The aim of this study is to contribute to understanding of how children try to understand and interpret their own father and his (possibly) violent actions against their mother in relation to their general conceptualizations concerning fathers and violence. A general social psychological and interactionist approach is related to the children’s selves as the organizing and experiencing structures, the family as the arena for experiences and communicative interaction, and society as a structure of norms and general ideas. The study is based on interviews with ten children, who were eight to twelve years old at the time of the interview and whose mothers had escaped from their fathers’ violence to a Women’s House. Qualitative interpretation of each child’s complex abstracted and generalized conceptualizations of fathers and violence enabled the understanding of individual themes as crucial parts of each child’s logically unified and conciliated symbolic meaning through the theoretical construct of negotiation. The study results in the identification of three alternative theoretical approaches to meaning-conciliation. One can be described as ‘conceptual fission’ in the general conception of fathers, one as ‘conceptual fission’ in the conception of the own father and one as negotiating the extension of the opposite of violence, described as ‘goodness’. These negotiations can be understood as parts of distancing violence from either one subgroup of fathers, from the overall, essential or principle understanding of the own father within the child’s relationship with him, or from fathers altogether, including the child’s own. The children’s attempts to combine normalization of their father as an individual with resistance to his violent acts are interpreted as indicating the difficulty that the combination of the social deviancy of violence and the family context constitutes for many children.

The purpose of this study was to investigate young children's perspectives related to their experiences in child care. Researchers used individual interviews and drawings in an early childhood program in Denmark and one in the United States as the basis for examining children's perspectives on their everyday lives in child care. Observations documented the everyday cultural practices for the children in the two child care centers and provided a foundation for interpreting the interviews and the drawings. The information collected was analyzed to determine what aspects of child care young children like best and least, as well as their thoughts on the adults and peers in their center.

Barns rätt till delaktighet i sin vård och behandling framhålls av barnkonventionen, riktlinjer för hälso- sjukvåden och svensk lagstiftning. Delaktighet i vården har stor betydelse för barnens välbefinnande och hälsa då delaktighet bidrar till en känsla av kontroll som minskar oro och stress vilket också stärker barnets självkänsla i att kunna hantera andra stressfyllda händelser senare i livet. Trots teoretisk samsyn och lagstiftning visar forskning att barn inte alltid får anpassad information eller får komma till tals och att det är svårt att i praktiken veta på vilket sätt barn vill vara delaktiga i sin vård och behandling. Syftet med litteraturöversikten var att undersöka på vilket sätt barn vill vara delaktiga i samband med vård och behandling på sjukhus. Metoden som använts är en systematisk litteraturöversikt med kvalitativ ansats. Dataanalysen följde Bettany-Saltikovs & McSherrys (2016) modell av tematisk analys för kvalitativa litteraturöversikter. Resultatet visade att barn önskar vara delaktiga genom att förstå och kunna påverka sin situation på sjukhus. De önskade känna sig betydelsefulla och få sin önskan hörd samt att vårdpersonalen, sjukhusmiljön och att bli inkluderad i samtal hade en betydande roll för upplevelsen. Varje barn är unikt och har olika behov, vilket stärker vikten av ett barncentrerat förhållningssätt där vårdpersonalen bör göra individuella bedömningar i varje given situation. Resultatet i föreliggande litteraturöversikt kan användas för att öka barns delaktighet i vården och kunskapen kan tillämpas av alla professioner inom hälso- och sjukvård. / Children's right to participate in their care and treatment is emphasized by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, guidelines for health care and Swedish laws. Participation in health care is of great importance for children's well-being and health as participation contributes to a sense of control that reduces anxiety and stress, which strengthens the child's self-esteem in being able to handle other stressful events later in life. Despite theoretical consensus and legislation, research shows that children do not always receive appropriate information or have a voice and that it is difficult to know in practice how children want to be involved in their care and treatment. The aim was to investigate how children want to be involved in their hospital care and treatment. The method used was a systematic literature study with a qualitative approach. The data analysis followed Bettany-Saltikov & McSherry's (2016) model of thematic analysis for qualitative studies. The results showed that children want to be involved by understanding and influencing their situation in the hospital. They wish to feel important and have their voice heard and that the health care staff, the hospital environment and being included in conversations had a significant role in their perception. Each child is unique and has different needs, which reinforces the importance of a child-centered approach where health care professionals should make individual assessments in each given situation. The results of this study can be used to increase children's participation in health care and the knowledge can be applied by all health care professionals.

The thesis examines accompanied asylum-seeking children’s position in Swedish asylum reception management and in the determination of their claims. The three articles of the thesis focus on children’s own experiences of seeking asylum, on the experiences and practices of the civil servants at the Migration Board, as well as those of the legal representatives that assist asylum-seekers in the application process. The thesis builds on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2008 and 2010 in southwest Sweden. Theoretical inspiration has been sought in the new sociology of childhood as well as in practice theory. The first article in the thesis concerns children’s caseworkers who are responsible for safeguarding children’s interests in the Migration Board’s daily work with reception. The study highlights a range of dilemmas caseworkers have to deal with in their role as frontline bureaucrats. The study shows that the children’s caseworkers often perceive their discretion as limited, but also that they themselves contribute to limiting it, for example due to their hesitation in challenging existing norms and collegiality.    The second article examines the ways in which legal representatives, who act on behalf of families in asylum determinations, in their practice perceive and relate to the concept of children’s best interests and children’s right to participate. The study shows that children in families can become invisible in the legal representatives’ daily rounds. This invisibility is due to practical limitations in the representatives’ work as well as a general view that children rarely have their own grounds for asylum, as separate claimants to their parents. The third paper of the thesis explores the ways in which children experience and seek to influence circumstances that signify their time spent as asylum-seekers. The study shows how the children developed a range of tactics to deal with their particular situations, which varied with their housing and schooling, and the family’s financial resources. The conclusion is that the children themselves are the primary representatives of the child perspective in the asylum-seeking process, not least through their struggle to belong and create a life like that of ’ordinary’ children.  In line with previous research in the field, the thesis points to the contradiction between the principle of regulated migration and the child perspective in the asylum-seeking process. Together with practical circumstances, such as lack of resources, this contradiction results in a more limited implementation of the child perspective than rules and regulations actually stipulate. Finally, the thesis points to the active role asylum-seeking children take in their efforts to create an everyday life that is as similar as possible to that of  the ’ordinary’ children (e.g. non asylum-seeker and permanently settled children) around them. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following paper was unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1: Submitted.</p>

This two phase study explored perspectives of play according to children and parents of Somali heritage and primary school practitioners, in a city in South West England. In an addition to the considerable research base concerning play, this study investigated the frequently overlooked cultural dimension of play and how this affects the education of Somali heritage children in England. The broader contentious concern of play’s role in Early Years and Primary education was also explored. A mixed methods pragmatic approach was employed in this study. In Phase One, a photograph sorting activity based on the Activity Apperception Story Procedure by Howard (2002), was used to enable the participation of young children and participants for whom English is not their first language. Established via this activity were definitions of play and work according to children and parents of Somali heritage and primary school practitioners. Exploratory Data Analysis was applied to examine this data. In Phase Two, a focus group design was used, with discussions drawing on cross-cultural conceptions of play (Gaskins, Haight & Lancy, 2007; Göncü, Tuermer, Jain & Johnson, 1999). This enabled the exploration of how parents of Somali heritage and primary school practitioners perceive play’s relationship to children’s development and learning, with consideration for their own experiences of childhood. Focus group data was analysed using thematic analysis, supported by the Cultural Historical Activity Theory framework. The findings of this study highlight shared and individual definitions of play, competing benefits of play and the cross-cultural importance of play being intrinsically motivated. Implications for practice centre on the need to recognise play as part of unique cultural milieus at a practitioner, school, educational psychology service and policy level.

Syftet med denna studie är att bidra med kunskap kring fysisk aktiv lek i förskolans utemiljö utifrån barns perspektiv. Studien är relevant för förskolan då den kan ge kunskaper som kan påverka planering av verksamheten på ett sådant sätt att de bidrar till barns fysiskt aktiva lek och barns framtida hälsa. Baserat på tidigare forskning framkom faktorer som eventuellt kan påverka barns fysiska aktivitet och motoriska utveckling. I dessa studier har förskollärare intervjuats och barn har endast observerats. Utifrån det formulerades två forskningsfrågor där syftet blev att undersöka hur barn uttryckte fysisk aktiv lek på försöksgården. Studien har ett kvalitativt förhållningssätt och empirin bearbetades och analyserades utifrån den sociokulturella teorin med begreppen medling och appropiering. Resultatet visade på att barnen använder flera redskap i förskolans utemiljö i sin fysiskt aktiva lek. Det blev tydligt i resultatet att förskolan utemiljö har en påverkan på hur barns fysiskt aktiva lek blir. Vidare i diskussionen omsätts resultaten i tidigare forskning och jämför samband mellan denna studie och den tidigare forskningen. / The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge about physical active play in the preschool's outdoor environment from a child's perspective. The study is relevant for preschool as it can provide knowledge that can influence the planning of the activities in such a way that they contribute to children's physically active play and children's future health. Based on previous research, factors that could potentially affect children's physical activity and motor development were revealed. In these studies, preschool teachers have been interviewed and children have only been observed. Based on this, two research questions were formulated where the aim was to investigate how children expressed physical active play in the experimental yard. The study has a qualitative approach and the empiricwas processed and analyzed based on the sociocultural theory with the concepts of mediation and appropiering. The results showed that the children use several tools in the outdoor environment of the preschool in their physically active play. It became clear in the result that the preschool outdoor environment has an impact on how children's physically active play becomes. Furthermore, the discussion translates the results into previous research and compares the relationship between this study and the previous research.

Denna studie kan placeras inom barndomsforskningen, där barn ses som aktörer vars röster förtjänar att tas på allvar. Syftet var att undersöka regnbågsbarns syn på familj, sin egen familj och tillblivelse. Intervjuer har genomförts med tolv barn i åldern fem till åtta år som alla var samboende med två mammor. En semistrukturerad intervjuguide användes och barnen ombads att måla sin egen och en annan familj. Barnens tal har analyserats utifrån en diskursanalytisk ansats. Resultatet visar att regnbågsbarnen pratar om familj utifrån relationella band, emotionell närhet, att man bor och gör saker tillsammans. Barnen visar en öppenhet inför olika familjestrukturer. Föräldrar beskrivs som omhändertagande och mammors och pappors funktion sägs vara likvärdig. Pratet om den egna familjen och mammorna präglas av positiva beskrivningar men utmanas i ett fåtal berättelser genom att teman av konflikt lyfts. Majoriteten av barnen pratar om pappor och beskriver dessa dels utifrån ursprung och dels utifrån en relationell mening. En del barns prat framstår förvirrat kring dessa två aspekter av pappor. Barnen uppvisar svårigheter att närma sig prat om tillblivelse och använder begreppen frö och ägg i olika utsträckning. Majoriteten av barnen som pratar om frö berättar att det kommer från en man. Regnbågsbarnens sätt att prata om familj är i linje med tidigare forskning om barns syn på familj. Barnens öppenhet inför olika familjestrukturer kan ses som ett uttryck för att rättfärdiga den egna familjekonstellationen, alternativt visar det på en realistisk spegling av samhällets mångfald vad gäller familjeformer. Svårigheterna att prata om negativa erfarenheter inom den egna familjen visar på det problematiska att gå emot en dominerande diskurs av familj som harmonisk. Regnbågsbarnens prat kring att mammor och pappor är samma sak skiljer sig från tidigare forskning om barns syn på föräldrar och hur detta kan förstås diskuteras i uppsatsen. Den förvirring som en del barns prat kring att i en mening ha en pappa och i en annan inte, kan visa på att barnen behöver få stöd i att hitta en fungerande diskurs om vad en pappa är och skillnaden på en relationell pappa och en donator.