This report is the outcome of an exam work made in interaction design, bachelor degree, at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. Working in collaboration with the childhood obesity unit, Region Skåne, our aim was to fulfill their request of a web based application preparing the children for treatment at their facility. Furthermore the application intends to give the children knowledge concerning obesity as well as teaching them how to obtain a healthier lifestyle in terms of provision and activities. The application concerns children in different ages and therefore different stages of their learning abilities. Our conclusions are that they need to be challenged and obtain feedback in different ways to get motivated.

Researchers claim that stress has become a word of fashion and is now frequently used. They also state that there is no accepted definition that can easily describe the concept. In this essay, I have examined children and stress. The aim of the diploma work is to illustrate stress more closely the stress concept, the underlying reasons that can influence children and how teachers and school staff support children in their stress handling. My three issues are: What is stress? What stressors put children, at home and at school, in a stress situation? How can teachers help children to manage their stress? The diploma work is based on a literature study in order to find out what has been written on the subject in earlier research.

Abstract This essay will present actual research around the concept of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder, how it can reveal itself in school children and how it can influence young people?s learning ability and capacity to retain knowledge.The purpose is, above all, to clearly diagnose PTSD so that children with this complex of problems can receive good possibilities in learning and understanding.The question at hand is responded to by interviewees with an expertise on the subject and one ?story?, collectively with literary studies.The results illustrate that there can be neurological and biological, as well as social explanations for PTSD but it is seldom a permanent diagnosis. It is though something to take very seriously. PTSD can lead to severe psychobiological consequences, mostly by causing damage in one particular part of the brain, known as hippocampus. The hippocampus is essential in terms of memory and concentration.

Summary Title Are older consumers of interest for the Swedish Apparel market?A study of older consumers? attitudes and interests in apparel Deadline 12 January, 2007 Course FEK 533 Authors Brusk Kutlay and Linda Nordén Tutors Björn Carlsson and Roland Knutsson Keywords Older consumer, apparel, lifestyle, attitudes, consumer behavior Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate weather the 50+ segment is a strong market for apparel, i.e. if it is an interesting market for the Swedish apparel industry. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of consumers? attitudes toward apparel shopping on the Swedish market.

In this thesis I investigate what librarians working with children do for six-year-olds at the libraries in order to stimulate them to read. I also investigate how children of this age read and what books are like for these beginners. The background for the thesis is that reading decreased a lot in ages three to eight during the 1980s and 1990s. My aim is to see what projects, methods and other strategies there are to get children to read. The method used is case study.

Based on phenomenological hermeneutics and narrative theory the study explored how parents experience and create meaning when the child receives the diagnosis of autistic disorder. Interviews were conducted with eight parents and the analysis concerned both contents and form in their stories. The resulting aspects of the contents is presented in seven areas: stories about the time before the diagnosis, seeking help, receiving the diagnosis, the meaning of the diagnosis, coping, living with autism and stories about the future. The six resulting aspects of form included: chronology of the stories, creating order out of chaos, cultural norms, rewriting the story about the child, aspects of metaphors and changing perspective. The conclusion of the study is that the diagnosis serves as a way for the parents to transform experiences into a meaningful whole.

The aim of this study was to describe and understand parents? perspectives in aid assessment for children according to The Swedish Act (1993:387) concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (Lag 1993:387 om stöd och service till vissa funktionshindrade, LSS). The study took place in the county of Kronoberg, Sweden, and was based on a total of nine qualitative interviews. Four interviews were made with parents? of children who has interventions according to LSS (1993:387) and five interviews were made with LSS case workers. In our study we saw that parents? perspectives often is the largest amount of information that case workers take into account when assessing aid and as a case worker you listen to the parents perspectives to capture the child?s and the family?s needs. It also came clear that the parents? perspective is not only about the child?s needs, but also includes the parent?s own needs and their family?s needs. The parents in the study felt that they made the decision about the choice of aid and considered themselves as the one who decides the family?s requirements. It turned out that treatment and understanding from the case workers was important for gaining access to the best help and making parents feel listened to. Parental responsibility was of great importance for the assessment, and it often led to disagreement between parents and case workers. During the study, we saw that power existed in the relationship between case workers and parents, but that it could be moved and changed during the time of aid assessment..

The aim of this Masters´ thesis is to examine parenthood, gender and equality. The analysis is based on the novel Bitterfittan. The primary theoretical points of departure are Judith Butler?s theory about doing gender and Yvonne Hirdman?s theory about the gender system, the hierarchical order and the separation of the sexes. I use Lisbeth Bekkengen?s thesis in which the nuclear family is seen as an institution which is upheld by two structures; that is the social relationships man-woman and parent-child, and also by two discourses; on the one hand a notion that fathers and mothers are principally different and on the other hand the child focus.

Earlier studies shows that democracy within the preschool is an important and on-going work, but could implicate certain consequences. For example that goals regarding democracy and influence in the preschool, rarely is done in practice but instead remains just words on a paper. It could also mean that the pedagogues lack education and knowledge within the area, but also how they react to the influence of children. Preschool is expected to be a place for all children, no matter what luggage the child is carrying. The luggage is filled with the life experience, the personality and in this case the needs that the child has. The needs could be anything from nearness to physical and psychological disorders that requires more pedagogical attention.

Syftet med litteraturstudien var att belysa föräldrars psykosociala upplevelser då deras barn har cancer. Författarna gjorde en litteraturstudie med deskriptiv design baserad på tolv artiklar med kvalitativ ansats. Artikelsökningen ägde rum i databaserna PubMed och Academic Search Elite med de vedertagna sökorden ?neoplasms?, ?child?, ?family? och ?parents?. Utöver dessa inkluderades ord som ?experience?, ?cancer? och ?psychosocial?.

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyze a group of participants (social workers, contact families and the young adults who had been given a contact family as children) and monitor their experience of the intervention contact family and its goals, contents and design. We also wanted to look into what goals and guidelines are available regarding the interventions design and contents. We also looked into parts of the intervention which the participants found most useful for them individually. The method we used in our study was qualitative interviews. We compared and analyzed our results to research made on the subject and the theoretical frame.

The aim of this study is to examine views of picture books for children that reviewers in Swedish daily press express in their reviews in 2009 and 2010. The following questions were posed in the study: Are picture book reviews based on pedagogical criteria and/or aesthetic/literary criteria? Are picture books reviewed from an adult perspective and/or from a child perspective? Which elements of positive and negative criticism are to be found in picture book reviews? This qualitative study is based on 45 reviews of picture books in Swedish daily press. The theoretical approach is developed from four ways of looking at children literature that professor Maria Nikolajeva has compiled. The method used is idea analysis, which is a form of text-analysis.

This paper examines constructions of identities in Swedish news paper articles concerning the European Unions?s Tobacco Products Directive. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) supported by theories of discourse, semiotics and identity formation, this paper argues that constructions of a Swedish ?Us? are distinguished from a non-Swedish ?Them?. These constructions depends on categories such as use of tobacco, science, history and war, which are frequently used in the discourse to separate ?Us?, ?the good? from ?Them?, ?the bad?.

The aim of this study is to examine how social workers and pree-school teachers resonate about their experiences of cooperation with each other, in relation to maltreated children and the duty to report. Several studies show that there is a difference between how many children that is suspected of maltreatment and how many that are reported to social service. In Sweden, pre-school staff are obliged to notify the suspicion of child abuse according to 14: 1 SoL, but previous research indicates that the obligation to declare is not used to the extent that it should. One reason for the low notification rate is  the interaction between preschool and the social services shortcomings.Therefore, we believe it is relevant to examine how the cooperation really looks like between the organizations, when the child is being abused or at risk of suffering. The results of the study are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with four preschool teachers and four administrators.

This is a project about learning from an experience, about trying to have fun and not getting overwhelmed and draining your work. The thing that wraps this whole experience together is the making of a book. The purpose of making the book has been to bring two interests together, illustration and graphic design.The content of the book for this graduation project is written by Fredrik Mårtensson. His poetry tells about the unnatural state of the modern society. I have interpreted the poetry in six abstract illustrations that I made digitally, with the intent to maintain the feeling of something organic.The process of making this book is a lot about learning what it actually takes to finish it, about trying to tell something and a lot about experience practical work..