Skilsmässor och separationer : Betydelsen av rollspecialisering och jämställdhet

Divorces and separations: the impact of role specialisation and equality At the same time as women made their large scale entrance on the labour market divorce rates increased in most western societies. This combination of societal trends was widely understood from the perspective of the specialization and trading model, which implies undermined marital stability through decreasing interdependency between husband and wife. We argue the need to acknowledge the new roles, and perceptions of these roles, men and women have in order to explain differences in separation and stability among couples. When both partners are expecting to be in paid labour and share housework responsibilities, specialisation could actually be a risk factor for cohabitational dissolution. This article uses a ten year longitudinal database of all Swedish cohabiting first time parents in 1993. The analyses generally support what could be labelled a role balance model on separation rather than the specialization model. Looking at the father’s participation in childcare this was quite clear, where the man’s outtake of parental leave for the first child was shown to be related to reduced hazards of separation. In the same way equal distribution of the household labour market incomes between the partners was related to lower hazards of separation.

Discourse strategies and power roles in student-led distance learning

The assertion of identity and power via computer-mediated communication in the context of distance or web-based learning presents challenges to both teachers and students. When regular, face-to-face classroom interaction is replaced by online chat or group discussion forums, participants must avail themselves of new techniques and tactics for contributing to and furthering interaction, discussion, and learning. During student-only chat sessions, the absence of teacher-led, face-to-face classroom activities requires the students to assume leadership roles and responsibilities normally associated with the teacher. This situation raises the questions of who teaches and who learns; how students discursively negotiate power roles; and whether power emerges as a function of displayed expertise and knowledge or rather the use of authoritative language. This descriptive study represents an examination of a corpus of task-based discussion logs among Vietnamese students of distance learning courses in English linguistics. The data reveal recurring discourse strategies for 1) negotiating the progression of the discussion sessions, 2) asserting and questioning knowledge, and 3) assuming or delegating responsibility. Power is defined ad hoc as the ability to successfully perform these strategies. The data analysis contributes to a better understanding of how working methods and materials can be tailored to students in distance learning courses, and how such students can be empowered by being afforded opportunities and effectively encouraged to assert their knowledge and authority.

The physical classroom environment : roles, conceptions, and preferences

The problem addressed in this thesis is that a considerable proportion of students around the world attend school in inadequate facilities, which is detrimental for the students’ learning outcome. The overall objective in this thesis is to develop a methodology, with a novel approach to involve teachers, to generate a valuable basis for decisions regarding design and improvement of physical school environment, based on the expressed needs for a specific school, municipality, or district as well as evidence from existing research. Three studies have been conducted to fulfil the objective: (1) a systematic literature review and development of a theoretical model for analysing the role of the physical environment in schools; (2) semi structured interviews with teachers to get their conceptions of the physical school environment; (3) a stated preference study with experimental design as an online survey. Wordings from the transcripts from the interview study were used when designing the survey form. The aim of the stated preference study was to examine the usability of the method when applied in this new context of physical school environment. The result is the methodology with a mixed method chain where the first step involves a broad investigation of the specific circumstances and conceptions for the specific school, municipality, or district. The second step is to use the developed theoretical model and results from the literature study to analyse the results from the first step and transform them in to a format that fits the design of a stated preference study. The final step is a refined version of the procedure of the performed stated preference study.