This thesis deals with the social work in the context of early formation of family in socially excluded localities. In the first part of the thesis there is theoretical basis in which the basic terms are described and the main factors of social exclusion are distinguished. The second, empirical part, presents processed results which are chronologically divided into four consecutive chapters which follow the sequence of events directly connected with early parenting. Three-stage coding - open, axial and selective - was used. The aim of this work was to find out the reasons for adolescent girls living in socially excluded localities to start a family early, to summarize the opportunities of preventing the emergence of socially undesirable phenomena and to identify the key sources of support in managing child care. The main result of the research is finding out, that the most important influence on the circumstances connected to early parenting is undoubtedly the family and following its model. The mothers family and her partner are then the main sources from which can the young primiparas draw. The prevention of socially undesirable phenomena is adequate and appropriately mediated sexual education of underage girls and boys. Higher education can also be considered a protective factor. However the most important support of a young family does not consist in the amount and quality of social worker interventions but in the families the young parents come from. The families take care of the intergenerational transfer of childcare capacity and they are also involved in direct care to a great extent. So the family is on one hand a model due to which we can encouter higher birth rates of adolescent girls in socially excluded localities, on the other hand it can be considered the most valuable source of support for these girls. The present state can be considered looped and a solution is as uncertain as in the vicious circle of whole social exclusion.

Un robot d'assistance sociale (SAR) est destiné à engager les gens dans une interaction située comme la surveillance de l'exercice physique, la réadaptation neuropsychologique ou l'entraînement cognitif. Alors que les comportements interactifs de ces systèmes sont généralement scriptés, nous discutons ici du cadre d’apprentissage de comportements interactifs multimodaux qui est proposé par le projet SOMBRERO.Dans notre travail, nous avons utilisé l'apprentissage par démonstration afin de fournir au robot des compétences nécessaires pour effectuer des tâches collaboratives avec des partenaires humains. Il y a trois étapes principales d'apprentissage de l'interaction par démonstration: (1) recueillir des comportements interactifs représentatifs démontrés par des tuteurs humains; (2) construire des modèles des comportements observés tout en tenant compte des connaissances a priori (modèle de tâche et d'utilisateur, etc.); et ensuite (3) fournir au robot-cible des contrôleurs de gestes appropriés pour exécuter les comportements souhaités.Les modèles multimodaux HRI (Human-Robot Interaction) sont fortement inspirés des interactions humain-humain (HHI). Le transfert des comportements HHI aux modèles HRI se heurte à plusieurs problèmes: (1) adapter les comportements humains aux capacités interactives du robot en ce qui concerne ses limitations physiques et ses capacités de perception, d'action et de raisonnement limitées; (2) les changements drastiques des comportements des partenaires humains face aux robots ou aux agents virtuels; (3) la modélisation des comportements interactifs conjoints; (4) la validation des comportements robotiques par les partenaires humains jusqu'à ce qu'ils soient perçus comme adéquats et significatifs.Dans cette thèse, nous étudions et faisons des progrès sur ces quatre défis. En particulier, nous traitons les deux premiers problèmes (transfert de HHI vers HRI) en adaptant le scénario et en utilisant la téléopération immersive. En outre, nous utilisons des réseaux neuronaux récurrents pour modéliser les comportements interactifs multimodaux (tels que le discours, le regard, les mouvements de bras, les mouvements de la tête, les canaux). Ces techniques récentes surpassent les méthodes traditionnelles (Hidden Markov Model, Dynamic Bayesian Network, etc.) en termes de précision et de coordination inter-modalités. A la fin de cette thèse, nous évaluons une première version de robot autonome équipé des modèles construits par apprentissage. / A socially assistive robot (SAR) is meant to engage people into situated interaction such as monitoring physical exercise, neuropsychological rehabilitation or cognitive training. While the interactive behavioral policies of such systems are mainly hand-scripted, we discuss here key features of the training of multimodal interactive behaviors in the framework of the SOMBRERO project.In our work, we used learning by demonstration in order to provide the robot with adequate skills for performing collaborative tasks in human centered environments. There are three main steps of learning interaction by demonstration: we should (1) collect representative interactive behaviors from human coaches; (2) build comprehensive models of these overt behaviors while taking into account a priori knowledge (task and user model, etc.); and then (3) provide the target robot with appropriate gesture controllers to execute the desired behaviors.Multimodal HRI (Human-Robot Interaction) models are mostly inspired by Human-Human interaction (HHI) behaviors. Transferring HHI behaviors to HRI models faces several issues: (1) adapting the human behaviors to the robot’s interactive capabilities with regards to its physical limitations and impoverished perception, action and reasoning capabilities; (2) the drastic changes of human partner behaviors in front of robots or virtual agents; (3) the modeling of joint interactive behaviors; (4) the validation of the robotic behaviors by human partners until they are perceived as adequate and meaningful.In this thesis, we study and make progress over those four challenges. In particular, we solve the two first issues (transfer from HHI to HRI) by adapting the scenario and using immersive teleoperation. In addition, we use Recurrent Neural Networks to model multimodal interactive behaviors (such as speech, gaze, arm movements, head motion, backchannels) that surpass traditional methods (Hidden Markov Model, Dynamic Bayesian Network, etc.) in both accuracy and coordination between the modalities. We also build and evaluate a proof-of-concept autonomous robot to perform the tasks.

Diploma thesis deals with pupils from socially excluded localities and their education. The theoretical part defines the term socially excluded locality and deals with distinctive features that influence the situation of people living here. The Roma minority, which is often associated with social exclusion, is also characterised, and unfortunately is still frequently represented in socially excluded localities. The main topic is a socially disadvantaged pupil, their needs and current educational opportunities are taken into account. Special attention is given to Roma children and pupils with regard to cultural and ethnic specifics. The practical part is processed in the form of 12 case studies describing individual families from socially excluded localities and their attitude to children's education. The main objective of the research was to identify barriers that influence the education of their children from the parents' point of view. Partial objectives focus on other circumstances that families may have to limit access to school in relation to their social situation. The results of the research point to a close connection between the unfavorable social situation of the family, when these circumstances have a negative effect to the school education of children. Parents themselves perceive these...

In African folklore, there is a Swahili tale which depicts the relationship between a monkey and a shark; a story about the needs of two creatures living in two different worlds. The shark needs the heart of the monkey to give to his king and the monkey agrees to go on the journey to learn and experience new things. Unaware of each other’s intentions and goals they fall prey to a relationship of mutual distrust and suspicion. Many opportunities to use art as a tool for social engagement through service-learning exist in Higher Education. However, good intentions do not always equal good outcomes. The story above illustrates the importance of open communication around goals and motives. My past experiences in community engagement projects have taught me that more harm than good can result when communities are not involved in relationship-building and decision-making processes which affect them. It is therefore imperative that students collaborate with communities in every phase of the engagement process, so that they will learn and benefit from each other in meaningful ways. This qualitative research explores and describes the engagement between Intermediate Phase education students and community youth, the findings of which will be used to design a service-learning module in Creative Arts. The aims of the study were (i) to explore what the students and the community participants can learn from such a process, (ii) to explore what aspects of the engagement process can enhance the attainment of mutually beneficial learning outcomes, and which detract from it, and (iii) based on the findings, to suggest recommendations that can inform the development and design of a future service-learning module in Creative Arts programmes for teacher educators. A qualitative design situated within a critical theoretical paradigm employing a participatory action research approach to inquiry was utilised to achieve the aims of the study. Availability sampling was used to select participants in the engagement between the campus students from the Creative Arts department in the faculty of Education Sciences at the North West University (NWU) Potchefstroom, and the community youths from a nearby township area. The data generation process consisted of four cycles which embraced seven interactive activities, including visual, oral, art, and text-based techniques that were employed in a participatory process. Semi-structured reflective interviews towards the end concluded the research study. Data documentation was obtained through verbatim transcriptions of video clips, visual diaries, and visual charts. The engagement process was systematically monitored, inductively analysed, and thematically interpreted. Trustworthiness was verified by overlapping and multiple data generation strategies, and maintained by reflective member checking and own critical reflections on the process. Ethical requirements included the approval of the Ethics Committee of the NWU Faculty of Educational Sciences, Potchefstroom campus. Signed consent of participants was obtained in writing before the data generation began. Consent was obtained from the participants for visual material to be used for the research study and the presentations thereof. Three themes emerged from the data collection. Theme 1: the process allowed participants to gain insight into each other’s worlds. Theme 2: the participatory action research (PAR) process shifted power relations. Theme 3: the participants experienced personal and professional development through the interactive process. My findings on the student-community youth engagement suggest that the participatory (PAR) process is well suited for socially engaged art-based practices in service-learning as it promotes reciprocal learning through interactive activities. The activities unlocked value-laden and meaningful learning between the participants. Working collaboratively and in groups benefitted the participants in several ways. They gained confidence and self-determination, began to understand each other, improved personal and working relations, and increased their level of professional development. Limiting aspects included language barriers, short time frames, and unpredictable community events. The role of the researcher as change agent required shared leadership of collaborative groupwork, and it was necessary to structure topics in service-learning that evoke challenging and critical responses between participants from diverse backgrounds. These findings have significance for the design and development of a service-learning module for Creative Arts education, provide recommendations for future community partnerships in art-based practices, and for further research in service-learning. / MEd (Curriculum Development), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

In African folklore, there is a Swahili tale which depicts the relationship between a monkey and a shark; a story about the needs of two creatures living in two different worlds. The shark needs the heart of the monkey to give to his king and the monkey agrees to go on the journey to learn and experience new things. Unaware of each other’s intentions and goals they fall prey to a relationship of mutual distrust and suspicion. Many opportunities to use art as a tool for social engagement through service-learning exist in Higher Education. However, good intentions do not always equal good outcomes. The story above illustrates the importance of open communication around goals and motives. My past experiences in community engagement projects have taught me that more harm than good can result when communities are not involved in relationship-building and decision-making processes which affect them. It is therefore imperative that students collaborate with communities in every phase of the engagement process, so that they will learn and benefit from each other in meaningful ways. This qualitative research explores and describes the engagement between Intermediate Phase education students and community youth, the findings of which will be used to design a service-learning module in Creative Arts. The aims of the study were (i) to explore what the students and the community participants can learn from such a process, (ii) to explore what aspects of the engagement process can enhance the attainment of mutually beneficial learning outcomes, and which detract from it, and (iii) based on the findings, to suggest recommendations that can inform the development and design of a future service-learning module in Creative Arts programmes for teacher educators. A qualitative design situated within a critical theoretical paradigm employing a participatory action research approach to inquiry was utilised to achieve the aims of the study. Availability sampling was used to select participants in the engagement between the campus students from the Creative Arts department in the faculty of Education Sciences at the North West University (NWU) Potchefstroom, and the community youths from a nearby township area. The data generation process consisted of four cycles which embraced seven interactive activities, including visual, oral, art, and text-based techniques that were employed in a participatory process. Semi-structured reflective interviews towards the end concluded the research study. Data documentation was obtained through verbatim transcriptions of video clips, visual diaries, and visual charts. The engagement process was systematically monitored, inductively analysed, and thematically interpreted. Trustworthiness was verified by overlapping and multiple data generation strategies, and maintained by reflective member checking and own critical reflections on the process. Ethical requirements included the approval of the Ethics Committee of the NWU Faculty of Educational Sciences, Potchefstroom campus. Signed consent of participants was obtained in writing before the data generation began. Consent was obtained from the participants for visual material to be used for the research study and the presentations thereof. Three themes emerged from the data collection. Theme 1: the process allowed participants to gain insight into each other’s worlds. Theme 2: the participatory action research (PAR) process shifted power relations. Theme 3: the participants experienced personal and professional development through the interactive process. My findings on the student-community youth engagement suggest that the participatory (PAR) process is well suited for socially engaged art-based practices in service-learning as it promotes reciprocal learning through interactive activities. The activities unlocked value-laden and meaningful learning between the participants. Working collaboratively and in groups benefitted the participants in several ways. They gained confidence and self-determination, began to understand each other, improved personal and working relations, and increased their level of professional development. Limiting aspects included language barriers, short time frames, and unpredictable community events. The role of the researcher as change agent required shared leadership of collaborative groupwork, and it was necessary to structure topics in service-learning that evoke challenging and critical responses between participants from diverse backgrounds. These findings have significance for the design and development of a service-learning module for Creative Arts education, provide recommendations for future community partnerships in art-based practices, and for further research in service-learning. / MEd (Curriculum Development), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

During recent years many fund managers have merchandised their funds as accounting for “ethical”, “responsible” and “sustainable” criterions during the investment process (the generic term “ESG funds” will be used hereafter). These managers have used this as a marketing tool and claimed that this brings added value to their investors.  However, it has been very hard for investors to actually determine if the fund managers have been following these announced “ESG” criterions and strategies. In addition to this there have been a lot of discussions around whether or not funds that incorporate “ESG” criterions during their investment process sacrifice return in order to fulfill their obligations.   During March this year Morningstar launched the first independent rating that aims to evaluate how the underlying holdings in fund, i.e. companies in which the fund own shares, manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters. By analyzing the underlying holdings from the aspects mentioned above, Morningstar has been able to aggregate this information into a sustainability measure for funds. This new sustainability measure has been named Morningstar Sustainability Rating™, which is a rating for how sustainable a fund is.   This thesis address questions regarding how ESG funds, or rather funds that market themselves as ESG funds, tend to have different attributes compared to traditional funds in the Nordic countries Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway. The specific attributes that has been examined are relative fund flows, total returns, risk-adjusted ratings and sustainability ratings.   The results suggest that ESG funds do not show a difference in Sustainability Ratings compared to traditional funds. Furthermore, it could be verified that ESG funds in some cases generate higher relative fund flows compared to traditional funds. It has also been confirmed that these ESG funds actually outperforms traditional funds from a total return perspective.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to develop an understanding for how risk, return and ethicalaspects affect the decision to invest in an ethical fund. Specifically is the aim of the thesis todevelop a perception if socio-demographical differences regarding gender, age and education canexplain the propensity to invest in ethical funds. Method: A survey consisting of 90 respondents. Conclusion: The thesis finding show support for the claim that women see the ethical aspect inrelation to the return for investment in an ethical fund as more important than men do. This canfurther explain the propensity for women to invest more in ethical funds than men. The thesisdoesn’t find any support for the claim that women and men, younger and older value low risk, forthe decision to invest in an ethical fund, differently. This goes against previous research within thefield of mutual fund and indicates that the investment behavior between ethical funds and regularfunds differ. The thesis did not find any support for the claim that higher educated people see theethical aspect in relation to the return as more important than people with lower education. / Syfte: Studien syfte är att utveckla en förståelse för hur risk, avkastning och etiskt inslag påverkarvid beslutet som leder till investering i en etisk fond. Specifikt syftar uppsatsen till att utvecklauppfattning kring om socio-demografiska skillnader avseende kön, ålder och utbildning, finns somförklaring i benägenheten att investera i etiska fonder. Metod: Vi har gjort enkätundersökningar på 90 respondenter Slutsats: Uppsatsen finner stöd för att kvinnor ser den etiska aspekten i relation till avkastningenvid investering i en etisk fond som viktigare än vad män gör. Detta kan förklara varför kvinnorockså är mer benägna än män att investera i en etisk fond. Uppsatsen finner inget stöd för attkvinnor och män, yngre och äldre värderar låg risk vid investering i en etisk fond olika. Dettamotsäger tidigare forskning inom investeringsbeteende för fonder generellt sett vilket indikerar attinvesteringsbeteende för vanliga fonder och etiska fonder skiljer sig åt. Uppsatsen finner helleringet stöd för att högre utbildade ser den etiska aspekten som viktigare än avkastning vidinvestering i en etisk fond.

<p>The review of the ethical funds literature shows the significant growth of the Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) in the last few decades. The increase of the interest towards SRI indicates that ethical issues have become more essential for the investors. However the number of surveys reveals that financial performance remains of an important concern for the socially responsible investors. Therefore the benchmark analysis of the expected returns and management fees of the ethical mutual funds is chosen as a topic for this thesis research. The risk-adjusted measures are used to analyze and compare the performance of the ethical and non-ethical mutual funds in United Kingdom. The analysis does not indicate the significant difference in the expected returns between the two groups of funds. However this study concludes that on average ethical funds charge higher management fees. Thus investing in ethical funds is more costly but gives about the same returns as investing in conventional funds.</p>

This thesis is part of the Aurora project, an ongoing long-term project investigating the potential use of robots to help children with autism overcome some of their impairments in social interaction, communication and imagination. Autism is a spectrum disorder and children with autism have different abilities and needs. Related research has shown that robots can play the role of a mediator for social interaction in the context of autism. Robots can enable simple interactions, by initially providing a relatively predictable environment for play. Progressively, the complexity of the interaction can be increased. The purpose of this thesis is to facilitate play between children with autism and an autonomous robot. Children with autism have a potential for play but often encounter obstacles to actualize this potential. Through play, children can develop multidisciplinary skills, involving social interaction, communication and imagination. Besides, play is a medium for self-expression. The purpose here is to enable children with autism to experience a large range of play situations, ranging from dyadic play with progressively better balanced interaction styles, to situations of triadic play with both the robot and the experimenter. These triadic play situations could also involve symbolic or pretend play. This PhD work produced the following results: • A new methodological approach of how to design, conduct and analyse robotassisted play was developed and evaluated. This approach draws inspiration from non-directive play therapy where the child is the main leader for play and the experimenter participates in the play sessions. I introduced a regulation process which enables the experimenter to intervene under precise conditions in order to: i) prevent the child from entering or staying in repetitive behaviours, ii) provide bootstrapping that helps the child reach a situation of play she is about to enter and iii) ask the child questions dealing with affect or reasoning about the robot. This method has been tested in a long-term study with six children with autism. Video recordings of the play sessions were analysed in detail according to three dimensions, namely Play, Reasoning and Affect. Results have shown the ability of this approach to meet each child’s specific needs and abilities. Future work may develop this work towards a novel approach in autism therapy. • A novel and generic computational method for the automatic recognition of human-robot interaction styles (specifically gentleness and frequency of touch interaction) in real time was developed and tested experimentally. This method, the Cascaded Information Bottleneck Method, is based on an information theoretic approach. It relies on the principle that the relevant information can be progressively extracted from a time series with a cascade of successive bottlenecks sharing the same cardinality of bottleneck states but trained successively. This method has been tested with data that had been generated with a physical robot a) during human-robot interactions in laboratory conditions and b) during child-robot interactions in school. The method shows a sound recognition of both short-term and mid-term time scale events. The recognition process only involves a very short delay. The Cascaded Information Bottleneck is a generic method that can potentially be applied to various applications of socially interactive robots. • A proof-of-concept system of an adaptive robot was demonstrated that is responsive to different styles of interaction in human-robot interaction. Its impact was evaluated in a short-term study with seven children with autism. The recognition process relies on the Cascaded Information Bottleneck Method. The robot rewards well-balanced interaction styles. The study shows the potential of the adaptive robot i) to encourage children to engage more in the interaction and ii) to positively influence the children’s play styles towards better balanced interaction styles. It is hoped that this work is a step forward towards socially adaptive robots as well as robot-assisted play for children with autism.

This study examined the effects of response restriction (blocking and protective equipment) on subsequent durations of self-injury with two female participants with developmental disabilities. First, a functional analysis was conducted with each participant to identify potential maintaining variables of the self-injury. Second, access to the response was systematically restricted in a multiple schedule restriction paradigm. A baseline extended alone was conducted without the restriction component in place as a control condition. For one participant the results suggested that response restriction may have increased subsequent durations of responding once the restriction element was removed. For a second participant responding did not appear to be affected by the restriction component.