During the last two decades, the elementary, - secondary-, and upper secondary schools of especially Europe and USA have gone through a change. From being formed in the post war time and, in Europe, very influenced by the ideas of social democracy, the school today has more and more come under the influences of neo liberalism, entrepreneurship and the political and economical situations during the late 1980´s.This undergraduate work brings up the changed discourses of education and knowledge in relation to the traditional free school system for adults in Sweden, the popular education, and especially in relation to folk high schools (folkhögskolor). By using, first and foremost, the idea of Norman Faircloughs critical discourse analysis (CDA) the rules and documents concerning the folk high schools are analyzed. The purpose of the paper is to identify and recognize the movement in the discourse to reach an understanding about the political situation for folk high schools in Sweden. In the end you can see that it is possible to define a similar development in discourse surrounding the popular education, as has been in the case with the elementary, - secondary-, and upper secondary schools..

The aim of this study is to investigate ex-Jehovah's witnesses' experiences with accessibility in relation to sexual and reproductive health. The purpose is to build on the understanding of how closed Christian communities view the power over their own bodies in relation to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). The results are examined and analyzed through Foucault's ideas about power. The thesis is built upon an exploratory point of view, where the focus is to examine the experiences of former Jehovah's witnesses. The theoretical framework assumes that there are different types of power relations, specifically in the form of biopower, disciplinary power and governmentality. Through semi-structured interviews, six former members have been interviewed. The results indicate the complex relation between Jehovah's witnesses and several forms of power.

Storm water causes a number of problems in our country, particularly in city environment with its surfaces of non-absorbing ground materials. At heavy rain falls there are floods due to lack of capacity in the drain system when meeting heavy water masses over a short time. When the drain system is overloaded huge water masses reach the recipient untreated and there causing disturbances in the aquatic ecosystem. Due to emissions from mainly traffic, industries and other human activities the storm water is polluted. Earlier the problem used to be solved technically, by increasing the capacity of the tubes and by construction of reservoirs to delay the floods peaks.

This is a literature study of learning mathematics in general and algebra in particular. The goal is to explore and investigate the learning procedure and the difficulties pupils have with their understanding. Furthermore, to understand what qualities is requested of pupils in their effort to be successful in mathematics and algebra. I have also explored different pupil thinking styles in mathematics and what consequences that has on their learning and understanding. Moreover, I have investigated some different learning styles and how they can be addressed in teaching of mathematics in general and algebra in particular.

Problem solving is a big part of design, however a lot of emphasis is put on creativity in research related to the effects of stress. Research has shown that the amount of stress we feel affects idea generation. Stress may also affect the ability to solve problems, however the researchers don?t seem to agree about what the effect of stress actually does.The study was made through experimental sessions where the respondents were asked to solve 4 matchstick puzzles of similar difficulty. Depending on their outcome they experienced more or less stress.

In a globalized world, competitiveness is based on the high IP (intellectual property) of our export products and innovations are therefore important for new companies to establish and develop. It´s not enough to just have big international companies but it is also necessary to invest in new companies that can be competitive in the future. By helping entrepreneurs with innovation support in the early stages, new technology-based businesses are established and developed. The purpose of this paper was to examine how innovation support in the early stages affects the establishment and development of new technology-based companies. Furthermore, we investigated how this will affect Sweden's international competitiveness.

Urban planning is not only a matter of architectural trends; it is first and foremost political. This thesis seeks to understand the links between political ideas and visions for the city and the physical structure of the city. The study aims to construct a model to help understand these links, a helpful tool in analysing a city, focusing on the one hand at the physical structure of what I call "The City as a Welfare Provider" and on the other hand at "The City as a Growth Engine". It also sets out to test this model in an empirical study of Stockholm and the soon-to-be built district of Norra Station in the same city.The analysis shows that Stockholm has ambitions to be a welfare provider to its citizens, but have also adopted to a discourse of interurban competition which stresses the importance for the city to enhance economical growth. What is interesting is that the physical structures promoted in the planning documents of Stockholm are nearly exclusively those associated with the model of "The City as a Growth Engine"..

The purpose of this paper is to determine the established law and make researches into non-institutional compulsory care (?mellantvång?) paragraph 22 The Care of Young Persons (Special Provisions) Act (from now on called LVU) and examine whether the administration of the law is in harmony with the best interests of the child.This paper combines two methods : traditional judicial method and a social science method. In the juridical part the sources of law have been studied and in the social sciences part semi-structured interviews have been conducted with five respondents. The theoretical framework consists of ideas and theories about the best interests of the child, a concept which is one of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child's core principles.This study shows that the legislator has identified a problem and an existing need and found a solution to this by introducing a non-institutional compulsory care, paragraph 22 LVU. The problem is that Social Services do not make use of the restraint.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if the reading habits of teacher students are influenced by merit and descent. The empiric material consists of six questionnaires answered by students at the teacher training with Swedish at the upper secondary school as their first topic. The questionnaire comprised questions about reading habits in the childhood and today and information concerning merits and descent.Pierre Bourdieu?s sociological ideas about cultural capital transmitted from parent to child and the concept of habitus are used as a theoretical framework regarding descent.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to explore university librarians? thoughts about the future. The analytical focus is thus on the librarians? representations of the future. The theoretical framework used is narrative theory with a social constructionist viewpoint.

In this essay, I explore the history of the ideas that have shaped the profession of landscape architecture, in a Swedish context. To this purpose, I have sampled the professional debate on landscape architecture at four points in time. These are the years around 1890, 1930, 1970 and 2010. Drawing on G N Brandt (1920), I make the distinction between two arguably crucial approaches, i . e., naturalism and formalism. By identifying these perspectives, and by dividing the arguments of each time period according to this classification, I am able to compare the course of the debate over time. I take on the task through hermeneutics.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate the ideas that have influenced parents' choice of a Christian private school and how parents justify their choices. The essay also aims to examine the expectations that parents have in the schools, as well as the pros and cons as they consider private school compared to other schools.My study is based on qualitative data collected through interviews with parents who have chosen to place one or more of their children in a specific Christian private school. Using a qualitative approach has made it possible for me to get a deeper understanding of this investigation. I have also used the previous research on this field and theoretical starting points to explain and connect to my inquiry as Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the school Weber document types and identity in a multicultural society.The study shows that parents seek to or from the public school due to various reasons. To seek out a Christian private school depends on different reasons.

The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze experiences of how the daily rounds and a persons role is changing when you go from being a family member to being a family member as well as being a kinship carer.Essential questions at issue was:- Which feelings are associated to the roll as kinship carer?- What are the motivations for the relative/family member to become a kinship carer?- What is the change of the role like before and after the disease.Six persons have been interviewed on the subject and symbolic interactionism and role theory has been our theoretical perspective. The essay has been related to the ideas of Meads on social interaction and to Goffmans theatre theorem.The result of the essay showed that feelings and motivations as regards to the daily rounds and the role of the kinship carer were individual, where similarities and differences occurred. When ones partner, parent or child got a disease/functional disability it generated in some changes regarding their daily rounds and it led to altering of roles. To assume a role was a natural result and often happened when a relative/family member got a disease or an injury..

The aim of this study is to examine the understanding, preschool teachers, have about their work related to energy conversion in the human body. Through individual interviews, answers have been sought to the following questions: What do the preschool teachers believe they need to know about the link between food and energy? What are the different methods preschool teachers use to workwith the area of energy conversion in the human body?The results show that preschool teachers have knowledge in terms of food and its nutrients as an energy source for the body to cope with. However the more thorough and detailed questions become all the more uncertainty there is about the topic. Preschool teachers on their own initiative do bring up the topic with the children and begin conversations as well as ask questions, perform experiments and demonstrations.

Wavecraft AB develops medical equipment for heating of organic synthesises. The heating is done with microwaves, which improves the process in both speed and accuracy compared to the more traditional methods where heating elements are used. This report discusses the developement of an automatic lid mechanism for one of Wavecraft's product prototypes. The company assumes that the final product will be integrated by customers into fully automated systems, and the upgrade from a manually to an automatically controlled lid is therefore an important step in the product's developement process.The first stage och the project was an idea generation process. The ideas generated here were organized into five different concepts of which the best one was selected through the use of a concept matrix.