In this thesis I set out to study how the reading of fictional literature is viewed, legitimatized and operationalized in two educational domains: the recently revised steering documents that all Swedish teachers must relate to, as well as a selection of teaching materials designed for education in the Swedish language for upper secondary school. The teaching material I have studied has been recently updated in order to correspond with the new steering documents. I relate my analysis to previous research about the use of fiction in education, and I also combine my analysis of the two educational domains to see whether the underlying intentions of the steering documents have influenced the revision of the teaching material. The outcome indicates that the steering documents? previous focus on culture has diminished although a certain insecurity as to how to use the concept and deal with the issue of whose culture should be taught can be identified.

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva hur pedagoger använder sig av stödtecken och i vilket syfte de används. Vi belyser begrepp som kommunikation, språkutveckling och interaktion. Vi tar vår utgångspunkt i ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Vidare beskriver vi vad ?Tecken som stöd? (TSS) och ?Tecken som alternativ kompletterande kommunikation? (TAKK) står för.

For this essay, 12 liters of cremated bones from the Viking age grave mound RAÄ Berga 134:1 in Trotteslöv, Berga parish, Småland have been osteologically analysed.  The aim with this paper concerned questions as sex, age, number of individuals and animal species in the grave. Further questions that have been investigated are the relationship between the osteological sexdetermination and artifacts as well as which role animals played in burial rituals and as grave goods.The grave contained a middle-aged woman and a number of sacrificed animals: two horses, two dogs, three birds, a boar and a cat. The bones were fragile and very fragmented. One of the birds was determined as a bird of prey, and that together with findings of horses and dogs indicates hunting with bird of prey, an activity performed only by powerful and wealthy individuals.  The woman was buried in a mound of notable size, and with common grave goods for the time period: combs, beads, bronze and iron items. An unusual finding was textile which indicates high status. The number of sacrificed animal species also suggests that the grave belonged to a powerful individual. During the Viking age animals generally played an important role in grave rituals and as items to be used by their master in the next life.

Forskningen om internationellt adopterade barn har visat att dessa barn löper en större risk att få språkliga problem, jämfört med sina jämnåriga kamrater. Framförallt har problemen förknippats med svårigheter med abstrakt tänkande, även svårigheter med matematik har uppmärksammats. Forskning visar att de språkliga svårigheterna finns hos närmare hälften av alla internationellt adopterade och det som framkommit är att svårigheterna kan uppstå av två orsaker. De orsakerna som nämnts är i första hand den så kallade språkbrytningen medan den andra orsaken beror på brist på bra mat och uppmärksamhet som ofta uppstår på institutioner såsom exempelvis barnhem. Språksvårigheterna som kan uppstå är dock i de flesta fall möjliga att överbrygga.I detta arbete har intervjuer gjorts med tolv föräldrapar som sammanlagt har 22 internationellt adopterade barn som adopterats mellan tidigt 70-tal och 90-tal.

The purpose of this master thesis is both to interpret the articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child from a public library point of view and to investigate how childrens librarians in the county of Norrbotten view their working situation in their relation to the users. This purpose leads to the main question: How do the childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant describe the present and the future of the childrens library activities in the sparsely populated regions in the county of Norrbotten? The subquestions are: What articles from the Childrens Rights Convention are the most relevant for the public library? In what way can you notice the Childrens Rights in the way the childrens librarians work towards the users? What part of the childrens library activity is the most important according to the childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant of Norrbotten and field observations. The result of the study shows that the articles we found most relevant for the public library are 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 14, 17, 23, 28/29, 30, 31 and 42. The Childrens Rights can be noticed in several ways in the childrens library activities.

This thesis has two purposes: (1) to analyze the emptiness in Blodbok by Christine Falkenland, and (2) to analyze my own reading of the same book. I have chosen to focus on how emptiness is expressed through the body, the language and the place in Blodbok, because of the deep impact these seem to have on the emptiness. The thesis discusses what kind of emptiness that is described, what it does to me as a reader, and how it is connected to other works by Falkenland. Cultural politics of emotions by Sara Ahmed, Uses of literature by Rita Felski and Pouvoirs de l?horreur by Julia Kristeva together form the theoretical framework.Blodbok is a poetry collection, about the loss of a mother.

The purpose of this study is to explore specific pedagogical activities that benefit the student's verbal language development and to learn more about how our schools use teaching methods to achieve the ambitions in the governing documents in Sweden. The aim is finding the correlation between theory, research, governing documents and the educational work in our schools. This study contains an empirical survey in intention to see how teachers, pupils and school administrators experience school activities, to see if those activities are formed with the intention for pupils to reach the learning goals according to the governing documents.The aim of this study has been achieved by relating empirical data with theories and previous research on conversation analysis. Goffman's and Norrby's research on the importance of dialogue and previous research on dialogicity studied by Dysthe, Vygotsky and Bakhtin are presented. Those are related to empirical data and show that most teachers realize the importance of integrating dialogues in daily activities and in different learning contexts.

This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature.  The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality.

The aim with this thesis, based on five childrens librarians statements, is to highlight their view of their work, and what they deem to be of importance when working with small children within the library sphere. My main question is as follows: What motive compels childrens librarians in their work with small children, and will Vygotskys theories be recognised in their statements. I have two questions as a base for this main question: How do childrens librarians work with small children, and do they utilise any special methods in their work? How do childrens librarians view their work tasks, and what do they deem to be of importance regarding small children and libraries? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews. As a theory I have decided to concentrate on Vygotskys thoughts on imagination and creativity, the Zone of Proximal Development, and childrens language development.

The purpose with this essay is to study how students in elementary school are placed within the subject called ?svenska som andrasspråk?, or SVA. SVA is a subject specially designed to deal with the complications that students with a different native language encounter when trying to learn Swedish.  National school documents state that a student is to be offered SVA if he or she has a different native language than Swedish and if the headmaster decides it?s ?needed?. In this work I focus on the different factors which are involved in the headmasters decision whether a student should be in a SVA-class or a normal Swedish class.

 Title:              Not just words, classroom communication about subtraction in year 2Language:      Swedish with summary in English.Keywords:     Communication, mathematics, subtraction, teaching The purpose of this study is to analyze the mathematical communication in a classroom during a lesson in the field subtraction, and to find out how students describe their perception of mathematics that is communicated in the classroom.The study consists of the observations through the videotaping of two lessons in primary school grades 2 and student and teacher interviews related to these lecture occasions.Research indicates that Swedish pupils' mathematical skill continuously deteriorates in a national and international perspective, and that student experiences of mathematics in general are negative. The literature emphasizes the importance of communicating mathematics in various forms to deepen and develop understanding of concepts and mathematical operations. Communication must be generated between teachers and students but also between student and student to have a beneficial impact for the student.Our result demonstrate the different types of communication in the classroom but that communication does not always have a clear mathematical content in spite of teachers' mathematical intentions with teaching. The result also indicates that the mathematical communication that takes place, in essence, is a one-way communication where the teacher has a great opportunity to speak. The teachers perceived as oblivious to their own ways of communicating, but stressed in the interviews with an understanding of the importance of communication learning.

AbstractSwedish tuition for immigrants (SFI) is a public adult education program in Sweden that was created in order to provide the immigrants with basic skills in Swedish. People with different backgrounds speaking different languages learn together how they should communicate in Swedish, both orally and in writing. For those who teach SFI it is important to know which factors have positive effects on the Swedish language acquisition. One of the questions to be asked is if the learning materials´ genre has any effect on the SFI students´ proficiency, in particular, oral proficiency. Scientists as von Franz, Vygotskiy and Bettelheim argued that fairy tales, as a genre consciously or subconsciously recognizable by all the people, present texts that are easy to acqiure.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how diversity takes shape in children?s picture books published in Sweden. Twelve picture books, which touch the aspect of diversity in the categories of gender, ages, culture, nation, ethnicities, language, class, sexuality and functional disorder, were chosen from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs catalogue for youth and children?s books 2006. They have been analysed with the conception of ikonotext and with the theory of Pierre Macherey?s image in the mirror, of how literature reflects the reality of society.

According to the national curriculum guidelines for elementary school, preschool and after-school 2011, (i.e. Lgr11), the Swedish school is based on a democratic foundation. Schools should prepare students to develop an understanding and acceptance of cultural diversity not only in the society as a whole but also how this should be reflected in the morals and ethics between us. The purpose of this study was to describe how teachers in multicultural schools perceptions and experiences on teaching pupils with diverse immigrant origin, and how they apply these cultural expression in practice.In particular, I focus on four teachers in multicultural schools and how they reason about applying cultural expressions that are transmitted at these schools and by them. Explicitly, I review how from policy documents and their own personal pedagogic are reflected in the actual teaching.

A cochlear implant (CI) is a hearing device that makes it possible for individuals who are deaf or has a severe hearing impairment to receive auditory information and develop spoken language. The pragmatic ability may be affected. In short, pragmatics may be described as the study of language use in social contexts. Pragmatic ability can be seen as the result of the individual?s behavior as well as the underlying causes.The aim of the present study was to describe the pragmatic ability in children with CI.