The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the present importance of liberal education in the Swedish "folkhögskola" by studying its expressions in the teaching of literature and fiction. I have interviewed teachers at four different schools about their opinions of liberal education, literature and cultural heritage, means of instruction, and influence of their students. Liberal education in this thesis is considered as a process. Starting from our own experiences we meet something strange to us and while absorbing this in our experiences we change. But its purpose also is to convey the canon of Western literature.

This paper examines the concept of heritage and which factors that determines how we evaluate and select what should be considered cultural heritage. This has been examined using a qualitative study involving interviews with seven people working within different parts of the cultural heritage sector. The purpose was to get a picture of what the public sector?s cultural heritage consists of and why so. The research question was: What gives the status of cultural heritage? This was examined by looking at further questions: What defines the concept of cultural heritage? Who decides what should be considered cultural heritage? What is significant when discussing cultural heritage? One conclusion is that the concept itself is experienced as diffuse but that the meaning can be summarized as the traces we leave behind to be preserved by future generations.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the debate in library journals and in official reports on the subject of library education in Sweden. We focus on two periods: the period just before the year 1972 ? when the library education was transformed into being occupationally-oriented and the period just before the year 1993, when the library education was transformed into being ?academised?. This Master?s thesis shows that the debate and the arguments among initiated people in the library world have had some impact on how the library education was transformed later on.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine the use of the concept cultural heritage in Swedish governmental cultural policy. Ten official reports, reaching over a time period of seven years (1997-2004) are examined in the following way: What is cultural heritage? What functions/ values does the cultural heritage have? Whose heritage is a cultural heritage? With some simplification you can say that there are two different views on cultural heritage in the documents. The most common way to refer to cultural heritage is a category of chosen historical objects whose preservation is motivated by their function as sources of information and knowledge about the history and development of the Swedish society.

This study concerns art education, and the importance of creativity in learning. The objective is to examine the use of art education in practice, and the school teacher?s position on this practice.The theoretical basis of the study is rooted in a socio-cultural perspective, and concerns the relationships between theoretical concepts as learning, knowledge and art education.The investigation is qualitative and the main research methods are participant observations and structured interviews.The group studied in this investigation consisted of five active educators, who work at different schools and make use of art-based methods in their daily work.My results show that teachers believe that art education can be used by schools as a gateway to the other subjects. Art is regarded as a form of understanding through which pupils explore their surroundings, challenge their ideas and build skills through interaction with others..

My thesis is based on a qualitative study. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the educationalist at an especially chosen school in Stockholm promotes the students multicultural background in the education or not.This is due to the fact that the Swedish school to a considerable degree reflects the multicultural Swedish society. The socio-cultural starting point is when people come together and meet. The language is the tool of the socio-culture and it is the dialogue, discussion and sympathetic understanding that makes people meet.The cultural concept is diffuse and very wide. Everyone has their own definition of it.

This thesis aims to develop a theory in the under researched field of international comparative cultural policy studies. lt does so by combining theories from the fields of political scienceand cultural studies, researching how and to what extent the concepts of culture of different states have an impact on the way cultural policies are constructed.The thesis uses this theoretical development in order to research a specific problem, namely the perceived possibility that Swedish and German cultural structures are slowly converging. Two recent official policy documents from each country are the objects of study. Through comparative idea analysis and with Michiel S. D Vries theories on decentralization, the thesis explains the convergence between the countries by differing cultural views between them.

This Masters Degree thesis aims at giving an answer to what underlying ideologies are at work in digitizing our cultural heritage. Other questions to be answered are who are benefiting from a digitized cultural heritage and who are not, and what different opinions about digitizing our cultural heritage can be identified. Two studies are made in this thesis, one of Swedish political documents that concern digitizing our cultural heritage, libraries, museums and archives, and the other one is a study of documentation of three Swedish digitizing projects. In the first study three different, but closely associated ideologies are identified, namely a preserving, b giving access and c a mixture of both, and these are shown in a model. In the second study this model is then used to identify the ideologies of one project from each sector of the so called ABM-sector Archives, Libraries and Museums.

This Masters Thesis is about the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs and the arms length principle. The principle is used to explain the separation of power between two parts with a common interest. The main purpose is to elucidate if, and if so in what way, the arms length principle can be used to explain the relation between the National Council for Cultural Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture, i.e. the Swedish government, but also to examine the structures of power and relations within the Council. In the thesis we show that in the field of cultural policy the content of the arm lengths principle varies due to the many interpretations of the meaning.

According to the Swedish curriculum, teachers have an assignment to educate children to become democratic citizens. Students will develop values given in the curriculum's section, dealing with aspirational values. Teachers also have an assignment to transmit a cultural heritage. The curriculum states that education, in a deeper sense, is about to transmit a cultural heritage. This claims that the two assignments would be one and the same.

This paper deals with how science teachers in the Swedish secondary school choose the content in the education they give to the pupils. What are the reasons for their choices and what do they think of the purpose of science in secondary school? Through interviewing science teachers the investigation shows that there are three different views of how to choose content in the science education: one focuses on the processes of science itself, one integrates the socio-cultural aspects and one emphasizes the interests of the pupils.

The aim of this thesis is to map the intellectual base, and identify the general research interests, of Cultural Policy studies. In addition to this the thesis also aims to trace the uses of theoretical and conceptual approaches within the identified research interests. This is done by analysing citations from 130 articles published in the leading scientific journal International Journal of Cultural Policy between the years 2002-2007 using the bibliometric method author cocitation analysis (ACA). The results of the ACA confirm the overall notion that the research field of cultural policy studies is an ambiguous one, even when it?s studied with a quantitative method specialised in uncovering hidden structures within a given field as ACA.

My thesis is based on a qualitative study. The purpose of the study is to investigate whether the educationalist at an especially chosen school in Stockholm promotes the students multicultural background in the education or not.This is due to the fact that the Swedish school to a considerable degree reflects the multicultural Swedish society. The socio-cultural starting point is when people come together and meet. The language is the tool of the socio-culture and it is the dialogue, discussion and sympathetic understanding that makes people meet.The cultural concept is diffuse and very wide. Everyone has their own definition of it.

The aim of this study has been to explore local cultural policy documents in some municipalities in the geographical region of Västra Götaland. Do the municipalities have these kinds of documents for their local cultural activities, and how are they designed? These are questions which the study has focused on. The study has been concentrated on the library activity in the local cultural policy documents. The research has been a comparative one.

The purpose of this paper is to find out pedagogues approach to interCultural education through IVIK, goals and guidelines, the school for newly arrived students and how student experience and knowledge are utilized. In my study, I used a qualitative research method. I have interviewed four teachers and four students and a school administrator at IVIK. Results of the study show that most teachers have a good understanding of interculturalism, but that doesn?t mean that teachers make of this relationship means in their teachings.