| 1. |
- Andersson, Pernilla, 1969-
(författare)
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The Responsible Business Person : Studies of business education for sustainability
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Calls for the inclusion of sustainable development in the business curriculum have increased significantly in the wake of the financial crisis and increased concerns around climate change. This has led to the appearance of new initiatives and the development of new teaching approaches. This thesis explores business education at the upper secondary school level in Sweden following the inclusion of the concept of sustainable development in the curriculum. Drawing on poststructuralist discourse theory, the overarching purpose is to identify the roles of a responsible business person that are articulated in business education and to discuss how these roles could enable students to address sustainability issues. The thesis consists of four studies, based on textbook analyses, teacher interviews and classroom observations. Three categories of roles have been identified, implying that a business person is expected to either adapt to, add or create ethical values. These three categories are compared with the roles indicated in the environmental discourses constructed by Dryzek and the responsibility regimes developed by Pellizzoni. Drawing on Dryzek’s and Pellizzoni’s reasoning about which qualities are important for addressing sustainability issues, it is concluded that the roles identified in the studies could mean that students are unequipped (the adapting role), ill-equipped (the adding role) or better equipped (the creating role) to address uncertain and complex sustainability issues. The articles include empirical examples that illustrate how and in which situations specific roles are articulated, privileged or taken up. The examples also indicate how the scope for business students’ subjectivities are facilitated or hampered. It is suggested that the illustrative empirical examples could be used for critical reflection in order to enhance students’capabilities of addressing uncertain and complex sustainability issues and to improve educational quality in terms of scope for subjectivity.
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| 2. |
- Petros, Fikre Bogale, 1985-
(författare)
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Edge Precoloring Extension of Trees
- 2022
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Given a set of k colors and a graph G with a subset S of precolored edges (a partial k-edge coloring of G), we consider the problem of determining whether G has a proper edge coloring of G with the same k colors (an extension of the partial coloring) where the colors of edges in S are not changed. If such a coloring exists, then the partial k-coloring is called extendable.Some scheduling problems as well as some combinatorial problems can be reformulated as partial edge coloring extension problems for corresponding graphs. Partial edge coloring extension problems seem to have been first considered in connection with the problem of completing partial Latin squares. In 1960 Evans stated his conjecture that any partial Latin square of size n with at most n – 1 non-empty cells can be completed to a Latin square of size n. In terms of edge colorings this is equivalent to the statement that any proper partial n-edge coloring of the balanced complete bipartite graph Kn,n with at most n – 1 precolored edges is extendable. This classical conjecture was proved by Smetaniuk (1981), and also independently by Andersen and Hilton (1983). Moreover, Andersen and Hilton completely characterized which partial Latin squares of size n with n non-empty cells that cannot be completed to a Latin square of size n. In addition, Andersen (1985) characterized partial Latin squares of size n with n+1 non-empty cells that are completable to Latin squares of size n.More recently, the problem of extending a partial edge coloring where the precolored edges form a matching has been considered by Edwards et al. (2018). Casselgren, Markstrom and Pham (2020) studied questions on extending partial edge colorings of the n-dimensional hypercubes Qn. In particular, they obtained an analogue of the positive solution to Evans' conjecture on completing partial Latin squares by proving that every proper partial edge coloring of at most n – 1 edges of Qn can be extended to a proper n-edge coloring of Qn. They also characterized which partial edge colorings of Qn with precisely n precolored edges are extendable to proper n-edge colorings of Qn.In this thesis we study similar partial edge coloring extension problems for trees. Let T be a tree with maximum degree Δ(T). First, we characterize which partial edge colorings with at most Δ(T) precolored edges in T that are extendable to proper Δ(T)-edge colorings, thereby proving an analogue of the aforementioned result by Andersen and Hilton for Latin squares. Then, we prove an analogue for trees of the result of Andersen by characterizing exactly which precolorings of at most Δ(T) + 1 precolored edges in a tree T that are extendable to Δ(T)-edge colorings of T. We also prove sharp conditions on when it is possible to extend a precolored matching or a collection of connected precolored subgraphs of a tree T to a Δ(T)-edge coloring of T. Finally, we consider the problem of avoiding a given (not necessarily proper) partial edge coloring.
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| 3. |
- Fagerström, Jonathan, 1984-
(författare)
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Fine particle emissions and slag formation in fixed-bed biomass combustion : aspects of fuel engineering
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- There is a consensus worldwide that the share of renewable energy sources should be increased to mitigate climate change. The strive to increase the renewable energy fraction can partly be met by an increased utilization of different biomass feedstocks. Many of the "new" feedstocks puts stress on certain challenges such as air pollution emissions and operation stability of the combustion process. The overall objective was to investigate, evaluate, and explain the effects of fuel design and combustion control - fuel engineering - as primary measures for control of slag formation, deposit formation, and fine particle emissions during biomass combustion in small and medium scale fixed-bed appliances. The work in this thesis can be outlined as having two main focus areas, one more applied regarding fuel engineering measures and one more fundamental regarding the time-resolved release of ash forming elements, with particular focus on potassium.The overall conclusion related to the abatement of particle emissions and slag formation, is that the release of fine particle and deposit forming matter can be controlled simultaneously as the slag formation during fixed-bed biomass combustion. The methodology is in this perspective denoted “fuel engineering” and is based on a combined approach including both fuel design and process control measures. The studies on time-resolved potassium release showed that a Macro-TG reactor with single pellet experiments was a valuable tool for studying ash transformation along the fuel conversion. The combination of dedicated release determinations based on accurate mass balance considerations and ICP analysis, with phase composition characterization by XRD, is important for the understanding of potassium release in general and time-resolved data in particular. For wood, the results presented in this work supports the potassium release mechanism from "char-K" but questions the previously suggested release mechanism from decomposition of K-carbonates. For straw, the present data support the idea that the major part of the potassium release is attributed to volatilization of KCl. To further explore the detailed mechanisms, the novel approach developed and applied in this work should be complemented with other experimental and analytical techniques.The research in this thesis has explored some of the challenges related to the combined phenomena of fuel conversion and ash transformation during thermochemical conversion of biomass, and has contributed with novel methods and approaches that have gained new knowledge to be used for the development of more effective bioenergy systems.
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| 4. |
- Hansson, Petra, 1971-
(författare)
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Text, Place and Mobility : Investigations of Outdoor Education, Ecocriticism and Environmental Meaning Making
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall ambition of this thesis is to investigate the approaches taken to environmental and sustainability education in outdoor education and ecocriticism in a Swedish and in an international context, to investigate environmental meaning making and to conduce to the development of analytical methods for empirical investigations of environmental meaning making. Four objectives are formulated. The first objective of the thesis is to analyse constitutive discursive rules and traits regarding environmental and sustainability education and environmental meaning making in outdoor education in a Swedish context and in ecocriticism. This is achieved through discourse analyses of central textbooks in outdoor education and of research and textbooks in ecocriticism.The second objective is to investigate how different situated circumstances such as, text, place, mobility, social situations and previous experiences interplay in environmental meaning making. This is achieved through analyses of classroom communication, through analysis of nature writing and through an analysis of painted landscapes.The third objective is to compare and critically discuss the constitutive discursive rules and traits within the two investigated educational practices – out door education and ecocriticism – in the light of the results from the investigations of environmental meaning making carried out.The fourth objective is to develop analytical methods based on John Dewey and Louise Rosenblatt’s theories of transaction and meaning making for conducting empirical investigations of environmental meaning making in which different interplaying situational circumstances are taken into account.The results of the thesis show that taking a transactional starting point to investigate environmental meaning making adds further understanding of the situational circumstances influencing environmental meaning making in specific situations which sheds new light to the identified approaches to environmental and sustainability education in outdoor education and ecocriticism. These results suggest that a transactional approach to environmental and sustainability education can help to clarify taken for granted assumptions regarding the nature of situational circumstances such as text, place and mobility in environmental meaning making.
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| 5. |
- Klaar, Susanne, 1964-
(författare)
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Naturorienterad utbildning i förskolan : pragmatiska undersökningar av meningsskapandets individuella, sociala och kulturella dimensioner
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall purpose of this thesis is to investigate, illuminate and clarify meaning making processes and content when children between the ages of 1-3 encounter nature in a preschool practice. Further, the aim is to develop and illustrate action-centred methodological approaches that facilitate investigations of individual, social and cultural dimensions of preschool children’s meaning making of nature. The results are presented in four substudies that all take their starting points in John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, with a specific focus on Dewey’s concept of transactions, his theory of action and educative experience as meaning making. In the first substudy, a Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) is developed and used to investigate physical meaning making by studying actions and the consequences of these actions. In the second sub-study, a Custom Analysis is developed to facilitate investigations of how the preschool culture contributes to children’s meaning making of nature. An Epistemological Move Analysis (EMA) is used in the third sub-study for investigations relating to teachers’ guiding processes. Here, a Substantive Learning Quality Analysis (SLQA) is also developed and used for investigations of multi-dimensional learning qualities in children’s learning about nature. In the fourth substudy, the analysis methods above are refined to form a tool that can be used by teachers in their reflective work with pedagogical documentation in preschool practice. The results illuminate a multifaceted perspective of meaning making about nature. In this context, meaning making includes cognitive, physical, moral and aesthetical qualities, and nature content includes caring for nature, health and well being in nature and knowledge about natural phenomena and processes. The results contribute to a critical discussion about preschool science education that concerns how preschool practices can highlight nature learning and the multifaceted aspects that are of importance for making meaning of the environment and of life.
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