The purpose of this study was to find out how young children are allowed to influence and affect their daily lives in preschools, as well as teachers’ views on the latter. My interest in this topic is born out of my experience of working with both younger and older preschool children. My view is that democratic work with older children is largely based on direct verbal communication while with toddlers it is based on an adult’s interpretation of a child’s often non-verbal expressions. Thus, I believe that young children’s opportunities to influence to a greater extent than older children are dependent on having teachers with a conscious child’s perspective. Based on the above-stated purpose I have found it particularly interesting to explore a specific teachers’ approach, that takes advantage of the youngest children’s competencies, but also to identify dilemmas related to this. For that reason, the research questions have partially been formulated in order to discover whether conflicts exist between a young child’s right to influence and their need for care. The study begins with a general historical survey followed by presentations of curriculum history with a focus on children's influence, selected developmental theories and definitions of concepts essential for this study. Developmental theories have been selected for their relevance to the study and focus on Daniel Stern's intersubjectivity theory, its conceptual determination and usefulness in studies such as this. Furthermore, the results of the survey’s qualitative empirical observational studies and interviews based on phenomenological grounds are presented. Its main results argue that young children have the opportunity to influence when teachers allow the child´s perspective to dominate over the adult perspective. In doing this, teachers often show an intuitive awareness of young children's competencies and therefore take a flexible and playful approach in their work. Conflicts between younger children's right to influence and their need for care can be largely avoided using this outlook on democratic work in preschool. Moreover, cultural differences between a teacher´s and toddler’s expressions can be overcome by an intercultural approach where both parties are seen as equal.

No description available.

Understanding influence in behavioral data has become increasingly important in analyzing the cause and effect of human behaviors under various scenarios. Influence modeling enables us to learn not only how human behaviors drive the diffusion of memes spread in different kinds of networks, but also the chain reactions evolve in the sequential behaviors of people. In this thesis, I propose to investigate into appropriate probabilistic models for efficiently and effectively modeling influence, and the applications and extensions of the proposed models to analyze behavioral data in computational sustainability and information search. One fundamental problem in influence modeling is the learning of the degree of influence between individuals, which we called social infectivity. In the first part of this work, we study how to efficient and effective learn social infectivity in diffusion phenomenon in social networks and other applications. We replace the pairwise infectivity in the multidimensional Hawkes processes with linear combinations of those time-varying features, and optimize the associated coefficients with lasso regularization on coefficients. In the second part of this work, we investigate the modeling of influence between marked events in the application of energy consumption, which tracks the diffusion of mixed daily routines of household members. Specifically, we leverage temporal and energy consumption information recorded by smart meters in households for influence modeling, through a novel probabilistic model that combines marked point processes with topic models. The learned influence is supposed to reveal the sequential appliance usage pattern of household members, and thereby helps address the problem of energy disaggregation. In the third part of this work, we investigate a complex influence modeling scenario which requires simultaneous learning of both infectivity and influence existence. Specifically, we study the modeling of influence in search behaviors, where the influence tracks the diffusion of mixed search intents of search engine users in information search. We leverage temporal and textual information in query logs for influence modeling, through a novel probabilistic model that combines point processes with topic models. The learned influence is supposed to link queries that serve for the same formation need, and thereby helps address the problem of search task identification. The modeling of influence with the Markov property also help us to understand the chain reaction in the interaction of search engine users with query auto-completion (QAC) engine within each query session. The fourth part of this work studies how a user's present interaction with a QAC engine influences his/her interaction in the next step. We propose a novel probabilistic model based on Markov processes, which leverage such influence in the prediction of users' click choices of suggested queries of QAC engines, and accordingly improve the suggestions to better satisfy users' search intents. In the fifth part of this work, we study the mutual influence between users' behaviors on query auto-completion (QAC) logs and normal click logs across different query sessions. We propose a probabilistic model to explore the correlation between user' behavior patterns on QAC and click logs, and expect to capture the mutual influence between users' behaviors in QAC and click sessions.

published_or_final_version / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

The purpose of this research is twofold. Firstly, this research aims to investigate whether the design preferences of bloggers in selected countries from different cultural backgrounds are influenced by national culture traits. The investigation involves two categories of blogs selected within a country where the bloggers share similar attributes such as language or geographical location. Secondly, simultaneously, this research intends to discover the possibility of the impact of group level influence on design preferences of bloggers who are linked together in a network through bloggers’ linkage or blogrolls. To achieve the said purposes, observations on both the global and local blogs of six selected countries are conducted using the content analysis method. This method allows this research to observe web pages and rate design preferences of bloggers via a coding system, similar to the method used to analyse documents or manuscripts to find common themes or keywords. A total of 612 blogs (306 global and 306 local) are observed for a period of nine months to identify cultural traits on design behaviour based on national culture indicators chosen from prominent literatures. To prevent a systematic error, an independent second observer was appointed and the results obtained are compared using a statistical methodology. In addition, translators were also engaged to verify that the translations are of a correct meaning and comprehension since blogs use various national languages on their web pages. The data were statistically tested using SPSS engaging in statistical analysis of frequency table, Cross-Tabulation and cluster analyses and MANOVA. Results shown that design preferences between both the global and local blogs in each country, has significant differences in most of the design indicators chosen. The findings indicate that the national culture influence on design preferences in linked networks of blogs is weakening indicating another type of influence might be in existence. The results also provide evidence that blogs in linked networks are statistically significant as a cluster or a group by themselves and are independent from one cluster to another. The research, however, studies only six countries from six different cultural dimensions. The inclusion of other countries, similar to or different from the countries under investigation, would be an added advantage. Furthermore, the use of only a single type of global blog provider (blogspot.com) in this research could be extended to other global blog providers such as wordpress.com to give fairer coverage of major and popular global blogs as well as providing a wider generalisation effect of the research findings.

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to describe South Sudanese refugee women's perceptions of access to, use of, and their culture's influence on their access to and use of healthcare after resettling in the United States. Background: The prolonged civil-war and famine in the African nation of Sudan has displaced millions of women and children over the last two decades. Refugee women who are resettled to the United States must make adjustments to learn how to live in American society and culture. There is little known about healthcare access and use by South Sudanese refugee women in the United States. Conceptual Framework: The theory of Cultural Universality and Diversity was the conceptual framework guiding the study. Methods: Qualitative description method was used to describe Sudanese refugee women's perception of their access to, use of, and cultural influences on access and use of healthcare after resettling in the United States. Results: South Sudanese refugee women's perception of accessing healthcare is understood through themes: Women's means of accessing healthcare, types of healthcare institution. Perception of healthcare use is understood through the relationship between these themes: Care of self, concerns of the women, and the experience of using healthcare. Perception of cultural influence on accessing and using of healthcare is understood through these themes: Coping, South Sudanese healthcare culture, and role of family. Implications: The findings of this study may facilitate understanding healthcare access and use by refugee women. The knowledge from this study can lead to the development of culturally congruent interventions for resettled refugee women, in hopes of improving their access to and use of healthcare.

No description available.

Abstract The main purpose of this essay is to examine if media-sport influence pupils in their physical education and if the teachers understands it. At the same time the aim has also been to investigate how the teachers can get along with the media influence in their teaching. We have also investigated what teachers in physical education think about the curriculum and if there is space for a teaching method that respect the pupils will. The essay is an empirical qualitative study built on open-ended interviews with 3 respondents from two schools in the county of Värmland, Sweden. The range of qualified teacher is restricted at this school. We asked 5 teachers to join, but only 3 were accepting to join our study. Because there was not much time left of the school term we had to get started with the interviews as soon as possible. But first of all we had to make an extensive litterateur study. Not much literature is written about our subject. After that we made the interviews and transcript them into our paper. This qualitative study shows that - The main result of the research is that media influences pupils. Especially in physical education. - The teachers are trying to satisfy the pupil’s wishes. Though it is hard for the teachers to do this because of deficient resources. - The environment around the school is also important for the teachers. But if the school can’t satisfy the pupils, the teachers recommend them to join their local sport society. Keywords: Media influence, Health, Physical education