Though death and mortality is an inevitable part of our lives it seems like both the society with its culture and the individual in some way repress death. This study was set to explore how and why the individual holds back thoughts on his/her own death and in which way society affect the individual’s repression of death-thoughts. Using a hermeneutic approach I have interviewed five informants about death and thoughts about death in everyday life. Also for the analysis of the empirical material a hermeneutic approach was used, and the works of Bauman, Giddens, Heidegger, Fromm and May served as a theoretical starting point. The findings reveal that society influences the individual’s thoughts about death and that the individual’s fear of death comes out of the fear of one owns body being in some sort of suffering just pre death. The institutionalization of sick persons and dead bodies is part of the medical culture and can explain the fact that the individual sees the bodily death as more frightening than human mortality itself. Even the way persons want to be remembered by survivors is part of the evidence of our society’s and culture’s objectification of the human body and death.

During my time as a student of education I have learnt that it is my responsibility, as a teacher, to adjust the ways in which I teach to the needs, abilities, experiences, and thoughts of each individual child. What I have not yet gained much knowledge on is how to go about finding the children’s thoughts. In this thesis I investigate the interview as a method of finding out how sixth graders think about their mathematics education. Four children were interviewed. In addition to these inter-views, as a means of giving a broader perspective to and a greater understanding of the chil-dren’s answers, one math lesson was filmed and the math teacher was interview on two sepa-rate occasions. What I found was that a number of factors seemed to influence the children’s thoughts and answers, and that their answers were most likely not always a mirror of their thoughts. From this follows that we, as teachers, must be careful and not assume that we know about a child’s thoughts when, in fact, what we know is what the child chooses to communicate about his or her thoughts. I also found that the children seemed unaccustomed to speaking about mathe-matics in the way that I wanted them to. One reason for this seemed to be the way in which their teacher organized the lessons.

The use of out-door pedagogy in the school has been frequently high-lighted during recent years. To which extent out-door education was practised in the school depends on the opinions among the active teachers. The aim of this study was to examine the opinions on out-door pedagogy among teachers in classes 4-6 of the elementary school and to find out to which extent the teacher used out-door teaching. The study was based on qualitatively structured interviews with 4 teachers having different lenght of teaching experience. The results of the interviews showed that the teachers had different opinions on the definition of out-door pedagogy. They claimed that out-door pedagogy was a way to explore nature, to link the out-door environment to theoretical subjects and to give the children an increased understanding on nature. In daily teaching, out-door pedagogy was practiced to a varying extent depending on weather, season, schedule and the teacher´s own experience of out-door teaching. The teachers stressed that out-door pedagogy was an interdisciplinary teaching method that offered a possibility to integrate different subjects.

Many organizations have transitioned from single-systems development to product-line development with the goal of increasing productivity and facilitating mass customization. Variability modelling is a key activity in software product-line development that deals with the explicit representation of variability using dedicated models. Variability models specify points of variability and their variants in a product line. Although many variability-modelling notations and tools have been designed by researchers and practitioners, very little is known about their usage, actual benefits or challenges. Existing studies mostly describe product-line practices in general, with little focus on variability modelling. We address this gap through a qualitative study on variability-modelling practices in medium- and large-scale companies using two empirical methods: surveys and interviews. We investigated companies' variability-modelling practices and experiences with the aim to gather information on 1) the methods and strategies used to create and manage variability models, 2) the tools and notations used for variability modelling, 3) the perceived values and challenges of variability modelling, and 4) the core characteristics of their variability models. Our results show that variability models are often created by re-engineering existing products into a product line. All of the interviewees and the majority of survey participants indicated that they represent variability using separate variability models rather than annotative approaches. We found that developers use variability models for many purposes, such as the visualization of variabilities, configuration of products, and scoping of products. Although we observed that high degree of heterogeneity exists in the variability-modelling notations and tools used by organizations, feature-based notations and tools are the most common. We saw huge differences in the sizes of variability models and their contents, which indicate that variability models can have different use cases depending on the organization. Most of our study participants reported complexity challenges that were related mainly to the visualization and evolution of variability models, and dependency management. In addition, reports from interviews suggest that product-line adoption and variability modelling have forced developers to think in terms of a product-line scenario rather than a product-based scenario.

Background: In Sri Lanka, motherhood within marriage is highly valued. Sex out of wedlock is socially unacceptable and can create serious public health problems such as illegal abortions, suicide and infanticide, and single motherhood as a result of premarital sex is considered shameful. The way unmarried women facing single motherhood reflect on and make use of their agency in their social environments characterised by limited social and financial support has consequences for the health and well-being of both themselves and their children. The aim of this study was to explore and describe how unmarried women facing single motherhood in Sri Lanka handle their situation. Methods: This qualitative study comprised semi-structured interviews with 28 unmarried pregnant women or single mothers. The data were analysed by qualitative content analysis and the results related to the conceptual framework of social navigation. Results: The women facing single motherhood expressed awareness of having trespassed norms of sexuality through self-blame, victimhood and obedience, and by considering or attempting suicide. They demonstrated willingness to take responsibility for becoming pregnant before marriage by giving the child up for adoption, bringing up the child themselves, claiming a father for their child, refraining from marriage in the future, permanently leave their home environment, and taking up employment. Throughout the interviews, the women expressed fear of shame, and striving for familial and societal acceptance and financial survival. Conclusions: A social environment highly condemning of unmarried motherhood hindered these women from making strategic choices on how to handle their situation. However, to achieve acceptance and survival, the women tactically navigated norms of femininity, strong family dependence, a limited work market, and different sources of support. Limited access to resources restricted the women's sexual and reproductive health and rights, including their ability to make acceptable and healthy choices for themselves and their children.

Training for interpersonal skills is used widely in organizations but few empirical studies have measured its effectiveness in creating behavioral change. Though the impact of individual differences on training for technical skills has been examined extensively, prior studies in interpersonal skills training have not investigated personal characteristics to determine antecedents of interpersonal knowledge and predictors of learning. The current investigation applies social learning theory to the development of interpersonal skills training for job interviewing and examines the role of personality on training outcomes. In Study 1, I analyzed the interpersonal skills relevant to interviewing for a job and developed a measure of interpersonal interview knowledge. In Study 2, I investigated two formats for training interpersonal skills for interviews. One format used general rules for behavior to teach interpersonal skills for interviews while the other format used a combination of rules and examples of real interview behaviors modeled by actors. The primary aim of Study 2 was to examine the relationships between personality, training format, training’s fit with self-concept, knowledge, and interview performance. Training format did not impact interpersonal interview knowledge but did influence satisfaction with the training. Surprisingly, cognitive ability was not related to interview knowledge before or after training. Agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related interpersonal interview knowledge. Interpersonal interview knowledge and conscientiousness positively predicted interview performance. Agreeableness, however, was negatively related to interview performance. These findings begin to answer questions about how individual differences can impact the effectiveness of interpersonal skills training in terms of both knowledge development and transfer of skills to job-related contexts.

Diagnosis of adhd, the cause and consequence. A study about the teachers thought about it. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers experience and views about children diagnosed with adhd, and what implication and effects it gives to the pedagogy strategies in the classroom. This is a qualitative study based on the experience of six teachers from primary school. My results have been compiled and compared to special educational research about adhd, from three different perspectives. The results showed that the teachers who have been working as teachers for a longer period, think that the problems of adhd occur primarily due to environmental causes, but then also say that they think the individual causes matters. It is also these teachers that talks very well about medication as a treatment to cure adhd symptoms. The teachers who have worked the shortest time, most of them have some special education from the teacher education. They think that the adhd occur primarily from individual cause as heredity, and secondarily that surrounding environment also matters. Still the pedagogic strategies do not differ between these two groups of teachers with different thoughts about the causes of adhd symptoms. All the teachers want more knowledge about adhd, while simultaneously at the same time they think that the school situation works very well. Keywords: adhd, teaching, teacher experiences, special education perspectives, interviews.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine what people who had been interviewed and quoted in a local newspaper feel about being interviewed and what they think of the published article. Our aim was also to make a comparison of “known” sources and “unknown” sources. The main issues were: How do the sources of a local newspaper perceive that they are being treated in the actual interview? What do the sources think of the published article in which they are quoted? Do they trust media and journalists in general? Do the opinions differ between those who are used to being interviewed and those who are unfamiliar with the situation? This study was carried out through qualitative interviews with respondents who have been quoted in a local newspaper in Jönköping, Jönköpings-Posten. Articles were selected from three days in November. The articles should be based on one or more interviews and had to be large. At least one person should be quoted more than once in the selected article. In total 30 interviews were made. The study showed that the sources overall were pleased with the article and the way they were being presented. Nor was there anything to complain about when it came to the journalist’s behaviour. But almost everyone expressed certain scepticism when it came to confidence in media in general. However, most of the persons interviewed had an understanding of the ways that journalists work. We were surprised that the result was so positive and also that the people that were not used to being interviewed were more positive than those who often appear in the local press.

This study explores the reasons for why aboriginal parents decide for their children to cross district to school with a specific focus on three school district of Paiwaness tribes in Pingtung County. The area we research is undeveloped and the researcher is himself Paiwanese. It aims to explore why aboriginal parents choose to leave the school in tribes, discover the problems that parents and children encounter , how they handle the problems and the adaptations for children. The study adopts semi-structured questionnaire to conduct in-depth interviews. Purposive sampling was used to identify interviews and there were ten aboriginal parents were interviewed. The conclusions of the research are as the following:. 1.The main reasons for crossing district schooling include lack of peer-learning competitive in tribes, adaption in mainstream society and parents¡¦ positive discipline. 2.Poor marketing strategy of tribal school administrator, and local indigenous teachers¡¦ background and their negative image within daily lives affected parents¡¦ trust toward tribal school. 3.The decision of cross district schooling for children is influenced by parents¡¦ learning experience and opinions of family numbers. 4.The main consideration of cross district schooling for parents is to get household register of school district easily without comparing the ideas between the two different kinds of schools. 5.The problems they faced include driving the children to school, cultural learning of Paiwanese and learning tribal lives. But the main solution is passive pattern for parents. 6.The results of cross district school choice are satisfied mostly with parents¡¦ expectation but there is still a gap.

<p>The aim of this essay is to investigate how writing is taught in upper secondary school as well as what kind of writing is taught, the teachers’ attitudes towards writing and how written production is assessed. I am interested to see if teachers use different methods both when it comes to teaching and grading writing.</p><p>My research is based on recorded interviews with four upper secondary school teachers from two different schools. The teachers were interviewed on their planning, executing and grading of writing within English A and B. I have also carried out extensive reading of earlier research in order to get a complete background.</p><p>The result shows that all four teachers believe that writing is an important part of language learning and they all enjoy teaching it. The main focus is put on the formal aspects of writing, in order to prepare students for the national tests. Only one of the four teachers feel that creative writing is the best way to learn a second language. All teachers go through the formal rules of writing with the entire class before giving them an assignment. The biggest difference between the different teachers is the marking and final grading of the written production, where one teacher does not grade assignments at all and another has developed her own scale.</p>