The aim of the study was to understand how the family home secretary reasons and thinks and how they express themselves in their actions towards the family home?s biological children. The method used is qualitative semi-structured interviews, involving six family home secretaries from four different municipalities. The results were analyzed with the help of two theories ? the theory of grassroots bureaucracy and the sociology of childhood theory.

This study aims to investigate, describe and discuss the views of a group of adolescents on their identity and the process of second language acquisition. They all came to Sweden and started studying in Swedish schools in the last three years without any knowledge of the Swedish language.The study has been conducted with respect to the adolescents own perspectives and what they consider important.The methods used are group discussions/ interviews, observations in class and informal discussions with teachers and adolescents.Their voices are described and discussed in this paper. One must take into consideration that there is no objective of being neutral or to generalize the results to any other group or category. On the contrary the study has involved critical self- scrutiny and active reflexivity according to ethnographic tradition.Symbolic interaction has provided a theoretical framework for the study. Looking into how social identities may be constructed or communicated from the adolescents voices and looking in to their use of language the study reveals that several expectations and situations need? to be met by different identities.

The purpose with my degree project is to investigate the use of computers within the daily activity in three preschools and one preschool class. I have designed a survey that I distributed to the staff. The purpose of my work is to investigate how a number of preschool teachers and children in a few preschools and one preschool class in a medium-sized Swedish town are using the computer in their activities.My study shows that the computer is frequently used, both of the children and teachers, but also together. The children in my study are using the computer to play games, listen to music, and go into the websitewww.youtube.com, but also in order to write and count.  The teachers primarily use the computer to document, check their e-mail and listen to music.

The outdoor environment at Children's hospital, the University Hospital, Uppsala, is used by sick children at the Children's hospital, their families and the hospital staff. The staff at the Children's hospital wanted to render the site more attractive and available. This graduation thesis is a proposal about how the outdoor environment at the Children's hospital can be improved. The aim is to design an environment for the sick children, their families and the hospital staff that will serve as a place for relaxation and privacy, as well as for play and movement. In order to find support for the redesign of this site I read literature about theories concerning healing environments, healing gardens, children's play and designs for children.

Today many children have limited experiences with the outdoors or nature. In most suburbs where people originate from many countries and have various ways of understanding nature is it perhaps in preschool that several children for the first time experience nature.This survey is qualitative and the main research methods are participant observations and interviews. The theories used in this study are mainly based on the thoughts of Dewey and Vygotskij as well as on ideas from outdoor education and different ways or ideas of understanding nature.The purpose with this study is to make clear in what ways nature is used by the teachers in preschool activities and how this work is done in preschools in multicultural suburbs. Questions at issue are: What way of understanding nature are the teachers trying to convey to the children? How is nature used in the ordinary outdoor activities by the preschool teachers? What are the teachers experiences of success and problems in this work?The conclusion is that nature is used in preschool activities in many ways.

The purpose of my study was to explore how preschool educators in Kenya look at children's influence on teaching. Researchers have argued that the formal educational system in Kenya today is a remnant of its days as a colony when people were expected to blindly follow rules without questioning them. I have used qualitative interviews as a method in order get the most concrete understanding of educators? views on the influence from children. The educators I interviewed were based at a school I visited in Kenya.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine and analyze what discourses about children that can be found in three Swedish culture publications, and also to identify the different social roles that are attributed to children in these publications. The theoretical and methodological background is discourse theory, as described by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Additional theory used is social constructionism and Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse theory. Three questions are asked: What discourse/s can be found in these publications? What do these discourses tell us about the view on children within the library domain? What social roles are attributed to the children in the texts and what consequences do these have for the power configuration between children and adults? Furthermore there is a discussion concerning what effects these discourses might have on the direct and indirect reception of children in the library.

The main purpose of the study was to collect normative data for Lundamaterialet,revised version, divided into phonology and grammar, for childrenaged 4:6-5:11. Another aim was to explore how children aged 3:0-5:11 had acquiredprepositions and different forms of comparison. 195 children with typicallanguage development participated. The children were divided into six groups,116 children from the three oldest groups participated in the normative data. Theresults showed an increasing mean value with age for both phonology and grammar.The older children had acquired the prepositions and the forms of comparisonbetter than the younger ones.

This report is a qualitative study on children aged three to five years who are in the Swedish preschool. The purpose of the study is to investigate how five experienced preschool teachers view the way children between three and five years acquire basic mathematical concepts, basic numeracy and geometry. The aim is also to find out whether teachers feel that the size of the group of children affects their learning.The study contains information about what preschool teachers think about the way children learn mathematics and how the size of the group of children affects this learning. From the results it can be seen that children learn Mathematics, both in everyday situations and when playing. Moreover, the group size does not seem to affect the mathematical learning of the child.

This study discloses Swedish human service organizations and their methods of integrating unaccompanied children into the Swedish society. The purpose of the study is to investigate how social workers at HVB-homes for unaccompanied children depict their experience in and knowledge of how the unaccompanied children are integrated into Swedish society. The method of investigating the questions raised by the purpose of this thesis has been qualitative analysis of answers derived from interviewing personnel at HVB-homes for unaccompanied children. In doing so we have made use of a semi-structured method of interviewing the above-mentioned personnel. The data derived from these interviews has thereafter been analysed and filtered through the concept of integration and the theoretical formations human service organizations and street-level bureaucrats.

This essay, with the title: Among children, laser swords and lions. ? How do we approach and utilize the cultural experiences of children? is an approach to participate in a scientific discussion in the field of cultural experiences. This text is an attempt to show the importance of paying attention to, how children express themselves, and place their activities in social and cultural contexts. By doing so and approaching children and their activities with an intercultural point of view, I can use my new found knowledge and use it to stimulate their future learning progresses in different fields.

The need for second language learning is increasing in today?s multicultural and globalized society, and adult studies are becoming more common. Teachers must encourage all students, and all schools need to promote equality. Motivation is one of the most important factors for positive learning and progress, and it can be helpful for second language teachers to know more about this subject. The aim of this study was to examine which motivational factors that influence adult immigrants to learn Swedish through SFI education in Sweden.

The purpose of this examination was to make a qualitative study focusing on children's influence from a gender perspective. The study is based on interviews. We wanted to investigate teachers' perception of children's influence in the preschool.Earlier research on children´s influence and gender has also helped us in the conclusion of this examination.The survey consists of ten interviews with teachers of varied work experience in the preschool. We also chose to interview teachers in other positions, since this is often the case in preschools today. From the result we can see that there are different levels of skill and awareness regarding the topic of children's influence from a gender perspective.

AbstractIn this work, I have chosen to write about children in grief. Since children in grief is a large area, I have chosen to focus on how preschool handles and works with children who has loosed a parent, siblings or a play-mate by death. The aim of this work is to contribute knowledge about how you in preschool can handle and work with children in grief. To get answers to my questions, I have studied the current literature in the field. I have also interviewed five people with experience and knowledge of work with preschool-children affected by grief.

The Swedish language has for over six hundred years been under influence of foreign languages. Nowadays, it is the English language that undoubtedly affects it in largest scale - even though both French and especially German have had a serious influence through history. In an inquiry by behalf of the Swedish Government, named Mål i mun ? förslag till handlingsprogram för svenska språket (2002), one of the conclusions was that journalism is an important area that has to be under linguistic supervision to avoid a gradual weakening of the Swedish language. It is also a known fact that the Swedish sports writers has a tendency to use a lot of English words, even though there are equivalent Swedish ones applicable.