In what ways can outdoor education be used when teaching immigrants the language of their new country? There is a need to both concretise grammar teaching and diversify teaching methods to bring language acquisition closer to real life situations. By using action research a collaborative study was made with four Finnish teachers in four immigrant language classes by implementing a series of lessons using outdoor education. Focussing on the teacher’s experience qualitative interviews were conducted both before and after the collaborative outdoor lessons. This was supported by observation and student verbal and written evaluation. Both positive and negative aspects of outdoor education were explored in relation to how effective it is as a teaching method and as a method of cultural assimilation and group socialisation. Outdoor education was found to support a sense of group inclusion and strengthen collective group experience. Difficult concepts were dealt with in a more tangible manner which specifically benefited weaker students. By exploring the unfamiliar as a group in a supportive environment constructive outcomes were gained. Being outdoors and using natural materials democratised the cultural meeting. Peer collaboration was demanding but fruitful and should be used more as a developmental tool in education.

I Sverige insjuknar ca 30 000 personer årligen i stroke. Stroke är den vanligaste orsaken till neurologiska funktionshinder, som ofta innebär ett stort lidande för individen. I nuläget finns endast lite forskning kring de faktorer som påverkar känslan av sammanhang hos individer som genomlidit en stroke. Syftet med studien var att utifrån självbiografier ta reda på vad som bidrar till individens ökade känsla av sammanhang. Studien utgick från en kvalitativ ansats baserat på fyra självbiografier. Utifrån analysen uppstod fyra teman och tolv kategorier baserat på individernas viktigaste upplevelser av vad som bidrog till ökad känsla av sammanhang. Resultatet presenterades med hjälp av citat från självbiografierna. Det som bidrog till ökad känsla av sammanhang och som framkom i resultatet var Möjlighet till stöd, där stödet från närstående, vänner, sjukvårdspersonal och inte minst logoped var mycket betydelsefullt. Att komma framåt, vardagslivet och livet efter stroke, tar upp vikten av att finna mening och nya utmaningar och mål i livet. Det är viktigt för sjuksköterskan att förstå att stroke är en individuell sjukdom och att alla individer finner olika sätt till att anpassa sig till sin nya livssituation. Detta för att kunna anpassa omvårdnaden till varje enskild individ. / Each year, about 30 000 people in Sweden suffer a stroke. It is the most common cause to neurological dysfunction and implicates much suffering for the individual. Few studies have been made about the factors that could conduce to the individuals’ sense of coherence. The aim of this study was to, based on autobiographies, find out which factors there are that contribute to the individuals sense of coherence. The study was based on a qualitative approach. The result was presented in four themes and twelve categories that arouse when reading the materials. Each team and category where described with the help of quotations from the autobiographies. The most important things for the individuals’ sense of coherence were; Possibility for support, the support from friends, relatives, healthcare stuff and speech therapist meant a lot for the individuals’ wellbeing. To head forward, everyday life, Life after stroke and finding new meaning where other factors that turned out to have a great value for the individuals. It’s important that the nurse understands the individuality of stroke and that each individual finds his or her own way to adapt the new life situation, this because the nurse has to adjust the care that is given.

Sense of coherence, SOC, is a way to study health and wellbeing in a salutogen perspective. SOC is a theory that Aaron Antonovsky came up with and it involves three elements; comprehensibility, manageability and meaningfulness. These three elements is a objective way to look at our existence. The aim of this study was to examine how high the pupils sense of coherence was in the grades 1, 3 and 6 in a school in Karlstad. And with the result as starting point have a discussion around the pedagogical consequences and which educational work procedures we can use to work with SOC in school. It turned out that the students sense of coherence had a high mean value and that it got even higher through the grades.   The study will underlie for further development in this subject field and work as a foundation for further studies around the theory SOC.

Background: Tanzania is a country which faces several development challenges. The villages in this essay are located in a rural part of central Tanzania. The area experiences severe environmental conditions in addition to poverty and other related problems. Therefore, there are attempts to improve the situation by forming groups on local level. The two projects studied aim to improve the environment and the members’ economy by planting and selling trees. The participants are women only, except the supervisors who are men in both projects. Purpose and Question at Issue: The purpose is to examine if the project which the women participate in is affected by their sense of place. This is perceived through the examination of problems and possibilities faced by the women in their daily lives as well as in the project, and how these are managed and dealt with. The aim is to see if there is a correspondence between how different situations are dealt with by the individual and if this too can be related to the sense of place. Method: The majority of the material was gathered through field studies but additional information was achieved through literature studies, earlier research, observations in field and informal conversations. Interviews were carried out with participating women in the studied projects. The method followed the guidelines of grounded theory and the interviews were designed with Dolbeare’s and Schuman’s three-interview series in mind. A minor quantitative study was also carried out by handing out a questionnaire to the women in the projects. Theory: The theoretical framework builds on Tuan’s development of the meaning of sense of place, which is made up of people’s feelings, experiences and relations to a certain place. Closely related to sense of place is Bourdieu’s structural theory of habitus, why this is also considered a part of the theoretical framework. Analysis: The material gathered through the field studies is analyzed in relation to the purpose and question at issue. Sense of place is defined by using various categories of the concept, which aim to encompass several aspects and therefore give a more nuanced picture of the meaning of place for the individual. The women were found to relate the place first and foremost to their family, social bonds and daily chores and to a lesser extent with the environment.

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka om möjliga själv är relaterade till personlighet och känsla av sammanhang samt huruvida kön och ålder påverkar dessa relationer. Studien genomfördes på kadetter genom en enkätundersökning. Enkäten bestod av bakgrunds frågor, yrkesrelaterade möjliga själv (The Possible Selves Statements Test), personlighet (The Five Factor Personality Inventory) och känsla av sammanhang (KASAM). Resultatet visar att kluster (K-means) av personlighetsprofiler inte skiljer sig signifikant åt vad gäller möjliga själv, däremot uppvisades skillnader mellan personlighetsprofilerna vad gäller känslor och förväntningar kring möjliga själv. Liknande resultat erhölls avseende relationen mellan KASAM och möjliga själv. Kön och ålder påverkar inte dessa relationer. / The aim of this thesis is to study if possible self is related to personality and sense of coherence, and if gender and age has any influence on those relationships. A questionnaire was distributed to cadets. It contained background, work related possible selves (The Possible Selves Statements Test), personality (The Five Factor Personality Inventory) and sense of coherence (KASAM). The results showed that different clusters (K-means) of personality profiles do not differ significantly in possible selves. Differences were found between the personality profiles considering feelings and expectations around possible selves. Similar results were found considering the relationship between sense of coherence and possible selves. Gender and age didn’t influence those relationships.

Competence in mental arithmetic is recognised by many as essential to be active participants in the fast flowing, high technological society we live in today.  Many have noticed pupils’ unwillingness to set their calculators aside and practice this aspect of mathematics when possible.  Furthermore, some studies show that pupils’ ability to compute mentally deteriorates as they pass through the school system.  Through testing classes in a Swedish obligatory school and an upper secondary school, the aim of this thesis is to see if the goals set by The National [Swedish] Agency for Education regarding mental arithmetic, are being fulfilled.  Through using questionnaires to collect the strategies and ideas of the pupils, a wide range of problematic mathematical misconceptions became evident.  These are highlighted since they are important aspects teachers should be aware of.  The results of this study show that the obligatory school classes are far from reaching the goals set for them whereas the upper secondary classes show good results.  Furthermore, there is an apparent improvement in their progression, resulting in a fulfilment the official goals.  Many pupils however, seem reluctant to rely on their mental arithmetic capabilities and resort to algorithmic strategies.  Other problems to emerge are in carrying out table calculations and in a lack of number sense when deeming if the answers are reasonable.

Forskning har visat att self-efficacy, självkänsla, KASAM och locus of control alla har en effekt på graden av upplevd stress. Dock inte alla tillsammans, vilket denna studie avsåg att undersöka samt deras inbördes relationer och vilken variabel som predicerar stress bäst. Högskolestudenter (n = 65) svarade på varsin enkät. Resultatet visade att alla variablerna hade signifikant negativ korrelation med upplevd stress. Ju högre nivå på variablerna desto mindre stressade var studenterna. De kvinnliga studenterna var mer stressade än de manliga. Resultatet visade även genom multiple regression att self-efficacy var den variabel som var viktigast för att hantera stress inför en examination, näst viktigast var KASAM. Slutsatsen blev att dessa variabler hade en avgörande inbördes relation när det gäller graden av upplevd stress inför en examination.

THE AIM OF THIS STUDY WAS TO INVESTIGATE YOUNG ADULTS EXPERIENCE´ OF RESIDENTIAL TREATMENT. THE STUDY WAS QUALITATIVE, BASED ON INTERVIEWS WITH FIVE RESPONDENTS WHO HAD STAYED AT A TREATMENT HOME FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. THE FOCUS WAS ON THE RESPONDENTS´ EXPERIENCES OF MILIEU THERAPY AND THEIR VIEW ON NORMALITY. THE RESULTS WERE ANALYZED FROM EARLIER RESEARCH, THEORIES FROM SYMBOLIC-INTERACTIONISM AND ANTONOVSKYS´ THEORY ABOUT SENSE OF COHERENCE. THE RESULTS SHOWED THAT THE RESPONDENTS HAD TO EXAGGERATE THEIR DYSFUNCTIONAL BEHAVIOUR IN ORDER TO FIT AMONG THE OTHER RESIDENTS. THE GROUP OF RESIDENTS HAD A MAJOR IMPACT ON THE RESPONDENTS´ EXPERIENCE OF THE STAY. THEY ALSO EXPERIENCED THAT SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS WERE CONTAGIOUS WITHIN THE GROUP. AFTER THE TREATMENT THE RESPONDENTS FELT MORE SECURE IN THEMSELVES AND HAD A BETTER CONNECTION WITH THEIR FAMILIES. NORMALIZATION THROUGH EDUCATION SEEMS TO HAVE TAKEN PLACE SINCE ALL THE RESPONDENTS EXCEPT ONE ARE INVOLVED IN AN EDUCATION-PROGRAM NOW.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to find out what mathematical content primary school children encounter in their free options at school. Through observation, the study defines mathematical areas that primary school students encounter in their free options at school. We want the study to show the reader the mathematics that students continuously meet without associating it with regular mathematics as taught in school. A number of mathematical areas have been defined in the analysis of the observations. These areas have subsequently been discussed more thoroughly. Finally, the areas have been arranged in a grid system to clarify the results. In our study, we have discovered that mathematics exists in all the observed situations the students participated in. We believe that observation as a method can give teachers a tool for helping students associate practical actions during their free options with the more theoretical aspects of formal teaching of mathematics. We discuss this further in the study.

This research examined notions of belonging and sense of community through a set of layered lenses that integrated a social model of aging with phenomenology to gain a better understanding of the lived experiences of individuals residing in a long-term care (LTC) home. Conducted in a for-profit LTC home in Ontario, this study analyzed messaging in marketing materials supplied to potential residents and their families in anticipation of a move to a LTC home and in the staff policies and procedures manuals using document and narrative analysis. Themes emerging from this phase were then compared with the first-hand experiences of living in a LTC home as told by residents through the use of a focus group (n=6) and individual interviews (n=6) and experiences of working in a LTC home as described by interviews with staff (n=6). Analysis of marketing documents revealed the theme of let us be your caring community. As messaged in these documents, the LTC home supported residents by caring, embodying the ideals of home through natural living spaces, and supporting meaningful personal connections. This contrasted with messages found in the staff policy manuals. Divided discourses highlighted the tangible complexities of implementing a person-centered philosophy within a business model by describing the industry of care, prescribed customer service, fabricating normalcy and, to a much lesser extent, promoting the practice of person-centered care. Residents’ phenomenological stories illustrated variable un/belonging within a LTC home. Personal experiences of the institutional erosion of belonging, congregate nature of living in a LTC home, changing nature of personal relationships and the prescriptive living environment routinized day-to-day experiences and provided a stark contrast between belonging in community and un/belonging in a LTC home. Weaving belonging into daily tasks described how staff members laboured daily at working to personalize LTC home living, and how they were helpless to prevent losses in community and belonging. After completing the research and analysis of the promotional materials, policy and procedures manuals, and resident and staff transcripts I conducted a broader level analysis of all four sets of themes in order to get a sense of the whole. I concluded there were five tensions of: constructing home from the outside; person-centered care within a biomedical, business model; promoting individuality in a congregate structure; synthetic connections at the expense of long-standing relationships; and fostering living in a death-indifferent culture which justified society’s need to divide and regulate. Incorporating a range of data including promotional materials, policy and procedures manuals, and the voices of both residents and staff, these tensions are not only implicit in the culture of Manor House but within the overarching structure of LTC homes in general and have deep implications on the standing and status bestowed upon older adults in Canadian culture. My intention was to bring to light the contextualized lived experiences of individuals living at Manor House and highlight the structural and social barriers that continue to produce discrimination by “problematizing” aging and subsequently fostering notions of presumably acceptable dividing practices (Foucault, 1982) within society. By examining meanings and experiences of community in a LTC home, and also recognizing the systemic, structural and cultural factors that may shape those experiences, I sought to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the lifeworlds of individuals living within a LTC home.