There is a wealth of literature on the induction and support of provisionally registered teachers (Boreen, 2009; Bubb, 2007; Cameron, Lovett, & Garvey Berger, 2007) and the key skills of mentoring (Achinstein & Athanases, 2006; Glickman, 2002). However literature on how to meet the professional learning needs of curriculum leaders developing their mentoring skill set has largely been ignored in leadership literature. This study, informed by MacBeath and Dempster’s (2009)concept of ‘leadership for learning’, upholds the need for leadership work to focus on the improvement of student outcomes (Barber & Fullan, 2005) rather than traditional approaches to education which focussed on making resources available to students. In an outcomes-focussed model of education, the needs of the students are at the forefront of all learning. By focussing on teachers’ professional learning through mentoring and the use of a teacher inquiry model, the students’ learning needs are prioritised. The focus for my study is the skillset of curriculum leaders for their work with teachers within their learning areas. The participants for this study were five curriculum leaders, all from the same secondary school. This intervention study investigated the factors which contributed to the professional learning of the mentors, their views of their leadership role and the kinds of learning about mentoring which were beneficial to understandings about mentoring. By focussing on key adult learning principles, structures that support learning, and attention to a mentoring skill set, the participants were supported to develop their mentoring skills. The mentors participated in a professional learning experience, referred to as a Quality Learning Circle (QLC), over one and a half school terms, to co-construct their understanding of mentoring practice. In a QLC the focus is on the learners seeking and making changes to their practice in a collaborative, supportive environment (Lovett & Verstappen, 2003). The mentors collaboratively developed new understandings through deliberate talk in the QLC about their shared interest in mentoring. They also had opportunities for immediate and practical application of their new knowledge. While they participated in the QLC they co-currently developed their mentoring skills by working with a mentee who taught in the same subject area as themselves. This study features a qualitative methodology with an interpretive case study of experienced curriculum leaders. Data collection tools included a gap analysis survey which explored their understandings of their school’s current professional learning opportunities. A second data source was a career questionnaire which explored their teaching history and experiences of professional learning. This was followed by initial interviews which focussed on how they interpreted their role of a curriculum leader and the extent they could connect leadership with students’ learning. I also analysed transcripts of QLC meetings, and the teachers’ reflective journals. Four of the mentors worked with a provisionally registered teacher (PRT), while one mentor chose to work with a more experienced colleague. This study offered a new type of collegial interaction for the teachers. The mentors chose their own goals, a mentee to work alongside and the direction of their learning about mentoring. The QLC met five times during the study and the mentors and participant researcher (PR) also kept a reflective journal. In between the QLC sessions the mentors met with their mentees to practise their mentoring skills, such as questioning skills, and the use of observational tools for classroom observations. A typical QLC session focussed on each of the mentors talking about the mentoring practice they had undertaken. The group provided support and guidance on possible next steps of practice. Readings and practical resources were also discussed and there was an expectation that the mentors would practice an aspect of mentoring and report back to the group at the next meeting. At the close of the study the mentors were re-interviewed to compare their views of their leadership role and learning from their initial interviews. An iterative process was used so that emerging understandings of the data could arise. The data is presented according to the three broad themes of ‘effective professional learning’, ‘leadership role’ and ‘professional learning about mentoring’. The findings of this study highlight the importance of collaborative learning opportunities for teachers where they can state and resolve practical issues in a supportive group (Cochran-Smith, Feiman-Nemser, McIntyre, & Association of Teacher Educators., 2008). Among all of the findings there were four major findings about the development of curriculum leaders’ mentoring skills: the value of opportunities for deliberate talk, the importance of teacher agency, the need for specific tools in developing mentoring practice, and the necessity of understanding the curriculum leaders’ leadership role. My detailed account of the experiences of the five curriculum leaders offers a practical example of what the development of curriculum leaders’ understandings of mentoring might look like. This study serves to highlight the challenges for schools to provide support for teachers wanting to take responsibility for their own professional learning. In the absence of any formalised leadership professional learning about mentoring for curriculum leaders, this study proved to be a useful study to demonstrate the potential of the QLC approach to support curriculum leaders in their understandings and practice of mentoring. The key findings of this study validate the need for further research on what is needed for effective mentoring to be an integral part of every school.

Studien tar utgangspunkt i et metodeutviklingsprosjekt ved et barnevernkontor i Oslo, kalt ”DuKanJo” – et forsøk på å anvende eksternaliserende samtaler som en form for empowermentstrategi allerede i undersøkelsesfasen i en barnevernsak. I alt fire familier ble invitert til å delta i såkalte ettersamtaler – en form for evaluering av et empowermentprosjekt – samtaler som også utgjorde de primære forskningsdata i studien. Studien bruker en narrativ tilnærming både som forskningsmetode og som metodisk tilnærming i ettersamtalene og kan derfor betraktes som både en evaluering av en empowermentsrategi og som et forskningsprosjekt. Hensikten med studien er å belyse om hvorvidt en narrativ metodikk i undersøkelsessaker kan bidra til å flytte fokuset i barnevernssaker fra problemorientering til ressursorientering. Studien søker også å svare på om det er mulig for barnevernet - med et så klart definert kontrollmandat -, å gjøre bruk av en ressursorientert tilnærming for å fremme familienes salutogene krefter og mestringsstrategier. Studien bekrefter at en slik tilnærming er mulig, men at det fortsatt finnes faglige og etiske dilemmaer knyttet til en slik tilnærming. / The study is a result of, and an ambition of, using a narrative approach as an empowerment strategy at a child protection office in Oslo. Externalising conversations is the main method in the strategy, in order to implement this kind of narrative orientation, at an early stage in the co-operation between the family and the social workers. Four families were invited to an interview, which also was designed as an evaluation dialog of the empowerment process, which they have been attending to during the project. The data from the interviews was then examined by a narrative research method. The main purpose of the study is to confirm that a salutogenic approach is a useful orientation for social workers in their attempt to invite families into a more formal partnership at an early stage in the investigation process. The study confirms the advantages of the orientation, but also that there still is some methodological and ethical dilemmas related to this orientation. / <p>ISBN 91-7997-142-3</p>

This study explored the content of courtroom conversations about children's prior discussions regarding sexual abuse. Sixty felony child abuse trial transcripts including child testimony and reviewing court opinions were collected from the Court of Appeal and from court reporters. Information was obtained from under Section 288 of the California Penal code (sexual abuse of a child under 14 years of age) filed in Los Angeles County from 1997 to 2001. For this study, transcript testimony was transcribed, extracted for the necessary information, coded, assessed for reliability, and analyzed. The findings indicate that conversations about children's prior disclosure conversations, non-disclosure conversations, and conversations with perpetrators are present in nearly all cases of alleged child sexual abuse, although they only represent about 8% of questions asked of children. These courtroom conversations appear to mimic effects found throughout other child testimony research: children are often limited in their responsiveness unless open ended questions are asked and they rarely provide detailed content unless prompted to do so. The findings revealed that overt accusations, references to children's motives for telling or not telling, and conversations with the perpetrator about abuse were infrequently discussed by attorneys when interviewing child witnesses about their alleged sexual abuse during trial testimony. This was surprising as these topics are often discussed in the empirical literature as important factors to consider when assessing children's credibility. In the present study, children were often asked about what they disclosed generally, what was said during abusive acts, and what was (or was not) disclosed during specific prior conversations. Further, our results reflect that children's ultimate credibility assessment, as assessed by the outcome of the trial, related to the presence of non-disclosure questions and not the presence of disclosure questions or conversations between the perpetrator and child; cases without non-disclosure questions consistently resulted in a conviction. This study provided a first step in assessing the content of courtroom conversations about children's prior discussions about sexual abuse. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.

Vad är det som gör att vi uppfattar vissa samtal som svåra och hur ska vi på bästa sätt hantera dessa när de uppstår? Syftet med studien har varit att beskriva hur ett antal förskollärare upplever och säger sig hantera svåra samtal i förskolan. Utifrån syftet har vi ställt oss följande frågor: Vad menas med svåra samtal, enligt förskollärares upplevelser? Hur ser förskollärarnas förberedelser ut inför svåra samtal? Hur säger sig förskollärarna hantera de samtal som de uppfattar som svåra? Studien bygger på en kvalitativ metod i form av intervjuer som genomfördes med åtta förskollärare. Frågorna som ställdes var både strukturerade och ostrukturerade. Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i ett livsvärldsfenomenologiskt perspektiv. I resultatet framgår det att samtal som förskollärare upplever som svåra är samtal som rör ett barns missgynnande livssituation. Det framgår också av resultatet att den kollegiala stöttningen är utmärkande när det rör sig om förskollärarnas förberedelser inför ett samtal som kan tänkas bli svårt. Resultatet visar att det även finns brister i hur förskollärarna skapar möjligheter för föräldrarna att bli delaktiga i planeringen av samtalen. Vidare framgår det att ett samtal kan väcka känslor hos förskolläraren som kan medföra att samtalet får en svår karaktär. Hur ett svårt samtal hanteras ser väldigt olika ut men att ha barnet i fokus är något som poängteras av samtliga förskollärare. Studien synliggör en komplex verklighet där samtalen mellan förskolan och hemmet kan beröra känsliga och svåra ämnen, samtal som förskollärarna förväntas kunna hantera och förhålla sig till. / What is it that makes us perceive certain conversations as difficult and how do we best handle these as they arise? The aim of the study is to describe how a number of preschool teachers experience and claims to handle difficult conversations in preschool? The questions we asked were of structured art with a relatively high degree of standardization. According to the aim of the study we have asked ourselves the following questions; What is meant by a difficult conversation, according to preschool teachers experiences? How do the preschool teachers prepare before difficult conversations? How do preschool teachers claim to handle the conversations that they perceive as difficult? The study is a qualitative method based on interviews conducted with eight preschool teachers. The questions asked were of both structured and unstructured. The study is based on a life-world phenomenological perspective. The result shows that conversations that preschool teachers are experiencing as difficult conversations are those dealing with a child's disfavored life situation. Furthermore it appears that a conversation can generate feelings within the preschool teacher, which can cause the conversation to be of difficult character. The management of a difficult conversation is varying, but to keep the child in focus is something that is emphasized by all respondents. The study reveals a complex reality where a conversation between preschool and home involves sensitive and difficult subjects, conversations that preschool teachers are expected to handle and relate to.

This thesis investigates what can be gained by approaching social work reports and conversations as narratives. A conventional approach to social work accounting practices is to treat such documents as (more or less) accurate descriptions of social workers' clients, their problems and proposed remedies. Such a realist approach was found to be flawed, since it assumes straightforward access from accounts to external reality, not considering the constructedness of such documents. Drawing on theoretical themes from the sociology of scientific knowledge, literary theory, conversation analysis, ethnomethodology and sociolinguistics, this thesis explores the construction and reception of social work accounts as rhetorical, narrative and interactional processes. The documents analysed represent some of the occasions on which social workers describe and recommend social work intervention with children and their families - research interviews, court reports, internal memos, case file entries and journal reports. On these occasions, social work is performed and displayed in descriptions of people and their attributes, justifications for social work intervention and excuses for lack of success. The main theme of the thesis is that social work accounts can profitably be analysed as stories. To explain their work and their clients' world to a variety of audiences, social workers are heard to tell competent, professionally persuasive stories. A variety of storytelling features are explored, looking in particular at plot, character, the construction of the reader and the authority of the writer. Stories are heard to vary with reading occasions and critical audiences, and it is the study of reading relations which is a main focus of the analysis - to whom are these accounts addressed and how are they available to be read? Rhetorical features are investigated in order to understand how social work accounts are made available to be read as morally and factually persuasive. A critical reading is also offered, which questions the adequacy of the accounts, and makes available the possibility of reading unheard stories. Reflexive interludes comment on the claims of the thesis writer in terms of the efforts of the social work writer. The implications of this study are that treating social work accounts as textual accomplishments undermines social workers' claims for reporting objectively about their clients and their problems. Social work can be seen as constituted in and through the performance and reception of stories: doing competent social work is achieved through telling competent social work stories.

Electronic mail (e-mail) is an under-utilised resource of information and knowledge. It could be an important part of the larger so-called organisational memory (OM)—if it were not so disorganised and fragmented. The OM contains the knowledge of the organisation’s employees, written records, and data. This thesis is about organising and managing information in, and about, e-mail so as to make it retrievable and usable for task management purposes. The approach is user-centred and based on a conceptual model for task management. The model is designed to handle tasks that occur in the communications in an open distributed system, such as Internet e-mail. Both structured and unstructured tasks can be supported. Furthermore, the model includes management of desktop source information, which comprises the different electronically available sources in a user’s computer environment. The information from these is used in the model to sort information and thereby handle tasks and related information. Tasks are managed as conversations, that is, exchanges of messages. We present a language called Formal Language for Conversations (FLC), based on speech act theory, which is used to organise messages and relevant information for tasks. FLC provides the container for task-related information, as well as the context for managing tasks. The use of FLC is exemplified in two scenarios: scheduling a meeting and making conference arrangements. We describe a prototype based on the conceptual model. The prototype explicitly refines and supports the notion of threads, which are employed so as to give tasks a context. It integrates the use of FLC into the traditional threading mechanism of e-mail, in addition to matching on text in the body. An agent architecture is also described, which is used to harmonise the information in the heterogeneous desktop sources. Finally, human-readable filtering rules created by a machine learning algorithm are employed in the prototype. The prototype is evaluated with regard to its thread-matching capability, as well as the creation of usable and readable filtering rules. Both are deemed satisfactory.

Children are rarely asked about their experiences in the aftermath of war. Each child if given an opportunity has a unique and precious story to share. It is most likely that embedded within their experiential stories are essences of resilience. The purpose of this study was (1) to understand the phenomenon of resilience in an exploratory way with regard to how Afghan refugee children adapt despite facing adversities in the aftermath of war, and (2) to contribute to the knowledge of nursing science and practice for healthy childhood development. The core research question was: What are the experiences of Afghan refugee children currently living in Canada in the aftermath of war? The sub question was: How do Afghan refugee children describe their experiences of day-to- day life? Gadamers (1960/1989) hermeneutic philosophy was used to understand the experiences of Afghan children in the aftermath of war. In addition, hermeneutic photography, which is based on the methodology of hermeneutic (interpretive) inquiry, was used as the methodological approach as well as method. Data were collected with the aid of photographs of the childrens own choice. Two to three photo conversations were done with seven children residing in Edmonton, Alberta. The participants ranged between the ages of 13 to 17; five were females and two were males.They were all born in Afghanistan and had two parent families and belonged to the Shia sect of Islam specifically,the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslims. Gadamers approach to data analysis was adopted throughout the study. Four themes emerged that described the day-to-day life experiences of the Afghan refugee children: (a) cherishing the family; (b) treasuring the Afghan culture; (c) creating opportune spaces to dwell; and (d) building and sustaining resilience. Recommendations were drawn as a useful guide from the findings of this study for education, practice, policy development, and future research to benefit Afghan refugee children and their families to dwell in a new country.

This dissertation studies meetings from a process perspective. Such an approach, which can be labelled ‘process organisation studies’ is promising in that it directs attention to social processes continuously in the making. The thesis builds on the current development in process organisation studies in two ways. The first centres on an elaboration on key assumptions of approaching organisational life from a process perspective. I here bridge process organisation studies with Bakhtin’s work on dialogue into a dialogical becoming perspective. This perspective calls for a distinct way of understanding processes of becoming which makes it possible to explore meeting practices as situated, emerging and relational world-making activities. The second is a comprehensive processual account based on a collaborative field study with two owner families. Organised meetings held in a family that owns a business (or several) has proved to be of importance for family business longevity in that the family members can help to develop strong family relations and a healthy business. In this setting, where people are dealing with that which is often most important to them in life, such as their identity, work, family relationships and future wealth, a process approach is useful since it helps to understand the emotionally loaded, complex and intertwined issues at stake.What emerges as central in understanding movement and flow is the need to understand the here and now moments in meetings. I refer to these moments as ‘living moments’ as a reminder of the once-occurring, unique and momentary transformation that can take place between people in such encounters. Thus, the living moment is the moment of movement.

This study focuses on inferential comprehension instruction in the classroom. The overall aim is to study the way in which four teachers are designing their lessons to develop their students’ ability to make inferences in literary text in the Swedish subject. The main focus is to explore what teaching modules may look like to promote students’ ability to make inferences (e.g. text choice, group size and method) and how the teachers motivate their didactic work. The study is also focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with inferential comprehension instruction. The methods used are qualitative studies using observations and interviews. The material consists of observation notes and interview recordings. The concept of inference and reading comprehension is consistent in the study and focuses on the importance of explicit instruction to improve the students’ inference comprehension. The models of inferential instruction are used to analyze the empirical material. The results show that teachers prefer to teach their students in groups of approximately 12 students, and they choose texts that are close to the students’ everyday life and in which a lot of inferences can be made. The majority of the teachers in the study demonstrate how they use the inference strategy by the method think aloud, to show their students examples of how to think and for them to use the strategy on their own eventually. All teachers remind the students of their own background knowledge, which is proven to increase the students’ ability to make inferences. This study shows that the possibilities with the teachers’ inference instruction lead to a deeper understanding among the students when reading. The challenges are lack of time when preparing, impatient students, and if the students do not activate the right background knowledge from the beginning, which will lead to misunderstandings while reading the text.

Syftet med den aktuella studien var att beskriva kuratorerna inom Barn och Ungdomsenheterna (socialtjänsten i Örebro) uppfattning av Magnus Ringborgs modell Förändrande familjesamtal, FFS och hur användbar de upplever den vara. Sjutton av behandlingsenheternas tjugofem kuratorer deltog i utvärderingen. Kuratorerna intervjuades utifrån ett intervjuformulär med fasta frågor och möjlighet till kommentarer. Fokus för utvärderingen var metodens olika moment och hur viktiga dessa bedömts vara av kuratorerna. Därefter ställdes generella frågor om metodens användbarhet och effektivitet. De flesta kuratorer var positiva till metoden FFS. De ansåg att metoden var lättanvänd, underlättade familjearbetet, gav struktur och effektiviserade behandlingsarbetet. Dock uppfattade en del av kuratorer att metoden hade begränsad användbarhet i resurssvaga och omotiverade familjer. / The aim of the present study was to describe the professional counselors, in Children and Youth Units at Social services in Örebro, opinion on Magnus Ringborgs model Therapeutic family conversations (FFS), and how useful they perceive it to be. Seventeen of the Children and Youth Units twenty-five counselors participated in the evaluation. The counselors were interviewed based on an interview form with pre-defined questions and had opportunity to comment. The focus of the evaluation was the various steps of the method and how important the counselors considered them to be. They were then asked general questions about the method´s usefulness and effectiveness. Most counselors had a positive approach to FFS. They considered the method to be easy to apply, facilitated family work, gave structure and streamlined the processing work. Some of the counselors did however perceive the method to have limited use in resource poor- and unmotivated families.