<p>Avhandlingen söker svara på två förberedande frågor: hur man kan tolka Theodor W. Adornos kritiska teori idag? Samt hur en sådan tolkning kan göras relevant för aktuell teologisk problematik?</p>

<p>Dental involvement with oral cancer patients during their treatment and rehabilitation can be long and intense. How can dental personnel better understand their role in the treatment of these patients? How does treatment affect the patients and their spouses? In searching for answers, the theories of phenomenography, phenomenology and hermeneutics are used to describe and interpret the experiences of the hospital dental treatment teams, oral cancer patients, and their spouses. </p><p>Study I reveals that hospital dental treatment teams perceive the encounter with head and neck cancer patients in three qualitatively different ways; as an act of caring, as a serious and responsible task, and as an overwhelming emotional situation, indicating that they are not always able to lean on education and professional training in dealing with situations with strong emotional impact. Study II gives insight into the lifeworld of oral cancer patients, and how the patient becomes embodied in a mouth that is increasingly `uncanny´, as it slowly ceases to function normally. Study III shows that oral cancer puts a hold on the lifeworld of the patients’ spouses which can be described as `living in a state of suspension´. These findings suggest that the support needs of patients and spouses appear to be greatest at treatment end, when, upon returning home, they are faced with the accumulated impact of the patients’ sickness and treatment. Study IV gives insight into what it may mean to live with the consequences of oral cancer, revealing a silent physical, emotional and existential struggle to adjust to a changed way of living. </p><p>This thesis raises the question if todays’ organisation of oral cancer care can meet the varying emotional and existential needs of treatment teams, patients and spouses that were brought to light.</p>

Globalization has made English a pivotal language for global communication. This has increasingly made a great number of native English speakers move to Korea and teach English at all levels of education from kindergarten to university year after year. Most of them have not only little or no training as language instructors, but also little or no teaching experience. Many may wonder how they teach students with little understanding about teaching in a foreign country. At the same time, they may also surmise that they would endure many difficulties in their profession. As a faculty member working with them for over fifteen years, I have also had such questions. Especially, I was curious what conflicts they bear in their minds and how they respond to differences between Canadian and Korean culture and pedagogy. This study is grounded on the hermeneutic tradition which ultimately pursues humane lives. This hermeneutic tradition leads me to the conflicts that native English speaking teachers have experienced, to the implications embedded in the Korean and English language, and to the differences between Canadian and Korean ways of thought. While following the hermeneutic tradition, I am aware that there was little or no communication between the Canadian and Korean teaching staff, which resulted in their alienated lives and in living in a world of exclusion from their schools, disregard about their profession, and indifference from their students. The hermeneutic tradition guides me in a path toward restoring the deteriorated humane aspects of their lives as teachers. As a ground for understanding them, I attempt to define the notion of the in-between on the basis of equality and respect which are rooted in the concept of the Korean language for the in-between. This conceptual elaboration enables me to conceive that differences are not objects to exclude, to disregard, or to be indifferent, but motives to perceive the necessity to reform and to change the inequality and injustices. In this light, I propose that educational institutions allow them to participate in decision making, open a special in-service teacher training program for them, and provide them with a support system.

No description available.

Bei der Erstellung und Interpretation mathematischer Leistungstests steht die Frage, was eine Aufgabe mißt. Der Artikel stellt mit der strukturalen oder objektiven Hermeneutik eine Methode vor, mit der die verschiedenen Dimensionen der von einer Aufgabe erfassten Fähigkeiten herausgearbeitet werden können. Dabei werden fachliche Anforderungen, Irritationsmomente und das durch die Aufgabe transportierte Bild vom jeweiligen Fach ebenso erfasst wie Momente, die man eher als Testfähigkeit bezeichnen würde.Am Beispiel einer TIMSS-Aufgabe wird diskutiert, dass das von den Testerstellern benutzte theoretische Konstrukt kaum geeignet ist, nachhaltig zu beschreiben, was eine Aufgabe misst. / The design and interpretation of aptitude tests in mathematics provoke questions as to what each of the set tasks actually measures. With structural or objective hermeneutics, this article introduces a methodology capable of discerning the various dimensions of skills required for a particular task. Not only does this approach allow for the recognition of the technical requirements of the task, its off-putting factors and the image of the subject conveyed. The methodology is also able to locate the elements addressing the kind of skill that can more accurately be clas-sified as 'test ability'. Focusing on an example selected from a TIMSS aptitude test, the discussion seeks to de-monstrate that the theoretical construction employed in setting the test is hardly suited to define with any sense of permanence what is measured by each task.

This thesis attempts to highlight the contemporary conditions and processes of education in order to define what kind of education dominates the 21st century School. What mentality and pedagogy are governing the design of the 21st century School? How can the historical perspective help to explain the conditions and processes in contemporary education? This thesis studies these questions by analyzing and interpreting active educational discourses from the beginning of the 21st century. The study is based on critical hermeneutics. The concepts are mentality, inherent pedagogy and historical memory. The material underlying the study con­sists of 351 news articles about education in the Swedish newspaper Västerbottens-Kuriren. The interpretation process has been carried out at different stages, in order to describe, explain and understand active educational discourses. This interpretation applies three complementary methods - text analysis, hermeneutic interpretation and critical discourse analysis. The find­ings indicate a mentality containing three main trends – equal togetherness, independent learning and independent freedom of choice, which arises from an inherent pedagogy con­taining two main trends - competence-developing and a performance-enhancing process. The contemporary mentality and pedagogy are emerging in the gap between Piaget´s and Skinner's educational ethos. At a shorter historical perspective, mentalities in the 1990s bear major structural similarities to the mentalities formed in the 21st century. In parallel, inherent peda­gogy in the 1990s shares less structural similarities to the pedagogy formed in the 21st cen­tury. At a longer historical perspective, one will notice major structural similarities between the 18th century and the 21st century. What distinguishes one period from another is that the 18th century was a class society with teachers who had low ambitions, whereas the 21st cen­tury is a democratic society with teachers who have high ambitions. What unites the periods is that both the 18th and the 21st centuries witnessed great spatial and economic change. They are centuries of coercion and competition as well as centuries of freedom. In addition, they share the qualities of distance and control, and they both treat children as adults. Finally both centuries face unfinished policies with contradictory trends. From a media perspective, the debates from the 1990s and the editorials and facts from the 21st century news articles bear no similarities in terms of ideological positions on education.

The dissertation consists of eight studies in combination with a longer work, which links the eight studies together. The aim is two-fold: to develop a scientific approach within philosophical hermeneutics for the study of the culture-specific dimension of teaching in China, and to analyse the culture-specific dimension of teaching in China on the terms of this approach. An explicit ontological foundation makes up the base of the hermeneutic approach, and epistemology, methodology and so on are adapted in accordance with this. Implications of this hermeneutical approach for educational research is further outlined, and the hermeneutical approach is more clearly positioned in relation to so-called qualitative research. With this hermeneutical approach, cross-cultural educational research can be conducted without either universalism or exoticism, since it offers a possibility to understand phenomena in other cultures without claiming to share them. Based on this hermeneutical approach, an interpretational framework named traditional thinking is constructed as a theoretical synthesis of Chinese philosophy, that is Confucianism, Taoism, Chinese Buddhism, Moism and Legalism. With traditional thinking, the analysis of the culture-specific dimension of teaching in China generates an understanding consisting of a number of themes. The themes are: concrete activity, sociality, collectivism, relationalism, balance, order, patriotism, aesthetics, perfection, good examples, the nobility of teaching, family, hierarchy, equal competition, responsibility, talent, examination, body, improvement, critiques, effort, self-study. In this understanding, moral has a central position and refl ects on all themes. This is a social and relational morality that embraces knowledge and aesthetics, which is achieved and realised in concrete bodily activity. Morality serves a system in order, i.e. it helps keep its balance. It facilitates the functioning of the collective and gives patriotism a moral character. Perfection is the optimal moral standard, which characterises all good examples, and the striving for improvement depends on critique and effort. Since perfection is always attainable, teaching and self-study make up the human way to harmony. In this, family is a precondition for moral cultivation, just as equal competition is a precondition for a balanced hierarchy and for correct responsibility. Talent is decisive, which in turn requires examination.

Avhandlingen söker svara på två förberedande frågor: hur man kan tolka Theodor W. Adornos kritiska teori idag? Samt hur en sådan tolkning kan göras relevant för aktuell teologisk problematik?

This thesis aims to explore the different aspects of the phenomenon of migration in Greece, as a case study. The choice of country is motivated by its geographical position at Europe’s external borders. In order to gain an insight into the reality that migrants are faced with when searching for a better life in Europe, a field study was conducted in Athens, Greece during a period of six weeks in the spring of 2010. The field work included interviews with various actors and individuals that are directly involved in migration issues, informal discussions with migrants and personal observations. Additionally, secondary sources such as previous studies were used. The framework used to approach the material included elements from neo-institutionalism, hermeneutics as well as critical theory. The most important conclusions reached incorporate that the rights of migrants are not respected in any aspect of the societal sphere, or in other words the three institutional pillars, the regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive. As a result, there are double standards applied to Europeans respective migrants. As a possible cause of the problematic situation described, underlying perceptions of national identity versus "otherness" are identified. These perceptions derive from a deeply rooted acceptance of social constructions such as national borders, as undisputable facts.

The thesis comprises four papers. The overall aim was to illuminate meanings of becoming and being burnt out respectively not becoming or being burnt out. The papers deal with two groups of healthcare personnel, one group on sick leave due to medically assessed burnout (n=20) and one group who showed no indications of burnout (n=20) from the same workplaces at psychiatric (n=7) and elderly (n=7) care units. A further aim was to describe personality traits and to elucidate perceptions of conscience (PCQ), stress of conscience (SCQ), moral sensitivity (MSQ-R), social support (SocIS) and resilience (RS) among the people in these two groups. Papers I and II are based on the text of narrative interviews interpreted using a phenomenological-hermeneutic method. Papers III and IV are based on data, pertaining to the same participants as in Papers I and II, derived from the following questionnaires; Cattell’s Sixteen Personality Factors Questionnaire (16PF) (III), ‘Perception of Conscience’ (PCQ), ‘Stress of Conscience’ (SCQ), ‘Moral Sensitivity Revised’ (MSQ-R), ‘Social Interactions Scale’ (SocIS) and ‘Resilience Scale’ (RS) (IV). Conventional statistical methods and Partial Least Square Regression (PLSR) were used to analyse the data (III, IV). In Paper I the aim was to illuminate meanings of becoming and being burnt out as narrated by healthcare personnel. The results show that meanings of becoming and being burnt out is to be torn between what one wants to manage and what one can actually manage. It is as if one’s ideals become more like demands for, regardless of the circumstances, one must be and show that one is capable and independent. It also means being dissatisfied with oneself for not living up to one’s own ideals as well as being disappointed in other people for not providing the confirmation one strives for. Feelings that one is a victim of circumstances emerge. Becoming and being burnt out leads to a futile struggle to live up to one’s ideals and when failing to unite one’s ideal picture with one’s reality one finally reaches an overwhelming feebleness. In Paper II the aim was to illuminate meanings of not becoming or being burnt out at workplaces where others developed burnout, as narrated by healthcare personnel. The results show that meanings of not becoming or being burnt out are to be rooted in an outlook on life which perceives its many-sidedness of prosperity, adversity, strength and weakness in oneself and others. An openness towards the circumstances of life emerges. Being able to judge the possibilities of influencing things, as well as being able to let go of injustice and look after oneself with a clear conscience are revealed as meanings of not becoming and being burnt out. In Paper III the aim was to describe personality traits among burnt out and non-burnt out healthcare personnel from the same workplaces. The results show, that the people in the burnt out group had lower scores regarding emotional stability and higher scores regarding anxiety than the people in the non-burnt out group but the results also showed a wide variation of personality traits within the groups. The most important indicators for belonging to the burnt out group were openness to changes and anxiety, and for belonging to the non-burnt out group, emotional stability, liveliness, privateness and tension. In Paper IV the aims were to elucidate perceptions of conscience, stress of conscience, moral sensitivity, social support and resilience among burnt out and non-burnt out healthcare personnel from the same workplaces. The results show that higher levels of stress of conscience and moral sensitivity, a perception of conscience as a burden, having to deaden one’s conscience in order to keep working in healthcare and perceiving a lack of support from those around them characterize the burnt out group. Those in the non-burnt out group are characterised by lower levels of stress of conscience, an out-look on life with a forbearing attitude, a perception of conscience as an asset, an ability to deal with one’s conscience in a constructive way and a perception of receiving support from those around them. The comprehensive understanding from the four papers (I-IV) is discussed in light of a theoretical framework derived from Emmy van Deurzens thoughts about the four life worlds: the natural world (the physical world), the public world (the social world), the private world (the psychological world) and the ideal world (the spiritual world). The result can be summarized in terms of the human condition in life and demonstrates the essential importance of reconciling the vita activa (the active life of labor, work and action), the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing and judging) and not least the vita regenerativa (rest and recovery) in order to avoid being burned out. / Samvetsstress i vården