To address a gap in the empirical literature on Educational Psychology (EP) practice and on adoption, and to gain perspectives from the Local Authority (LA), this thesis describes collaborative action research conducted by an Educational Psychologist (EP) with adoptive parents to support their communications with school staff. Participants were members of an Adoption Support Group and colleagues in Social Care. Information was gathered via focus groups and semi-structured questionnaires to ascertain the types of difficulties expressed by adoptive parents and inform the processes of communication systems. Participatory action research empowered participants to engage in meaningful and purposeful actions of planning, designing and evaluating information. The research narrative reports on first person inquiry through personal reflection and learning. Second person inquiry was generated in the course of research interactions with participants and the data that emerged from their realities to inform practical learning in action. Third person inquiry moved towards thinking around explanations for issues and the generation of knowledge. Knowledge was developed about parents’ perspectives on the barriers and enabling factors involved in their communications with school staff. The action research approach captured the potential of the insider position to generate rich data in situ while promoting a collaborative response to the social situation faced by the adopters when communicating with school staff. My insider position as researcher, holding multiple roles as an adoptive parent, as an EP and LA officer, is actively acknowledged as influencing understanding and the conceptualisations of the findings. The participants collaborated in the generation of a resource that provided opportunities for insight into issues to improve working practice and may provide a tool to allow parents to communicate effectively with school staff. The resource supported two main recognised functions: practical structure and emotional support. Empowering approaches were those that respected their knowledge, used their language and meanings in an emancipatory way that removed barriers, and were inclusive of them and their children. Communication is enhanced by and depends on systems that are empowering for parents and staff to co-construct shared understandings.

Typical symptoms of aphasia such as comprehension problems and expressive language difficulties may affect the ability to take part in social contexts. Therefore, it is important to find ways to facilitate communication for people with aphasia. CIRCA is a communicationpromoting web service, designed for people with dementia and healthcare providers. Since people with aphasia show similar linguistic and communicative difficulties as people with dementia, it is possible that CIRCA would work as a communication support for people with aphasia as well. The aim of the present study was to investigate CIRCA as group activity for people with aphasia, in comparison to traditional group activities. Five participants with aphasia were recruited. The data collection involved four sessions with the use of CIRCA and four sessions where traditional activities were conducted, each session lasting for about 30 minutes. The sessions were videotaped, transcribed and analyzed according to methods inspired by Conversation Analysis, CA. The authors of this study chose to analyze the use of gestures, laughter, communication supporting behaviour and utilization of the available material in the various activities. The selected sections consisted of commonly used conversational phenomena that were considered to shape and characterize the conversations during traditional group activities, and when using CIRCA. Interviews about the participants' experiences of the conversations were conducted during the various activities. The selected conversational phenomena occurred frequently during all sessions as a type of interactive resources. What primarily characterized CIRCA as a group activity, in comparison to the traditional group activities, was that both pointing and iconic gestures were used to convey or clarify a message; that laughter served as a way of expressing mutual understanding about the material in CIRCA; that guesses in conversations when using CIRCA more often succeeded as communicative help behaviour; and that the images and music in CIRCA were used as a support for expression and understanding in conversation. All participants had a positive attitude toward the use of CIRCA.

Afasi innebär impressiva och expressiva språkliga svårigheter, vilket kan medföra svårigheter att vara delaktig i sociala sammanhang. Det är därför viktigt att hitta sätt att stödja kommunikationen för denna patientgrupp. CIRCA är en kommunikationsfrämjande webbtjänst, framtagen för personer med demens och deras vårdgivare. Då personer med afasi uppvisar liknande språkliga och kommunikativa svårigheter som personer med demenssjukdom, bör CIRCA även kunna användas som kommunikationsstöd för personer med afasi. Föreliggande studies syfte var att undersöka CIRCA som gruppaktivitet för personer med afasi, i relation till traditionella gruppaktiviteter. Fem deltagare med afasi rekryterades. Datainsamlingen bestod av fyra samtal då CIRCA användes och fyra då traditionella aktiviteter genomfördes, där varje session pågick under ungefär 30 minuter. Samtalen videofilmades, transkriberades och analyserades utifrån en CA-inspirerad metod. I föreliggande studie valdes att analysera användningen av gester, skratt, kommunikativa hjälpbeteenden och nyttjande av materialet i aktiviteterna. Utvalda utdrag i studien bestod av vanligt förekommande samtalsfenomen som ansågs forma och karaktärisera samtalen under traditionella gruppaktiviteter och vid användning av CIRCA. Intervjuer genomfördes kring deltagarnas upplevelser av samtalen under de olika sessionerna. Utvalda samtalsfenomen i studien förekom ofta under samtliga samtal och fungerade som olika typer av interaktionella resurser. Det som framförallt utmärkte CIRCA som gruppaktivitet, i relation till de traditionella gruppaktiviteterna, var att både pekning och ikoniska gester nyttjades för att förmedla eller förtydliga ett budskap; att skratt fungerade som ett sätt att uttrycka ömsesidig förståelse kring materialet i webbtjänsten; att gissningar i samtal vid användning av CIRCA oftare lyckades som kommunikativt hjälpbeteende; samt att bilderna och musiken i CIRCA nyttjades som ett stöd för uttryck och förståelse i samtal. Samtliga deltagare var positiva till användandet av CIRCA. / Typical symptoms of aphasia such as comprehension problems and expressive language difficulties may affect the ability to take part in social contexts. Therefore, it is important to find ways to facilitate communication for people with aphasia. CIRCA is a communicationpromoting web service, designed for people with dementia and healthcare providers. Since people with aphasia show similar linguistic and communicative difficulties as people with dementia, it is possible that CIRCA would work as a communication support for people with aphasia as well. The aim of the present study was to investigate CIRCA as group activity for people with aphasia, in comparison to traditional group activities. Five participants with aphasia were recruited. The data collection involved four sessions with the use of CIRCA and four sessions where traditional activities were conducted, each session lasting for about 30 minutes. The sessions were videotaped, transcribed and analyzed according to methods inspired by Conversation Analysis, CA. The authors of this study chose to analyze the use of gestures, laughter, communication supporting behaviour and utilization of the available material in the various activities. The selected sections consisted of commonly used conversational phenomena that were considered to shape and characterize the conversations during traditional group activities, and when using CIRCA. Interviews about the participants' experiences of the conversations were conducted during the various activities. The selected conversational phenomena occurred frequently during all sessions as a type of interactive resources. What primarily characterized CIRCA as a group activity, in comparison to the traditional group activities, was that both pointing and iconic gestures were used to convey or clarify a message; that laughter served as a way of expressing mutual understanding about the material in CIRCA; that guesses in conversations when using CIRCA more often succeeded as communicative help behaviour; and that the images and music in CIRCA were used as a support for expression and understanding in conversation. All participants had a positive attitude toward the use of CIRCA.

This research was concerned with the collection of empirical data necessary to estimate the effects of decision support tools on the performance of distributed groups. Data was collected in a controlled experimental environment that simulated a geographically-dispersed meeting through the use of videoconferencing and group communication support (GCSS) technology. Results of the use of a Group Decision Support System (GDSS) on group process and outcome variables were mixed. As predicted by the literature the use of a GDSS by distributed groups improved overall group consensus, decision accuracy, and decision effectiveness. The use of a GDSS also increased perceived process structure. Contrary to previous studies, the use of a GDSS increased decision time, and decreased overall satisfaction with the group process. No significant effects were found for perceived consensus, cooperation, amount of information exchange, or confidence in the decision. A strong correlation was found between decision quality and decision time. An even stronger correlation was found between perceived structure of the process and satisfaction with the process. The lack of feedback about the process and its outcomes could explain the lack of a GDSS effect on perceptions of consensus, cooperation, and confidence in the decision. Perception of subjective measures of the process may depend on the presence of the appropriate types of feedback. The results suggest that an increase in structure without a perceived improvement in decision quality (confidence in the decision) tends to reduce group satisfaction. A richer taxonomy for Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) systems is proposed whereby three orthogonal dimensions of group support are defined. These three dimensions of group support are: Communication support, decision support, and presence support. This new taxonomy suggests a number of research directions aimed at the empirical identification of contextual and design factors relevant to distributed group performance and decision making performance in general. / Master of Science

This study looks at what happens in informal conversations between three people with learning difficulties (intellectual impairment) and a range of non-disabled partners. It takes a participatory approach using data collected by the participants with learning difficulties who chose their communication partners; these partners included family and staff who were paid to support them. The study uses descriptive statistics to highlight areas where there was apparent asymmetry in the conversations. Conversation Analysis combined with features taken from Systemic Functional Linguistics is then used to look in detail at some of these aspects. Important features identified include turn design, repair, and the use of evaluative language and the contribution of non-verbal aspects in particular eye gaze, gesture and the use of artefacts. The study highlights possible strategies for assessing and supporting more effective and equitable interaction for those with learning difficulties and communication impairment and identifies features that should be considered when training professionals working in the field of learning difficulties.

L’évolution des contraintes applicatives imposent des améliorations continues sur les performances et l’efficacité énergétique des systèmes embarqués. Pour répondre à ces contraintes, les plateformes « SoC » actuelles s’appuient sur la multiplication des cœurs de calcul, tout en ajoutant des accélérateurs matériels dédiés pour gérer des tâches spécifiques. Dans ce contexte, développer des applications embarquées devient un défi complexe, en effet la charge de travail des applications continue à croître alors que les technologies logicielles n’évoluent pas aussi vite que les architectures matérielles, laissant un écart dans la conception complète du système. De fait, la complexité accrue de programmation peut être associée à l’absence de standards logiciels qui prennent en charge l’hétérogénéité des architectures, menant souvent à des solutions ad hoc. A l’opposé, l’utilisation d’une solution logicielle standardisée pour les systèmes embarqués peut induire des surcoûts importants concernant les performances et l’occupation de la mémoire si elle n’est pas adaptée à l’architecture. Par conséquent, le travail de cette thèse se concentre sur la réduction de cet écart en mettant en œuvre des mécanismes matériels dont la conception prend en compte une interface de programmation standard pour systèmes embarqués. Les principaux objectifs sont ainsi d’accroître la programmabilité par la mise en œuvre d’une interface de programmation : MCAPI, et de diminuer la charge logiciel des cœurs grâce à l’utilisation des mécanismes matériels développés.Les contributions de la thèse comprennent la mise en œuvre de MCAPI pour une plate-forme multicœur générique et des mécanismes matériels pour améliorer la performance globale de la configuration de la communication et des transferts de données. Il est démontré que les mécanismes peuvent être pris en charge par les interfaces logicielles sans augmenter leur complexité. En outre, les résultats de performance obtenus en utilisant un modèle SystemC/TLM de l’architecture multicœurs de référence montrent que les mécanismes proposés apportent des gains significatifs en termes de latence, débit, trafic réseau, temps de charge processeur et temps de communication sur des cas d’étude et des applications complètes. / The application constraints driving the design of embedded systems are constantly demanding higher performance and power efficiency. To meet these constraints, current SoC platforms rely on replicating several processing cores while adding dedicated hardware accelerators to handle specific tasks. However, developing embedded applications is becoming a key challenge, since applications workload will continue to grow and the software technologies are not evolving as fast as hardware architectures, leaving a gap in the full system design. Indeed, the increased programming complexity can be associated to the lack of software standards that supports heterogeneity, frequently leading to custom solutions. On the other hand, implementing a standard software solution for embedded systems might induce significant performance and memory usage overheads. Therefore, this Thesis focus on decreasing this gap by implementing hardware mechanisms in co-design with a standard programming interface for embedded systems. The main objectives are to increase programmability through the implementation of a standardized communication application programming interface (MCAPI), and decrease the overheads imposed by the software implementation through the use of the developed hardware mechanisms.The contributions of the Thesis comprise the implementation of MCAPI for a generic multi-core platform and dedicated hardware mechanisms to improve communication connection phase and overall performance of data transfer phase. It is demonstrated that the proposed mechanisms can be exploited by the software implementation without increasing software complexity. Furthermore, performance estimations obtained using a SystemC/TLM simulation model for the reference multi-core architecture show that the proposed mechanisms provide significant gains in terms of latency (up to 97%), throughput (40x increase) and network traffic (up to 68%) while reducing processor workload for both characterization test-cases and real application benchmarks.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka vad några verksamma inom förskolan har för åsikter, vetskap och erfarenheter om hur språk och kommunikationsstöd används i förskolan. I studien undersöks också vilka tillvägagångssätt som används för att stödja barn i deras språkutveckling och om de intervjuade anser att det finns några fördelar och nackdelar med språkstöd. För att samla in material gjordes intervjuer med verksamma inom fem olika förskolor och tre olika områden, vilket var förskollärare, talpedagog och specialpedagog. Data samlades in genom ljudupptagning samt anteckningar som sedan transkriberades och delades upp i sex kategorier. Utifrån studien fick vi i resultatet fram att språk och kommunikationsstöd är något som gynnar alla barn, oavsett svårigheter. Det framkom att bild- och teckenstöd är den vanligaste metoden men också att pedagogernas relation till barnen är en av de viktigaste faktorerna för att det ska kunna bli ett stimulerande lärande. Resultatet visar också att en nackdel med språkstöd är tidsbrist och brist på kunskap och intresse hos pedagoger. / <p><strong>Fastställt via akademichefsbeslut HIG-STYR 2019/7 den 2019-01-07</strong></p><p><strong> </strong>Daniel Petterson, fil dr, univ. lekt Pedagogik och Erika Björklund, fil dr, univ. lekt Pedagogik går in som examinatorer på PEG700 under veckorna 1 till och med 3, 2019 då Peter Gill, prof. Pedagogik, gått i pension från och med 2019-01-01.</p>

Studien undersöker flerspråkiga föräldrars erfarenheter av upplevt socialt stöd i föräldrarollen till ett barn med kommunikationsnedsättningar. Forskningsfrågorna berör även vilken betydelse stödet får för kontakten med barnet. Metoden som använts är en sekventiell mixad metod (enkätundersökning och fokusgruppsintervjuer) som utgår från en transformativ strategi. Studiens vetenskapsteoretiska ansats grundar sig i Benno Herzogs teori om social diskursiv exkludering och analysen utgår från Barreras samt Hellers och Swindles grundantaganden om upplevt socialt stöd. Respondenterna deltog i utbildningarna TAKK på Modersmålet och FAMN som anordnades av Projekt TAKK för Språket i Göteborg. Resultaten visar att föräldrarna i studien upplevde socialt stöd utifrån att utbildningarna anpassades och erbjöd: språkstöd på modersmålet, samtal kring användning av alternativ och kompletterade kommunikation (AKK) tillsammans med modersmålet samt samtal om funktionsnedsättningar och samhällstöd. Därutöver visar resultaten att föräldrarna, genom dessa anpassningar, upplever en ökad förståelse för stöddiskursen och stärkt självförtroende. Detta, i sin tur, leder till att föräldrarna upplever större handlingsutrymme i stressrelaterade situationer och en ökad benägenhet att söka och ta emot stöd. / The study examines multilingual parents' experiences of perceived social support when parenting a child with communication impairments. Research questions also deal with the importance of perceived social support for the contact between parents and child. The method used is a sequential mixed methodology (survey and focus group interviews) based on a transformative strategy. The study's scientific theoretical approach is based on Benno Herzog's theory of social discursive exclusion and the analysis starts from Barrera´s and from Heller´s and Swindle´s basic assumptions about perceived social support. The respondents participated in the parenting programs TAKK på Modersmålet and FAMN, that focused the use was of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) together with the mother tongue, which was organized by the project TAKK för Språket (AAC for multilingualism) in Gothenburg. The results show that the parents in the study perceived social support when the education programs were adapted and offered language support in the mother tongue, discussions about the use of AAC together with the mother tongue (AAC) and information about disabilities as well as information about society’s support system. In addition, the results show that parents, through these adjustments, experience an increased understanding of support discourse and strengthened confidence. This, in turn, leads to parents´ experience of greater freedom of action in stress-related situations and therefor an increased inclination to seek and receive support. / El estudio examina las experiencias de apoyo social percibido por los padres multilingües en relacion al cuidado de un niño con problemas de comunicación. Las preguntas de investigación también se ocupan de la importancia del apoyo social percibido para el establecimiento del contacto entre padres e hijos. El método utilizado es una metodología mixta secuencial (encuesta y grupos de enfoque) basado en una estrategia transformadora. El enfoque teórico científico del estudio se basa en la teoría de la exclusión social discursiva de Benno Herzog y el análisis parte de los conceptos de apoyo social percibido que Barrera y Heller &amp; Swindle describen. Los participantes formaron parte de los cursos para padres TAKK på Modersmålet y FAMN, que enfatizaron el uso de la CAA (comunicación aumentativa y alternativa) junto con la lengua materna, los cuales fueron organizados por el proyecto TAKK för Språket (AAC para el multilingüismo) en Gotemburgo, Suecia. Los resultados muestran que los padres de familia en el estudio perciben apoyo social a partir de que el contenido de los cursos para padres ofrecieron: apoyo en el idioma materno, discusiones sobre el uso de la AAC junto con la lengua materna, información acerca de diferentes discapacidades e información sobre el sistema de apoyo social en Suecia. Además, los resultados muestran que los padres, a través de estos ajustes, experimentan una mayor comprensión del discurso de apoyo a la comunicación lo cual refuerza su autoconfianza. Esto, a su vez, ayudo a los padres a experimentar una mayor libertad de acción ante situaciones estresantes, lo cual aumento la propensión de los padres a buscar y aceptar apoyo.

Both companies and individuals have observed positive effects after implementing working from home (WFH) practices as digital technology expands collaborative possibilities. As a result, the hybrid workplace has emerged as a sustainable possibility for future workplace solutions. In a hybrid workplace, the workforce is distributed between a co-located office and WFH to different extents, naturally inferring an intense use of collaborative technology in daily operations. However, despite reports of aforementioned positive effects, research show that the feeling of professional isolation (PI) is a reoccurring issue for knowledge workers WFH. And although the spread of the issue appears to be severe in literature, little is known about the effects that the collaborative technology actually has on the level of experienced PI.  Within the interdisciplinary research field of CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative Work), collaborative information technology systems are studied from both technological and social perspectives. Thus, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of professional isolation in relation to the use of collaborative information technology systems, this study aims to explore how knowledge workers currently WFH experience and perceive the support of CSCW systems for communication in relation to PI.  Based on a qualitative, focused ethnographic approach, nine knowledge workers from different companies and positions currently WFH were interviewed about their perceptions of CSCW systems for communication support in relation to PI. The empirical data that the interviews generated was subjected to a thematic analysis, from which five themes emerged and constituted the empirical findings. These themes were then analyzed in the light of the research questions and discussed with the concepts in the literature review as well as with a symbolic interactionist perspective.  The results of this master’s thesis research show that most of the participants do not experience professional isolation as defined in literature, however, they display a loss of connectedness to co-workers when using the CSCW systems for communication support when working from home. The connectedness in question is achieved with ‘social interaction’, however, the research findings of this master’s thesis illustrate that ‘social interaction’ is not symbolically connected to any of the CSCW systems for communication support for the participants. Based on these research findings, it is proposed that ‘social interaction’ is not included in the concept of ‘communication’ within the field of CSCW. Furthermore, it is suggested that organizations aspiring to implement working from home (WFH), or hybrid workplace practices may want to re-evaluate current and future social activities within the CSCW systems for communication support based on the insights provided by the master’s thesis research study.