| 1. |
- Stolpe, Karin
(författare)
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Att uppmärksamma det väsentliga : Lärares ämnesdidaktiska förmågor ur ett interaktionskognitivt perspektiv
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Den här avhandlingen syftar till att belysa lärares ämnesdidaktiska förmågor i naturvetenskap. Jag fokuserar på tre olika förmågor som är centrala för lärare, nämligen lärares professionella seende, deras automatiska agerande samt deras förmåga att berätta narrativ. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för avhandlingen är det som jag kallar för det interaktionskognitiva perspektivet. Tre olika aspekter av interaktion behandlas, interaktion mellan individen och hennes omgivning, interaktion mellan individen och andra individer samt interaktion mellan två olika kunskapsformer – den deklarerbara och den intuitiva kunskapen – som bearbetas i det explicita respektive det implicita minnessystemet. Modellen om de två minnessystemen är således central i den här avhandlingen och jag behandlar hur dessa båda minnessystem samverkar så att deklarerbara och intuitiva kunskaper tar sig i uttryck i form av förmågor. Informanterna i de ingående studierna utgörs av såväl lärarstudenter som erfarna lärare som undervisar om, berättar om eller löser problem med ett naturvetenskapligt innehåll, med särskild tyngdpunkt på ekologi. Datainsamlingen har främst bestått i intervjuer, såväl semistrukturerade som stimulated recall-intervjuer. Dessutom har data samlats in genom att undervisning har videofilmats och att informanter har beskrivit sin undervisning i loggböcker. Resultaten visar att vi kan urskilja tre olika aspekter av lärares professionella seende: uppmärksamma, identifiera och känna igen. Förmågan att uppmärksamma det väsentliga i en komplex miljö, exempelvis att finna en viss typ av gräs bland andra gräs, är starkt förknippad med förmågan att känna igen. Dessa förmågor bygger på intuitiv kunskap och är därmed en långlivad förmåga. Att identifiera, dvs. att kunna sätta ett namn på gräset, är däremot en deklarerbar kunskap som är snabbt avklingande relativt lärtillfället. Vidare visar resultaten att förmågan att agera automatiskt är starkt situerad och därmed sammanlänkad med lärandemiljön, elevgruppen och det specifika innehållet. Automatiskt agerande bygger på erfarenhet (igenkänning) av en specifik situation vartill ett beteende är kopplat. En lärare behöver inte själv vara medveten om sitt agerande eftersom detta är en intuitiv kunskap. Den intuitiva kunskapen verkar dessutom vara en viktig del av berättelser. Studenterna kunde upp till ett år efter lärtillfället återberätta grunddragen i en historia. Däremot visade det sig att de exakta vetenskapliga termerna, dvs. den deklarerbara kunskapen, till stor del hade bytts ut mot mer vanligt förekommande termer. Jag vill poängtera värdet av både intuitiv och deklarerbar kunskap i lärarutbildningen.
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| 2. |
- Eriksson, Elisabet
(författare)
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Christian Communities and Prevention of HIV among Youth in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Young people in South Africa, particularly females, are at great risk of acquiring HIV, and heterosexual sex is the predominant mode of HIV transmission. In order to curb the epidemic the Department of Health encourages all sectors in the society, including religious institutions, to respond effectively. The present thesis seeks to increase the understanding of the role of Christian communities in prevention of HIV for young people. Three denominations in KwaZulu-Natal were selected to reflect the diversity of Christian churches in South Africa: the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa, and the Assemblies of God. Using qualitative interviews the first paper explores how religious leaders (n=16) deal with the conflict between the values of the church and young people’s sexuality. Study II reports on attitudes to HIV prevention for young people among religious leaders (n=215) using questionnaire survey data. Study III investigates how young people (n=62) reflect on messages received from their churches regarding premarital sex by analysing nine focus group discussions. In the fourth paper, based on questionnaire survey data, we report on young people’s (n=811) experiences of relationships with the opposite sex and their perceived risk of HIV infection. The view that young people in churches are sexually active before marriage was common among religious leadership. The majority of religious leaders also reported that they are responsible for educating young people about HIV prevention. Religious leaders who had received training on HIV were more likely to run a life skills programme for young people, however they were ambivalent about prevention messages. Young people reported premarital sexual abstinence as the main HIV prevention message from their churches. The majority responded that they had received information about HIV in church. To be in a relationship was common, more so for males for whom multiple relationships also were viewed more acceptable. To perceive themselves at risk of HIV infection was common. Further training for religious leaders is needed to enable them to manage the conflict between the doctrine of the church and their willingness to assist young people in the transition into adulthood.
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| 3. |
- Eriksson, Malin, 1969-
(författare)
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Social capital, health and community action : implications for health promotion
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background; The overwhelming increase in studies about social capital and health occurring since 1995 indicates a renewed interest in the social determinants of health and a call for a more explicit use of theory in public health and epidemiology. The links between social capital and health are still not clear and the meanings of different forms of individual and collective social capital and their implications for health promotion needs further exploration. The overall aims of this thesis are to explore the relationship between social capital and health and to contribute to the theoretical framework of the role of social capital for health and health promotion.Methods; Data from a social capital survey were used to investigate the associations between individual social capital and self-rated health for men and women and different educational groups. Survey data were also analyzed to determine the association between collective social capital and self-rated health for men and women. A qualitative case study in a small community with observed high levels of civic engagement formed the basis for exploring the role of social capital for community action. Data from the same study were utilized for a grounded theory situational analysis of the social mechanisms leading to social capital mobilization.Main findings; Access to individual social capital increases the odds for good self-rated health equally for men and women and different educational groups. However, the likelihood of having access to social capital differs between groups. The results indicate a positive association between collective social capital and self-rated health for women but not for men. Results from the qualitative case study illustrate how social capital in local communities can facilitate collective actions for public good but may also increase social inequality. Mobilizing social capital in local communities requires identification of community issues that call for action, a fighting spirit from trusted local leaders, “know-how” from creative entrepreneurs, and broad legitimacy and support in the community.Conclusions; This thesis supports the idea that individual social capital is health-enhancing and that strengthening individual social capital can be considered one important health promotion strategy. Collective social capital may have a positive effect on self-rated health for women but not for men and therefore mobilizing collective social capital might be more health-enhancing for women. Collective social capital may have indirect positive effects on health for all by facilitating the ability of communities to solve collective health problems. However, mobilizing social capital in local communities requires an awareness of the risk for increased social inequality.
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| 4. |
- Wilhelmsson, Margaretha, 1948-
(författare)
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Developing Interprofessional Competence : Theoretical and Empirical Contributions
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Different professions meet and work together in teams every day in health and social care. In order to idenUiy and deliver the best quality of care for the patient, the teamworkers need to be both professionally and interprofessionally competent. How can higher education prepare teamworkers to be both professionillly and interprofcssionally competent? This thesis seeks to contribute theoretically and empirically to this issuc. A starting point for interprofessional education (WE) worldwide was when WHO presented a document entitled "Leaming Together to Work Together for Bdter Health". The basic idea in this strateg)' was that it is favourable for undergraduilte students and the development of their own professionill identity to experience other professions in health and sodal sectors as earlyas during their undcrgraduate studies. Inherent in this scheme is that the various professions will work together in practice. Thc overall winner in this new thinking about education and professionai prLlctice would be the patient. One of the Hrst systematic attempts to organize IPE academically was initiated in 1986 at the Faculty of Health Sciences (FHS) at Linköping University in Sweden. The "Linköping Model" has now yielded 25 yeilrs of practical experience and development of IPE curricula.Aims: The overall aims of this thesis we.re to define, describe and measure effects and outcomes of interprofessional education/learning.Methods: In the research papers theoretical, aualitative and quantitative methods have been used.Results: The newly registered medical doctors educated at the FHS at Linköping University and exposed to WE and PBL reported more confidence (p < 0.0001) that their lIndergraduate studies had given them interprofessional skilIs and abilities to collaborate with other professions than medical students from all other medical faculties in Sweden. Nurses who hild been exposed to interprofessional curricula during their undergraduate education ilt FHS reported to greater extent (p = 0.003) that they were prepared to work as a nurse. Furthermore, they also reported to a greater extent (p < 0.0001) that their undergraduate education hild prepared them to work with other healt care professions. Other findings in this thesis wcre that female tudents in generill and nursing students had a more positive view of interprofessional learning and were more open-minded about collaboration with other professions. Only to a minor extent did exposure to a more extensive interprofessional curriculum promote a positive attitude towards teamwork.Conclusions: A major challenge to modern health care is the need for more interprofessional teamwork to improve the safety and quality of patient-centred care. This thesis indicates some directions for more successful interprofessional education.
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| 5. |
- Jaldemark, Jimmy, 1970-
(författare)
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Participation in a boundless activity : Computer-mediated communication in Swedish higher education
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general purpose of this thesis is to understand how participation in the activity of education relates to communication and tools. This purpose unfolds by drawing on possible conceivable consequences. In the fulfilment of this purpose communication, education, participation, and tools are analytically linked by a common denominator: human action. The commentary text expounds on these links, while the four included papers illustrate how these links operate in educational settings. The general purpose serves to frame a narrower purpose: a discussion of participation through computer-mediated communication in online settings of Swedish higher education. The theoretical departure derives from a transactional approach that embraces human action as an inseparable aspect of a dynamic whole, here defined as the activity of education. This activity is discussed in terms of its cultural, ecological, historical, and social aspects. This theoretical departure embraces ideas largely taken from ecological, pragmatic and sociocultural perspectives of human action. The papers include analyses of, variously, empirical material taken from interviews with students, online exchanges of utterances, syllabuses, and study-guides. Two of the papers are literature reviews. The findings indicate that participation in education is a complex boundless phenomenon that is best understood as a dynamic whole. In this whole, participation in education is culturally, ecologically, historically, and socially transformed by actions, agents, communication, tools, and the setting. In this thesis, concepts such as computermediated communication, communicative genres, dialogical intersections, and educational settings are utilised to reach a dynamic understanding. The dynamics of these findings, therefore, are a challenge to all dualistic conceptualisations of education, such as those building on the idea of learners operating in learning environments. Particularly, these findings challenge operationalisations of education that rely on computer-mediated communication and which build on the idea of so-called online learning environments. A more coherent understanding of participation in education is possible if educational research and design builds on a non-dualistic conceptualisation that includes the idea of participation being performed in a boundless activity.
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| 6. |
- Mbabazi, Penelope B.
(författare)
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Quality in Learning in Rwandan Higher Education : Different stakeholders’ perceptions of students’ learning and employability
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to investigate quality in learning in higher education in Rwanda by focusing on students’ learning and their employability. This focus allows for an understanding of key challenges for Rwandan higher education to emerge, at a time when more and more students are enrolling. Higher education is being rebuilt after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda and the focus on quality in learning and preparing students for work life is thus timely and important. The empirical material comprises interviews with students, teachers and employers. Interpretation of this material is guided by perspectives on quality in learning: students’ approaches to learning, learning as transformation and employability. A meta-ethnographic analysis of the four articles on which the thesis is based generated five themes as central quality aspects of learning that could enhance the employability of graduates: becoming professional, skillful practices, becoming a learner, becoming responsible and international experience. The results illustrate that students have to some extent different views from employers and teachers regarding questions about quality in learning. Thus, it could be of value for policy makers and teachers to listen to what the students have to say when designing policy and curriculum in higher education in Rwanda.
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| 7. |
- Weibull, Louise, 1973-
(författare)
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Emotion matters : Emotion management in Swedish Peace Support Operations
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis makes an overall contribution to the qualitative research on soldiers’ experiences from service primarily in low-intensity mission areas, this operational environment being placed within a framework of emotion sociology. The central argument put forward states that even on this type of mission the emotional demands are considerable, and that the need for emotional management in Peace Support Operations (PSO) should therefore generally follow other demarcations than the formal military divisions of high and low intensity conflicts respectively. In contrast to the prevalent view stating that the successful soldier is someone with emotional control in the sense that he ‘lacks’ feeling towards what he is doing, this thesis argues that soldiers’ emotion management work when choosing, modelling, managing, and displaying the ‘right’ emotional expression is what it takes to get the job done. Further, the thesis argues that emotion management demands are not restricted to the tour of service. Returning home often involves feeling both cognitively and emotionally disorientated, even if the mission has been militarily quite uneventful. A new theoretical concept, Post-Deployment Disorientation (PDD), is introduced to explain and highlight the origin of these feelings. PDD is not a diagnosis, however, but a term reserved for a phenomenon invisible in statistics that likely confronts the majority of Swedish soldiers on return.The thesis comprises four essays and draws on qualitative data collected mainly from soldiers deployed to Kosovo and Liberia in 2006/2007. Two of the essays also include data from Afghanistan. Jointly, the four essays help us understand that from an emotion management perspective, serving abroad is both a varied and challenging experience. Nevertheless, the informants seem to muddle through many difficulties and the study broadly confirms Bolton’s (2005) accounts of the multi-talented emotional actor, who is quite capable of handling contradiction while negotiating feeling rules. However, this does not mean an adjustment with negligible effort or without substantial emotional costs.
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| 8. |
- Bergman, Jonny, 1973-
(författare)
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Seeking empowerment : asylum-seeking refugees from Afghanistan in Sweden
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how asylum-seeking refugees manage their lives in the situation they are in, a situation in which they are dependent and have to wait for decisions on whether or not they will get to stay in the country in which they have made their application for asylum. The elaboration upon these questions and the purpose of the study is approached through a field study of asylum-seeking refugees from Afghanistan in Sweden. The thesis presents a background of international migration, refugee migration, refugee migration from Afghanistan and the reception of asylum seekers and refugees in the EU and Sweden, which tells us both that asylum seekers and refugees are not welcome in the countries of the ‘North’, where policies of containment and repatriation are the most common features of treating the refugee ‘problem’ and that the long period of waiting and uncertainty creates a situation of passivity and ill-health among the asylum seekers. Employing grounded theory methodology in different forms based in data from fieldwork, including participant observations and informal conversations, the study applies a constructionist grounded theory approach in the analyses of the situation and the management thereof. Steered by this constructionist grounded theory approach, strengthened by a situational analysis, the thesis presents a situational frame pointing to the situation for the asylum-seeking refugees as temporal and dependent on Swedish national discourse, racism and paternalism. With this background and frame and generated by data from the field study, the thesis goes on to present the situation as disempowering. The disempowering processes are illustrated through looking at dependence and inhospitality, and are characterised by the asylum-seeking refugees’ oscillation between feelings of hope and despair. It becomes, however, also evident that the asylum-seeking refugees take action and that they are supported by latent empowering processes. The actions taken are categorised as actions of empowering in opposition to the processes presented as disempowering. The actions of empowering are connected to keeping oneself occupied, searching for and maintaining social contacts and in the asylum-seeking refugees’ representations of themselves. From the presentation of the situation as disempowering and the actions taken by the asylum-seeking refugees in response to this situation as actions of empowering, a process characterised as seeking empowerment is presented. In this process empowerment is discussed as the establishment of power to resist. During the discussion of the concept of seeking empowerment it is shown how the asylum-seeking refugees in this study, through their actions of empowering, try to resist the disempowering situation. By seeking to establish power to resist, they are seeking empowerment.
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| 9. |
- Fägerstam, Emilia
(författare)
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Space and Place : Perspectives on outdoor teaching and learning
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to explore teachers’ and students’ experience and perception of outdoor teaching and learning. Further, it aims to explore influences of outdoor teaching on academic performance in biology and mathematics. The contexts for the thesis are a Swedish high school and Australian environmental education centres. The empirical material comprises student and teacher interviews, and questionnaires and tests answered by students. Theoretical frames of reference are theory of place and three dimensions of learning: content, social and emotional dimensions of learning. The results reveal that the extended physical space had the potential to improve social relations and increase participation, collaboration and on-task communication. However, teachers witnessed a period of up to three months before the students adjusted to outdoor teaching. During that time disciplinary issues were a concern. Teaches’ perceptions were that experience of specific places such as local natural environment was fundamental to forming a sense of belonging and environmental concern. However, teachers described children and students as unfamiliar with local natural environments. Teacher’s perceptions were that media provides knowledge about nature rather than direct experience and children and students were often uncomfortable or afraid in nature. Mathematics followed by language education were the subjects most regularly taught outdoors. Two studies compared classroom education with partly outdoor education in biology and mathematics. Results reveal that students’ performance was equally good, or more developed as a consequence of outdoor teaching. An overarching conclusion is that the possibility to appeal to cognitive, social and emotional dimensions of learning all at the same time has the potential to concretize and broaden the often theoretical approach of high school education, and to contribute to long term episodic memories and a desire to learn.
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| 10. |
- Nor, Barni
(författare)
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Promotion of Exclusive Infant Feeding in South Africa : Community-Based Peer Counselling in high HIV Prevalent Area
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Despite global efforts, exclusive breastfeeding is rarely practiced in South Africa where infants are at risk of diarrheal infections, malnutrition and HIV transmission. The present study was conceptualized within the context of a multi-country, cluster randomized community-based behavioural intervention known as PROMISE-EBF in South Africa, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Uganda (www.clinicaltrials.gov, no: NCT00397150). The aim of this thesis was to identify and describe contextual factors that are important for the effectiveness of community-based peer counselling with a special focus on the promotion of exclusive breast and formula feeding. This thesis identifies the paradoxes and discrepancies embedded in the notion of community-based “peer” counselling approach, especially in the South African context of poverty, HIV and social distrust. Peer counselling, while perceived useful, was associated with social distrust which might have resulted in reduced effectiveness of the intervention. The thesis further illustrates that, while there is strong support for breast feeding, there was a general openness for early introduction of commercial foods and liquids. Mothers’ perceptions on infant feeding and peer counselling varied substantially according to HIV-status and geographical area. Nevertheless, the infant feeding peer counselling approach neither modified the mothers’ perceptions on feeding nor its associated barriers. Thus, several important barriers to exclusive breastfeeding including the risk for HIV stigmatization still remain. The results of this thesis highlight the need to rethink current approaches to the promotion of exclusive breastfeeding. It further draws attention to the gap between theoretical assumptions inherent in health interventions and the actual dynamic processes and realties of women in low-income high HIV settings.
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