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- Isaksson, Joakim, 1976-
(författare)
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Spänningen mellan normalitet och avvikelse : om skolans insatser för elever i behov av särskilt stöd
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Sweden, an increasing number of pupils are defined as having some form of difficulties in school. In order to receive special support measures in school, these difficulties must have been subject to a pedagogical examination that state that the pupil is in need of special support measures. This work of identifying and defining difficulties implies that questions about normality and deviance inevitably come into play in school. There has been an increasing demand in school politics to identify these difficulties as early as possible, and this demand has placed further pressure on school personnel in this issue. Furthermore, the personnel’s perspective on the difficulties is also important, i.e., in terms of their origin, because this has importance for the design and content of the special support measures. The overall aim of this thesis is to analyse the tension between normality and deviance that is manifested in the school’s work procedures for pupils with special educational needs. Related to the overall aim, four overarching research questions are addressed. How have pupils with special educational needs and special education been articulated in national policy documents during recent decades? What perspective on school difficulties are being portrayed in schools’ individual educational plans for pupils with special educational needs? How do school personnel identify and differentiate pupils with special educational needs from “normal” pupils? How do pupils with special educational needs and their parents experience the special support measures that they receive in school and what seems to be the main concern of such support measures? The thesis consists of four studies that are based on different empirical materials such as policy documents, individual educational plans (IEPs) and qualitative interviews with school personnel, pupils and parents. The methods that are used for analysing the material are policy analysis, content analysis and grounded theory. The results show that the target group for special support measures has been ascribed with different meanings (over time) in policy documents, something that has affected the recommendations of the support measures and the choice of actors who are assigned to provide such support. Furthermore, the IEPs, as well as the interviews, reveal that an individual perspective on school difficulties seems to be deeply rooted in school. The identification process of special educational needs followed three models: a pedagogical model, a social model, and a medical/health model. However, the process of sorting out and defining these pupils invoked ambivalent feelings in the school personnel and the school class usually became the frame of reference for normal or deviant behaviour. Finally, the pupils’ and parent’ main concern of special support measures in school were described as a struggle for recognition and inclusion. The results are discussed with theoretical perspectives on school difficulties and special education. In the concluding discussion, it is argued that pupils with special educational needs have to balance between normality and deviance in school, but also between a pedagogical and a medical discourse by means of having a medical diagnosis in school.
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| 2. |
- Svanevie, Kajsa, 1976-
(författare)
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Evidensbaserat socialt arbete : Från idé till praktik
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- As an innovation Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) is designed as a tool for clinical problem solving. According to its theory of use EBP will bring a difference for policy makers, for professionals, for researchers and for service users. One question to be asked is whether EBP actually leads to the radical social change it is designed to accomplish. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the outcome of the effort to establish EBP, with a focus on the case of social work in Sweden. The research questions are: What is EBP? Why are efforts made to establish EBP? What is the outcome of the EBP project? How can the outcome of the EBP project be explained?The case study was conducted on a critical realistic meta-theoretical ground with a focus on explanation of social change with an explicit actor-structure perspective. Methodologically, a narrative synthesis of studies was made. As a complement primary data were collected to fill empirical gaps. The state of things was described before and after the EBP-initiatives. Several helping theories – Kuhn’s theory of paradigm, program theory, neo-institutional theory and theory of diffusion – were used to analyse the empirically mapped outcome of the EBP project.The results show that the import of the original model of Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) to social work is a part of a wider social movement in the helping and educational professions. The new model has influenced social work as a discipline, as a field of practice and as a field of policy. There are examples of full-scale implementations of EBP, although EBP has not reached a general status as daily practice. Some obstacles remain.The gradual adaption of EBP corresponds to criteria hold by Kuhn for a paradigm shift. Acceptance of the model has contributed to change the structure and function of social systems. At an organizational level, this change means on-going institutionalization. The innovation is influencing the way institutional actors conduct their work. Although the structural conditions have been optimal, the EBP-model has been debated with heat. The EBP-debate and policy-driven infrastructural efforts have brought a more in-depth examination of the model. So-called coercive, normative, and regulative isomorphisms were used to change organizations. The degree of institutionalization depended on the individuals and the organizations willingness and preparedness to change, to understand, and to put the model into practice. When actors used a less strict version of the original EBP model, the pace of cultural and institutional change slowed down.
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| 3. |
- Evertsson, Lars, 1964-
(författare)
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Välfärdspolitik och kvinnoyrken : organisation, välfärdsstat och professionaliseringens villkor
- 2002
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The relationship between the Swedish state’s welfare political commitments and the emergence and development of three female-dominated welfare state occupational groups - nurses, home relief helpers and occupational therapists - is at the heart of this thesis. The primary aim is to study the professional possibilities and limitations created by the state’s welfare political commitments in health care, family policy and rehabilitation. The thesis emphasises the importance of regarding the state as a historically conditioned actor and as an organisation of organisations. The state is not a unified and static actor and this makes it difficult to speak of the state’s relationship to different welfare occupations in general terms. Nurses, home relief helpers and occupational therapists have encountered the state in different historical contexts and established ties to different parts of the state. Abbott’s (1988) term jurisdiction is used to characterise the area within welfare politics that nurses, home relief helpers and occupational therapists have made claims on or been allotted. The struggle for jurisdiction takes place on three, analytically separate but in reality interconnected arenas. These arenas are the workplace, the media arena and the legal arena. The thesis limits itself to the legal arena, that is, the state’s administrative, planning and legislative structures. At the centre of the analysis of the legal arena are the Swedish Government Commission and the welfare political reform work that to a large degree has been formed by these institutions’ function and work. An important conclusion from these three case studies is that the state’s welfare political commitments have been central for the emergence of nurses, home relief helpers and occupational therapists and their development into welfare state occupational groups. The state’s welfare political ambitions have contributed considerably to the transformation of nurse, home relief helpers and occupational therapists into modern occupational groups. Dependency on the state has not always been easy to handle however. The state’s welfare political interests have often contradicted the wishes of the professions regarding the content, length and organisation of training programmes, as well as regarding continuing education and licensing. The state has been unwilling to provide more training than deemed necessary from a welfare political perspective. An important conclusion from this study is that it is difficult for welfare state occupational groups to steer their professional project in a direction that falls outside of the state’s welfare political commitments.
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| 4. |
- Jacobsson, Maritha, 1960-
(författare)
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Terapeutens rätt : rättslig och terapeutisk logik i domstolsförhandlingar
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this dissertation, I explore a quite unique legal situation, namely administrative court hearings relating to coercive interventions: the Care of Young Persons Act (LVU), Care of Abusers (Special Provisions) Act (LVM), and the Compulsory Psychiatric Care Act (LPT). There are three central participatory roles in the court hearings: The official party is the authority who files the application for coercive intervention – either a chief psychiatrist or a social welfare board (typically represented by a social worker or sometimes a lawyer assisted by a social worker), whereas the citizen party is the person about whom the application is brought. The citizen party is represented by a legal representative. The professionals represent two different logics: therapeutic and judicial.The purpose of this dissertation has been to study the tension between therapeutic and judicial logic in court hearings relating to compulsory care. With theoretical concepts from Scott (1995) and Wetherell & Potter (1998), it is possible to say that the therapeutic and judicial logics are built up by institutional elements that are communicated through interpretative repertoires. Three questions are central:1. How do professional participators handle the different role expectations embedded in therapeutic and judicial logic? In this case, I am particularly interested in role conflicts faced by social workers and psychiatrists.2. How do different institutional elements (regulative, normative/cognitive) play out in the court hearings?3. To what extent can these court hearings be considered a scrutinizing order of discourse, where the arguments of official party are subjected to critical examination?In my analysis I am inspired by both critical discourse analysis and organizational theory, more precisely, new institutionalism. These two perspectives provide useful insights and make it possible to combine the micro- and macro levels in the analysis. Data for the analysis consist of 43 court hearings and 31 interviews, gathered from two different county administrative courts in Sweden. All written documents used and produced by the courts are also part of our data.The dissertation consists of five studies that indicate that the court hearings hardly can be described as a scrutinising order of discourse. In spite of this, the court constantly finds that the legal criteria for coercive intervention are satisfied. Neither the official party nor the legal representative argue according to a judicial logic. Instead, therapeutic logic dominates the order of discourse. When the arguments for compulsory care are therapeutic, they are not explicitly related to the criteria in the law. In my interpretation, the reason why the conflict between therapeutic and judicial logic is not realised can be found in the existence of a logic of normalisation. This ideological logic of normalisation can be found in most of the institutions in the Swedish society and are built on the idea of traditional welfare norms.
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| 5. |
- Rosenberg, David, 1957-
(författare)
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Psychiatric disability in the community : Surveying the social landscape in the post-deinstitutional era
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation presents a discussion of life in the community for people experiencing psychiatric disabilities in the post-deinstitutional era, with the goal of developing knowledge that can suggest a focus for planning more relevant services and supports. While evaluations of deinsitutionalization have focused on possibilities for providing community, rather than hospital-based services for these individuals, the intention was to support a participatory life in the community, a life defined by much more than just care and treatment. The Mental Health Care Reform of 1995 in Sweden paved the way for this more community-based view of needs related to psychiatric disabilities, as local social services became responsible for supports to a participatory life, “like all others”. The general aim of this dissertation was to explore and analyze the results of a series of surveys of psychiatric disability, in order to develop knowledge of the social context of the lives which individuals experiencing these disabilities live in the community. More specifically, the aim was to;• describe contacts/interactions between these individuals and the societal organisations with which they seek services or support.• describe characteristics and needs of the individuals identified in these studies as expressed by representatives of the helping system and users who participated in the studies.• develop knowledge of the mechanisms involved in these patterns of seeking support by exploring and analyzing the empirical results within the context of theoretical (social) approaches to understanding psychiatric disability.The findings of this research are based on an analysis of the quantitative and qualitative results of three studies involving seven municipalities in northern Sweden. Of the 2385 individuals who personnel identified as meeting the criteria for a serious psychiatric disability, approximately half did not have active contact with the formal mental health system. They did however seek services, supports and opportunities that they saw as relevant to their lives and needs as community members. These included health, housing and financial assistance as well as opportunities for education and employment. Various mechanisms operating in the community, including stigmatizing attitudes, exclusionary practices and organizational systems and rules, were seen by respondents as obstacles to these individuals developing meaningful and participatory roles.Social approaches, when utilized to explore and understand issues regarding psychiatric disability in the community, support a focus on the social landscape in which ndividuals experience disability-related needs, as well as the dynamics of the disability experience. While in the deinstitutional era, needs were assessed relative to the individual’s relationship to the psychiatric care system, in the post-deinstitutional era, they should be assessed from a participation-relative perspective, where their position as community member, rather than as patient or client, describes the social location of need. Specialized support to general community resources and services in addition to psychiatrically defined supports, would likely reach many, especially younger individuals who might otherwise become seriously disabled.
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| 6. |
- Höckertin, Chatrine, 1964-
(författare)
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Organisational characteristics and psychosocial working conditions in different forms of ownership
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this thesis has been to compare psychosocial working conditions in workplaces with different forms of ownership, i.e. public, private and cooperative. A second aim has been to study how organisational characteristics of relevance for psychosocial working conditions (in terms of management control strategies and prerequisites for management) are manifested in these ownership forms. The empirical data is based on structured interviews with managers at 60 workplaces within the service sector and on a questionnaire to all employees working in the participating workplaces, resulting in a set of 1384 individuals. An additional seven interviews with first-line managers within geriatric care were also conducted for the last study. The results show that employees in cooperatives perceived that they had better opportunities to influence decisions concerning the workplace as a whole, although there were also results showing advantages for public and private employees. Regarding opportunities for employees to influence their own work situation, there were no differences between the ownership forms. Differences were found in the prerequisites for first-line geriatric care managers. As a result of an earlier organisational change, the public managers were now further away from the strategic level and had to focus on daily, operative work tasks, while simultaneously also being responsible for keeping within the budget. The private managers, on the other hand, having group leaders to deal with the daily work concerning personnel and operations, could focus more on strategic work related to financial results in terms of planning and follow-up of the budget. One conclusion is that there are certain differences in both psychosocial working conditions and organisational characteristics between the ownership forms, but when the comparisons were restricted to only one type of service, in this case the provision of care, it is rather the similarities within the care organisations, regardless of ownership form, that are most pronounced.
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