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The purpose of this study was to determine how and why students in grade six, in a suburban school division in Manitoba, make decisions regarding optional arts course choices for their grade seven year and their perceptions on these courses for grade seven. There was a particular focus on choice related to music courses. The researcher conducted interviews with students in grade seven who chose music as an option, students in grade seven who did not choose music as an option, and conducted focus group conversations with elementary music educators and middle years‟ music educators. The data indicated that the choice was difficult, that students felt that they should not have to choose and that, with parental support, students chose the option that expressed their passion.

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In the two years 1994 and 2013 the focus of the Swedish media in the school debate has been on segregation, freedom of choice, and support for weak students. In 2013 while the media was still united on the above issues the overall emphasis is on profitability. In 1994 the focus was more on weak students who in 2013 are considered unprofitable. The purpose of this essay is to study the Swedish media and their debate on Swedish schools and witch concepts related to "one school that fits all" in the year 1994 and also in 2013. We have analysed related articles and their concepts, norms, and values to see if there are any differences between their focus on the said issues in the two years. We have also studied the ideas and concepts that came under scrutiny and discussion in these two years, and shall investigate if there are differences in the debates conducted in 1994 and those conducted in 2013.

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Denna studie undersöker hur premiepensionssparare tar beslut och vad som ligger till grund för valet att vara aktiv eller passiv i syfte att skapa ökad förståelse och underlätta utformningen av ett ökat beslutsstöd för premiepensionsspararna. Tidigare studier har visat att premiepensionssparare som är kontinuerligt aktiva i sin placering är de som får högst avkastning på sin premiepension, ändå är en stor andel av svenska premiepensionssparare passiva. Studien undersöker några av de faktorer och tankesätt som ligger till grund för att en stor andel av svenska premiepensionssparare inte tar beslut som förväntas enligt teoretiska beslutsteorier som förutsätter rationalitet. Som verktyg för att undersöka och öka förståelsen för premiepensionssparares beslutsfattande används prospect theory som är en alternativ teori till den klassiska ekonomiska teorin om ekonomiskt beslutsfattande. Studien grundar sig i problematiken som uppstår när samhällsutvecklingen allt mer skapar större informationsflöde samtidigt som allt mer beslut och risk läggs på individen. Mängden information ökar samtidigt som det blir allt svårare att filtrera vilken information som är viktig. Genom enkätundersökning visar studien att informationsöverflöd och kunskapsbrist är de främsta orsakerna till valet av passivitet. Studien visar också att en högre kvalitet på den information som ges om fonder och premiepensionsystemet skulle kunna få fler premiepensionssparare att bli aktiva. Studien ger även indikationer om att svenska premiepensionssparare tar beslut enligt prospect theory.

The purpose of this study was to determine how and why students in grade six, in a suburban school division in Manitoba, make decisions regarding optional arts course choices for their grade seven year and their perceptions on these courses for grade seven. There was a particular focus on choice related to music courses. The researcher conducted interviews with students in grade seven who chose music as an option, students in grade seven who did not choose music as an option, and conducted focus group conversations with elementary music educators and middle years‟ music educators. The data indicated that the choice was difficult, that students felt that they should not have to choose and that, with parental support, students chose the option that expressed their passion.

Childbirth is an essential part of reproductive politics which have largely focused on expanding choice for women’s reproductive lives. Childbirth in the west has been medicalised, which means that authoritative knowledge was moved into the hands of the patriarchal medical establishment through displacement of traditional midwives, casting women as ‘hysterical’ and inherently sick and seeing birth as a medical event and technology as the appropriate way to deal with birth and the body. In the United States, with surveillance and risk factors, each woman in labour is considered in medical danger and treated accordingly, curtailing women’s ability to make decisions about their bodies and birth. The alternative or natural childbirth movement has resisted this form of medicalised birth, but within the movement, pressure can also be found on women to perform femininity and achieve a perfect birth. A focus on choice is therefore limited without also considering structural factors. / Graduate

The Education Reform Act of 1988 introduced a policy of open enrolment into English secondary education that was designed to enhance the scope for parental choice of schools. In the resulting 'quasi market' for education, state school admissions authorities can no longer deny most expressed parental preferences, and the majority of state educational funding follows pupils to the secondary schools that they attend. Accompanying these policy reforms has been a longstanding concern that the new school attendance patterns resulting from the enhanced choice present within an open enrolment system would further polarize the social compositions of secondary schools in England. This thesis employs recently developed individual-level databases such as the Pupil Level Annual Schools' Census (PLASC), along with GIS mapping software, to investigate the role that choice of non-local schools played in the degree of social segregation in English secondary schools in 2002. A detailed analysis of the data reveals high rates of non-local school attendance across many areas of England in 2002 as large numbers of pupils from all backgrounds bypassed their local schools in favour of non-local alternatives. Although non-local school choice was exercised by both disadvantaged and more advantaged segments of the schooling population, pupils eligible for free school meals were less likely to attend higher performing non-local schools than their more advantaged counterparts. The disproportionate gains made from non-local school attendance by more advantaged secondary pupils within the marketplace helped to reinforce local school hierarchies already strongly associated with performance and social composition. As the individual level pupil data in PLASC illustrates, the exercise of non-local school choice in 2002 produced school compositions that were more segregated by socio-economic status than they otherwise would be under a system of local school catchments. Thus, rather than helping to diminish the social segregation of secondary pupils resulting from pronounced residential segregation levels, the availability of parental choice instead further stratified most English secondary schools by socio-economic status in 2002.