This study is about youths, democracy and school. It seeks to describe and problemize the school's role in the democratic society. Firstly, using Social Representations Theory, 44 upper secondary shool pupils? representations, or Conceptions, of democracy are described and discussed. These representations are then analyzed in relation to the school's role in the democratic society, as it is described by different researchers.The results show that many of the youths have a rather simplistic and abstract view of democracy, describing it only in terms of general principles and the main features of the representative democracy, such as voting in national elections.

The aim of this study is to describe what teachers and principals experience in schools regarding threats, violence and harassment towards teachers. A phenomenographical inspired approach has been used to describe and analyse the Conceptions of five teachers and five principals. The findings of the study indicate that there is no impending risk for teachers to suffer from violence, threats or harassment. However, it does occasionally happen, and the findings of the study indicate that there are some factors that increase the risk. The major three factors are: fear, personality and inexperience.

The aim of this study is to examine ways of writing experiences of the strange and different, experiences of the other in his or her otherness and experiences of suffering. The study focuses possibilities and limits for the writing of these experiences and aims at finding a tangible way of writing literature. Part of the aim of this study is to elaborate a proposal for a way of writing experiences of the strange and different, experiences of the other in his or her otherness and experiences of suffering.    The material for the study consists of three different approaches to literature, in which theories on literature or analyses of literary works are presented. This material is initially analysed in separate analyses in which Conceptions, strategies and methods for writing experiences of the strange and different, the other and suffering are identified. Secondly, the material is analysed in a comparative analysis, aimed at finding similarities and differences between the approaches but above all to let the approaches supplement and challenge each other.

This thesis examines which function the information technology may have in thechildren's library, with the example from two library computer programmes. One is anexpert system, Hedvig, which will help children to choose and to find books, and theother is a computer game, The mysterious signs, that will teach children library user education.The main question is: What Conceptions do the project-leaders, the children'slibrarians and the children have concerning the function of these two programmes in thechildren's library?The study is based upon qualitative interviews with two projects-leaders, fourlibrarians, three computer programmers and twenty-eight children.The theoretical material consists of examples on other library computer programmesfor children developed in Denmark and USA, some American studies in children'sabilities to use computerized information retrieval systems, and studies concerningchildren's relations to computers.The adult's Conceptions of the computer programmes are divided into categories asfollows: Democracy, aspect of sex, complement, marketing, reading promotion,development of competence, information technology development, pedagogics, adulteducational activities, compensation and armusement, pedagogics, usefulness,effectiveness and information. These categories shall be seen as the conclusions of the thesis..

This essay is a selective review of Nordic literature with the aim to explore contemporary Conceptions of male-on-female rape, to increase the understanding of how these can construct ?a real rape?. To achieve this two questions were formulated: What circumstances can cause an incident not to be defined as rape? What circumstances can cause an incident to be defined as rape? Searches in international and Swedish databases led to initial selection of peer-review journal articles and dissertations that were reviewed against set criteria. These criteria were met by 8 studies, that were assigned codes, from which comprehensive categories were developed.

This study is about conception in the evaluation of financial assistance within the social services. The aim of this study is to describe and understand how social workers reason about variation, conception and local norms and its significance in the evaluation process. To reach this purpose we have conducted semi-structured interviews with eight social workers in which different themes were discussed and reasoned about. In order to understand and analyze our results we have studied/used the knowledge about tacit knowledge and street-level bureaucracy. Our results showed, as previous research states, that social workers do have Conceptions about clients.

AbstractDue to the success of the Populist Party Sverigedemokraterna in the Swedish election of 2006, the daily paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet published a number of columns written by well-known academics, writers and debaters. Their aim was to address the question of why this happened in the election and what it is in the Swedish society today that brought forward these trends. The first and the last word was given to the writer Fredrik Ekelund, and therefore the debate was named Ekelunddebatten.The debaters are fighting to present their view of the world as the only option when categorizing different societal groups and appointing themselves as group representatives. My aim is to unravel these different Conceptions of the world and to do this I use the Dicourse Analysis as a method. I discuss the results with Critical Discourse Theory as a theoretical base and also from the view of the current societal discourses: the working class discourse, the multicultural discourse and the discourse of political correctness.I mainly observe four different Conceptions of the world with different posing of problems.

The aim of this thesis is to study the conditions three public libraries have to be a resource for university students. The libraries are all situated at a distance from universities that allow the students to commute between the university and their homes. These students often make the same demands on the public library as they do on the university library. In order to conduct this study the frame factor theory has been used. This theory was developed by pedagogic scholars during the 1960s and focuses on how the framework surrounding the school affects the learning results.

The primary purpose of this degree project was to investigate teachers Conceptions about education for sustainable development and their education within the area. Teachers from Sweden and California have taken part and one of the aims with this study was to look if any differences could be found depending on what country the teachers came from. Therefore, this study has used a qualitative approach where conception maps and interviews have been used to get a result. Furthermore, the result showed that none of the differences that was found can be linked to the participants home country. The study also showed that several of different teaching traditions and educations philosophies was represented.

National identity, multiculturalism and invisible norms are three Conceptions focused on in this essay. They are discussed and analysed with the purpose of deepening deepen the understanding of their meaning. Further on they become instruments in a study of the Liberal Party's proposal for new politics of integration. My ambition is to distinguish signs of a Swedish national identity in this proposal and to interpret the party's relation to multiculturalism.The method of this essay comprises partly a literature study and partly a qualitative analysis of text.My discussion and analysis ended in an understanding of national identity and multiculturalism as complex and interrelated Conceptions. I found parts of a Swedish national identity in the value of working, in the fear of the cultural unknown and of eventual anti Swedish culture, in the idea of Sweden as the best country in the world considering gender equality and in the strong defence for the Swedish language.

The aim of the study was to do an analysis about the Conceptions of units and unit con-version. Investigating the students´ attitudes towards their own mathematical ability and the students´ understanding of the conception of units..

AbstractIn this master´s thesis I primarily investigate librarians´ and teachers´ Conceptions of collaboration between libraries and schools and their Conceptions of childrens´reading. Secondary I investigate the contents of laws concerning libraries and schools and also the school curriculums concerning the subject field of the Swedish language. My theoretical point of departure is that of social constructionism. I use two models in my analysis. One is a model of collaboration created by Patricia Montiel-Overall, called TLC (Teacher Librarian Collaboration), which grades collaboration from the lowest level (A) to the highest (D).

The aim of this master thesis is to examine the opinions of the students of Linköping University regarding the role of the university library in their learning process. The study addresses the student?s expectations and satisfaction regarding the library services. The questions we seek to answer are: What are the students? Conceptions of Linköping University Library as a part of their learning process? What expectations do the students have regarding Linköping University Library? Does the library fulfil the students? expectations? In what way has the library?s pedagogical ambition reached the students? What are the students? opinions about the user education? The study is based on a web survey complemented with interviews.

Clients with dual diagnosis have difficulties to recover and have a tendancy to fall between two stools. Among other things this is due to the fact that caregivers have different approaches, values and focus. The purpose of this study is to compare how clients, therapists and socialworkers look upon the aim of the treatment, its form, residential care, the conception of goalfulfillment and participation. In our study we have applied the theories of Aaron Antonovsky, Howard Becker and Erving Goffman. The paper consists mainly of qualitative interviews with clients, therapists and socialworkers.

The gender theory of Judith Butler is based on both philosophical and psychoanalytic notions of the self. Although greatly inspired by both early and contemporary psychoanalytic thinking, Butler has also questioned some of its core notions such as the meaning of gender complementarity and Conceptions of desire. In a dialogue in Studies in Gender and Sexuality she discusses these and other theoretical and ethical issues with the influential psychoanalyst and gender theorist Jessica Benjamin. The exchange is a unique example of an attempt at dialogue and theoretical reflection between a prominent contemporary gender theorist and psychoanalyst. It reveals disagreements and theoretical difficulties I will show to be directly attributable to radical differences between Butler's and Benjamin's Conceptions of the self.