Estimates of “Street Youth” (SY) (those who live/work on the streets) show 150 million around the world, with approximately 50,000 in Kenya alone as of 2018. Challenges these youth face remain a significant barrier to national governments achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) targets, as formal schools limit access or fail to provide meaningful and supported learning experiences for SY. However, informal learning spaces that empower youth to solve problems themselves may provide them with the knowledge and skills they are denied by formal schools. SY rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration centers all around the world emphasize and place education at the center of their operations. Recommendations for educational services for SY include providing flexible, alternative education and skills training for youth unable or unwilling to return to school. However, the lack of skilled professionals working with the SY population is one of the most critical challenges.<div>To meet the learning needs of vast numbers of SY, teachers already connected to this population must be trained in teaching more empowering, skill-based courses such as engineering, which are typically complex. Such innovative, problem-centered curricula demand skilled teachers who are prepared to facilitate a more student-centered classroom. However, sub-Saharan Africa faces a shortage of 17 million formally qualified teachers, even for its formal public schools. Therefore, connecting with the teachers in the context and training them in engineering teaching is crucial. Researchers have long argued the need for teacher professional development to be continuous and long-term. Through this dissertation, I present a Design-Based Research (DBR) study of untrained Teacher Professional Development (TPD) in collaboration with three aspiring engineering teachers at an alternative school for SY in western Kenya. I draw on the theoretical framework of Situated Learning and Communities of Practice (CoP) to discuss the outcomes of a three-phase professional development program. Each phase was designed using the recommendation from McKenney et al. (2006) to include three iterative micro-cycles of analysis, design, and evaluation leading to a meso-cycle. In total, three meso-cycles were completed to arrive at DBR’s final phase of reflection and generation of design principles.<br></div><div>In the first phase, teachers in this study adopted reflective practice strategies to increase their awareness of the practice. Analysis from the study showed that the teachers individually and collectively showed resilience to challenging and complex experiences by establishing a strong foundation for the community of practice. In the second phase, teachers engaged in action research to improve both teaching and learning outcomes. Results demonstrated increased active participation of the teachers in their teaching practice, and developed new understandings of engineering teaching. However, the first two studies also showed the challenges limiting the teachers from constructing an engineering teacher identity and unresolved questions about the sustainability of the TPD. Therefore, in the last phase, the teachers adopted mentoring new teachers as a strategy to develop their identities and sustain the engineering TPD.<br></div><div>The findings from the three phases resulted in generation of design outcomes that include a situated understanding of the theory in this fragile context and design principles that are transferable in comparable settings. Implications of this work suggest a sustainable teacher professional development model for untrained engineering teachers in fragile contexts and present relevant design principles for the CoP.<br></div>

En människas röst är komplex och ofta svår för otränade lyssnare att beskriva verbalt. Det gör att värdefull information riskerar att gå förlorad när öronvittnen intervjuas i samband med en brottsutredning. Syftet i denna studie var att göra öronvittnesmål mer användbara genom att undersöka akustiska korrelat till vanliga röstbeskrivningar. 126 otränade lyssnare deltog i en enkätundersökning och bedömde röstegenskaper hos sju medelålders män som läste en text på svenska. Resultaten visade att röster med högre förstaformant bedömdes som mer spända och hårda, och röster med högre tredjeformant uppfattades som mer vanliga. Kvinnor bedömde röster med högre grundtonsfrekvens som ljusare. Röster som uppfattades som ljusa bedömdes i hög grad som spända och ostadiga, och de som bedömdes som mjuka tenderade att bedömas som mer avslappnade och melodiska. Resultaten bör betraktas med viss försikthet då antalet stimuli var lågt, men de indikerar att formanter har en avgörande betydelse för vår röstperception. Resultaten kan bidra till en ökad förståelse för den information som förmedlas i ett öronvittnesmål samt till att utforma effektiva metoder för att intervjua öronvittnen. På sikt är även akustiska fantomröster en intressant tillämpning. Kommande studier uppmanas att undersöka liknande frågeställningar med fler talare och med andra typer av talmaterial. / A person's voice is complex and often difficult for untrained listeners to describe verbally. This may lead to valuable information being lost in criminal investigations involving earwitnesses. The purpose of this study was to investigate acoustic correlates to common voice descriptions in order to enhance the usefulness of earwitness testimonies. 126 untrained listeners assessed voice characteristics of seven middle-aged men reading a Swedish text. Voices with a higher first formant were judged as more tense and harsh, and voices with a higher third formant were perceived as more common. Women rated voices with a higher fundamental frequency as higher. Voices that were perceived as high were also judged as tense and unstable, and those perceived as soft tended to be judged as relaxed and melodic. The results should be considered with some caution due to the low number of stimuli, but they indicate that formants play a crucial role in voice perception. The results can contribute to the understanding of earwitness testimonies as well as to develop effective methods for interviewing earwitnesses. Acoustic phantom voices are discussed as an interesting application. Future studies should investigate similar questions with more speakers as well as other types of speech material.

This paper studies if the Minimax theorem holds for the behaviour of trained and untrained actors in the field. This is explored with data from 1043 football penalty kicks from professionals of the German Bundesliga and for 268 penalty kicks from untrained players. Minimax makes good predictions about the collective patterns emerging from the behaviour of experienced actors, as well as about their individual strategic actions. However, this is not true for untrained actors. In the next step it is explored if, the professional players learned their behaviour, or if they were selected into their roles because they had the required abilities. The data suggests that the professionals were selected by the competitive conditions of professional sports.