| 1. |
- Aspán, Margareta, 1965-
(author)
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Delade meningar : Om värdepedagogiska invitationer för barns inflytande och inkännande
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)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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| 2. |
- Christensen Sköld, Beatrice, 1941-
(author)
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"Vi kan inte alla passa till hantverkare" : Blinda kvinnors bildningsprocess 1879-1923
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main aim of my dissertation is to make a contribution to the history of blind women in Sweden from 1879 to 1923 by demonstrating how they were educationally defined and classified during that period. I have chosen this particular period because education for the blind was separated from that of the deaf in 1879, when the first state-funded institute was founded. My study ends in 1923, the year in which state control of the blind ended, to be replaced by a supportive network created by the Organisation for the cooperation with a philanthropic organisation. My chief source were the State school for the Blind archives, which contain reports from 1903 to 1923 compiled by inspectors whose task it was to supervise education for the blind. For my interpretation of these sources I adopted a hermeneutic method. Since blind women have left very few written sources, I concentrated my interpretation on historical events and their external reality, while touching on the current of ideas these events formed part of. However, I have written four mini biographies of blind women who were Professional blind, using the vocabulary of Robert A. Scott. They worked at the organisation for the blind (DBF) most of their life, trying to improve the conditions of their fellow sisters. Ideas which were part of a process which was rapidly changing society were adopted by educationalists of the blind, although it often took years before new teaching methods and subjects were assimilated into education for the blind. Education for the blind 1879-1923 was a process of normalisation and integration of the disabled, although these concepts have a different meaning today. Normalisation then meant not being a burden to society; self-support was the catchword. There were several dividing mechanisms in education for the blind which contributed to blind women’s dependence on financial support. However, it should be pointed out that this attitude to blind women did not differ much from society’s attitude to women in general. Although there was an effort to make blind women more self-supporting around the time of the Great War, the majority of blind women still desperately needed support in the beginning of the 1920s. Private vocational schools for the blind were better informed of the needs of blind women and so provided an education which helped to make them self-supporting. These schools were run by blind persons and employed blind teachers.
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| 3. |
- Lundström, Elisabeth, 1953-
(author)
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Ett barn är oss fött : Att bli förälder när barnet har en funktionsnedsättning - ett beskrivande och tolkande perspektiv
- 2007
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- “A child has been born unto us”, is the most beautiful expression of humankind’s ability to cherish hope and trust for the world, writes Hanna Arendt. She describes how every child’s birth is the beginning of something new, something that the title is intended to emphasise. “Us” in the title also indicates that the child with a functional impairment becomes a public child in a special way. The purpose of this study is to describe the experience of becoming a parent when the child has a functional impairment. The study is based on a relational perspective. The theoreticians whose ideas have been used are, aside from Arendt, also Buber, Stern and Winnicott. In the analysis of the parental narratives, inspiration was taken from Ricoeur in a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Encounters are the themes in this thesis, and have been formulated as encounters with the child, the environment and the professionals. 30 parents (19 mothers and 11 fathers) were interviewed about their experiences of parenthood. The diagnosis of the child’s functional impairment was a chaotic and upsetting situation for the parents. Many strong, different feelings came into play. The parents could feel that they had been “thrown out into space”, and that their future was suddenly taken away from them. The future was what worried them most, and the question that was singled out was “How can we live this life?” Many professionals became involved in the child’s life, which could be both advantageous and disadvantageous for the family. The professionals’ attitudes and advices had a profound influence on the parents. Even though the child became in a sense a public child, the parents also had a feeling of having to carry on a struggle for their child in society, a” struggle of love” demanding the consideration of the child’s potential. Another “struggle of love” initially involved the parents’ own attempts to establish a relationship to the child. Thus there were two “struggles of love”. In their new, hesitant parenthood they had to “find their place in the world” and a way to exist. In their interaction with the child they had two competing figures of mind during the first period, “to be” and “to act”. The grief the parents had felt for the diagnosis could after a while be separated from the child, and it was the child who helped the parents to handle the grief. In the thesis the parents’ experiences are discussed, based on questions confronting them. How playing and training are interrelated is also discussed, as well as the significance of narration and the responsibility of the professionals. These results can be expected to have consequences for special educational work in this field.
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| 4. |
- Luttropp, Agneta, 1945-
(author)
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Närhet : Samspel och delaktighet i förskolan för barn med utvecklingsstörning
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main purpose was to study if children with intellectual disability interact or participate differently with preschool staff and peers compared to their non-disabled peers and how preschool teachers experience interaction and participation for children with intellectual disability and children with typical development. The results from study I show that there are more similarities than differences between the groups. There are no differences between the groups neither in engagement nor in what kind of material the children use or in what setting they play. The results indicated that children with intellectual disability interacted in the same contexts as their peers. Significant differences were found, indicating that the children with intellectual disabilities communicate less and especially less with peers. Children with intellectual disability are more often close to a teacher than children with typical development. Teacher’s communication indicates that teachers communicate and initiate more often to children with intellectual disabilities. Results from study II showed that the main difference between the target child and the control child expressed from the teachers was in the area communication. Participation differed in structured and unstructured situations even if it is not significant. The child with intellectual disability was less involved in his/her live situation in unstructured situations. The results from Individual Plans showed that goals and methods about communication were more common as a goal than interaction even if the teachers expressed that interaction is the child’s main problem.
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| 5. |
- Melin, Eva, 1953-
(author)
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Social delaktighet i teori och praktik : Om barns sociala delaktighet i förskolans verksamhet
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis seeks to explain social participation in pre-schools for children with and without Down’s syndrome. The explanation is achieved by use of an explanatory model of social participation, designed on the basis of critical realism, which has been used in an empirical study of how social participation emerges in practice.Mechanisms have been abstracted. It is assumed that recognition mechanism produces social participation and reification mechanism social exclusion.The results show that the agency of the personnel affects the possibilities for the recognition mechanism to produce social participation. Within the agency of the personnel, the internal relationship between the child perspective, i.e. how children's place in society is understood, and the relationship to the child's perspective, i.e. how children's participation is regarded, either prevents or makes possible activation of the mechanism.The child perspective has, through the empirical study, been seen to take two different forms: either that children are similar, with similar needs, or that they are different, with different needs. If children are defined as similar, the structures will accommodate all children, enabling them to be socially involved in the same activities. If children are defined as different, different structures are created for different groups of children. Groups are segregated from each other, preventing the children from being socially involved in joint activities.The relationship to the child's perspective has emerged in relation to the roles of the child as an agent, as a collective subject, and as an individual subject. The role definition affects the degree of constraint imposed on the possibilities for action that are offered, and thus affects the opportunity costs and degrees of freedom of the children. These determine the activation of recognition mechanism and social participation in the situation.
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| 6. |
- Åman, Kerstin, 1948-
(author)
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Ögonblickets pedagogik : Yrkesgrupper i samtal om specialpedagogisk kompetens vid barn-och ungdomshabiliteringen
- 2006
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is about special needs educational competence of educators working in collaborating teams within child and youth habilitation centres. The pedagogy of the moment stands for the decisions made by educators, based on their observations made when meeting the child in its different environments. These decisions build on educational theoretical and practical knowledge and experience developed through collaboration within interprofessional teams. The study was carried out through the use of focus groups consisting of professionals within different child and youth habilitation centres. The data consists of taped and transcribed focus groups discussions. Participants provided additional information concerning, estimations of the focus group session, their education and use of special needs educational assignments through additional questionnaires. The analysis focuses on how the educators conceptualise their competence and the dialogue in the group conversation. To facilitate the interactional analysis, a constructional key for the conversation was developed.The educators within child and youth habilitation centers have not developed specific professional strategies, but instead, appear to have adapted a mission through structural means. Their competence appears contextually adapted and devel-oped within three spheres of activities. Their basic education is in the area of pre-school with theoretical focus on children’s normal development, pedagogical experience of working with groups of children, play and learning. On the basis of this background, together with experiences with toy library activities for children with disabilities, they have become one of the corner stone of child and youth habilitation centres of the 1980’s. In these centers, by tradition a mainly medical sphere of activity, they work in teams with family orientated habilitation, and have developed compe-tence for special needs educational intervention for children with disabilities. Special needs education is a supplementary field, which includes educators who are being trained for municipal operation. The educators use professional speech genres with colloquial language terminology, which is adjusted to its communicative context. The educators and their colleagues in the teams emphasize the importance of the educator bridging the medical, treatment and pedagogical contexts, together with a focus on child, parents and staff, at home and in preschool/school. A communicational genre has developed within the occupational group, where the educators reinforce rather than question each other when taking turns during interprofessional conversations. The competence of the educator is based on knowledge and experience when it comes to children, their development, play and learning. The thesis demonstrates that the main focus of the supplementary education increasingly lies on the pedagogical meeting with adults, mostly parents, around specific child. The practical pedagogical work for the child, playing as intervention as well as the specific special needs educational intervention is less conceptualised by the educators. They are requesting relevant research and theories to support their field of knowledge.
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