This study can be described as a journey into the discourse of ‘sangomahood’. It focuses on the narrative of a female sangoma in South Africa and how she experiences her ‘sangomahood’ and gives meaning to it in her specific cultural context. By qualitatively exploring her narrative an attempt was made to understand and illuminate the experiences informing her ‘sangomahood’. This journey starts with an introduction to the two discourses of health namely the dominant, scientific discourse of Western medicine and the alternative discourse of traditional healing. In this part of the journey the historical, anthropological and sociological perspectives on medicine are discussed, as well as the different views of Western medicine and traditional healing pertaining to healers, practices, illness and patients. The methodology and context of the research are then explained. Narrative analysis is used to explore the themes in the sangoma’s narration. The sangoma’s narrative is then introduced by means of five letters that I, as the researcher, write to her. In these letters I also reflect on the difference between her experience and mine, as well as the impact of her narrative on me as a psychologist trained in the Western perspective. This journey was undertaken to create a greater understanding of the culture and experience of ‘sangomahood’. This research also intends to make psychologists aware that the telling of a narrative is never a neutral process and that their clients’ stories always have a certain impact on them, as listeners. Each individual experience is shaped through time, by a specific cultural context which becomes the lens through which people experience and shape the world. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

This is a rhetorical study of Swedish feminist erotic short stories. The purpose is to investigate what kind of identification possibilities are offered to readers and if these are presented or influenced by the male gaze and normative gender perceptions. The male gaze is a concept based on men having the dominant perspective on sexuality and is the one whose needs are to be met in mainstream pornography and erotica. Through a narrative analysis we seek to examine characters, settings, plot, themes and rhetorical functions in the artefacts. To broaden the analysis, focus is placed on examining if and how a male and/or female gaze are presented in the short stories and coexists with a feminist gaze. The interest is to understand how these gazes affect the identification possibilities for readers. A feminist perspective should mean that the influence of the male gaze decreases sharply, right? The results show that a feminist gaze and perspective can contribute to broaden identification possibilities, but that it is not quite as manifested as one might think. The results also show that it is difficult to write feminist erotic short stories without letting the text be influenced by normative gender perceptions and the dominance of the male gaze.

<p>Early childhood teachers pursuing associate degrees often repeated the college algebra course, demanding, “Why do we have to take this? We don’t teach algebra!” Expectations for their training were not well-aligned with their mathematics preparation or teaching work. I have taught the mathematics courses and young children and have worked for an early childhood practice, policy, and research agency. I wanted to learn about these teachers’ experiences as mathematics learners and teachers, with a goal to share the complex nature of their work with teacher educators and other stakeholders to identify better avenues for their mathematics training. I explored the questions: (1) What role, if any, do mathematical learning experiences play in early childhood teachers’ mathematics teaching practice? (2) In what ways do their voices contribute to the professional dialogue regarding teaching mathematics with young children? </p> <p>Dewey’s (1938/1998) <i>experience</i> construct provided lenses to examine early childhood teachers’ experiences learning and teaching mathematics. <i>Continuity</i>, <i>interaction</i>, <i>social control</i>, <i>freedom</i>, <i>purpose</i>, and <i>subject matter</i> provided insights and situated teachers’ experiences within a disparate patchwork of settings and policies. Two family childcare providers participated in this narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly) through an interview on their experiences learning and teaching mathematics and three classroom observations. After analyzing data for Dewey’s (1938/1998) <i>experience</i> constructs, I used narrative analysis (Polkinghorne, 1995) and teaching images (Clandinin, 1985) to write an emplotted narrative for each teacher, Josie and Patsy.</p> Josie told a turning point story (Drake, 2006) of making mathematics “real,” influencing her mathematics teaching practice as she integrated “real” mathematics into everyday activities. Patsy’s appreciation for mathematics and building was seen in her story of a child explaining he used the wide blocks for his base, elaborating, “He's telling me HOW he's building.” While Josie and Patsy had few opportunities to learn about teaching mathematics with young children, they were eager to learn. I propose a training for early childhood teachers, iteratively working as a group to investigate a personal mathematics teaching puzzle or celebration, building on their mathematical personal practical knowledge. Adding my own story to those of the teachers, like Josie’s and Patsy’s, of our work together, will add to my understanding and development of my practice as a curriculum maker (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992), as early childhood teachers’ voices contribute to the professional dialogue about teaching mathematics with young children.

The aim of this essay, As only the deceived one can love, is to investigate the city character in the book Mina drömmars stad (City of dreams) by swedish author Per Anders Fogelström. I will do this by using narratology and making a narrative analysis of the city as a protagonist, with help from Jimmy Vulovic’s Narrativanalys (”narrative analysis”) and Claes Göran Holmberg’s &amp; Anders Ohlssons Epikanalys – En introduktion (”epic analysis – an introduction”). All of these three theorists use the narratological tool-box of Gérard Genette, and I will use his tools in this essay as well. By doing this I will try to point out what this kind of personification of the city does to the story, and how it affects the readers point of view. One of the steps of the narrative analysis is to seek for information about the protagonist in its own environment, to see if there are any hidden clues about the identity of their character. In his book A universe of the mind – A semiotic theory of culture, Jurij M. Lotman writes about the semiosphere of the home, and how the ultimate place to seek for details about someone’s character is in someone’s home environment or surroundings. He demonstrates his thesis by analyzing the meaning of different homes in Michail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Even if I try to read the city as a main character in City of dreams, it is inevitable that the city is also a stage, a scene and the environment where the story takes place. In the end of my analysis I will look to the environment of the city to try to draw conclusions about who this city of dreams really is.

<div> <div> <div> <p>This dissertation is a three study format. In this dissertation, I used an explanatory sequential mixed method design. Study 1 develops a measurement scale to capture first-generation college students’ agency using the constructs of intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, and self-reflectiveness. Study 2 used structural equation modeling to establish a relationship between personal agency, disciplinary role identities, and students’ desire to enact engineering agency. Study 3 was a narrative analysis of how Kitatoi, a Latina, first-generation college student, authored her identity as an engineer. Data for study 1 and 2 came from a survey administered in the Fall of 2017 of 3,711 first-year engineering students across 32 ABET universities. </p> </div> </div> </div>

The thesis addresses analysis of stories and narrative in relation to the subject of gender. This analysis primarily deals with fairy tale The Beauty and the Beast by Disney. The first part is about general theoretical basis for my thesis and about the most important authors in this field. Archetypes and logocentrism topics are dealt with partially as well. The foundations of the first part are however literary and motion-picture feministic theories, also the concept of the myth of beauty. In the practical part sequences of the The Beast and the Beauty are studied. Findings described in theoretical part is utilized here and the marked and subtle influence of androcentric culture on style and content of the story is shown.

This thesis looks into the concept of the quality of life in women with epilepsy from a qualitative perspective. Epilepsy, as is a chronic neurological disease, affects not only everyday activities after the diagnosis, but also has its impact on the women's life regarding employment or family. By adapting the narrative analysis this thesis categorizes the influential factors of this concept into primary and secondary ones. Moreover, it explores in detail the issue of obtaining a driving license, which is one of the specifics of the people with epilepsy in Czechia. Also, it defines the respondents' attitudes toward the societal perception of epilepsy and fears that accompany it. In addition to that, the matter of motherhood and pregnancy for women with epilepsy is explored as one of the influential factors of the quality of life. Lastly, this thesis argues that the qualitative approach is essential for the initial examination of the selected sample for future investigations regarding the concept of the quality of life in epilepsy.

Embedding itself in the larger discussion on protests against measures taken by governments all over the world to mitigate the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, this work concerns itself with the role of the Holocaust in narratives found in prominent Telegram channels and chat groups of German covid-protests. Building on the existing body of research, it uses the theoretical framework of New Social Movement (NSM) theory to categorise the protests in Germany. Choosing a mixed-methods design, the phenomenon is described using narrative analysis, computer-assisted coding, and elements of network analysis. The narrative analysis and results of computer-assisted coding, find that the Holocaust is narrated as a valid comparison to pandemic politics, while some Telegram channels engage in historical revisionism. The network analysis reveals a large network of Telegram channels, strengthening the importance of the analysed channels for the protests in Germany

INTRINSIC RELIGIOSITY PRACTICE Psychological aspects of intrinsic religiosity of Catholic women - mothers of small children. Key words: Intrinsic religiosity, Prayer, Spirituality of an Everyday Life, Motherhood, Catholic Faith, Identity, Narrative Analysis Secularisation of the current post-modern Europe represents a collapse of Christianity in the sense of an integrating power of the society; however, it does not mean extinction of Christianity as such. The largest European church has been responding to the changes in the post-modern society by moving the emphasis from Catholicism (institutionally - as a doctrine attitude of the church) to Catholicity (openness and universal attitude of the church). Despite this inner movement, the Roman Catholic Church is losing numbers of their members and frequently it does not satisfactorily address, among the competition in the 'religious market', agnostics or even the 'searching' ones. From another point of view, however, it is obvious that for many people it still remains a 'home' in which they develop their faith as an individual expression of existential needs. The symbolic universe of the traditional Catholic religion provides these people with factual as well as symbolic tools to develop spirituality. Significant changes in religiousness and...

This text deals with the Financial crises from the perspective of everyday lived experience. It presents the analysis of narrative accounts of lay people who were active on the Czech housing market during or after the Crises. Theoretically rooted in the in the framework of narrative analysis, the text widens the mainstream economical perceptions of Crises bringing the concepts of emotions, ethos and symbolic boundaries into account. On the behalf of the narratives of Crises, the narratives of the process of social construction of home proved to be significant for the narrator's identity construction and presentation. Text presents three main findings a) Crises is trope, which is used as such in the narratives b) moral evaluation, which might be coined as the bourgeois morality ethos prove their significance in the narratives c) housing choices being based both on "rational" and "irrational" factors i. e. emotions, moral evaluations. The main interpretation of the narrative accounts suggests the crucial importance of the narratives of social construction of home for the expression of being independent, capable, responsible and thus successful person. The ability to express the capability of securing what is culturally regarded as "good and ideal housing" to the family, represents ones ability to...