The overall purpose of this thesis was to contribute to the understanding of teachers’ endeavours to their own professionalization in connection with developmental work at school. The main purpose was to analyse how well these endeavours could be interpreted and understood in terms of the action-altematives of closure and alliance. This thesis comprises empirical investigations of three developmental activities involving various categories of teachers. The first study concerned nursing instructors in the upper secondary school and the college of higher learning in an experimental activity dealing with nursing practice, the second study concerned a pre-school teacher, a recreation instructor and junior level teachers in an experiment with school start for six-year-olds, and the third study concerned immigrant language teachers of Finnish in a developmental acivity, whose purpose was to improve the quality of bilingual teaching. A qualitative approach was chosen with interviews as the principal method for the collection of data for the descriptions of teachers’ endeavours to professionalize in practice. These descriptions were later analysed and interpreted in the light of concepts adopted from the neo-Weberian perspective in combination with the more liberal attitudes characteristic of the perspective of ”the Third Path”. Inclusion, dual closure, and demarcation, and, in addition the opening alternative of vertical alliance were the activity options included in the analysis. The results showed that teachers’ endeavours to professionalize occur through interwoven efforts aiming at competence and position, seeing position and improvement of position as decisive for the possibilities of the development of competence. Furthermore the results showed that teachers put into practice closure as well as alliance with a purpose to maintain or improve their own position. The conditions of the individual case decided the choice of action-alternative and the result of the endeavours. With a single exception, where the teachers chose an alliance which was primarily horizontally directed, the teachers’ endeavours to professionalize were inconsiderable. The differences noticeable in teachers’ endeavours to professionalize have been discussed in the light of their different conditions as to their positional starting point, the present impendent scenario, the existence of real activity options and how well the chosen strategy was manifest in official documentary guidelines. Furthermore the various conditions for the initiation of the developmental activities have been discussed and also to what extent the intentions behind the change-over to the goal-related and decentralized educational system has won legitimacy on various levels of the educational system. / digitalisering@umu

This study is based on doctors' experiences of the changing conditions in the workplace from a profession to the ongoing deprofessionalisation. Former studies suggests that medical professionals have undergone deprofessionalisation in the form of social changes. Our purpose with this paper is to find out the doctors’ experiences of the changing conditions. The empirical data consists of ten interviews with ten different doctors regarding their worklife experience from the medical profession.    The result indicate patterns of deprofessionalisation based on three social changes: 1. Knowledge society – the relationship between the doctor and the patient has changed because of the patient’s rights and the information society, which has led to the weakening of the doctors' exclusivity of the knowledge base. 2. New Public Management – new reforms in the form of bureaucracy and market management has entered the profession, and it has led to the weakening of the profession’s autonomy. 3. The attributes of the medical profession – the doctor’s coat has been a clear status symbol and distinction between doctors and outsiders, and the removal of the doctor’s coat has led to the reduced status of the profession.

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No description available.

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This essay aims to investigate the affects of interaction between different professions in a municipal project. In the project, professional representatives from the social services and schools have collaborated with staff in preschool/school and exchanged knowledge to improve the work around children with antisocial behavior. It is in this essays ambition to create an understanding of how professional practitioners, with a monopoly on certain knowledge, influences the possibilities and limitations of cooperation in a municipal project. This is examined through six qualitative interviews with members of an municipal project. By using theories about professionalization, social closure, alliance strategy and social control it is possible to understand how division into professions creates opportunities and limitations of interaction exchange in collaborative projects. The main conclusion is that well-established professions exclude other professions through social closure when they threaten to challenge the established knowledge monopoly. Project members who don’t challenge the established knowledge monopoly are accepted and an alliance between professions occurs. To succeed with the exchange of knowledge in projects between different professions, it is important to establish a common vision which can gather people's different knowledge and professional backgrounds and get them to strive for a common purpose. It is important to establish interaction for making the project members feel belonging and solidarity with the group.

Leadership courses are emerging across higher education institutions taking various shapes and forms. Some are coordinated and run by faculty sometimes leading to a minor, major, or certificate. Others are coordinated by student affairs professionals. The focus of this study is to understand the experiences that student affairs professionals have in implementing and coordinating leadership courses in academic units. Because on many campuses leadership courses are being implemented by student affairs professionals, there are distinctive intricacies involved. Plagued by the complexity of the inter-profession relationship between student affairs and faculty, implementing and coordinating courses is not a simple matter. In addition to learning about student affairs professionals' experiences, this study also shares strategies that these professionals use in trying to implement and coordinate leadership courses in academic units. Drawing from literature on the professions as well as leadership development helps shed light on the complex dynamics underlying the course implementation and coordination process. Implications for both research and practice are included.

Bakalauro darbe analizuojama šeimų, auginančių vaikus, turinčius negalę, socialinė izoliacija. Siekiama atskleisti šeimos socialinio uždarumo raišką, jo pasireiškimą, atsiradimo priežastis, įveikos galimybes. Tyrime dalyvavo 24 šeimos, turinčios neįgalų vaiką. Jų atsakymai leido išanalizuoti ir nustatyti šeimų, auginančių vaikus, turinčius negalę, socialinio uždarumo: pasireiškimą, priežastis ir atsivėrimo visuomenei galimybes. Taip pat buvo apklausti 17 asmenų, kurių šeimose nėra negalę turinčio vaiko. Jų atsakymuose išryškėjo santykių ypatumai, bendraujant su negalę turinčio vaiko šeima, respondentų jausmai bendraujant su šeimos nariais, auginančiais negalę turintį vaiką. Aiškintasi, kiek ir kokius santykius su šeimų nariais, kurių šeimose auga negalę turintis vaikas, nori turėti tokių vaikų neturintys asmenys. Tyrimo objektas – šeimos, auginančios neįgalų vaiką, socialinis uždarumas ir jo įveikos galimybės. Tyrimo tikslas – atskleisti šeimų, auginančių negalę turintį vaiką, socialinio uždarumo raišką, socialinio uždarumo priežastis ir uždarumo įveikos galimybes. Siekiant tikslo, iškelti šie tyrimo uždaviniai: 1. Išnagrinėti ir išanalizuoti mokslinę literatūrą, analizuojančią šeimų, auginančių neįgalius vaikus, socialinio uždarumo teorines prielaidas ir raišką. 2. Remiantis mokslo darbų analize, parengti tyrimo instrumentą, atskleidžiantį šeimos, auginančios neįgalų vaiką, socialinio uždarumo raišką, socialinio uždarumo priežastis ir atsivėrimo visuomenei galimybes. 3... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / This undergraduate work analyses social isolation of families raising children with disabilities. It is aimed to reveal the aspect of social family insularity, its manifestation, causes and coping capabilities. Family relationship, its strength and its relations with environment are being analysed. A family with a disabled child participated in the study. Their responses let us identify the reasons of such families’ social closure and their opportunities for opening up to public. There were also people who do not have disabled children interviewed. Their responses highlighted the strength of the relationship with the families that have a disabled child (acceptance or rejection) the respondents’ feelings and experiences in dealing with family members raising a child with disabilities. The research was analysing how much and what relationship with a handicapped child’s family members these people without such children want to have. The object of the research - the social closure of family with a disabled child and its negotiation. The objective of the study - to reveal the aspect of social closure of the families that have children with disabilities, causes of social insularity and coping capabilities. To achieve the objective there were set the following research goals: 1. Examine and analyse the scientific literature exploring manifestation and theoretical assumptions of the social closure of the families’ with disabled children. 2. Formulate a survey instrument... [to full text]

This thesis examines the working lives of foreign-born academics who come to work to the UK. Its main aim is to understand the degree and conditions of migrant scholars' inclusion in professional practice abroad. The thesis fulfils this aim by developing a conceptual approach to encapsulate how migrant professionals' working lives are conditioned by the pre-existing professional structures. Grounded in the principle of social closure, this framework proposes that migrant professionals' employment abroad is influenced by the different forms and rules of closure, as well as by the sites in which closure rules are applied. The synthesis of the theoretical framework with findings from sixty-two interviews with foreign-born scholars employed in thirteen British universities shows that migrant academics' working lives are explained by ‘modes of incorporation'. ‘Modes of incorporation' designate the distinct ways in which the academic profession has reacted to the increased presence of foreign incomers, and comprise integration, exclusion, subordination and indifference. The proposed framework extends the understanding of the demographic change in professions, and offers a way to capture migrant professionals' movement across countries.

This thesis develops a theory of international social closure to examine (i) the politics of membership in status groups – or, clubs – in international society and (ii) the persistence of clubs in international society. This thesis offers new concepts to improve the English School’s understanding of international society, its expansion, and its reproduction. In so doing it also addresses limitations and gaps in the IR status literature and the global governance and diplomacy literatures concerned with clubs and networks. This thesis analyses strategies of exclusion, entry, and incorporation used by actors to deny, attempt, or grant inclusion into clubs as well as the institutional contexts underpinning those clubs. Specifically, this research undertakes a study of instances of exclusion, entry, and incorporation in the context of three clubs: the Family of Civilised Nations, the Great Powers club, and G-summitry. In the first two cases, this research relies primarily on secondary sources while in the case of G-summitry it presents original empirical research gathered through archival research, interviews, and ethnographic participant observation. This thesis presents four main conclusions about the operation of closure: (i) the logics of different closure games are defined by overarching normative institutions of international society; (ii) despite a collectivist closure rule, closure in international society is predominantly individualistic; (iii) actors seeking entry tend to employ deferential entry strategies that reproduce a stratified status quo order; and (iv) incorporation promotes stratification along both functional and cultural lines. This thesis also draws three specific conclusions that run counter to much current scholarship: (i) contemporary international society is neither more open nor less hierarchical than nineteenth century international society; (ii) hierarchy is reproduced to a large degree by entry and incorporation strategies rather than exclusion strategies; and (iii) closure does not run along a ‘west versus the rest’ fault line.