Prior to the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were already experiencing social isolation due to the complex intersection of symptoms, and perceptions towards the illness. COPD is a chronic lung illness characterized by progressive shortness of breath, and decreasing lung function, with influenza and other respiratory illnesses more likely to have fatal consequences for this population. Societal beliefs and assumptions around behavioural risk factors, and in particular smoking, contribute to perceptions that COPD diagnosis, outcomes and experiences are self-inflicted and an individual responsibility. This is a perspective that fails to take into the account the complex contextual factors of the social determinants of health, where structural inequities result in higher smoking rates among populations with lower socioeconomic status. Further, these underlying societal values may compound the isolation experienced with COPD in which ongoing stigma towards the illness discourages people from identifying with a COPD diagnosis. The lack of identity may discourage developing a community where people can share experiences and strategies in living with COPD, and form a collective group that can advocate for change. Digital technologies (DTs), such as Facebook and Zoom offer new avenues to support social connectedness. However, little focus has been given on how people with COPD may (or may not) be using DTs to support their illness. This study explored the role DTs could serve in addressing social connectedness and experiences and outcomes for the COPD community. The study was informed by Mertens (2003, 2007) transformative approach where the knowledge of people living with COPD was prioritized in finding out what DTs they may be using to maintain social connectedness and to support their illness. The three stage mixed methods research design consisted of interviews, patient-reported outcome measures, patient-reported experience measures and a DT survey. Bazeley's (2018) approach was used to guide the integrative mixed analysis on data collected across the three stages. The overall findings were: 1) Participants’ experiences in living with COPD had uniquely prepared them for the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was the community that lacked capacity; 2) Dominant discourse around technology may be creating further harms to the COPD population that extend beyond the digital world; 3) Current digital health monitoring strategies for other chronic illnesses do not fully translate to the interests and needs for people living with COPD; 4) People living with COPD are using DTs, but prefer to keep their virtual world separate from their illness world; and 5) Considerations for DTs for COPD should move beyond managing outcomes, and include supporting experiences of living. Conducted between December 2018 and July 2020, and concurrent with the COVID-19 pandemic, the study demonstrated even greater importance with the onset of the pandemic in understanding how DTs may support social connectedness for people living with life-limiting chronic lung conditions. / Graduate / 2022-02-07

This mixed-methods study analyzed the effectiveness of the practices and attitudes of selected African American teachers who use culturally relevant and responsive Afrocentric pedagogies as the instructional foundation for improved academic outcomes with their African American students. The theory of Afrocentricity was used as the philosophical framework to study their pedagogy. Afrocentricity is a mode of thought and practice in which in African people are placed at the center of their own history and culture; engages them as subjects rather than objects; and approaches them with respect for their interests, values, and perspectives (Asante 1980, 2003). Concepts employed from this theoretical framework provided a lens for the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative data collected and analyzed. The setting for this study was a private Afrocentric prekindergarten through 8th-grade school. The participants in this study were 3 African American teachers. Data collected and analyzed supported using culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy to produce improved academic outcomes for students of color (Boykin, 1984, 1994; Hale-Benson, 1986; King, 1991; Ladson-Billings, 1994; Shujaa, 1995; Villegas, 1991). Findings suggested that in selected academic settings improved academic performance occurred for African American students when teachers used culture relevant and responsive pedagogy. The following themes were embedded in the pedagogy: self-determination, academic empowerment, cultural empowerment, and family/community empowerment. The findings implied a need for teachers and teacher-training institutions to re-examine, recommit, and reinstitute culturally relevant and responsive pedagogy that respects and addresses the culture, education, and social improvement for positive academic outcomes for all children.

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The National Writing Project (NWP) conducts four and five-week professional development summer workshops that K-16 expert teachers consistently praise as transformative. The central question posed in this dissertation focuses on whether the NWP workshop, based on a teachers-teaching-teachers design, could also serve as an effective professional development vehicle for transforming and preparing graduate student instructors (GSIs) to teach first-year composition. This question arises out of the need for knowledge-building graduate student preparation programs that keep pace with the increased demands of the first-year composition course and of the first-year composition students. Methods used to explore the feasibility of the NWP to prepare GSIs involve an analytic autoethnography and two survey research instruments. In the autoethnography, the researcher views the various processes experienced throughout the NWP workshop through the twin lenses of Transformation Learning (TL) theory and constructivist learning pedagogy. In the survey research, the researcher investigates the GSI participants' and local site directors' perceptions concerning the value and benefits of the NWP workshop to prepare GSIs for teaching writing. The researcher's analytic autoethnography reveals the transformative effects of the NWP experience on the teacher-frames of the researcher and of those peers attending the same NWP institute, while the surveys of the GSI participants and the local site directors reveal similarly positive effects of NWP pedagogy for preparing GSI for teaching writing. Based on these findings, combined with foundational support from the NWP meta-analysis of student writing outcomes of NWP participating teachers generated by the Local Sites Research Initiatives (LSRI), along with the independent Inverness Associates' studies focusing on the perceptions of teachers involved in the NWP's New-Teacher Initiative (NTI), the researcher recommends a pilot project involving a NWP designed pre-semester workshop for graduate student instructors prior to teaching first-year composition.

Zambia has ratified vital international conventions that promote the rights of PWDs and domesticated some of them in various legislatures and policies. However, access to the built environment for PWDs does not seem to be improving. There is, therefore, a need to understand the challenges that the Zambian legal framework that regulates the design of the built environment faces in ensuring adequate access to the built environment for PWDs. This study explored Zambia's legal framework that regulates the designing of the built environment for sufficiency in ensuring adequate access to the built environment for PWD. The study is a qualitative descriptive case study of the said legal framework. The study reviewed Zambia’s architecture, equality and disability laws from 2012 to the present from a socio-legal perspective. They were then analysed by transformative equality principles for accessibility. It has been established that the legal framework in Zambia is not sufficient to ensure adequate access to the built environment for PWDs.

The firstly explicitly adopted Feminist Foreign Policy was developed in Sweden in 2014. Since then, seven countries have so far adopted a so-called Feminist Foreign Policy. Nevertheless, no common definition of Feminist Foreign Policy has been agreed upon, nor by the States neither by the scholars. Different States have therefore adopted Feminist Foreign policies with different understanding. Recently adopted Feminist Foreign policies in Europe, France (2018), Spain (2021) and Germany (2023) have been hardly analysed against feminist perspectives and Feminist International Relations theory. To contribute to fill in in this gap the research aims at responding to the following research question: What understanding of feminism and feminist International Relations theories underpin the different Feminist Foreign Policies? The findings demonstrate that FFPs are not a unified phenomenon, they are not grounded on a common understanding of feminism and feminist theories. These three Feminist Foreign policies differ in their gender transformative ambitions, understanding of gender equality, embracement of intersectionality or appetite for inclusion and listening to marginalized groups. Diverse perspectives of feminism and elements pertaining to Feminist International Relations theory have strongly influenced the Feminist Foreign policies of France, Spain and Germany in dissimilar ways.

The purpose of the study is to analyze the challenges of coaching leadership in practice, by examining middle managers’ perceptions of their leadership. The study analyzes the challenges based on Habermas’ (1995) communication theory, Krams’ (1983) theory of mentor relationships, but also Sobel and Holms’ (2019) description of coaching as leadership. Coaching as leadership results from the transformative leadership, specifically from the content "inspirational motivation" where the leader and the manager are in focus when it comes to being a good role model. The study is a qualitative survey based on semi-structured interviews where the respondents are managers closest to the employees, often referred to as supervisors. The respondents were selected on the basis of a goal-directed sample where these came to be relevant for the research questions that were developed and for the implementation of the study. Six interviews were conducted and then analyzed with a thematic analysis according to Braun and Clarke (2006). When transcribing all the interviews, both main and sub-themes emerged, which were then analyzed and discussed between both of us authors. The choice of analysis method was based on the transcriptions contribution to creating a clear structure and thus facilitating the analysis of the material. The results showed that coaching leadership as it is theoretically described did not always correspond with the respondents' perceptions of their leadership. During the interviews, it was discovered that much of the leadership in the various organizations was situational with challenges that mainly revolved around communication, time and contextual factors. / <p>Godkänt 2022-06-15.</p>