisms.This dissertation makes numerous theoretical contributions to the front-end literature. First, it extends the front-end literature by presenting the concepts of systematic idea generation and fuzziness assessment as a prerequisite for improving front-end performance. Second, this dissertation extends the front-end literature by listing the collaboration conditions that help firms cooperate with science-based partners. By collaborating with science-based partners, firms can access (unpublished) codified and tacit scientific knowledge, enabling them to rapidly build on the latest research findings. The findings suggest particular practices that can be applied to reduce cultural differences and diminish goal divergence among project members. Third, the findings in this dissertation enrich the front-end literature by describing a set of detailed practices to streamline the involvement of different types of partners using diverse protective practices. Fourth, it suggests a theoretical framework that describes how to manage the collaborative front end of innovation. The theoretical framework explains how manufacturing firms can use their organizational capabilities to develop new product ideas efficiently and safely. In particular, the framework discerns the capabilities that are necessary to explore mechanisms, practices, and routines in terms of divergent thinking, external expertise, and multiple opinions. Altogether, these contributions assist firms to better manage collaborative front end.
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| 7. |
- Leijonhufvud, Susanna, 1972-
(författare)
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Liquid Streaming : The Spotify Way To Music
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis accounts for the liquid affordances of musicking via streamed music from the perspective of the end-user. The study is particularly analysing the case of Spotify, which has gained an extraordinary prominent position within the Swedish market. The point of departure is that music streaming has emerged in a time where there seems to be an increased space and need for a musical presence in everyday human life. This circumstance is then related to the phenomenon that music has an exceptional position for human beings.Music may affect the human body, empower physical activity as well as regulate moods and feelings. Whatever the musical experience might be, it is affected by previous musical socialisation including formal as well as informal music learning situations. These experiences per se found the base of future musical awareness and advancement. Moreover, as musical involvement, to such a large extent currently are given via streaming, it is most crucial to understand what kind of affordances streaming brings to a lifelong learning and its more or less organized arenas, of music. To investigate music streaming from the user’s point of view, Norman’s concept of affordance has been applied to numerous public sources that in different ways houses the Spotify way to music. Here, the concept of affordance reveals the idea of the user as the user is inscribed in the design. The Spotify software program, materials from Spotify employees, newspaper articles, statistics and reports concerning music streaming have been analysed according to actor-network theory (ANT) situated in, what Bauman regards contemporary society as, an interregnum of liquid time. The thesis initially accounts for the constitution of music streaming as a feature, revealing an intrinsic network of a company with its core of employees, its agile management and playful culture, but also necessary networked actors such as Internet Service Providers, manufactures of digital devices, software algorithms and music formats to mention a few. Economic Maecenas and legislators also constitute the streaming service intertwined with the main players of users and music. This multifaceted picture shows that to comprehend a music streaming actor, its whole network needs to be accounted for as its constitutes the actor. Also, as condition changes, actor changes, why also music streaming, as a feature, changes. Consequently, any music educator at various levels within the society, e.g. public radio, artists, teachers, peers, the user herself, or even the Spotify company need to consider the liquid situation as it has become fundamental for musical experiences and learning through this kind of media. The affordances of musicking are further analysed on the level of the service’s interface, e.g. the visual display of the music service by addressing a multimodal analysis of the social semiotics used to network users to music. This cross-section also shows to be liquid as the service both continuously updates as well as being customised which means that one view is not alike the other. This protean state and the liquid affordances it brings with it needs to be related and responded to by music educators. Finally, the thesis covers the affordance of musicking on behalf of the one who streams. Based on the fact that music is available in a plethora, the central feature of streaming services is to aid and guide users to music. In this realm, intelligent algorithms have started to be employed as cicerone. Algorithmic cicerone based on usergenerated data blend humans and machines into a hybrid lifeform when musicking. User-generated data is currently being refined via an increased human embodiment by the Internet of Things starting to close up on the one who streams. Technological embodiment of the human is starting to increase to also embrace a sensuous embodiment of the musicking human. A detected human heartbeat can consequently co-constitute musical recommendation for the streamer, a recommendation that in turn can affect the heartbeat. This evolution calls for a turn toward a renewed coalition between music and human. Music streaming has the affordances to constitute an advent of something newborn - a musical cyborg.
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| 8. |
- Newell, David
(författare)
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Locating Wind Power Policy : The Mechanics of Policy Subsystem Interactions
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates the drivers behind political decision-making and the policy outcomes resulting from political decisions. It is proposed that in policy processes where political decisions are made at multiple levels or across multiple policy subsystems, policy outcomes can be understood in terms of the mechanisms (i.e. the processes or means) of interaction between multiple policy subsystems within which political decisions are made,resulting in more or less policy alignment between political decisions and policy outcomes. Policy network theory and policy subsystem theory are used separately as the basis forderiving two potential explanations for the mechanics of policy subsystem interactions. Because political decision-making authority in the wind power policy process in most Western democratic countries is spread across multiple policy subsystems, and because there has been significant variation between wind power policy outcomes between these countries, wind power policy processes in European Union countries are used as an empirical point-of-departure for exploring and illustrating the mechanics of policy subsystem interaction. A survey of the research on wind power development is used to illustrate and explore preliminary empirical indications of support for a framework derived from policy network theory. The case of political decisions made in Sweden over the past twenty years related to wind power development and production is used to illustrate and explore preliminary empirical indications of support for an explanation of policy subsystem interactions derived from the Advocacy Coalition Framework proposed here, as well as to explore the drivers of political decisions. This dissertation therefore contributes to understanding how policy subsystems interact. The dissertation contributes theoretically to the literature on policy processes generally, as well as to network/network management theory, and to the Advocacy Coalition Framework/policy subsystem theory. It also contributes to understanding two strategically chosen, embedded cases within the broader case study of political decision-making in the wind power policy process in Sweden.
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| 9. |
- Nilsson, Jens, Doktor, 1982-
(författare)
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What logics drive the choices of public decision-makers?
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores what logics drive the decisions of public decision-makers. More specifically, and drawing on new institutional theory, this topic is investigated from the perspective of how institutions, i.e. the formal and informal patterns of rules and practices, influence public decision-makers. New institutionalism has a variety of ideas on how this decision-making occurs and recent research in this tradition emphasizes the importance that context has for the empirical support of these ideas. At the same time, studies exploring, contrasting and converging new institutional ideas, and how these vary depending on context i.e. their conditionality, are lacking. In this thesis, I set out to address this knowledge gap and, moreover, to examine the role of personal values for the new institutional ideas on how institutions affect the public decision-makers. Personal values have not been emphasized in new institutional studies but successfully explained decision-making from other perspectives. By adding this dimension, I seek to explore whether individual factors, in this case the personal values the public decision-makers bring with them into the institutional context, affect the way they make decisions. Consequently, the aim of this thesis is to explore what decision-making logics that are at play among public-decision-makers and how this varies depending on context and personal values. This exploration is conducted by deriving and testing hypotheses on decision-making, from rational choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism, in two different contexts, parliaments and collaborative management, within the same national arena. Parliaments have a homogenous composition of actors, i.e. politicians, whereas collaborative management arenas are constituted by the inclusion of both public and private actors in decision-making, resulting in a more heterogeneous composition. Through a study of local parliaments and wildlife conservation committees (a form of collaborative management on the regional level) in Sweden, the aim of the thesis is fulfilled by survey and interview analyses of decision-making in regards to different policy issues. The results show that there are different decision-making logics at play in the parliamentary case compared with the collaborative management case. Further, personal values influence the decision-making logics among the public decision-makers. The implications of these results are, firstly, that the conditionality of new institutionalism, as suggested in earlier research, is empirically prevalent in the studied cases and, secondly, that personal values play a role for what decision-making logics that are at play. Further research is encouraged to delve deeper into the results, preferably through qualitative studies that could complement the primarily quantitative focus of this thesis, and through studies of other national contexts than Sweden.
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| 10. |
- Backman, Ylva
(författare)
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Students’ Reasoning about Learning and Well-being in School : On the epistemic privilege of Swedish early adolescent students
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The recent emphasis on performance in standardized testing of Swedish students is visible in reports from both national and international agencies. According to the reports, there has been a steep decline in the internationally measured performance of Swedish students in school since the 1990s. In fact, the performance of Swedish students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has declined more dramatically than any other OECD country in the last decade. This has influenced a national debate about factors promoting knowledge acquisition. Alongside the drop in performance, young Swedish people’s mental problems have increased since the 1990s. The impact of one’s well-being on performance has been widely acknowledged in previous research, and two explicit targets in both current andprevious Swedish national curriculum for the compulsory school are learning and well-being. Meanwhile, the importance of encouraging early adolescents’ (10–14 years) participation in improving their own standards is acknowledged in several recent reports from influential non-governmental organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF. However, advancing students’ development requires a keen understanding of their current situation, something impeded by the fact that data on early adolescents is relatively scarce. Furthermore, a large amount of previous research has been focused on risk factors related to illness in children, rather than factors promoting well-being. The aim of this thesis is to explore early adolescent students’ reasoning about learning and well-being in school. A qualitative design with open-ended writing tasksand interview questions was constructed in order to facilitate the incorporation of students’ reasoning about learning and well-being into the research, in accordance with the study’s salutogenic point of departure and the specific standpoint epistemology that I propose and use in the thesis.The empirical data includes (1) written reflections by 200 students in grades 5–9 from 11 classes in four different schools (rural and urban), which were part of the Swedish compulsory school system and which were located in two municipalities in the northern part of Sweden, and (2) interviews with 24 students, from 12 to 15 years old, from two municipally run schools, which were also part of the compulsory school program in northern Sweden. Four sub-studies were conducted and presented in four journal articles. The data in sub-studies I, II, and IV consisted of the written reflections described above, while the data in sub-study III consisted of the interviews described above. The first sub-study concerned early adolescent students’ previous positive experiences and indicated that the students found aspects both within and beyond the classroom relevant for having a good time in school. In more detail, the students’ positive experiences concerned (i) interaction with teachers, (ii) freedom of choice regarding work and workmates, (iii) the atmosphere for discussions, (iv) school subjects and success, (v) learning processes in outings, (vi) friends, and (vii) primary (basic) needs. The results show a perceived complex relation between learning and well-being in school, which may well be studied further in future research. The second sub-study investigated students’ preferred states of affairs. The students emphasized a variety of views of what kind of structures, content, actions and attitudesmay have a positive impact on the learning environment in school. The variousreflections provided by the students were understood as falling under four themes: (i) influencing educational settings; (ii) striving for reciprocity; (iii) managing time struggles; and (iv) satisfying well-being needs. Besides providing perceived opportunities for change in school concurring with previous research, the results also point towards great variety and certain inconsistencies in the students’ perceptions about factors promoting learning.In the third sub-study, the interview data was analyzed using a distinction between decision methods and criteria of rightness, which has rarely been used in empirical research. Six forms of variety in the students’ moral reasoning were found, denoted as follows: (i) interpersonal variety in decision method dimension, (ii) intrapersonal variety in decision method dimension, (iii) interpersonal variety in criterion of rightness dimension, (iv) intrapersonal variety in criterion of rightness dimension, (v) interpersonal variety between the two dimensions, and (vi) intrapersonal variety between the two dimensions. The use of the distinction between decision methods and criteria of rightness enabled a nuanced understanding of varieties in students’moral reasoning, and may be useful in large-scale studies, for example, to explore the rate of occurrence of each respective form of variety. Future research could also examine the potential context dependence of the different forms of varieties. In the fourth sub-study, five perceived bidirectional crossovers of subjective wellbeing (i.e., perceived two-way transmissions between happiness and other aspects within the school domain) were noted in the students’ written reflections. These were: (i) happiness and learning, (ii) happiness and school engagement, (iii) happiness and appreciation of subjects or lesson content, (iv) happiness and others’ happiness, and (v) happiness and prosocial behavior. Besides providing novel hypotheses aboutbidirectional crossovers of subjective well-being, this sub-study supplied a systematic framework for interpreting qualitative outputs and provided conceptual as well as analytical direction for future research about happiness in education. I provide a definition of the formal expression “bidirectional crossovers” of subjective well-being, which may provide analytic categories for future research, while the more informal expression “circles of happiness” could be used in education, allowing teachers and students to conceptualize everyday events in the classroom. In the final parts of this thesis, students’ reasoning about the conditions for and effects of learning and well-being in school in all the four sub-studies are compared with previous empirical research through the use of established and novel definitions and theory. The comparison shows considerable correspondence between the students’ reasoning and previous research, providing evidence to the effect thatSwedish early adolescent students’ reasoning is trustworthy regarding the conditions for and effects of learning and well-being in school. There are also novel researchgenerating hypotheses formulated directly based on the students’ reasoning. The trustworthiness and novelty of the students’ reasoning about the conditions and effects of learning and well-being in school provides evidence for an epistemic privilege for the students participating in this study. This constitutes a starting point for futureresearch in which the claims about epistemic privilege in the standpoint epistemology proposed here can be further tested for Swedish early adolescent students in general.KEYWORDS: education, epistemic privilege, happiness, learning, moral reasoning, standpoint epistemology, well-being
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