In the school subject of the natural sciences it is imperative that the students are given opportunities to ?talk science?, since the dialogues that occur in the classroom have a significant importance for the students? abilities to engage in meaning-making in their learning process. Hence, the student and teacher interaction in the classroom and the feedback given there play a significant role in the students? learning process. The aim of this study is to contribute to the development of formative assessment tools that can mediate the students? meaning-making in natural sciences subjects in upper-secondary school.

In December 2004 an earthquake coursed waves that hit Thailand. Over 5000 people died, and Sweden was the tourist country that has been effected the worst. The catastrophe precipitated Sweden in crises and the demand became high for Swedish government to act. Swedes followed the development via media, why media became the crucial element for how the public perceived politicians? acting.

This study includes a life cycle assessment, LCA, on an ecological produced cotton shirt for the company Reflective Circle, which designs ethical and ecological clothes.Initially were cotton farming and textile production studied to gather basic knowledge about the processes. Since this shirt is being ecological produced in the whole production chain, we studied what an ecological production means, but also how a conventional production works. When this was done we could start to discuss the differences and similarities between the production of the shirt and general conventional production.When the LCA was first initiated, the main focus was on the green house gas emissions from the manure at the cultivation. Thereafter the process steps such as picking, ginning, carding, spinning, weaving and sewing were being studied. The picking is done by hand, but the rest of the processes are handed by machines which consumes energy.

This thesis focuses on how companies in the textile and clothing industry view or interpret the idea of corporate social responsibility. The purpose of the study is to create an understanding for how this view affects the dissemination and the implementation of the idea in the organization and what might be the effects on the organization of those processes. In order to identify any differences in how the view affected the processes I have studied the current discourse on CSR simultaneously with my theory and conducted a comparative case study of two Swedish clothing brands. The theory focuses on the diffusion of ideas and change management within organizations. My data shows that the two companies have different ways of interpreting CSR and that this indeed affects their dissemination of the idea in the organization.

There is an increasing demand for information literacy, which is mirrored in curriculum throughout the whole educational system. This, in turn, has brought forward a growing need for librarians who can teach. But do librarians possess pedagogical competence, and if they do, how is this ability used in everyday library practice? The aim of this study is to investigate librarians' conceptions of the pedagogical role, as it is expressed in their didactic interaction with the users. The research questions focus on librarians' experiences of teaching information seeking and use and their activities in this respect.

This survey aims to investigate and analyze how six teachers on a high school in Stockholm reflect on pedagogical aspects of problem based learning( PBL). The survey focuses on ana-lyzing how the teachers relate to the benefits and problems of PBL and how they reflect on the students development. The survey was conducted on a high school and the method used for the study was interviews, each taking 30-45 minutes. The outcome of the survey indicates that the teachers sees problem based learning as an alternative to what they define as tradi-tional education regarding its epistemology. They indicate that PBL allows the students to define their own questions, to be carriers of knowledge and to evolve analytic skills in relation to the basegroup.

This study concerns the energy future of the county of Stockholm up until 2050 and describes how the energy consumption can be compared to today with the use of scenario methodology. Within energy future studies the backcasting approach is well known and has been put to use in this study. Due to the characteristics of backcasting the study is self-fulfilling, i.e. the future energy scenarios presented in this study satisfy the targets set up in this study. In the light of what may be the largest challenge of our time ? the climate change - the aim of this study is to describe how the energy consumption in a fossil fuel free Stockholm county in the year of 2050 may be.

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare what six preschool teachers thought about their opportunities to take advantage of children's interest in natural sciences and technology, across four kindergartens. The following questions were explored in order to achieve the aim of the study: How do the preschool teachers interviewed describe their work with science and technology in the preschool and what these preschool teachers think about the meaning of motivation in the children?s learning of natural sciences and technology in preschool.  The study used a qualitative approach in the form of semi-structured interviews and interviewed a total of six trained pre-school teachers from four kindergartens with different profiles. The first kindergarten focuses on mathematics, science and technology.

This research is about six pedagogue´s and their reflections about the size of the children´s group in the preschools. Then I will discuss the pedagogue?s recommendation on the significance of the size of a children´s group learning and development and it´s practical significance for the preschool function. The pedagogue?s statements will be discussed in relation to The Swedish National Agency for Education (TSNAE) guidelines on group size.The theoretical framework of this essay will take an overview of the social cultural perspective, the group size and its significance for both the children´s learning and development, for interaction and communication and TSNAE advice and guidelines.

This study focuses on oral communication in the classroom involving discussion and dialogue amongst pupils, but also between teacher and pupil. The overall aim is to study the choices regarding the group composition and working methods that might occur in four individual teachers? lessons plans with the intention of increasing the pupils? knowledge through oral communication. The main focus is to explore what the teachers think of the choices they make and how they believe these changes affect the pupils. It is also focused on how the teachers perceive their pupils? learning is improved by oral communication and how they incorporate all pupils, especially the pupils who rarely participate in classroom activity.The methods used are qualitative studies using interviews and observations.

The aim of this project was to design a furniture that raises thoughts and curiosity about how to relate to people you share furniture with. Luova, a changing piece of furniture for public spaces is a bench where the user can choose the degree of social interaction. Furniture for public spaces has a diverse audience ranging from children to adults. Some come alone, others in group. Some are sitting down for a short time while others stay for longer.

This study is based on interviews with five directors of educational administration within the Stockholm County. The purpose is to investigate how the directors of educational administrations, in the different municipalities, describe the relationship between the administration and the local school units. Moreover, the aim is also to describe the administration director?s work in relation to the various levels of the administration. To what extent can it be identified as a dimension of the learning organization described in this report.The study shows that skepticism is usually directed upwards toward the next level in the organization and that the decision-making right for local schools is consistently safeguarded.

Within media and communications studies, questions of taste have often been associated with the dichotomy of high versus popular culture. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has also used mass media products in his studies of class determined tastes and dispositions. In this paper the author uses the theoretical framwork of Bourdieu to examine aspects of social class and legitimate taste in the interior design magazine "Sköna Hem", a market leading magazine within it's genre of lifestyle magazines in Sweden. A specific type of feature article, where a real-life home is portrayed, is studied using the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough. The homes portrayed are predominantly affluent and display elements of conspicuous consumtion as mediated through legitimate taste and cultural capital.

The aim of this study was to investigate how preschool teachers think about preschoolscience, what they consider science to be and how they deal with specific curricular objectivesrelated to science.Science is a part of our everyday life, it is a prerequisite for understanding everydayphenomena and how the world is working. Nevertheless it is often dropped in favour of othersubjects in Swedish preschools.The eight preschool teachers participating in this study are all working in the samemunicipality in the western part of Sweden with children aged 1- 5 years. The method used inthis study was interviews. The interviews were recorded to facilitate the transcriptions.The results show that preschool teachers find that science is an important subject that shouldbe introduced to the children early on in life. They also show that preschool teachers considerscience to have a preventive effect on the learning to the children, and it is needed for them tounderstand everyday processes and phenomena.

The purpose of this essay is to show the opportunities and difficulties of teaching within distance education. I will show this from two different parts of the world. One being Sweden and the other Australia, both countries run a distance education program with similar reasons students whom travelling, some living hundreds of miles from any schools and some students with health and or social disadvantages. This study is based on the actual teacher?s accounts and experiences the opportunities and difficulties in teaching in distance.