The modern world is focused on children. We care much more about the right regime of our children, about hygiene and other aspects of their daily routine. So it is not surprising that many scientists start their recent projects on or with children. Anthropology is not an exception. This study creates a smaller part of a larger sleep research study which aims to investigate whether two community based social marketing campaigns influence parents' view of pre-school children sleep requirements and healthy sleep practices. This work targets directly pre-school children and wants to determine if we are able to educate children about healthy and right sleeping habits through specifically performed game based activities. The main aim of this study is to find out which games are useful for enhancing the results of the supreme Medical Anthropology research. Secondary aim is to solve what we can generally do for a better engagement of children in our research.

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Gender based violence (GBV) is a global public health issue and a major feature in humanitarian emergencies. However, the phenomenon is not inevitable and can be predicted and prevented. In a context such as the Philippines, where GBV is widespread and there is a constant threat of natural hazards, strengthening the capacity of humanitarian responders to reduce the risks of GBV post disasters can contribute to preventing unnecessary suffering of affected populations. Yet, no previous research has looked at factors associated with the perpetration of GBV and strategies used by humanitarian actors to engage with men and boys to prevent these types of violence post disasters in the Philippines. The aim of this study is to enhance this knowledge and investigate; how can humanitarian actors in the Philippines work with men and boys to prevent the perpetration of GBV post disasters? The study adopts a qualitative research approach and based on a literature review and 18 key-informant interviews with humanitarian actors in the Philippines, it explores the current knowledge and practice on the topic. The material was analysed in relation to gender and feminist theory, the Ecological Model of risk factors of GBV, a primary prevention approach and the Spectrum of Violence Prevention. The study identifies a number of aggravating factors that seem to be associated with an increased risk of perpetration of GBV post disasters, such as men’s loss of a livelihood and lack of coping mechanisms. However, these factors are not the causes of GBV but these violent acts are deeply rooted in gendered power imbalances and rigid gender roles in the Philippines society. Ultimately, the study concludes that to effectively prevent the perpetration of GBV post disasters, long-term and effective multi-sectoral efforts between a wide range of actors are needed. In this work, humanitarian actors can play a key role to initiate change. The study suggests that humanitarian actors, within their existing activities, should seek to increase men’s access to safe spaces, peer support networks and mental health services, and support men to develop more elastic gender roles and non-violent coping mechanisms. Programmes should simultaneously increase women’s empowerment, the broader community’s support for social change and allow for dialogue to take place between women and men to synchronise their social transformations. Finally, the study notices that a rather heteronormative and binary understanding of gender seem to be present in the shared initiatives to prevent GBV post disasters. Hence, the study suggests that humanitarian actors should strengthen the capacity of their staff to apply a gender and norm-critical analysis in their work by incorporating these aspects in internal trainings.

In 2015 the UN completed a list of environmental and social goals, one of these goals is the “life in the water” goal, or goal 14. It focuses on the factors endangering the diversity and the ecological balance in the water. However, the goals are formulated with a focus on changes to be done by countries or bigger organisations, not by individuals. This project focused on creating a design for a technical solution that teaches and motivates youths how to help take care of the planet. To do this a design process consisting of a pre-study, concept phase and a workshop were done. The pre-study consisted of interviews, a questionnaire and a pre-study of similar digital games. The interviews focused on how youths and what values and knowledge youths are taught today. These interviews informed a questionnaire that focused on how and what the students were taught about taking care of the oceans. The last part of the pre-study was a review of games with focus on the environment, which was later used to inspire the design process. The concept phase consisted of three iteration phases of concepts and the last phase created the concept tested in the following workshop. Each iteration ended with a discussion of concepts were one or two concepts chosen to focus on. The final concept was a type of exhibition of two digital minigames or simulations and one physical simulation. The three prototypes were linked, in a wizard of Oz type of style, where two of the prototypes, the physical and one of the digital prototype, influenced the environment in the last digital prototype. The collective prototype seemed to inspire engagement and interest from the participants and was mainly received as a good idea. The workshop was held with youths between 12-16 years old and resulted in feedback and a proposition to a redesign.

Aspects of Engaging Problem Contexts From Students' PerspectivesTamara Kay Gandolph StarkDepartment of Mathematics Education, BYUMaster of ArtsToo many students have negative feelings towards mathematics which is causing them to disengage in their classrooms. This has led to student under-achievement. This study attempts to better understand how teachers can help students to reengage with mathematics by using more engaging contexts to develop mathematical content. The study began with the characteristics realistic, worthwhile, enjoyable or motivating as a framework for posing engaging problem contexts, which were synthesized from the current research literature. As students discussed what made contexts engaging, my understanding of what engaging problem contexts looked like expanded. The characteristics realistic and worthwhile were combined. Students felt contexts were more realistic and worthwhile when the contexts were authentic, purposeful and related to their everyday lives or a potential career situation. Furthermore, students felt context was enjoyable when it was interactive or included a good story. Finally, students discussed their frustration with repetition within problem contexts. Even if certain types of problems were engaging at first, if they saw them over and over again, they became unengaged. Students wanted to see a variety of new ideas and different kinds of contexts. This study better informs teachers and curriculum writers on what to include/exclude to make contexts more engaging for students.

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This dissertation studies the impact of two courses, “Rise Up” and “Leadership in Community Service,” at a Level 4 high school in Massachusetts. The school, which had a higher than average level of student dropout, implemented the two courses developed by the researcher to address student retention, academic performance, and connection to school. Students in grades 9-12 took one or both of the semester-long classes, which used community building activities, group discussions, democratic teaching principals, community service–learning, and goal setting to address the needs of marginalized students. Students who participated in the classes showed increased connections to peers, teachers and community members, an improvement in indicators for school retention including grades, behavior, and attendance, and also an increase in their perceptions about their ability to persist in challenging situations.

Community college students are often excluded from persistence studies due to the unique characteristics of community colleges and its students. Recent studies have heavily relied on retention models that do not adequately account for the role individual and campus culture plays in students’ persistence decisions. Using Museus’ (2014) Culturally Engaging Campus Environment (CECE) model, this cross-sectional, correlational study examined the impact of campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging on the persistence decisions of students at a rural community college in the southeastern part of the U.S. Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the relationships between two independent variables, campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging, and one dependent variable, students’ persistence decisions. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to determine if differences in campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging existed between racial and gender identity groups. Lastly, a t-test was conducted to examine differences between residential and commuter students. Utilizing the CECE Survey for Community Colleges (Museus et al., 2017), a total of 234 responses were analyzed. The results revealed that students are more likely to persist when they have a positive perception of the campus environment. It also revealed that students were more likely to persist when they possessed a strong sense of belonging. Upon examining differences of campus environment perceptions, the results showed that gender identity influenced campus environment perceptions and race influenced sense of belonging among students. There was insufficient evidence to establish differences of campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging among residential and commuter students. Limitations regarding this study included its generalizability due to the low number of survey responses and the physical aspect of campus environment and campus culture. Recommendations for policymakers and practitioners include consideration for community memberships, increase campus support for underrepresented groups, and cultural competency for training. Recommendations for future research include the use of different theoretical frameworks to understand student persistence, continued studies involving community colleges, inclusive campus environment perceptions and sense of belonging studies, and qualitative studies on campus environment perceptions and sense of belong of community college students.

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The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how international development organizations are working to communicate campaigns and photographs from one cultural context to another. Additionally, will challenges in making campaigns which are both ethical appropriate and engaging be highlighted and discussed in relation to today’s impatient media landscape where globalization and development are dominated by economic interests. This research follows the international development cooperation We Effect and explore their whole media production process while making external communication from the work in Kenya to the target group in Sweden. The researcher has done interviews with decision makers at the head office in Stockholm, regional communicators in Nairobi, independent photographers and farmers in the fields of Kenya, visible in We Effect’s campaigns in Sweden. Additionally, ethnographical observations and diary notes contribute to answer the question how international organizations are planning, creating and distributing ethical and engaging media about development organizations long-term development work. In theoretical discussions, anchored in concepts about global culture, cosmopolitanism and how to mediate distant others, together with previous literature by Lilie Chouliaraki, Roger Silverstone and Stuart Hall, will this research state that there are several challenges in communicating messages from one cultural context to another. The distance, both geographical and mental, makes it challenging for the media producers and spectators to understand the same message; this research states that both the media producers and spectators’ interpretations of photographs and messages are dependent on their cultural background.