The purpose of the study was to evaluate the function of TalkingMats in a group of people with Huntington?s disease, with main focus on theeffectiveness of communication. Four individuals with Huntington?s diseaseand their group leader participated in the study. The group was videotapedduring four sets of conversations; two with and two without Talking Mats.

The purpose of the study was to examine if Talking Mats® couldsupport communication and participation for people with Huntington?sdisease, carers and a dental hygienist in conversation about oral care. Elevendyads, a person with Huntington's disease and a carer, participated.Conversations with and without mats were video recorded and compared.Each participant responded to a questionnaire about how they experiencedthe conversations. Analysis with Effectiveness Framework of FunctionalCommunication showed that two participants increased their communicativeeffectiveness using Talking Mats®. Feelings of participation increased forall participants and were significantly higher for participants withHuntington's disease.

Light has always fascinated humans but ever since the invention of the first light bulb, the use of artificial lighting has accelerated dramatically. Darkness has never been as rare as today and the overuse of lighting has created a new phenomenon called light pollution. Most living beings are biologically dependent on the recurrent twenty-four-hour rhythm of light and darkness, called the circadian cycle. Human beings are evolutionary developed after this circadian rhythm and the effects of constant artificial light is yet unknown. Scientists fear the consequences of constant lighting and what it means physically, mentally and philosophically for the human species.

To talk about, talk to or with children. A conversation between a child and its teacher should be more than the teacher telling the child what to do, how to act. It should be more like a respectful and reverent meeting between two people where the adult sets the tone. The purpose of this research is to investigate teachers' experiences of conversations with children in need of special assistance. Our issues: What do teachers say about how they meet children in need of support? How do teachers response to students who are in difficulty? What ability have teachers and their school's to meet children in need of support and what appear to be particularly important or problematic issues for them in that work? In order to find some answers to our questions we interviewed ten teachers at two schools.

Analyses of pollen and charcoal in peat cores, together with age-structure data of Pinus sylvestris from a Ledum-Pinus-mire in the Tyresta National Park (south-east Sweden) show the regional vegetation succession and fire history over the last 9000 years. Five major stages of mire development are identified: 1. Lake (c 7000-6400 cal BC); 2. Wet fen (c 6400-6000 cal BC); 3. Deciduous fen (c 6000 cal BC to c cal AD 700); 4.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how six students at a Secondary School describes interaction patterns among teachers when students express in a way that the teacher perceives as racist and/or xenophobic, by presenting a qualitative interview study. The interviews were analyzed by two opposing models of value education: the traditional and the constructive model.The results show that students divide teachers in different categories based on five qualities: 1) they listening, 2) they accept students' opinions, 3) they allow discussion, 4) they are knowledgeable and 5) they can express their own opinions.These qualities are included in the value pedagogical model for deliberative conversations, whose strategies for interaction aim to create an understanding of different rules and values, thereby creating skills of rules by using a democratic approach. In contrast to this model, the rule-based moral education, in which the teacher uses his authority and refers to rules without giving an explanation for why they occurred, as strategies. .

This master thesis examines online reading groups with swedish participants. The aim is, by way of introduction, to investigate what kind of online reading groups that exist and how they work. The overall question of the thesis is: how do a conversation about books on the Internet look like? The theory used is Grounded Theory and this is a methodology which has influenced the hole structure of the study. Grounded Theory apply that issues and hypothesis must be created from the collected material, and the author collected for this reason material in the form of survey answers, email-conversations, blogmaterial and articles to draw up exact issues based on this material.The material was sorted into four different categories; social reading, reading fellowship, virtual freedom and anonymity and the issues were formulated according to this categories.

The aim of the study was to investigate how teachers work with reading aloud. The aim also included examining their ideas about and motives for reading aloud. The study consisted of interviews with three teachers at the lower level of compulsory school along with observation of one of these teachers during a reading aloud session. The interviewed teachers work at three different schools in the same geographical area.The analytical tools chosen for the study were the theories of Rosenblatt. The three basic skills that Damber et al.

The social media arena is rapidly growing and more and moreorganisations take part in the daily ongoing conversations indifferent social media channels. Conversations are being heldacross borders on every available topic and ratings and reviews ofconsumer products and services is one of them. This focus onglobalisation is also the reality of the hospitality- and tourismindustry. Their customers travel across borders and are eager,given the opportunity, to share their experiences with each other.As organisations within the hospitality- and tourism industry meetthese demands in terms of providing technological infrastructurefor information sharing and involve themselves in theseconversations there are some issues that need to be addressed.What does the logic of social media look like? How iscommunicating in social media any different from traditionalmarket communication? And how can hospitality- and tourismorganisations adapt their communication to fit into the logic ofsocial media?To conclude how organisations within the hospitality- and tourismindustry can benefit from the use of social media, I haveinterviewed representatives from a number of organisations andstudied their communication.

Reaching shared understanding during court hearings is a prerequisite to ensure a fair trial and maintaining legal certainty. Every month between 2,000 and 3,000 court hearings in Sweden make use of interpreters. Interpreter-mediated conversations involve an extra discourse compared to monolingual conversations which increases the risk of misunderstandings.Using methodology of conversation analysis the study explores how bilingualism is expressed during interpreter-mediated court hearings, at which occasions the Spanish-speaking laymen switch to Swedish and what function the codeswitching fulfills. The study identifies patterns in codeswitching and categorizes them into six different types. Furthermore the ideology of monolingualism in court is challenged and the advantages and disadvantages of codeswitching is discussed.The analysis concludes that even though certain types of codeswitching lead to delays in the conversation, the interaction is mostly favored by the Spanish-speaking party understanding some Swedish.

The title of the paper aims at a comment by one of the students during an interview. It reflects how most of the students experience the lunches in a specific school where the investigation is made. The question of pedagogical lunches has always interested me. Here I have used a method called the Grounded theory. I carried out a qualitative investigation with a number of methods such as interviews and participating observations.

Communicative recycling, to repeat utterances uttered by oneself or others, is a common phenomenon in all societies and languages. The talk of persons with autism often features recycling. The aim of this study was to identify different forms of recycling in communication involving a boy with autism and to describe its functions. Communication between the boy with autism, who used Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) to communicate, and his parents and teachers was videotaped. The conversations took place in familiar settings, in the boy?s home and at his pre-school.

This qualitative study is about the individual supportive conversation with the school welfare officer in upper secondary school. The main aim of the study was to find out what the pupils get out of a series of conversations with the school welfare officer and what it means for the pupils that the welfare officer belongs to the school organization. Six qualitative interviews were held with pupils who had conversation contact with the school welfare officer during their time at upper secondary school.I found that these pupils and welfare officers were oriented towards change and solutions. I found that the most important thing for the pupils was to achieve a good and trusting relationship with the welfare officer. After this the pupil starts a process of change in cooperation with the welfare officer, with the aim that the pupil should be happy and satisfied with the current life situation.

This final thesis was performed at Ericsson in Gävle between April and June of 2008. Ericsson is a world leading manufacturer of radio base stations (RBS), which handles mobile phone traffic with 2G and 3G technology. The main purpose of this study is to examine if two different types of products (RBS and site material) should have different terms and conditions, today the terms and conditions are the same for both types. During the course of our study we have tried to think of the terms reliability, validity and generalization. The intention in doing that was to keep the thesis at a high academic level. To name an example of this we have tried to keep our minds at an objective level during the interviews and informal conversations.

This study is about how school counselors in Kalmar County view the need for a pupil curative work online, what they believe are ethical aspects to be considered in social work online and if they feel they have sufficient training to conduct pupil curative conversations online. The aim has been to make contact with universities in Sweden to see if they have elements of social work education that lectures a social work online.The study is based on semi-structured interviews with school counselors in Kalmar County. The majority of the interviewed school counselors lacked the knowledge and experience of a student curative work online but some had discussed this phenomenon at work. One counselor worked daily with a pupil curative work online. The intention of interviewing universities to investigate whether there are elements of social work education that addresses a social work online defaulted unfortunately because they choose not to participate in the study.The main conclusion of our study is that school counselors consider themselves lacking sufficient knowledge to conduct pupil curative conversations online.