Flexible consumption in the household sector concerns individuals daily choices and the routines that develop in their households. Targeting household-level energy consumption therefore requires an understanding of energy consumption in relation to individual household members activity patterns. Individual time-diaries reveal when, for how long and where energy-related activities occur, permitting discussions of the temporal flexibility of these activities. Using multiple time-diaries (n=6477) from a population reveals differences in activity patterns in larger groups and permits recorded activities to be clustered. Few explorative studies perform cluster analyses of energy-consuming activities in order to examine when and for how long these activities occur. When clustering is done, it is usually based on socio-economic factors, and not on the activities performed in sequence. This paper reports a time-geographically inspired cluster analysis based on when and for how long some activities requiring electricity are performed in the home by individuals in a population. The presented cluster analysis based on activities gives a new perspective to the discussion of flexible users and provides a basis for deeper analyses, for example, of whether activities are moveable in time for individuals, complementing cluster analysis based on other variables.

Context: Teachers in vocational education and training (VET teachers) have specific conditions for their continuing professional development (CPD). They have a background in an initial occupation, in which they now teach and train the next generation. Thus, as VET teachers, they are expected to master the knowledge and skills of that occupa- tion, even if they have now crossed the boundary from the community of their initial occupation to the community of the school. This study explores the perceived values among VET teachers of different activities that may contribute to their CPD in teaching subjects/initial occupations. The study examines VET at the upper secondary level in Sweden. Here, the VET teachers have the main responsibility for students’ vocational learning in the vocational subjects, including the work-based parts. In the latter parts, the teachers are supplemented by supervisors at the workplace.

Approach: We argue for the duality of a VET teacher identity with a professional competence that comprises two intertwined parts – teaching skills, and knowledge of the teaching subjects based in the teachers’ initial occupations. Our study is based on a situated learning perspective, and the empirical findings particularly concern values created from learning through participation and boundary crossing. CPD activities typi- cally include some form of participation in and/or boundary crossing between school and work-life practices. In the analysis we also include the possible influence of institutional, situational, and dispositional drivers and barriers for participation in different activities. The research question was: what factors can explain the variation in perceived values created by participation in different CPD activities among VET teachers? The study was conducted as a survey of 886 Swedish VET teachers. Focus was put on the values created through different types of activity, values for the teachers’ vocational knowledge, for networks in working life, and for teaching. The data were primarily analysed using logistic regression modelling.

Findings: Dispositional drivers, the teacher’s sex, and regular performance of the ac- tivity are important for the perceived value. The dispositional factor is the one most commonly retained, and it has a consistently positive effect. Factors such as educa- tional background and vocational training have weaker influence, which suggests that individual driving factors are important when VET teachers assess the value of CPD activities.

Conclusions: The study covers a general challenge for VET teachers, but is of particular relevance in systems with a high degree of school-based VET, full-time employed VET teachers, and VET teachers who are responsible for students’ vocational learning. Here, the values for vocational knowledge, for networks, and for teaching that are created through different activities are important for the VET teacher identity. They are also interrelated, and together they provide professional development in relation to the initial occupation, and for the occupation as a vocational teacher.

Activities performed by individuals in their everyday life uses energy. Travel is an integrated vital part of everyday life, as it enables the individual to move between geographic locations, thus enabling the performance of geographically removed activities. Energy use from domestic activities and travel is commonly treated as separate though it is individuals that use energy.

By approaching the energy use of individuals in their everyday life from their travel patterns and how this relates to the energy used in everyday life a fuller picture of individual energy use can be discovered. The approach examines how individual’s energy use from travel can be aggregated into travel activity patterns and related to their energy use, both domestic and from travel. The characteristics and the differences between the patterns are explored.

Notable results are that travel constitutes a major part of the energy used of individual activities despite being performed for comparably short periods of time. The activity of travel is further an integrated part of everyday life and changes to travel patterns will claim changes in the activities performed by individuals in their everyday life.

Energianvändningen är en del av vardagen likaväl som användningen av energi är en del av den globala klimatförändringen. För att mildra effekterna på vår gemensamma miljö uppmanas människor av politiker och andra beslutsfattare att förändra sitt vardagsbeteende.

I avhandlingen betraktas vardagsbeteendet som människors dagliga aktiviteter. Avhandlingens teoretiska grund är den tidsgeografiska ansatsen, där människors vardag betraktas som en sekvens av de aktiviteter som utförs av odelbara individer. Människors dagliga sekvens av aktiviteter undersöks för att ta reda på vilken energianvändning som genomförandet av aktiviteterna ger upphov till.

Den empiriska grunden för avhandlingen är tidsdagboksdata från den svenska tidsanvändningsstudien från 2010/2011 och avhandlingen utforskar tidsdagböckerna som sekvenser av aktiviteter med hjälp av sekvens- och klusteranalys. Resultaten visar att individers energianvändning är nära sammanvävd med de aktivitetssekvenser som visar hur vardagslivet levs. Resultaten pekar vidare på att förändringar av enskilda aktiviteter också påverkar andra aktiviteter i det dagliga livet. Förändringar av en aktivitet påverkar således hela den dagliga sekvensen av aktiviteter. I utformningen av information som syftar till att minska hushållens energianvändning bör hänsyn tas till hur vardagslivets aktivitetssekvens formas av den enskilde i samspelet både med andra individer i hushållet och med samhällsstrukturerna. Målgruppsinriktad information kan utformas med utgångspunkt from människors likartade aktivitetsmönster så som de framgår genom klusteranalys.

Behavioural change is among the goals of information campaigns aimed at sustainability and reducing energy use, often directed towards specificactivities. Encouraging behavioural change is expected to induce changes to what and how activities are performed by individuals in everyday life. The results, however, seldom meet the expectations.

Here, the difficulties for people to change their daily behaviour in line with the campaigns are explored from the perspective of understanding the activities of everyday life as a sequence of activities, and it is claimed that for change to occur this sequence as a whole has to be considered. Taking a timegeographic approach on analysing activity sequences it is argued that change not only relates to a specific activity in itself but also to its context.

It is argued that it may be complicated to change an activity of everyday life due to it being affected by other activities, impacting other individuals, affecting the individuals’ goals and desires as well as requiring a restructuring of the whole day. Activities are classified as flexible, semi-flexible and rigid due to their relatedness to their context and to basic human needs. The conclusion is that changes of a singular specific activity have an effect on the daily sequence of activities and while there may be a potential for change at a general level, there may not be a capacity to enact the change when the activity is seen in its context, implying that information campaigns for change ought to have a more holistic approach.

Time-use diary data convey information about the activities an individual wasengaged in, when and for how long, and the order of these activities throughout the day.The data are usually analyzed by summarizing the time used per activity category. Theaggregates are then used to determine the mean time use of a mean individual on anaverage day. However, this approach discards information about the duration of activities,the order in which they are undertaken, and the time of day each activity is carried out.This paper outlines an alternative approach grounded in the time-geographic theoreticalframework, which takes the duration, order, and timing of activities into consideration andthus yields new knowledge. The two approaches to analyzing diary data are comparedusing a simple empirical example of gender differences in time use for paid work. Thefocus is on the effects of methodological differences rather than on the empirical outcomes.The argument is made that using an approach that takes the sequence of activities intoaccount deepens our understanding of how people organize their daily activities in thecontext of a whole day at an aggregate level.

The energy use of individuals in households results from their activities within the household. These individuals are targeted by information campaigns aiming at reducing household energy use.

Presented is an approach that focuses on the sequence of activities people perform during a day and how these activities affect energy use. The approach examines how individuals with divergent daily activity sequences may be clustered into aggregate activity patterns. The characteristics of these patterns are explored, as are the differences between them. The timing of energy use generated from activities during the individuals’ weekday in each cluster is considered.

In this way, daily life is approached from the perspective of individuals’ daily activities, which yields deeper, contextually anchored insights that can help shape information that individuals may relate to the structure of their daily life.

Notable results from this approach are that background variables have minor effects on the patterns, and that energy use for each pattern is varied and has its own character, and thus different strategies should be employed to target them. Argued is that in relating information to everyday activities, individuals have greater opportunities to recognize their everyday situation, which may increase their willingness to act on the information.