A critical exploration of seven peer-reviewed published papers supports the author’s contention that learning in Higher Education is a fragile system of conscious and unconscious transactions that serve to weaken a process that is already precarious. Over the course of this essay and the accompanying papers, the submission is that learning is brittle, and easily broken. The Fragile Learner is described as someone close to conceding defeat to circumstances that threaten his education. The Fragile Learner might be a student of a Higher Education Institution, but also might be an appointed educator. Alongside notions of barriers to learning, this submission explores identities and tensions. Although some of the ideas that make up my picture of Fragile Learning have been researched by other contributors (notably Meyer and Land; Britzman), my own contribution sees the complexities through various psychoanalytic lenses. Fundamentally, it is the addition of psychoanalysis that makes Fragile Learning original. It is argued that anxiety is an important part of adult learning. Fragile Learners might experience anxieties that are internal and complex but which appear to be attacks from other people. Alternatively, Fragile Learning might be a consequence of learners having suffered illness or indisposition. It is important that something can be blamed. The themes of fragility and anxiety – not to mention the difficulties that arise from distance learning – are present throughout.

abstract: This dissertation explores the lives of women who are on the Severely Mentally Ill (SMI) caseload at Maricopa County Adult Probation in Arizona (The Phoenix metro region). The project focuses on three primary issues: (1) what are the pathways to the criminal justice and mental health systems for women on the SMI caseload (2) how does discretion and expansive formal social control (both benevolent and coercive) impact the lives of these women on the SMI caseload and (3) what are the gendered aspects to successful completion of SMI probation. To answer these questions a mixed-methods research design was employed. First, in-depth semi-structured interviews were completed with 65 women on the SMI caseload. Second, these interviews were supplemented with a case file review of each participant, and field observations (encompassing roughly 100 hours) were conducted at the Maricopa County Mental Health Court. Third, analysis also included 5.5 years of quantitative intake data from the SMI caseload, exploring demographic information and risk and assessment needs scores. The biographies of the women on the SMI caseload revealed similar histories of victimization, substance abuse, and relationship difficulty that previous pathways research has noted. Additionally, mental health problems directly impacted the path to the criminal justice system for some women on the SMI caseload. Results also showed many aspects of expanded social control for women on the SMI caseload. This expanded control appeared to be gendered at times and often created double binds for women. Finally, quantitative analysis showed that some predictive factors of SMI probation completion were gendered. Policy implications and summaries of findings are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Criminology and Criminal Justice 2013

This study examines the difference in perception of a character in a male and a female guise amongst university students in Seychelles, and elaborates on how such difference reflects gender hierarchies in general. The students were given a questionnaire consisting of five scenarios, in which two or more characters communicated, and then answered questions about their perception of the characters. The character’s gender mattered to how he/she was perceived for at least one of the characters in the dialogue, in four of the scenarios, and in one scenario there was no difference in perception of the male guise and the female guise. The biggest difference in perception of a male guise and female guise was in a scenario in which one character commented on his/her colleague’s appearance. The male guise was perceived more negatively both when commenting and when rejecting such comment. However, the space in which the interaction took place, and the relationship between the characters influenced how they were perceived. So, when a group of people commented on an unknown person’s appearance, on the beach, the respondents perceived both the male guise and the female guise of the character similarly both as commenters and as receivers of the comment.

The purpose of this study was to see how often, and to what extent, students in upper secondary school use adjectives and adverbs in their school writing. Additionally, a comparison was made between girls and boys. 40 texts were used in total, and 20 of them were written by girls and 20 written by boys. I counted the adjectives and adverbs in the texts and took notes of what kind of adjectives and adverbs were used as well as how often each of them were used. In this study, I found that girls outperform boys in both total number, of both adjectives and adverbs, as well as in variety. Furthermore, I found that students use far more adjectives than they do adverbs in their school writing.

The aim of this study is to examine Japanese gendered language use in online game streaming, and the differences in gendered language use between male and female streamers. The main aim of this thesis is to examine how, and to what extent, young Japanese adults use gendered language when broadcasting gaming streams online. I will examine how pronounced the differences in gendered language use are between male and female streamers, and see if the major theories about gendered language apply in the Japanese streaming community. To collect the data, I looked at 20 game streamers, with each stream lasting 15-30 minutes. I transcribed the streamers’ commentary, and examined the frequency of certain sentence ending particles, personal pronouns, and polite speech/word choice. The streamers were chosen with regards given to certain criteria to prevent skewed results, and to control the independent variables to a certain extent. For example, the streamers must be playing alone to ensure that the streamer is the only person speaking. I analyzed the results using a qualitative method, which indicated that the greater gender differences are found in the use of personal pronouns, but not as much in the use of sentence ending particles or politeness level.

Although interpersonal communication studies have focused on various aspects of interpersonal relationships, research on the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation in romantic relationships has received little attention. This narrative research inquiry was undertaken to explore perceptions of men and women related to the player identity and gendered emotional manipulation. This investigation used social construction as a theoretical perspective to understand three areas of investigation that include: the existence and relevance of the player identity, the player’s relation to emotionally manipulative behaviour, and the connection between socially constructed gender conventions and the player identity. Hesse-Biber’s (2006) feminist interviewing approach guided semi-structured interviews with six male and six female participants. Respondents reported the existence and relevance of the player identity in romantic relationships today, connecting this identity to emotionally manipulative behaviour, as well as relating this identity to traditional gender conventions. Finally, implications for men and women in romantic relationships today and future areas of research are discussed in light of these findings.

This study contends that the spaces where crime occurs in films are not neutral; they are layered with maps of meaning that we construct somewhere between the imagined and the lived. Given that popular cultural representations both shape and reflect our understandings of crime and space, a study examining where crime occurs in films was warranted but previously unrealized in the criminological literature. This study addresses this gap in the literature by considering how geographies of crime are characterized in a sample of ten recent popular crime films. Applying a qualitative content analysis approach, this study foregrounds the onscreen spaces where crimes occur in an attempt to expose and denaturalize the meanings around crime that are embedded in these backgrounds. Particular regard is given here to the twinning of crime and urbanity, the aesthetics of insecurity, and the gendering of geographies of crime.

Background: The portrayal of men and women in various contexts and genderedrelated research is a field of interest that has been extensively dealt with for more than three decades. Still, an acknowledgement of the “truth” is far from being attained. In marketing, the power of storytelling has revolutionized the way stories are used in business practice. This research focus on gender differences in marketing by adding storytelling as a parameter. Purpose: This thesis was conducted to investigate if men and women's perceptions differ in terms of decoding elements in a story. The purpose was answered by two research questions: (1) Do men and women’s perceptions differ in terms of decoding a message or theme in storytelling? (2) If so, what elements plays major roles? Method: This thesis takes on a triangulation method and uses an interpretivist research paradigm with a deductive research approach to explore the purpose. This was a qualitative study where primary data was collected using two qualitative research methods, and secondary data from peer-reviewed articles containing relevant theories to this research. Conclusion: The conclusion is made that if marketers aims to target women, they should focus to create a highly emotional story that contains sentimental elements and shows the importance of family, relationships and love. If they want to target the male audience, they should focus on creating a story that includes a character that is distinctly portrayed as a hero, information is told clearly and straight away where the males easily can identify the mission and, also emphasize statistics and status.

This study examines occupational aspiration and choice of traditional first-time college students utilizing longitudinal data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). Focus is given to beliefs about the importance of family and money in relation to selection of an occupation that is classified as sex-typed. Change from one occupational category to another is also considered. The dissonance between students' beliefs about the importance of family and money as associated with their sex-typed occupational choice is explored. Understanding students' occupational plans that subsequently determine future prestige, wealth, and status is vital to higher educational professionals who facilitate students in their career selection and major. Therefore, environmental factors of satisfaction with career counseling and academic advising are examined. The U.S. Census Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data is applied in the classification of sex-typed occupations. Race and ethnicity is investigated to determine if the same gender patterns exist among cultural groups with regards to their occupational selection. The results indicate that students' occupational aspirations were influenced by their belief regarding the importance of family or money. In addition, their beliefs regarding family and money changed after four years of college with family increasing in importance. Strong beliefs that were, either concordant or discordant with relation to students' gender and occupational choice predicted change after four years of college. Also, race and ethnicity showed some relation to sex-typed occupational aspirations of students. Being Hispanic predicted female sex-typed occupations, while being Asian predicted male sex-typed occupations. However, the results of this study may have been compromised by the extremely skewed representation of an elitist student sample. Thus, future research that includes a more diverse student sample (race/ethnicity, social class, and geographical location) was recommended for validation of this study's findings.

abstract: This dissertation examines the concept of gendered space as it applies to prayer spaces in Islam, particularly mosques and mushollas exclusively for women. Gendered space is often articulated as space created by those with power—men— in order to control women’s access to knowledge and to put them at a disadvantage, thereby maintaining patriarchal structures. Yet, when groups are relegated to or voluntarily choose the margins, those within may transform the margins into sites of empowerment. I consider the dynamics of religious space, including its construction, maintenance, and activities performed by its inhabitants, by focusing on the Women’s Mosque of America in Los Angeles, which opened in 2015, and Musholla ‘Aisyiyah Ranting Karangkajen and Musholla ‘Aisyiyah Kauman, which have been in operation since the 1920s in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. This work is based on ethnographies of the attendees of these three sites in order to explore the experiences of the women and the impact both traditional religious spaces and religious spaces exclusive to women have on their spirituality, ideas of authority, and sense of community. The Women’s Mosque of America and ‘Aisyiyah women’s mushollas create opportunities for women to participate in and contribute to Muslim communities by basing their efforts on the Sunnah and examples of female piety and leadership in early Islam. The present research challenges the argument that gendered spaces are inherently detrimental and must be remedied by a de-gendering process. Rather, the accounts of the attendees of the Women’s Mosque of America and ‘Aisyiyah women’s mushollas speak to the possibilities of creating an exclusive space that privileges those within it, fulfilling the women’s desire of religious knowledge, leadership, community, and piety in ways that traditional religious spaces have at times fallen short. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Religious Studies 2020