The aim for this master thesis is to create an understanding of the intersubjective processes of how individuals are experimenting with their identities in social media and the consequences for the identity and embodiment. The thesis is completed with the help of discourse analysis and a starting point in four complementary theories. Central to the implementation of the analysis is the concept of diffraction. Therefore the thesis is, which is reflected in the choice of theoretical approaches and methods, critical to many aspects of classical philosophy of science and method. The empirical material is based on interviews. During the analysis the theory is applied to empirical data received from the interviews, but the empirical data will also be used as inspiration for examining my chosen theories. The analysis covers several topics. First I discuss how a web-identity is constructed and how this can be considered as a process of negotiation with other users on the same website. Furthermore I discuss how my informants negotiate about boundaries conserning sexuality and corporeality, but that the subjective boundaries shift in the encounter between different discursive claim to legitimate expression of body and sexuality. In the final section, before the final discussion, I discuss the body's impacts on communication on a website. During the final discussion several questions are being raised. Centrally, however, is how the essays selected theories help to demonstrate how the negotiation of boundaries in social media is complex, and that experimentation with the identity of a website partly dependent on society's other discourses on gender, body and desires. But it is also discussed how discourses of gender, body and desire is shifted inside the selected websites, and that these sites creates new opportunities for identification and self-knowledge.

<p>Can cross-border interaction: interpersonal, economic, and otherwise, help ease relations between neighbouring political entities facing conflicts of interest and other differences?</p><p>1. How and why are border crossing communication routes created and maintained?</p><p>2. Under what circumstances are they used and how?</p><p>3. In what ways do they alter the conditions of a conflict between the parties that they link?</p><p>4. How do governments relate to the communication route and in what ways do they fit it into their policies?</p><p>Seeking to reconcile the theories of the international system advanced by Hedley Bull and John W. Burton, we conduct a comparative case study, based on contemporary media and scholarship, of the situations regarding Senegal and the Gambia, as well as the two de facto (if not de jure) republics of Cyprus to answer these questions. Having sought to estimate the causes and effects of border crossing, we find that host factors, in particular divergent economies and the utilization of international partners, may in fact come to stem from the issues of border-crossing activity and contribute to complicating existing conflicts rather than resolve them.</p>

<p><font face="Times New Roman"> <p align="left">This study looks at the effect of a cross-cultural instructional approach on the learners&rsquo / conceptions of lightning and attitude towards science. It explored Basotho conceptions of lightning and thunder under the following themes: nature of lightning, protection against lightning, animalistic/humanistic behaviour of lighting and nature of wounds inflicted by lightning.</p> </font></p>

Migration has become a topical theme both in academia and in public discourses across the media which have contributed to create a highly political and visual 'migrant subject'. However, the highly mediatized figure of the migrant has left crucial aspects of migration underrepresented and unrecognised. What is normally concealed and left to the margins of public debate is the individual experience of the protagonists, their imaginative lifeworlds and the complexity of their stories. This practice-based research has centred its inquiry on the relationship between the lived experiences and the imagination of past, present and future existential possibilities, by engaging three Egyptian migrants through the creative processes of theatre improvisations, storytelling practices, participatory photography, collaborative filmmaking and animation. It recognizes the fundamental role that imagination and future existential possibilities play in people’s perceptions of reality, in their decisions and actions, and finally in the way they narrate their experiences. In order to better understand how individuals make their choices, interact with each other, understand themselves and the world around them, I have argued that we need to take into account their biographies and imaginative inner lives as the ways people retell their stories allow space for contradiction, feelings of ambivalence and uncertainty, unlaced and unfinished thoughts and existential dilemmas. Imaginative realms of existence are ever-changing and ungraspable, posing a challenge to conventional methodologies in the social sciences which rely heavily on observation, interviews and text. The thesis is divided into two parts. By using the ethnographic material that emerged during fieldwork and from the creative processes, in the first part I look at the role imagination and the future play in Ali’s, Mohamed’s and Mahmoud’s relationships to their origins, and to their decisions and experiences of illegally crossing the Mediterranean Sea in order to reach Milan (Italy). The second part describes and reflects upon the performative and audio-visual collaborative practices that involved my participants in producing their own narrations and theoretical reflections on their experiences, aspirations and memories. It is thanks to the ‘subjunctive possibilities’ enabled by performative improvisations, creative storytelling and the animation that my participants and I could explore their mnemonic and imaginative processes. Finally, the thesis concludes by arguing for social research to engage participants in more collaborative and creative practices in the study of migration, as a necessary way of involving the protagonists in producing the questions and counter-narratives that reclaim their acts of struggle and their creative imaginative abilities to contrast objectifying political discourses and exclusionary legal and bureaucratic procedures.

abstract: In the real world outside of schools, contemporary students are routinely reading, writing, communicating, acting, and learning internationally, translingually, and multimodally, thanks to the prevalence of digital online communication; this has taken place across students’ racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities and national affiliations. Today, the global online contexts are considered as one of essential literacy environments, and the globally networked online contexts might become a main stage of future literacy practices. In this sense, this study develops new three theories about literacies studies from the perspective of the New Literacy Studies in an increasingly digitalized and globalized contemporary world. To achieve this, first, I introduced the features of a global online affinity space as a new concept. Second, I developed the theoretical claim of “complexified diversity.” Finally, I developed the theoretical concept of “Border-Crossing Discourses” on the basis of Gee’s (1990/2015) seminal idea of capital “D” Discourses. I expanded the concept of capital “D” Discourses, looking across borders at a variety of languages, nations, and broader cultures under the global view. The concept of Border-Crossing Discourses was established on the basis of the new concepts that I put forth previously of global online affinity spaces and complexified diversity. As an example of possible supplementary empirical studies, I conducted a small piece of discourse analysis. I observed and examined literacy practices in two global online affinity spaces. They are sites devoted to K-pop fanfiction sharing (hereafter, Asianfanfics) and to Japanese anime (hereafter, Crunchyroll). In particular, I explored the aspects of multimodal and translingual practices in these spaces. Both theoretical and empirical future research will contribute to the elaboration of these theories. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Learning, Literacies and Technologies 2018

Doctor Educationis / This study looks at the effect of a cross-cultural instructional approach on the learners’ conceptions of lightning and attitude towards science. It explored Basotho conceptions of lightning and thunder under the following themes: nature of lightning, protection against lightning, animalistic/humanistic behaviour of lighting and nature of wounds inflicted by lightning.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the extent to which multicultural science education, including indigenous knowledge representations, had been infused within the content of high school biology textbooks. The study evaluated the textbook as an instructional tool and framework for multicultural science education instruction by comparing the mainstream content to indigenous knowledge perspectives portrayed in the student and teacher editions of 34 textbooks adopted in Florida within the last four adoption cycles occurring from 1990 to 2006. The investigation involved a content analysis framed from a mixed methods approach. Emphasis was placed, in consideration of the research questions and practicality of interpreting text with the potential for multiple meanings, within qualitative methods. The investigation incorporated five strategies to assess the extent of multicultural content: 1) calculation of frequency of indigenous representations through the use of a tally; 2) assessment of content in the teacher editions by coding the degree of incorporation of multicultural content; 3) development of an archaeology of statements to determine the ways in which indigenous representations were incorporated into the content; 4) use of the Evaluation Coefficient Analysis (ECO) to determine extent of multicultural terminologies within content; and 5) analysis of visuals and illustrations to gauge percentages of depictions of minority groups. Results indicated no solid trend in an increase of inclusion of multicultural content over the last four adoption cycles. Efforts at most reduced the inclusion of indigenous representations and other multicultural content to the level of the teacher edition distributed among the teacher-interleafed pages or as annotations in the margins. Degree of support of multicultural content to the specific goals and objectives remained limited across all four of the adoption cycles represented in the study. Emphasis on standardized testing appeared in the six textbooks representing the most recent adoption cycle. Recommendations included increased efforts to identify quality of content by including input from scholars in the field of multicultural education as well as indigenous peoples in the creation of textbook content. Recommendations also included further clarification of the definition of science within multicultural science education frameworks, indigenous knowledge as compared to Western science and pseudoscience, and scientific literacy as a central focus to a multicultural science education meant to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and prime-age workforce.

The thesis aims to investigate the role of human smuggling in migration, and specifically, the part played by the figure of the facilitators. The study was conducted through qualitative research based on semi-structured interviews: six people who reached Europe through the assistance of smugglers were interviewed in three different countries – Germany, Italy and Sweden. The data collected reflects the opinions, experiences, and the perspectives of the migrants. Accordingly, the data is interpreted through the Rational Choice Theory that focuses on the micro-level angle, and the concept of border which intends to research the phenomenon from a macro-level viewpoint. The findings revealed that smugglers play a crucial role in migration allowing the border-crossing for those migrants who do not have regular means to travel. I suggest that smugglers renegotiate the concept of border which becomes more fluid and permeable.

The Diploma Thesis is composed of two parts: text-based and project-based. Text-based part deals with universal use of border crossings. Most of the border crossings is in private ownership, therefore it is not known how it will be used in the future. Deputies of villages, districts and local authorities were approached because some of the border crossings lie within their competence. The intention of the private owners was discovered. The project-part deals with particular border crosing between the Czech Republic and the Slovakia Republic – Starý Hrozenkov. Zlín district is interested in reconstructing of the mentioned border crossing. A project dealing with the future purpose of the rest area, such as building a gass station, a restaurant, a relaxation zone and a space for checking vehicles, was suggested within the technical study.

Studies in astronomy education have shown that socio-cultural factors combine with everyday human experience to create learning difficulties that are unique to this field. The history of astronomy also shows a complex link between science and religion. The foundations of modern astronomy lie in religious beliefs and practices, but over time, in the West, as science grew ever more powerful in explaining the apparently mechanistic processes of nature, the beliefs and understanding associated with scientific explanations came into conflict with those of the Christian church. In Africa, Western religious and scientific beliefs were brought by the missionaries, and imposed onto already existing beliefs systems. From colonial times to the present, Western knowledge has been privileged over local knowledge in African formal schooling. Little recognition has been given to the learning difficulties that may be caused in situations where the knowledge system taught at school is different to that imbibed through home and culture. The difficulties of epistemic access have been highlighted through the development of socio-cultural constructivist theories of learning. This study, which is based on the sociocultural constructivist theories of cultural border crossing and collateral learning, represents an investigation of the learning difficulties experienced by South African first year university students who study a compulsory course in basic astronomy called 'The Earth in Space'. The sample was thus a convenience sample, made up of 191 students who took the course between 2000 and 2004. The investigation was carried out using a pre-instruction questionnaire to record the precourse knowledge of the students. The questions that were asked focused on knowledge related to some of the key concepts in basic astronomy, such as an understanding of the nature of stars, the rotation and revolution of the earth and the phases of the moon. These questions had the dual purpose of benchmarking South African students' knowledge of the scientific explanations for these phenomena against similar international studies, as well as establishing the prevalence of cultural or traditional ideas held by these students. After the course had been completed, a post instruction questionnaire was used to establish students’ views on the difficulties they had experienced in learning in the course. This was followed up by semi-structured interviews with 25 of the students. The data obtained from the questionnaires were analysed using two methods: the first used a deductive coding system where the students’ responses were allocated to chosen categories, i.e. whether they conformed to the explanations of Western Modern Science or to cultural knowledge and beliefs, or both. The second method used a computer software programme, Atlas.ti, where each statement made by the student was recorded and coded, leading to an inductive, fine-grained analysis of their responses. The results from the pre-instruction questionnaire indicated that South African students display similar poor levels of knowledge in this field, to students from other Western and non-Western countries. The explanation for this lies in the fact that understanding the scientific explanations requires the ability to think abstractly, and to be able to construct complex mental models, in situations where the processes involved run counter to normal daily experience. However, the explanations given by the South African students also indicated that there were epistemological and ontological issues, related to conflicting beliefs in terms of culture and religion, which exacerbated the barriers to border crossing in this field. However, the data indicated that students did not find it as difficult to cross the barriers created by cultural or traditional beliefs as those caused by fundamentalist Christian beliefs. The biggest obstacle to learning related to conflict between creationist and scientific accounts of the formation of the Earth and Universe. While this is not unusual, as shown by studies carried out in the United States, where religious students are also affected by the apparent conflict between Christianity and science, the most significant finding of this study related to the existence and extent of this conflict in Black African students. In post-1994 South Africa, the revision of the national education system has resulted in a science curriculum that recognizes 'other ways of knowing'. These refer specifically, however, to Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) rather than religious beliefs. The curriculum does not acknowledge that African ontology is religious. It also does not recognize the duality of this ontology in terms of African Traditional Religion and Christianity, which is the stated religion of the majority of Black South Africans. The findings of this study indicate that because of the nature of African philosophy, religious ways of knowing need to be explicitly acknowledged as one of the 'other ways of knowing'. Such acknowledgement by science teachers and lecturers would help to prevent these different knowledge systems from being discarded or compartmentalized, which was found to lead either to the promotion of scientism, or to the preclusion of meaningful engagement with science.