Humans are relational beings, as they are constantly in interaction with others and with their environment. In schools, learners spend at least nine years of their lives in formal schooling, and the relationships they have with their teachers are bound to have an impact on their self-configuration. According to the Field theory, the Bioecological theory and the Dialogical theory of self, which were used as theoretical frameworks for this study, individuals’ self-configuration is impacted by their environment, experiences and interactions with others. The focus of this study was on Grade 7 learners’ self-configuration experiences within the teacher-learner relationship. Grade 7 learners are at the beginning of the adolescent phase, which is characterised by many changes, transitions, challenges and uncertainties. One of these transitions is the forthcoming transition from primary school to high school and a healthy self-configuration could assist learners to adapt to these changes in a positive manner. The research was qualitative in nature and made use of the case study method. This allowed the researcher to use data gathering approaches through which the subjective experiences of the participants could be explored. Twelve participants volunteered to take part in this study, and data was gathered by means of individual interviews as well as group discussions. All interviews and group discussions were voice and video recorded, where after they were transcribed and analysed by means of thematic analysis. The analysis allowed for data to be organised into meaningful themes. It was found that learners’ experiences of relationships with teachers are both positive and negative. Self-regulation in learners takes place through encouragement and disapproval from teachers, as well as through lessons learnt from teachers and from past experiences. Further studies around self-configuration and teacher-learner relationships are recommended, in order to make teachers more aware of the importance of the teacher-learner relationship, and also to determine what the obstacles are in developing supportive and caring teacher-learner relationships. By highlighting the importance, and by determining the obstacles, more meaningful teacher-learner relationships could be encouraged and developed in order to enhance learners’ self-configuration experiences. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Challenging behaviour poses problems for teachers globally and yet very little research has been done with regard to the teacher-learner relationship and what challenging behaviour does to the teacher. The goal of this study was to explore teachers’ experiences of challenging behaviour within their relationships with learners that display challenging behaviour regarding teacher’s self-configuration. A qualitative approach was pursued in the form of an interpretive descriptive design in order to gain a better understanding of the teachers’ self-configuration experiences. For the purpose of this study the field theory was used as the theoretical framework, viewing teachers in their environment, specifically focusing on the teacher-learner relationship. A total of 12 teachers were purposefully selected from a school in Observatory, Johannesburg. The data were collected through in-depth interviews. Additionally, incomplete sentences were used to enrich data and to enhance trustworthiness. Triangulation was ensured by using two data collection methods to increase the credibility and validity of the results. The interviews and incomplete sentences were recorded via audio recording equipment. The recordings were then transcribed in order to identify emerging themes and subthemes. Thematic analysis was used once the data had been transcribed in order to gain meaningful information. This study revealed teachers’ self-configuration experiences in their relationships with learners with challenging behaviour and experienced their relationships with these children as a foundation for self-configuration. Teachers’ self-configuration is embedded in their different selves at school and their love and passion for teaching are reduced due to negative emotions. Experiences within the relationship escalate to the home environment and challenging behaviour causes stress for teachers. Teachers viewed challenging behaviour as behaviour that is an internal challenge for the learner, but also behaviour that is directed externally towards the teacher and other learners. Trust and respect, class size, individual attention and communication were identified elements contributing to self-configuration within the teacher-learner relationship. This study showed the importance of relationships in the school context and specifically focused on teachers’ self-configuration. / MA (Psychology), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Kommunikationsdirektör vid Sundsvalls kommun önskade undersöka hur man på bästa sätt kommunicerar vid kris med personer som inte talar svenska. Detta eftersom att Sundsvalls kommun ansåg att man saknade tillräckliga språkkunskaper för att hantera kriser. Enligt forskningen är det just personer av annat ursprung än landet det bor i som är mer utsatta vid kris (Olofsson, 2007:7), varför det är viktigt att anpassa kommunikationen så att den når ut till och kan hjälpa alla medborgare. Jag fann det därför intressant att undersöka Sundsvalls kommun och dess kriskommunikativa anpassning genom att intervjua de som inom kommunen är ansvariga för kriskommunikationen samt undersöka hur det ser ut i landet i stort. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om Sveriges kommuner anpassar sin kriskommunikation för medborgare med utländsk bakgrund med huvudfokus på hur Sundsvalls kommun arbetar strategiskt med sin kriskommunikation.   Metod och material: Kvalitativ samtalsintervju med Camilla Nilzén och Ulf Wallin vid Sundsvalls kommun med kompletterande kvantitativ webbenkät till 121 svenska kommuner. Huvudresultat: Sundsvalls kommun är inte anpassade i sin kriskommunikation till medborgare med utländskbakgrund vilket även antas gälla en större del av landets kommuner. Däremot visar resultatet på att kunskapen om att kommunicera på ett anpassat sätt finns varför Sundsvalls kommun och de av landets kommuner som inte är anpassade på ett enkelt sätt kan bli bättre på att anpassa sin

In this study the researcher explored and described the utilization of Gestalt play therapy concepts and techniques in order to strengthen the sense of self of the pediatric hematology/oncology patient. Literature studies were compiled to examine the concepts of the pediatric hematology/oncology patient, sense of self and Gestalt play therapy. These literature studies provided the theoretical frame in which the study was executed. During the empirical study qualitative data was gathered by means of unstructured interviews within an instrumental case study. Eight therapy sessions were conducted with the participant in order to explore how Gestalt play therapy concepts and techniques could be utilized to strengthen the sense of self of the pediatric hematology/oncology patient. Following the analysis of the data the researcher was able to describe how the Gestalt play therapy concepts and techniques were utilized to strengthen the sense of self of the pediatric hematology/oncology patient. / Social Work / M. Diac. (Play Therapy)

In STEM domains, robust learning includes not only fluency with procedures, but also recognition and application of the conceptual principles that underlie them. Grounded feedback is one instructional approach proposed to help students integrate conceptual knowledge into their learning of procedures. Grounded feedback functions primarily by having students take an action in the target domain (often symbolic) and receiving feedback in a representation that is easier to reason with. This thesis defines grounded feedback and evaluates its effectiveness. I define grounded feedback with four characteristics: (1) The feedback reflects students’ inputs according to rules that are inherent to the topic of study. For example, an inputted equation with two variables may be shown as a graph. (2) The feedback facilitates selfevaluation - by examining the feedback, students can evaluate for themselves if their answers are correct or not. (3) Students do not directly manipulate the feedback representation. Instead, the inputs are in a format that matches the domain learning goals. (4) The feedback conveys information about the nature of errors, not just that a particular action was incorrect. For example, the feedback may indicate the direction or magnitude of the error. Some prior experiments on systems with the four characteristics of grounded feedback found greater learning of target procedures (Nathan 1998) and greater transfer (Mathan & Koedinger 20015), relative to robust controls. Over four studies with 4th and 5th graders, this thesis explores three tutor designs for fraction addition that incorporate visualizations of magnitude, including grounded feedback. Two studies of grounded feedback show effects of robust learning relative to correctness feedback, including greater future learning (in study 2) and transfer (in study 3). Another study found little difference between grounded feedback with and without correctness. In the last study, relative to correctness feedback, two implementations of dynamically linked concrete representations (variations on grounded feedback) showed greater robust learning (pre-test to delayed test). The correctness feedback tutor, used in three of these studies, is a high-bar control, including immediate step-level correctness feedback and adaptive on-demand hints. Indications of more robust learning with the grounded feedback tutor are promising, though not conclusive. Grounded feedback is intended to leverage concrete representations to elicit students’ prior knowledge of relevant concepts. Over two Difficulty Factor Assessments, 5th graders demonstrated difficulty incorporating magnitude information when evaluating fraction addition equations. In particular, students could generally evaluate an equation correctly when it was represented with fraction bars. However, including symbols with the bars interfered with students’ evaluations by triggering incorrect transfer from whole-number addition. Students also did not fully grasp that when two positive fractions are added, the resulting sum is bigger than each addend alone. These findings may help explain why the benefits of grounded feedback are not as strong as proponents of concrete representations might hope. Namely, the target population may not be able to take full advantage of the magnitude visualization because they lack pre-requisite knowledge of how fraction addition involves magnitude.

Community colleges continue to experience high levels of student attrition and low degree/certificate completion rates. Given extant literature, there appears to be a need to reexamine how interactions between students and the institution, and students and institutional agents are taking place, with the aim of identifying institutional practices that deleteriously or positively impact degree completion and thus guide colleges to develop action plans to improve conditions for student success. This study examined how factors such as institutional commitment to students, mattering, sense of belonging, interactions with diverse peers, perceptions of the campus climate, engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, and goal commitment collectively affected community college students’ intent to persist to degree completion. The proposed model tested the tenability of seven propositions examining how the above constructs interact to influence intent to persist. The sample consisted of 2,088 multiply diverse community college students. The conceptual model was grounded on Astin’s (1991) Input-Environment-Outcome model and was tested in the context of structural equation modeling. Multiple group invariance analyses for race/ethnicity were conducted. The conceptual model explained 28% of the variance on intent to persist for Asian students, 21% for White students, and 19% for Latino/a students. Results indicated that transition support from family/friends exerted the highest effect on intent to persist across all racial/ethnic groups, followed by engagement/involvement, perceptions of mattering, interactions with diverse peers, GPA, goal commitment, and socio-academic integrative experiences, albeit varying by group. This study was the first in the literature to empirically demonstrate a causal effect between institutional commitment to students and perceptions of mattering. Mattering, in turn, exerted a moderate to strong influence on engagement/involvement, socio-academic integrative experiences, sense of belonging, and indirectly on intent to persist. Evidence in support of an omnibus “student development and success” construct, as alluded to by Wolf-Wendel, et al. (2009) is also presented. Of import to these findings is that while this construct explained a significant proportion of the variance for engagement/involvement, belonging, mattering, and interactions with diverse peers, the individual factors exerted an independent effect on intent to persist. Implications for theory, research, and practice are also discussed.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att genom ett salutogent perspektiv få en ökad förståelse för, inom äldreomsorgen verksamma, biståndshandläggares arbetssituation samt att undersöka vad som kan bidra till att biståndshandläggares arbetssituation upplevs som lättare och mindre påfrestande. Metoden som använts är kvalitativa intervjuer där sex biståndshandläggare verksamma i Värmland har intervjuats. Intervjuerna analyserades genom teman ur KASAM och resulterade i kategorier under varje tema. Under temat begriplighet framkom att biståndshandläggare får stöd från sina kollegor men att de också önskar att det fanns mer resurser för handledning. Biståndshandläggare utför mer än vad som ingår i arbetsbeskrivningen. Under temat hanterbarhet framgår att hög arbetsbelastning hanteras genom att biståndshandläggarna måste planera, strukturera och prioritera. Kollegornas stöd gör arbetet lättare att hantera då de genom att prata med varandra bearbetar känslomässigt påfrestande delar av arbetet. De uttryckte olika behov av att reflektera över sitt arbete. Biståndshandläggare har en stor frihet att planera sin egen arbetsdag och de samverkar med andra professioner. Under temat meningsfullhet framgår att biståndshandläggare finner mening i att göra skillnad för den enskilde. Vårt resultat visar att biståndshandläggarna är utsatta för stress i sitt arbete och att de också har förmåga att möta stressen, men förmågan att möta stressen minskar när arbetsbelastningen blir för hög. / The purpose of this paper was to, by using a salutogenic perspective, achieve a better understanding of eldercare, care managers’ work situation and to explore which factors contribute to the administrator's job situation being experienced as easier and less stressful. The method used were qualitative interviews where six care managers active in Värmland were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed by themes from the Sence Of Coherense and led to categories under each theme. Under the theme comprehensibility was found that care managers receive support from their colleagues but they wish for more resources for professional guidance counselling. Care managers perform more duties than what is included in their job description. Under the theme manageability it shows how administrators have to manage their, high workloads by planning, structurizing and prioritizing. The work is easier to handle when they recieve support from colleagues by talking to each other about strenuous parts of the work. They expressed different needs to reflect on their work. Care managers have a freedom to plan their own and they do collaborate and interact with other professionals. Under the theme meaningfulness the results show that care managers find meaning when they make a difference for their clients. Our results show that care managers are exposed to stress in their work and that they have their own resources cope with. The ability to handle stress is reduced when they feel that the work load is too high.

The aim of this thesis is to develop theories and formal methods to endow a computing machinery with capabilities to identify, represent, reason and evaluate complex activities that are directed by an individual’s needs, goals, motives, preferences and environment, information which can be inconsistent and incomplete. Current methods for formalising and reasoning about human activity are typically limited to basic actions, e.g., walking, sitting, sleeping, etc., excluding elements of an activity. This research proposes a new formal activity-centric model that captures complex human activity based on a systemic activity structure that is understood as a purposeful, social, mediated, hierarchically organized and continuously developing interaction between people and word. This research has also resulted in a common-sense reasoning method based on argumentation, in order to provide defeasible explanations of the activity that an individual performs based on the activity-centric model of human activity. Reasoning about an activity is based on the novel notion of an argument under semantics-based inferences that is developed in this research, which allows the building of structured arguments and inferring consistent conclusions. Structured arguments are used for explaining complex activities in a bottom-up manner, by introducing the notion of fragments of activity. Based on these fragments, consistent argumentation based interpretations of activity can be generated, which adhere to the activity-centric model of complex human activity. For resembling the kind of deductive analysis that a clinician performs in the assessment of activities, two quantitative measurements for evaluating performance and capacity are introduced and formalized. By analysing these qualifiers using different argumentation semantics, information useful for different purposes can be generated. e.g., such as detecting risk in older adults for falling down, or more specific information about activity performance and activity completion. Both types of information can form the base for an intelligent machinery to provide tailored recommendation to an individual. The contributions were implemented in different proof-of-concept systems, designed for evaluating complex activities and improving individual’s health in daily life. These systems were empirically evaluated with the purpose of evaluating theories and methodologies with potential users. The results have the potential to be utilized in domains such as ambient assisted living, assistive technology, activity assessment and self-management systems for improving health.

No description available.

Thesis (MA (Sociology and Social Anthropology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The thesis examines the lives of four families in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal and what the situation in which these families find themselves tells us about race, poverty and social change in contemporary South Africa by using ethnographic participant observation techniques. Central to the thesis is a concern with contradiction expressed in the entanglement of these four families with a particular moral order. This moral order is the basis of continued material survival, but at the same time, it is not adequate to transform conditions of poverty nor to change feelings of entitlement, making it impossible for these families to imagine their condition as shared with other races. The problem appears to be just about individuals not thinking correctly about their position and about them not seeing how many South Africans are struggling to survive and therefore share similar difficulties. The thesis shows that the difficulties experienced have rather more to do with changing the families' common sense notions. Their common sense is grounded in material realities, in realties of institutions that provide for them but also dictate a particular way of seeing the world, a moral order. Common sense is embedded in the material practices of people, in how they inhabit space and make place for themselves, in how they interact with family, in how they work with the institutions that are the very condition of their survival, and in how they come to understand and judge the past. At the moments when the limits of the moral order become clear, it is then not the moral order that comes into question but rather it is reasserted through explanations based on particular structural changes as contingencies that reinforce the moral order rather than challenge it. It is at these moments that people reassert race since their common sense explanations seem limited. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie proefskrif ondersoek die alledaagse lewens van vier families in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal en wat hul situasie ons kan vertel van ras, armoede en sosiale verandering in 'n kontemporêre Suid-Afrika gebasseer op deelnemende waarneming en etnografiese tegnieke. Sentraal tot die proefskrif is 'n fokus op die teenstrydigheid wat voorkom in die verstrengeling van hierdie vier families met 'n bepaalde morele orde. Hierdie morele orde is die grondslag vir voortgesette materiële oorlewing, maar terselfde tyd is dit nie voldoende om die kondisies van armoede te transformeer of om hul gevoelens van geregtigheid te verander nie en maak dit amper onmoonltik vir die families om hulle kondisie as gedeel en gemeenskaplik met ander rasse te sien. Die probleem blyk om meer te wees as net individue wat nie korrek nadink oor hul posisie nie of nie sien hoeveel ander Suid Afrikaners sukkel om 'n bestaan te maak nie en dus soortgelyke probleme ervaar. Die tesis wys dat dit het eerder te doen met 'n verandering in wat die families „weet‟ gebaseer op hulle gesonde verstand (common sense). Hulle gesonde verstand is gegrond in materiële realiteite, die realiteite van instellings wat vir hulle voorsiening maak en gevolglik die spesifieke wyse waarop hulle die wêreld sien dikteer; 'n morele orde. Hulle gesonde verstand is gegrond in die materiële praktyke van mense, in hoe hulle in ruimtes leef en plek maak vir hulself, in hoe hulle omgaan met familie, in hoe hulle te werk gaan met instellings wat die basis is vir hulle oorlewing en in hoe hulle sin maak van die verlede asook dit oordeel. In die oomblike wanneer die grense van die morele orde bereik word, is dit nie die morele orde wat bevraagteken word nie. Die morele orde word eerder gehandhaaf deur regverdigings gebasseer op spesifieke strukturele veranderings wat dit verder versterk, eerder as uitdaag. Dit is in hierdie oomblikke wat mense fokus op ras omdat hulle gesonde verstand se rationalisasies of regverdigings beperk is.