Med blicken på barnet syftar till att synliggöra hur barn skapas som subjekt när deras beteenden förbryllar, oroar eller utmanar personal i förskolan och hur utrymme för, eller begränsningar av, barnens möjligheter till att vara, kunna eller göra olika därmed framträder. Vidare belyser studien hur hanterings- och styrningsförslag av barnen och deras beteenden formuleras i specialpedagogiska sammanhang inom förskolan som diskursiv praktik. Huvudsaklig grund för studien är situationer där avdelningspersonal och specialpedagog möts för samtal samt texter som producerats i samband med dylika samtal. Studien vilar på en poststrukturalistisk teoribildning och har genomförts med ett diskursanalytiskt angreppssätt. Studien har genomförts utifrån antagandet om att språket medverkar till hur människor konstituerar, socialt konstruerar och förändrar sin verklighet. Även om det finns rörlighet och förändringskraft i språket kan, genom att ett specifikt sätt att tänka och tala inom en kontext reproduceras och fixeras, viss kunskap och vissa föreställningar bli dominerande och till slut tas så för givna att de inte längre ifrågasätts. Studien erbjuder en alternativ bild som kan öppna upp för reflektion och andra sätt att tänka och tala än de som har blivit och utmärkt sig som naturliga och dominerande i specialpedagogiska sammanhang inom förskolan.

The present thesis explores how masculinity is constructed and negotiated in relation to race, class and sexuality in hip hop in Sweden. Theoretically, the study contributes to the increasing use of contemporary feminist theory in men and masculinity research. In so doing, it brings into dialogue poststructuralist feminism, feminist phenomenology, intersectionality and queer theory. These theoretical perspectives are put to use in a discourse analysis of rap lyrics by 38 rap artists in Sweden from the period 1991-2011. The thesis is based on the following four articles: Sticky masculinity: Post-structuralism, phenomenology and subjectivity in critical studies on men explores how poststructuralist feminism and feminist phenomenology can advance the understanding of subjectivity within men and masculinity research. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, and offering re-readings of John Stoltenberg and Victor Seidler, the article develops the notion of “sticky masculinity”. Degrees of intersectionality: Male rap artists in Sweden negotiating class, race and gender analyzes how class, race, gender, and to some extent sexuality, intersect in rap lyrics by male artists. It shows how critiques of class and race inequalities in these lyrics intersect with normative notions of gender and sexuality. Drawing on this empirical analysis, the article suggests that the notion of “degrees of intersectionality” can be helpful in thinking about masculinity from an intersectional perspective. ‘No homo’: Straight inoculations and the queering of masculinity in Swedish hip hop explores the boundary work performed by male artists regarding sexuality categories. In particular, it analyzes how heterosexuality is sustained, given the affection expressed among male peers. To this end, the article develops the notion of “straight inoculations” to account for the rhetorical means by which heterosexual identities are sustained in a contested terrain. Hip hop feminism in Sweden: Intersectionality, feminist critique and female masculinity investigates lyrics by female artists in the male-dominated hip hop genre. The analysis shows how critique of gender inequality is a central theme in these lyrics, ranging from the hip hop scene to politics and men’s violence against women. The article also analyzes how female rappers both critique and perform masculinity.

In this thesis I address the following questions: (1) How do dykes take up space in public in contemporary cities? (2) How does the ‘marching dyke’ emerge as a subject and what kind of subject is it? (3) How, in turn, do marching dykes affect space? In order to examine these questions I focus on the Toronto Dyke March to ask how it emerged in this particular time and place. The answer to each of these questions is paradoxical. I argue that the Dyke March is a complex, complicated and contradictory site of politics, protest and identity. Investigating ‘marching dykes’ reveals how the subject of the Dyke March is imagined in multiple and conflicting ways. The Toronto Dyke March is an event which brings together thousands of queer women annually who march together in the streets of Toronto on the Saturday afternoon of Pride weekend. My research examines how the March emerged out of a history of activism and organizing and considers how the March has been made meaningful for queer women’s communities, identities, histories and spaces. My analysis draws together queer and feminist poststructuralism, cultural geography literature on sexuality and space, and the history of sexuality in Canada. I combine a Foucaultian genealogy with visual ethnography, interviews and archival research. I argue that the Dyke March is an event which is intentionally meaningful in its claims to particular spaces and subjectivities. This research draws connections across various bodies of scholarship and offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, contributing to discussions of queer women’s visibility and representation. Although my analysis is focused on Toronto as a particular site, it offers insight into broader queer women’s activist organizing efforts and queer activism in Canada.

In this thesis I address the following questions: (1) How do dykes take up space in public in contemporary cities? (2) How does the ‘marching dyke’ emerge as a subject and what kind of subject is it? (3) How, in turn, do marching dykes affect space? In order to examine these questions I focus on the Toronto Dyke March to ask how it emerged in this particular time and place. The answer to each of these questions is paradoxical. I argue that the Dyke March is a complex, complicated and contradictory site of politics, protest and identity. Investigating ‘marching dykes’ reveals how the subject of the Dyke March is imagined in multiple and conflicting ways. The Toronto Dyke March is an event which brings together thousands of queer women annually who march together in the streets of Toronto on the Saturday afternoon of Pride weekend. My research examines how the March emerged out of a history of activism and organizing and considers how the March has been made meaningful for queer women’s communities, identities, histories and spaces. My analysis draws together queer and feminist poststructuralism, cultural geography literature on sexuality and space, and the history of sexuality in Canada. I combine a Foucaultian genealogy with visual ethnography, interviews and archival research. I argue that the Dyke March is an event which is intentionally meaningful in its claims to particular spaces and subjectivities. This research draws connections across various bodies of scholarship and offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, contributing to discussions of queer women’s visibility and representation. Although my analysis is focused on Toronto as a particular site, it offers insight into broader queer women’s activist organizing efforts and queer activism in Canada.

The research in this dissertation develops a multiperspective theoretical framework, which I describe as queer criticality, to guide the examination of discursive practices, educational policies, and public discourses that undergird heteronormativity and disproportionately impact the personal safety and professional wellbeing of sexual minority and gender variant (SMGV) teachers and students in Canadian K-12 schools. Queer criticality, as a theoretical construct, seeks to bring together and investigate aspects of critical theory, critical pedagogy, poststructuralism, and queer theory. My aim is not to attempt to reconcile these competing theories to produce a grand narrative or proscriptive way of theorizing; rather, I investigate the productive tensions that a notion of queer criticality can prompt for self-reflexive researchers when these theoretical perspectives are placed in dynamic relationship with one another. Accordingly, this collection of interwoven essays examine critically how research has positioned SMGV youth as both victims and, more recently, resilient survivors who experience a daily onslaught of homophobic, transphobic, and heterosexist violence in their schools, classrooms, and communities; it also explores interpretative frameworks and mobilization strategies used to politicize or privatize SMGV identities and concerns through educational policy and practice; and it utilizes empirical research to interrogate the lived effects of these heteronormative discourses and discursive practices on sexual minority teachers working for inclusive educational and social change; and transsexual teachers searching for a valued space and place for recognition of their personal and professional identities in their public schools. Ultimately, through these connected essays, this poststructural assemblage seeks to open up spaces for difference to be exposed and interrogated within K-12 public schools. It also works to help provide discursive materiality to sexual minority and gender variant identities by demonstrating how heteronormalizing discourses impact and shape the lived experiences of all teachers and students in Canadian schools. Ultimately, this research asks whose lives are deemed intelligible and, thus, liveable in our public schools. / Theoretical, Cultural, and International Studies in Education

This thesis examines an instance of the failure of a parent-led bid for a new local school in Queensland at the end of the last millennium. This parent-led and school-endorsed initiative failed despite a policy climate that appeared actively to encourage such initiatives from government funded school communities. The work shows that the parents of Sunnyvale College, (a pseudonym), were both encouraged by the policy environment and discouraged by the response given to their new schooling initiative, from being full educational partners in the process of the schooling of their children. The unanticipated failure is investigated as a case study of parent engagement set against a background of relationships between government and particular educational stakeholders in that time and place. It examines how these relationships are played out in this context and what the implications of this are for contemporary relationships of this type. Because the approach to the case study is not based on any assumption that the " failure" was the outcome of a pernicious state, the investigation acknowledges the discontinuous nature of such educational relationships and thus, refuses notions of linearity and continuity. The case study approach draws on poststructuralist scholarship, in particular the work of Michel Foucault (1979-84), who is the key theorist informing the investigation. Foucault's theories relating to truth, power and governmentality, are of particular interest and are used as a basis for argument and analysis. The case study is conducted in three key parts. First, the study brings together an overarching framework of interpretive and theoretical bricolage, which works to allow multiple theoretical perspectives and understandings to inform the process of investigation. Second, there is an acknowledgement of the importance of history and also, of historical contingency, in the production of events such as this failure. Thus, there is an historical account of the establishment of schools in Queensland, particularly in the 1990s, and an exploration of the differences in the establishment process across this decade. This exploration is undertaken by working backwards through relevant archival documents and other data in order to highlight the discontinuous nature of such processes. This means that parent/school relationships are historicised, using a macro and micro analysis to understand how such relationships have been produced over time. The case in question is situated within this historicising, allowing for an exploration of its nature and setting, its historical background, the roles of particular individuals, and the processes and procedures that were important in the development of the case. The third part of the study involves re-theorising parent/school relationships in contemporary contexts. The main argument of the case study is that there was a shift in the discursive constitution of schooling that was taking place at the very time that the initiative was undertaken in 1997. It is argued that the school community in question was working out of a set of assumptions about school partnerships, which had already been substantially reinscribed by a new discursive system. This new system reframed " choice" and " community" in terms of the " performative" rather than the " democratic" school. The main arguments and findings in the case study are then used to re-theorise parent/school relationships in post-millennial Queensland, particularly in relation to policy reform. This re-theorising is conducted in the form of a discourse analysis of current federal and state government policy and other types of data, which are relevant to schooling in contemporary contexts. Various interpretive and theoretical perspectives are used in this process of re-theorising, including notions of performativity (Ball, 2003a, 2003b, 2004), responsibilisation (Rose, 1990, 1999, 2000) and pedagogicalisation (Popkewitz, 2003). Such notions are employed to build on the lines of inquiry that develop as a consequence of the use of Foucauldian theory in the earlier part of the study. These concepts are also used to develop new epistemological understanding of parent/school relationships in contemporary contexts. The work of Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 2001) further assists in the conceptualisation of parent engagement in schooling as a game played on the field of schooling. As a consequence of this re-theorising, it is argued that parent engagement in schooling is a focus of increased attention on the part of educational stakeholders and is increasingly demanded by way of increased levels of responsibilised participation. This trend raises questions about the levels of fatigue and anxiety that could result for parents as a consequence of such demanding levels of performance. Additionally, an argument is presented that " performative" parenting is a prescribed set of activities, not an open invitation to leadership and high-level decision-making. Thus, as previously mentioned, choice is always already framed, as " proper" parents make " informed" choices with regard to their children's schooling. This thesis concludes that " performative" schools offer new and problematic subject positions for " performative" parents, which are inviting more engagement but constraining the type of partnership that is possible between parents and schools.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a popular curricular approach in medical education. This thesis asks the question: How does PBL teach medical students about what matters in medicine using qualitative methods. The research demonstrates that PBL contributes to the on-going marginalisation of social issues in medical education.

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"2004". / Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media & Philosophy, Department of Critical and Cultural Studies, 2005. / Bibliography: p. 315-327. / Introduction -- Aporias and openings in the architecture of the mind's eye: deconstructing pure visuality in Descartes -- Visuality, universal flesh and phenomenal circularity: visio-corporeal generality with Merleau-Ponty -- Corporeal envisionings as power-knowledge: Foucault and diffuse visio-governmentality -- The grammatology of visuality: visio-corporealising Derrida's "science" of the trace -- Conclusion. / The conception of visuality within what Jacques Derrida understands as the 'metaphysical epoch' demands revision in order to produce a fully post-metaphysical theory of visuality. Drawing upon the corporeal phenomenology of perception in Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the politico-cultural conception of visuality in Michel Foucault and the trace philosophy of vision in Jacques Derrida, visualities are theorised here as dynamic 'corporeal tracings' immanently bearing politico-cultural forces. Elements of these three major thinkers are here brought into generative dialogue and welding which, for instance, relocates the corporealism of Merleau-Ponty in terms of the trace dynamics conceived by Derrida and which in turn insists upon the visio-corporeality of general writing that Derrida largely elides. A rereading of Rene Descartes on vision is advanced in the light of this theory that deploys Derrida's deconstructive method to detect the aporias and self-deconstructions within a characteristic metaphysical discourse of pure visuality that overtly elides both corporeality and the trace (understood in the theory of corporeal tracings as inseparable). -- Merleau-Ponty is critiqued from a post-dualist position on the role of the mind and the body in the experience of visuality, Foucault's ideas on bodies, visualities and diffuse powers are developed through the notion of'visio-govemmentality' and Derrida's conceptions of grammatology and the trace are redefined in terms of an emphasis on visiocorporeality. New terms and concepts emerge from these engagements that extend and elaborate visuality theory in terms of fully post-metaphysical domains of understanding. There is a commitment throughout to three theoretical positions: corporealism, culturalism and holism or what is termed here 'total contextualism'. These positions enable the fully post-metaphysical theorisation of visualities as dynamic and complex corporeal tracings encompassing both human bodies and total visio-corporeal contexts. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / 327 p