In this current study, discussions were conducted in three focus groups with preschool teachers. In each focus group, two preschool teachers from two municipal preschools in a medium-sized city participated. The purpose of the research was to create a basic knowledge of how rough-and-tumble play (R&T) are perceived, interpreted and handled by preschool teachers. The cultural-historical theory of Vygotsky is used as a theoretical basis for this study. The results show that among preschool teachers there is a tendency to allow this kind of play in a limited form. The results also highlight the preschool teachers' insecurity in relation to children's rough-and-tumble plays. That uncertainty can take place because R&T games require a balance between being allowed, restricted and forbidden during a game. Furthermore, preschool teachers' awareness of the connection between their experiences and the approaches described about R&T plays are demonstrated. A lack of preschool teachers' consensus on R&T games also emerged in the study. / I den aktuella studien genomfördes diskussioner i tre fokusgrupper med förskollärare. I varje fokusgrupp deltog två förskollärare från två kommunala förskolor i en mellanstor stad. Forskningssyftet var att skapa en grundläggande kunskap om hur bråklekar uppfattas, tolkas och hanteras av förskollärare. Den kulturhistoriska teorin av Vygotskij användes som en teoretisk grund för den här studien. Resultatet visar att det bland förskollärare finns en tendens att tillåta bråklekar i en begränsad form. I resultatet lyfts även förskollärares osäkerhet gentemot barns bråklekar. Den osäkerheten kan uppkomma eftersom bråklekar kräver en balans mellan att vara tillåten, begränsad och förbjuden under en lek. Vidare påvisas förskollärares medvetenhet om en koppling mellan deras erfarenheter och de föreställningar som beskrivs kring bråklekar. En brist på förskollärares samsyn kring bråklekar framkom i studien.

The thesis aims to explore future mobility system alternatives in the context of “winter cities” to achieve a more sustainable society. This is done by interviewing a broad range of mobility experts - encompassing those focused on cities in the northern regions and those with global expertise. The result highlights what (social and technological) innovations are believed to transform winter city mobility and what factors can play a key role in successful transformations. The relevance of the findings is illustrated with examples of their contextualization for the case of Skellefteå municipality, located in Sweden. / Studien syftar till att utforska framtida mobilitetssystemalternativ i sammanhanget "vinterstäder" för att uppnå ett mer hållbart samhälle. Detta görs genom att intervjua en rad olika mobilitetsexperter – som besitter erfarenhet och kunskap från städer lokaliserade i de norra regionerna samt de med global expertis. Resultatet belyser vilka (sociala och tekniska) innovationer som tros förändra vinterstadens mobilitet och vilka faktorer som kan spela en nyckelroll i en framgångsrik transformation. Studiens relevans påvisas genom att resultat illustreras med exempel på dess kontextualisering i caset Skellefteå kommun.

Pictures are often used when marketing a tourist destination. Photographs of a place, a destination, are used to convince customers and stimulate daydreaming in order to turn a potential customer into a real customer. For some people the photographic representations of a place is the only one they experience. With this in mind, it is reasonable to question how representations of places and geographical imaginations are being (re)produced when marketing a destination by using photographs. This paper aims to study how representations of place and people are used when marketing a tourist destination via travel commercial. The study was conducted by analysing images used for marketing tourist destinations located outside Europe, with a focus on photographs portraying people. The pictures included in this study were found in five travel catalogues for the Swedish market. The sample was narrowed down and reduced to three pictures, which were analysed by using a semiotic image analysis. The study aim to answer the following questions: When marketing a tourist destination how are people in the tourism advertising being presented? In what way can the images that are being used for tourism advertising generate stereotypes about places/people? The study indicates that, according to the included sample, the people portrayed in tourism advertising are being presented in a stereotypical manner.

Bakgrund. Specialistsjuksköterskan med inriktning psykiatrisk vård har en viktig roll i att främja utvecklingen av vårdande och stödjande handlingar hos både sig själv och andra. Studier visar på att sjuksköterskestudenter känner osäkerhet inför utvecklandet av professionellt vårdande. Forskning saknas kring hur studenter under utbildningen till specialistsjuksköterska med inriktning psykiatrisk vård utvecklar sina kunskaper. Syfte. Syftet var att inom ramen för specialistsjuksköterskeutbildning med inriktning psykiatrisk vård, undersöka hur studenternas självskattade kunskaper om att utföra vårdande och stödjande handlingar förändrades under utbildningens gång. Metod. Studien genomfördes som en kvantitativ enkätstudie. Studien är longitudinell och datainsamlingen skedde 2017 och 2019, då studenter som gick specialistsjuksköterskeprogrammet med inriktning psykiatrisk vård vid ett specifikt universitet svarade på samma frågor vid båda tillfällena. För att analysera data har deskriptiv och analytisk statistik använts. Resultat. Studenterna upplevde att de efter avslutade studier i högre grad kunde samtala med patienten om dennes hälsa, ohälsa och välbefinnande. De hade också lättare att prata om sådana patienter mådde dåligt av, och hade efter utbildningen fått en bättre förmåga att stödja och uppmuntra patienter både socialt och praktiskt. Specialistsjuksköterskeutbildningen behöver i större grad fokusera på att möta patienten i mer svåra samtalsämnen. Slutsats. Studenterna skattade generellt sin kunskap och kompetens gällande att utföra vårdande och stödjande handlingar högre efter två års studier. Dock syns ingen kunskapsförändring angående studenternas förmåga att bjuda in till samtal om tankar och känslor eller att bjuda in till en vårdande relation. Studiens resultat visar på både ny kunskap och på områden med möjlighet till kompetensutveckling inom specialistsjuksköterskeutbildningen. / Bakgrund. Den psykiatriska sjuksköterskan har en viktig roll i att främja utvecklingen av omtänksamma och stödjande åtgärder hos både sig själv och andra. Studier visar att sjuksköterskestudenter känner sig osäkra på utvecklingen av professionell vård. Det saknas forskning om hur psykiatrisjuksköterskor utvecklar sina kunskaper under sin utbildning. Avsikt. Syftet med studien var att inom ramen för specialistsjuksköterskeprogrammet med fokus på psykiatrisk vård undersöka hur studenternas självskattade kunskaper om att utföra vårdande och stödjande åtgärder förändrats under utbildningens gång. Metod. Studien genomfördes som en kvantitativ enkätstudie. Studien var longitudinell och datainsamlingen skedde 2017 och 2019, då studenter som gick specialistsjuksköterskeprogrammet med inriktning mot psykiatrisk vård vid ett specifikt universitet svarade på samma frågor vid båda tillfällena. För att analysera data har vi använt beskrivande och analytisk statistik. Resultat. Studenterna upplevde att de efter två års studier i större utsträckning kunde prata med patienterna om deras hälsa, sjukdom och välbefinnande. De hade också lättare att prata om saker som patienterna mådde dåligt över, och hade fått en bättre förmåga att stötta och uppmuntra patienter både socialt och praktiskt. Specialistsjuksköterskeprogrammet behöver fokusera mer på hur man möter patienten i svårare samtalsämnen. Slutsats. Studenterna värderade sina kunskaper och färdigheter när det gäller att utföra omtänksamma och stödjande åtgärder högre efter två års studier. Men ingen förändring i kunskap ses när det gäller elevernas förmåga att bjuda in till samtal om tankar och känslor eller att bjuda in till en vårdande relation. Studiens resultat visar på både ny kunskap och områden med möjligheter till kompetensutveckling inom specialistsjuksköterskeutbildningen.

The subject of this study is how elementary school pupils look upon foreign cultures. Two hundred children have written essays about what they think about thoughts and belief in other countries. The analysis shows that democracy, justice and equality are very important conceptions within children's general view of life. The children are deeply sympathetic to the plight of poor people in the world, especially when they suffer from war and natural catastrophes. When the children try to explain what happens in the world, religion has no great importance. The children's great degree of empathy gives the impression that it is desirable and imperative to find a suitable didactic way to teach them about the situation in the world so they can understand it.

This thesis investigates how students in upper secondary school solve problems and discuss physics in small groups. The study examines how gender, knowledge in physics and the image of the subject physics are constructed in the students’ conversation and how these processes are related to each other. The theoretical framework includes a sociocultural perspective on learning and a gender perspective that views gender as both process and discourse and focus on how femininity and masculinity are constructed in social relations. 28 students in two classes at the science program participated in the study. 8 videotaped group discussions and 15 audiotaped interviews where analysed through thematic analysis and discourse analysis according to different research questions. The results show the complexity of a learning conversation. The character of the dialogue in the groups, the difficulties the student encounter when dealing with the tasks, and the social interaction in the groups, has a deep impact on the possibilities to develop the discussion about physics phenomena and concepts. The images of the subject physics and the images of a student skilled in physic that are constructed in the interviews are reconstructed in the students’ discussions and in their acting in the groups. But there are also inconsistencies and counter discourses. The possibilities for learning are related to the construction of gender and to equality issues within the groups. Traditional gendered positions are to a large extent reconstructed in the students’ interaction. Boys are for instance positioned as more competent in physics than girls. But traditional gendered positions are also resisted and challenged.

Syftet med föreliggande avhandlingsarbete är att få större kunskap om några av förutsättningarna för förskolans pedagogiska verksamhet och få veta mer om vad som faktiskt sker ute i förskolans barngrupper. I avhandlingen kartläggs tolv förskollärares föreställningar om förskolan och uppfattningar om arbete, lek och inlärning samt hur de agerar i barngrupp med avseende på dessa begrepp. Föreställningar och uppfattningar hos tjuogoen lärarkandidater har också kartlagts, dels vid böljan av deras förskollärarutbildning, dels efter avslutad utbildning.1981 presenterade Socialstyrelsen en ny arbetsplan för förskolan. Den kan betraktas som ett försök till lösning av olika problem inom förskolan som utvecklats under en period av ca tio år. Arbete, lek och inlärning framställdes i arbetsplanen som centrala begrepp vilka gav struktur och innehåll åt förskolans pedagogiska verksamhet. I avhandlingen fokuseras föreställningar och uppfattningar. Dessa kan definieras som strukturerande och integrerande principer av övergripande art som är avgörande för hur en individ tolkar och värderar omvärlden. Förskollärarnas och lärarkandidaternas föreställningar och uppfattningar kartlades genom intervjuanalyser. En särskild kortsorteringsuppgift konstruerades och gavs i samband med intervjuerna. Förskollärarna observerades också i barngrupp.Resultatet visar att några av förskollärarna hade föreställningar om förskolan som "en institution för kompensation" eller som "en institution för utveckling". De flesta av dem såg förskolan som "en institution för anpassning". De hade även skilda uppfattningar om arbete, lek och inlärning. De olika uppfattningskategorierna kan sägas ge uttryck för ett mer eller mindre "pedagogiserat" eller "psykologiserat" synsätt; "vuxencentrerat" eller "barncentrerat" synsätt Observationerna visar att förskollärarna inte helt agerade i enlighet med den syn de gav uttryck för i intervjuerna. De agerade mer lika varandra i praktiken än vad man hade anledning att anta. De flesta av dem uttryckte i sin praktik att förskolan är en institution för "anpassning", endast få gav uttryck för "utveckling" och ingen alls för "kompensation". De uppfattningar som främst kom till uttryck i praktiken var att arbete är "förelagd uppgift", lek är en "terapeutisk nödvändighet" och inlärning är "social träning". I avhandlingen diskuteras resultaten i belysning av förskolans utveckling under 1970-talet. Professionalisering, yttre förutsättningar för verksamheten och förskolans tradition är begrepp som också används i diskussionen och för förklaring av resultaten. / The purpose of this dissertation is to acquire greater knowledge of some of the conditions of the educational activities of pre-school as well as of what is actually going on in pre-school. The study examines twelve pre-school teachers' notions of pre-school and conceptions of work, play and learning and how they interact with children with respect to these concepts. The notions and conceptions of a group of twenty-one trainee teachers have also been studied at the beginning and at the end of their training. In 1981 a new plan for pre-schooling was presented by The National Board of Health and Welfare which can be regarded as an attempt at solving pre-school problems arisen the last ten year period. Work, play and learning were the central concepts in the plan, providing pre-school, day-nurseries and part-time-groups, with structure and content. In the study, notions and conceptions are key-words. They can be defined as structuring and integrating, comprehensive principles determining how an individual interprets and evaluates the surrounding world. Notions and conceptions are examined through interview analyses. A special classification item was designed and administered in connection with the interviews. The pre-school teachers were also observed interacting with the group of children for fifteen hours.The results show that some of the pre-school teachers had notions of pre-school as "an institution for compensation" or as "an institution for development". Most of them regarded pre-school as "an institution for adjustment". They also had different conceptions of work, play and learning. The categories of conceptions express a more or less "educationalized" or "psychologized" attitude, an "adult-referenced" or "child-referenced" attitude. Regarding the conceptions of activities it is maintained that the trainee teachers have become "educationalized" in the course of their training. They expressed fewer notions that can be described as "child-referenced" or " psychologized". The observations show that the pre-school teachers did not act quite in accordance with the view they expressed in the interviews. They acted more uniformly than could be expected. The practices of most pre-school teachers indicated pre-school as "an institution for adjustment", only rarely "development", never "compensation". The most frequent conceptions expressed in their practices were that work is "assigned tasks", play is a "therapeutic necessity" and learning is "social training". The results are dicussed in the light of the development of pre-school in Sweden during the 1970s. Professionally, frame-factors, tradition in pre-school are important concepts for the understanding of the results. / digitalisering@umu

The inclusion of a gender perspective in medicine has shown that gender is an essential factor in health and disease, in medical encounters and also in medical students’ educational environment. The aim of this study was to explore attitudes, preconceptions and norms regarding gender within medical education and processes of gender bias. First, we explored medical students gendered beliefs about patients. Second, we examined the medical students ideas about their future careers. Third, we compared awareness on gender issues among medical students in Sweden and the Netherlands. Method and material The analyses were based on data from two different sources: one experimental study based on authentic patient narratives about being diagnosed with cancer and one extensive questionaire exploring different aspects of gender issues in medical education. Both studies had a design which enabled both qualitative and quantitative research and mixed methods was used. Study I (Paper I and II): Eighty-one anonymous letters from patients were read by 130 students of medicine and psychology. For each letter the students were asked to state the patient’s sex and explain their choice. In paper I the students’ success rates were analysed statistically and the explanations to four letters were used to illustrate the students’ reasoning. Paper II examined the 87 medical students’ explanations closer to examine gender beliefs about patients. Study II (Paper III and IV): The questionaire started with an open question where medical students were asked to describe their ideal future, it also included a validated scale designed to estimate gender awareness. Paper III examined 507 swedish medical students descriptions about their ideal future and compared answers from male and female students in the beginning and at the end of medical school. Paper IV compared gender awareness among 1096 Swedish and Dutch medical students in first term. Findings with reflections Paper I showed that the patient’s sex was correctly identified in 62% of the cases. There were no difference between the results of male and female students. However, large differences between letters were observed, i.e. there were some letters were almost all students correctly identified the patient´s sex, others were almost all students were incorrect and most letters were found somewhere in the middle. Another significant finding was that the same expressions were interpreted differently depending on which initial guess the medical student had made regarding the sex of the patient. Paper II identified 21 categories of justifications within the students’ explanations, twelve of which were significantly associated with an assumption of either a male or female patient. Only three categories led to more correct identifications of the patients’ sex and two were more often associated with incorrect assignments. The results illustrate how beliefs about gender difference, even though they might be recognizable on a group level, are not applicable on individuals. Furthermore, the results show that medical students enter the education with beliefs about male and female patients, which could have consequenses and cause bias in their future work as doctors. Paper III found that almost all students, both male and female, were work-oriented. However, the female students even more so than their male counterparts. This result is particularly interesting in regards to the debate about the “feminization of medicine” in which the increasing number of female students has been adressed as a problem. When reflecting on their own lifes and their future its obvious that medical students nowadays, male and female, expect more to life than work, especially those who are on the doorstep to their professional life. Paper IV found that the national and cultural setting was the most crucial impact factor in relation to the medical students preconceptions and awareness about gender. The Swedish students expressed less stereotypic thinking about patients and doctors, while the Dutch students were more sensitive to gender difference. In both countries, the students’ sex mattered for gender stereotyping, with male students agreeing more to stereotypes. Conclusions A gender perspective is important in medical education. Our studies show that such initiatives needs to take cultural aspects, gender attitudes and students’ gender into account. Moreover, reflections on assumptions about men and women, patients as well as doctors, need to be included in medical curricula and the impact of implicit gender beliefs needs to be included in discussions on gender bias in health care. Also, the next generation of doctors want more to life than work. Future Swedish doctors, both female and male, intend to balance work not only with a family but also with leisure. This attitudinal change towards their future work as doctors will provide the health care system with a challenge to establish more adaptive and flexible work conditions.

Specific machines furnish the contemporary socio-technical imaginary: ‘Robot companions’ that supposedly herald the age of robots, an age that is signified by the realization of robot technologies that are taking over labor from humans in every sphere of ‘everyday human lives’. How do we want these robot companions to work and look and how do we want to live with these machines?  This thesis explores the engineering of relating humans and machines in the specific context of contemporary robotics from a queer feminist technoscience perspective. The ways in which such engineering processes implement ‘human-likeness’ in realizing the figure of the robot companion are of special concern. At the heart of this study is one robot model: Armar, developed at the Institute for Anthropomatics and Robotics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Participating in the local everyday practices of establishing the efficient robot-human interface in the kitchen laboratory, this study investigates the ways in which Armar is made domestic as a prospective care service provider and companion in the kitchen. This study applies a posthumanist frame of research to investigate the practices of making anthropomatic kitchen robots. It employs an understanding of this making in terms of ‘performing the kitchen’. This further entails querying the ways in which norms of ‘humanness’ are translated into the human-like robot as well as the idea of pre-figured embodied entities with individual properties that meet in the laboratory. Thus, this thesis maps the labors and reciprocities of learning to see and experience this specific robot model as a future human-like companion for humans by analyzing the apparatuses of bodily co-production between human and machine that are at work in the kitchen laboratory. / Avhandlingen undersöker sociotekniska processer inom samtida robotik som både upprätthåller och skapar människa – maskin relationer ur ett feministiskt teknovetenskapligt perspektiv. Speciellt undersöks hur ingenjörer skapar robot-människa gränssnitt för hushållsrobotik och implementerar människolikhet i skapandet av framtidens robotsällskap. En specifik robotmodell, Armar, och dess utveckling följs vid Institutet för Antropomatik och Robotik, Tekniska Högskola i Karlsruhe i södra Tyskland. Armar ”bor” och verkar där i ett kökslaboratorium, en simulerad vardagsyta utvecklad för forskning och offentliga demonstrationer. Men hushållsrobotar har också en speciell plats i vår kulturella föreställningsvärld. I denna studie undersöks det sociotekniska och kulturella processen att domesticera robotar och ge dem status som prospektiva hjälpredor och sällskap i köket. Som en sådan kartläggning av ömsesidigt människa-maskin skapande teoretiserar studien den kroppsproducerande apparaten (Haraway 1991) som sätts i spel i detta kökslabb och i robot-människa gränssnittet. I studien utforskas ickemänsklig agens och posthumanistisk performativitet (Barad 2003) samt gränsdragningsarbetet mellan Jaget och Andra, människa och maskin, subject och objekt. Avhandlingen gör ett bidrag till förståelsen av kroppsliga normer och socio-materiella ömsesidigheter i skapandet av förmänskligat robotsällskap. / Ob in Medienberichten oder Kinofilmen – aktuell prägen Maschinen das sozio-technische Imaginäre, die nach menschlichem Vorbild entwickelt werden, um in das ‘alltäglich-menschliche’ Leben einzutreten und dieses nachhaltig zu verändern. In ihrer Allgegenwärtigkeit künden sie das Zeitalter der Roboter an, das verspricht, den Lebensstandard, den sich der globale Norden zuschreibt, zu verbessern. Im Fokus dieser Studie steht ein spezifisches Robotermodell, Armar, das am Institut für Anthropomatik und Robotik des Instituts für Technologie in Karlsruhe (Deutschland) entwickelt wird. In der Analyse von Interviews, teilnehmender Beobachtung sowie Fotomaterial untersucht diese Studie die alltäglichen Praktiken im Robotik-Küchenlabor, durch die Armar zur Begleiter_in und Care-Arbeiter_in in der Küche wird. Die posthumanistische, queer-feministische Rahmung der Analyse erlaubt es, die Herstellung des anthropomatischen Küchenroboters als ein Performing the Kitchen zu verstehen. Die Arbeit fokussiert damit auf die Bedingungen und die Akteur_innen – sowohl menschliche als auch nichtmenschliche – und fragt nach den Normen des Menschlichen, die bei dem Arbeiten an einer ,menschenähnlichen‘ Maschine produziert, aber auch verändert werden. Dabei zeichnet sie nach, dass Entitäten mit verkörperten Eigenschaften nicht präexistieren, sondern aus komplexen Mensch-Maschine-Verhältnissen der Ko-Produktion hervorgehen.

Place, culture, identity: A critical discourse analysis of media representations in Västerbotten The aim of this thesis is to analyse how representations in newspaper media constructs and reconstructs conceptions of place, culture and identity in the county of Västerbotten located in northern Sweden. The study is based on 26 different newspaper articles from two local agencies located in Västerbotten, Folkbladet and Västerbottens-kuriren. Adopting the method Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper explores how differentiation is made through the use of language and how media divides and represents different characteristics as symbolic of the municipality Umeå, the hinterland (inlandet) and the county of Västerbotten. Even though the study shows that there are multiple different opinions regarding the "true" culture and identitity of the different spaces, the study reveals the presence of a political neoliberal agenda that aims to redefine the locals idea of culture in the different communities for marketing purposes. It is found that media representations are influenced by a political attempt to present the geographical spaces as a part of a new and exotic cultural centre in Europe, wherefor the articles reflect an ongoing conflict of definition between locals and politicians in Västerbotten.