This study was designed to describe and understand how children perceive and explain mathematical situations. During our work based training we have met several students who have been insecure in the subject of mathematics and therefore come to think that it's difficult and boring. The questions we have asked ourselves are why and how this insecurity occurs. In preschools around the country teachers actively worked to create opportunities for children to meet and discover mathematics. The question is whether the teachers are aware of how children perceive mathematics and how children think in mathematical situations. We chose to conduct a qualitative study using different methods of data collecting in order to approach the children's world.

There has been a lot of debate in media about mathematics teaching in grade school in Sweden. Many students experience that mathematics in grade school is abstract, which leads to decreased interest of mathematics in early years. An international study indicates that Swedish students in class 4 do not fulfill the mean for mathematics according to EU/OECD countries. The study also shows that Sweden practice a textbook driven education, compared to other countries. The aim for this study was to find out how a few pedagogues for class F-6 teach mathematics, and why they have chosen to educate the way they do.

Background: Mathematics is a subject that many students perceive as difficult. In recent years, results in mathematics declined, while many students have difficulties in the subject of Swedish. However, there is not much research on the relationship between difficulties in mathematics and language weaknesses.Purpose: The purpose of this work is to find out what role the advocate competence of learning opportunities for the students to understand mathematics. A further aim of this work is to find out how mathematics is verbalized and individualized in preschool and find out how teachers in those classes describes how they work to verbalize and individualize mathematics.Method: The purpose is answered by observations in preschool and interviews of the teachers working in the observed classes. The empirical data are discussed and analyzed with theories related to children's learning and literature of mathematics and language.Result: The results show that mathematics is extensively verbalized in preschool classes.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

The study´s main purpose is to examine how three educators who work with children ages 1-3  in three different preschools working with mathematics in preschool. I have used a qualitative research in the form of interviews to obtain educators perspectives on their working. The educator´s stories about their working methods are the most important findings and it turned out that the interviewed educators was working fairly similar in terms of mathematics learning with the youngest children  in preschool. They both schedule mathematics in various activities and work with it in everyday situations. Their different approaches can be divided into five different categories which are: planned theme work and experiences, body and play, interaction and conversation, environment and materials, visualize mathematics..

Aim: The aim of this study was to study through papers if early intervention of children and adolescents with deaf-blindness can be facilitated through early intervention programs, cochlear implants (CI) and communication strategies.Method: The method that we used was a literature study of scientific articles through Pubmed and Cinahl databases. The articles reference lists were also studied which lead to that more papers were found.Results: Children and adolescents with deaf-blindness can benefit from early intervention programs, when their caregivers were educated to give appropriate response to the children?s behavior. The interaction between children and their caregivers can improve through an early intervention model. Children and adolescents with Deafblindness have variable results from CI.

The purpose of this essay was to illustrate professionals? reflections on the concept early attachment between guardian and infant, within different family support activities, and how professionals encourage early attachment between guardian and infant. The mental health state of infants is an important field of knowledge to explore. Attachment between guardian and infant is of the utmost importance for the development of children. The questions we had were: What contains the concept early attachment between guardian and infant from a professional point of view? Which factors have influence on early attachment between guardian and infant? How do professionals work with early attachment between guardian and infant? The essay is a qualitative study based on six interviews with two female district nurses, two female social welfare secretaries, a female psychologist and a female social worker.

This work deals with mathematics teaching in preschool classes. The purpose of my study is to investigate the preschool classes? teachers' aspirations for the children learning mathematics in two different preschools. To achieve my goal, I formulated the following questions to be explored and answered through interviews with five teachers.  Does mathematics in preschool classes have a prominent role in educators' planning? What perception do the educators in the field have about the learning and teaching of mathematics in the preschool classes? How do the teachers understand their own work with mathematics in preschool classes in relation to multilingual students?                                A qualitative interview method was applied.

The purpose of this work is to explore how to work with early reading and writing and find out what really comes first of the two. The work also involves the best known literacy learning methods and deals with methods to work around reading and writing. I have read previous research on the subject and watched a movie from our AV-central on children?s early language development. It includes an interview with two professors of education, Mats Myrberg and Mats Ekholm where they talk about the pros and cons of early learning literacy. My research is based on literary sources and interviews with educators who work with reading and writing in the early years. The results showed that even if a teacher tries to work with early writing skills we still remain in the traditional school, beginning with learning how to read.

Today?s Sweden becomes more and more multicultural, with a mixture of many different languages. Many children are raised to learn two or more parent languages. If you work as an educationalist in preschool you will probably come in contact with these children. The question is how you should treat them and ease their development of languages.The purpose with this work is to find answers to the question if bilingual children develop their languages by the same method as monolingual and how one as an educationalist can make these children?s development of language easier.The papers preface is a part of literature that describes different researchers view on the bilingual children?s development of language and how one, as an educationalist, can ease it.To my study I have chosen to interview three educationalists in preschool who all work with bilingual children.

The purpose of this study was to investigate into the praxis based sociocultural tools that are utilized to enhance language development in early childhood education. Four pre-school teachers were involved in this study. Two were recruited from an independent pre-school "Maria Montessori", practicing the pedagogical philosophy developed by Maria Montessori. Two were from a public pre-school herein named "Kvasten", which has no official philosophy but where the teachers (like in many Swedish pre-schools) work in a general alignment with the principles of Reggio Emilia pedagogics. The theoretical fundament of the study lies in the general theories of language development and education of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotskij, and the comparative element mainly concerns the variations in pedagogical praxis between the two pre-schools, and the way the teachers reason about language development.

AbstractThe signification of the eyesight for children?s development and learning- how do pedagogues support and stimulate children with defective vision in their development and learning in pre-school?These issues are based on my purpose of the field survey investigations, where I have interviewed three pedagogues and also performed an observation.My main conclusion and results describe that the vision is the high-powered engine in children?s development and learning. It also tells us that those around the children are very important for optimum development and learning, especially when it comes to supporting and stimulating children with defective vision in their necessities. Our other senses are a compensation to make it easier for children with defective visions in their lives. But all our senses are equally important for children with defective vision as they are for seeing children in their development and learning with their whole body in pre-school.Keywords:Eyesight, children with defective vision, development and learning in pre-school, pedagogues, pedagogical support and stimulation.

The Third International Assessment of Educational Progress (TIMMS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) during the last decades regarding the results of mathematics teaching shows that China have a better performance than Sweden?s.Swedish teacher-guidelines focus on developing student?s individual interest and confidence for mathematics. In the Chinese teaching-guidelines for Mathematics Curriculum Standards, Ordninary Senior Secondary, the focus is given on: Elevate their mathematics literacy necessary for future citizenship and Development of citizen´s qualities (s.3).Teachers are the primary factors that impact teaching and learning of mathematics. Two teachers from Sweden and two from China were interviewed and their methods were compared in my study. The aim of my study was to understand mathematics teaching in China and Sweden.

AbstractThe purpose of the study was to examine if manual signs used as support to spoken and written language can be a god mnemonic for learning of word-pictures. I performed my study as an experiment in which I made a Memory game with word-pictures. I played the game with the children twice. The first time, we played without manual signs and the second time I used sign as a support. I observed the children and noted the words they learned to read with and without the support of manual signs.

The aim of child health care is to promote health and development for all children, to early identify problems that concern children´s growth and development and to prevent ill-health among children. Today in our society the proportion of children who are underweight are few.The aim with this study was to describe paediatric nurses experience in meeting with underweight children and their parents. Interviews were implemented and analyzed according to qualitative content analysis. Focus was placed on looking at differences and interpretations in the text content. The analyse resulted in six main categories, such as a need of sensitivity and a holistic view from the nurse, difficulties in handling the meeting because lack of tools.