Young Learners' Perceptions of Learning about Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment: The Struggle for Recognition in School

Based on participatory research with teachers and young learners’, this article explores students’ perceptions of learning about sexual and gender-based harassment in upper secondary school in Norway. Drawing upon theoretical considerations on recognition, intersectionality and legal literacy as educational capital, this article discusses approaches to teaching and learning that could ensure young learners’ rights to active participation and voice, which is an essential element for protection and prevention of harassment. The empirical material indicates that learners would like to learn more about these sensitive issues, although this applies to a greater extent for girls rather than boys. Their wish to learn more about harassment and abuse could be interpreted as a struggle for recognition, motivated by experiences of disrespect. However, defending one’s rights, and having someone defending one’s rights, in school requires both students’ and teachers’ legal literacy, which according to the empirical material is limited.publishedVersio

Sexual violence and children's rights : A mixed methods study of teachers' and students' perceptions of teaching practice in social science education.

The purpose of this doctoral dissertation in social science education is to explore teachers' and students' perceptions of teaching practice related to gender, sexuality, harassment, and abuse in upper secondary school in Norway. This is an article-based dissertation consisting of three articles and an extended abstract. Few studies have addressed teachers" and students' perceptions of teaching practice concerning sensitive issues in the mandatory subject for social science in Norwegian upper secondary school. Previous research has indicated that teaching practice on gender, sexuality, harassment and abuse varies greatly, but few studies have thoroughly examined how we can understand this variation by taking into account both teachers' personal characteristics and school culture. Previous research has indicated that social science students are motivated and engaged when learning about issues that concern them directly, involve ethical considerations or evoke emotions. However, relatively little attention has been dedicated to students' perceptions of teaching practice concerning gender, sexuality, harassment and abuse in Norwegian upper secondary school. This research project seeks to fill these knowledge gaps. This PhD project consists of two interrelated phases, including both teachers' and students' voices, based on a mixed methods approach. Phase 1 consists of personal telephone interviews with 64 social science teachers in Norwegian upper secondary schools from February to October 2018. Phase 2 consists of participatory research with leachers and students concerning the development of pedagogical and didactic methods for teaching and learning about harassment.publishedVersio

Exploring Variation in Norwegian Social Science Teachers’ Practice Concerning Sexuality Education: Who Teachers Are Matters and So Does School Culture

publishedVersio

Pre-Holocene volcanic ash in sediments near Jan Mayen

Poster presentation at the conference Nordic Geological winter meeting, 11.05.22 - 13.05.22, Reykjavik, Icelan

Are all perturbations created equal? An analysis of the WMAP 5- and 7-year data without inflationary prejudice

We submit recent claims of a semi-significant detection of primordial tensor perturbations in the WMAP data to a closer scrutiny. Our conclusion is in brief that no such mode is present at a detectable level once the analysis is done more carefully. These claims have their root in a brief debate in the late 1990s about the standard calculation of the scalar and tensor spectra in standard inflationary theory, where Grishchuk and collaborators claimed that their amplitudes should be roughly equal. We give a brief summary of the debate and our own reasons for why the standard calculation is correct.Comment: 12 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.

A Review on Emerging Cementitious Materials, Reactivity Evaluation and Treatment Methods

Alternative to traditional concrete, sustainable concrete reduces cement content, waste management issues, and CO2 emissions. To achieve sustainable concrete, waste materials can be used as supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs) to partially replace cement. Fly ash, ground-granulated blast furnace slag, and silica fume have been heavily studied as SCMs. However, due to the retirement of coal-fired power plants and switching to renewable energy, existing SCMs are losing their dominance. With SCMs becoming more widely accepted as partial cement substitutes, there is fear that the current supply will not meet future demand. As a result, researchers have been looking for alternative SCMs. The circular economy can be achieved by reusing non-hazardous construction and demolition materials, timber, and metal/steel production waste as SCMs. This article discusses emerging SCMs, reactivity evaluation methods, their limitations, and treatment methods that may improve reactivity. Emerging SCMs can replace existing SCMs in quantity, but their supply to cement factories and low reactivity due to stable crystallinity hinders their use. Among treatment methods, particle size reduction effectively enhances reactivity; however, very fine SCM may increase the overall water demand due to the large surface area. Decades-old reactivity evaluation methods have relatively weak correlations and thus misreport the reactivity of SCMs. Newer R3 models, such as calorimetry and bound water, give the best correlations (R ≥ 0.85) for 28-day relative strength and better performance. Additionally, more concrete testing with emerging SCMs under different durability and environmental protection conditions is required and life cycle assessments are needed to determine their regional environmental impact

Artificial Thawing of Frozen Ground: A Review

Understanding the freezing and thawing processes in porous media such as soils is important, especially in regions experiencing seasonal frost or permafrost. These processes have a wide range of implications as diverse as how to maintain the structural integrity of roads, railways, pipelines, and buildings, to when to plant seeds during the growth season. Thawing of frozen ground is the opposite process of ground freezing but has not received nearly as much attention as the latter in research studies or field experiments. Accurately predicting thaw depth or thaw rate is a challenging task. Many mathematical models have been proposed to describe the thawing process, with different perspectives and complexity. This paper provides an overview of historical modeling efforts made for predicting heat and mass transfer during thawing. Assumptions and premises for each model are discussed, as well as limitations and some applications. In addition, this paper reviews historical and modern approaches to thawing of frozen ground in cold regions, lists pros and cons of each method, and gives examples of applications. The review shows the need for further research and more accurate models, specifically for predicting thaw depth and thaw rates in frozen ground subjected to artificial thawing

Optimized Large-Scale CMB Likelihood And Quadratic Maximum Likelihood Power Spectrum Estimation

We revisit the problem of exact CMB likelihood and power spectrum estimation with the goal of minimizing computational cost through linear compression. This idea was originally proposed for CMB purposes by Tegmark et al.\ (1997), and here we develop it into a fully working computational framework for large-scale polarization analysis, adopting \WMAP\ as a worked example. We compare five different linear bases (pixel space, harmonic space, noise covariance eigenvectors, signal-to-noise covariance eigenvectors and signal-plus-noise covariance eigenvectors) in terms of compression efficiency, and find that the computationally most efficient basis is the signal-to-noise eigenvector basis, which is closely related to the Karhunen-Loeve and Principal Component transforms, in agreement with previous suggestions. For this basis, the information in 6836 unmasked \WMAP\ sky map pixels can be compressed into a smaller set of 3102 modes, with a maximum error increase of any single multipole of 3.8\% at $\ell\le32$, and a maximum shift in the mean values of a joint distribution of an amplitude--tilt model of 0.006$\sigma$. This compression reduces the computational cost of a single likelihood evaluation by a factor of 5, from 38 to 7.5 CPU seconds, and it also results in a more robust likelihood by implicitly regularizing nearly degenerate modes. Finally, we use the same compression framework to formulate a numerically stable and computationally efficient variation of the Quadratic Maximum Likelihood implementation that requires less than 3 GB of memory and 2 CPU minutes per iteration for $\ell \le 32$, rendering low-$\ell$ QML CMB power spectrum analysis fully tractable on a standard laptop.Comment: 13 pages, 13 figures, accepted by ApJ

Kjerneelementet Resonnering og argumentasjon i lærerveiledninger

Med innføringen av den nye læreplanen, Kunnskapsløftet 2020, ble viktige kompetanser i matematikkfaget listet opp ved hjelp av kjerneelementene. Disse gir lærerne tydelige retningslinjer for hva som skal gjennomsyre faget på tvers av temaene. Kjerneelementene er hva elevene må lære for å kunne mestre og anvende faget, og de skal bidra til at elevene over tid utvikler forståelse av innhold og sammenhenger. Et av kjerneelementene i matematikk er Resonnering og argumentasjon. Det handler om at elevene skal kunne følge, vurdere og forstå matematiske tankerekker, og at elevene skal begrunne fremgangsmåter, resonnementer og løsninger og bevise at disse er gyldige (Kunnskapsdepartementet, 2019, s.3). I definisjonen av kjerneelementet ligger det et krav om bevis, altså er Resonnering og argumentasjon slik det er definert i læreplanen deduktivt. I vår oppgave ser vi etter hvilke muligheter som finnes for å arbeide med kjerneelementet Resonnering og argumentasjon. For å kunne utvikle elevenes kompetanser knyttet til kjerneelementene, er læreverk et viktig verktøy. Læreverkenes utforming har sterk innvirkning på hvordan undervisning, læring og klasseromspraksis er orkestrert (Ball & Cohen,1996; Davis & Krajcik, 2005, sitert i Ahl et al., 2015, s.179, vår oversettelse). Læreverkene vi undersøker, er lærerveiledningene til to ulike forlag: Cappelen Damm og Gyldendal. Lærerveiledninger gir ofte informasjon om aktiviteter som ikke alltid er tydelig i lærebøker og kan hjelpe læreren med å veilede elevene gjennom aktiviteter. Med dette som bakgrunn, lyder forskningsspørsmålet slik: “Hvilke muligheter finnes for arbeid med kjerneelementet Resonnering og argumentasjon i lærerveiledninger i matematikk for 5.-7.trinn?” Da vårt datamateriale er dokumenter, har vi foretatt en todelt dokumentanalyse, der vi har en kort, overfladisk analyse før hovedtyngden blir lagt på dybdeanalysen. Studien er kvalitativ, men har innslag av kvantitativ metode. Vi fant i vår studie at det finnes muligheter for arbeid med Resonnering og argumentasjon i de analyserte lærerveiledningene, men at det med tanke på kjerneelementets sentrale rolle i matematikkundervisningen kunne kommet sterkere til syne i lærerens instruksjoner