<p>In all times school has defined and categorized pupils from a hypothetical normality. The National Agency for Education is today critical to how the municipalities provide for the necessity of special support for pupils with difficulties in school.</p><p>Pupil`s assistants has been a growing profession in school during the last decade and their importance for the pupils is relatively unexplored. The aim of this study is to find out how the pupils think about having pupil`s assistant during the obligatory school on the basis of the ideas of power, knowledge, involvment and understanding. The study is based on qualitative interviews, consisting of half-structured questions, with eight pupils that have or have had pupil`s assistant during their time in senior compulsory school. The result notifies that the pupils feel powerless in school, they have no opportunity to affect and they do not think they are someone that could make any change. With the pupil`s assistant the pupils get an opportunity to affect and a feeling of recognition. The pupil thinks that the pupil`s assistant is a translator of the teachers instructions and someone who builds a bridge between teacher and pupil. There is a fear within the pupils to be different, to not belong. When the pupil`s assistance is given in the classroom the pupil think they belong more to the class than if the assistance is given outside the classroom. With assistance outside the classroom the pupil sees the pupil`s assistant more as a teacher.</p>

In all times school has defined and categorized pupils from a hypothetical normality. The National Agency for Education is today critical to how the municipalities provide for the necessity of special support for pupils with difficulties in school. Pupil`s assistants has been a growing profession in school during the last decade and their importance for the pupils is relatively unexplored. The aim of this study is to find out how the pupils think about having pupil`s assistant during the obligatory school on the basis of the ideas of power, knowledge, involvment and understanding. The study is based on qualitative interviews, consisting of half-structured questions, with eight pupils that have or have had pupil`s assistant during their time in senior compulsory school. The result notifies that the pupils feel powerless in school, they have no opportunity to affect and they do not think they are someone that could make any change. With the pupil`s assistant the pupils get an opportunity to affect and a feeling of recognition. The pupil thinks that the pupil`s assistant is a translator of the teachers instructions and someone who builds a bridge between teacher and pupil. There is a fear within the pupils to be different, to not belong. When the pupil`s assistance is given in the classroom the pupil think they belong more to the class than if the assistance is given outside the classroom. With assistance outside the classroom the pupil sees the pupil`s assistant more as a teacher.

What is home, and why are we drawn to spaces which elicit this feeling within us? Why is it that we are immediately able to achieve a type of rapport with some spaces, while others remain indifferent to us? What is it about home that makes it such a special place? These are questions that would give pause to many designers. We spend so much time learning about the history of architecture, the science of buildings, and the economics of development, but how many of us can say with certainty that they can make a space in which an individual will feel at home? Can we tell our clients, in no uncertain terms, that we know how to make their lives better through design? The thesis seeks to establish the importance of the concept of home to our development as individuals and our ongoing psychological and physical well being, as well as demonstrate the connection between what recent psychological study has found to make us feel comfortable or “at home”, and factors over which architects hold sway. While previously thought of as ethereal, the feeling and space of home are too important to continue to allow their creation be left to chance. Research, both empirical and otherwise has granted us knowledge of how individuals communicate with spaces, and we are thus able to create spaces which will be more in tune with our entire being. It is our responsibility to use this knowledge to the benefit of our clients and the credibility of our profession.

What is home, and why are we drawn to spaces which elicit this feeling within us? Why is it that we are immediately able to achieve a type of rapport with some spaces, while others remain indifferent to us? What is it about home that makes it such a special place? These are questions that would give pause to many designers. We spend so much time learning about the history of architecture, the science of buildings, and the economics of development, but how many of us can say with certainty that they can make a space in which an individual will feel at home? Can we tell our clients, in no uncertain terms, that we know how to make their lives better through design? The thesis seeks to establish the importance of the concept of home to our development as individuals and our ongoing psychological and physical well being, as well as demonstrate the connection between what recent psychological study has found to make us feel comfortable or “at home”, and factors over which architects hold sway. While previously thought of as ethereal, the feeling and space of home are too important to continue to allow their creation be left to chance. Research, both empirical and otherwise has granted us knowledge of how individuals communicate with spaces, and we are thus able to create spaces which will be more in tune with our entire being. It is our responsibility to use this knowledge to the benefit of our clients and the credibility of our profession.

Feeling connected to one’s community has been associated with increased self-rated health and well-being. Connectivity has also been linked to health behaviours such as smoking and obesity, which have been related to overall health status. Physical activity is related to overall health status as it protects against many chronic diseases. Unfortunately, less than 50% of Canadian adults are meeting the physical activity requirements set out by Canada’s Physical Activity Guide to Healthy Living. Thus, this study determines whether sense of connectedness is associated with current participation in leisure-time physical activity and intention to start or increase engagement in physical activity. Cross-sectional data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) cycle 3.1 was used to analyze the association between sense of community belonging and physical activity among Canadians aged 25 to 64. A series of logistic regression models were used to analyze the data. People reporting a stronger sense of connectedness had greater odds of being physically active with income, education and sex often moderating the relationship. It appeared that the relative odds of being physically active were greatest among people who felt very strongly connected to their communities and in the highest socioeconomic groups. Further, feeling more that very weakly connected to the community increased the odds of intending to start or increase physical activity among inactive females and decreased the odds of intending to increase physical activity among moderately active males. This study provides preliminary results regarding how important social factors may alter population level physical activity. The results from this study inform our understanding of barriers and facilitators associated with physical activity and how policies and conditions which affect community connectedness may be used to enhance physical activity.

The study seeks to investigate and understand how individuals create their identity from the perspective of two countries and cultures, and how these affect their current lives today. The focus of the study is aimed at young adults who have mostly or entirely grown up in Sweden to parents that have migrated. The material is based on seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews. The result is then divided into three themes; ethnic and cultural belonging, life impact, and the preservation and passing on of culture. The derivation of the first theme is that there are mixed views regarding the cultural association of the persons interviewed. Some present a clear vision of their cultural belonging and identities as Swedes, while others give a more ambiguous depiction as they find themselves in between two cultures and are experiencing a certain ambivalence regarding their cultural belonging. The second theme describes the pros and cons of living alongside two cultures as well as the importance of language. One of the main advantages that emerge is that the respondents perceive themselves as having a broader perspective and a deeper understanding of other cultures and ethnicities. Negative aspects that individuals have experienced are discrimination and parental influence. This theme also addresses the importance of language regarding the cultural belonging of the individual. The respondents agree that the language is of importance for the feeling of belonging, and that it is natural to feel more connected to those who speak the same language. The third and last theme describes how the individuals retain their original culture in their everyday lives, and it furthermore deals with ideas regarding the future as well as the passing on of culture.

Because bilingual programs provide a secure environment likely to promote school belonging, it was hypothesized that Hispanic students in a bilingual program would experience higher belonging than those in regular education and that they would experience a steeper drop in belonging at the transition to middle school. Participants were 277 Hispanic and White elementary and middle school students who were followed longitudinally from grade 4 to 6. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to compare the mean levels of school belonging across groups and measure the change in school belonging at the transition. Results suggested that Hispanic students both in bilingual and in regular education had higher belonging than White students and that groups did not differ in their change in belonging at the transition to middle school.

To feel at home and to find your place identity in a completely different setting than you are used too requires a whole new type of coping with changes. In order to cope, there are different aspects that can help you. Either it be your personality, the physical surroundings or the people that you have by your side. This thesis has had the aim of examining how and why refugees feel at home in the city of Umeå, Sweden. What has been clear is that the interviewed refugees do feel at home in Umeå, this mostly because of social activities with friends and family, not as much because of the physical attributes Umeå has as a city. Place identity, seen from different theoretical perspectives, has been clear in that identity is mostly created in harmony with a place and what the place has to offer socially and not always due to the physical attraction of the place, which has been visible in discussion with the refugees in the study. Instead, place identity for the interviewed individuals has been created through the conceptions, interpretations, ideas and related feelings the individuals have to Umeå.

This ethnographic work is about the aesthetic, habitual, and sentimental registers of some Bosnian Muslims’ (Bosniaks) daily lives in post-war Sarajevo. It addresses the ages-old themes of Bosnians’ multiple belongings and the question of political subjectivity through lived experience with a particular focus on the contemporary urgency to generate Bosniak national and religious subjectivity. It attends to the affective surplus of mundane scenes that convey the disconcerting drama of conversion to Islam, the nervous accumulation of new Islamic sensibilities, the vibrant ethos of Yugoslavism, the politically vulnerable but habitually engrained identity of Bosniannes, shared memories of the recent war, and the sustenance of the material and sentimental textures of domestic and communal life. Attending to the eventful character of the daily life enables the work to detail and test the existing frames of understanding Bosniaks (such as Nationalization and Islamization) and to further explore the potentialities of lived experience that escape existing regimes of representation. / text

A very well-known concept indicates that the Kakataibo Indigenous Peoples are composed of seven communities, and the Camano who is the group of people that retain full control of their relationships with the outside world. In academia, the Camano and Indigenous Peoples who live in a similar situation to the Camano are labeled “Isolated Indigenous Peoples” or “Uncontacted Tribes,” among other names. The goal of this research is to challenge classical anthropology’s conception of the Kakataibo as a single unit, in order to bring another line of the existence of the Camano peoples. Based on my research, my argument is twofold. First, I argue that the conception that states the Kakataibo are a single unit did not exist among the Kakataibo in the past, and in the present moment this sense of belonging is not clear either. Second, I argue that the Camano that supposedly belong to the Kakataibo is a different group from the Kakataibo, based on the oral histories of Sinchi Roca’s past. The Sinchi Roca community is one of the seven current Kakataibo communities, that have “contact” with the outside. In other words, I argue that if the Kakataibo is composed of the seven communities plus the Camano, this and one of seven communities –the Sinchi Roca- rejects belong to the same group as the Camano means that the Kakataibo has a different composition from the coined by classical anthropologists. My argument is supported by a historical analysis of the following three aspects of the Kakataibo: language, territory, and their response to their encounters with the “white man.” The approach to these three issues allowed me to explore the complexity of the relationship between the Sinchi Roca Kakataibo community and its “isolated” counterpart. Despite the fact that this investigation does not indicate who the Camano are, it does reveal some aspects of the relationship that exists between the Kakataibo and the Camano. In effect, because we cannot meet with the Camano, I analyze the oral history of Copai, a Camano man captured by missionaries in the 1950’s – 1960’s. His accounts reveal aspects about the Camano. Copai was held in the Sinchi Roca community, and lived there until his death. In short, through this investigation I offer an alternative to understanding the Kakataibo and their relationship to the Camano. / text