Background: The curriculum for both adapted upper secondary school and adapted compulsory school states that everyone within the school must use the curriculum. Nevertheless, it is stated in the introductory chapter of the curriculum that the curriculum is aimed to all teachers and for all teachers. It shows an exclusion of other professions, including student assistants, which are so important for students in need of adaptations. Along with them, the school's goal is to provide the right conditions for the students and the conditions come from the staff but also from the collaboration meeting that the school staff has together with other professions and relatives of the students.Aim: The purpose of the study is to interpret and understand the picture of how student assistants at an adapted school, experience power structures and power relations that they may encounter in a collaborative process. The issues related to the purpose are: What perceptions do student assistants have about their participation and influence in a collaboration process and what perceptions do the student assistants have about their room for manoeuvre in a collaborative process.Methods: I have done a qualitative semi-structured interview study. Where I interviewed five student assistants.Results: The results show that the student assistants may participate before the collaboration meeting but not in the meeting. The results also show that they have room for manoeuvre that they can use when they encounter resistance in the operations.Conclusions: The result of the study showed that there is a balance of power based on mandate and status within the organisation because the educators and principals have the overall decisive decision-making.

No description available.

Kenya's 2010 Constitution marked a significant shift towards decentralised governance and public participation as key drivers of sustainable development (Finch and Omolo, 2015). One of the primary strategies county governments employ to achieve this goal is participatory budgeting (PB), which empowers communities and devolves power to support inclusive and equitable development. Through the Communication for Development lens, this thesis investigates the discourse surrounding participatory budgeting in Makueni County, Kenya. The study examines the communication approaches the county government applies to promote public participation, explores the role of participatory communication in facilitating public engagement in PB, and assesses the inclusivity of participatory approaches. Additionally, the research delves into the opportunities and challenges of integrating digital tools into participatory communication for PB. This aspect of the study is particularly relevant in today's digital age, where digital communication tools have become an essential aspect of communication. The thesis also considers power dynamics, social context, and the appropriate use of digital tools to foster a participatory and inclusive approach for PB.The data collection methods to dissect the research topic included semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Makueni County officials and a focus group discussion with civil society and community members. The findings of this research reveal Makueni County has public participation approach that enjoys strong government backing and efforts to institutionalise PB within the county devolution governance. The county communication approach blends participatory and top-down strategies, dominated by a monologic, one-way flow of information. However, a participatory aspect is also present, facilitated by traditional community platforms and community mobilisation through media and digital tools. While digital platforms are employed, restricted internet coverage and a digital divide hinder their effectiveness. The findings also identify limited youth and civil society participation in the communication approaches further hinder inclusive participation in the PB processes. Despite these challenges, the study suggests that Makueni County's approach is promising for participatory communication. However, to achieve a truly participatory communication approach, the county government needs to refine its communication approach to enhance inclusivity and leverage digital tools to foster effective public participation. This could cultivate transparent, accountable, and participatory communication strategies, that could yield sustainable and equitable outcomes in the participatory budgeting initiative.

Power as a concept has a long history of being debated in regards to foreign policy, whereforeign aid as a tool can create asymmetrical power dynamics between donor and recipient.Traditional donors' own national interests have frequently been reduced to security oreconomic motives. China, an independent and emerging donor, is thought to be among themajor donors of foreign aid today. With the growing Belt and Road Initiative, China's globaleconomic ambition is increasing. The general theme of this study is power in relation toforeign aid. The aim is to examine donor motives and how foreign aid can transitioneconomic power to political influence in accordance with Joseph Nye’s theory of power. Inaddition, could China's aid-project be regarded as a “smart power”-strategy? This was doneby examining China’s whitebook on development cooperation through a motive analysis. Inaddition, a method of process-tracing on the case of Chinese aid to Cambodia wasimplemented to examine how China’s foreign aid can manifest as a means of power.Cambodia is a top receiver of Chinese aid, and therefore interesting to explore. The resultsshowed that China’s donor motives can be summarised as security, global development andambition, cooperation, commercial and diplomatic interests. Furthermore, evidence was foundthat Chinese foreign aid can be considered a means of power in Cambodia. Largely becauseof an asymmetrical bilateral relationship as well as Cambodia’s weak state capacity.

This research is a qualitative interview study on consent in upper secondary school dance education through focus group interviews with teachers and students. The intention is to give more insight on how teachers and students understand consent in upper secondary school dance education and in general. The study shows that consent in upper secondary dance education in Sweden exists at the intersection between norms of communication, power and the context in which it is practiced. The most common communication of consent for dance in this study is through reading body language, and the most discussed situation is regarding touch and bodily contact. Touch is viewed by the teachers as a vital part of knowledge generation in dance. Both teachers and students find situations where students are engaging with touch and body contact as the most challenging. The study observes that consent is specific within its context, which requires dance teachers to establish and clarify norms and intentions in the dance studio. To do so takes time and repetition, if not successful norms and perceptions from other contexts may be stronger and make the communication of consent difficult. Further, the study suggests that teaching about consent needs to be combined with practical exercises for a more preventive knowledge. The material was analyzed with qualitative analysis and a norm critical and multimodal perspective.

No description available.

When managing the reception and relocation of refugees within the EU, it is unsurprising that negotiating common policy and burden-sharing schemes are complex, contentious tasks (Thielemann 2003; Naurin 2015). Indeed, the individual geographic, political and economic positioning of member states are reflected in larger power dynamics within the EU, further complicating resolution on solidarity initiatives in asylum policy (Duarte and Pascariu 2017, Basile and Olmastroni 2020, Bauböck 2018). Within this thesis, I argue that these power dynamics are evidenced along EU core and periphery lines (i.e., states with external borders and those with primarily internal borders) and within negotiation discourses (Jäntti and Klasche 2021; Zaun 2018). By conducting a critical discourse analysis (CDA) with statements from the French and Greek national parliaments, as well the EU Commission statement, this project is able to pursue a comparative analysis of discursive approaches and highlight differences in discourses and power positionings. This, in turn, can also help us to examine why standstills in asylum policy negotiation proceedings persist. The structure of this thesis is in line with previous research which has examined how power and agency of member states is constructed through linguistic framing (Mainwaring 2014), and literature investigating complications that emerge with common immigration policy within the EU and the supranationally (Omelaniuk 2012, Hampshire 2013, Bauböck 2018).

No description available.

The purpose of this study is to explore different power dynamics in the spiritualist movement of fin-de-siècle Sweden. The source material for this exploration is the spiritualist magazine of Efteråt, which was the main spiritualist magazine in Sweden at the time, in print between 1891–1922. The main material for this study is specifically the texts that fall under the genre of ”fictionalized witness-accounts” of supernatural phenomena. These witness accounts yield reoccurring tropes that are either actors, arenas, or narratives. The process of finding these tropes is made through discourse analysis as constructed by Norman Fairclough complemented using grammar and props as presented by Mattias Fyhr. The theoretical tools utilized are the framework of Luce Irigaray and the relationship between the subject and the object, the concept of receptivity as coined by Ann Cvetkovich, and finally the concept of heterotopia as coined by Michel Foucault. The relationship between a masculine subject and a feminine object is generally maintained throughout the source material. However, this dynamic is open to destabilization. This is especially prominent in the arena of the séance room, where perceived feminine volatility is both a liability and a resource. This also rises interesting perspectives concerning male mediums. This destabilization in further deepened when the concept of receptivity is applied and the relationship between the spirit world and the material world is come into question: where is agency situated? The last result concerns the spiritualist movement and its relationship to hegemonic society. With the help of the concept of heterotopia the different spiritualist rooms show what is deemed lacking in society at large, as well as the perceived functions they have within the movement.

No description available.