| 1. |
- Abdelrazek, Fathya, et al.
(författare)
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Leadership and management skills of first-line managers of elderly care and their work environment
- 2010
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Ingår i: Journal of Nursing Management. - : Hindawi Limited. - 0966-0429 .- 1365-2834. ; 18:6, s. 736-745
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim To study the leadership and management skills of first-line managers (FLMs) of elderly care and their work environment in Egypt and Sweden. Background FLMs in Egypt and Sweden are directly responsible for staff and quality of care. However, FLMs in Sweden, in elderly care, have smaller units/organizations to manage than do their colleagues in Egypt. Furthermore, family care of the elderly has been the norm in Egypt, but in recent years institutional care has increased, whereas in Sweden, residential living homes have existed for a longer period. Methods A convenience sample of FLMs, 49 from Egypt and 49 from Sweden, answered a questionnaire measuring leadership and management skills, structural and psychological empowerment, job satisfaction and psychosomatic health. Results In both countries, FLMs' perceptions of their leadership and management skills and psychological empowerment were quite high, whereas scores for job satisfaction and psychosomatic health were lower. FLMs had higher values in several factors/study variables in Egypt compared with in Sweden. Conclusion and implications The work environment, both in Egypt and Sweden, needs to be improved to increase FLMs' job satisfaction and decrease stress. The cultural differences and levels of management have an effect on the differences between the two countries.
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| 2. |
- Ahmadi, Fereshteh, 1958-
(författare)
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Music as a method of coping with cancer : a qualitative study among cancer patients in Sweden
- 2013
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Ingår i: Arts and Health. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1753-3015 .- 1753-3023. ; 5:2, s. 152-165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: This study investigated patients' understanding of the role of music in coping and in influencing their well-being. Methods: A qualitative study was conducted based on semi-structured interviews with 17 cancer patients. Participants were chosen from a group of patients who had listened to or played music as a means of coping with their illness. Results: The study shows the importance of considering the roles that different kinds of music play in coping with cancer. The music of nature, healing music, religious music and cheerful music each have different benefits for patients. Conclusions: A patient's situation and his or her individual characteristics determine the types of music that can act as a useful or harmful coping strategy. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the types of individual characteristics that can make listening to different kinds of music a helpful or harmful coping method.
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| 3. |
- Airey, John, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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On the Disciplinary Affordances of Semiotic Resources
- 2014
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Ingår i: Book of Abstracts. ; , s. 54-55, s. 54-55
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the late 70’s Gibson (1979) introduced the concept of affordance. Initially framed around the needs of an organism in its environment, over the years the term has been appropriated and debated at length by a number of researchers in various fields. Most famous, perhaps is the disagreement between Gibson and Norman (1988) about whether affordances are inherent properties of objects or are only present when they are perceived by an organism. More recently, affordance has been drawn on in the educational arena, particularly with respect to multimodality (see Linder (2013) for a recent example). Here, Kress et al. (2001) have claimed that different modes have different specialized affordances. Then, building on this idea, Airey and Linder (2009) suggested that there is a critical constellation of modes that students need to achieve fluency in before they can experience a concept in an appropriate disciplinary manner. Later, Airey (2009) nuanced this claim, shifting the focus from the modes themselves to a critical constellation of semiotic resources, thus acknowledging that different semiotic resources within a mode often have different affordances (e.g. two or more diagrams may form the critical constellation).In this theoretical paper the concept of disciplinary affordance (Fredlund et al., 2012) is suggested as a useful analytical tool for use in education. The concept makes a radical break with the views of both Gibson and Norman in that rather than focusing on the discernment of one individual, it refers to the disciplinary community as a whole. Put simply, the disciplinary affordances of a given semiotic resource are determined by those functions that the resource is expected to fulfil by the disciplinary community. Disciplinary affordances have thus been negotiated and developed within the discipline over time. As such, the question of whether these affordances are inherent or discerned becomes moot. Rather, from an educational perspective the issue is whether the meaning that a semiotic resource affords to an individual matches the disciplinary affordance assigned by the community. The power of the term for educational work is that learning can now be framed as coming to discern the disciplinary affordances of semiotic resources.In this paper we will briefly discuss the history of the term affordance, define the term disciplinary affordance and illustrate its usefulness in a number of educational settings.
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| 4. |
- Airey, John, 1963-, et al.
(författare)
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The Concept of Disciplinary Affordance
- 2014
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Ingår i: The 5th International 360 Conference. Encompassing the multimodality of knowledge, May 8-10 2014, Aarhus University, Denmark. ; , s. 20-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Since its introduction by Gibson (1979) the concept of affordance has been discussed at length by a number of researchers. Most famous, perhaps is the disagreement between Gibson and Norman (1988) about whether affordances are inherent properties of objects or are only present when perceived by an organism. More recently, affordance has been drawn on in the educational arena, particularly with respect to multimodality (see Linder (2013) for a recent example). Here, Kress et al (2001) claim that different modes have different specialized affordances. In this theoretical paper the concept of disciplinary affordance (Fredlund et al., 2012) is suggested as a useful analytical educational tool. The concept makes a radical break with the views of both Gibson and Norman in that rather than focusing on the perception of an individual, it focuses on the disciplinary community as a whole. Put simply, the disciplinary affordances of a given semiotic resource are determined by the functions that it is expected to fulfil for the discipline. As such, the question of whether these affordances are inherent or perceived becomes moot. Rather, the issue is what a semiotic resource affords to an individual and whether this matches the disciplinary affordance. The power of the term is that learning can now be framed as coming to perceive the disciplinary affordances of semiotic resources. In this paper we will discuss the history of the term affordance, define the term disciplinary affordance and illustrate its usefulness in a number of educational settings. ReferencesAirey, J. (2009). Science, Language and Literacy. Case Studies of Learning in Swedish University Physics. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 81. Uppsala Retrieved 2009-04-27, from http://publications.uu.se/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=9547Fredlund, T., Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2012). Exploring the role of physics representations: an illustrative example from students sharing knowledge about refraction. European Journal of Physics, 33, 657-666.Gibson, J. J. (1979). The theory of affordances The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (pp. 127-143). Boston: Houghton Miffin.Kress, G., Jewitt, C., Ogborn, J., & Tsatsarelis, C. (2001). Multimodal teaching and learning: The rhetorics of the science classroom. London: Continuum.Linder, C. (2013). Disciplinary discourse, representation, and appresentation in the teaching and learning of science. European Journal of Science and Mathematics Education, 1(2), 43-49.Norman, D. A. (1988). The psychology of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
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| 5. |
- Alatalo, Juha M., et al.
(författare)
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Climate change and climatic events: community-, functional- and species-level responses of bryophytes and lichens to constant, stepwise, and pulse experimental warming in an alpine tundra
- 2014
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Ingår i: Alpine Botany. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1664-2201 .- 1664-221X. ; 124:2, s. 81-91
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We experimentally imposed three different kinds of warming scenarios over 3 years on an alpine meadow community to identify the differential effects of climate warming and extreme climatic events on the abundance and biomass of bryophytes and lichens. Treatments consisted of (a) a constant level of warming with open top chambers (an average temperature increase of 1.87 A degrees C), (b) a yearly stepwise increase of warming (average temperature increases of 1.0; 1.87 and 3.54 A degrees C, consecutively), and (c) a pulse warming, i.e., a single first year pulse event of warming (average temperature increase of 3.54 A degrees C only during the first year). To our knowledge, this is the first climate change study that attempts to distinguish between the effects of constant, stepwise and pulse warming on bryophyte and lichen communities. We hypothesised that pulse warming would have a significant short-term effect compared to the other warming treatments, and that stepwise warming would have a significant mid-term effect compared to the other warming treatments. Acrocarpous bryophytes as a group increased in abundance and biomass to the short-term effect of pulse warming. We found no significant effects of mid-term (third-year) stepwise warming. However, one pleurocarpous bryophyte species, Tomentypnum nitens, generally increased in abundance during the warm year 1997 but decreased in control plots and in response to the stepwise warming treatment. Three years of experimental warming (all treatments as a group) did have a significant impact at the community level, yet changes in abundance did not translate into significant changes in the dominance hierarchies at the functional level (for acrocarpous bryophytes, pleurocarpous bryophytes, Sphagnum or lichens), or in significant changes in other bryophyte or lichen species. The results suggest that bryophytes and lichens, both at the functional group and species level, to a large extent are resistant to the different climate change warming simulations that were applied.
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| 6. |
- Alatalo, Juha M., et al.
(författare)
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Dominance hierarchies, diversity and species richness of vascular plants in an alpine meadow: Contrasting short and medium termresponses to simulated global change
- 2014
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Ingår i: PeerJ. - : PeerJ Inc.. - 2167-8359. ; 2014:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We studied the impact of simulated global change on a high alpine meadow plant community. Specifically, we examined whether short-term (5 years) responses are good predictors for medium-term (7 years) changes in the system by applying a factorial warming and nutrient manipulation to 20 plots in Latnjajaure, subarctic Sweden. Seven years of experimental warming and nutrient enhancement caused dramatic shifts in dominance hierarchies in response to the nutrient and the combined warming and nutrient enhancement treatments. Dominance hierarchies in the meadow moved from a community being dominated by cushion plants, deciduous, and evergreen shrubs to a community being dominated by grasses, sedges, and forbs. Short-termresponses were shown to be inconsistent in their ability to predict medium-term responses for most functional groups, however, grasses showed a consistent and very substantial increase in response to nutrient addition over the seven years. The non-linear responses over time point out the importance of longer-term studies with repeated measurements to be able to better predict future changes. Forecasted changes to temperature and nutrient availability have implications for trophic interactions, and may ultimately influence the access to and palatability of the forage for grazers. Depending on what anthropogenic change will be most pronounced in the future (increase in nutrient deposits, warming, or a combination of them both), different shifts in community dominance hierarchies may occur. Generally, this study supports the productivity-diversity relationship found across arctic habitats, with community diversity peaking in mid-productivity systems and degrading as nutrient availability increases further. This is likely due the increasing competition in plant-plant interactions and the shifting dominance structure with grasses taking over the experimental plots, suggesting that global change could have high costs to biodiversity in the Arctic. © 2014 Alatalo et al.
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| 7. |
- Andersson, Kristina
(författare)
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"It's Funny that We Don't See the Similarities when that's what We're Aiming for"-Visualizing and Challenging Teachers' Stereotypes of Gender and Science
- 2012
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Ingår i: Research in science education. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0157-244X .- 1573-1898. ; 42:2, s. 281-302
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study illuminates teachers' conceptions of gender and science and possibilities to challenge these conceptions. Since 2005, a group of teachers (K-6) in Sweden have met approximately once a month in two-hour seminars to discuss and develop their instruction in science and technology based on a gender perspective. The present data consist mainly of audio-recordings of the teacher seminars and video-recordings of science activities with students. Analysis of the empirical data has been carried out in several stages and was inspired by thematic analysis, the theoretical framework of which is based on Hirdman's and Beauvoir's theories of gender. The results show that the teachers' ideas about gender/equity and science exist on several levels, within which various conceptions are represented. On the one hand, "reasoning around similarity", where teachers consider that both girls and boys should have the same prerequisites for working with science. In contrast, stereotypical conceptions of girls and boys occur when the teachers evaluate their activities with students, and condescending attitudes toward girls are also observed. The girls' ways of working with science are not as highly valued as the boys', and this outlook on children can ultimately have consequences for girls' attitudes towards the subject. When teachers are allowed to read their own statements about the girls, they get "a glimpse of themselves", and their condescending ideas about girls are made visible. In this way, the teachers can begin their active work towards change, which may lead to new outlooks on and attitudes towards students.
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| 8. |
- Andersson, Roland, et al.
(författare)
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Financing roads and railways with decentralized real estate taxes : The case of Sweden
- 2012
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Ingår i: The annals of regional science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0570-1864 .- 1432-0592. ; 48:3, s. 839-853
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Roads and railways in Sweden are mainly financed with national government taxes. However, the regional distribution of benefits differs widely from that of tax payments. As a consequence, overspending is likely to occur. A condition for efficiency is that the collective of users should pay for such projects. Therefore, we propose a new regional order for financing projects: government expenditures for transportation projects should be transferred to regions as well as the real estate tax to finance them. We present estimates of the size of such expenditures and of the income from real estate taxes following decentralization to regions.
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| 9. |
- Anderssson, Kristina, 1962-, et al.
(författare)
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What is science in preschool and what do teachers have to know to empower the children?
- 2014
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Ingår i: Cultural Studies of Science Education. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1871-1502 .- 1871-1510. ; 9:2, s. 275-296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we problematize the purpose of teaching science in preschool and the competences preschool teachers need in order to conduct science activities in the classroom. The empirical data were collected through an action research project with five preschool and primary school teachers (K-6). In the first section of this paper we use one situation, a floating–sinking experiment, as an illustration of how two different epistemological perspectives generate different foci on which kind of science teaching competences can be fruitful in preschool settings. In the first perspective, the central goal of science teaching is the development of the children’s conceptual understanding. With this perspective, we found that the science activities with children were unsuccessful, because their thoughts about concepts did not develop as expected, the situation even enhanced a‘‘misconception’’ concerning density. Moreover, the teacher was unsuccessful in supportingthe children’s conceptual learning. The second perspective uses a feminist approach that scrutinizes science, where we investigate if the floating–sinking activity contributes to a feeling of participation in a scientific context for the children and if so how the teacher promotes this inclusion. This second perspective showed that the children’s scientific proficiency benefited from the situation; they had a positive experience with density which was reinforced by the teacher. The children discovered that they had power over their own learning by using an experimental approach. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that there are competences other than subject matter knowledge that are also important when preschool teachers engage children in scientific activities. Through process-oriented work with the teacher group, we identified four concrete skills: paying attention to and using children’s previous experiences; capturing unexpected things that happen at the moment they occur; asking questions that challenge the children and that stimulate further investigation; creating a situated presence, that is, ‘‘remaining’’ in the situation and listening to the children and their explanations. We discuss possible ways to move preschool teachers away from their feelings of inadequacy and poor self-confidence in teaching science by reinforcing this kind of pedagogical content knowledge.
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| 10. |
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