Search

This paper explores how participants in a Swedish secondary school do gender talk with comics. Swedish schools are tasked with working with gender, but this can be a challenge for many teachers, and finding materials to work with gender aspects can be difficult. Meanwhile, literary research on comics has shown them to be a potential tool for problematising gender, but little educational research has investigated the gender discussions that comics can promote. Therefore, using conversation‐analytical methodology, we have documented situated classroom talk through video observations, focusing on the social construction of gender. Five excerpts are shown, where different aspects of gender talk are displayed and discussed. Results indicate that although students deconstruct and criticise gendered binaries in characteristics and behaviour from comics' imagery, this critique remains superficial, revolving around the hypersexualised body imagery of the muscular superhero the Phantom or the outdated femininity of the girly Daisy Duck. Although comics present an opportunity for discussions of norm critique in the classroom, we suggest that more social‐realistic comics, wherein gender roles are more subtle and nuanced, be used for furthering the research on this topic and allowing students more width when it comes to deconstructing gender binaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interactive touchscreens are currently entering into educational practice, little is known about what this means for learning in early childhood and, in particular, how touchscreens shape action and communication. In this paper, we examine the interactions of 2‐year‐olds and their teachers in a multilingual preschool in Sweden. We analyse the communicative environment between the children, teachers and shared touchscreens and books in the context of reading. A mixed‐methods analysis was used, taking a concept of action that includes both verbal, non‐verbal utterances and digital touch. The analysis shows a reconfiguration to the interactional dynamic where children perform comparable amounts of actions in sessions with the touchscreen and book reading but less talk during the touchscreen sessions. However, while talking less, children display other types of communicative actions. We analyse the changing interactional dynamic that follows, its implications to learning and early childhood pedagogical practice and how interaction can be reconceptualised as cycles of communication and action in which educational scaffolding unfolds. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Touchscreens are a significant part of children's lives and educational curricula.There is considerable uncertainty on how touchscreens can be incorporated into early childhood education.Little is known about how educational social interaction changes with touchscreens such as iPads.What this paper adds A mixed methods multimodal analysis of the changing actions and dynamics of iPads as compared with bookreading.Children's patterns of communication change towards less talk and more bodily communication, while teachers' actions remain somewhat similar.Touch actions change the dynamics of interaction, can alter the pedagogical situation and bring a reconceptualisation towards a cyclical and embodied view of interaction.Implications for practice and/or policy New patterns of action may require a recalibration of educational practices.Teachers need to attend to new sets of touch actions that children use to communicate and act with as displays of knowledge.The use of touch screens should be seen as complementary to established practices of language and literacy training (such as book reading) rather than replacing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The impact of hearing impairment is typically studied in terms of its effects on speech perception, yet this fails to account for the interactive nature of communication. Recently, there has been a move towards studying the effects of age‐related hearing impairment on interaction, often using referential communication tasks; however, little is known about how interaction in these tasks compares to everyday communication. Aims: To investigate utterances and requests for clarification used in one‐to‐one conversations between older adults with hearing impairment and younger adults without hearing impairment, and between two younger adults without hearing impairment. Methods & Procedures: A total of 42 participants were recruited to the study and split into 21 pairs, 10 with two younger adults without hearing impairment and 11 with one younger adult without hearing impairment and one older participant with age‐related hearing impairment (hard of hearing). Results from three tasks—spontaneous conversation and two trials of a referential communication task—were compared. A total of 5 min of interaction in each of the three tasks was transcribed, and the frequency of requests for clarification, mean length of utterance and total utterances were calculated for individual participants and pairs. Outcomes & Results: When engaging in spontaneous conversation, participants made fewer requests for clarification than in the referential communication, regardless of hearing status/age (p ≤ 0.012). Participants who were hard of hearing made significantly more requests for clarification than their partners without hearing impairment in only the second trial of the referential communication task (U = 25, p = 0.019). Mean length of utterance was longer in spontaneous conversation than in the referential communication task in the pairs without hearing impairment (p ≤ 0.021), but not in the pairs including a person who was hard of hearing. However, participants who were hard of hearing used significantly longer utterances than their partners without hearing impairment in the spontaneous conversation (U = 8, p < 0.001) but not in the referential communication tasks. Conclusions & Implications: The findings suggest that patterns of interaction observed in referential communication tasks differ to those observed in spontaneous conversation. The results also suggest that fatigue may be an important consideration when planning studies of interaction that use multiple conditions of a communication task, particularly when participants are older or hard of hearing. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject: Age‐related hearing impairment is known to affect communication; however, the majority of studies have focused on its impact on speech perception in controlled conditions. This indicates little about the impact on everyday, interactive, communication. What this study adds to the existing knowledge: We investigated utterance length and requests for clarification in one‐to‐one conversations between pairs consisting of one older adult who is hard of hearing and one younger adult without hearing impairment, or two younger adults without hearing impairment. Results from three tasks (two trials of a referential communication task and spontaneous conversation) were compared. The findings demonstrated a significant effect of task type on requests for clarification in both groups. Furthermore, in spontaneous conversation, older adults who were hard of hearing used significantly longer utterances than their partners without hearing impairment. This pattern was not observed in the referential communication task. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work?: These findings have important implications for generalizing results from controlled communication tasks to more everyday conversation. Specifically, they suggest that the previously observed strategy of monopolizing conversation, possibly as an attempt to control it, may be more frequently used by older adults who are hard of hearing in natural conversation than in a more contrived communication task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue in this paper that corporate language policies have significant power implications that are easily overlooked. By drawing on previous work on power in organizations (Clegg, 1989), we examine the complex power implications of language policy decisions by looking at three levels of analysis: episodic social interaction, identity/subjectivity construction, and reconstruction of structures of domination. In our empirical analysis, we focus on the power implications of the choice of Swedish as the corporate language in the case of the recent banking sector merger between the Finnish Merita and the Swedish Nordbanken. Our findings show how language skills become empowering or disempowering resources in organizational communication, how these skills are associated with professional competence, and how this leads to the creation of new social networks. The case also illustrates how language skills are an essential element in the construction of international confrontation, lead to a construction of superiority and inferiority, and also reproduce post-colonial identities in the merging bank. Finally, we also point out how such policies ultimately lead to the reification of post-colonial and neo-colonial structures of domination in multinational corporations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study of the interplay between nurses and doctors in medical and surgical wards in Sweden. The social order on the wards is seen as a negotiated order, the result of a continuous negotiation between doctors and nurses. The negotiated :order perspective is argued to be a more appropriate means of understanding the interaction on wards than the traditional doctor-nurse game model which has dominated research until now. In particular, the study shows the importance of analysing the structural basis of negotiations and its knowledge context in order to understand the interplay, of doctors' and nurses' opportunities for exerting power on the wards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lay intuition suggests that some people are better than others at strategic social interaction. Nonetheless, identifying reliable predictors of individual differences in negotiation performance has been difficult. In this investigation, we hypothesized that an individuals' skill in understanding the structure of socially interdependent situations, and in best responding to others' likely behavior in such situations, should predict their negotiation performance. We adapted existing and novel social guessing games to measure such skills. In a series of studies with students and business executives in Russia and Sweden, performance in the guessing games predicted better individual outcomes and better joint outcomes in dyadic negotiations. Guessing‐game performance remained predictive of both outcomes after proxies for general mental ability were controlled for. Potential applications to larger‐scale phenomena are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boys' underachievement and oppositional behavior in school has for a long time been the target of various public debates. Drawing on ethnographic data from fieldwork in two Swedish secondary schools, this article explores how the influential theory of boys' anti-school culture can be interpreted as a master narrative that is reproduced, but also contradicted and subverted, by students and teachers in social interaction within local school contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Children with dental behavioural management problems (DBMP) form a heterogeneous group, where personal characteristics play significant roles. Attention to everyday life and family situation as additional background facets may help to better understand and treat these patients. Aim. This study describes everyday life and family situation in child/adolescent patients referred because of DBMP, as compared to patients in ordinary dental care. Design. A study group of 230 referred patients (8–19 years old; 118 girls) was compared to a reference group of 248 same-aged patients (142 girls) without DBMP. Patients and parents were interviewed according to a semistructured protocol. Results. Patients referred because of DBMP more often lived in low socioeconomic status families, had parents not living together, fewer leisure-time activities, and were assessed as doing worse in social interactions compared to the reference group. Half of the study group had personal professional support, and some had experienced interventions by the social authorities. Whether these findings apply also to children/adolescents with DBMP who are not referred to specialist care remains to study. Conclusions. Many children and adolescents referred because of DBMP have a burdensome life and family situation. This should be paid attention to in research and in clinical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We tested the cross-national similarity of additive and interactive variants of the Contingent Consistency Hypothesis in regard to antinuclear activist behavior. We predicted that attitudinally Consistent behavior is influenced (a) more by specific than general attitudes, (b) by facilitation between normative support and personal attitudes in an interactive manner, and (c) by a fundamental or basic social-psychological process that can be demonstrated in people from different Countries and cultures. These three hypotheses were tested for general (pacifist) attitudes, specific (anti-nuclear) attitudes, normative support, and antinuclear political activism in samples of college students from the U.S., England, and Sweden. In each sample, specific attitudes were strong, unique predictors of activist behavior (more so than general attitudes), while normative support had no additive influence on this behavior beyond that explained by attitudes for U.S. and British students. Interaction effects were found for both pacifist and nuclear attitudes in conjunction with normative support among the U.S. students, but only for pacifist attitudes in the British sample and only with antinuclear attitudes in the Swedish sample. In contrast with other studies where interaction effects were hypothesized for behaviors that were deviant or typically initiated by others, the present interactions were obtained for lawful behaviors that are often begun and/or performed alone. With some notable variations, these results were confirmed in each sample, partially validating the cross-national generality of the interactive attitude-behavior model for activist behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental hospitals offer their patients many different kinds of social activities/facilities. One-hundred-and-twenty-seven patients in the long-term care unit at a mental hospital were included in the study. They were divided into three subgroups on the basis of diagnosis: dementia disorder (n = 65), chronic psychotic disorder (n = 38), and chronic non-psychotic disorder (n = 24). An inventory was made of all possible activities/facilities offered to the patients by the mental hospital, with the objective of ascertaining whether participation in social activities/facilities discriminated between the three diagnostic groups. Sixteen activities/facilities were obtained from an inventory by nurses. Stepwise discriminant analysis identified length of stay in hospital, age and the social activities/facilities that separated the three diagnostic groups. The discriminant function analysis showed that participation in social activities, together with length of stay and age, discriminated very well between the demented and the chronic psychotic groups. The discriminant analysis also indicated that patients with chronic psychotic disorder were distinguishable by their frequent participation in social activities, long stay in hospital, and low age. The results obtained can be used when the social activities/facilities in a community care setting are being planned for the various diagnostic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]