The main purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse how museum visitors engage with and make meaning from what is being offered to them in terms of the various resources made available in two exhibitions. Yet another purpose is to describe and analyse the design of these exhibitions. The empirical data stems from observational studies at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, and includes the investigation of two exhibitions: Prehistories I and II. Eight ‘visiting pairs’ were videotaped and the tapes were multimodally transcribed and analysed. Data also includes digital photos and maps produced by the visitors. In a comparative analysis, descriptions of the exhibitions and their analysis and the visitor study are discussed in relation to earlier research and to the issue of learning. A design-oriented and multimodal perspective on learning is used as a theoretical and methodological framework. The different visits are compared and the visitors’ responses are discussed as different forms of engagement. The results are interpreted within an institutional perspective connected to contemporary discourses within museum studies. The exhibitions are considered as an expression of the museums’ ambition to adjust to a pressure for change. Both exhibitions are, in a greater or less degree, considered as examples of ‘new’ exhibitions in that they rhetorically put forward visitors’ participation, cultural rights, post colonial perspectives and immaterial aspects of cultural heritage. The study presents learning as a social and sign-making activity. It stress how meaning-making and learning happens as a transformation in several steps. As visitors engage in different semiotic resources in the exhibitions’ design, they form new signs through their representations – as a ‘re-design’ of the exhibition – which in turn give them new possibilities for making meaning. / Museet, utställningen, besökaren. Meningsskapande på en ny arena för lärande och kommunikation

This thesis contributes to the knowledge about the role of sociocultural resources in students’ learning in Science Education. In the analyses, both individual experiences and situation are taken into account. Different sociocultural resources – the teacher, artefacts and texts – that students encounter in educational settings are focused with the aim to study what role they play for which meaning making is made possible and relevant. To study these encounters, a pragmatist approach called practical epistemology analysis – i.e. an analysis of what students use as relevant information, valid questions and relevant attentiveness – is used and advanced. The empirical material consists of video recordings from Science Education classrooms in Swedish compulsory school. The first paper is an introduction to the line of work subsequently performed. In the second paper, a method for analysing the role of teaching for students’ meaning making – epistemological moves analysis – is developed and illustrated. This method focuses on those actions of the teacher that have a function of influencing what direction students’ learning takes. In the third paper, the practical epistemology approach is applied in order to clarify, within a sociocultural understanding of learning, the role of the interplay between students’ prior experiences and the use of artefacts in students’ meaning making. In the fourth paper, the practical epistemology approach is applied as a method for investigating the role of instructional texts in laboratory settings for students’ meaning making. The thesis shows how individual continuity can be understood and analysed within a sociocultural perspective on learning. The developed methods make it possible to study learning as constituted in action without ascribing teachers, artefacts or texts a pre-determined meaning prior to their use in a practice. The results show that the way sociocultural resources are made intelligible by the students shapes the conditions for further meaning making.

Being affected by a serious or life-threatening illness implies an existentially changed situation that is accompanied by a number of questions about the illness itself, consequences of the illness in an everyday context and implications for the future. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine people’s meaning-making when they are affected by a serious illness and to determine how the illness acquires meaning in the context of their lives. The dissertation thus deals with what can be referred to as existential meaning-making. A hermeneutical approach was adopted, drawing more specifically on Paul Ricoeur’s narrative theory that emphasises the importance of different dimensions of time and memory in the understanding of narratives. An empirical study was carried out of illness narratives collected in research interviews with six women who had been diagnosed with serious illnesses, such as cancer, stroke and heart attack. The analysis reveals that the discovery of the illness and the period following was characterized by chaos and a lack of time perspective, feelings of lack of freedom and thoughts about death, but also feelings of responsibility towards the family. Experiences of the health services were also important in accounts of this early period, particularly wishes for more empathic encounters with the professionals. In the women’s accounts of the long term living with the illness, death continues to emerge as a back drop to their everyday experiences of the illness, but gradually more as confronting the problem of death rather than giving up life. Over time, relationships to significant others and the importance of everyday life also constitute increasingly important themes. In their expectations for the future, the women account for some experiences that have been important in creating a sense of hope and heightened vitality, and thus a new ‘wholeness’, such as being close to nature as well as their religious or spiritual experiences. These results are discussed in terms of how memories of significant events or places play an important role in existential meaning-making, and also how reflections on these memories can be seen as a process of existential ‘learning’.

Conceptual change is one of the most important influences in modern educational research and this theoretical framework can be used for empirical research aimed at improving our common knowledge about learning as well as developing new theories and practices within the education system. In its very basic meaning, conceptual change can be explained as a person who during the course of the learning experience changes their initial conception of a phenomenon (such as a object or a concept) from one specific point of view to another. The aim of this study is to map out the differences and similarities between two seemingly opposite movements within today’s pedagogical research community. Within phenomenography a constitutionalist approach to learning is used, which means that the conceptions formed by students are considered to be an internal representation of the individual’s interpretation of their own knowledge in relation to their surroundings. The intentional analytical approach suggests that contextualisation is necessary for conceptual change to take place, for the student to be able to interpret the assignment or task at hand and then incorporate that in meaningful activity that will lead to a successful learning process. Both the intentional and the phenomenographic approach agree that it is the meaning of a task that is important in the learning situation, but the differences lie in the ways of distinguishing what this meaning consists of as well as the means of finding out what the meaning is to an individual. / Begreppsutveckling är en av de viktigaste influenserna inom det pedagogiska forskningsområdet. Denna teoretiska inriktning innebär att man genom empirisk forskning studerar lärande och dess kontext. Detta kan sedan bidra till vår kunskap om vad som påverkar lärprocessen samt hur denna skulle kunna användas i utvecklingen av nya didaktiska metoder och verktyg. Begreppsutveckling kan förstås som teorier om hur en individ, genom övning och reflektion ändrar en grundläggande uppfattning om ett fenomen eller objekt från en specifik uppfattning till en annan. I den här litteraturstudien, kommer jag att försöka kartlägga två skilda sätt att anta utmaningen att undersöka hur lärande genom begreppsutveckling kan förstås och tolkas, nämligen fenomenografi och intentionell analys. Fenomenografi är utvecklat med en konstitutionell ansats till lärandet, där man menar att de koncept som individen använder formas genom interna representationer av den egna tolkningen av omgivningen samt hur det egna konceptet relaterar till omgivningen. Intentionell analys å andra sidan menar att begreppsutveckling uppstår när individen kontextualiserar uppgiften genom meningsskapande processer i relation till omgivningen och att detta beskriver lärprocessen. Den gemensamma nämnaren för båda dessa perspektiv är att det är meningsskapandet för individen som är nyckeln till lärandet. Skillnaden mellan dem märks i synen på lärandet i de meningsskapande processerna där man närmar sig betydelsen av denna process som den ter sig för den lärande individen.

Children of alcoholics (COAs) are those who grow up in a home where one or more parent is an alcoholic; once adulthood is achieved, they are referred to as adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs). Several risk factors have been identified as a potential result from exposure to an alcoholic environment; however there is a dearth of literature exploring resilience in this population. Descriptive Narrative Inquiry was used to explore the question, Describe the qualities, processes, or internal motivational factors which have facilitated resilience for adult children of alcoholic parents. Two ninety-minute life history interviews were conducted with four participants, including the researcher. The participants were female, middle class, university students who considered themselves to be adult children of alcoholics who are resilient. A composite narrative was used to depict the results of this study, combining the data from each participants life story. The narrative was written in the first-person through the character of Sophie, and the data included is the result of a narrative analysis from the transcripts of the participants data. The narrative depicts the developmental stages of the participants lives, including childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and the present. Their experiences of growing up in an alcoholic home were documented at each stage. A thematic analysis was conducted, extracting the common themes, meaning made, and personal characteristics that were generated within and across participants that contributed to their development of resilience. The results are discussed in four major themes: Being in Relation: Others Create a Difference; Belief Systems: Spirituality, Religion, and Values; The Self: An Evolving Being; and Alcoholism: Meaning in Itself. It is through the dialogue of the participants experiences of resilience that awareness creates opportunity for advocacy for children and adult children of alcoholics. The implications of this research in relation to the experiences of resilience are discussed for children and adult children of alcoholics, educators, and counsellors. Directions for future research are addressed.

Children of alcoholics (COAs) are those who grow up in a home where one or more parent is an alcoholic; once adulthood is achieved, they are referred to as adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs). Several risk factors have been identified as a potential result from exposure to an alcoholic environment; however there is a dearth of literature exploring resilience in this population. Descriptive Narrative Inquiry was used to explore the question, Describe the qualities, processes, or internal motivational factors which have facilitated resilience for adult children of alcoholic parents. Two ninety-minute life history interviews were conducted with four participants, including the researcher. The participants were female, middle class, university students who considered themselves to be adult children of alcoholics who are resilient. A composite narrative was used to depict the results of this study, combining the data from each participants life story. The narrative was written in the first-person through the character of Sophie, and the data included is the result of a narrative analysis from the transcripts of the participants data. The narrative depicts the developmental stages of the participants lives, including childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and the present. Their experiences of growing up in an alcoholic home were documented at each stage. A thematic analysis was conducted, extracting the common themes, meaning made, and personal characteristics that were generated within and across participants that contributed to their development of resilience. The results are discussed in four major themes: Being in Relation: Others Create a Difference; Belief Systems: Spirituality, Religion, and Values; The Self: An Evolving Being; and Alcoholism: Meaning in Itself. It is through the dialogue of the participants experiences of resilience that awareness creates opportunity for advocacy for children and adult children of alcoholics. The implications of this research in relation to the experiences of resilience are discussed for children and adult children of alcoholics, educators, and counsellors. Directions for future research are addressed.

This thesis focuses on young students’ experiences and meaning-making processes in school practices within environmental and sustainability education. Earlier research has shown this to be an area of complexity; besides a transdisciplinary perspective requiring relational thinking, it also involves conflicting interests as well as emotions and values. With a certain interest in emotions being part of learning as a meaning-making process, this thesis aims to investigate the character of experiencing, and the function of aesthetic experience in environmental and sustainability education. Through a mixed-methods approach a comprehensive questionnaire was used in the first study, and a more in-depth case study investigated the most important findings from the questionnaire even further in the second one by using multiple data. 209 students, age 10-12, from six different schools in Sweden answered the questionnaire. One class in grade six participated in the case study during four months, where both in- and out-of-door activities were studied. Both qualitative content analyses, and quantitative statistics were used to analyze the material from the two studies. Furthermore, John Dewey’s theoretical perspectives and neo-Aristotelian philosophers, mainly Martha Nussbaum, guided the interpretations of the empirical results. The main findings show that young students’ experiences in environmental and sustainability education are characterized by relational understandings both within and among ecologic, economic and social aspects, but also that perceived school activities of a value-laden and more cognitive kind correlated. The results further show that aesthetic experiences function as links in the transactional and continuous processes of meaning making. Furthermore, of importance for students’ meaning making and formation of values in environmental and sustainability were also prior experiences, encounters with outdoor environments and artifacts (both natural and digital), social interactions and felt independence. A holistic picture of understanding, emotions and values hence appear as an intertwined unity in students’ written responses, action and talk. A conclusion suggests that contributing to students’ possibilities of making meaning in environmental and sustainability issues requires openness to personal emotions and values as a starting point. Activities allowing for social interaction, independence, and relevant contextual encounters should also be considered in the pedagogical practice of environmental and sustainability education.

In what ways and under what circumstances can a movie be a resource for individuals and their thoughts about existential matters? This central research question has been investigated using a both quantitative and qualitative approach. First, a questionnaire was distributed amongst 179 Swedish students to provide a preliminary overview of film habits. The questionnaire was also used as a tool for selecting respondents to individual interviews. Second, thirteen interviews were conducted, with viewers choosing their favourite movie of all time. In the study socio-cognitive theory and a schema-based theoretical tool is adopted to analyze how different viewers make use of movies as cultural products in an interplay between culture and cognition in three contexts; a socio-historic process, a socio-cultural interaction with the world and inner psychological processes. Summarizing the interviews some existential matters dominated. Matters of immanent orientation were in the foreground. Transcendental questions received much less attention. Summarizing the schema-based theoretical question, assessing which cognitive schema structures the narratives were processed through, the study found an emphasis on a combination of two main cognitive structures, person schema and self schema. Detailed person schematic cognitive processes about fictitious characters on the screen and their role model behaviour were combined by the respondents with dynamic cross-references to detailed self schematic introspections about their own characteristics, related to existential matters at some very specific moments in their lives. The viewers in the study seem to be inspired by movies as a mediated cultural resource, promoting the development of a personal moral framework with references to values deeply fostered by a humanistic tradition. It is argued that these findings support theories discussing individualised meaning making, developing ‘self-expression values’ and ‘altruistic individualism’ in contemporary western society.

Violence by children and young people against their parents, often described as parent abuse, is a problem that has been less recognised and researched than other forms of family violence. The present study explored a distinct form of parent abuse - that being the causing of intentional loss of, or damage to, parental property, referred to as Domestic Property Violence (DPV). A questionnaire was designed to gather quantitative data on what gets damaged, how often, and by whom. Additionally, rich, qualitative information about how parents made meaning of their experiences and how they were affected by, and responded to, DPV was gathered using in-depth interviews with 14 participants, and later analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Although the questionnaire attracted just 30 responses, this information was used to inform the subsequent qualitative phase of the research. When combined, the quantitative and qualitative data demonstrated that DPV happens in some families, and when it does, it has the potential to cause significant financial, emotional, and relational harm. An ecological meaning - making theoretical framework emerged from the data and illuminated connections between social and cultural influences on personal theories of causation, impacts, and responses to DPV, including help seeking. The findings of the present study have important implications for supporting parents experiencing DPV and other forms of parent abuse. Help seeking was shown to not always be a positive experience, particularly when help was not available, the problem was viewed as trivial, or parents were made to feel they were wholly responsible for their children's misconduct. Conversely, parents benefited from services that offered an opportunity for private disclosure without critical judgement, practical advice, and support. One objective of the research was to increase awareness of the many and complex causes and impacts of parent abuse, and the wide range of families that may be affected, in order to promote better screening within health and social support services.

This thesis focuses on how reproductive health is made meaningful in the context of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kentucky. Using ethnographic field methods, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the paper explores how staff members negotiate definitions of reproductive health as employees of Planned Parenthood health center. The analysis addresses reproductive health discourse among the clinic staff and how reproductive health is used as a site of intervention. It also explores the sociocultural processes and interactions the staff members engage in at the national and local levels and the role these play in shaping the conceptualization of reproductive health and how it is deployed at the clinic level. This analysis illuminates the fluid nature of reproductive health meanings and the ways in which health care delivery is contextually and socially mediated.