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Over the past decade, relationship education has grown as a means of enhancing couple relations. This study examines the experiences of 2,828 ethnically diverse and low-income adults who participated in the Smart Steps for Stepfamilies: Embrace the Journey program, a 12-hour stepfamily education program. Self-report measures of relationship quality, couple commitment, and relationship instability were gathered prior to and immediately after the Smart Steps intervention as well as six weeks, six months, and one year post-program. Results suggest that stepfamily participants experienced increases in relationship quality; however, these increases reduced to near pre-program levels one year after the programs completion. Results further showed no changes in couple commitment or relationship instability measures nor among differing participant groups including Latinos, European Americans, low-income, moderate- income, married, unmarried, those in a first marriage, second remarriage, and higher order remarriage. Finally a cost-analysis of the program was conducted. Application of these findings and policy implications are discussed.

The aim of this dissertation is to develop and illustrate a spiritually centered narrative method for transforming disorder into agency and action. I use my own position as a second-generation Hispanic female immigrant to show how training in a spiritual practice that mirrors my ancestral traditions helped me productively move through a sense of displacement, illness, and lack of purpose. My research includes travel to Havana, Cuba, and immersion in a five-week shamanic counseling training program in Tampa, Florida, during which I learned how to narrate my experiences as I engaged in shamanic journeying. As I reflect on these experiences, I explore three questions: How can second-generation immigrants 1) overcome family histories of displacement to create a sense of home? 2) engage in self-care practices that promote healing and nourishing relationships? and 3) create healthy identities and a sense of purpose within their communities? Through the process of writing my own story, I move from individual pathology toward communal creativity and tap into the burgeoning activist movement of bruja feminism.

This thesis is concerned with the development of tertiary students' experiences of learning as they progress through three years of undergraduate study in two different psychology programs. Previous research that is relevant to this topic has tended to focus either more narrowly on the development of epistemic beliefs or more broadly on the variation of learners' experiences of learning. Research on epistemic beliefs has tended to focus on the structural aspects (stages) of development and to ignore the content of thinking. In contrast, research on experiences of learning has concentrated upon the content of students' experiences, yet it can be criticised for the way in which it decontextualises students' experiences and for its limited attention to change and development. Moreover, despite evidence suggesting that learning comprises a complex of phenomena such as understanding, memorising and knowing, this line of research has tended to treat learning as a single phenomenon. In the thesis I draw on Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Gurwitsch's view of awareness, and much of the conceptual framework of the phenomenographic perspective to argue a case for a theoretical framework and consequential practices that are more plural and inclusive of learner's experiences of learning. The new approach refocuses the relationship between researcher, knower and known in terms of the knowing relation-one that involves a dynamic iterative interweaving of first and second order perspectives. Using this new approach, students' experiences are analysed to provide rich description and ontological explanation of both change and development over time. The approach allows the unity of the partlwholelpart relation of an individual's experience to be recognised. So the method is able to take account of the contextual relevancy of the individual whilst also focusing on the experiences of the group. The results show that rather than comprising a single phenomenon, learning is itself part of a multi-dimensional (depth, spatial and temporal dimensions), multi-phenomenal field. The phenomena of learning, understanding, memorising and knowledge are described in detail, and their individual internal relations are elaborated along with the internal relations between the phenomena. Four main groups of experiences of learning are described within this framework: reproductive experiences; relational experiences; constructive experiences; and transformative experiences. Each of these categories comprises several sub- categories. This fine-grained focus on individual students' data, and the use of the phenomenographic whadhow framework, allows the development of experiences to be traced and interpreted as a gradual morphing over time. The pattern of development suggests that each part of the learners' journey plays an important role in the growth of skill and competence in learning. Thus, it may be important that curricula account for variation not by focussing upon transformative experiences of learning, as is often the case, but by facilitating shifts through all of the experiences that learners may pass through.

<p>The main subject for this paper is to compare Eugene O’Neill’s play Long day’s journey into night with the Swedish playwright Lars Norén´s Och ge oss skuggorna. Norén´s play is based on a biographical material from O’Neill’s life; therefore I will also compare the play with two biographical analyses on O’Neill. For that I have chosen Doris Alexander’s Eugene O’Neill’s last plays: Separating art from autobiography and Stephen A Black´s Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and tragedy. The main question in this paper will be: what is the picture of Eugene O´Neill that Norén portrays in the play Och ge oss skuggorna.</p>

The main subject for this paper is to compare Eugene O’Neill’s play Long day’s journey into night with the Swedish playwright Lars Norén´s Och ge oss skuggorna. Norén´s play is based on a biographical material from O’Neill’s life; therefore I will also compare the play with two biographical analyses on O’Neill. For that I have chosen Doris Alexander’s Eugene O’Neill’s last plays: Separating art from autobiography and Stephen A Black´s Eugene O’Neill: Beyond Mourning and tragedy. The main question in this paper will be: what is the picture of Eugene O´Neill that Norén portrays in the play Och ge oss skuggorna.

A narrative qualitative research approach was used to understand the role that spiritual journeys had on the lives of emerging adults. Participants were four emerging adults (2 female, 2 male) ranging in age from 20 to 29 years. All participants were of middle class social economic status and lived in a mid-size Canadian prairie city. Three of the participants were Caucasian and the fourth was of Spanish-Caucasian ancestry. Semi-structured interviews provided the opportunity for the participants to share their stories regarding the role that their spiritual journey played in their life. Data were analyzed for themes within and across the participants stories. A visual representation of their collective journeys was created along with four-part poetic representations of each participants individual story. The stories that the participants shared revealed that emerging adults spiritual journeys were cyclical in that the journeys began with feelings of discontent, which led them to seek spiritual resources and experiences to address the unhappiness in their lives. In acquiring new knowledge, the participants were faced with different theories, ideas and experiences that brought forth additional questions. These new areas of thought led these individuals to search for further answers and meaning, bring forth new questions, new meaning, and in turn, the process became a cycle. The cycle that began with their initial discontent continued because of a desire for further knowledge.<p> Findings are discussed in terms of the current literature on spirituality in emerging adulthood and spirituality in relation to meaning making; implications are discussed for counselors, educators, and researchers and recommendations are made for future research.

This dissertation describes the introduction and development of school journeys within the Swedish elementary schools during the period 1890 to 1940. The study focuses on how the jour­neys were perceived, organised and performed by elementary school teachers and their pupils. The development of school journeys is mainly due to two different organisations: The Elemen­tary School Teachers of Sweden (Sveriges allmänna folkskollärarförening, SAF) and the Swe­dish Tourist Association (Svenska Turistföreningen, STF). The latter started to support school journeys performed by elementary schools in 1898, by allowing teachers to apply for economic benefits. SAF, on the other hand, helped the development of journeys through the production of guidelines. They also appointed a special School Journey Committee 1899 that were to pro­mote school journeys, and they introduced special youth hostels for travelling school-classes in about 50 cities in Sweden during 1897-1930. School journeys were introduced in Sweden in 1894. The term was used to describe longer journeys taken by school children under the direction of teachers. Its intention was to give the pupil direct experience of the work that had been done in the classroom. The subjects that were dealt with in school, geography, history and nature studies, were thus objectified during the journey. Children were to see and experience such things that hitherto had been nothing but names. In this dissertation the different purposes of the journeys are discussed and it is argued that the journeys became a mean to translate into practise some of the progressive educational prin­ciples that Swedish progressive educators discussed at the end of the nineteenth century. These principles included that education should be based on direct observation, that it should pro­mote self-activity and that it should give the pupils a sense of the national community and shape their national identity. The study consists of three parts. The first part deals with the origin of school journeys and the educational principle of direct observation. The second part presents the ways the notion of school journeys were translated into practise. The third part discusses the image of Sweden that was presented to the children, through the journeys. / digitalisering@umu

This degree project consists of “A photographic journey through Vietnam”. One month was spent in Vietnam where the different aspects of the Vietnamese life were documented in images. The journey began in Hanoi and descended down the country to Ho Chi Minh City.The report describes the compositional elements of photography and makes an attempt to describe what a “good” image is. Furthermore it explains what equipment that is necessary for such a journey and how you can interact with the local population.When the journey came to an end, a photographic book consisting of 200 images was created. The report details the used workflow step by step. Finally the author has commented 20 of the selected images regarding their photographic composition.

A narrative qualitative research approach was used to understand the role that spiritual journeys had on the lives of emerging adults. Participants were four emerging adults (2 female, 2 male) ranging in age from 20 to 29 years. All participants were of middle class social economic status and lived in a mid-size Canadian prairie city. Three of the participants were Caucasian and the fourth was of Spanish-Caucasian ancestry. Semi-structured interviews provided the opportunity for the participants to share their stories regarding the role that their spiritual journey played in their life. Data were analyzed for themes within and across the participants stories. A visual representation of their collective journeys was created along with four-part poetic representations of each participants individual story. The stories that the participants shared revealed that emerging adults spiritual journeys were cyclical in that the journeys began with feelings of discontent, which led them to seek spiritual resources and experiences to address the unhappiness in their lives. In acquiring new knowledge, the participants were faced with different theories, ideas and experiences that brought forth additional questions. These new areas of thought led these individuals to search for further answers and meaning, bring forth new questions, new meaning, and in turn, the process became a cycle. The cycle that began with their initial discontent continued because of a desire for further knowledge.<p> Findings are discussed in terms of the current literature on spirituality in emerging adulthood and spirituality in relation to meaning making; implications are discussed for counselors, educators, and researchers and recommendations are made for future research.