Detta är en kvalitativ studie som genom diskursanalys ämnar ta reda på hur samarbetet mellan förskolpedagoger och specialpedagoger ser ut på förskolor. Studien utfördes i en storstadsregion i Sverige. Alla barn ska få rätt till stöd i alla skolformer. Vi ämnar utröna hur förskolpedagoger ser på samarbetet och ifall det finns externa faktorer som påverkar. Externa faktorer som till exempel kan påverka skulle kunna vara maktstrukturer, professionella roller, erfarenhet och synen på vad som är bäst för barnet. Vi genomförde fem gruppintervjuer med 2 till 4 deltagare i vardera. Totalt intervjuades 15 personer, alla informanter var förskolpedagoger. Syftet med att intervjua pedagoger i förskolan är att det är en professionell yrkesroll med stor makt att påverka hur förskolan fungerar och att det är pedagogernas ansvar att planera och samarbeta med specialpedagoger. Denna studie kommer bidra till en större förståelse för vad förskolpedagoger har för förväntningar på samarbetet med specialpedagoger. Vi hade en uppfattning om att specialpedagogerna hade befogenhet att föreslå åtgärder oavsett vilka åsikter förskolpedagogerna hade i frågan. Detta var inte i linje med den information vi fick fram, där specialpedagogerna inte upplevdes befinna sig i maktposition gentemot förskolpedagoger. Däremot sågs det som önskvärt att ha specialpedagoger närvarande i samtal med vårdnadshavare som ett stöd åt alla inblandade parter. En specialpedagog bör således kunna ta hand om helheten, stödja lärare och barn, ge vikt och värdighet till svåra samtal med vårdnadshavare, men inte vara med och besluta om faktiska åtgärder. Denna komplexitet bidrar till att en möjlig hierarki av makt i pedagogiska termer faktiskt inte påverkar samarbetet mellan dessa yrkesgrupper negativt, utan tillför en positiv verksamhetsutveckling. / With the help of qualitative interviews, we want to find out what preschool teachers have for wishes and expectations of a collaboration with special educators. Are there any obstacles to good cooperation and what external factors can influence the collaboration? External factors that could affect, for example, may be power structures, professional roles, experience, and the view of what is best for the child. This will be of great importance to our future professional role if we have a better understanding of what is desirable in our professional role. We conducted five group interviews, with 2 to 4 participants. A total of 15 people was interviewed. All informants were preschool teachers in Sweden. The purpose of interviewing preschool teachers is that it is a professional role with great power to influence how preschool works and that it is the responsibility of preschool teachers to plan and collaborate with special educators. We were of the opinion that the special educators had the power to propose how the teachers would work regardless of what the teachers had in mind. This was not in line with the information we obtained, but it was desirable that the special educator could be present in discussions with the guardians as support for all parties involved. A special educator should thus be able to take care of the whole, support teachers and children, give weight and dignity to difficult conversations with custodians, but not be involved in deciding on actual measures. This complexity contributes to the fact that a possible hierarchy of power in pedagogical terms does not in fact affect the cooperation between these occupational groups negatively, but adds positive development.

The Internet has grown from its modest academic beginnings into an important, global communication medium. It has become a significant, intrinsic part of our lives, how we distribute information and how we transact. It is used for a variety of purposes, including: banking; home shopping; commercial trade - using EDI (Electronic Data Interchange); and to gather information for market research and other activities. Owing to its academic origins, the early developers of the Internet did not focus on security. However, now that it has rapidly evolved into an extensively used, global commercial transaction and distribution channel, security has become a big concern. Fortunately, the field of information security has started to evolve in response and is fast becoming an important discipline with a sound theoretical basis. The discipline views the twin processes of identification and authentication as crucial aspects of information security. An individual access attempt must be identifiable prior to access being authorised otherwise system confidentiality cannot be enforced nor integrity safeguarded. Similarly, non-denial becomes impossible to instigate since the system is unable to log an identity against specific transactions. Consequently, identification and authentication should always be viewed as the first step to successfully enforcing information security. The process of identification and authorisation is, in essence, the ability to prove or verify an identity. This is usually accomplished using either one or a combination of the following three traditional identification techniques: something you possess; something you know; or something you are. A critical consideration when designing an application is which identification method, or combination of methods, from the three described above to use. Each method offers its own pros and cons and there are many ways to compare and contrast them. The comparison made in this study identifies biometrics as the best solution in a distributed application environment. There are, however, two over-arching hindrances to its widespread adoption. The first is the environment’s complexity - with multiple applications being accessed by both the public and the private sectors - and the second is that not all biometrics are popular and no single method has universe appeal. The more significant hindrance of the two is the latter, that of acceptance and trust, because it matters little how good or efficient a system is if nobody is willing to use it. This observation suggests that the identification system needs to be made as flexible as possible. In a democratic society, it could be argued that the best way of ensuring the successful adoption of a biometric system would be to allow maximum freedom of choice and let users decide which biometric method they would like to use. Although this approach is likely to go a long way towards solving the acceptance issue, it increases the complexity of the environment significantly. This study attempts to solve this problem by reducing the environment’s complexity while simultaneously ensuring the user retains maximum biometric freedom of choice. This can be achieved by creating a number of central biometric repositories. Each repository would be responsible for maintaining a biometric template data store for a type of biometric. These repositories or “Biometric Authorities” would act as authentication facilitators for a wide variety of applications and free them from that responsibility. / Dissertation (MSc (Computer Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / MSc / unrestricted

This dissertation investigates trends in Muslim women’s religious authority within and beyond the US context by examining the Women’s Mosque of America (WMA), a women-only mosque in Los Angeles. Muslim women across the globe occupy various positions of authority across different religious networks, including as educators at Islamic institutions, board members at mosques, khateebahs (preachers), and prayer leaders. Shifts in Muslim women’s religious authority result from uneven processes of privatization and individualization of religion, resulting in the decentralization of established religious authorities. In the global Islamic context, scholars theorize this process as a fragmentation of authority and its expansion to a wider range of lay actors. This privatization of religion in the US context shapes religious congregations as civic institutions through which religious actors acculturate to American norms, including women’s increased participation in public religious life, and engagements in interfaith dialogue. This dissertation, which analyzes the WMA at the convergence of these two contexts, intervenes in scholarly conversations on the fragmentation of religious authority and the racialized nature of American religious institutions. Through my analysis of WMA sermons, participant observation, and ethnographic interviews, I argue that the WMA produces new forms of Islamic authority based on women’s experiences and individual relationships to scripture, rather than traditional religious training. This study brings together the Religious Studies methodologies of textual analysis and ethnography with feminist epistemological frameworks that privilege experiences as a valid basis for knowledge. My analysis of the WMA speaks to ongoing debates on Islam and gender, American Islam, and the role of the mosque as a center for religious community. This study situates Muslim women’s authority at the intersections of gender, religious space, and national belonging. I demonstrate how WMA preachers assert themselves as meaningful religious actors in the US in and beyond Muslim communities. Through their interpretations of scripture, the WMA represents an American branding of Islam that privileges individuality, civic engagement, and social and gender justice. / 2026-07-31T00:00:00Z

Vermittlung von Informationskompetenz: Dieses Thema dominiert seit einiger Zeit nicht nur die bibliothekarische Fachwelt. Informationskompetenz, das heißt die Fähigkeit, aus der unübersehbar großen Zahl von Informationen genau diejenigen heraus zu filtern, die für die Lösung eines Problems benötigt werden, gehört zu den Schlüsselqualifikationen für die wissenschaftliche und berufliche Arbeit und ist genau so wichtig wie die Lesekompetenz.

Thesis (MPAM.) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The study investigated the challenges faced by CoGHSTA department in records management and disposal with the sole purpose of developing some mechanisms to address the above-mentioned challenges. The study was conducted at CoGHSTA in Limpopo Province. The overall challenges faced in both records management and disposal are discussed. Data was collected from various sources e.g., primary, and secondary sources of data. Literature written by different authors – from international, national, and provincial contexts - namely government legislations, books, journals, websites office records such as procedure manuals and service standards, was investigated, to explore the topic under study. The population for this study was all 21-records management staff within the two divisions of the Information management unit such as general records and human resource records. The study employed a qualitative research approach that relies on phenomenology because the researcher intends to find out what challenges are faced by CoGHSTA records management staff on records management and disposal. The study adopted purposive sampling because its respondents have the characteristics and knowledge to answer the research problem of this study. For this study, data were collected from 17 participants using semi-structured interviews. The study findings revealed the following as major challenges faced in records management: Lack of resources - human and financial; lack of storage facilities; lack of Senior Management support. The following were raised as challenges experienced on the disposal of records: delay in the approval of memo(s) for disposal of records by the Head of Department; delay by the Provincial Archives to give authority to dispose of records; lack of storage facilities for active and inactive records and shortage of staff to arrange records for disposal. It is out of those findings that the study proposed several recommendations which included the need to implement records management policies, standards, guidelines, and procedures. The study recommended that the records management unit be allocated sufficient resources (human and financial) as other units that the department of strategic business deems to be performing the department’s (CoGHSTA) core functions. This is because the records management unit equally plays a key role in the management of the records from various CoGHSTA units which are regarded as core units. It is also recommended that the allocation of storage facilities that meet the records storage xi facilities standard be prioritised and attended to as a matter of urgency because the records management unit could function effectively and efficiently without such an important infrastructure. The study deems it necessary for the Head of Department as the Accounting Officer to delegate - in writing - the authority to the Records Manager or his/her supervisor to sign and approve the memorandum for disposal of records after a thorough appraisal of such records is done by the records staff to avoid the delays that are experienced during the approval of the memorandums. The study further recommends that the Provincial Archives have three (3) to four (4) employees amongst its staff establishment dedicated to each government department dealing with all records management issues including an appraisal of records to address the delay by the Provincial Archives when authorising the disposal of records.

This thesis explores two examples of water management in the highland Peruvian villages, San Pedro de Llancha and San Antonio de Chinchina. One example is of cooperation and union between the two communities. The other is of conflict between the same two villages just 40 years prior. I examine ethnographic and ethnohistorical data from both the collaborative period and the conflictive period of these two communities’ relations over water. The data suggest that, while the outcomes of these two periods were drastically different, the processes through which these communities came into relation with one another were quite similar. Their communal union or fragmentation depended on subtle differences in their positional relations to a common resource, water, others who needed the resource, and external entities who had authority over that resource. The result is two neighboring sister communities who flow in to and out of each other’s communal orbit according to circumstance and practice, rather than permanent, abstract village identity.

Hybrid energy systems are receiving more popularity in remote areas to provide low-cost electricity by taking advantage of existing electric generation systems and new generations of renewable energy resources. Such hybrid systems will increase reliability and decrease the cost of electricity. Renewable energy sources are gaining more attention due to their flexibility in utilization of locally available resources and their contribution in cleaner energy production. To this end, this thesis scrutinizes the viability of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) incorporating wind turbine and photovoltaic (PV) for Kagbeni village located in Nepal. The proposed framework covers both economic and technical aspects. For economic feasibility analysis, the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) software is utilized to recognize the optimal size of required assets (i.e., PV module and wind turbine) to be incorporated into the current system. For the technical analysis, Electrical Transient Analyzer Program (ETAP) software is used to virtually model the projected HRES to assess the feasibility of the optimized HRES in operation modality (e.g., power flow, short circuit analysis, and protection coordination). The obtained results confirm that the integration of PV and wind units into the current Kagbeni power grid can lead to an economically feasible and reliable microgrid enhancing the social well-being of Kagbeni’s residents.

This dissertation examines two recent programs for post-secondary Islamic theological training in Europe that aim to produce a new class of professional Islamic scholars for emerging roles within European society. Graduates can use their training and new qualifications to secure advanced professional roles and leadership positions within the Muslim community and the broader society and state. In the process, these graduates develop and define an emergent institutional role for Islamic knowledge and authority in Europe. This study is based in seven months of fieldwork research in 2017 at two centers for higher Islamic education, including participant observation within classrooms and interviews with students, faculty and alumni. Founded in 2009, the Cambridge Muslim College in Cambridge, England is a small private school that provides professional training for about a dozen graduates of the many Islamic seminaries in the UK. Founded in 2012 with support from the German state, the Center for Islamic Theology at the University of Tübingen provides Islamic theological training to hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students each year, many of whom have received no prior formal Islamic education. In addition to the institutional differences between the schools, their graduates enter into different job markets. Where the British graduates must develop new entrepreneurial roles for Islamic leaders in the UK, the German graduates become the skilled workforce to meet existing demand for public school Islam teachers, academic theologians and professional chaplains. Comparing these two educational programs—one private, the other public—this dissertation explores how the position of each school vis-á-vis the Muslim community and the state shapes the construction of scholarly authority and the professional outcomes of the graduates. It finds that students at each school leverage their new authority to formulate creative programs of Islamic reform that justify and promote new roles for professional Islamic scholars within both the Muslim community and the larger society. Drawing upon current scholarship about Muslim identity, Islamic authority and secularism in Europe, this study considers how prevailing national discourses that marginalize Muslims in Europe shape students’ creative programs of reform and so also the future institution of Islamic knowledge in Europe. / 2022-09-30T00:00:00Z

This thesis studies how small Swedish firms used their patents between 1998 to 2016. We also examine the association between used and unused patents and their characteristics such as technological class, family size, inventors, claims, grant and authority. Research data are collected from both databases (PATLINK, Serrano, and PATSTAT) and survey. We found that 79% of patents are used in small Swedish companies and family size is associated with patent use. In small Swedish companies, the increase in patent family size will decrease the frequency of use.

This thesis explores a recent innovation in First Nations health, the formation of Canada's First provincial-wide First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). Analyzing this service model against Indigenous assertions of a Treaty Right to Health expressed in the Numbered Treaties, I argue that the realizations of the Treaty Right to Health cannot solely be met under neoliberal models of increased Indigenous capacity in health care service administration. I assert that these models of devolution do not enable Treaty First Nations to achieve Indigenous self-determination in accordance with Treaty rights, relationships and responsibilities. The current discourse on First Nations health care only minimally accounts for the Treaty Right to Health, and where it does, it is devoid of Indigenous understandings of a Treaty Right to Health that encompasses access to healthy lands, waters, and livelihood for an achievement of holistic wellness. Mobilizing an Indigenous auto ethnographic approach which accounts for my own embodied positionally, this thesis problematizes the exclusion of holistic visions of health and well-being against settler governments' orientations toward a neoliberalized health care system. This thesis extends a comparative analytical lens to the political mobilizations of Indigenous advocacy bodies in the province of British Columbia, whose efforts under the New Relationship paradigm in Indigenous-state relations has resulted in an unprecedented practice of health care devolution. / Graduate