<p><strong><p>Abstract</p><p>Attitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian’s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden. We used three theories to explain our aim. These are Jürgen Habermas theory of social communication, theory about professions and Christian Grönroos theory of Service Management.</p><p>We found that our informants both see the physical meeting with the library and the social exchanges with the librarians as important parts of the user’s experience of the library.</p><p>The three libraries that we visited work in different ways to improve their customer service. One library has developed a policy for concrete ways to improve the social exchange with the library user. Another library is working with a policy and the third library handle attitude questions more implicit in the daily work and in a specialised group. We could see that the informants who worked at the library which had a policy and an under-standing of the importance of customer service as a central part of the organisation regarded those questions as being very important. Some informants could not see how customer service could get improved in another way than just discussing these issues in groups, meetings or in connection to seminars.</p><p>The changing of attitudes of members of the staff can be complicated however because it, at some level, is about individual changes. We believe that a person has to be motivated to make these changes. To improve this motivation the organisation has to create opportunities for the staff to critically reflect upon their working situa-tion. In that way we believe that the staff can experience security and motivation to do a good job which then has a positive impact on the customer service provided. The acknowledgement of the importance of customer service within an organization has to engage everybody and the whole organisation at all its levels.</p><p>We think that customer service in the library setting will become more important in the future as a response to the technical evolution and all the automated elements in our society. The importance of actual meetings in-crease as our society increasingly communicates via digital means.</p></strong></p>

This dissertation is a study of social interaction in virtual worlds and virtual world design. A virtual world is a synchronous, multi-user system that offers a persistent spatial environment for iconically represented participants. Together, these form an example of social interaction design. I have applied an arena perspective on my object of study, meaning that I focus on these socio-technical systems as places. I have investigated the persistent qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds. What I have found is that virtual worlds are as real as the physical world. They are filled with real people interacting with each other evoking real emotions and leading to real consequences. There are no fixed boundaries between the virtual and physical arenas that make up a participant’s lifeworld. I have found that participants in virtual worlds are not anonymous and bodiless actors on a level playing field. Participants construct everything needed to create social structures such as identities and status symbols. The qualities of social interaction in virtual worlds cannot be measured against physical interaction. Doing so conceals the qualities of virtual interaction. Through the concepts of levity and proximity, I offer an alternative measure that better captures the unique properties of the medium. Levity is related to the use of avatars and the displacement into a virtual context and manifests itself as a kind of lightness in the way participants approach the interaction. Proximity is my term for the transformation of social distances that takes place in virtual worlds. While participants perceive that they are in the same place despite being physically separated, the technology can also create barriers separating participants from their physical surroundings. The gap between the participant and her avatar is also of social significance. As a theoretical foundation for design, I have used Michael Heim’s writings and practices as a base for a phenomenologically grounded approach, which provides an alternative to the dominating perspectives of architecture and engineering. Based on an explorative design project and the earlier mentioned findings regarding social interaction, I have formulated a model for virtual world design called interacture. This model takes the interaction between participants as the fundamental building material and the starting point of the design process. From there, layers of function and structure are added, all the time balancing the design between fantasy and realism. I have explored the possibilities of using ethnographic studies as the foundation for a participant centered design approach. I have aimed for an inside view of my object of study both as an ethnographer and as a designer. One outcome of this approach is that I have come to understand virtual worlds not just as places but also as processes where the experience of participating can change drastically over time as the participant reaches new stages in the process. In conclusion, the method of integrating ethnography with design and the understanding of social interaction as the fundamental building material is woven into a general approach to the study and design of socio-technical systems called social interaction design.

The subject of this thesis is interaction in the service encounter. The aim is to describe and explain the service encounter interaction with a special focus on the social and organisational context. The contextual focus is related to two overriding questions: What significance does the human interaction have for the service encounter? What significance does the organisational context have for the service encounter? The result show that even though the communication consists of four discerned phases – salutation, the subject of the call, concluding the subject, and rounding off the call, each phase also displays contradictions. Consequently, there are both relational and instrumental utterances, as well as symmetrical and asymmetrical aspects of the conversations. These contradictory results of the relational-instrumental and symmetrical-asymmetrical features are explained when interaction is viewed in terms of three different sets of logic – the commercial, the bureaucratic, and the social. Every logic is constituted by a number of characteristics, each contributing to the shape of the interaction and to the relationship between the customer and the employee. Analytically speaking, the three forms of logic can be described in terms of their respective field of action and rationality, that is, what the actors talk about and what the purpose of the talk is. It is shown that the actors must prioritise between economic, administrative and personal areas within a limited time of action. It is also clear that the disparate rationalities, that is, economic, executive and recognition, all exercise influence over the service encounter, which means that acts aiming at a specific goal are restricted by the objectives of the other logics. Therefore there is a certain self-regulating function in the antagonism between the logics. The positions of the employee in relation to the customer, the organisation and the so-called collective customer mean that there are demands made from three qualitatively different directions. There is, in other words, a three-bosses dilemma for employees. The different positions of the employee also entail three different asymmetrical relationships in which either the customer or the employee has the advantage. This position constructs the hierarchy of dominance between employee and customer. To conclude, the interaction constitutes a complex relationship between the characteristics of the logics and when these combine the interaction of the service encounter is shaped. The fact that the service encounter involves human interaction means that there is a counter balance against the organisational ascendancy.

Syftet är att genom en litteraturgranskning av vetenskapligt publicerade forskningsartiklarundersöka vad peer-tutoring som en form av kooperativt lärande kan innebära för möjlighetentill social interaktion och lärande när elever med funktionsnedsättning inkluderas i enidrottsundervisningssituation. Många elever med funktionsnedsättning är inte inkluderade iidrottsundervisningen som de skulle önska, detta begränsar deras påverkansmöjlighet till godhälsa genom fysisk aktivitet. Kooperativt lärande och peer-tutoring har visat sig gemöjligheter till ökad social interaktion och lärande. Sökmetod: Tio vetenskapligt publiceradeartiklar granskades och tre återkommande områden kunde skönjas. Dessa var socialinteraktion, lärande hos eleverna och lärarens roll i undervisningssituationen. Fem artiklarbaserades på särskild interventionsstudie, fem baserades på tidigare forskning.Artikelsökningen gjordes under våren år 2010 i vetenskapliga databaser: Science direct,SAGE journals, Academic search elite, PsycINFO och ERIC under med kompletterandehandsökning. Krav var att artiklarna skulle handla om kooperativt lärande eller peer-tutoring iinkluderad idrottsundervisning, gälla grundskoleelever och vara engelskspråkig. Resultat: Treområden kunde skönjas i artiklarna, dessa var den sociala interaktionen effekter, lärandegenom peer-tutoring och lärarens roll. Sammanfattning: kooperativt lärande och peertutoringökar möjligheterna till social interaktion mellan eleverna då uppgifternas lösning ärberoende av social interaktion. Kooperativt lärande främjar social interaktion mellan elevermed och utan funktionsnedsättning. Kooperativt lärande och peer-tutoring ökar ävenmöjligheterna för lärandet då den sociala interaktionen gynnar lärande hos elever. Lärarensroll inför och under undervisningen är viktig för utfallet. Inkludering innebär heterogenaklasser vilket är positivt för kooperativt lärande.

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of Communication

Syftet med denna studie är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer beskriva upplevelser och erfarenheter av medierad social interaktion på Internet för klienter på behandlingshem för missbrukare. Vi ville undersöka hur detta påverkar klienternas möjligheter att förändra sina liv, identitetsskapande och sociala relationer. Vi genomförde enskilda intervjuer med tre personer som jobbar på ett behandlingshem där klienterna har fri tillgång till Internet och med en klient på samma behandlingshem, samt gruppintervjuer med sammanlagt sju personer som hade varierande erfarenhet av behandlingshem. Resultatet visar en allmän negativ syn på medierad social interaktion under behandlingstiden. Den största risken som lyfts fram under intervjuerna är att Internet försvårar för klienterna att bryta med missbruksvärlden. Kontakt med vänner och bekanta i missbruksvärlden kan leda till att klienten avbryter sin behandling. Andra risker som vårt resultat visar är att klienterna lätt kan beställa droger på Internet, att man inte fokuserar på behandlingen och att det blir svårare att bygga upp en identitet och gemenskap i den nyktra världen. / The purpose of this study is to, by using qualitative interviews, describe experiences of mediated social interaction on the Internet for clients in drug treatment. We wanted to examine how this affects clients' ability to change their lives, their identity and social relations. We conducted individual interviews with three people who work at a treatment center where clients have free access to the Internet and with one client on the same centre, and group interviews with a total of seven people who had varied experience in drugtreatment. The results show a general negative view of mediated social interaction during the treatment. The main risk is that clients need to break their connection to “the addiction world” and the Internet complicates this. Contact with friends and acquaintances in “the addiction world” may lead to the client interrupting his or hers treatment. Other risks that our results show is that clients can easily order drugs on the Internet, that you do not focus on the treatment and it makes it more difficult to build an identity and to be part of a community in the sober world.

This study investigates how social interaction affects newly arrived pupils’ views on their study situation in the Swedish educational system. The aim is to give a contribution to the discussion on the notion of including “the Other” in educational practice in multicultural schools. Semi-structured group interviews were conducted to explore how the intercultural perspective and the theory of inclusion can be used to explain the dynamics of social interaction. The main research questions were: how did social interaction take place in preparatory class and in regular class? In what way did social interaction affect the transitional period from preparatory class to regular class? Did social interaction have consequences for the informants as learners? The results show that newly arrived pupils had the opportunity to develop intercultural interaction skills in the preparatory class. Meanwhile, this organization meant educational exclusion, which might have contributed to the stress and anxiety they experienced later in regular class. The transitional period was problematic, since students had to struggle in two aspects. First, they had to catch up in many subjects though no significant measures were taken to their linguistic ability and former school experiences. Secondly, they had to assert their place in an environment with dysfunctional social interaction between some teachers and pupils in regular class. The conclusion is that schools have a dilemma in catering for both social and educational inclusion simultaneously. Despite this, many pupils expressed satisfaction with their school performance. This suggests that intercultural interaction skills, crucial for the pupils’ development, can be developed in the preparatory class. Schools need to implement an intercultural perspective in the educational organization and planning to include every newly arrived pupil. This calls for a holistic approach in pedagogic and social interaction between everyone involved.

Syfte: Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur lärandet av yrkesrollen som hälsocoach bidrar till att forma den personliga identiteten. Syftet var även att undersöka hur denna lärprocess skulle kunna påverka hälsocoachernas individuella hälsa, genom beskrivningar av deras personliga förhållningssätt till hälsa. Metod: Föreliggande studie har haft en kvalitativ metodansats där datainsamlingen har skett genom sex semistrukturerade intervjuer med yrkesverksamma hälsocoacher. Studien hade en hermeneutisk epistemologisk ansats, och utgick vidare från ett abduktivt arbetssätt. Det empiriska materialet sammanställdes till olika teman och analyserades sedan utifrån det teoretiska ramverket. Resultat: Resultatet visade att deltagarna identifierar sig med yrkesrollen som hälsocoach, och att det kan vara svårt att bortse från rollen som hälsocoach även i privata sammanhang. Genom sociala interaktioner med kunder och kollegor har hälsocoacherna lärt sig vad yrket kräver och har utvecklats i sin yrkesroll genom att anamma särskilda egenskaper och färdigheter som anses viktiga för yrkesrollen. Genom att utvecklas i yrkesrollen som hälsocoach har intervjupersonerna fått ökad kunskap inom hälsoområdet och vidare fått en mer balanserad syn på hälsa. Hälsocoacherna anser att det finns yttre förväntningar på hur de bör vara och agera, men upplever inga negativa konsekvenser av detta. Slutsats: Lärprocessen som sker inom yrkesrollen har format hälsocoacherna på så sätt att särskilda egenskaper utvecklats och yrkesrollen har blivit en stor del av den personliga identiteten. Den ökade kunskapen och utvecklingen i yrkesrollen har bidragit till att hälsocoacherna har förändrat sitt sätt att tolka, tillämpa och förstå hälsoinformation. Detta har i sin tur resulterat i ett mer balanserat förhållningssätt till hälsa, vilket i sin tur kan ha positiva hälsoeffekter. / Aim: The purpose of this study was to examine how the learning of the professional role as health coach contributes to shape the personal identity. The aim was also to investigate how this learning process could affect the health coaches' individual well-being, through their descriptions of personal approach to health. Method: The present study had a qualitative methodological approach, where data collection occurred through six semi-structured interviews with professional health coaches. The empirical data were compiled into themes and then analyzed through the theoretical framework. Results: The results shows that learning, in terms of interactions with customers and colleagues, and the adoption of particular characteristics and skills, may influence the personal identity of health coaches. Through learning, the individuals identified themselves, even in private settings, with the professional role. Due to learning, the health coaches have a more balanced approach to diet, exercise, and individual health. Conclusion: The learning process that takes place within the professional role has shaped the health coaches in such ways that special characteristics has developed and the professional role has become a big part of their personal identity. Furthermore, the results also shows that learning may influence the way of interpreting, applying, and understanding health information. Even their personal approach to health has changed for more balanced, which in turn may have positive health effects.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Education / Master / Master of Education

Inom den svenska förskolan har antalet barn ökat i barngrupperna samtidigt som resurserna har minskat. I det ökade barngrupperna skapas det en större oro bland barnen. Pedagogerna inom den svenska förskolan upplever att det blir mycket spring och konflikter. Detta gör att pedagogerna strävar efter att hitta nya arbetssätt som minskar oron och konflikterna bland barnen. Mitt syfte i denna studie är att undersöka hur en förskola genomförde en förändringsprocess kring sin innemiljö, det vill säga rum, möblering och material. Syftet är även att studera hur barns sociala samspel påverkas av den nya miljön där kommunikationen och interaktionen det vill säga samspelet mellan barn-barn och barn-miljö är som en viktig del i barnens lärande. I interaktioner mellan barnen stimuleras språket och språket stimulerar barnens tänkande. En viktig del i interaktionen är miljön. Miljön har en betydelsefull roll för att stimulera barnens utveckling och lärande. Metoden för studien har bestått i kvalitativa intervjuer och studien är utförd på en förskola med fem informanter som är pedagoger. Resultatet av studien visar att för att en förändringsprocess ska bli framgångsrik behövs det inspirerande och lyhörda ledare. Ledarna behöver ge sina medarbetare tid att gå igenom förändringsprocessens alla steg. Solrosens förskola vill ge en tillgänglig, inspirerande och utmanande innemiljö där barnen får utvecklas i sin egen takt. Efter förskolans förändringsprocess, är deras innemiljö inte längre hemlik utan en miljö gjord för att barn ska bli inspirerade, kreativa och utvecklas som individer. / There is a great increase of the number of children in Swedish preschools and in the same time there is less resources. With the increase of the size of the group of children we have a growth of greater anxiety. The teachers in Swedish preschool experience a lot of running around and conflicts. This means that the teachers strives to find a new way to decrease the anxiety and conflicts among the children. The purpose of my study is to examine how one preschool carried out a change process in their indoor environment concerning the room, furniture and material. The purpose is also to study how children’s social interaction is affected by the new environment, there communication and interaction that is between child –child and child- environment which is a great deal of importance to a child’s learning process. This interaction between children stimulates their language which in its turn stimulates the children´s thinking. An important deal in interaction is the environment. The environment has an important part in stimulating the children´s development and learning. My method has included qualitative interviews and the study is done on a preschool with five informants which are teachers. The result of the study shows that to get a successful changing process the leaders has to be inspiring and perceptive. The leaders need to give their collaborators the time to go through every step of the changing process. The preschool Solrosen is keen on offering an accessible, inspiring and challenging indoor environment for children to develope in their own pace. After the preschools changing process, their indoor environments is no longer like a home, instead it has become a place for children to be inspired, creative and develope into individuals.