In the aftermath of armed conflict, peace and justice are no longer perceived as contradictory. Scholars and practitioners alike have increasingly argued that societies emerging from periods of conflict or repression need to address legacies of past mass violence and human rights abuses in order to sustain peace. This is the rationale behind the evolving field of transitional justice. While it is stated that transitional justice also makes headway in contemporary peace agreements, existing literature tends to remain unspecific. Albeit being the most victim-centred among the range of transitional justice mechanisms, the incorporation of reparation for victims of mass violence into peace agreements is particularly under-researched. This research gap is even more puzzling as it is a “basic maxim of law that harms should be remedied” (Roht-Arriaza 2004: 121). In response to this, this thesis establishes that only around a third of intra-state peace agreements signed from 2000 to 2009 have addressed reparation. Further, by means of an analytical framework that embeds thematic analysis within the structure of framing theory’s model of meaning-making, it maps how the studied peace agreements assign meaning to reparation in their texts. As a result, two themes labelled ‘reparation as the fulfilment of basic needs’ and ‘reparation as an act of justice’ are identified as constituting the broader patterns of meaning held within peace agreements’ reparation provisions. While the language of the latter equips harmed individuals with rights as victims, the former theme focuses instead on individual vulnerability and collective development needs. It deemphasises the link between harm experienced and violation committed. As it is suggested that the employment of particular themes and terminology lifts certain issues up the agenda while marginalising others, peace agreements’ authoritative meaning-making directly impacts on the lives of those victimised during conflict. Hence, this thesis highlights the need for more systematic research in this area to strengthen evidence-based reparation advocacy during peace processes.

The objective of this thesis is to analyze children’s meaning making processes in science related to environment and sustainability at the pre-school level. This thesis examines an approach to early childhood education which is conceptualized by an explorative as well as a listening approach that specifically addresses children’s questions. The purpose is to create knowledge on how the processes develop and what specific science related content that emerges. All studies are based on a Deweyan pragmatic perspective. Study 1 “logs in” to the debate on children’s possibilities to become “agents for change” and contributing to positive changes for the environment. The results reveal that the children’s positive and negative aesthetic utterances have significance for how the process develops and is being fulfilled. The contextual aspects are imperative both for the content and for the choices the children make along the course of actions. Study 2 examines children exploring animals in a pre-school project concerning biodiversity.  Initially, the results reveal that the organisms’ appearances and movements received morphological and physiological explanations. Further on, knowledge was gained in a manner which has similarities to ecological and evolutionary ways of explaining biological phenomena. Study 3 takes departure from the discussion on the fact that sustainability related problems often are unstructured, multifaceted and conceptualized as “wicked”. The study examines how the process of imagination comes into play when children explore a sustainability related problem that is important to them. The results reveal that creative solutions come into existence when blending various experiences.  Study 4 investigates how children raise and answer science related questions by non-verbal actions. The results expose that non-verbal actions serve as inquiry, comparative systematics, visualization, question-generators as well as a public and self-reflective communication. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: In review. Paper 3: In press. Paper 4. Manuscript.</p>

The acquisition of relational concepts plays an integral role and is assumed to be a prerequisite for analogical reasoning. Language and token-trained apes (e.g. Premack, 1976; Thompson, Oden, and Boysen, 1997) are the only nonhuman animals to succeed in solving and completing analogies, thus implicating language as the mechanism enabling the phenomenon. In the present study, I examine the role of meaning in the analogical reasoning abilities of three different primate species. Humans, chimpanzees, and rhesus monkeys completed relational match-to-sample (RMTS) tasks with either meaningful or nonmeaningful stimuli. For human participants, meaningfulness facilitated the acquisition of analogical rules. Individual differences were evident amongst the chimpanzees suggesting that meaning can either enable or hinder their ability to complete analogies. Rhesus monkeys did not succeed in either condition, suggesting that their ability to reason analogically, if present at all, may be dependent upon a dimension other than the representational value of stimuli.

Sammanfattning   Arbetets art: Examensarbete i Lärarutbildningen, avancerad nivå, 15hp. Högskolan i Skövde.   Titel: Förskolebarns aktiviteter i sandlådan. En kvalitativ studie om barns meningsskapande i sandlådan ur ett naturvetenskapligt perspektiv.   Sidantal: 27   Författare: Helena Jebens och Jörel Sandh.   Handledare: Susanne Gustavsson.   Datum: januari 2014   Nyckelord: Meningsskapande, förskola, sandlåda, naturvetenskap.   Studien belyser barns möjligheter till naturvetenskapligt meningsskapande i sandlådan. Som pedagoger i förskolans verksamhet har vi dagligen sett barn aktivera sig i sandlådan, men inte reflekterat över vilket naturvetenskapligt meningsskapande som möjliggörs där. Vi har även i vår verksamhet uppmärksammat genom samtal med andra pedagoger att naturvetenskap upplevs som svårt och krångligt. Studiens syfte är att undersöka vilket naturvetenskapligt meningsskapande som möjliggörs i sandlådan. I bakgrunden presenteras forskning om naturvetenskap i förskolan och teorin utgår från det sociokulturella perspektivet. Insamlandet av data har skett genom videofilmning som består av sammanlagt 28 filmsekvenser.  Materialet har analyserats och bearbetats med hjälp av Susanne Klaars reflektionsverktyg. Studiens resultat visar att barns handlingar i sandlådan kan möjliggöra ett naturvetenskapligt meningsskapande. Pedagoger har enligt studiens resultat rika tillfällen att påverka och utveckla barns meningsskapande och utveckla intresset för naturvetenskap genom att tolka, bekräfta och sätta ord på de handlingar med naturvetenskaplig karaktär som sandlådan erbjuder. Barns naturliga intresse för naturvetenskap får med stöd av pedagogers guidning mot ett naturvetenskapligt meningsskapande, ökad möjlighet för lärande och förståelse genom de handlingar som sker. / Abstract   Study: Degree project in teacher education, advanced level 15hp. University of Skövde.   Title: Preschool children’s activities in the sandbox. A qualitative study of children’s meaning-making in the sandbox from a natural science perspective.   Pages: 27   Authors: Helena Jebens och Jörel Sandh.   Tutor: Susanne Gustavsson.   Date: January 2014   Keywords: Meaning- making, preschool, the sandbox, the natural sciences.   The study highlights the children's opportunities for scientific meaning-making in the sandbox. As teacher’s in the preschool's activities, we have seen children activate themselves on a daily basis in the sandbox, but not reflected of the natural sciences meaning-making that is possible there. We also have in our activities highlighted by talks with other teachers that natural science are perceived as difficult and complicated. The study's purpose is to investigate which natural sciences meaning-making is possible in the sandbox. In the background is presented research on natural science education in preschool and the theory is based on the socio-cultural perspective. The collection of data has been made by videotaping which consists of a total of 28 sequences. The material has been analyzed and processed with the help of Susanne Klaars reflection tool. Results of the study show that children's actions in the sandbox can allow a natural science meaning-making. Teachers, according to the results of the study, have rich opportunities to influence and develop children's meaning-making and developing interest in natural science by interpreting, confirming and put into words the acts of natural scientific character which the sandbox offers. Children's natural interest in natural science, with the support of teacher’s guidance toward a meaning making of natural science, increased opportunity for learning and understanding through the activities that is done.

As a violinist, teacher, and thinker, I am concerned to articulate the relevance of music to the lives of my audience, my students and myself. But my concern is not merely to describe the meanings that people experience when they engage music. Rather, I am interested in constituting the musical relevance that each of us must actualize as we work to make our lives vital and meaningful. Accordingly, in my study I articulate in philosophical, yet practical, terms, a particular attitude of musical engagement that I call meeting. Grounded in Martin Buber’s idea of human existence as I-Thou, my conception of meeting has a specific character. Each side of the meeting must meet itself in its work to constitute the adequacy of its engagement with the other as it must meet with the other in its work to constitute the adequacy of its engagement with itself. It follows that the essence of human meeting is not merely the “reality” – physical, cultural, intellectual – of people who come together. Rather, the essence is their self-critical thought that is created as they share their lives with each other. The focus, then, is not the meeting’s outcome but rather the meeting itself insofar as it constitutes mutual understanding, communication and love. Thus, at the heart of my study, I constitute music in the same way, not as a physical or cultural “reality,” but rather as the meeting between music and musical participant that demands that each – music and participant – attend to self and other. The idea that music’s whole being is meeting has profound implications for how we conceive of music education. Accordingly, the ultimate purpose of my study is to bring my ideas of musical meeting to bear upon how we teach and learn music in the classroom.

国立情報学研究所で電子化したコンテンツを使用している。

(The classroom as an arena for discussions) The aim of the dissertation is to study whole class discussions in the Swedish upper secondary school, concerning issues subjected to controversy in the public debate. The empirical study is related to a wider question: the possibilities for the school to educate democratic citizens. By using discourse analysis,14 videotaped lessons from social- and religious studies where analysed, with the ambition to investigate recurrent patterns of participation and meaning making. Five teachers and six classes participated in the study. The analysis shows that the teachers have two concurrent goals: to focus on the students’ contributions on issues in the public debate, and introduce the students to different questions in the public debate. A consequence of these goals is that the role of the teacher often becomes complex. By acting on the basis of having responsibility for the students’ development of knowledge, and sometimes also calling attention to certain values, the teacher attempts to guide the students as not yet ready for the public debate. Features from other kinds of teacher-centred education are thereby present in the discussions. However, students can also act as more autonomous participants in relation to the teacher. When they are not answering the teacher’s questions in an expected way, and in particular, in situations in which they are interacting with each other, the students may discuss the public issues without being teacher-guided to the same extent as in other situations. The last chapter concludes that the authority of the teacher is partly given by the official steering-documents. It is still possible to ask if the guiding role of the teacher itself could be subjected to discussion. This suggestion is made from the point that teacher authority is considered as more or less limited for developing a critical attitude among the students. One may also ask if the students’ could be offered possibilities to choose the topic for discussion themselves. This latter point is made against the background that classroom-discussion presupposes student’s viewpoints in order to be accomplished.

This thesis examines the mediation of ecological values, showing that we come to understand, interact, and value the ecologies in which we are bound, through experience of commodified and technologised abstractions of ecological life. So doing, I take the study of ecological value out of the natural and into the cultural, because it is within the sphere of culture that such ecological values are propagated and valiorised. And it is those values that determine how we act on, in, and through our environments, and ultimately come to engage as active ecological agents.

This study contributes to the growth of design knowledge in China, where vehicle design for the local, older user is in its initial developmental stages. Therefore, this research has explored the travel needs of older Chinese vehicle users in order to assist designers to better understand users’ current and future needs. A triangulation method consisting of interviews, logbook and co-discovery was used to collect multiple forms of data and so explore the research question. Grounded theory has been employed to analyze the research data. This study found that users’ needs are reflected through various ‘meanings’ that they attach to vehicles – meanings that give a tangible expression to their experiences. This study identified six older-user need categories: (i) safety, (ii) utility, (iii) comfort, (iv) identity, (v) emotion and (vi) spirituality. The interrelationships among these six categories are seen as an interactive structure, rather than as a linear or hierarchical arrangement. Chinese cultural values, which are generated from particular local context and users’ social practice, will play a dynamic role in linking and shaping the travel needs of older vehicle users in the future. Moreover, this study structures the older-user needs model into three levels of meaning, to give guidance to vehicle design direction: (i) the practical meaning level, (ii) the social meaning level and (ii) the cultural meaning level. This study suggests that a more comprehensive explanation exists if designers can identify the vehicle’s meaning and property associated with the fulfilled older users’ needs. However, these needs will vary, and must be related to particular technological, social, and cultural contexts. The significance of this study lies in its contributions to the body of knowledge in three areas: research methodology, theory and design. These theoretical contributions provide a series of methodological tools, models and approaches from a vehicle design perspective. These include a conditional/consequential matrix, a travel needs identification model, an older users’ travel-related needs framework, a user information structure model, and an Older-User-Need-Based vehicle design approach. These models suggest a basic framework for the new design process which might assist in the design of new vehicles to fulfil the needs of future, aging Chinese generations. The models have the potential to be transferred to other design domains and different cultural contexts.

This research posits art as an encounter, an encounter between the conceptual worlds of artists and of viewers. It acclaims the respective art skills within the marae (communal meeting place) named Tangatarua at Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua. Tangatarua Marae is a place of bicultural encounter. This writing includes readers in the social relations of this encounter. This is a qualitative study that uses an interpretive epistemology to examine some of the art forms of Tangatarua. My focus is on micronarratives - that is, on intimate, improvised meanings generated by some of the small artworks. These reference and affirm the symbolism of the carvings but are less visible due to their lesser scale and interstitial placement within the interior architecture. They are rendered more visible through the phenomenological detail of participant accounts as well as the positivism of a formalist critique. I posit art as a dialogical activity, inseparable from the phenomenological conditions that precede and inform it, and inseparable from the emergent meaning that is forged at its encounter. I contend that the collaborative mode of art production within Tangatarua embodies this dialogical model. I amplify some of the tangible art forms of Tangatarua by dismantling the intangible discursive forms that have impinged on them. These include aspects of the political context of the establishment of the marae, Waiariki Institute of Technology’s bicultural framework, and the pedagogy of its Art School. My writing is underpinned by a participatory paradigm acknowledging my situatedness as an artist participant within Tangatarua, a woman of Ngai Tahu descent, and art tutor at Waiariki Institute of Technology. This study similarly acknowledges the multifaceted, experiential transactions between those artists whose small collective gestures have informed and transformed the interior of Tangatarua.