This thesis aims at analysing the novel History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera using a queer phenomenological lens in order to reveal to what extent it depicts aspects of sexuality, consent and relationships in a non-heteronormative way. Furthermore, the thesis discusses different ways of making visible the effects of normativity on student’s learning and development through the proposed queer phenomenological pedagogy.  The literary analysis is conducted by implementing queer theory, queer phenomenology and reader-response to reveal and convey the above-mentioned aspects in a way that enables critical thinking from a non-heteronormative perspective. The pedagogical implications show how the different aspects of sex/sexuality, consent and relationships can be put in juxtaposition and evaluated to broaden the pupils’ understanding and perception. The thesis concludes that the novel History Is All You Left Me contain several examples of sexuality, consent and relationships, amongst others, in a non-heteronormative way, which can be put in juxtaposition in the classroom to further enable critical thinking regarding the topics. Furthermore, the thesis concludes that a queer phenomenological pedagogy can work against normalisation and for pupils finding or expressing their identity and uniqueness.

Reading is considered to be one of the main factors for success throughout the compulsory education and into the years in upper secondary school, and is often connected with instrumental values, such as better grades and higher level of empathy. However, good readers are seldom drawn to books as means to improve their grades, but enjoy reading in its own right. The curriculum for for the upper secondary education in Swedish on the other hand stipulates that students should learn to analyse literature – i.e. learn how to do a reading rather than develop as readers.This study looks at two groups of upper secondary school students discussing two different young-adult novels, and analyses the recordings from a reader-response perspective. As readers they focus mainly on the plot, and their knowledge of story line and genre seems to draw heavily from film, but they also come to the text with different expectations and experiences, which influence their reading. An initial resistance for one reader could be the same factor making the book too trivial for another. Possible implications for teachers are that consideration for the aim of the reading should be made when choosing books for students, as it might be counterproductive to expect inexperienced readers to perform literary analysis if the goal is to develop reading.

OBJECTIVES: Acoustic stapedius reflex threshold (ART) tests are included in a standard clinical acoustic immittance test battery as an objective cross-check with behavioral results and to help identify site of lesion. In traditional clinical test batteries, middle-ear admittance of a 226 Hz probe is estimated using ear-canal measurements in the presence of a reflex-activating stimulus. In the wideband (WB) acoustic immittance ART test used in this study, the pure-tone probe is replaced by a WB probe stimulus and changes in absorbed power are estimated using ear-canal measurements in the presence of the activator. The ART is defined as the lowest level at which a criterion change in admittance (clinical) or absorbed power (WB) is observed in the presence of the activator. In the present study, ARTs were obtained in adults with normal hearing using the clinical, manual method and with a new WB automated adaptive threshold detection method. It was hypothesized that the WB test would result in lower ARTs than the clinical test because reflex-related changes in power absorbance could be observed across multiple frequency bands in the WB test compared with a single frequency in the traditional test. DESIGN: Data were collected in a prospective research design. ARTs were obtained in ipsilateral and contralateral conditions using 500, 1000, 2000 Hz, and broadband noise (BBN) activators on a clinical system and on an experimental WB system. The bandwidth of the BBN activator was 125 to 4000 Hz on the clinical system and 200 to 8000 Hz on the wideband system. ARTs were estimated at both tympanometric peak pressure (TPP) and ambient pressure on the WB system. Data were collected in both ears of 39 adults (21 males) of mean age 47.7 years (range 23-72 years). Differences in ARTs among the three threshold estimation methods (clinical, WB at TPP, WB at ambient) were examined using the general linear model repeated measures test in SPSS. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons were completed with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. Statistical significance was defined as p < 0.05 for all analyses. RESULTS: ARTs obtained on the WB system at TPP and ambient pressure were significantly lower than obtained on the clinical system. ARTs obtained on the WB system at TPP were significantly higher than at ambient pressure in the 500 and 2000 Hz ipsilateral conditions. CONCLUSIONS: WB automated adaptive ARTs in normal-hearing adults were lower than for clinical methods when measured at TPP and ambient pressure. Lower presentation levels required to estimate ART in the WB test may be more tolerable to patients. Patients with ARTs that are not present at the maximum level of a traditional reflex test may have present ARTs with a WB ART test, which may reduce the need to refer for additional testing for possible retrocochlear involvement. Automation of the test may allow clinicians more time to attend to the other requisite tasks of a hearing evaluation and make the system useful for telehealth applications.

Bakgrund: I primärvården arbetar både grundutbildade och specialistutbildade sjuksköterskor. Det finns behov av fördjupad förståelse om sjuksköterskors erfarenheter och upplevelser av bemötandet med unga vuxna med psykisk ohälsa via telefonrådgivning. Telefonrådgivning är en stor del av sjuksköterskornas arbete på vårdcentralerna. Det är av vikt att ha och regelbundet utveckla sin kompetens om psykisk ohälsa då det är en växande grupp. Syfte: Syftet är att beskriva sjuksköterskors upplevelser av att bemöta unga vuxna med psykisk ohälsa via telefonrådgivning i primärvården.  Metod: Kvalitativ metod med induktiv ansats valdes. Nio semistrukturerade intervjuer utfördes med sjuksköterskor som arbetar med telefonrådgivning på vårdcentraler i södra Sverige. Analysen skedde genom kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: De flesta sjuksköterskor upplever att de har kunskap om hur de ska bemöta unga vuxna med psykisk ohälsa i telefonrådgivning dock önskar de en fördjupning av sin kompetens för att göra samtalen bättre. De önskar flödesscheman för att inte missa viktiga frågor. Det upplevs som en viktig del i anamnesen att ställa frågor om suicidrisk eller om det finns tankar på självskadebeteende. Tiden upplevs vara en stor utmaning i samtalen. Slutsats: Det finns ett stort behov av att söka för psykisk ohälsa för unga vuxna. Sjuksköterskorna upplevdes trygga i rådgivningen men önskade ytterligare utbildning i psykisk ohälsa för att förbättra samtalen. Tidsbrist påverkar förmågan att göra en utförlig anamnes och stötta unga vuxna med psykisk ohälsa. Att ställa frågor om suicid är en naturlig del i samtalen om psykisk ohälsa. En ökad kunskap kan bidra till att stärka patientsäkerheten. / Background: Both graduate nurses and specialist nurses work in primay care settings. A deeper understanding of nurses´ experience of meeting young adults with mental illness during telephone consulting is necessary which is a substantial part of working in primary care settings. It is important to have and increase knowledge of mental illness as it is growing.     Aim: To describe nurses’ experience of meeting young adults with mental illness via telephone consultations in primary care.  Method: Qualitative method with an inductive design was chosen. Data was collected using semi-structured interviews. Nine nurses who works with telephone consultations in primary care in southern Sweden participated. Data was analyzed with inductive content analysis.  Results: The majority of the nurses have knowledge about meeting young adults with mental illness in telephone consulting but desire to deepen the knowledge to improve call quality. They wish to have a flowchart to avoid missing important questions. It is an important part of the nursing anamnesis to ask about suicide risk and risk of self-harm. Time is a considerable challenge in the call.   Conclusion: There is a big demand on seeking care for mental illness for young adults. The nurses felt secure in telephone consulting but wished for more knowledge to improve call quality. Lack of time effects the possibility to make a detailed anamnesis and support the the young adult with mental illness. It felt like a natural part of the call to ask about suicide and risk of self-harm. Improved knowledge could improve patient security,

This thesis seeks to explore the related research literature surrounding representations and portrayals of protagonists of various multicultural backgrounds in series or transitional books. As teachers, it is essential to acknowledge the lack of multicultural characters in children's literature among elementary classroom bookshelves and learn how to incorporate literature featuring strong main characters of varying races and ethnicities so that children can see role models who mirror their own contexts. Prior studies, such as Gangi (2008) and Green and Hopenwasser (2017) have examined the deficiency of multicultural literature in the classroom, particularly among transitional stories, which shows the importance of exploring this topic. Furthermore, Green and Hopenwasser (2017) emphasize the importance of equal representation of transitional books with characters of diverse ethnicities, as they act as "mirrors and windows" for students to reflect upon themselves. These studies argue that to prevent the "whitewashing" of literature for primary grades, teachers should be cautious while choosing series or transitional books. I conducted an equity audit on three series or transitional books from different time periods, commonly found among elementary classroom libraries to explore ethnic and racial representations of protagonists to the actual demographics of the third-grade student population. Administering this equity audit also determined that popular series or transitional books are advantageous to include in classroom libraries when protagonists are portrayed as non-stereotypical experiencing real-life situations. The findings of this equity audit have the potential for educators to improve their methods choosing literature with characters of diverse races and ethnicities and improve methods of integrating multicultural literature into lessons.

No description available.

Set in an imagined pre-colonial/ medieval southern African kingdom, A Smoke that Thunders or Godtouched is an epic fantasy novel that tracks the lives of three magical Black girls taking on the gods and the patriarchy.

Our purpose is to examine the possibilities of Bakhtinian dialogical analysis for understanding students' experiences of medical training. Twenty-three interviews were conducted with eleven British medical students intercalating in psychology. Forty emotionally resonant key moments were identified for analysis. Our analysis illustrates students' use of the professional genre to present their training as emotionally neutral. However, we show how medical training can be framed in more unofficial and affective-laden ways in which threshold moments of crisis are presented as space-time breaches characteristic of the genres of adventure-wonder and adventure-ordeal. This affect was often depotentiated in the narratives through brief allusion to the professional genre. This cycling between genres suggests that the students were searching for an appropriate way in which to frame their experiences, a central dilemma being the extent to which medical training makes sense within an immediate and affect-laden, or future-orientated and affect-neutral, pedagogy. Finally, we identify how consultants are an important aspect of the affective experience of medical training who, at their best, offer inspiring exemplars of flexible movement between official and unofficial ways of being a doctor. In conclusion, we demonstrate the potential of genres to make sense, and to organize the experience, of medical training spatially in terms of moving between personal and impersonal contact, temporally in terms of moving between the extraordinary and routine, and affectively in terms of moving between potent and neutral affect. Learning to use the professional genre is part of enculturation as a doctor and can be helpful in providing a framework restoring coherence and composure through engaging with, and reformulating, difficult experiences. However, it is important to take seriously the resistance many of the students demonstrated to the professional genre as a possible barometer of its acceptability to the general public.

As Skolverket (2022b) highlights, reading fiction novels can develop students’ understanding of both themselves and others, as well as challenge new ways of thinking about the world. This study aims to examine how racialized characters and multicultural encounters are portrayed in four chosen young adult novels, and to discuss their didactic potential. To accomplish this, the young adult novels were chosen through asking Swedish teachers what young adult novels they used. The method used is a qualitative thematic text analysis. Moreover, the material has been analyzed through two main themes: Racialized who are observed and Racialized who observe. In addition, three subthemes have been subject to our analysis: exclusion as feeling and action, social relations and the importance of place. Further, the theoretical basis of the study is based on concepts which include multiculturalism, racialization, representation, the Other, and recognition. Accordingly, the results suggest that racialized characters are often portrayed as the deviant and exotic Other, and this is done through clear as well as subtle mental and linguistic representations, which reinforce the multicultural encounters characterized by power structures. Finally, we discussed their didactic potential, such as the advantages of the double perspective and counter-stories, in fostering students’ understanding and empathy towards all cultural identities.

Multicultural literature is a very important tool in today's classrooms because it enables teachers and students to learn about the practices, historical background for attitudes, norms and customs of other cultures and peoples. / Ph. D.