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In 2017 the Ontario government moved forward with new child welfare legislation, Bill 89, spelling out that the 47 Children’s Aid Societies in Ontario will be much more ‘child-centric’. I explore the historical context of the ‘child-centric’ language and commitments in the new Act, including tracing its origin by the Act’s incorporation of the Katelynn Principle and Article 12 of the 1989 United Nations Convention On The Rights Of The Child. How best to consult youth in-care is an essential, but a mostly unanswered question. Children Aid Societies across the province have a unique opportunity to implement alternative methods in engaging young people in consultation, should they pan out as viable and reliable strategies when consulting youth in-care. Tradition interview approaches are not always the best strategies when engaging youth. Visual research methods, such as photo-elicitation, have the potential of offering useful insights into children’s perspectives and experiences. The focus of my thesis is youth voice. I explore this topic through a study with young people in-care involved in a music group. I used focus groups and photo-elicitation as methods for data collection. An important question addressed by my thesis is whether a visual research method, such as photo-elicitation, helps in the consultation process with young people and whether some of the claims made about the approach are accurate when working with youth. Specifically, I explored claims made about photo-elicitation helping with increasing 'emotional type talk' and inquired into how the method may enhance the consultation process with young people. I consider these questions in the context of important epistemological and theoretical debates about arts-informed and visual research methodologies. Five youth who had involvement of being in-care and were a part of a music group at a local Children’s Aid Society participated in my study. My study found that the youth overall felt consulted and did feel a degree of influence in shared decision making with being in-care. My study also showed that although photo-elicitation did not generate more ‘emotional-type talk’, it does appear to enhance self-confidence, which seemed to support meaningful participation in the interview process. Although much more needs to be explored with the application of visual research methods, and social science researchers should be cautious in making exaggerated claims in support of the approaches, youth in-care can surely benefit from visual research methods such as photo-elicitation. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

In recent years, there has been an enormous growth in the literature that has focussed upon assets, in other words emphasising the positive attributes of both people and communities; these include children and young people’s developmental assets, community asset mapping and public health, all of which have generated a wide range of literature. Although there has been some consideration of assets within a child health context, this is limited and no literature has previously documented the mapping of children’s assets at an individual level. It has long been recognised that wellbeing is an integral aspect of health. Children’s wellbeing has been the focus of much concern at both national and international levels; this has resulted in the publication of key documents by prominent organisations, as well as the undertaking of a range of research. Despite this, studies have not previously sought to map the assets underpinning children’s wellbeing – this research has addressed this deficit. This study was supported by a theoretical framework that was specifically developed to guide the study. An ethnographic approach and a photo elicitation method were drawn upon to facilitate the gaze through the lens of ‘Activities that I Enjoy’; this in turn enabled the mapping and emergence of assets that underpin children’s wellbeing. Two primary schools in the south-east of England were used to recruit twenty Year 5 children (aged 9-11 years of age). The participants, ten boys and ten girls, were given disposable cameras and asked to take photographs of the activities that they enjoyed. The children’s photographs were integral to subsequent individual semi-structured interviews that sought to gain insight into children’s wellbeing. ii A constant comparative analysis technique facilitated the mapping of assets that underpinned the children’s wellbeing; this process revealed one overall Stabilising Asset as well as eight internal and three external assets. Whilst some of the assets have been previously recognised, others have not; in particular, the study revealed ‘When I Have Got Nothing To Do: Resourcefulness’ as an internal asset that has not formerly been articulated. All of the assets are presented within the ‘I’m Good’: Children’s Asset Wheel [CAW], an original model that provides a new and important insight as well as being an integral component of the initial guiding theoretical framework. As its contribution to knowledge, the study offered a number of key insights including: The presentation of an innovative guiding theoretical framework that not only has the potential to inform future research, but also professionals in relation to the practicalities of asset mapping. Secondly, the study developed and documented a detailed original approach to asset mapping at an individual level; thirdly, the research facilitated the design of the CAW which encapsulates the assets underpinning children’s wellbeing. Appropriate dissemination strategies have been initiated, and will continue, in order to facilitate the study’s contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

Introduction : L’adolescence est une période cruciale dans le développement des saines habitudes alimentaires et pour le maintien de celles-ci à l’âge adulte. Les choix alimentaires sont guidés par de multiples facteurs individuels, environnementaux et sociaux qui, durant la période de l’adolescence, se butent à une quête identitaire. Objectifs : Explorer et mettre en relief les principaux déterminants jouant un rôle dans le processus décisionnel des choix alimentaires chez de jeunes adolescents québécois tout en évaluant la méthode de recherche qualitative utilisée. Méthodologie : Issue du projet de recherche « Les dimensions socioculturelles des pratiques alimentaires et d'activité physique des jeunes : une enquête qualitative auprès d'adolescents québécois de 12 à 14 ans », cette étude repose sur l’analyse de 30 entrevues semi-dirigées utilisant des photographies en lien avec l’alimentation. Résultats : Les facteurs individuels et ceux liés aux environnements sociaux se démarquent principalement. Parmi les facteurs individuels, le goût et les perceptions sensorielles, la représentation ou l’impression personnelle des aliments et les connaissances nutritionnelles sont très influents. La famille ainsi que les activités sociales associées à l’aliment ou au lieu de consommation dominent au chapitre des facteurs sociaux. Enfin, l’utilisation de la photographie s’avère un outil de collecte de données très intéressant afin d’obtenir des propos complémentaires en situation d’entrevue. Conclusion : Cette étude confirme l’importance de certains déterminants (surtout individuels et sociaux) qui influencent les comportements alimentaires des jeunes adolescents québécois. Les connaissances acquises dans le cadre de ce projet seront utiles pour les divers intervenants appelés à développer ou à mettre en œuvre des programmes d’intervention adaptés pour la promotion de la santé et de saines habitudes chez les jeunes adolescents québécois. Mots clés : jeunes, adolescents, adolescence, motivations de consommation, choix alimentaire, alimentation, photographie / Introduction : Adolescence is a pivotal period when healthy eating habits are developed and strengthened into adulthood. Food choices are inevitably influenced by multiple factors, both individual and environmental. Moreover, amongst teenagers, such factors are often biased by a quest for identity. Study Aims : Investigate and contrast the principal determinants pertaining to the decision-making process of food choices among Quebec teenagers as well as evaluate the qualitative research method used. Method : This study is based on the project « Les dimensions socioculturelles des pratiques alimentaires et d'activité physique des jeunes : une enquête qualitative auprès d'adolescents québécois de 12 à 14 ans ». Thirty semi-directed interviews were analyzed using a framework of food photo-elicitation. Results : Both key individual and social factors were found to be significant. Taste and sensory perception, personal meaning of food and nutritional knowledge were found to be key individual motivators. Conversely, for social factors, family, friends, activities and location pertaining to food consumption had an important impact. In the setting of an interview, the use of photography is a very interesting and useful tool to further collect key, complementary data. Conclusion : This study confirms the importance of key individual and social determinants of eating behaviours among Quebec teenagers. The knowledge acquired will be useful for both the improvement and development of governmental programs that will be well-suited to promote healthy behaviours among Quebec teenagers. Keywords : adolescence, teenagers, adolescents, photo-elicitation, food choices,

Museums are important for maintaining trust and tolerance in society and their importance has in-creased as more and more people visit museums. Twenty-five million visits were made to museums in Sweden in 2014. The issue of creative idea generation in terms of exhibition projects is central to the museum's impact and success, and to its relevance to an increasingly complex audience. In order to download their collections with new content and stories, museums have to develop their vision of creative idea generation and be better at taking a creative approach to the exhibition topic. This is difficult because museums have an inherent resistance to change because they are controlled by their institutions, here in the sense of self-imposed rules, conventions and traditions of how something is done. Within institutional theory, one uses the term Path Dependency. There are constant negotiations within institutions between the different roles with varying strong or weak ne-gotiating positions. Museum directors have strong negotiating positions and are therefore key play-ers in the creation of exhibitions. By illustrating how museum directors perceive their role in relation to exhibits, it is possible to change the institutions. Qualitative semi-structured interviews have thus been conducted with all five museum directors who have been or are active in the Swedish National Maritime Museums in the period 2004-2013. The investigation has shown that the organization and the director general at an overall level estab-lish the framework for museum directors' ability to exercise their role and their negotiating position. One result is that museum directors have strong negotiating positions in certain distinct areas, but that there are also areas that are unclear to them, which prevents them from fully exploiting their negotiation position. One such area is the commissioning of exhibitions, especially in relation to the artistic creative processes and design. The conclusion from the result is that the commissioner’s role must be defined much more clearly. Another important conclusion is that museum directors must approach the question of what creative idea generation is and how it works.

abstract: Engagement as a concept and emerging theory has been explored, but key elements have not been clearly described, and as such, work has not been comprehensive in nature. Research was needed to explore the concept and theory of engagement in general, as well its application to the study of volunteer tourism. Additional research was also needed to incorporate youth perspectives of a volunteer tourism program, along with exploration of engagement impacts on program youth. The purpose of this case study was to explore participant engagement in a volunteer tourism youth education program and impacts on program youth as perceived by program participants (volunteer tourist teachers, adult residents, and program youth). Confined within the Engagement Theoretical Framework, data were retrieved from nonprofit documents and websites, researcher observations, individual interviews, and focus groups (two focus groups used participant generated photo elicitation method). Findings suggest participant engagement in a volunteer tourism program is related to the themes of connection, communication, and hope. The primary reason participant engagement in this program is due to the Mpingo (tree), the symbolic bridge between community members and volunteer tourist teachers. This culturally relevant symbol has linkages to the study of signs (or symbols) called semiotics. Through volunteers traveling to this area to teach, this culturally relevant symbol helps to connect, aids in the communication between, and gives hope to, participants. Significant contributions of this study to literature include: volunteer tourist and community member engagement plays an important role in the planning, and the sustaining, of volunteer tourism community development programs today; program youth perspectives about program impacts may result in prospective youth leadership and future adult civic engagement; program skill matched volunteers are likely to be repeat volunteers which leads to group cohesion and program sustainability; and the major theme of hope appears to be a significant motive for program participation in a community development project. In terms of deep meaning ascribed to culturally relevant symbols, this unique finding contributes to engagement research by understanding there are multiple dimensions involved in a diverse group of participants engaged in a specific community program. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Community Resources and Development 2018

Collective memory has recently become one of the most explored topics in the social sciences and has led to the emergence of a separate and independent subdiscipline called memory studies. The thesis investigates the awakening of collective memory in two borderlands of Central Europe: the former Sudetes region in the Czech Republic and the southern part of former East Prussia in Poland. The thesis provides an overview of the current theories about collective memory with a focus on the interactional and visual character of the studied phenomenon. In line with this, the thesis presents, discusses, and elaborates on research conducted in the two borderlands in 2016 and 2017. The aim of the research was to study the role and form of collective memory (shared remembrance) in ethnic, cultural, and historical borderlands. The contributions of the thesis are both methodological and theoretical. Firstly, the discussed research revealed that between particularly family-based communicative memory and official, institution-generated cultural memory, there is ritualised communicative memory, maintained through interactions among members of the borderland community (community of memory). Secondly, the thesis contributes to various studies within the interactionist paradigm and proves the usability of Goffman's...

With a tense political landscape with stigmatizing discourse about migrants and so-called migrant ghettos, alongside continuous indications of gender imbalances in public spaces in Copenhagen, a focus on migrant women was chosen. The thesis takes its outset in a photo project conducted in Kringlebakken, an integration house in Copenhagen. Six migrant women participated and were asked to photograph the city through their eyes, meaning taking photos of their everyday lives and places they wanted to show and talk about in the following photo elicitation interviews. With agency and empowerment as key values the women navigated the conversation and shared experiences about their everyday lives. Concepts of intersectionality, the everyday and emotional geographies were applied through a feminist lens, highlighting the role emotions play in shaping our perception of spaces. From an inductive approach two themes were found: 1) green spaces and 2) everyday practices and challenges. The women shared peaceful moments and embodied experiences in nature both with themselves, with their children and their family. The green spaces evoked gratitude, appreciation and peace and had a general restorative effect in their everyday life. Their appreciation mainly stems from previous experiences in their home countries where urban green areas are not as accessible. Furthermore green spaces become a space where the women can get a break from the everyday chores. In contrast, the experiences shared about the everyday spaces and practices included language barriers, discrimination and feelings of exclusion. The added hindrances to urban life brings a level of discomfort in their everyday lives and it is here that Kringlebakken plays an essential role as an inclusive space in the women’s lives. Highlighting these embodied experiences adds nuances to a heterogeneous group that is often depicted as a homogeneous group.

Venezuela faces today an unprecedented social and political collapse that extends beyond the critical economy and the violence; a deadly combination of severe shortages of food and medicine which makes it extraordinarily difficult for most Venezuelans to obtain essential medical care and the adequate minimal nutritional intake to ensure survival. The primary concern of this research is to answer the question of how do visual representations of Venezuela’s humanitarian disaster elucidate the deterioration of the quality of life of its younger citizens? This study aims to examine and better understand the effects and implications of Venezuela’s humanitarian crisis on its citizenry through the use of photography as a method of qualitative research, by paying particular attention to young Venezuelans and their role as social and political agents. The study of young people’s reali- ties through photographs provides an unique opportunity to appraise and comprehend real processes of social exchange; the ways in which visual images can be understood differently by different sub- jects in different socio-cultural spheres in the context of a humanitarian disaster. However, in order to enlarge the possibilities of conventional empirical research and withstand the intrinsic subjectivi- ty of qualitative research, these visual representations were inserted into photo-interviews. Both the photographs and the photo-interviews of this study were analysed and interpreted by using the ana- lytical approach of thick description. In this regard, this dissertation seeks to examine the length and complexity of an emergency situation by seeking to raise awareness and procure critical understanding about the colossal dimension of Venezuelan’s humanitarian crisis and its disastrous consequences on more than 30 million people.

This is a study of qualitative method that aims to investigate how compulsory school students perceive the content of Visual Art Education and the relevance of art education. The study is based on empirical methods that consists of semi-structured interviews with a total of 12 students in grades 6 and 9. The theoretical framework of the study is based on a sociocultural perspective which describes that it is through communication and interaction with others that the individual acquires knowledge and skills. The theoretical starting points for the study are supported by the concepts of visual culture, visual literacy and Vygotskijs concepts of creativity and imagination with the assistance of contemporary research that describes the concepts from the perspective of a modern-day society. Furthermore, the study uses the cultural circuit from Hall and photo elicitation from Rose as analytical tool to analyze the participants perceptions about Visual Art Education. The results of my study show that Visual Art Education still represents something that is more similar to a traditional view of artist work, with a focus on techniques and materials. The results also show that the participants perceive Visual Art Education as less important compared to other school subjects and some of the participants don’t think they will benefit from the subject’s knowledge and abilities either in future education, future profession or their private life. This shows the participants narrow view of how abilities linked to visual literacy are relevant in a modern society. The knowledge contribution added to the problem area and previous research is a deeper understanding of how the participants perceive the relevance of Visual Art Education. The study is important and relevant for the teaching profession, as students need to be made more aware of the breadth and relevance of Visual Art Education. From this content it can be deduced that the abilities that students must acquire through visual arts education are about so much more than just drawing. It is also important that teachers gain insight and understanding of how students perceive the relevance of Visual Art Education for them to be able to move forward.