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Parental involvement in children’s education has been a topic for discussion among educators and researchers for decades worldwide. Studies have shown the positive relationships between parental involvement and children’s education outcome. Yet, there is a gap between what is found in theory and what is practiced in schools. This project investigates the role that teachers can play in the integration and involvement of parents with culturally, linguistically and economically diverse families in the education of their children with a particular focus on immigrant parents. Furthermore, it highlights challenges faced by both teachers and parents regarding parents’ involvement in their children’s education. This research focuses upon a local school in Malmö. It is a qualitative study which explores parental involvement from the teachers’ perspective through semi-structured interviews with three teachers who work in an elementary school in Malmö city. The findings of this project highlighted the complexity within the relationships between parents and their children’s education, both at home, and as well as in connection with school. It has been found that the teachers understand the position of the parents through a deficit theory, which is to place the blame for children’s failure in school on their homes and families. Reasons for this includes parents’ attitudes and approaches to school, parents’ expectations that the school should deal with issues regarding students’ learning, differences in school systems between Sweden and the parents’ home country.

Environmental management has increasingly become a participatory process. In recent times, emphasis has been placed on watershed-based solutions to remediate the problems of diffuse source pollution and to engage stakeholders in designing solutions. Water quality models are an integral part of this process; such models are often inaccessible to lay stakeholders. A review of the literature suggests that properly applied partnerships have several benefits that go beyond decision-making. Stakeholder education and enhancements to the eventual outcome from stakeholder insight and support are two such benefits. To aid engineers and scientists, who often do not interact directly with other stakeholders, several best practices were identified that may be applied to develop, manage, and evaluate stakeholder partnerships. Environmental Decision Support Systems (EDSSs) have been shown to be an effective way to promote stakeholder partnerships in environmental decision-making. Many current EDSSs were designed to be used by experts, thus limiting their effectiveness for stakeholder engagement. Often, these EDSSs, if designed for lay stakeholders, were not coupled with water quality models. To demonstrate that complex water quality models may be made accessible to stakeholders, without any significant changes to the modeling scheme, a web-based EDSS was developed for the Occoquan Reservoir, located in northern Virginia, U.S.A., and its tributary watershed. The developed EDSS may also be readily extended to other watersheds and their modeling programs. The current implementation of the EDSS enables users to modify land use and analyze simulated changes to water quality due to these modifications. A local-network server cluster, based on the Locally Distributed Simultaneous Model Execution (LDSME) framework, was also developed and served as a backend to the EDSS. The server cluster can support simultaneous execution of multiple water quality models or any other software on disparate computers. This system was employed to study pre-development and other land use modification scenarios in the Occoquan Watershed. The pre-development scenario offers an easy-to-understand and universally-applicable baseline for measuring waterbody and watershed restoration progress. It enabled computation of a measure called the "developed-excess," which is independent of local conditions and may be used for comparisons among various watershed sub-divisions or between watersheds. / Ph. D.

In recent decades, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), both national and international, have employed various approaches to improve socio-economic conditions in Africa. Influenced by neo-liberalism, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are now widely used to deliver social programs and services integral to those efforts. This study examines a sample of such collaborations addressing HIV/AIDS and malaria in Togo's Maritime Region. The analysis focuses on relationship dynamics—governance structure, communication, trust levels, and decision making—to gauge partnership effectiveness in delivering health services, as perceived by selected government and NGO representatives. I interviewed leaders from government agencies and NGOs, national and international—all experienced in such collaborations. They described partnership dynamics, issues impeding partnership success and how those concerns might be addressed. This is the first investigation of public-private health-related partnerships in any Togolese region. The analysis contributes empirically to the broader literature concerning the employment by developing nations of cross-sector collaboration for health service delivery. In Togo, national and international NGOs must be granted legal identity, formal governmental acknowledgement under a national regulatory statute, in a process fraught with obstacles. The study concludes that the Togolese government should systematically develop a framework for guiding its partnerships with NGOs, including ways to build mutual trust among those participating in them. Such action would foster mutual engagement in policy decisions, while also honoring the government's rightful stance as final arbiter. Neither of these steps can occur without more open, effective communication among all involved. The study offers recommendations for helping all parties address reported concerns about communication and trust. In characterizing the dynamics of these partnerships, the study enriches our understanding of the challenges confronting the government, NGOs and civil society in Togo. / Ph. D.

The Eastern Partnership was founded in 2009 with three main areas of focus: one being security. The research questions: ‘What effect has the changing security situation had on the usage of the term security by the EU/joint statements by the Eastern Partnership on selected non-security terms from 2009 to 2021?’ and ‘How have the security terms been affected?’Using content analysis, sampling was kept to official statements concerning the partnership as a whole and do not include material from sub-co-operations, such as the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly. The coding, with a focus on ‘security’, includes several expressions that include security, such as; ‘energy security’; ‘human security’; ‘cyber security’; as well as ‘resolution of conflicts’ and ‘peaceful settlement’; while the codes included in the primary analysis are; ‘economic integration’; ‘stability’; ‘strategic’; ‘prosperity’ and ‘common values’. The theory of securitization was utilized due to its foundation in constructivism and the theory aims to explain how securitizing actors use speech acts to bring attention to issues. Findings show that ‘security’ has been used more in later years, while ‘stability’ is used frequently across all years with data. The selected non-security-related terms are used more overall than the selected security-related ones; a reason for this is that ‘economic integration’ is the core of the EU and one of the founding principles of the Eastern Partnership. Furthermore, one explanation why the non-security-related terms are used more could be that the Eastern Partnership and the EU do not always know where to put the focus, and as a weakness does not recognize the urgency of certain issues, and too little is done too late.

Objectives: We investigated pediatric rare disease researchers’ experiences and perspectives with research collaborations involving industry partners. Methods: This mixed methods study included a cross-sectional survey of academic/hospital-based Canadian pediatric rare disease researchers which informed semi-structured interviews with a subsample of survey participants. We analyzed survey data descriptively and interview data thematically, integrating findings narratively. Results: Of 126 survey respondents, 59 (47%) reported research collaborations with industry; we interviewed 10 of these researchers. Important benefits to collaborations with industry reported by survey participants and interviewees included access to funding and resources, while disadvantages stemmed from perceptions that partners had different motivations. Interviewees provided advice for future researchers including careful selection of an industry partner, relationship building, clear expectations, and utilizing supportive institutional structures. Conclusion: Our findings provide insights into the experiences of pediatric rare disease researchers and offer suggestions on how to conduct successful collaborative research with industry.

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