The purpose of the present study is to examine how a multicultural classroom affects the teaching of religion, and which conflicts teachers at secondary school and upper secondary school encounter in multicultural classrooms, as well as how these affect the school’s fundamental values. The study has been conducted through qualitative interviews with seven teachers who either teach religion at secondary school level or upper secondary school level.The study is based on the assumptions that multiculturalism affects teaching in the religion classroom and that there are conflicts where the conduct during the conflicts affects how schools work with their fundamental values. The study has a social constructionism approach where what teachers say about this study’s central concepts multiculturalism and conflict are studied. These concepts have then been used as a foundation for the analysis.The result of the study is that teachers are generally positive about a multicultural classroom for teaching religion; however, the study shows that there are both positive and negative aspects of this. The teachers in the study emphasized that the multicultural classroom, among other things, benefits the students' understanding of each other and that they can share and learn each other's experiences. The disadvantage of a multicultural classroom was considered by teachers to be the skepticism that can arise regarding their legitimacy as a mediator of knowledge. As for conflicts in the multicultural classroom in religion teaching, the result shows that teachers see conflicts as both positive and negative for the work on fundamental values, depending on its outcome. According to the teachers, a conflict can generate understanding and respect among the students, but also provide space for the students to express prejudices that lead to disagreements.Key

Literature on marriage shows that in the span of a single generation it has become the norm for both spouses to work outside the home. The inception of dual career marriages in the 1970s has created challenges and complications in the marital system as women break traditional gender roles in families and lead the way toward equality at home, just as they do in the industrial world. Black South African communities are no exception to this trend. The theoretical framework of social constructionism was used to identify the ways in which the participants construct their identities as Black professional women in dual career marriages. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 Black professional women in dual career marriages to identify the discourses that construct their marriages, their autonomy in marriage and how their construction of autonomy influences their construction of marital satisfaction. The study found that cultural and Christian discourses inform the ways in which the participants construct marriage, autonomy and marital satisfaction. Although the participants construct themselves as empowered and autonomous individuals, particularly in the workplace, they construct themselves as less autonomous within their marriages despite their expressed need to be seen as equal partners. As a result of their dual identities the participants consciously adopt different behaviours in different contexts and in this way reproduce dominant constructions of women. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Psychology / unrestricted

This feminist poststructuralist study explores discourses of gendered and sexualized subjectivity of South African women who self‐identify as bisexual. The discipline of psychology has typically upheld a monosexual binary, where heterosexuality and homosexuality are positioned as the only legitimate categories of sexual identification. Within such a structure bisexuality is not considered a viable sexual identity. In broader public discourses female bisexuality is generally constructed in delegitimising ways, such as through constructions that necessarily equate bisexuality with promiscuity or describe it as an eroticized male fantasy, as a threat to lesbian politics, or as a strategy to retain heterosexual privilege. Data collection entailed conducting individual interviews with thirteen bisexual women and the transcribed texts were analysed using discourse analysis. The analysis focused on how bisexuality is Constructed in the interview texts, how the various constructions of bisexuality function and how Gendered subjectivity intersects with participants’ identity as bisexual. The analysis identifies a number of discourses that impact on, in varied and contradictory ways, participants’ positioning as bisexual. In a post‐apartheid context, participants regard fixing their Identity along strictly defined lines of difference as oppressive and resist bisexuality as being primary To their identity. Participants challenge the traditional gender binary through unsettling the automatic Linking of sex, gender and sexuality in discourses of sexual desire. However, participants also demonstrate the coercive effects of dominant discourse in the gendered positioning of subjects, with Heterosexuality in particular functioning as a normative sexual category with implications for participants’ gendered subjectivity. It then appears that parallel to its ability to disrupt the gender binary, bisexual discourse also acts in ways to support it. The analysis further indicates that in claiming a bisexual identity, participants risk marginalization in The face of delegitimising discourses that construct them in negative terms of promiscuity, hypersexuality and decadence. Powerful silencing discourses further construct same‐sex attraction As un-African and as sinful. The analysis concludes with a discussion of participants’ strategies to Normalize bisexuality. This study contributes to research accounts that explore diversity in sexual identification and creates Greater visibility of bisexual women in South African discourses of sexuality. It also contributes to theories of female sexual identities and adds to theoretical debates around the challenge to dominant gender and sexuality binaries posed by bisexuality. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Psychology / unrestricted

Mannen och kvinnan har över tid framställs olika i text och tal, likaså individer i missbruk. Individer i svårt missbruk kan bli föremål för prövning av tvångsvård. Förvaltningsrätten dömer individerna enligt Lag (1988:870) om vård av missbrukare i vissa fall (LVM). Syftet med föreliggande studie är att undersöka hur män respektive kvinnor porträtteras i skriftliga dokument i form av LVM-domar. För att uppnå syftet har vi valt att använda oss av kritisk diskursanalys (CDA) som metod. Det teoretiska ramverket för studien har utgjorts av teori om socialkonstruktionism samt genus. Antalet domar som analyserats är 28 stycken. Studiens resultat visar att det finns en diskrepans mellan hur män och kvinnor framställs i LVM-domarna. Kvinnor porträtteras som mer passiva än män. Därtill framträder medicinsk diskurs samt marknadsdiskurs. / Men and women have over time been portrayed differently in text and talk, addicts as well. Individuals struggling with addiction can in the Swedish court be sentenced to compulsory care (LVM). The purpose of the study is to investigate how men and women are portrayed in the verdicts ruled by the court. We have used critical discourse analysis as a method. The theoretical framework of the study is based on social constructionism and gendertheory. We have analyzed 28 verdicts. The results of the study shows that there is a difference between how women and men are described. The results also show different discourses such as the addict as a passive object, the woman as a victim, the medical discourse and the market discourse.

Hemlöshet är ett mångfacetterat begrepp och socialt problem som funnits i århundraden, trots detta finns ingen samsyn kring fenomenets orsaker eller lösningar. Denna studie har ämnat bredda kunskapen kring konstruktioner av hemlöshet och särskilt inriktat sig på svenska statens syn på, och anspråk om, personer i hemlöshet och hemlöshet som socialt problem. I studien har en dokumentstudie utförts för insamling av empiriskt material och därefter har en kvalitativ textanalys genomförts. Med ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv och Losekes teori om anspråk har två utredningar som anses vara representativa för respektive tidsperiod analyserats. Dessa är SOU 1929:9 och SOU 2001:95. I analys av utredningarna framkom att hemlöshet har konstruerats på två olika sätt. I den tidigare utredningen anses personer i hemlöshet ha förorsakat sin egen situation och ses som ett problem som samhället lider av. I den senare utredningen ses personer i hemlöshet som offer för primärt strukturella omständigheter och förtjänta av samhällelig uppslutning för problemets lösning. Analysen resulterade även i att belysa hur anspråk formulerade om problemets orsaker var avgörande vid formuleringen för givna anspråk om problemets lösningar. Denna studie kan ses bidra till kunskapsutvecklingen om hemlöshet genom att belysa vikten av att inte glömma historien för att kunna utveckla det framtida sociala arbetet ytterligare.

The Tend and Befriend stress response model suggests that women have, through natural selection, evolved a different stress response reaction to that of men. It thus offers a collective, gender stereotypical reality of women’s responses to stress. In this research the Tend and Befriend model is thus viewed as a dominant public discourse which informs or influences the private narratives or stories of women. It is this interaction between public (dominant) discourses and private narratives which are investigated through using the Tend and Befriend model as a discursive landscape. If gender or gender roles are flexible, there is a concern that individual women might be misrepresented and not given a voice by the dominant discourse which supports gender stereotypical models like the Tend and Befriend model. This qualitative exploration was done by exploring the socially constructed stress responses of five professional women. To investigate this, as researcher I explored the narratives of these women in face-to-face individual interviews. The constructions explored include: How these women understand the way they respond to stress; how they view the Tend and Befriend model; and the influence of the model on them. Through the lenses of social constructionism a broader insight into the stress responses of women may be obtained. From the data analysis, I uncovered very little ‘evidence’ for tending or befriending behaviour as described by Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung and Updegraff (2000), with the participants. In the exploration the closest response to the model which the participants reported was befriending, however in their construction of befriending they employed it as a workplace strategy. The only form of tending co-constructed in the interview process was a secondary response to stress and a unique outcome to this study: Self-tending. Additionally, as social constructionist research predicts, these participants illustrated that for them stress responses are not concrete, as models would like to suggest, rather they employed an alternate multifaceted stress response approach which was another significant unique outcome to this study. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Psychology / unrestricted

Studiens syfte var att undersöka om det förekommer negativa attityder till äldre personer med alkoholmissbruk bland socialsekreterare och i så fall i vilken utsträckning, samt om det finns adekvata insatser att tillgå och om detta erbjuds till målgruppen. Studiens syfte besvarades med hjälp av en enkätstudie där intentionen var att studien skulle resultera i en totalundersökning, varpå samtliga små kommuner i mellersta Sverige (med under 15 000 invånare) tillfrågades att delta. Enkäten besvarades slutligen av totalt 12 personer varav 9 utav dessa respondenter var relevanta utifrån studiens population. Resultatet har analyserats med hjälp av det teoretiska perspektivet social konstruktionism samt teori om ålderism. Studiens huvudsakliga resultat påvisade att det inte förekommer negativa attityder bland socialsekreterarna till äldre personer med alkoholmissbruk och det är därefter inte möjligt att uttala sig om någon form av ålderism. Detta resultat skiljer sig markant från tidigare forskning på området som visar på en förekomst av negativa attityder bland denna yrkesgrupp till äldre med alkoholmissbruk. / The purpose of the study was to examine whether there are negative attitudes towards older people with alcohol abuse among social secretaries and if so to which extend, and whether there are adequate services available and if this is being offered. The purpose of the study was answered with the help of a quantitative survey and the intention was that the study would result in a total survey, whereupon all small municipalities in Sweden (with less than 15,000 inhabitants) were asked to participate. In the end the survey was answered by a total of 12 people, of which 9 of these respondents were relevant based on the purpose of the study. The result have been analyzed using the theoretical perspective of social constructionism and theory linked to ageism. The main results of the study showed no signs of negative attitudes towards older people with alcohol abuse among social secretaries and it is therefore not possible to say anything about ageism. This result differs markedly from previous research in the field that shows a prevalence of negative attitudes among this occupational group to elderly with alcohol abuse.

After the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Ireland’s neoliberal housing policy turned again to housing financialisation as focus lay upon the attraction of corporate investors in order to revive the housing market. The result was a swift return to housing price rises but this came with ever growing homelessness and housing precarity as REITs and other corporate investors' influence on the housing market grew. Affordability has become a common framing as one of the key issues which Ireland’s housing system is currently facing, by the state and researchers alike. However, much of this research frames housing issues and policies as being objectively defined. Social constructionism holds that housing issues and policy are heavily subjective, where material conditions are subjectively negotiated among competing narratives steeped in ideology and vested interests in an attempt to create a dominant narrative. This research, building upon a social constructionism approach, has analysed the negotiated process within the affordability discourse of Ireland. The key findings are that the state’s affordability narrative remains heavily linked to a commodified, private sector led housing provision which holds to its traditional liberal welfare regime. This narrative is reflected in the private sector’s narrative, which frames the state as a facilitator of the efficient private sector, which within a housing system free of state barriers, can create affordability. However, as more and more face into greater housing precarity as unaffordability grows, a counter narrative framing state built public housing, supported by the non-profit sector as key to reducing the reliance on a greedy private sector and in so doing, achieving affordability. As this movement grows, spearheaded by the increasing threat of Sinn Féin to parliamentary power and the growth of the trade union led Raise the Roof campaign movement, this counter narrative has grown in power. Although limited, there has been a shift in the state’s narrative which reflects that of the counter narrative where the state frames the need for a greater direct state role in affordable housing provision and state intervention as a control mechanism on the negative effects of the profit motive of the private sector. Although this can not be said to be a shift in welfare regime, it highlights the negotiated process of narratives within affordability discourse.

Magister Artium (Psychology) - MA(Psych) / Women and their bodies are at the very centre of a prevailing cultural obsession regarding strict standards of body weight, shape and image. The pressure to achieve unattainable body-beautiful standards has given rise to women having a negative relationship with their bodies. This preoccupation with body image has resulted in an increasing sense of body dissatisfaction, chronic dieting and anxieties associated with self-worth and appearance. The primary aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship a group of female participants have with their bodies. The major thrusts of this study are: to explore on a deeper level how they make personal meaning of the concepts of body and body image within their own lives. To explore the way in which women understand their broader social context, as playing a role, in relation to their perceptions and attitudes of their bodies. In this respect, a closer examination of their awareness of the more complex gender issues, will be undertaken, by means of the emerging discourses within the research process. Whilst this study generally locates itself within a social constructionist understanding of body image, it actively draws from feminist theories. The literature review outlines empirical, feminist and social constructionist approaches to body image and explores the social constructionist approach more broadly. It utilises discourse analysis and therefore positions itself within a qualitative paradigm. Three one-and-a-half-hour focus groups were conducted with eight women who are psychology honours students. A discourse analysis was carried out on the transcriptions of the three focus groups. The findings revealed that the participants were aware of the way in which the wider cultural context impacted on their perceptions and attitudes regarding their bodies. They understood the way in which body image is socially constructed and specific to the current cultural context. They identified the current body ideal (norm), to be waif like and very slender. Despite this understanding of the body ideal as socially constructed, they continued on a personal level to evaluate themselves against the body ideal, giving rise to personal feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction.

No description available.