In a society where adults set the conditions for children?s play and generate modern and at times technically advanced products, fundamental characteristics like simplicity, opportunities for motor skills training and learning tend to be neglected. Owing to this, the Linköping-based company Time In wants to introduce a new multifunctional product, which differs from other products in shape and function and lives up to the often overlooked, basic characteristics in a toy.With Time In as the assigner, the purpose of this master thesis has been to use simple means to produce a "learning by playing" concept. Since Time In sells toys and products suitable for children in nurseries and preschools, the development of the products has therefore included a study of nursery and preschool environments.The thesis has been carried out within the Product Design subject area at the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University. Concept development has been done in three phases: the Preparation phase, the Design phase and the Presentation phase.

This dissertation is about children in a district in Malmö, Sweden that is called RosengÄrd. This district is known for its high amount of immigrants and foreigners and all the children interviewed for the study are foreigners.We wanted to bring out their story, how they experience the cultures they are in touch with, the Swedish culture that they live in and their foreign culture that they experience at home with their parents. How do these children socialize into the Swedish culture while living in a district that is hardly exposed to it? We have been working from a different perspective, this due to the fact that we have both grown up in RosengÄrd and are still currently living here. Therefore our perspective is more from the inside, we can relate to the children?s stories and we can tell about it in a way that seems more natural.These children are not more different than other children, they have the same interests and hobbies as is considered to be ?fashionable? in youth culture today.

The aim of this study is to examine which factors in the receiving-country that have had an influence on three now adult unaccompanied refugee children. The method used in the study is qualitative interviews with the three above-mentioned participants. The results show that some factors are perceived as helpful, having a positive influence on the participants life while other factors are perceived as worsening, having a negative influence on their life. Depending on the context some factors such as age, the Swedish language and housing arrangements have had both positive and negative influences on their life. Positive factors are among other things: access to good treatment and support, help with processing trauma and bad mental health, help with understanding coherence, access to a social network, family reunification, resilience and other internal factors.

The aim of this research is to develop a better understanding of how preschool-teachers respond to children in preschool, when they show that they want to have some influence. I have concentrated this study on how the preschool-teachers respond to the children in the gatherings and when the children are playing freely indoors, where the questions at issue are:How do the preschool-teachers respond to the children?s initiative for participation in the gathering and while playing freely?There have been four preschool-teachers and 14 children who have taken part in this study. The children who took part are in the ages of three to five. The study was done at a section in a preschool in middle Sweden.The method used in this study is unstructured observations.

The study which has been made is a qualitative observational study where play forms and participation of adults were observed in two preschools. The word play is defined in the study with an ?as-if? ?nature based on Knutsdotters definition which differs play and activities from each other. The observed play form has been analyzed according to the concept of imitation and imagination play. To get a complete base of the study a few children on some occasions drew what they played or would like to play.Through photographs of these drawings and how the children described and explained what they drew a connection could be made with the children?s play forms.

Studies among parents of children with disabilities have shown that they experience a higher level of parenting stress as well as a lower degree of wellbeing, compared to parents of children without disabilities. However, there is a need to further explore parents? experience on this matter within a Swedish context. The aim of the current study was to examine how parents of preschool children, with and without disabilities, in VĂ€sterbotten, experience the impact of their child. A sample of 67 parents of children with disabilities and 134 parents of children without disabilities took part in the questionnaire study.

The purpose is to examine social workers view of vulnerable children and their needs. We are also interested to know how social workers think and discuss concerning the help these children are given. Our main questions in our study are; How do social workers define vulnerable children? Which needs do vulnerable children have according to social workers? Which opportunities and difficulties might there be in the decision making when trying to help these children? Which public authorities do social workers cooperate with? Which opportunities and difficulties do social workers find in the cooperation?This study is based upon interviews with ten social workers in the social childcare division in different municipalities in SkÄne region, Sweden. Our results are explained and analyzed with a qualitative approach through different aspects of power- and Human Service Organization theories.

This report describes an examination project made for the IT consultingcompany Sogeti. The purpose of the project was to develop and modify the translation tool Language Manager (LM) built by Sogeti to be used for translating applications. Employees at Sogeti considered some disadvantages with Language Manager, version 1.0 which among others was that language files for projects were saved at two locations. Partly in resource maps among with the source code of the applications and partly in a database. This was dual work for employees at Sogeti and it also caused redundancy inthe system.

Studies among parents of children with disabilities have shown that they experience a higher level of parenting stress as well as a lower degree of wellbeing, compared to parents of children without disabilities. However, there is a need to further explore parents? experience on this matter within a Swedish context. The aim of the current study was to examine how parents of preschool children, with and without disabilities, in VĂ€sterbotten, experience the impact of their child. A sample of 67 parents of children with disabilities and 134 parents of children without disabilities took part in the questionnaire study.

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.

Background: Overweight in children has been an increasing problem in recent years and research show that early intervention is important. The parents? diet- and exercise habits are important to lay the foundation for a healthy lifestyle for their children. Aim: To investigate parents? attitudes towards overweight in children.

According to pre-school curriculum, the childrenÂŽs needs and interests from the basis for the design and planning of the educational activities. The curriculum also highlights that all children should have the opportunity to satisfy their increasing ability to influence the content and approach. The purpose of this study is to examine whether and how teachers work in involving children's influence and interest in forest excursions.The essay is based on a qualitative approach in which we have chosen to carry out unstructured observations by a team of three educationalists. The study includes children of 3-5 years of age.The results show that the educationalists take advantage of children's interests and needs foremost in conversations. The children are given the possibility of influence that of which concerns only themselves and nobody else.

This report is a qualitative interview study which central content enlightens how movement and sports effects children?s performance in school. With the help of five different teachers in three different schools questions like; how does movement effect the performance of children in school? Have been answered.Lots of research and litterateur shows that children is doing better physical and mental, the concentration level is improved and the performance in school is better when exposed to more movement, also there are less conflicts and the students gets better motor skills.Comparison with the ?Bunkefloproject? has been done, which was a project in the south of Sweden where they let the children have physical education every day and then they examined how this effected their performance in school. With this basis this report will examine the teachers view on the subject.The result shows that the teachers think that there should be more movement in the daily schedule for the children because they seam to be more happy and concentrates better after movement.

The purpose of this study is to find out what the educators idea of educational documentations in ratio to childrens inclusion and impact in pre-school are, together with the child's own perception of the concepts of documentation. We proceeded from the following issues: What are the significance of educational work according to the teachers? What is the teachers idea of a childs impact and inclusion in educational documentation? In what way do the children have influence over, and inclusion in educational documentation? What are the childrens feelings of the documentations? In order to find answers to our questions, we used qualitative examinations consisting of seven educators and seven children from various pre-schools in Stockholm, and thereby, we have analyzed our results. As our theoretical frame, we used ourselves of Vygotskijs and SÀljö's sociocultural perspective that is about "progress and learning", which is achieved by interaction and cooperation in a social context. The result shows that the aim of educational documentation is to reveal the childs development and learning, and also to involve the parents by putting up documents on the wall.

With the increasing number of adoptees in Sweden, so has the amount of literature regarding different aspects of adoption. The aim of this study is to explore the construction of adoptees in children's literature. It takes on a social constructionism view, by regarding language as a narrative tool in which human beings construct versions of different phenomenon. By exploring the different discourses in the data within the context adoption, we can identify different versions of "the adopted child" and their needs as it is constructed in the literature. Also, by putting them in a bigger context, we are allowed to see the social structures and the discursive conditions that allow a certain child perspective of "the adopted child" to take place.