abstract: Recently there has been an increase in the number of people calling for the incorporation of relevant mathematics in the mathematics classroom. Unfortunately, various researchers define the term relevant mathematics differently, establishing several ideas of how relevancy can be incorporated into the classroom. The differences between mathematics education researchers' definitions of relevant and the way they believe relevant math should be implemented in the classroom, leads one to conclude that a similarly varied set of perspectives probably exists between teachers and students as well. The purpose of this exploratory study focuses on how the student and teacher perspectives on relevant mathematics in the classroom converge or diverge. Specifically, do teachers and students see the same lessons, materials, content, and approach as relevant? A survey was conducted with mathematics teachers at a suburban high school and their algebra 1 and geometry students to provide a general idea of their views on relevant mathematics. An analysis of the findings revealed three major differences: the discrepancy between frequency ratings of teachers and students, the differences between how teachers and students defined the term relevance and how the students' highest rated definitions were the least accounted for among the teacher generated questions, and finally the impact of differing attitudes towards mathematics on students' feelings towards its relevance. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Curriculum and Instruction 2012

In this essay, four teachers of English as a foreign language were interviewed about their conceptions of culture and language. The purpose was to investigate what they consider important to teach their students about culture and how they attempt to achieve this in practice. Furthermore, it was discussed whether the teaching of culture can be improved. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviews, using theory about culture taught from either a product perspective, as observable behaviors, facts and information, or from a process perspective, as values, attitudes and empathy with otherness. The results showed that the teachers generally aimed to teach culture from a process perspective, promoting empathy, deconstructing stereotypes and teaching about the students’ own culture as well as cultural features in other parts of the world. They also listed some methods of achieving this aim. However, many of the teaching methods were more centered around facts and information, particularly about national cultures. This suggested an approach more focused on culture as a product, which may be detrimental to the voiced goals of teaching culture as a process.

Utiliser un zoom pour donner l’apparence du travelling est une illusion d’ordre perceptif, c’est pourquoi je voudrai penser le zoom comme le passage d’une image à l’agrandissement (ou rétrécissement) de cette même image. Il est fondamentalement une image d’image qui s’évaluera à l’aune de nouveaux concepts que sont le centrement, la mobilité du surcadre virtuel, la durée descriptive et l’aplanissement. Dans une problématique de la duplication, le rapport entre l’image et son référent sera à questionner : l’image du zoom sera semblante ou ressemblante car elle tire sa qualité de l’écart qui se creuse entre l’image et son image initiale. Elle engendre un centre imaginaire comme fiction ou au contraire une empreinte du réel. C’est en ce sens que le zoom crée des images, des images qui nous regardent et en retour nous donnent conscience de notre propre regard. Souvenons nous de Brunelleschi et de son expérience par effet de miroir qui fit que l’homme se voyait regardé par son propre regard au "fond" d’un tableau en perspective, dans l’ouverture de cette porte qui aspire le regard et renvoie le peintre dans un face à face avec son double, son image. Le zoom, à l’instar de la perspective est aussi une métaphore du regard : il produit l’image d’un objet façonnant l’image du regard. L’image du zoom, ce signe à déchiffrer, s’est substituée au réel en le redoublant et, dans le même temps, a été menée à disparaître derrière la transparence d’une image de la réalité. Nous sommes confrontés à l’idée que la réalité serait susceptible d’attester de l’image et que finalement l’image pourrait être créatrice de réel. / The zoom lens, originally invented for advanced optical instruments, soon came into use in the field of still photography before being adapted to the motion picture camera. It is a development that brought an end to the stability and the transparency of the image in favor of movement and visibility within that same image. To make use of a zoom to give the impression of a tracking shot is to propagate a form of perceptual illusionism, which is why I choose to consider the zoom as the passage from an image to the enlargement (or shrinking) of that very image. The zoom is fundamentally an image of an image that is to be understood in light of new concepts such as central framing, descriptive long takes, the flattening of the image, and the virtual frame within a frame. While evoking the notion of duplication, the connection between the image and its referent is to be questioned: an image made by a zoom lens is one of resemblance, as it is characterized by the gap that is formed between the image and its origin. It engenders an imaginary center as a form of fiction, or on the contrary, is marked by reality. It is in this sense that the zoom creates images that stare back at the spectator, rendering him conscious of his own gaze. One could evoke Brunelleschi’s experiment, which used a mirror so that one is observed by his own gaze in the "distance" of a painting in perspective, thus drawing in the gaze of the painter, confronting him with his double, his image. The zoom, like the notion of perspective, is also a metaphor for vision: it produces the image of an object that is shaped by the image of the gaze. The image of the zoom, a sign to be decrypted, substitutes reality by doubling it, yet is also vowed to disappear behind an image of reality. We are confronted with the idea that reality can be called on to vouch for the image, and that the image has the capacity to create reality.

In Paul's epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, the Apostle famously opposes "works of the law" within disputes regarding Jews and the law. But what are these works, what do they signify, and why are they rejected? Such questions are widely contested in New Testament scholarship, with responses constituting an important fault line in contemporary debates between "old" and "new" perspectives on Paul. This study engages these debates by investigating the views of the earliest patristic sources on this issue, which carry distinct heuristic value due to their historical, cultural, and personal proximity to Paul. Part I of this thesis presents the theoretical basis for using early reception within a period of "living memory" to engage contested areas of interpretation. Part II outlines the "old" and "new" perspectives on works of the law, with Luther, Calvin, Bultmann and Moo presented for the "old" perspective, and the "new" represented by Sanders, Dunn and Wright. Part III presents a comprehensive investigation of early patristic writings, stretching from the Didache to Irenaeus, which evaluates each source's usage of the relevant Pauline texts and their understanding of the meaning, significance, and reasons for opposing works of the law. Part IV concludes with a synthesis of these early views, an assessment of how they relate to the "old" and "new" perspectives, and implications for what their testimony suggests about Paul's meaning in the biblical texts. While neither perspective aligns uniformly with the patristic sources, it is concluded that contrary to current nomenclature, the "new" perspective finds greater correspondence with Christian antiquity than the "old" on this issue, and given these sources' proximity to Paul and the consistent and uncontroversial nature of their interpretations, the burden of proof in contemporary debates should be carried by those who would run counter to these early perspectives.

The implementation of information technology and its impact on organisational change has been an important phenomenon, discussed in the IS literature over the last 30 years. Treating information system (IS) implementation as organisational change is a complex phenomenon. This complexity is mainly due to its multidisciplinary, socio-technical, dynamic and non-linear nature. This challenging nature of IS implementation complexities has a direct relationship to the IS implementation project outcomes - its success or failure. In view of this complexity, this research aims to understand how process studies can improve the understanding of enterprise system implementation. We argue that the socio-technical nature of IS development is inevitable thus the only way to go forward is to explore and understand the phenomenon. Following this, we adopt the stakeholder's perspective solely for the purpose of identification of stakeholders and their embedded interests and expectations. While prior research concentrated on a limited number of stakeholders of IS, we attempt to adopt Pouloudi et al. (2004) in mobilizing a stakeholder perspective to incorporate non-human stakeholders within the analysis. Within the actor-network perspective, complexity is resolved through simplification (black-boxing) - unpacking or collapsing the complexity. However, during this simplification process, the risk of removing useful description of the phenomenon through labelling was avoided. To support this research, the punctuated socio-technical information systems change (PSIC) model was applied. In this model, interactions and relationships between its components (antecedent condition, process, outcomes and organisational context) play a vital role. This research focuses on the implementation of an integrated financial system in three Malaysian universities through three interpretive case studies. Our findings show that each of our case studies provides a unique IS development trajectory. Following stakeholder analysis, the different cases provide interesting combinations of conflicts and coalitions among human and non-human stakeholders which further dictates the project outcomes or the process of IS black-boxing. The relationship between the three case studies on the other hand provides an interesting illustration of IS technology transfer.

Given today's hurried pace of change in higher education and its institutions, it is imperative for the higher education research community to reflect on its current composition and resulting ability to understand and respond to the breadth and rapidity of that change. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to identify selected social and academic characteristics of the primary contributors (authors, editorial board members, and editors) to The Review of Higher Education, to categorize institutional affiliations of contributors via the Carnegie Classification System and to synthesize the data in a historical and sociological perspective. The contributions to The Review's articles, editorial board positions, and editorships in its first 25 years have predominantly been from male members of the higher education professoriate affiliated with and receiving doctoral degrees from major research universities ranked highest in the Carnegie Classification System. Trends toward greater gender and disciplinary representation, especially among author contributors, began to appear by the mid-point (1990s) of the study period.

Nutida förutsättningar för samhällsplanering har resulterat i att barns demokratiska och fysiska utrymme i planer är mindre än det som stipuleras i barnkonventionen. Syftet med studien är att skapa en förståelse för vilka utmaningar, brister och möjligheter som finns att inkludera barnfrågor i kommunal planering. Undersökningen utgår från två frågeställningar där detta konkretiseras. Studien är avgränsad till Sverige och den teoretiska utgångspunkten är begreppen ”barnperspektiv”, ”barns perspektiv” och ”barns bästa”. Materialet har samlats in med hjälp av de kvalitativa metoderna dokumentstudie och intervju och empirin har sammanställts genom en tematisk analys i tre delar. Arbetet har resulterat i tre centrala slutsatser kring utmaningar, brister och möjligheter. Genom dessa argumenterar vi för att förhållningssättet till barns kompetens samt strukturella och praktiska förutsättningar är avgörande för en lyckad inkludering av barnfrågor i planering. / Present conditions for urban and regional planning have resulted in children's democratic and physical space in development plans being smaller than what is stipulated in Children’s Rights Convention. The purpose of this study is to understand what challenges, deficiencies and opportunities there are when including children’s needs in physical planning in Sweden. The study is based on two research questions where this is further specified. The theoretical framework is the concepts of “child perspective”, “child's perspective” and “children's best interests”. The data has been gathered trough the two qualitative methods document study and interview and compiled through a thematic analysis. This work has resulted in three central conclusions regarding challenges, deficiencies and opportunities. With these conclusions we argue that the approach to children’s competence as well as structural and practical conditions are crucial for successfully including issues concerning children in planning.

Den tidigare termen frivilligt barnlös har idag ersatts med den nya benämningen barnfri, vilket innebär att man aktivt väljer bort  föräldraskapet. På grund av en fortsatt stigmatisering behöver ämnet lyftas för att påvisa hur genomtänkt ett barnfritt val är. Men finns det skillnader i hur kvinnor resonerar i sin barnfrihet? Är det skillnad mellan kvinnor som är födda i två årtionden i deras motiv ur ett mikro- och makroperspektiv? Genom en kvalitativ studie med semistrukturerade frågor intervjuades åtta svenska kvinnor, tre födda 1970-1979, samt fem födda 1980-1989, för att jämföra deras främsta skäl till att välja ett barnfritt liv. Resultatet visar att den primära orsaken för alla utom en av deltagarnas barnfrihet grundar sig i mikroperspektivet såsom frihet, spontanitet och av hänsyn till sin egna kropp. Bidragande orsaker kunde ses utifrån makroperspektivet som klimat, överpopulation och psykisk ohälsa. Den yngre gruppen uttryckte en större oro inför klimat, överpopulation och framtidsutsikter i jämförelse med den äldre gruppen. Sammanfattningsvis har den här studien visat hur genomtänkt valet är att leva som barnfri / The former term “voluntary childless” has today been replaced with the new term “child-free”, which means actively choose not to parent. Due to continued stigmatization, the topic needs to be explored to show how well thought-out the choice to remain child-free is. Are there differences in how women resonate around their child freedom? Are there any differences between women who were born in two different decades in their motives from a micro- and macro perspective? Through a qualitative study with semi-structured questions, eight Swedish women, three born 1970-1979, and five born 1980-1989, were interviewed to compare their main reasons for choosing a child-free life. The results show that the primary cause of all but one interviewees' childfreeness is based on the micro-perspective such as freedom, spontaneity and for the sake of their own body. Contributing causes could be seen from the macro perspective such as climate, overpopulation and mental ill health. The younger group expressed greater concern about climate, overpopulation and worse prospects compared to the older group. In summary, this study has shown how well thought-out the choice is to live as a child-free.

This study aims to focus on children’s perspectives of the relationship with leisure-time teachers. It aims to show the relationships significance and how the relationships are created and maintained. Semi structured group interviews with 25 children aged 8-9 years on leisure- time centers were conducted. Their stories have been analyzed from a relational perspective. The results show that for a child, a leisure-time teacher can be anything from an adult in the background who maintains order and security in the environment, to an adult who stands relationally close. The children highlight the importance of leisure-time teachers' inclination to care for the child. The leisure-time teachers’ concern can be presented in different ways and children notice if it is genuine. The children's stories are an admonition to today’s leisure- time teachers to reduce the negative interactions that includes reprimands and anger, and to take the time to listen and take the children seriously.

This scientific essay is about communication and collaboration between the preschool and a home with Swedish as a second language and has its foundation based on two dilemmas. The first dilemma describes a parent-teacher conference that I have with a guardian who has Swedish as their second language. In the conversation, I feel that the communication is failing, even though I get help from an interpreter. The second dilemma is also about a conversation with a guardian who has Swedish as their second language, but this conversation takes place more spontaneously. The second conversation also leads to misunderstanding as communication between us fails. My aim with this essay is to investigate how communication affects the collaboration between the preschool and home. As well as whether the language has any significance for communication and how it affects the children's right to influence and participation in the preschool. The method I use in the degree project is essay writing as I reflect on my role as a teacher and try to understand my thoughts from the guardians' perspectives. I reflect on my issues that have emerged from my designs with the help of the socio-cultural and intercultural perspective and other relevant literature. This essay has made me reflect on my cultural identity, both in my professional role and as an individual, and how I use my experiences in social contexts. My hope for this essay is to increase my understanding of others' perspectives more than I have experienced before.