The purpose of this essay has been to seek understanding of how young people in high school and adult education experience the use of educational media tools in teaching. Examples of questions submitted material has been: What are the positive and negative experiences of ICT in the classroom? The essay is of a qualitative nature, in which five students were interviewed about their experiences of ICT in the school environment. The result is analyzed from a sociocultural perspective and from an inward-student perspective. The results showed that students felt that it was difficult to absorb many of the ICT facilities as sources of knowledge in the school environment. Due to lack of quality in teaching material and difficulties of the pupils to sort out the important information of the injected.

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Master of Architecture / Department of Architecture / Gary J. Coates / This research explores the bioclimatic and socio-cultural benefits of Kolkata’s courtyard houses. A typological and historical analysis of courtyard houses from around the world, as well as in Kolkata, provides a context for the field research. The main intention of this study is to explore the roles of solar shading and natural ventilation in courtyard houses located in the hot-humid climatic region. For this purpose interviews with the heads of household of ten courtyard houses in Kolkata were conducted in January 2005, to finally choose three houses for detailed experimental analysis. All three houses have high thermal construction and similar socio-economic conditions. This helped in comparing the results of the temperature (both ambient and surface temperatures) and air speed measurements among the three houses referred to as House A, House B and House C houses. House A and House C houses have shallow courtyards (high aspect ratios which in both cases equal 0.95), while House B house has a deep courtyard (low aspect ratio equal to 0.21). Further, ventilation analysis has been done with the help of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software. The simulation study and the experimental data measurements focused on the comfort conditions generated within the house based on their differences in proportion of form and massing. The effects of solar shading and natural ventilation on activity patterns and uses of a space are also examined through occupant surveys. Finally, this research explores the historic courtyard houses in Kolkata, with a view to address the benefits of the universal courtyard form of design and speculate the appropriateness of the vernacular courtyard form in the modern architectural arena of Kolkata.

As the cultural diversity of the United States increases, more researchers are using socio-behavioral perspectives to explain health disparities. These studies are not unwarranted; high incidence rates in conditions like hypertension, obesity, and diabetes in given populations do suggest that cultural factors influence morbidity. But rarely does research examine how political culture affects health. I investigate this relationship using four waves of the National Survey of Black Americans. I focus on factors like political partisanship, electoral and political participation, Black socio-political beliefs, and system perception. Results from several statistical analyses show that African Americans who do not participate in mainstream politics have better health than those that do participate. Findings also suggest that the adoption of Black political orientations positively affects health satisfaction. Other results on key demographic factors are consistent with the wider literature which suggests that age, socioeconomic status, coverage, marital status, and religious identity all influence health. This study is significant because it contributes to a small, but emerging body of literature that examines the connection between political factors and wellness outcomes.

Uppsatsens syfte är att studera lärande utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Det som står i fokus är att finna och studera närmare faktorer och komponenter som enligt det sociokulturella perspektivet motverkar inlärning och skapandet av kunskap. För att genomföra studien har en kvalitativ fallstudie utförts, där fyra gymnasieelever har djupintervjuats individuellt. Dessa elever har valts ut med tanke på deras uppvisat svaga skolprestationer utifrån ett betygsperspektiv. Ett sociokulturellt teoretiskt ramverk har använts som ett genomgående teoretiskt betraktelsesätt för studien. Ett antal olika komponenter och faktorer som berör och inverkar negativt på lärande och kunskapsutveckling hos gymnasieelever hittades och studerades utifrån det valda teoretiska perspektivet. En viktig kunskap som genereras av detta är att en betydelsefull uppfattning framkommit utav hur eleverna uppfattar skolan, dvs. skolan framställs utifrån fyra betygssvaga elevers verklighetsuppfattning. Insikt i denna verklighetsuppfattning kan berika varje verkande pedagogs fortsatta kunskapsutvecklande. Avslutningsvis möjliggör vi även för varje enskild pedagog att utifrån det sociokulturella perspektivet på lärande utföra en personlig granskning på sin pedagogiska verksamhet. / The aim of this essay is to study learning from a socio-cultural perspective. Our purpose is to find and look at factors and components which can affect the learning process in a negative way. We have used a qualitative case study where we individually interviewed four senior high school students. We have used a qualitative method, in the form of a case study, where we have interviewed four senior high school students individually. The interviewees were chosen because of their low grades. The study is based on a socio-cultural theoretical framework. We found a number of factors which had a negative impact on the students´ learning process and the students’ abilities to gain knowledge. Important knowledge, generated by this study, is how the four lowgraded students perceive different aspects of school. Understanding their perception of school will provide pedagogues with valuable insight on continuous development of knowledge. The study also gives the educationist the possibility to perform an individual evaluation of their own context.

My research explores my Egyptian family’s migration from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Canada. It examines the role of photography to document memories of family reunions, migration, and stories. The objective of my study is to foster dialogue and raise awareness about the lived experiences of an Egyptian family from the 1950s to contemporary times. The methodology used in this series is open-ended interviews and textual analysis with family members: my mother, father and maternal grandfather. My research aims to reconstruct the historical effects of migration and the lived experience of an Egyptian family in the diaspora. It looks into intergenerational psychological trauma, its several interfaces and role in familial relationships, and modernity's emergence in Egypt. I aim to explore transnational identities through storytelling and photography that capture historical and contemporary movements—the role of these movements in producing complex versions of identities, belonging and trauma. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This research focuses on the transition of Bahraini students to a Western medical university which has been ‘transplanted’, with its values and context of practice, to the culture of Bahrain. A socio-cultural model of Communities of Practice was adopted as a theoretical framework in this research for it linked in well with the personal context of this study which suggested that students’ transition could be related to the practices in Bahraini schools associated with science and English education, as well as general school pedagogy. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore how different participants perceive the role of school practices, as well as science and English education in transition. In order to explore these different understandings, a case study methodology was adopted and insights into the practices of students’ school and university community were gained through the use of focus group and individual interviews, as well as a descriptive questionnaire. The data from the qualitative investigation was analysed deductively under the three themes of science background knowledge, the English language and school pedagogy, while the questionnaire data was subject to univariate analysis based on mean responses. The key findings indicated high levels of confidence in students’ science base and approaches to study, which enabled the students to take a number of strategic actions in order to move through the educational outcomes of the university programme. In terms of the English language, a compromised foreign language (L2) proficiency caused by inadequate school practices was perceived not to play an important role in the transition process, which suggested a diminished role of L2 in transitions in the context of language change. As far as school pedagogy is concerned, whilst all participants at the secondary level agreed that general memorisation-based pedagogy in secondary schools could play a negative role in the transition, the participants at the university revealed that rote-based approaches to study formed in school could also be strategically used at university. Hence, the findings from this research have specific implications for the model of Communities of Practice and suggest future work within this theory regarding the role of students’ individual agency. These findings also suggest a new understanding of transitions in the context of language and culture change.

Spring Break, which has been transformed from a rather mild mid-winter vacation to a cultural rite over the past seventy-years, allows students to bring their values en masse to the host locations they visit. While only visiting these locales for a short time, college students nonetheless significantly impact the economic, public governance and socio-cultural processes of their Spring Break host locations. This dissertation explores the process of how and why students choose these locations and the impacts that occur as a result. A quantitative approach is used to determine the level of impact on a host location's economic, socio-cultural and public governance processes and what role city policies have in affecting these impacts. The data comes primarily from public sources – national, state and local – between 1995 and 2005. This investigation helps to answer the question ‘Is Spring Break worth the cost of the student impacts?' In doing so, it will allow for current Spring Break cities in the U.S. to determine what role the event plays in their future and provides potential Spring Break locations with the information necessary to determine whether or not to court the next generation of Spring Breakers.