ABSTRACTSince Robert D. Putnam first wrote about the causes behind the regional differences in economic and political development in Italy, the theory of social capital has truly flourished in the fields of social science. This days you constantly hear politicians and scholars stressing the important role of the quality of the social fabric to a society?s wellbeing. There all looking at ways to construct policies and institutions that help the spread of social capital.

Numerous studies raise the topic of highly educated immigrants whose education and list of qualifications devalue in the context of the Swedish labour market. However, little is known of those with foreign background who enter into higher education in Sweden. Our study attempts to shed some light onto the value of higher education relative to that of a person?s ethnic background. The background material features nine in-depth interviews of foreign background academics, as well as data extracted from an extensive survey study previously carried out at Växjö University. Initially, the quantitative data showed that students with foreign background, including Swedish-born children of immigrants, had not managed to find qualified work upon completion of studies to the same extent as their Swedish background counterparts.

This paper deals with breaks in upper secondary school. The aim with the study was to study the function of breaks for upper secondary students by investigating students? activities during breaks with the main issues: ?what does the students do during breaks??, ?how do they experience breaks?? and ?What is the relation between breaks and lessons??.A combination of the two complementary methods observation and interview was chosen to study this. The study was executed on an upper secondary school during one month. I have visited the school several times every week and written daily notes over my observations.

Unga möter unga is an activity that concentrates on sexuality, coexistence and relations. The project was founded by ?Ungdomsmottagningen centrum?. Ungdomsmottagingen centrum collaborates with the University of Gothenburg in implementation. When us students of socialwork programs have our practical vocational training place during term six we get the possibility to choose to participate on this activity aside of our other practical training.

AimThe aim with this study was to acquire knowledge of mental training and if you can use it in the elementary school to increase in a short period of time the performance in a coordination test. Furthermore we wanted to investigate teachers understanding of the possibilities to perform this kind of training in the elementary school, and if there is support for this in the school regulation.MethodAs method we have used a combination of a literature pre-study, interview and at the end an experiment. Before the experiment and interviews could take place we studied literature about mental training to get a basic knowledge of the subject. The facts we learned from our pre-study and interviews gave us the base for our experiment. The experiment group included 23 pupils in a third class at school situated in Stockholm.

The purpose with my essay was to investigate how genre pedagogy works in a practical manor? I wanted to reach a deeper understanding for the genre pedagogy and to find out if it fits all students. To investigate this issue I have asked following questions:What is genre pedagogy?How do teachers work with different genres in the genre pedagogy?For whom is the genre pedagogy?Is the critic right that Frøydis Hertzberg is proposing about the genre pedagogy formalism? I have been using qualitative methods, to gather my empirical data. I have been using two unstructured interviews and one unsystematically observation, in a third grade class in a school south of Stockholm, with 30% second language students.

Purpose: Aims of this paper is to evaluate a comparative study between China and Russia funds in respect of the risks and returns. We also want to examine what has affected the funds in their respective domestic stock market.                                                            Method: The study is based on qualitative methodology to complement the quantitative survey by first gathering of secondary data from Morningstar, and fund manager´s stories on fund and banking companies' websites.  Primary data is conducted by the interview with fund manager. The sample consists of all land funds for China and Russia has found more than 10 years on the stock market.Results and Conclusion: The survey shows that China funds will generate better in decline than Russia Funds in both return and risk-adjusted Sharpe ratio. Because the China funds had better risk diversification and its holdings spread across different industry area while Russia funds is more directed towards oil and gas industry.

Johanna Petrén, a prospective teacher of religion, has examined how a couple of students view Christianity as it is presented in a Religious Education classroom. Furthermore, how this image matches their experience of Christianity outside of school. The key questions of this essay are: How do the students generally describe Christianity and what it means to be a Christian based on the image they have acquired from outside of school, or from Christian friends, confirmation or their own faith? How do the students describe Christianity according to what they learn in Religious education at school? What potential differences do the students perceive between the image of Christianity conveyed by the school and the image they have of Christianity from outside of school? Does the school's teaching influence the credibility and interest in Christianity? The questions have been discussed in focus group interviews, in which the students way of reasoning and talking about religious matters were analysed based on previous research. References used in the analysis includes research on topics such as science of religious history, religion in multicultural and postcolonial rooms, secularism and discourse analysis have.

The company System Andersson is developing systems for controlling materials and production in industries. They want to add a new service, where parts of those systems are accessible through cell phones.In this paper we are investigating which technology are best suited for this kind of application. And then we describe how we are developing a prototype fort this application, based upon that technology. After investigating technologies such as Java ME, Microsoft Silverlight, and web applications we settled upon building the system as a web application, customized for a mobile environment.To build a web page which is readable by many different cell phones we use the markup-languages which are developed for cell phones. We put much effort in reading about the standards and recommendations for the mobile web, produced by the organizations W3C and OMA.

The purpose of this thesis is to, based on interviews and document studies, critically discuss how the introduction of kickboxing in Physical Education (PE) could affect gender equality in society. Based on a queer feminist and norm critical perspective on the prevailing teaching of PE, which, despite official efforts to challenge and modernize PE, persists in reproducing gender norms by e.g. spending 75% of class time on ball games. The hypothesis is that girls accessing violence (empowerment) through a bodily awareness in the form of kickboxing, positively would challenge the power imbalance that gender norms create. Girls are brought up, even today, in accordance with gender norms arguing against girls/women wanting to use their bodies as powerful tools to set limits.

SummaryAim and research questionsThe purpose of the study is to examine how physical education (PE) teachers can work to increase young people?s interest in physical education but also physical activity in general.- How can PE teachers work to increase student?s interest in physical activity?- Does PE teachers believe that the student?s interest for sports is achieved according to the educations curriculum and in that case, how?- What problems can PE teachers encounter in their efforts to get young people motivated for physical activities during PE classes?MethodPrior to implementation of the study i reviewed on a lot of past research and got interested about the problem with unmotivated students. After this I looked for different theories that I could use for my study and settled with the KASAM theory by Aaron Antonovsky. The method applied in this study was a qualitative interview method. The aim was to find out how teachers work to motivate their students to be physically active and wanting to participate in PE classes.

Världen är i ständig förändring, så även de krig och konflikter som utkämpas. Aktörerna utgörs inte längre enbart av nationer utan innefattas även ickestatliga aktörer. År 2000 utsattes amerikanska fartyget USS Cole för en asymmetrisk attack, där en ickestatlig aktör, genom asymmetrisk krigföring, åsamkade stor skada med relativt ringa medel. Denna typ av krigföring och hot är någonting relativt nytt inom den marina arenan. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka om ubåt typ Gotland är en potent plattform att nyttja vid en internationell insats med asymmetrisk hotbild.

Exotic small animals that are commonly kept as pets include aquarium fish, cage and aviary birds, rodents, rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), reptiles and amphibians. These different kinds of animals, even species within the same class, may differ markedly from each other regarding physiology and requirements. Although these species are common in both Swedish households and in pet trade, many animal keepers have a lack of knowledge about the origin and requirements of their pets. This is a cause of several health problems seen in animals which are held in captivity. In Sweden, the county administrative boards perform all animal welfare controls.

This paper examines how remedial teachers and subject teachers in two secondary schools talk about pupils with special education needs (SEN) both in general, and more specifically about boys and girls who need special education. The study is based on 6 interviews with teachers in two secondary schools in the Stockholm area. In the analysis of the interviews, two different theories have been used. Firstly, the teachers´ speech has been analyzed based on three perspectives; a compensatory-, a critical- and a dilemma perspective (see Nilholm, 2007). Secondly, discourse analysis has been used to examine how the teachers in the study talk about boys and girls in the special education.

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.