| 11. |
- Hjalmarsson, Marie, 1961-
(author)
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Lojalitet och motstånd : anställdas agerande i ett föränderligt hemtjänstarbete
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis aims to shed light on the dynamics and the complexity in the relationship between power and resistance in labour, from an employee-perspective. This is done by describing and analyzing how a group of employees in municipal home help services interpret and make use of their possibilities to act in relation to a process of change, initiated by the management, involving new technology. Hand-held computers were implemented by the management and the home helps were supposed to use them to register their daily work performance. A theoretical framework based on power and resistance in accordance with Michel Foucault and Jon McKenzie, together with Ackroyd & Thompson’s concept of self-organization, is used. The study has an ethnographic approach. The empirical material is based on a combination of participant observation, interviews and document analysis. Two major periods of observations were conducted. The first period focused on understanding the work performance and its routines. During the second period, the use of (or rather attempts to use) the hand-held computers was in focus. The interviews with 11 home helps focused on the meaning and content of their work with regards to work performance, skills and knowledge, possibilities and limitations and their opinions of the ICT project. Five management representatives, a local councillor, a software consultant and a union representative were also interviewed in order to grasp a management perspective. The results show a pattern in the actions of the home helps. It is a rational way of acting where adaptability, responsibility and reliability permeate thoughts and actions. It functions as a premise for how the home helps interpret their possibilities to act at work. They address their loyalty in several directions: to the care recipients, but also to their colleagues, to the management and to the organization as such. This rationality of loyalty is reproduced by the home helps but also by the management. The home helps are to a certain extent aware of the loyalties in their actions and every so often they use them in a conscious way. They reflect on how strong the loyalty should be and towards whom or what it should be directed. The actions of the home helps at work in general and in relation to the ICT project in particular is characterised by loyalty and consent rather than by formal resistance. The home helps don’t show any formal resistance but they do self-organization. They strive towards a relative autonomy and to maintain their dignity. This way of acting is however related to the rationality of loyalty that has a regulating influence on their informal resistance. Despite the limited and informal character of the self-organization of the home helps, it can be considered subversive. It has a possibility of undermining the exercise of power and it creates an alternative professional identity to the one offered by the management
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| 12. |
- Hjalmarsson, Maria
(author)
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Lärarprofessionens genusordning : En studie av lärares uppfattningar om arbetsuppgifter, kompetens och förväntningar
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis presents a study of the gender order of the teaching profession. It focuses on how teachers perceive meanings of the gender order in their work. It also focuses how the gender order is expressed in the interviewees’ understandings and interpretations of their assignment and work.The theoretical concept gender contract (Hirdmans, 1988, 2007) is used to interpret and analyse how teachers apprehend their work tasks and how these are carried out. Lindgrens (1985, 1999) studies of majority- and minority positions at a work place are relevant as that the amount of women and men in schools’ lower grades differ. The theoretical concept gender regime (Connell, 1996) is used to study how the overall gender order is expressed in different schools. Connell (1999) describe a hierarchy of masculinities which is used as a tool to understand how the male teachers reason about expectations from others.The thesis is primarily based on an interview study among fourteen teachers in grade three to five in an urban municipality. Some data from a questionnaire, answered by approximately 600 teachers who work with children 10-12 years old, are also included.Results show that social dimensions are intervened with pedagogic-didactic aspects, but at the same time talked about as disturbing teachers’ main assignment. Social dimensions are described as taking a lot of teachers’ time and energy, but also as “that all round”. Especially the male teachers discuss aspects as caring and relationships to pupils and describe these aspects as a source to challenge in work. From a gender perspective, it is interesting to note that it is mostly female coded aspects, i.e. relationships that are described as “that all around”. Contact with parents is highly emphasized and influenced by aspects of ethnicity. Several teachers state that norms in the pupils’ home environment and norms in school differ. Because of this, contact with parents includes dilemmas.Partly because of that, it can be hard to delimit the teacher role from the private role.Even if tasks related to social dimensions in work are described as “that all around”, the importance of the teachers’ social competence is emphasized. The teachers maintain that competence in work does not have anything to do with the gender of the teacher. Especially younger teachers tend to emphasize abilities and competences of the individual. At the same time, it seems that women and men partly handle different kinds of tasks and that certain tasks get gender coded, which corresponds to the regulations of the gender contract through which the gender order is established.Several male teachers state that they have worked as teachers for smaller groups of pupils with special needs, without having the relevant educational background. These men also told that they were recruited to handle instable groups of pupils. Thereby, they are expected to behave like “real men”, i.e. perform a hegemonic masculinity, and if they don’t they run a risk to be seen as unmanly. Feelings of shame are discussed only by male teachers. This shows that not only women but also men “suffer” of the gender order.The male teachers dwell upon strong expectations from parents to “uphold peace and quiet” in a way that female teachers don’t. However, when focusing the corresponding theme in the questionnaire, the picture changes. 91% (n=366) of the female teachers and 86% (n=235) of the male teachers feel to a high degree expectations from parents to “uphold peace and quiet”.
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| 13. |
- Holfve-Sabel, Mary-Anne
(author)
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Attitudes towards Swedish comprehensive school : comparisons over time and between classrooms in grade 6
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main aim of the study is to understand student attitudes towards different aspects of school using data from the late 1960s and 35 years later, and to analyze the impact both from teachers and students on classroom climate. Another important aim in order to accomplish this is to develop suitable instruments and methods. The starting point of the empirical work was a 40-item attitude questionnaire that was used in the Didactical Process Analysis (DPA) project conducted in Göteborg in the late... mer 1960s, which comprised 60 classrooms and 1600 grade 6 students. This attitude questionnaire was reanalyzed using two-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the reanalysis resulting in seven factors describing differences in student attitudes within classrooms, three factors describing attitude differences between classrooms. The original 40-item questionnaire was expanded with 31 new items concerning school environment, teaching and interaction between the students, and between the teacher and the students. This instrument was administered to 78 classes, with the participation of 1696 students and 78 teachers in Göteborg. The first objective was to compare the attitudes of students now with the DPA investigation 35 years ago using identical items. The analysis focused both on item-level data and on factor scores computed from the two-level CFA model. The results showed a general improvement in attitudes. A differentiated picture was seen on the within-class level with significant changes in peer relational factors but not in school factors. The present curriculum with its focus on interaction aspects of learning may have implemented changes in relational patterns and created a more positive student attitude. On between-class level all three factors had increased their levels of attitudes, but the variation among classes was wide. The second objective was to analyze differences between the points of view of students and their teachers, and to analyze which factors explained classroom differences in attitudes. Differences in teacher-student perspectives were seen on item level. The students’ attitudes emphasized the importance of positive interaction with both teacher and peers. Teachers noted the level of work ambitions, stress and disturbance among students. The factors of most importance for classroom differences in attitudes concerning work atmosphere and social relations were a sensible management of deviancy, and creation of a safe and orderly environment.
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| 14. |
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| 15. |
- Johansson, Monica
(author)
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Anpassning och motstånd : En etnografisk studie av gymnasieelevers institutionella identitetsskapande
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Nearly all pupils in Sweden continue their studies at upper secondary school. A central point of departure in this thesis is therefore to examine how the upper secondary school deals with its now both complex and difficult to interpret task of ”one school for all” and to describe and analyse the creation of identity for pupils within this institution. How the creation of identity occurs in different programmes during the pupils’ period of education is specifically studied with a theoretical starting point in Anthony Gidden’s structuration theory complemented with theories that concern pupil adaption and resistance. The study was conducted at a municipal upper secondary school and used critical ethnographic research and document analysis. The programmes that were included in the study are the individual programme, the health care programme and the technical programme. Five pupil groups were followed for three school years. The results show that the differentiation of pupils within the education system is strengthened in the everyday activities of the upper secondary school. At a general school level, an explicit pupil identity is sought after, but in the different programmes different possibilities for the pupils to achieve this are discerned. The pupils are faced with different demands and expectations depending on which upper secondary school programme they are studying at. This applies to both their performances and the social relations of the positioning processes involved in being a pupil. The creation of pupils' identities is formed and developed in different ways and can also be related to the prevalence of special support, as well as to gender, social background and ethnicity. During their education most pupils strive towards adapting to the pupil identity that the school, at a general level, seeks. But they do so with varying degrees of resistance. In the thesis, the results are discussed in relation to the increased marketisation of the education system where individual performance, control and the evaluation of pupils are becoming more and more central. There is a need to critically examine these questions since they have such significant consequences for the future of young people.
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| 16. |
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| 17. |
- Mattsson, Anita
(author)
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Flexibel utbildning i praktiken : En fallstudie av pedagogiska processer i en distansutbildning med en öppen design för samarbetslärande
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this study is to examine the pedagogical processes that evolve in an "open" design for online learning realized in relation to a specific setting. The study describes and analyzes pedagogical activities in a distance education course in higher education that uses an asynchronous conference system for communication and interaction. The study's theoretical framework is based on the CSCL field, and a socio-cultural perspective, where the aim of the research is to create artefacts and environments that support meaning making in practice. The study was conducted in an authentic environment and can be described as an ethnographic exploratory case study. The analysis focuses on how the practice is established and constituted over time. The unit of analysis is ongoing interaction between nine groups of students and their teacher. Some overall patterns has been analysed and three models of division of labour emerged in the study. The produced assignments mirror the negotiations the groups’ members have in understanding how and when they will be working with the assignments. The course had a weak educational framing and the participants were responsible for their own learning. The teacher's instructions were intentionally broad and vague, an open design, which allowed the students to use their creativity in the work. Even if the teacher was responsible for monitoring the students' discussions, she did not participate because she thought it was too difficult to understand when her active participation supported the students and when it did not. The relations between and within the structuring resources were used in learning communities and the students acted in relation to them. To understand how to divide and allocate tasks, and how to solve problems, is not only done in relationships and people's thinking, but also implicit in learning communities. This means that teachers have to design courses in new ways. The requirements for participation, interaction, and communication, must be determined. The way in which an assignment is formulated structured the students' way to solve the assignments.
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| 18. |
- Nilsson, Lars-Erik
(author)
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"But Can't You See They are Lying?" Student Moral Positions and Ethical Practices in the Wake of Technological Change
- 2008
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Today it is considered important that modern digital technology be implemented and that all citizens learn to use it. Students already use mobile phones, personal digital assistants, computers, and their applications to do much of their work. This includes searching for and retrieving information, and collaborating on assignments and writing. Recently, claims have been made in both the media and academic research that student technology use is an important factor underlying an increase in student attempts to deceive on exams and other graded work. For example, it is assumed that students sometimes use the Internet to download other people’s essays, then handing them in as their own, and to make patchwork compositions of other people’s texts using the copy and paste functions. Such claims, however, risk not considering other changes that have occurred, for example, changing forms of exams/assessed assignments. Accordingly, one aim of this thesis has been to go beyond the categorization of students as cheaters and their use of digital technology as the use of unauthorized aids when discussing student use of technology in exams/graded assignments, and consider what rights and duties and what other subject positions are being made available for them. Four studies have been conducted, the first into the work of high-school students on research reports and the other three into interaction in disciplinary inquiries. These studies illustrate how exams/graded assignments and assessment in general introduce dilemmas for students and how it is important to consider how these dilemmas are solved in practice before making assumptions about technology use as cheating. As a contribution to the debate about students’ moral values and their use of technology, this work has demonstrated the importance of distinguishing between actions and the meaning ascribed to them as acts. A general observation is that student use of technology is generally met with suspicion. Cheating functions as a device for making good texts appear as possible downloads, texts with uneven quality as possible patchwork, inadvertent textual overlaps (i.e., unintentional near reproduction of the wording of a source) as intentional plagiarism, and student references to technical problems as probable rationalizations. From a methodological perspective, the utility of investigating cheating as an interactional accomplishment is demonstrated. This approach has made it possible to investigate how students reason about using existing texts and asking others for help. As well, the application of a dynamic perspective on subjectivity has made a theoretical contribution. Through this perspective, it is possible to criticize the normalization of students as cheaters based on how they use technology. That their actions could as easily make other positions available to them is shown.
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Ahlberg, Kristina, 1954
(author)
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Synvändor : universitetsstudenters berättelser om kvalitativa förändringar av sätt att erfara situationers mening under utbildningspraktik
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main purpose of this study has been to examine the questions: Do people experience view-turns? Can they describe them? What do the processes signify? A narrative method, with an open and dual-focussed interview question to students of medicine, nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy in their final term, was used to obtain accounts of university students? experiences of changing ways of experiencing during educational placement. The accounts revealed that all interviewed students except one had found it meaningful and possible to describe experienced processes of changing ways of experiencing. The accounts were analysed phenomenographically and two qualitatively different main categories were discerned, which were drawn directly from the students? descriptions: Addition of Something New, with subcategories Information and Result, and Restructuring of Awareness, with subcategories Figure/Ground, Difference/Similarity, Perspective and Whole/Part. Categorisation of the accounts was verified in a three-stage interjudge reliability test with three independent assessors. Significant difference between placing in the two main categories was found between accounts by students of medicine and those by students of nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. Medical students? accounts were categorised predominantly as addition of something new, whilst accounts from nursing, occupational therapy and physiotherapy students were categorised almost exclusively as restructuring of awareness. This difference was elucidated by theoretical and historical connection to the Natural Attitude and the Philosophical Attitude described within early phenomenology. The described view-turns were theoretically elucidated with phenomenology, pragmatic meaning formation theory and gestalt theory. The theories, which each give a partial understanding of view-turns, all fail however to explain fully the findings of this study. Contradictions amongst the single-dimensional theoretical understandings offered are suggested to be reconciled through the variation theory of learning, by the premise of co-constitution of experiencing and the experienced. An element of contradiction is seen to be integral to dynamic processes of learning. The research question?s simultaneous focussing on two ways of experiencing something appears to have been decisive in revealing dynamic processes of changing ways of experiencing as well as way of experiencing.
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