| 1. |
- Jacobsson, Gunnel, 1952-
(författare)
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On the threshold of adulthood : Recurrent phenomena and developmental tasks during the period of young adulthood
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the dissertation is to investigate the own narratives told by young adults in the age group 18 to 25 years old about strains in life, ideas about the background to these, and attitudes now and in an imagined future. The emerging recurrent phenomena form the basis for a deeper understanding of the developmental tasks of young adults. Gender variances and changes over time are focused upon. The investigation is based on three distinct theoretical perspectives: developmental psychology, social constructionism and personal epistemology.The methods used vary according to the focus in four separate studies: (1) The Interview study is based on the narratives of 23 informants. A qualitative analysis was carried out and central themes are presented at group level. (2) In the Questionnaire study, a bird’s eye view is taken. A quantitative analysis was performed on 611 respondents’ answers about their own attitudes and experienced background to strains. (3) In the Follow-up study, 21 informants from the Interview study were interviewed again after eighteen months. (4) The Case study scrutinizes in detail four informants’ narratives about strains and attitudes on three occasions, over a total of three years. The combination of three different theoretical and three different methodological perspectives was used to make recurrent phenomena more visible, enabling the formulation of developmental tasks during this period of life.The most prominent phenomenon concerning strains is to become someone in the world. This is interpreted as an individuation process, which is a specific developmental task. Depression-like conditions occur and are understood to be transitional expressions of developmental-related sorrow. A spectrum based on prominent attitudes is formulated: vegetative being – creative being – productive doing – warding-off doing. The spectrum includes both problem-solving and problem-distancing attitudes. Common for men and for women is a movement between the problem-distancing and the problem-solving attitudes. The attitudes differ between men and women. Over time, a greater range of problem-solving attitudes is used, and they become less gender-specific. The problem-distancing attitudes decrease, both within the group of women and the group of men, but are still as gender-specific. As time passes, the narratives about the background to strains and future attitudes gain an increased number of themes. These changes are interpreted as a maturity process within the age group. Most of the young adults convey a hopeful view of the future.
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| 2. |
- Aspán, Margareta, 1965-
(författare)
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Delade meningar : Om värdepedagogiska invitationer för barns inflytande och inkännande
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In two studies efforts to enhance children’s possibilities to participate and to improve the school as a social meeting place are followed. The first focuses on a three year project, aimed to work out new forms for pupils (grades 6-9) to participate in the school organization. The second study follows younger children (grades 1-5) in specific lessons where social dilemmas are discussed and solved, which can be characterized as social and emotional learning. Both studies concern the school’s option to handle the child fostering to individual actors, their independence and ability to take part through ’self-expression’, and at the same time instill the society’s ‘common value system’. By following pedagogical interventions by participant observations and interviews, it appears that there is little interest to let the children get involved out of their own questions and problem definitions. In the participation project it appears that children often are rather strictly directed by adults, and they are not so often let to use their critical and reflective thinking. In the second study each exercise is scrutinized for what it affords the children. Also these results show that the underlying intentions are not to create pedagogical conditions that support communication that involves the children’s own perspectives and interests, in an ‘exploratory’ speech in learning about one’s self, about the other and the world. The children’s resistance to perform properly can be seen as a way to recapture some of their autonomy to break the ‘ritualized' communication. In both studies children’s use of a field of free action is restricted. The interventions are analyzed through the concept of intersubjectivity and of child perspective. I conclude that the basis for why and how these efforts are done can be seen in a cultural childhood narrative: they are in certain aspects seen as ‘not yets’ despite the late modern emphasis on competence and responsibility.
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| 3. |
- Balldin, Jutta
(författare)
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Kulturell tid och individuella rytmer : Gymnasieelever om tidens pedagogiska villkor
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The problem focused in the thesis has its ground in the crossroads between a manifold school-time and shared as well as individual rhythms of pupils. The thesis builds on a theoretical assumption that cultural structures in time are of meaning for an understanding of ourselves and of others, and works as a frame for contemporary values and constraints, especially in school. The aim is to understand and create a thick description of the phenomenon time as a condition for positioning, as young high school pupils see and deal with it. The contexts for their descriptions are three specific schools, challenging traditional ways of studying in time by offer independency, one by distance education, one by mobility between independency and timed lessons, and one by an independent project in an otherwise ordinary timetable. The empirical material is mainly based on interviews, letters and drawings, collected from thirty pupils, ten from each school. The study is conducted and analysed in means of an abductive methodology, and use senzitising concepts to withdraw units of meaning, relating the descriptions of pupils to theoretical assumptions.Time as a condition for positioning is a way of balancing between structure and individual acts. Time in school is created and dealt with in the crossroads between feelings of freedom to, of being in control of and/or close to, and their opposites, feelings of freedom from, or being controlled by and/or on distance. Dreams of spontaneity, closeness and intensity give way to certain temporal dilemmas in a school-time with contradictory values. The rhythms outlined by some of the pupils support the dreams described, as well as they underline the pupils’ need for temporal frames that see and confirm their performances here and now, as well as in the future. Time as an analytical filter reveals a meaning of time as enclosing lines and circles, present moments and stretched lives, school-time and other times.
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| 4. |
- Bergström, Helena, 1971-
(författare)
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Kön och förändring : Kontinuitet och normalitet i anhörigas relationer till transsexuella
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The categorisation of people into two kinds of subjects, men and women, as well as the notion that gender is natural and lifelong, are predominant ideas in contemporary society. When gender categories are challenged, new questions about gender arise. This is particularly evident for close relatives of transsexuals, who are subject to dominant discourses of gender, health and close relationships, at the same time as they have their relationship to maintain. The aim of this thesis is to explore how relatives handle, and make sense of their experience, when someone close is transsexual. This interview study of 15 close relatives to transsexuals, explores how the relatives understand and ascribe meaning to the transrelationprocess. The purpose of the interviews was to identify how close relatives relate to discourses of gender and identity, positioning themselves as relatives and gendered subjects in relation to the transsexual person. The study also addresses the narrative process itself. The analysis points to a “relatives-dilemma”, in which the close relatives relate to the transsexual in a way that is acceptable for the relationship, at the same time as dealing with the cultural images of gender, health and kinship, as understood by themselves and others. The analysis identifies three different conditions for the relatives’ sense-making process: the complete gender, health as an imperative, and reciprocity of consideration and care. The metamorphosis of gender of a close relative can be regarded as a catastrophe, a breakthrough development, or both. The manner in which this is dealt with seems to depend on whether the transsexual relative is a female-to-male transsexual or a male-to-female transsexual, as well as on particularities in their relations to each other, and the relative’s own gender in relation to the transsexual. The common denominator found in the study was the relatives’ need for the construction of continuity of gender, and thus the construction of normality.
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| 5. |
- Bragée, Britt W., 1945-
(författare)
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Kroppens mening : Studier i psykosomatiska lösningar
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Stress-related diagnoses such as ‘burnout’ are a growing and alarming social trend, which affect more and more young people, especially women. These diagnoses are expressions of ‘psychosomatic conditions’ in our contemporary society. The focus in this thesis has been to study meaning constitution when it does not lead to solutions to pressing problems but rather results in a psychosomatic breakdown. A phenomenological analysis was carried out that among other things shows that the road to the breakdown starts early in life, having to do with industrious but not successful attempts to win recognition for the persons’ individuality. In the second study, physiological measures occurring concomitantly with the informants’ narratives showed that autonomous activity could be distinguished in patterns divided in two groups. One group pattern was linked to helplessness, high arousal and marked stress level and the second group pattern was characterized by hopelessness and a very low level of autonomous activity.The conclusion of the thesis is that due to an inability to transform structures of thinking, feeling and behaving in a taxing situation, the psychosomatic breakdown can be understood as bodily attempts at meaning constitution, through bodily symptom and other forms of understanding. This, however, cannot help the person constitute meaning needed in order to solve the problematic situation. The reasons for this body/mind split are discussed.
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| 6. |
- Ehrlén, Karin
(författare)
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Conceptions and artefacts : Children's understanding of the earth in the presence of visual representations
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The studies in this thesis explore children’s understanding of the earth when presented with visual representations. The conceptual understanding is related to cognitive contexts as well as the physical and cultural state. Pictures and models, as communicative tools, are associated with both cognition and culture. The investigation was divided into three different studies, where the main differentiation was the category of visual representation of the earth that was used. In the first study eleven children, aged six to eight, were interviewed with a globe as a model of the earth. In the second study fourteen children, aged six to eight, were interviewed, this time with a poster of a satellite photo of the earth. In the third study, eighteen children, aged six to nine, were interviewed while they were drawing pictures the earth. The results showed that the influence of these representations could be detected in what the children talked about and in their choices of explanations. In the children’s conceptions of the earth, however, no clear influence from the representations was apparent. A possible explanation for this is that pictures and models can be produced according to different conventions for depicting. The alternative modes of depiction in the children’s culture appeared to make it possible for the children to choose a certain mode of depiction, in their interpretation of the representation that made this interpretation in accord with their own conception of the earth. Not only did the children express various conceptions of the earth, e.g. that people and countries were situated inside a globe, in the presence of the representations, but also some children drew pictures of the earth in line with conventional methods for depicting the earth, even though they may have expressed alternative conceptions. The results support the view that children hold conceptions, but they oppose to claims that naïve thinking is without conceptual structure, and that we have no foundation to locate conceptions in people’s minds, as distinguished from concepts that are located in cultural tools.
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| 7. |
- Englundh, Elizabeth, 1953-
(författare)
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Folkrätt för barn som pedagogiskt åtagande : Statligt ansvar - regionalt lärande?
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on the problem of learning processes in an organization that has decided to implement the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). It is based on an assumption that there is interdependency between learning about the CRC and its implementation. The aim is to understand the conditions for individual learning and group learning in the organization. The empirical material consists of 52 interviews, notes and written material from the UN, the Swedish government, and regional levels. The research design is qualitative and the method used is abduction and retroduction. Sensitizing concepts have also been used. The regional context is a county council which has decided to implement the CRC by educating a "pilot-group", and whose task will be to integrate the CRC in the organization. The theoretical frame is mainly constructivistic; learning is an "inside-out" process. It is the individual who does the learning, but these individuals meet in the pilot-group and create knowledge based on their own experiences. The most significant results point out that learning about the CRC is a prerequisite for implementation. Once the individuals have learned about the CRC and how to understand and interpret its implicantions, they also know what has to be done in the administration in order to speed upp and secure implementation. Other important results show how the individuals act depending on to their position in the organization. The administration directors show passive resistence by not including the question on the agenda. The operations managers show active resistence by not taking the CRC into consideration in their contracts "because then you have to show what you have accomplished".
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| 8. |
- Fjällhed, Anders, 1960-
(författare)
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Flyktingskapets situation och möjlighet : Colombianska flyktingbarn i Venezuela och Sverige
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is about the situation and possibilities in a refugee situation. The aim is to deepen the understanding of the situation for Colombian refugee children and how they are able to handle the adjustments related to a refugee situation, both in a neighbouring country like Venezuela and in a foreign country like Sweden. First, quantitative data were collected and analyzed in order to obtain a general picture of the situation for the refugee children. Further, grounded theory was used to analyze some of the interviews, which resulted in a generated theory. During the process of developing the theory, a case study was carried out with a Colombian refugee family in Sweden. The interviewed persons are fifty Colombian refugee children (boys, girls, and teenagers) who lived in the border states of Venezuela, and a Colombian refugee family (the parents and their two children) who now live in Sweden. The generated theory deals with how the refugee children are able to relate to and manage the new refugee situation. The core concept is possibility-finding: the developed ability to find possibilities in the refugee situation. It is a way of thinking as well as practical action. The latter is evident in the way the refugee children see the possibilities and deal with the challenges and problems they are facing. By the solutions they find and the results that are developing into growth. All of this influences and helps to build up their personal stability. The foundations that emerge, and which support or strain possibility-finding, are peace, culture, language, and networks like familyship and friendship. There is an emphasis on the importance of peace and dreams in order to handle times of huge challenges.
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| 9. |
- Hessle, Marie, 1943-
(författare)
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Ensamkommande men inte ensamma : Tioårsuppföljning av ensamkommande asylsökande flyktingbarns livsvillkor och erfarenheter som unga vuxna i Sverige
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The primary aim of the study was to develop knowledge about how unaccompanied asylum-seeking children manage their life circumstances and challenges after being granted a residence permit and maturing into adulthood in Sweden. A second aim was to develop knowledge about the life circumstances of these children in their respective countries of origin, the motives behind their flight to Sweden, the means by which they came to Sweden. The thesis is a ten-year follow-up study. The first set of data is clinical in nature: 100 unaccompanied children were interviewed shortly after their arrival. Ten years later a register study was made of these now young adults. The research group was now reduced to the 68 young adults who remained in Sweden after receiving their permanent resident permits. Twenty of them were chosen for a qualitative interview by means of strategic sampling. The unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who, ten years after becoming permanent residents, remained in Sweden have become established in a favourable life situation as young adults. The process of becoming established in Sweden from the stressing conditions in the country of origin is marked by both risks and possibilities that occur in periodical sequences in the life course of the unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. The children/youths may have come alone, but they did not remain alone. A majority were taken in hand by relatives in Sweden who were links to the family’s transnational network. The other children who had no family with which to reunite sought to establish transnational links on their own. A transnational perspective can shed light on how these young adults have created cross-national networks and this appears to have been of decisive importance for their socialisation and favourable establishment in Sweden.
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| 10. |
- Hultén, Magnus, 1970-
(författare)
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Naturens kanon : formering och förändring av innehållet i folkskolans och grundskolans naturvetenskap 1842–2007
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyses the science curriculum in Swedish compulsory school 1842–2007. National curricula, textbooks, textbook adverts, and handbooks are analysed. These all have a strong position in defining the school curricula and their contents, methods and aims, and can therefore be called canonic texts. What contents, methods and aims have dominated the curricula? How have these changed? The aim of the study is to contribute to the understanding of what ideologies have dominated compulsory school science texts and how these ideologies have been shaped by social, pedagogical and cultural currents in society.The start of this study is set by the issuing of the first Statute on Common Schools in Sweden, June 18, 1842. In this statute a natural science based subject was present. Even though the subject wasn’t new to the public school system, the year 1842 marked an important step in the formation of a “science for the people” in Sweden.Six different canons are discerned in the history of the science subject in compulsory school: God’s canon (1842–1900); The canon of the physical environment (1900–1919); The canon of the national landscape (1919–1936); The canon of the citizen (1936–1962); The canon of science (1962–1980); and The canon of the bricoleur (1980–2007).On a broad scale, these canons have been shaped by on the one hand natural science and on the other hand broad social, cultural and pedagogic currents in society. While researchers have mainly focused on the first source of influence, the latter have to a large extent been neglected. In the thesis I show that there have been major changes in the curriculum genre over time and that these changes first and foremost must be understood as shaped by pedagogic, social and cultural forces.
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