| 1. |
- Frödén, Sara, 1973-
(författare)
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I föränderliga och slutna rosa rum : en etnografisk studie av kön, ålder och andlighet i en svensk waldorfförskola
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to generate new knowledge of the educationalpractice of a pre-school and of how it may contribute to the understandingof doing gender. The ethnographic study examines the place and practiceof a Steiner Waldorf pre-school, and it focuses specifically on materiality,age, spirituality and the intentions of the pre-school teachers. Fieldworkhas been conducted for a period of one and a half years in one pre-school.The methods used are mainly participant observation and interviews withthe pre-school teachers. The results highlight the importance of the materialand spatial dimensions of the pre-school for the constitution of children’sgender. The concepts of performativity and ritualization have beenused as the main analytical tools. The study draws on the scope of theseconcepts as understood by Judith Butler and Catherine Bell.On the basis of the analysis of the empirical material, a theoretical concept,situated decoding of gender, is suggested. It is argued that what atfirst glance can be interpreted as a ‘female universe’, turns out to be a placewhere gender is made non-relevant through an unintentional, yet powerfulongoing process of naturalization. The situated decoding of gender is madepossible because of certain features in this pre-school. Firstly, a repetitivestructure characterizing educational practice has been observed. This isbased on a principle of rhythm reciprocally related to the alternations betweencontinuity and change. Secondly, there is a clear spatial and materialdemarcation that the study argues makes the pre-school an enclosed space,in the sense of being a place of nurturing and protection, where the boundariesbetween home and pre-school are maintained. Thirdly, the performativeforce of the ritualized preschool practices further enhances the decodingof gender. The ritualization highlights and supports the spiritual dimensionin the pedagogy, which sidelines the doing of gender. Fourthly, theteachers contributed to the decoding of gender through the consistency oftheir everyday actions.
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| 2. |
- Hammarström-Lewenhagen, Birgitta, 1951-
(författare)
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Den unika möjligheten - en studie av den svenska förskolemodellen 1968-1998
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish preschool-model interlaces care, nurturing and learning and is organised to solve twin functions; providing children a playbased learning-environment and enabling parents to combine parenthood with work.The model was developed within the social sector then incorporated into the educational system 1998. This shift and the model´s “unique characteristics” praised by OECD formed the point of departure for this study.The aim of the thesis is to describe and analyse the discussions and negotiations shaping the Swedish preschool-model during 1968-1998. The research questions address: discursive themes; actors involved; governmental intentions; claims about the preschool´s task, pedagogical content and the preschool´s institutional identity and relationship to the institutions: social service, school and family. The study utilized abductive textual analysis inspired by discourse analysis and narrative approaches. Main text sources are: official reports, bills, steering documents, the preschool teachers´ periodical 1968 -1998 and a media debate.The results illuminate preschool-teachers´ struggle for a pedagogical identity and the construction of the educareconcept as a flexible and pragmatic solution to several societal interests and values.Governmental intentions concerning equality, emancipation and democratization have had great influence on the process in combination with a recurring theme about a revised preschool pedagogy with a strengthened focus on children´s learning. Political efforts to foster a preschool for all in a future are identified and described as one of the main discursive themes. Different standpoints about earlier school start are analyzed. The overall result is that the framework and core features of the model laid down by the National Commission on Child care still has a great impact on the launched syllabus (Lpfö) in the end of the period as on the curriculum in a broader sense.
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| 3. |
- Jansson, Anders, 1951-
(författare)
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"Nästan som en författare" - multimedialt berättande : Utforskande av lärande om och i berättande med inspiration från Vygotskij
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis builds on an interest in teaching that enables learning for all children, including children with disabilities. The work is founded in a theoretical perspective on teaching and learning and respectively research practices based on Lev S. Vygotsky’s cultural-historical ideas of learning and development as emerging in zone(s) of proximal development. The aim of this thesis is to identify and comprehensively analyze learning processes that emerge while four students (boys), diagnosed with autism, create stories based on a cultural model of narration using multimedia software tools. A second aim is to try out a collaborative research model that enables the study of learning processes in a teaching practice. The thesis is based on a case study designed as a collaborative research project in a small, primary class in a Swedish compulsory school. The researcher and the teacher collaboratively designed and carried out assignments on narration concurrently served as experiments with cultural tools. The total material comprise over 30 hours of videotape and more than 30 digital stories/artefacts. Consequently the analysis is mainly based on video recordings and students’ multimedia stories. Four storytelling projects: Digital puppets, The Knight and the Princess, The Magical Necklace, and a Time Travel to the Middle Age, are analyzed sequentially highlighting changes in the learning and development. Key themes in the analysis are: The emergence and expansion of learning in a playful narrative community; The learning and development emerging in the interplay of explicit conscious narrative structure and everyday experience; The possibilities for creative and imaginative storytelling in different modalities. The discussion highlights narrative processes in the interplay of various cultural tools as a possibility in enabling important aspects of learning and cultural development. A key result is the potential for expansive learning in multi-faceted enabling educational activities. The learning and development emerging in storytelling, the becoming, was highlighted when one of the students expressed himself “almost as a writer”.
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| 4. |
- Solheim, Inger Helen, 1970-
(författare)
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Identitet, kropp og hverdagsliv i et folkelig perspektiv : og erfaringskunnskapens plass innen folkehelsetenkningen
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over the last decades the weight has increased in the Norwegian population. Report no 16 to the Storting, “Prescription for a healthier Norway”, expresses concern for this development and defines important areas of commitment to prevent a further increase in health problems like diabetes 2 and other lifestyle related diseases. The foci described above are all justified by figures and statistical surveys. The dominant approach towards lifestyle related diseases is closely connected with Western medicine. The main tendency in the recommendations is primarily presenting overweight and obesity as something negative and problematic. This study focuses on self-assessment and self-perception of people that are overweight as well as those of normal weight. The aim is to reveal the collective understanding in a local community that struggles to avoid a further weight-gain in its population. This thesis seeks to, shed light on how the weight- evolvement in the Norwegian society influence peoples individual self-image and body perception. A local community in Norway (“Libygda”) defined by media, some years ago, as the most overweight local community in the country, constitutes the basis for this thesis.Methods like fieldwork, multistage focus group interviews and individual interviews (all carried out in “Libygda”) were used. The main focus in all the approaches is the bottom up strategy gained through the research approach Co-operative Inquiry which implies that both researcher and participants together search to gain insight and new experiential knowledge. In this case about individual health perception, body and identity. The data material is analyzed mainly through Life Mode-Theory, and theories of social capital (and other theories from the Social Science field).Methodological and theoretical approaches within Public Health Work are mainly based in Health Science, whereas this thesis has Social Science (Sociology and Social Anthropology) as its point of departure. The thesis will by its perspective aim to complement the traditional Health Science and offer a supplemental approach to the Science of Public Health.This thesis describes how experience-based perspectives on health and body exist side by side with the medical and Public Health Science perspective. This implies that there exists a parallel understanding of reality, which is rarely focused on by health professionals. If Public Health Work should gain a greater impact on peoples’ everyday life, these experience based and folk perspectives must be taken into consideration and accepted by professionals as relevant.
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| 5. |
- Bannbers, Elin, 1984-
(författare)
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The Effect of Steroid Hormones in the Female Brain During Different Reproductive States
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Women are twice as likely as men to suffer from depression and anxiety disorders and have an increased risk of onset during periods associated with hormonal changes, such as the postpartum period and the menopausal transition. Furthermore, some women seem more sensitive to normal hormone fluctuations across the menstrual cycle, since approximately 3-5% suffers from premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Why these disorders are so common in women has not been established but there is a probable involvement of the ovarian hormones.The aim of this thesis was to investigate the effect of the ovarian hormones on the female brain during different reproductive states using psychological tests known to affect brain activity in different ways.Paper one examined the effect of the ovarian hormones on prepulse inhibition (PPI) on the acoustic startle response (ASR) and comprised cycling women and postmenopausal women. The cycling women had lower levels of PPI compared to postmenopausal women and postmenopausal women with moderate estradiol levels had lower PPI compared to postmenopausal women with low estradiol levels.Paper two examined the effect of anticipation and affective modulation on the ASR in women with PMDD and healthy controls. Women with PMDD have an increased modulation during anticipation of affective pictures compared to healthy controls during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle.Paper three examined brain activity during response inhibition among women with PMDD and healthy controls by the use of a Go/NoGo task and fMRI. Women with PMDD displayed a decreased activity in the left insula during follicular phase and an increased activity during the luteal phase compared to controls.Paper four comprised women in the postpartum period and non-pregnant controls to examine brain activity during response inhibition. While this study revealed decreased activity at 4 weeks postpartum compared to 48 hours postpartum we cannot ascertain the role of the ovarian steroids, since none of the significant brain areas correlated with ovarian steroid or neurosteroid serum concentrations.The results of this thesis demonstrate that the ovarian hormones, or at least various hormonal states, have a probable impact on how the female brain works.
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| 6. |
- Eriksson, Katarina
(författare)
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Bacterial Vaginosis : Diagnosis, Prevalence, and Treatment
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is a disorder of unknown etiology, characterized by a foul smelling vaginal discharge, loss or reduction of the normal vaginal Lactobacilli, and overgrowth of other anaerobic bacteria. Thus, it presents a formidable problem for clinicians as well as microbiologists researching its etiology, clinical course, treatment, and epidemiology. The present work focuses on the unresolved issues of the epidemiology and treatment of BV in order to provide valid methods for treatment studies of this condition and to describe the prevalence of BV in defined populations.The first study validates the use of PAP-stained smears in the diagnosis of BV. The study assesses the methods of Amsel’s clinical criteria and Nugent criteria on Gram-stain smears, against Pap-stained smears and also validates different observers. The result shows that the PAP-staining of vaginal smears is a good method in BV diagnosis; the kappa value is 0.86 (interobserver weighted kappa index) compared to 0.81 for Gram-stained smears, and 0.70 for rehydrated air-dried smears using the mean Nugent score as the criterion standard. This enables population based studies on archived PAP-stained smears from the screening of cervical cancer.In the second study, we use the knowledge gained from study one to investigate the prevalence of BV in a cohort from the population of Åland. The prevalences of BV on the Åland Islands were: 15.6 %, 11.9 %, 8.7 %, and 8.6% in 1993, 1998, 2003, and 2008, respectively. This means that the prevalence of BV decreased between1993-2008 from 15.6% to 8.6%. The confidence intervals are not overlapping, thus indicating a significant decrease in prevalence from 1993 to 2008.The third study is a prospective, double-blind placebo controlled treatment study of BV. After conventional treatment with clindamycin, the patients were treated with adjuvant treatment of Lactobacilli-loaded tampons or placebo. The study showed no differences between the treatment and the placebo group, indicating that the tampon does not work at all. There are a variety of possible explanations for the result, which are analyzed in this thesis.The fourth study aimed to evaluate whether clindamycin is retained for a long time in the vaginal mucosa, thus disturbing the Lactobacilli in an attempt to reimplant Lactobacilli in the probiotic treatment studies. In conventional treatment, it is also useful to know whether clindamycin is retained, especially when considering the pressure from antibiotics on the antimicrobial sensitivity pattern. In the study, we found that the clindamycin disappears rapidly.Conclusion: BV research requires effort from many different scientific disciplines and the riddle of this condition and its treatment can only be resolved by concerted actions in research and treatment. The vision for the future includes, among other factors, better molecular biology based diagnostic tools, and knowledge of population based bacterial floras.
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| 7. |
- Florin, Ulrika, 1964-
(författare)
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Från idé till gestaltningsförslag : fallstudie från Projekt Konstpaus
- 2010
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Populär sammanfattning I vårt samhälle finns många offentliga konstverk. Dessa verk har kommit till på olika sätt men gemensamt är att konstverken i de allra flesta fall upphandlats med utgångspunkt i någon form av skiss. Skissen föregår det kommande konstverket och tjänar som underlag för beslut om upphandling av verket i full skala. Kunskapen om hur skisser kan tydas varierar och dessutom förekommer flera typer av skisser som var för sig fordrar olika sorters insikter av betraktaren (beslutsfattaren) för att kunna tolkas. Det övergripande temat för avhandlingen är kommunikationsprocesserna i relation till utvecklingen av 12 konstnärers gestaltningsförslag, tävlingsbidrag, samt hur juryns bedömning av dessa ser ut. Studien är baserad på material insamlat från de deltagande konstnärernas processer i Projekt Konstpaus, ett projekt delfinansierat av EU. Syftet med studien är att öka förståelsen för hur konstnärer utformar sina gestaltningsförslag, samt hur dessa förslag används och värderas. För att göra detta har tävlingsbidragen analyserats och konstnärerna intervjuats. Konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser har synliggjorts liksom kommunikationen mellan beställare och konstnär.Bland annat har det framkommit att det finns en större potential att förmedla ett komplext gestaltningsinnehåll till en jury med stöd av digitala skisser, än vid användande av traditionella skisser. Det har visat sig att det kommande konstverkets kvaliteter blir synliga, men också att de brister som finns i gestaltningen tydliggörs i 3D- skisserna. Liksom teknologier tidigare i historien haft sin påverkan på bildutvecklingen, tolkningen och seendet har också övergången till digitala skisstekniker denna inverkan. Det har också visat sig att den text som tillhör respektive tävlingsbidrag haft avgörande betydelse för utfallet av jurybedömningen. Muntliga och skriftliga presentationer, bilagor och brev har påverkat juryn i sina beslut.Studien har också visat hur konstnärer kan tolka och förmedla resultat av en inventering och genom sina skisser förmedla dessa tolkningar. Konsten som tolkare av miljö, tid och tanke, kan gestalta information om en plats och i och med detta också fungera värnande för ett samhälles identitet i olika faser av en utveckling.Studien har bidragit med en djupare inblick i konstnärliga gestaltningsprocesser och hur de kan beskrivas samt i och med detta också en fördjupad förståelse i allmänhet av kreativa processer.
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| 8. |
- Strandberg, Max, 1953-
(författare)
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Läxor om och för kulturell mångfald med föräldrars livserfarenheter som resurs – några kritiska aspekter
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to explore how parents' life experience can become a resource to strengthen teaching about, and for, cultural diversity with the help of homework assignments and teacher feedback. Two of the four articles included are based on data from the Läxprojektet (2004-2006) [The Homework Assignment Project], which was a practicebased, collaborative research project at a multi-lingual and multi-cultural secondary school. The material collected from project and used in this thesis consists of collaborative homework assignments, audio recorded lessons, student texts and interviews with parents, students and teachers. Article A concerns teachers' feedback during classroom discussions. Results consist of seven categories of feedback and show that all feedback, in contrast to previous research, does not support students' learning. Article B show that collaborative lessons that are based on parents' life experience may fulfill the function of boundary objects (Star & Griesemer 1989) between home and school. Article C deals with the relationship between homework and feedback, which is studied in a research review. Article D revealed that issues concerning how cultural diversity was highlighted at the municipal level and in school planning were primarily featured in the municipalities with the highest proportion of multilingual immigrant students.Thesis results suggest that:Feedback is a challenge for teachers when the content of what the students present is unknown.Parents' life experiences can be a resource in a content-based partnership between home and school.Teaching about cultural diversity is facilitated by the existence of cultural diversity among students and parents.In summary, results indicate that there are several factors that influence whether and how content and teaching about, and for, cultural diversity succeeds in schools. These factors affect the individual level, the classroom level and partially also the municipal level.
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| 9. |
- Öhman Sandberg, Ann, 1960-
(författare)
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Hållbar programutveckling : en studie av betydelsen av expansivt lärande och delvis delade objekt
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to develop meanings of sustainable programme development. Policies are often introduced to solve societal problems identified by a government agency or some other organization. In order to realize the intentions behind the policy it is common that one or several policy driven projects are funded with large sums of money. By funding policy driven projects, the funding organizations expect that the projects can support a sustainable change of practice that can solve or at least decrease the societal problem. Research shows that policy driven projects and programmes often fail to realize the intentions behind poli-cies. Hence, it is uncertain to what extent policy driven projects contribute to a sustainable change of practice.
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| 10. |
- Fermsjö, Roger, 1966-
(författare)
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Rekonstruktion av logaritmer med tallinjer som medierande redskap
- 2014
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the research reported in this licentiate thesis was to create an environment that could support students’ learning about logarithms. To develop such a learning environment, Davydov’s ‘learning activity’ was used as a theoretical framework for the design. A new tool was created, that was used by the students to unfold and single out some of the unique properties of logarithms when solving different learning tasks. The construction of the model was inspired by Napiers original idea from 1614, i.e. exactly 400 years ago, by using two number lines; one arithmetic (i.e. based on addition) and one geometric (i.e. based on multiplication).The research approach used was learning study where teachers and researcher worked collaboratively in an iterative process to refine the research lesson. The study was conducted in six groups with six teachers in upper secondary school in a major city in Sweden. The sample comprised about 150 students and data were collected by filming lessons and by interviews with some of the students. The data were analysed using an analytic framework derived from ‘learning activity’ and the results show what supports, but also what does not support, the creation of an environment for supporting students’ learning of logarithms.The results from the study are related to former research regarding instrumental/procedural vis-à-vis relational/conceptual understanding and also about research about students’ ‘errors and misconceptions’. It is argued that the formal definition of logarithms, y = 10x <-> x = lgy (y > 0), should not be used to introduce the concept, instead a new way is proposed. One conclusion is that it is possible to reconstruct logarithms without using the definition as a tool. The results from the analysed lessons show how students looked for ways to solve learning tasks using the new tool. The definition and the identities regarding logarithms appear as bi-products of the students learning activity. When analysing students actions, they rarely over-generalised mathematical rules, e.g. used the distributive law, or separated log-expressions, e.g. adding log expressions part by part, that seemed to be an issue according to former research.
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