<p>This is a study witch examines the national minorities relations to authorities and DO’s report of discrimination within the educational establishment. The purpose of this essay is to illustrate and highlight the national minorities’ thoughts according to DO’s report, and approach the problem with the minorities trust for authorities. In this essay I present recommendations and proposals on how these authorities should work to approach the trust issue, according to my knowledge on the subject. The theories which are applied on the empiric material are based on Niklas Luhmanns theories and also of Kieran O’Hara’s thoughts of trust as a facilitator and as an enabler to achieve goals and maintain a nourishing collaboration. This is a qualitative exploratory study which is based on interviews with central organisations within the national minorities. To sum up the result of this study, the empiric material shows a very positive attitude towards DO:s report, but there is also a general distrust amongst the national minorities against these authorities. To address the issue of distrust against them, the authorities should establish improvements. Such as social representation, intimate knowledge of both parties, take action to reach out and nurture the relations that are essential for the minorities in order to trust and cooperate with the authorities. Only then can they obtain the achievements according to the complexity of these problems.</p>

<p>The aim of this essay is to study the decision making process and implementation of the principle of political participation and influence for Roma minority in Sweden. The results regarding the decision making process is structured through a discourse influenced policy analyses. Problem picture and recommended measures in the political documents representing the decision making process are analysed through theories of minority rights and equality. The implementation is seen through, by the author given minority discourse and the work in the roma council and analysed by the same theories already mentioned.</p><p>The results show that regarding the decision process the aim of art.15 in the framework convention is based on the idea of equality while the Swedish documents relates more to an idea of the right to speak for the group. Regarding recommended measures, the framework convention gives several recommendations on specific measures for political participation while the Swedish documents focuses on the general politics of the state. The results of the analyses of the implementation shows that those actors in the discourse, comparing the political participation for romas before and after the implementation of the minority policy creates a positive view of the principle, while those relating the principle to real influence in the political decision gives a more negative view of the implementation. The work in the Roma council shows that the majority of the issues are in information and discussion form and mostly information given by government staff. There has been critical voices from Roma representatives, while an another think time will give more space for Romas to have more influence. The Roma representatives still have a position outside the positions of real power influence in the consultative body.</p>

<p>Detta är en kvalitativ uppsats med syfte att ge en inblick i hur ett antal läroböcker och lärare valt att belysa Sveriges nationella minoritetsspråk i Svenska B på gymnasiet. Jag har analyserat fem läroböcker böcker i svenska, samtliga utgivna efter år 2000. Analysen visade att alla analyserade böcker utom en har gett minoritetsspråken mycket lite utrymme. Informationen i majoriteten av böckerna fokuserar på vilka minoritetsspråken är och vilka rättigheter de sedan 2000 erhållit. I tre av de analyserade böckerna nämns den historiska aspekten men informationen är ofta tagen ur sin kontext. Till studien intervjuades också tre verksamma gymnasielärare i svenska med avsikten att ta reda hur de tolkar minoritetsspråkens roll i Svenska B. Resultatet visade att samtliga informanter gav minoritetsspråken mycket lite och ibland inget utrymme i Svenska B. Sammanfattningsvis kan sägas att minoritetsspråken varken i den analyserade litteraturen eller av de intervjuade lärarna gavs vidare stort utrymme.</p> / <p>This is a qualitative essay in order to study how a number of textbooks and teachers illuminate Sweden’s national minority languages in the B-course in Swedish, in the upper secondary school. Five Swedish textbooks, published after year 2000 has been analysed which showed that all books except one gave the minority languages little room and that the information in the majority of textbooks was focused on which languages that are the minority languages and the rights they have received. In three books of five, the historical aspect is mentioned but it is often taken out of its context. For the study I also interviewed three active Swedish teachers with the intention to find out there view on the minority languages role in the Swedish b-course. The result showed that all teachers gave the minority languages very little or sometimes no space at all.</p>

No description available.

Open Source Software (OSS) communities are homogenous and their lack of diversity is of concern to many within this field. This problem is becoming more pronounced as it is the practice of many technology companies to use OSS participation as a factor in the hiring process, disadvantaging those who are not a part of this community. We should expect that any field would have a population that reflects the general population given no constraints. The constraints within OSS are documented as being a hostile environment for women and minorities to participate in. Additionally OSS communities rely predominately on volunteers to create and maintain source code, documentation, and user interface as well as the organizational structure of the project. The volunteer nature of OSS projects creates a need for an ongoing pool of participants. This research addresses the lack of diversity along with the continual need for new members by developing a pedagogical paradigm that uses a collaborative environment to promote participation in an OSS project by diverse students. This collaborative environment used a Communities of Practice (CoP) framework to design the course, the indicators of which were used to operationalize the collaboration. The outcomes of this course not only benefit the students by providing them with skills necessary to continue participation and experience for getting a job, but also provide a diverse pool of volunteers for the OSS community. This diverse pool shows promise of creating a more diverse culture within OSS. In the development of this pedagogical paradigm this research looked primarily at student���s perception of the importance of their group members and mentors provided to guide their participation in and contribution to an OSS community. These elements were used to facilitate the formation of a CoP. Self-efficacy was also used as a measure; an increase in self-efficacy is associated with the successful formation of a CoP. Finally the intent to continue, as reported by students, was measured to determine the potential contribution to the OSS community overall. This research was designed to use collaboration to support the formation of a CoP within the groups formed between students based on common interests in the OSS project. Additionally students were provided with a mentor from the community to assist in finding paths to contribute. The Ubuntu project was chosen for its commitment to diversity and its reputation for being a welcoming environment to newcomers, reducing the risk of negative community interactions for students. Written reflections were gathered at mid and end of term and used in conjunction with transcripts or reports of group meetings as well as emails between mentors and mentees. Additionally self-efficacy was measured at the beginning and end of the term. The results of this study show that this pedagogical paradigm supports student contribution. Contribution levels were found to be associated with the level of the formation of a CoP within each group and the use of mentors, as well as attending a live, hands-on bug triage demo and the Global Jam, to gather resources. It was also evident that students intend to continue participating at a rate higher than the average rate for newcomers trying to contribute without the type of support offered by this class. Further research into the examination of the use of reflective dialogue with mentors is recommended. It is also recommended that the results from the operationalization of the indicators of the formation of a CoP be used to assist in a more consistent formation of this important resource across more groups within the class. The results of this research point to the effectiveness of this paradigm to promote contributions to an OSS community. These contributions provide the skills students need to improve their attractiveness to future employers. This class also produced a number of students who intend to continue participating in OSS, providing a diverse pool of potential volunteers to the OSS community. / Graduation date: 2013

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Miami University, Dept. of Educational Leadership, 2007. / Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 123-141).

Little is known about the college adjustment of first-generation students, particularly those from various racial/ethnic groups. This study sought to describe the college adjustment of first-generation students from three different racial/ethnic backgrounds (White/non-Hispanic, Black and Hispanic) and to determine whether generational status and race/ethnicity jointly or separately affect college adjustment as measured by responses to the Student Adaptation to College Questionnaire (SACQ). A sample of 418 students (208 first-generation, 210 non-first-generation; 140 White, 138 Black, and 140 Hispanic) was drawn from a population of 4,718 degree-seeking, self-identified undergraduates at a research university in the Southeast. A 2 X 3 factorial ANOVA was used to assess the effects of generational status and race/ethnicity on college adjustment. There was no significant interaction between the independent variables on adjustment to college, nor were there significant main effects. Despite follow-up data collection efforts, a low response rate (34%) to the online administration of the instrument and consequent low number of respondents in each cell may have obscured existing differences. Other implications are discussed, including the question of SACQ sensitivity to racial/ethnic differences and difficulties of web-based survey administration in an institutional setting.

With its focus on immigration to the United States and development of American identity, Bharati Mukherjee’s fiction eludes literary categorization. It engages with the various contexts of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and globalization, yet Mukherjee adamantly positions herself as an American author writing American literature. In this essay, I investigate the intersections between Mukherjee’s focus on the American character, culture, and people and developing theories and critical debates on globalization. Through Mukherjee’s works, we can see American identity in a state of flux, made possible by the immigrant and the relationships established between the transnational individual and America. Mukherjee’s immigrant characters challenge and expose American mythology from the American Dream of individual achievement to the canonical literature of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, rewriting them to show how foundational the immigrant is to American culture. I trace Mukherjee’s redefinition of the American character in and through three successive novels – Wife, Jasmine, and The Holder of the World. In Wife, Mukherjee challenges America’s adoption of multiculturalism because she considers it a means of essentializing ethnicity and both maintaining and enhancing difference. This multiculturalism, as part of America’s assumed principles of acceptance, alienates the protagonist Dimple from her immigrant community and the larger American culture, resulting in her violent attempts to force her Americanization. Jasmine continues to work against multiculturalism by explicitly inserting the immigrant into the American mythos, reshaping the Western literary canon to include the transnational individual and to assert the immigrant foundations of American ideology. Mukherjee expands her focus in Holder of the World as her protagonist Hannah travels to England, India, and the bourgeoning United States, rewriting The Scarlet Letter to suggest that globalizing forces have been present throughout American cultural history, not just at the end of the 20th century when critical debates began to flourish. Through analysis of these novels, I argue that Mukherjee’s reformulation of American character reasserts American ideals by including and developing with the rise of globalization theory.

This dissertation is the result of studies concerning the prerequisites for Finnish to survive in contemporary Sweden. When the Sweden Finnish parents want instruction in Finnish for their children the only choice available in Swedish municipal schools is between two language programs: one giving instruction in Swedish classes with 1-2 hours of home language training in Finnish per week, and the other giving instruction in and of Finnish in Finnish classes. In a four part study I investigate whether Sweden Finnish pupils who take part in these programs use and have a command of both languages. The focus of the dissertation is nonetheless on Finnish and the possibilities for Sweden Finns to preserve and develop their language and culture. A total of 560 second generation Sweden Finns from Botkyrka participated in the studies and are divided by language programs into Finnish classes (273) and Swedish classes (287). The introduction of the dissertation gives a picture of the composition of the Sweden Finnish group, cultural aspirations and education possibilities. It also discusses the official position of the Swedish authorities as well as their efforts in relation to the Sweden Finnish aspirations. For comparison 411 Finland Swedish pupils from Turku as well as monolingual control groups in Finland and Sweden are also investigated. Questionnaires, tests, and essays were collected on two occasions, in 1980 and 1995. Command of reading and writing skills in Finnish and Swedish are compared among the Sweden Finnish, the Finland Swedish, and the monolingual pupils. The most bilingual were the Finland Swedish pupils. This group achieved better results on the Swedish tests than the other groups. On the Finnish tests they were better than the Sweden Finnish pupils in the Swedish classes. Compared to the Sweden Finnish pupils in Finnish classes, the Finland Swedish pupils read just as well or better but wrote less well. In the studies the Sweden Finnish pupils' language use in school and at home and the changes which had taken place during the fifteen years which had passed between the times of data collection were scrutinized. Compared to the Sweden Finnish pupils in Swedish classes in 1980 the Sweden Finnish pupils use much more Swedish today (1995) while the Sweden Finnish pupils in Finnish classes nowadays use both languages more often than those who took part in the same language program in 1980. In one study 41 former Sweden Finnish informants with an average age of 27 were re-visited. Those who had been in the Swedish classes tended to let Swedish take over at home while those who had been in the Finnish classes used both languages. Sixteen of the former informants had children of their own. The language chosen to use when speaking to their children correlated with their own language skills and the language of their partner. None of those who had been in the Swedish classes spoke Finnish with their children. Among those who were in Finnish classes various combinations of languages were applied: 40% spoke Finnish, 25% spoke both languages and 33% spoke Swedish. Nearly 90% of those who had been in Finnish classes wanted their children to learn Finnish in school while not quite 60% of those who took part in home language training wanted their children to learn Finnish in school. Judging from the results of the study, attendance in Finnish classes was of great significance for the preservation of Finnish in Sweden because only this program seemed to guarantee many-sided language skills in Finnish. The number of pupils in Finnish classes has decreased sharply since 1980, and nowadays such classes exist only in a few places in Sweden. Swedish school political practices have contributed strongly to the difficulties Finnish is having and will have surviving beyond the coming two or three generations.

Detta är en kvalitativ uppsats med syfte att ge en inblick i hur ett antal läroböcker och lärare valt att belysa Sveriges nationella minoritetsspråk i Svenska B på gymnasiet. Jag har analyserat fem läroböcker böcker i svenska, samtliga utgivna efter år 2000. Analysen visade att alla analyserade böcker utom en har gett minoritetsspråken mycket lite utrymme. Informationen i majoriteten av böckerna fokuserar på vilka minoritetsspråken är och vilka rättigheter de sedan 2000 erhållit. I tre av de analyserade böckerna nämns den historiska aspekten men informationen är ofta tagen ur sin kontext. Till studien intervjuades också tre verksamma gymnasielärare i svenska med avsikten att ta reda hur de tolkar minoritetsspråkens roll i Svenska B. Resultatet visade att samtliga informanter gav minoritetsspråken mycket lite och ibland inget utrymme i Svenska B. Sammanfattningsvis kan sägas att minoritetsspråken varken i den analyserade litteraturen eller av de intervjuade lärarna gavs vidare stort utrymme. / This is a qualitative essay in order to study how a number of textbooks and teachers illuminate Sweden’s national minority languages in the B-course in Swedish, in the upper secondary school. Five Swedish textbooks, published after year 2000 has been analysed which showed that all books except one gave the minority languages little room and that the information in the majority of textbooks was focused on which languages that are the minority languages and the rights they have received. In three books of five, the historical aspect is mentioned but it is often taken out of its context. For the study I also interviewed three active Swedish teachers with the intention to find out there view on the minority languages role in the Swedish b-course. The result showed that all teachers gave the minority languages very little or sometimes no space at all.