The aim of this study is to fill the gap in mathematics education research concerning the relationship between identity and positioning in mathematical collaboration in groups. This study elaborates on the relationship between how pupils see themselves as math students in sixth grade, how they show their identities as math students, in contrast to how they position themselves reflexively in group collaboration while engaging in mathematical problem solving. The theoretical concepts linked to this study are discourse, identity and positioning. Discourse is used to describe and form the setting and context of the study. Identity is seen as a transient and elusive concept formed by the students own perceptions of self through narratives. The reflexive form of positioning, where the students choose to position themselves in discourse, is derived from acts and speech in group collaboration. This form of positioning is then used as comparison to the narratives of identity to explore the relationship between these two concepts. Data has been collected through participative observation and dialogue, and discourse analysis is partially used to identify the relationship. The results may have implications for future structuring and planning of mathematics education in our classrooms, and the findings provide a narrowing of the gap in mathematics education research within this area. The findings also open up new questions concerning the social constructions of identity among children. Finally, the findings related to the need of reflexive positioning among children in their early teens, and how educators can benefit from this need, are other aspects worth further research.

This study discusses possible effects on investment decisions among Gotland enterprises from the ongoing public discourse over the present and future Gotland ferry traffic to mainland Sweden. Central topics are a substantial freight cost disadvantage, level and classification of state funding. By way of critical discourse analysis of statements from the most visible, powerful and persistent stakeholders surrounding the Gotland ferry issue are two major discursive thrusts identified. The level of enterprise awareness of the ferry discourses is investigated in a survey and correlated to perceived political uncertainty. Also is uncertainty related to investment reluctance. Further is the share of mainland marketed products related to the share of value-added products, and finally are enterprises asked whether they have invested to enhance the share of value-added products or if such investments are planned. The findings indicate that enterprises are well aware of the ferry discourse which is bringing about a high level of political uncertainty, while the level of investment hesitancy is somewhat more modest. Still a majority of enterprises are postponing or even refraining from investments. Also of interest is the high degree of consistency between enterprises with a high share of mainland marketing and high share of value-added products. A minority of enterprises has chosen the strategy to enhance their share of value-added products or is planning investments to that end in order to compensate for the higher transport costs. Longitudinal studies comparing the transport cost share of overall turnover for Gotland enterprises and their mainland competitors in the agriculture/food, manufacturing and tourism sectors are suggested, together with a study whether a more strategic investment pattern might evolve among Gotland enterprises.

In this thesis, the“NewModerates” communications strategy used by The Moderate Party and the representation of social practices and social conditions by Alliance for Sweden-coalition in the 2006 and 2010 Swedish election campaigns are analyzed.The campaigns are placed in the context of current research on modern political communication and analyzed through Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis framework.The results indicate that The Moderate Party wanted to encourage voters to reassess their opinion of the party through the “NewModerates”-strategy, by indicating considerable changes in their policies.Official guidelines for which discursive and social practices should be utilized in party communication to achieve these goals were issued.The Moderate Party positioned themselves against The Social Democratic Party, partially by referring to themselves as the “new worker’s party” of Sweden.

Theodor Fontane’s famous novel Effi Briest (1895) has been widely discussed in secondary literature, and every single aspect of the novel’s complex content and style seems to have been analysed; however, the similarities in content and style between Fontane’s Effi Briest and his less known and discussed work Schach von Wuthenow (1882) have not yet been recognized. A remarkable and meaningful similarity between the two regarding the content is the portrayal of a close relationship between mother and daughter which is strongly influenced by the latter’s relation to the mother’s (former) admirer. The relationship of Josephine von Carayon and her daughter Victoire and that of Luise von Briest and her daughter Effi will be compared by means of an analysis based on Michel Foucault’s theories on discourse, truth and power; in particular, the discourse of beauty, illness, honour and love will be closely examined. A method based on Foucault’s theories facilitates an analysis of the female protagonists’ actions that is free of moral implications for the protagonists are understood in their non-freedom of action owing to their discourse-constructed identity. Since the constellations of power in which the female protagonists are living cannot be analysed without the male protagonists’ influence, the constitution of Schach and Innstetten’s characters will be closely examined, too. The analysis of the discourse of beauty and illness shows that those disourses are portrayed as inseparably connected. In the society outlined by Fontane in Schach von Wuthenow, Victoire is made an outsider due to the pockmarks in her face; during the private conversation at Prince Louis’ castle, however, the prince calls Victoire a beauté du diable whose beauty is based on the survival of a fatal disease which has resulted in a passionate character. Innstetten, on the contrary, considers Effi to be particularly beautiful when she looks pale, lethargic and frail for he connects Effi’s ill appearance with his wife finally becoming a woman. Beauty, however, is exposed as a construct in both of Fontane’s works: on the one hand, by the (in itself) contradictory argumentations of the characters; on the other hand, by the narrators who criticize and disprove the prince’s idea of Victoire, which is temporarily accepted by Schach, and Innstetten’s connection of illness, beauty and femininity. The examination of the discourse of honour and love reaches the conclusion that both of Fontanes’s works portray honour as a construct with changing truth. In Schach von Wuthenow honour is exposed and critiziced mainly by Josephine, in Effi Briest mainly by Innstetten and Luise because these characters are aware of the identity-constructing quality of the demands made by society. Nevertheless, Innstetten submits his love for Effi to the claims by the disourse of honour; Luise, however, realizes in her love for Effi a part of her human essence. Luise’s love for her daughter is completely accepted since it is considered natural; thus it turns out to be beyond the demands of honour. Josephine also acknowledges the greater truth of parental love and retreats from her strong wish to live a life in harmony with society in favour of her daughter. By means of their female protagonists, Fontane’s story Schach von Wuthenow and his novel Effi Briest demand a re-evaluation of the discourse of love. Not the love between a man and a woman but the love of a mother for her daughter is portrayed as natural and is thus considered beyond any demands of the disourse of beauty and honour.

The goal of this thesis was to validate journalist Rick Perlstein’s assertion in Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008) that the foundational dialectic of the 1960s “has not yet ended.” With Nixon as the principal cultural architect of modern American political discourse, Perlstein defined Nixonland as “the America where two separate and irreconcilable sets of apocalyptic fears coexist in the minds of two separate and irreconcilable groups of Americans.” Perlstein’s grand narrative for the inherited socio-political landscape of the 1960s has conceptually synthesized the nature of the “culture wars” of the 1960s based on Nixon’s imposed hegemonic framework for political discourse through the theatre of television. The central argument of this thesis is shaped by the dialogue in the historiography in that Richard Nixon and Barack Obama appear to be “bookend presidents” of the limits of the modern American kulturkampf- the ongoing conflict between religious and secular elements in American society. While Nixon confined political discourse within the hegemonic framework of the images and rhetoric of modern American conservatism imbibed in the 1960s, Obama expanded the limits of political discourse through the motives and motifs of New Left rationalism established in the 1960s. Within this interpretative framework, this thesis illustrates the foundational dynamic of campaigning and governance within modern American political discourse by demonstrating how presidential elections are structured according to the Republican style of conservative “populist aggression” against the liberal Democratic substance of “fairness issues.”

Doing and learning science are social activities that require certain language, activities, and values. Both constitute what Gee (2005) calls Discourses. The language of learning science varies with the learning context (Lemke, 2001,1990). Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1990) and Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 2000) endorse inquiry science learning. In the United States, most science learning is teacher-centered; inquiry science learning is rare (NRC, 2000). This study focused on 12 high school students from two suburban high schools, their three faculty mentors, and two engineering mentors during an extracurricular robotics activity with FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC). FRC employed student-centered inquiry focus to teach science principles integrating technology. Research questions were (a) How do science teachers and their students enact Discourses as they teach and learn science? and (b) How does the pedagogical approach of a learning activity facilitate the Discourses that are enacted by students and teachers as they learn and teach science? Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the study examined participants’ language during robotic activities to determine how language used in learning science shaped the learning and vice versa. Data sources included video-recordings of participant language and semi-structured interviews with study participants. Transcribed recordings were coded initially using Gee’s (2005) linguistic Building Tasks as a priori codes. CDA was applied to code transcripts, to construct Discourses enacted by the participants, and to determine how context facilitated their enactment. Findings indicated that, for the students, FRC facilitated elements of Science Discourse. Wild About Robotics (W.A.R.) team became, through FRC, part of a community similar to scientists’ community that promoted knowledge and sound practices, disseminated information, supported research and development and encouraged interaction of its members. The public school science classroom in the U.S. is inimical to inquiry learning because of practices and policies associated with the epistemological stance that spawned the standards and/or testing movement and No Child Left Behind (Baez & Boyles, 2009). The findings of this study provided concrete ideas to accommodate the recommendations by NRC (1996) and NSES (2000) for creating contexts that might lead to inquiry science learning for meaningful student engagement.

The field of global health has grown rapidly over the past two decades. In response, academic institutions have established new educational practices and training opportunities for students. One flourishing area of global health training is in international medical electives (IMEs) in which medical students experience medicine in a different political, cultural, and epidemiological context for a short period of time. Scholarly literature on IMEs has been published and disseminated widely, and various discourses establish the way that IMEs are understood and experienced. However, rather than offering neutral descriptions, discourses actively shape the world in favor of certain viewpoints. When accepted uncritically, dominant discourses can reproduce inequalities by legitimizing certain practices. In the field of global health, dominant discourses have been largely unexamined and unquestioned. Informed by social constructionist and post-structuralist views of language, this study critically examines IME discourses in 60 journal articles published between 2000 and 2011. A method for analyzing discourse influenced by the French philosopher Michel Foucault was used to emphasize the intricate relationship between discourse, knowledge, and power. The findings reveal that two dominant discourses cohere to produce commonly accepted and appropriate knowledge about IMEs. The discourse of “disease and brokenness” depicts IMEs as situated in faraway lands plagued by “exotic” diseases, and the discourse of “romanticizing poverty” portrays developing countries as trapped in time. These discourses emphasize and privilege certain meanings, while discrediting and silencing others. Moreover, IME discourses constitute uneven power relations and are characterized by a language that relies on dichotomies. In both of the identified discourses, medical students are privileged subjects while inhabitants are marginalized. As a result, inequalities between developed and developing countries are reproduced and the possibilities for forming mutually beneficial relationships during IMEs are constrained. Recognizing that reality is constituted through language, the findings indicate that prevailing representations are constructed rather than inevitable “truths”. Furthermore, this study suggests that dominant meanings can be resisted, articulates how current “truths” can be destabilized, and proposes a new way of conceptualizing IMEs. By critically reflecting on their work, students, researchers, and practitioners in the field of global health can engage in more socially just practices.

Information and communication technologies are not value-neutral. I examine two domains, public health surveillance and sustainability, in five papers covering: (i) the design and development of a software package for computer-assisted outbreak detection; (ii) a workflow for using simulation models to provide policy advice and a list of challenges for its practice; (iii) an analysis of design documents from three smart home projects presenting intersecting visions of sustainability; (iv) an analysis of EU-financed projects dealing with sustainability and ICT; (v) an analysis of the consequences of design choices when creating surveillance technologies. My contributions include three empirical studies of surveillance discourses where I identify the forms of action that are privileged and the values that are embedded into them. In these discourses, the presence of ICT entails increased surveillance, privileging technological expertise, and prioritising centralised forms of knowledge. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 4: Manuscript. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>

This study investigates the underlying factors of what connects gender and social status with environmental exploitation in the Tunisian society. It starts from an Ecofeminist theoretical basis, which explores the male domination over women and the natural environment. Furthermore, it uses a top-down and a bottom-up approach to test the hypothesis of the study. The top-down approach relies on Dryzek’s discourse analysis while the bottom-up approach is based on empirical data and Schwartz’s seven cultural value orientation theory. Through the discourse analysis elements of a Sustainable Development environmental discourse were identified. Moreover, Schwartz’s culture value orientation theory showed that even though Tunisian women live in harmony with nature, because the society emphasizes values such as embeddedness and hierarchy, the culture is not likely to promote equality. Thus, the hypothesis of the study was fulfilled, i.e. there is a relationship between the subordination of the Tunisian woman and the degradation of the environment.

Using discourse analysis, this study will apply a critical theoretical framework and discuss how perceptions of the Tanzanian national borders compares to problematized understandings of the socially constructed concepts of borders, sovereignty, and power. For example, the Tanzanian borders will be reassessed into something creating a safe ‘inside’ opposing an unsafe ‘outside, and into something dividing territories, thus, giving birth to the identities of ‘nationality’. Furthermore, the presence of biopolitical interventions will be discussed in order to see how biopower can help increase security in Tanzania. More substantially, the phenomena of roadblocks will be analysed as something potentially functioning as ‘extended arms’ of the national border. The analysis showed how the so called ‘geopolitical imaginary’, where borders are defined as the outer reaches of a sovereign state, is a well-established idea in Tanzania; the national borders were perceived as important and worthy of protection. However, they can also be seen as something ultimately creating non-coherent ‘insides’ and an ‘outsides’, where outside ‘threats’, often perceived as illegal immigrants, are dependent on the existence of territories. The analysis further showed that biopower in Tanzania is something which can create ‘social’ borders wherever there is authority. This form of exercised power does although suffer severely from corruption, and this leads to a conclusion that Tanzanian ‘security’, to a great extent, is being evaluated in terms of money.