All human beings need and have the right to a language. How a language is learned and used depends on the individual conditions. This study considers the work to development the language done by pedagogues in a special school for mentally retarded children. How do pedagogues work to develop the language in children who are so different and have so different conditions and needs? That is the central aim of this study.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.

Background: Overweight in children is a growing problem around the world. Studies has shown that children suffering from overweight, are at a greater risk to remain overweight as adults as well. Child health care nurses have an important task by trying to motivate parents to better diet and exercise habits for their children. Previous research proves that overweight and obesity in children is a very complex problem which requires a good caring relationship between child health care nurses and parents.Purpose: The purpose of the study was to illuminate the experiences of child health care nurses of meeting parents of overweight children.Method: An inductive qualitative approach was used as method. The collection of data was conducted by using semi-structured interviews.

The overall aim was to examine how the public interest to protect children from violence and sexual abuse at home, is realized by social workers. The study´s central focus was the risk assessments as Social services are obliged to do when they receive a report containing concern that children are being exposed to violence or sexual abuse at home. The study addresses the following questions:o How do social workers go about practically, and what support and knowledge is being used to determine whether the Social services need to intervene for the protection of a child?o What risk and protective factors are taken into account by social workers in the assessment process?o What contextual factors do social workers experience are affecting them in the assessment process?o Which support does the documentation system BBIC provide in the assessment process?The study material was collected through qualitative group interviews, with a modified vignette methodology as tools. The study included a total of twelve social workers, with varying numbers in each interview group.

This study aims to find more knowledge about preschool teachers? point of view on the situation of children living in economic hardship and how it affects them at the preschool. With economic hardship becoming more frequent and common amongst families with young children we find the subject important and in need of more attention. Studies have proven the negative effects of poverty on children?s development and health and since the preschool is a big part of children?s everyday life the study aims to see what perspectives practitioners have on the issue and how they plan activities and learning situations based on the needs of these children.

In the curriculum for Swedish pre-school the focus is mainly on five concepts. These are care of the children, learning, influence, rearing and security. These concepts are to characterize the activities of the pre-school in Sweden.Back in time the focal point of pre-school activities for young children was mainly on security. The learning part became more prominent as the children grew older. When speaking to teachers and parents I do sense that some believe this is the case even nowadays.

The purpose of this study has been to describe and analyze how seven Swedish preschool teachers and two special education teachers think and work with children who show a lack of social skills. The study method has been semi-structured interviews with the educators which have been analyzed and sorted under different themes/categories. The theoretical framework used in this study is sociocultural, relational and categorical perspectives. These perspectives have been chosen in order to better understand how teachers see their role in supporting children in need of special support. The environment in the preschool is found to be of great help and the teachers? approach is of great importance.The research emphasizes the importance of integrating thinking, feeling and behavior.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

AbstractThe purpose with the study is to contribute knowledge of teacher?s thoughts of, and actions in potentially stress filled situations at preschool. The methods I?ve been using are qualitative interviews and unstructured observations of hallway situation at dressing and the transit between lunch and rest.At the interviews with the teachers it showed that none of them feels stressed but there are stress filled situations. The lunch and transit between lunch and rest is a stressful situation, where there is a lot to do, like the dishes, the teachers break and the lie-down.

The purpose of this survey was to discern possible similarities and difference between how teachers in preschool and pre-class respond to children?s own initiative out of a power perspective. The results of this study is collect by observations that we have done in free and planned activity in both preschool and pre-class as well as a few interviews with some of the teachers. The results have shown that teacher?s responses to children?s own initiatives in preschool and pre-class to most part is similar, despite the difference in their commission.

The aim of this study is to examine how social workers and pree-school teachers resonate about their experiences of cooperation with each other, in relation to maltreated children and the duty to report. Several studies show that there is a difference between how many children that is suspected of maltreatment and how many that are reported to social service. In Sweden, pre-school staff are obliged to notify the suspicion of child abuse according to 14: 1 SoL, but previous research indicates that the obligation to declare is not used to the extent that it should. One reason for the low notification rate is  the interaction between preschool and the social services shortcomings.Therefore, we believe it is relevant to examine how the cooperation really looks like between the organizations, when the child is being abused or at risk of suffering. The results of the study are based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with four preschool teachers and four administrators.

Each year over 3000 children in Sweden lose a parent. The loss of a parent may cause some grave changes in a child?s life, leading to both mental and physical consequences. The purpose of this literature study is to examine the different ways in which health care personnel can better receive and relate to children whose parents are dying or have passed away.Data was collected through such sources as Pubmed, Academic Search Elite and Cinahl, which resulted in the inclusion of sixteen subsequent articles, ten of which were quantitative and six of which were qualitative. Thirteen of the said articles illustrate how children act in response to a dying or deceased parent and what measures were needed for them to move on with their lives.

AbstractThis study investigates the impact of storytelling for children's language development in preschool from a sociocultural perspective. The purpose is to find what narrative methods teachers use to promote children's language development. I also want to examine whether the children are involved in the storytelling. To get answers to my questions which include what methods teachers use, narrative meaning and function, and their children's participation, I have used qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers at four different preschools.The results of my survey show that teachers use a variety of methods at storytelling. The most common methods were reading, rhymes and daily storytelling while eating.

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.

The purpose of this study is to determine which approach preschool teachers from a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool and a traditional preschool have on children, knowledge, learning and their own role in children?s learning. The two pedagogical approaches have different basic visions; Reggio Emilia follows the thoughts of Lori Malaguzzi and the traditional preschool follows the Swedish curriculum Lpfö 98. The main research questions asked were:What view on children, learning and knowledge does the preschool teacher from a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool have in comparison with a traditional preschool?Which role does the teacher believe that they should take regarding children?s learning?What differences and similarities can be identified in the teachers' perceptions?To carry out this study, I used a qualitative research method.