According to the Swedish preschool policy documents all children should have the same opportunities to develop their early language skills regardless of their social background. The purpose of this study is to investigate how preschool teachers work with children's early literacy and language development with focus on reading aloud. The reason is to investigate how the preschool teachers work to create an environment that stimulates children's literacy and language development. Another intention is to study how often reading aloud occurs in the children's home environment and what the preschool teachers thoughts are about that. The study is based on interviews with four preschool teachers and surveys that were answered by parents.

Franchise theorists have to a large extent failed to keep up with the actual development in global franchise chains. The recent emergence of fast growing multi-unit-franchisees has fundamentally been ignored, and it has been claimed that the new phenomenon can be regarded as a mere replication of the franchisors? structure and control system into sub hierarchies. This study however, suggests that the reality is more complex. Through conducting case studies of two Nordic multi-unit-franchisees, new theories are built explaining how and why control systems are designed the way they are.

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

Personal trainer is a profession that has grown strongly in recent decades, and has become increasingly common in the labor market within the health sector due to the widespread and growing interest in health and self- improvement. Further more, personal training is a great example of occupations with a close interaction between producer and consumer. The purpose of this study was to examine whether and if so how, personal trainers experience that the relationship with the clients affects their own personal development. This by finding out what impact the profession has had on the personality, what impact the relationship with the clients has affected the leadership, and last what impact the relationship with the clients have had on the personality based on social and mental aspects. Based on the purpose of the study qualitative method was chosen and data was collected with qualitative interviews.

Detta examensarbete genomfördes i samarbete med m4solutions AB, Halmstad, och Volvo Buses AB, Göteborg.Då Volvo önskar att minska totalkostnaden för tillverkning av luftintag, utan nedsatt prestanda som konsekvens, krävs undersökningar om hur väl dagens intag fungerar och vad som kan förbättras, samt planering av utvecklingsarbetet. För att underlätta för kommande förbättringsarbete har detta examensarbete undersökt vilket underlag och vilka kompetenser som krävs för att genomföra detta arbete. Resultatet av denna undersökning är en instruktion fylld med redskap och information vilket skall stöda Volvo Buses AB vid kommande arbetet att optimera luftintaget. Eftersom Volvo AB ingår i fordonsbranschen är det lämpligt att forma vår instruktion utefter ISO/TS 16949:2009 standarden, för produktutveckling inom fordonsindustrin, och Volvo?s egna metodik, Global Development Process, för produktutveckling. Studien innefattar flödessimuleringar, marknadsundersökningar och kriterieframtagning, samt analyser och utvärdering av samtlig tillgänglig information. Tillsammans gav detta en övergripande bild över luftintagets funktionalitet och prestanda, vilket i sin tur belyser vilka aktiviteter som är nödvändiga att föreslå i den slutgiltiga instruktionen..

Abstract and summaryThe glocal province of competence.The regional building up of knowledge at Växjö University and its choice of home region.The aim of the study is to give views on knowledge and to describe and discuss which home region Växjö University has chosen as its context. Taking my point of departure in the literature and in examples, I illustrate, discuss and examine how three different disciplines at the university have chosen their home regions. The disciplines are history, economics and biology. The study covers the last 33 years.The empirical study, with its focus only on regional matters, is based on four sources. 1.

The goal of this work has been to create a flexible strategic group-based artificial intelligence for the Arrowhead Game Studios-game Magicka, by implementing, using and examining different AI-techniques that's used in many commercial games in more or less extent. C# is the programming language that has been used in the development, and the implementation has been made as flexible as possible to make further development and extending AI-rules etc. easier..

Young children get affected and influenced by people?s thoughts and preconceived ideas about the difference between boys and girls. How they should behave and how they are supposed to play and interact with different toys.In the goals for what the school and teachers will achieve it says in the curriculum for preschool that teachers are supposed to counteract the traditional gender roles.To get answers to the question at issue, I collected 48 individual plans of development and I have performed four observations. I put all facts together and compared the results.The main result in this study shows that the traditional gender roles are being reflected in the children?s plans of development.

A large part of the Namibian low income population lack access to grid distributed electricity. This mean they are effectively shut out from basic functions such as lighting, information technologies and hygienic food handling. Hence, finding ways of providing affordable off-grid electricity is an important, not to say critical, task.This master thesis is an innovation and concept development project that has been carried out in cooperation with organisations in Sweden and Namibia. The purpose of the project has been to (1) develop a concept for off-grid electricity supply in Namibia and (2) to gain a deeper knowledge within the area of innovation and product development for the Base of the Pyramid population, i.e. the poorest, but largest, socio-economic part of the global population.Essential in this project has been to acquire user understanding and to identify user needs to create a foundation for developing the concept.

The main objective of this thesis was to develop appropriate strategies and find factors that affect the usability of parameterized designs. This was accomplished by investigate the user-interface and how it is designed to meet the user's information needs. The thesis also embraces the basic theories in terms of investigation, cognitive design principles and human behavior patterns in the interaction with the machine. The approach has led to an explorative investigation in this subject area.The thesis also had the purpose to achieve more efficient ways for development of motor chainsaws at Husqvarna AB's department Global Cutting Equipment. That can be achieved through reduce costs of development per sold unit.

Denna studie jämför hur Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) och Fama-French trefaktorsmodell förklarar och förutspår avkastning på en global aktiemarknad. CAPM utgår ifrån att investerarna förväntar sig en riskfri ränta adderat marknadspremien multiplicerat med företagens exponering mot marknaden. Fama-Frenchs är en utvidgning av CAPM modellen, där företagens storlek och book-to-market-värde läggs till som förklarande variabler för avkastning. Genom regressionsmodeller och prediktioner för portföljer indelade i storlek och book-to-market jämförs modellerna. Fama-French tycks vara genomgående bättre på att förklara och förutspå avkastning under perioden 1990m07-2013m02 för samtliga portföljer, förutom portföljen för stora företag med medelhögt book-to-market värde.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to find out how leisure educator´s reason about children?s learning and development, and their view of their own role in the process. Four leisure educators were interviewed to answer these questions. The study is based on qualitative interviews, wich means that the interviewer must interpret and understand what the respondents want to say. This is to get a deeper knowledge of the subject. The results show that the leisure educators believe they have a large and important role in children's development and learning.

Given that the end-customer has become more demanding, the retailer has to deliver products according to the market demands, which have forced manufacturing companies to constantly search for new opportunities to reduce costs and improve efficiency. It is, therefore important to choose suppliers that are able to compete with the market demands.The market demands in the textile industry have lead to shorter product life cycles, which have caused manufacturers to deliver flexibility with high technology to compete successfully on the global market. To achieve the market requirements the underlying factor is to be aware and optimally use and control time. New technology can have a major influence in the production development, if the company choose to take benefit of the advantages, by optimal allocation of the internal resources the productivity and efficiency will increase, to accomplish a competitive advantage. One way to achieve this is by investing in a Unit Production System.In our thesis we have questioned what the main driving forces for an apparel manufacturing company is when it chooses to invest in new technology.

För det multinationella företaget är det rimligtvis en stor utmaning att kunna ta hänsyn till såväl den lokala som den globala dimensionen. Förevarande uppsats syftar till att kartlägga hur organisk processorientering fungerar som styrform i en global kundorienterad koncern. Med utgångspunkt i vald teori formuleras en tes med innebörden att denna styrform förväntas vara lämplig för en global verksamhet där stora krav på kundfokus, flexibilitet och anpassningsbarhet ställs. Samtidigt förväntas den försvåra integrationen av koncernens dotterbolag.Studien genomfördes genom att undersöka hur skärverktygstillverkaren Sandvik Coromant organiserar sin globala verksamhet med dotterbolag i 130 länder. Intervjuer har genomförts med beslutsfattare vid huvudkontoret, på tre dotterbolag samt med en globalt kundansvarig.

På senare år har debatten om företags sociala ansvar rönt uppmärksamhet både i media och i företagsvärlden. Från omgivningen ställs allt större krav på att företag skall integrera etiska och sociala hänsyn i sin verksamhet och ta ett socialt ansvar för de konsekvenser som företagens verksamhet medför för människa och miljö. I stort handlar det om krav på att införliva även andra värden än monetär lönsamhet och effektivitet i företagsvärlden. Med den ökade makten som globala företag har i världen är det knappast förvånande att också ökat ansvar krävs av dem. Men vad är egentligen socialt ansvar? Hur kan företagen ta ansvar och hur långt bör det ansvaret sträcka sig? Ett ökat ansvarstagande medför ett ökat anseende för företagen och kananvändas för att stärka företagets varumärke.