Early school leaving continues to be an issue that garners much attention from administrators, educators, and academics. In this study I review the existing literature on risk factors relating to early school leaving while examining the role of social context on educational aspirations and expectations. Research findings (Alberta Learning, 2001; Ferguson, Tilleczek, Boydell, & Rummens, 2005; Satchwell, 2004) show that early school leaving is a long process of disengagement that arises from multiple factors associated with experiences both inside and outside of school. In this study I carry out a qualitative analysis of both school and non-school related risk factors deemed to be significant to the early leaving of four young Portuguese-Canadian men. Their stories attest to the complexity of the phenomenon as they affirm the impact of both school and non-school related factors on early school leaving such as irrelevant curriculum, learning community, socio-economic status, and social context. In recounting their stories, and analyzing them through Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1979) understanding of “cultural capital” and “habitus,” I provide insights in this study into how administrators, educators and policymakers, alike may make learning more meaningful and authentic in order to curb early school leaving. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-05-29 09:54:48.856

This performance-based project scrutinizes indeterminacy as a mediating force impinging upon our behaviour and its subsequent impact on the nature and constituency of engagements and dialogue between people in urban spaces. Concepts centering on the dynamics of departure are being investigated with focus upon the Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE), Second Life as a facet of real life (the term 'real life' will henceforth be referred to in this document within the context of Second Life, as First Life). Experienced through the vehicle of the Roaming Body, our meetings and encounters with people and places frequently manifest as disjunct communiqués and mis-engagements. I am asserting that this is due to the inevitability in our existence of indeterminacy acting as a significant factor in the articulation of our relations with others, reinforcing our description as time-based entities traversing the passage of the everyday. I maintain that this is frequently evidenced in our behaviours through the occurrence (notwithstanding arrivals) of a continual, pre-emptive state of departure. Indeterminacy implies motion and emerges, as Massumi asserts, through ‘… an unfolding relation to its own nonpresent potential to vary …’. We, as humans, are constantly being drawn away – always either approaching or embracing involuntarily, a 'state-of-Leaving’ which co-mingles with and unerringly erodes our efforts to stay engaged with another in the here and now. In my dance and video practice, interventionist dance strategies are being used to prompt and interrogate the constituents of departure within encounters in designated public places. Experimental movement frameworks employed are informed by the discipline of Contact Improvisation Dance and Authentic Movement. The working process is being documented using a range of video narrative.

International evidence indicates that school systems need to change in order to tackle early school leaving and improve social inclusion in education and society. Policy-makers and school actors require practical tools to assist them in this process, made all the more urgent by the EU2020 headline target to reduce early school leaving. This report develops such practical tools; it is designed to inform strategic policy and practice by offering an innovative framework of structural indicators for early school leaving prevention and inclusion in school. It draws upon key European Council and Commission policy documents on early school leaving prevention, and also on the Paris Declaration 2015 on promoting common values of freedom, tolerance and non-discrimination through education, which includes a focus on social marginalization.

We use data drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort to study the effects of leaving school in an economic downturn on sleep quality and quantity. We account for the potential endogeneity of economic conditions at school leaving using instrumental variables based on birth year and early state of residence. We find that men who leave school in an economic downturn initially experience lower quality sleep, but these men are able to experience improved sleep quality over time. Women who leave school in an economic downturn experience better sleep quality, although the effect emerges over time. We find that leaving school in an economic downturn increases sleep quantity among men and women. We document heterogeneity by work type.

This qualitative study examines the prevalence of violent extremist groups and criminal gangs in a county in Sweden, and what support is available for people in the county who want to leave these groups. The participants consist of eight people who in their profession can meet people who want to leave criminal gangs or violent extremists. The participants work in six different professions and in four different municipalities. Through semi-structured interviews data were collected which were analyzed based on Thematic Analysis. The theoretical frame of reference for this study is Hirschi's theory of social bond. The results show that in the studied county there is some occurrence of violent extremism, but especially of criminal gangs. From what emerges, there is a lack of insight and awareness of this among different professional groups. Support for people who want to leave criminal gangs or violent extremism is very limited, there are no Exit programs and there are no routines and contact routes between the actors involved that may be relevant for these people. Protection may be available, but other support is lacking. The conclusion of this study is that increased knowledge, awareness and support and treatment interventions in this area are central to counteracting the increase, in particular, gang crime. The results of the study can contribute to the crime prevention work in the county by highlighting the existence of this problem and the need for support for this target group. / <p>2022-01-31</p>

<p> The use of smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops skyrocketed in the last decade. These devices enable ubiquitous applications for entertainment, communication, productivity, and healthcare but also introduce big concern about user privacy and data security. In addition to various authentication techniques, automatic and immediate device locking based on user leaving detection is an indispensable way to secure the devices. Current user leaving detection techniques mainly rely on acoustic ranging and do not work well in environments with multiple moving objects. In this paper, we present mmLock, a system that enables faster and more accurate user leaving detection in dynamic environments. mmLock uses a mmWave FMCW radar to capture the user’s 3D mesh and detects the leaving gesture from the 3D human mesh data with a hybrid PointNet-LSTM model. Based on explainable user point clouds, mmLock is more robust than existing gesture recognition systems which can only identify the raw signal patterns. We implement and evaluate mmLock with a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) TI mmWave radar in multiple environments and scenarios. We train the PointNet-LSTM model out of over 1 TB mmWave signal data and achieve 100% true-positive rate in most scenarios. </p>

No / During the past ten years, there has been growing interest in the health needs of young people leaving care in England and Wales. Most such young people leave care between the ages of 16 and 18 and many experience significant problems adjusting to independent living. This article fulfils two objectives. First, it examines the legislative and policy context within which practice towards such young people is now conducted. Second, it deepens our understanding of this policy context by reporting the results of a project on this subject that was undertaken in one local authority district in the north of England in 2005. The project surveyed all young care leavers within the district, analysing their health concerns and experiences. Using postal questionnaires (70 responses), face-to-face interviews (30) and focus groups (two), it sought to provide a clear picture of current needs and to inform future policy action by local health and social care professionals.

No / The present paper uses life course theory to explore the move toward 'independent living' required of young people leaving care in England and Wales. Informal interview contact with 14 young people who had recently left care was maintained over a period of 12-18 months. Biographical stories constructed from field research are used to consider the social and developmental processes of the life course. The contextual analysis formalized within life course theory focused on the social timing and social construction of independence, revealing the way in which important 'invisibilities' may have social and developmental consequences for care leavers.

Framing Neverland is a content analysis that examines how the documentary Leaving Neverland is portrayed in Swedish daily press between January 25 to May 20, 2019. It is through the questions “How does the framing of Leaving Neverland being perceived in Swedish daily press?” and “Does morning and evening presses differ in the framing?” the essay was designed. Entman's framing theory forms the basis of the study's theoretical framework and is supplemented with media logic and tabloidization, which is operationalized into variables in the study of 100 articles within Swedish daily press. The Swedish morning and evening newspapers are represented by the four largest daily newspapers in Sweden today; Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. A cluster selection were made in the process of choosing the articles, because of the choice of newspapers which is the largest Swedish ones today, also a total selection when all published articles within the population have become objects for the survey. Previous research consists of framing theory and tonality of different subjects than this study, since similar essays traditionally relate to political and war reporting. Inspiration has been given from previous research on analysis tools to apply to this contemporary work which is at the intersection of popular culture and news content. The newspaper framing  in general is relatively homogeneous, which explains some tabloidization among, what we call, the quality press. The commercialization of the media gives rise to this, but some differences remain. Aftonbladet is the newspaper with the most frequent reporting by Leaving Neverland and then comes Expressen. Which means that the evening press prioritize this topic as a higher news value than what the morning press does. However, it is possible to extract a result which shows that the content of the morning press is of a more critical nature towards Leaving Neverland. Together, the result is thus presented through framing theory, media logic and tabloidization, which together explain how the documentary is framed. / Framing Neverland är en kvantitativ innehållsanalys som undersöker hur dokumentären Leaving Neverland gestaltas i svensk press mellan 25 januari till 20 maj 2019. Det är genom frågeställningarna “Hur ser gestaltningen av Leaving Neverland ut i svensk press?”  samt  “Skiljer sig morgon- och kvällspress i gestaltningen?”  som uppsatsen utformats. Gestaltningsteori står till grund för studiens teoretiska ramverk och kompletteras med medielogik och tabloidisering, vilket operationaliseras till variabler i studien av 100 artiklar inom svensk press. Svenska morgon- och kvällstidningar representeras genom de fyra största dagstidningarna i Sverige idag; Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen och Svenska Dagbladet. Det är således ett klusterurval som gjorts av de största tidningarna, men även ett totalurval då alla publicerade artiklar inom populationen har blivit objekt för undersökningen.  Tidigare forskning består av gestaltning och tonalitet av annan slags karaktär än denna studie, då liknande uppsatser traditionellt sett förhåller sig till politisk- och krigsrapportering. Inspiration har givits från tidigare forskning gällande analysverktyg för att applicera på detta nutida verk som befinner sig i skärningspunkten mellan populärkultur och nyhetsinnehåll. Resultatet i studien visar att tidningarnas sammanslagna gestaltning generellt är relativt homogen, vilket förklarar viss tabloidisering bland “kvalitetspressen”. Mediernas kommersialisering ger upphov till detta, men vissa innehållsmässiga skillnader kvarstår. Aftonbladet är den tidning som står för största delen av nyhetsrapporteringen av Leaving Neverland och därefter kommer Expressen. Detta innebär att kvällspressen anser att detta ämne har ett högre nyhetsvärde än vad morgonpressen gör. Således går det att utvinna ett resultat som påvisar att morgonpressens gestaltning är av mer kritisk karaktär gentemot Leaving Neverland. Tillsammans redovisas följaktligen resultatet genom gestaltningsteori, medielogik och tabloidisering, vilket tillsammans förklarar hur medierna gestaltning ser ut av dokumentären.

From being an unemployment success story, Sweden was during the 1990s thrown into a European normality, with apparent high and persistent unemployment. This has made unemployment a central issue in the Swedish public debate as a social problem directly affecting hundreds of thousands of individuals. In the public debate there is however no consensus on what characterises the experience of unemployment. One perspective emphasises the role of employment for self-realisation. Unemployment here becomes a very destructive experience, due to the psychosocial value attached to employment. An alternative perspective instead views employment as a necessary evil that brings little satisfaction to those who participate in it. From this perspective unemployment mean very little to those struck by it outside the possible negative effects on income (which are minimised by the welfare state). The objective of this thesis has been to move beyond the postulated truths of what the experience of unemployment means. It uses an empirical approach in order to investigate the consequences of unemployment for mental well-being, and to develop an understanding of the reasons for this relationship. The following conclusions can be drawn from the five articles that make up the thesis. In line with previous international and Swedish research, the thesis shows that unemployment as compared to employment is in general a distressing experience. This does however not mean that we can draw the simple conclusion that unemployment represents misery and employment represents the absence of misery. The thesis finds the relationship to be more complex than so. There is a need to take into account more of the possible variations in status available both on and outside the labour market. Different exit routes from unemployment were found to have different consequences for the mental well-being of the unemployed individual. Further, the evidence in the thesis shows that there is variation in the impact of unemployment on mental well-being within the unemployment group. We should, thus, not talk about the experience of unemployment, but rather about varying unemployment experiences. The general effect of unemployment on mental well-being, and the variation in the unemployment experience, was in turn shown to be mainly dependent on two factors. Firstly on the psychosocial need for employment in a society where employment is the norm. Secondly, on the economic need for employment in a society where employment, as the thesis also shows, for many still is necessary for adequate economic resources. / <p>Härtill 5 uppsatser.</p> / digitalisering@umu