Denna studie syftar till fördjupade kunskaper om hur gitarrlärare ser på vänsterhänthet i relation till instrumentets speltekniska svårigheter och hur de anser sig arbeta med vänsterhänta elever i sin undervisning. I uppsatsen ges en bakgrund om vad vänsterhänthet är, en historisk bakgrund om den klassiska gitarren och dess speltekniska svårigheter samt tidigare forskning om musikundervisning av vänsterhänta. Studien utgår från ett multimodalt designteoretiskt perspektiv och ett empiriskt material bestående av fyra kvalitativa intervjuer. Av studiens resultat framkommer att de deltagande lärarna inte ansåg sig anpassa sin undervisning efter elevernas vänsterhänthet, förutom vid starkare grader av vänsterhänthet då eleverna uppmanades att vända på gitarren. Valet av hur gitarren ska hållas beskrivs sällan överlåtas till den enskilda eleven, utan förefaller istället vanligen bestämmas av läraren. Lärarna menade också att alla elever behöver öva samma tekniker och att samma undervisning därför bör gälla för höger- såväl som vänsterhänta elever. Den högersträngade gitarren utgör norm i undervisningen, vilket lärarnas berättelser om hur de sällan rekommenderade elever att vända på gitarren visar. Utifrån detta resultat diskuteras sedan gitarrundervisning av vänsterhänta. Undervisningen beskrivs inte enbart vara en fråga om att anpassa ett instrument, då hela undervisningens design beskrivs spela roll för elevernas lärande med instrumentet. / The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper knowledge of how guitar teachers view left-handedness with regard to the technical difficulties of the instrument and how they work with left-handed students while teaching. This paper provides some background on what left-handedness is, some historical background on the classical guitar and the technical difficulties of playing it, and an overview of previous work on musical education and left-handed people. The study is based on a multimodal and design theoretical perspective, and an empirical material consisting of four qualitative interviews. The results show that the participating teachers did not, in their own view, adapt their teaching because of left-handed students. The exception was students with a strong degree of left-handedness, who were encouraged to turn the guitar around. However, how the guitar is held was not often described as something left up to the individual student, but rather as something decided by the teacher. The teachers also felt that all students need to practice the same techniques, and that the same instructions therefore should be used for both right-handed and left-handed students. Right-handed guitars are standard in teaching situations, and the fact that the teachers say that they rarely recommend that students turn the guitar around reflects that. The results of the study then form the basis for a discussion on teaching left-handed students. It is not just a question of adapting an instrument; the whole design of the lessons makes a difference when it comes to the student learning the instrument.

This study explores the responses of twelve fifth graders to Japanese pictorial texts - manga (Japanese comics), anime (Japanese animations), kamishibai (Japanese traditional visual storytelling), and picture books - and their connections to Japanese culture and people. This study took place Cañon Elementary School in Black Canyon City in Arizona. The guiding research questions for this study were: How do children respond to Japanese pictorial texts? and What understandings of Japanese culture are demonstrated in children's inquiries and responses to Japanese pictorial texts? The study drew on reader response theory, New Literacy Studies, and multimodality. Data collection included participant-observation, videotaped/audiotaped classroom discussions and interviews, participants' written and artistic artifacts, ethnographic fieldnotes, and reflection journals. Results revealed that children demonstrated four types of responses including (1) analytical, (2) personal, (3) intertexual, and (4) cultural. These findings illustrate that the children actively employed their popular culture knowledge to make intertextual connections as part of meaning making from the stories. They also showed four types of cultural responses including (1) ethnocentrism, (2) understanding and acceptance, (3) respect and appreciation and valuing, and (4) change. This study makes a unique contribution to reader response as it examines American children's cultural understandings and literary responses to Japanese pictorial texts (manga, anime, kamishibai, and picture books).

In recent years a paradigm shift has occurred in second language acquisition and applied linguistics, moving away from a monolingual approach toward a multilingual one that emphasizes the social, political, and historical contexts of languages in contact. Scholarly recognition of multilingualism has led to research studies focusing on multilingual practices such as code-switching in a range of contexts and genres, e.g., film, hip hop, advertising and social networking sites. These studies reflect a shift in research focus from spontaneous speech to scripted texts, and also from the communicative to the symbolic function of code-switching, as seen in studies of Mock Spanish (Hill, 1998) and linguistic fetishism (Kelly-Homes, 2005). The emphasis on the symbolic and ideational is reflected in an increased interest in multimodality and how language interacts with other semiotic codes (e.g., visual imagery, gesture, dress, body ornamentation, and soundtrack) to convey messages of identity and ideology. Recently, several scholars have called for an expanded framework that would incorporate systematic multimodal analysis in studies of multilingualism in popular culture texts (Androutsopoulos, 2012; Stamou, 2014). The present study responds to this call with a genre-based project incorporating a sociolinguistic and multimodal studies approach with critical discourse analysis and genre analysis, which focuses on a comparison of three different types of popular culture texts: 1) a bilingual English-Spanish film from the U.S. (From Prada to Nada), 2) multilingual music videos from Japan (by the artist Mona AKA Sad Girl), and 3) a bilingual television ad from the U.S. (by Taco Bell). The study adapts and extends O'Halloran et al.'s (2011) model of multimodal critical discourse analysis based on social semiotic theory (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2001) to examine how semiotic codes work together to either reinforce or challenge racial, linguistic, gender, and age-related stereotypes and dominant discourses. This model draws from Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia and intertextuality and Barthes' concept of myth to examine how language and other multimodal features at the micro-level interact with macro-level discourses to create multi-layered meanings. The dissertation also explores how creators of popular culture texts utilize intertextual references to convey meaning through multiple semiotic codes and how texts become re-contextualized as they circulate globally. Taking into account the multiplicity of readings by diverse audiences, which in part depend on viewers' familiarity with intertextual references, this study addresses issues of reception by analyzing re-mediatized discussions about the texts in online comments, reviews, and articles, in order to gain added insights into the variety of ways the texts are interpreted. The findings of this study show how multilingual, multimodal features in popular culture texts cross genre, linguistic, national, and ethnic boundaries by means of global (re)circulation and local (re)contextualization through the agency of re-mediatization, which is made possible because of internet technology. In the process of recirculation these features become "semiotic metaphors" (O'Halloran 1999, 2008), representing discourses of identity and ideology which are in turn re-interpreted, influencing the way language, visual images and auditory modes are used to create new meanings in different contexts. By showing how semiotic metaphors cross many different types of borders, this study helps to account for emerging local-global hybrid identities and linguistic hybridization and supports previous calls for a more localized perspective of transnationalism (Lam & Warriner, 2012). Finally, it substantiates the need to move beyond traditional monolingual and monomodal notions of language and culture toward a more multi-dimensional view that transcends traditional boundaries.

Τα τελευταία χρόνια η ραγδαία ανάπτυξη και διάδοση των τεχνολογιών της πληροφορίας και της επικοινωνίας και η συνακόλουθη συσσώρευση μεγάλου όγκου πληροφοριών δημιούργησαν ένα νέο επικοινωνιακό τοπίο. Στην καθημερινότητά του ο σύγχρονος άνθρωπος έρχεται σε επαφή με κείμενα που συνδυάζουν λέξεις, κίνηση, ήχο, κινούμενες ή στατικές εικόνες και σύμβολα, και με νέες μορφές τυπογραφίας και ψηφιακής τεχνολογίας (π.χ. εφημερίδες, εικονογραφημένα έντυπα, τηλεοπτικές και ραδιοφωνικές εκπομπές, σελίδες διαδικτύου κτλ.). Η νέα αυτή πραγματικότητα απαιτεί νέους τρόπους προσέγγισης του γραμματισμού και την ανάπτυξη νέων δεξιοτήτων απαραίτητων για την προσέγγιση και κατανόησή της. Η εξέλιξη αυτή δεν πρέπει να αγνοηθεί από το γλωσσικό μάθημα στο σχολείο, αν αυτό θέλει να ανταποκρίνεται στις πραγματικές επικοινωνιακές ανάγκες του σύγχρονου ατόμου. Σκοπός της παρούσας έρευνας είναι να εξετάσει σε ποιο βαθμό η πολυτροπικότητα γίνεται αντικείμενο διδασκαλίας στο εκπαιδευτικό λογισμικό για το γλωσσικό μάθημα στην υποχρεωτική εκπαίδευση. Ειδικότερα, γίνεται προσπάθεια να διαπιστωθεί κατά πόσο η επιλογή κειμένων, δραστηριοτήτων κατανόησης-επεξεργασίας και παραγωγής γραπτού λόγου εντάσσονται στην πολυτροπική λογική των πολυγραμματισμών. Σύμφωνα με τα αποτελέσματα, η επιλογή κειμένων και δραστηριοτήτων παραγωγής πολυτροπικού λόγου εντάσσονται ως ένα βαθμό μόνο στην πολυτροπική λογική των πολυγραμματισμών. Διαπιστώθηκε ότι δεν αξιοποιήθηκαν αρκετά οι δυνατότητες που παρέχει ένα τόσο σύγχρονο μέσο, όπως είναι ο ηλεκτρονικός υπολογιστής, ώστε οι μαθητές να αναπτύξουν δεξιότητες πολυτροπικής επικοινωνίας που θα τους διευκολύνουν στην αποκωδικοποίηση των επικοινωνιακών μηνυμάτων που εκπέμπονται καθημερινά. / The purpose of this research is to examine to what extent multimodality becomes a subject of teaching in educational software for language teaching, in compulsory education. In particular, an attempt is made to determine whether the selection of texts, activities of understanding- processing and writing are included in the multimodal logic of Multiliteracies.

Simultaneous optical imaging and MRI of a dorsal skin-fold window chamber mouse model is investigated as a novel methodology to study the tumor microenvironment. Simultaneous imaging with two modalities allows for cross-validation of results, integration of the capabilities of the two modalities in one study and mitigation of invasive factors, such as surgery and anesthesia, in an in-vivo experiment. To make this investigation possible, three optical imaging systems were developed that operated inside the MRI scanner. One of the developed systems was applied to estimate vascular kinetic parameters of tumors in a dorsal skin-fold window chamber mouse model with simultaneous optical and MRI imaging. The target of imaging was a molecular agent that was dual labeled with both optical and MRI contrast agents. The labeling of the molecular agent, characteristics of the developed optical systems, the methodologies of measuring vascular kinetic parameters using optical imaging and MRI data, and the obtained results are described and illustrated.

<p>The first part of the thesis focuses on the development of Bayesian modeling motivated by geophysics applications. In Chapter 2, we model the frequency of pyroclastic flows collected from the Soufriere Hills volcano. Multiple change points within the dataset reveal several limitations of existing methods in literature. We propose Bayesian hierarchical models (BBH) by introducing an extra level of hierarchy with hyper parameters, adding a penalty term to constrain close consecutive rates, and using a mixture prior distribution to more accurately match certain circumstances in reality. We end the chapter with a description of the prediction procedure, which is the biggest advantage of the BBH in comparison with other existing methods. In Chapter 3, we develop new statistical techniques to model and relate three complex processes and datasets: the process of extrusion of magma into the lava dome, the growth of the dome as measured by its height, and the rockfalls as an indication of the dome's instability. First, we study the dynamic Negative Binomial branching process and use it to model the rockfalls. Moreover, a generalized regression model is proposed to regress daily rockfall numbers on the extrusion rate and dome height. Furthermore, we solve an inverse problem from the regression model and predict extrusion rate based on rockfalls and dome height.</p><p>The other focus of the thesis is adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method. In Chapter 4, we improve upon the Wang-Landau (WL) algorithm. The WL algorithm is an adaptive sampling scheme that modifies the target distribution to enable the chain to visit low-density regions of the state space. However, the approach relies heavily on a partition of the state space that is left to the user to specify. As a result, the implementation and the use of the algorithm are time-consuming and less automatic. We propose an automatic, adaptive partitioning scheme which continually refines the initial partition as needed during sampling. We show that this overcomes the limitations of the input user-specified partition, making the algorithm significantly more automatic and user-friendly while also making the performance dramatically more reliable and robust. In Chapter 5, we consider the convergence and autocorrelation aspects of MCMC. We propose an Exploration/Exploitation (XX) approach to constructing adaptive MCMC algorithms, which combines adaptation schemes of distinct types. The exploration piece uses adaptation strategies aiming at exploring new regions of the target distribution and thus improving the rate of convergence to equilibrium. The exploitation piece involves an adaptation component which decreases autocorrelation for sampling among regions already discovered. We demonstrate that the combined XX algorithm significantly outperforms either original algorithm on difficult multimodal sampling problems.</p> / Dissertation

This bachelor thesis consists of an analysis of museum environment. In the research, case studies have been done at the, Stockholm based museums, Swedish museum of Natural history’s exhibition Natur i Sverige (Nature in Sweden) and the Nordiska museet’s (Nordic history) exhibition Modemakt (Power of fashion) and learning environment Lekstugan (playhouse). The purpose of the research was to study how cultural heritage is used and developed within the museum pedagogy aimed at children. The research is based on a multimodal approach with focus on learning resources. The research examines the museums focus on children and youngsters, what the goals for this focus looks like on respective museum and how the focus is visible in the actual museums. The investigation has shown that both of the museums have a clear focus towards children and young people and follows the guidelines from the Swedish government. This thesis shows the differences between both museums in their separate ways of focus on children and youngsters. The different possibilities on focus on children and young can provide inspiration for either other museums or the specific museums in the thesis when developing or expanding their focus further. Both museums way to communicate with children and young people considered to have good potential for learning. / Denna kandidatuppsats består av en analys av museala miljöer. I undersökningen har fallstudier gjorts på Naturhistoriska riksmuseets utställning Natur i Sverige samt Nordiska museets utställning Modemakt samt lärmiljö Lekstugan. Syftet med undersökningen har varit att studera hur kulturarv används och utvecklas inom museipedagogiken riktad mot barn. Undersökningen utgår ifrån ett multimodalt perspektiv med fokus på lärresurser.   Frågeställningarna hanterar museernas riktning mot barn och unga, hur målen för detta ser ut samt hur det ser ut i verkligheten. Undersökningen har visat att båda berörda museer har en tydlig riktning mot barn och unga samt gott och väl följer regeringens riktlinjer för statliga museer.   I uppsatsen tydliggörs Naturhistoriska riksmuseets och Nordiska museets olika sätt att angripa frågan ”riktning mot barn och unga”. Detta kan utgöra inspiration för andra museer eller för de berörda museerna att utveckla sin riktning ytterligare. Båda museernas vis att kommunicera mot barn och unga bedöms ha goda förutsättningar för lärande.

Studiens syfte var att, med utgångspunkt i ett designteoretiskt multimodalt perspektiv, beskriva, analysera och tolka hur tre förskolepedagoger designar lärandesammanhang, kring ämnet matematik. Förutom detta var också syftet att få insikt om hur lärandesammanhangets design kunde förstås och tolkas i termer av lärande och meningsskapande. Den metod jag valde var uppbyggd kring en icke-deltagande videoobservation med ett kvalitativt upplägg där målet var att försöka förstå det som ägde rum genom relevanta tolkningar. I resultat och slutsatser framkom det till exempel att förskolepedagogerna använder en mängd semiotiska resurser och teckensystem i form av fysiska redskap tillsammans med ansiktsuttryck, tal och handrörelser i kommunikationen med barnen. Dessutom framkom det att barnen också använde sig av ett antal olika semiotiska resurser och teckensystem i arbetet med att skapa mening kring de olika lärandesituationerna. Det blev också tydligt att barnens tidigare erfarenheter fick en betydande roll då barnen använde de tidigare erfarenheterna som ett tankeredskap i de meningsskapande processer, designade av förskolepedagogerna, de deltog i. / The study's purpose was, based on a design theoretical multimodal approach to describe, analyze and interpret how three preschool teachers design learning contexts, on the subject of mathematics. Besides, this was also the aim to gain insight on how context of learning designs could be understood and interpreted in terms of learning and meaning. The method I chose was built around a non-participating video observation with a qualitative approach where the goal was to try to understand what took place through the relevant interpretations. The results and conclusions that emerged was that the preschool teachers used a variety of semiotic resources in the form of physical tools along with facial expressions, voice and gestures in their communication with the children. Moreover, it appeared that the children also used a number of different semiotic resources in their work of creating meaning around the different learning situations, designed by the preschool educators, they participated in. It also became clear that the children's previous experiences had a significant role as they also used past experiences as a tool in the meaning-making process.

Studien undersöker hur matematiska begrepp etableras i diskursen i klassrummet och hur lärare planerar för, iscensätter och bearbetar matematiska begrepp. Studiens syfte är att studera hur lärare hanterar matematiska begrepp i undervisningen ur ett specialpedagogiskt perspektiv. Utifrån studiens ansats väljs två kvalitativa datainsamlingsmetoder. Till detta infogas Selander &amp; Kress (2010) formellt inramad lärsekvens och Hallidays (2004) tre metafunktioner och en ny metafunktion, den institutionell funktion (Boistrup- Björklund, 2010).   Studien visar att procedurkunskap har en stor plats i undervisningen. Lärarna hanterar begrepp i förbifarten och funderar inte på vilken roll de språkliga uttrycken har. Det pågår först och främst två diskurser, den matematiska och den vardagliga. Diskurserna etableras utifrån olika sociala och sociomatematiska normer som styr undervisningen. Traditioner och förväntningar påverkar undervisningen och den påverkan verkar vara starkare än forskningsrön eller nya styrdokument. / The study examines how mathematical concepts established in the discourse in the classroom and how teachers plan for, implements and processes mathematical concepts. The study's purpose is to study how teachers deal with mathematical concepts in teaching from a special education perspective. Based on the study's approach chosen two qualitative data collection methods. To this inserts Selander &amp; Kress´s (2010) formal learning design sequence and Halliday´s (2004), three meta-functions and an institutional function (Boistrup- Björklund, 2010).   The study shows that procedural knowledge has a big place in teaching.  Teachers deal with concepts in passing and not thinking about which part the linguistic expressions have. There are primarily two discourses ongoing, the mathematical and the everyday, the discourses are established based on various social and socio-mathematical norms that effects the teaching. Traditions and expectations affect the teaching and the effect seems to be stronger than research findings or new policy document.

The aim of this study is to present teacher and student views on, and usage of, digital learning tools in the Swedish upper secondary English language classroom, as well their views on a comparison between digital and traditional learning tools. Digital learning tools have seen an increase in both usage and development, something that began as early as the 1990’s, and has become a more common sight in Swedish upper secondary schools. Previous research conducted about digital learning tools and their application in both the general and the English language classroom is presented and used to both analyze and discuss empirical data; said data has been received through a qualitative methodology comprised of two focus group interviews with students and teachers. The empirical data is categorized according to each research question, with direct and translated quotes from the focus group interviews. The results of the study show that while digital learning tools viewed in a positive light and their usage is appreciated by some students, both groups primarily advocate variety in the English language classroom rather than relying exclusively on just one set of tools to create a learning environment that caters to all students rather than a select few.