Online and Offline Gaming as Support for English Education in Swedish Upper Elementary Schools with Focus on Reading Comprehension Online and Offline Gaming as Support for English Education in Swedish Upper Elementary Schools with Focus on Reading Comprehension : A literature review about online and offline gaming as a resource for developing English reading comprehension in Swedish schools in year 4-6

The aim of this degree thesis is to see what research says about the use of computer and video games to support upper elementary pupils’ development in English reading comprehension in Swedish schools. Other goals are to see how online and offline gaming can be integrated in the Swedish schools and what attitudes teachers have towards gaming. The method used is a systematic literature review and the purpose is to analyze chosen articles and to find relevant content that answers the research questions. Five articles were chosen from different databases and were systematically analyzed in this thesis. The results show that online gaming as support for education can be rewarding for some upper elementary pupils in English learning. However, in English reading comprehension there is not much research found which means that more research needs to be made within this area. Moreover, involving online gaming in English language learning seems to be a challenge for teachers mostly because of their lack of knowledge about the subject, even though they are positive to gaming. The lack of knowledge about the subject could be altered with more education and courses in the area.

Manager's task to support integrated autonomy at the workplace : Results from an intervention

A new managerial task arises in today’s working life: to provide conditions for and influence interaction between actors and thus to enable the emergence of organizing structure in tune with a changing environment. We call this the enabling managerial task. The goal of this paper is to study whether training first line managers in the enabling managerial task could lead to changes in the work for the subordinates. This paper presents results from questionnaires answered by the subordinates of the managers before and after the training. The training was organized as a learning network and consisted of eight workshops carried out over a period of one year (September 2009–June 2010), where the managers met with each other and the researchers once a month. Each workshop consisted of three parts, during three and a half hours. The first hour was devoted to joint reflection on a task that had been undertaken since the last workshop; some results were presented from the employee pre-assessments, followed by relevant theory and illuminating practices, finally the managers created new tasks for themselves to undertake during the following month. The subordinates’ answers show positive change in all of the seventeen scales used to assess it. The improvements are significant in scales measuring the relationship between the manager and the employees, as well as in those measuring interaction between employees. It is concluded that the result was a success for all managers that had the possibility of using the training in their management work.

Sjuksköterskors erfarenheter och upplevelser av att vårda patienter med självskadebeteende : en kvalitativ intervjustudie

Bakgrund: Självskadebeteende är ett sedan länge förekommande fenomen som kan vara framträdande hos patienter med en oförmåga att reglera affekter. Det innebär ett lidande för patienterna och det bidrar till en känslomässig påverkan hos sjuksköterskorna. För att skapa en gynnsam omvårdnadsrelation behövs resurser, kunskap, kompetens och stöd för sjuksköterskorna i omvårdnaden. Syfte: Beskriva sjuksköterskans erfarenheter och upplevelser av att vårda patienter med självskadebeteende. Metod: Data samlades in från sex sjuksköterskor genom kvalitativa semi-strukturerade intervjuer med stöd av en intervjuguide. Materialet har analyserats med kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Det framkom fyra kategorier "Att självskada", "Behov av kompetens", "Ge omvårdnad" och "Känslomässig påverkan". Sjuksköterskorna lyfte svårigheter i omvårdnaden, behovet av kompetens och den känslomässiga påverkan de drabbades av i mötet med patienter med självskadebeteende. Slutsats: Självskadebeteende skapar många olika känslor hos sjuksköterskorna, både positiva och negativa. Sjuksköterskorna upplevde att patienter med självskadebeteende var en svår, men intressant grupp att arbeta med. Tidsbrist, stress och upprepade självskadehandlingar var påfrestande och de känslor som uppkom hos sjuksköterskorna var inte alltid lätta för dem att hantera. Sjuksköterskorna poängterade vikten av att fånga upp patienter i tid men beskrev även svårigheterna i att kunna göra det. Sjuksköterskorna efterfrågade utökat stöd, kunskap och bättre resurser för att känna sig trygga i sin yrkesroll samt för att kunna erbjuda patienter med självskadebeteende en god och säker omvårdnad.

The Importance of Work-Life Balance Opportunities and Support from the Perspective of Nursing Stu-dents in Dalarna, Sweden

There is a shortage of nurses leading to challenges in recruitment in Sweden and many other countries. Especially for less populated regions recruitment can be chal-lenging. Nurses often face difficulties with work-life balance (WLB). This study aims to identify the importance of WLB opportunities and support that make a work-place attractive from the perspective of nursing students studying in Dalarna. A questionnaire was distributed via email to 525 students enrolled in the nursing bach-elor program at Dalarna University. They were asked to rate the importance of 15 sub questions regarding WLB opportunities and support. These sub questions were asked in order to analyze the importance of 15 components regarding WLB oppor-tunities and support. 196 students (37 percent) answered the questionnaire. Three WLB components, working from home, childcare and rooms for breastfeeding, were found to be not important to nursing students studying in Dalarna. This was reason-able due to the profession of nursing and the WLB support provided by the Swedish government. Cultural factors, such as the organization being positive towards using WLB opportunities and support, were more important than structural factors, such as the possibility to work part-time. Moreover, to have a manager that is supportive towards using WLB opportunities and support was found to be the most important factor and having workplace practical support such as childcare was found least im-portant. Furthermore, contrary to the expected results, no statistical significance was found on the influence on the importance of all combined relevant WLB opportuni-ties and support by the sociodemographic variables; gender, semester of studies, age, having children, months of work experience and work experience in the healthcare sector. However, nine individual components were found to be influ-enced by one or more sociodemographic variables. Therefore, some recommenda-tions on how to target specific groups of individuals were made. However, the con-clusion of the study is that, regardless of the sociodemographic variables and gov-ernmental support, organizations should offer new nurses opportunities and support to gain a balance between work and life, especially in terms of cultural factors.