According to the curriculum the Swedish school system should aim to let the democratic values permeate the school as a whole, and the school should assume each student's individual abilities in teaching. (Lpo -94) Democratic education is what the pragmatist John Dewey strongly encourages in his book Democracy and Education, which is why he stands for the theoretical framework of the concept of democracy in the school context. This study aims to examine whether and if so, the social roles in a classroom can affect students' opportunities for learning. The main research questions asked were:How can the social roles affect students' opportunities for learning in a classroom? How do students perceive that the social roles in the classroom affect their opportunities for learning? This has been investigated by two complementary perspectives.  Partly thru a student perspective to raise the students 'own experiences, and partly from an outside perspective to show how I, as an observer can see that social roles affect students' opportunities for learning.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine information seeking andinformation use among high school pupils in two Norwegian highschools. The main research question focuses on different kinds ofinteraction or lack of interaction in the pupils? information seeking andinformation use.The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on a socioculturalperspective which allows for a specific focus of various forms ofinteraction. I investigate interaction in relation to concepts such associal practices, previous experiences and meaning making. Theempirical material consists of data from a large scale questionnaire (n=217) and in-depth interviews with six pupils.The results show that these pupils are used to interact with digital tools.The pupils trust printed sources more than digital ones, but at the sametime they prefer digital sources since these are easier to handle, it isquicker to locate information and this is easier to understand.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate students? perceptions of the content inthe Swedish subject and current syllabus for Swedish in the third year of uppersecondary school. The purpose has also been to analyze if students are familiar with theaims they are working towards, how explicit they are and if they have any significancefor the students? results and motivation. This investigation is based on a socio-culturalperspective and was made with help of a quantitative method by using questionnaires,but has also been studied to some extent qualitatively, which have been analyzed from astudent angle.The analysis of the results shows that the students have very good perception ofwhat they should study in Swedish year three in upper secondary school.

The aim of this study is to investigate how preschool teachers reason about gender stereotypical and gender neutral toys and other material. I would also like to see how the pedagogues reason about gender segregation when it comes to toys. To investigate the issue, I have interviewed three pedagogues from different preschools. The results showed that the work procedures differed a bit from school to school, although they all wanted to achieve the same goal. A goal that our curriculum mention as well: Not to make a difference between boys and girls.

This essay deals with how the development of society, the media society in particular, has an impact on the teaching of the subject of art. In the society of today, we are bombarded with more images than ever before. As an effect of this, the curriculum of 2011 emphasises the importance of the ability to orientate oneself in the modern society. Furthermore, it describes art not only as a practical subject, but also as a verbal and community-orientated subject. Because of sparse and dated research, the subject of art is in danger of marginalization as a school subject. The purpose of this study is to illustrate art teachers? conception of the aim of the subject of art.

AimThe study aims to highlight and discuss students 'and teachers ' conceptions of teaching in the element of dance in physical education.IssuesHow do teachers work with teaching of dance in physical education in secondary school?How do students perceive the teaching of dance in physical education in secondary school?MethodThis study used a qualitative approach with semi structured interviews. Two teachers in two schools were interviewed and two focus groups of five students each were interviewed. One school is located north of Stockholm and the other one east of Stockholm. The interviews were recorded with a cellphone and transcribed.

The purpose of this essay is to discover what Formative Assessment is used for in practice and also how teachers use the Curriculum for elementary school, preschool and after-school activity 2011 (Lgr 11) in their Formative Assessment work.The questions are as follows:What considerations do teachers take into account when assessing a student?How do teachers view assessment for learning?How do the teachers consider formative assessment works in relation to Lgr 11?I have used a qualitative research method to answer my questions. I have interviewed five teachers regarding their view on and experience with assessment. Using a hermeneutic approach I have tried to retrieve a deeper meaning from my interviewees regarding formative assessment. I have approached formative assessment using the socio-cultural perspective because I believe it to be the best fit.All of the informants believe formative assessment has made it easier to assess students and also that it works very well together with Lgr 11.

Daily citizens are informed by the media about the environment and the climate changes. The schools purpose is to educate students according to events that are of current interest and take place in present time. According to Swedish curriculum, Lpf94, all Swedish education should include and discuss the problems surrounding durable development. The purpose of the study is to se how the textbooks in History, Social studies and Geography and their contents meet the demands of the curriculum. The study shows that only the textbooks in geography meets the demands that the curriculums have on durable development.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the ideological currents that have influenced the swedish school system since the 1990's. The background of my interest is the lively debate in schools and media about the new School reform 2011. My hypothesis is that education in 2011 largely will be influenced by neoliberal and neoconservative values. The method I`ve used is discourse and ideology critique, which examines the relationship between rhetoric and power. These concepts are useful to explain the ideological change in different policy documents and in curricula, for example Lpf 94 and School 2001. The theoretical framework is based primarily on the neoliberal and the neoconservative agenda, which are two distinct political rationalities in the contemporary postmodern world.

Adolescence is more and more characterized by messages containing allusions and attitudes through social agents (family, friends, school and media). Therefore the purpose of this study was to investigate what significance the social agents and their messages, concerning sexuality, have in relation to young people's thoughts, questions and socialisation.The study is made from the young people's perspective. Our target group was 15 to 16-year-olds in ninth grade at a compulsory school in Sweden. The quantitative part of the study consisted of an anonymous and voluntary questionnaire among the students. To achieve a greater variety we made an interview as a complementary addition in which nine students participated.We found our main theoretical starting point in Anthony Giddens's theories about social agents, modernity, post modernity and sexuality.The conclusion was that the young people in our study foremost associated sexuality to sex, love, relationships and sexual orientation.

Studies show that the interest and knowledge about science among teenagers is decreasing. They also reveal the difficulties to explain the ecological processes and that the ideas about the nature are collected from everyday life and early school years.The intention of this investigation was to find out more about children?s ideas and knowledge about the ecological processes and to compare these results with the curriculum.The method was a questionnaire and interviews with children in school year 1 ? 6. The aim of the studies was also to find out if any progress connected to age could be found, concerning understanding of the ecological processes.The results showed difficulties in achieving the predestined goals for biology and chemistry concerning ecology cycles and they differed a lot between the children. Often the learning process showed very little progress.

The purpose of my study is to gain insight into how the education system (particularly social studies) is morally-minded based on the governing documents, former students and a textbook. I wanted to find out what morally-minded means and if it has a big role in social studies. Through interviews with former high school students (when my thesis is aimed at high school) I wanted to find out how they felt their social studies were educational and which the values that they had taken on from the lessons. I also chose to analyze a textbook to get a broader understanding of how the morally-minded education is written in specific areas relating to social studies. My study is a qualitative study and what I came up with is that the former students consider their social studies teaching lacked to some degree when it came to the morally-minded education. My investigation concludes that the morally-minded education is important in social studies as the purpose of social studies is to promote active democratic citizens.

According to the national curriculum in Swedish schools, teachers have the responsibility to prevent and discourage psychological and physical harassment (Lgr 2011). This study focuses on 7 teachers with their viewpoint and understanding of bullying as a human based social problem. The teachers, as the informants, give their personal explanation on how they act, prevent and discourage bullying in their school. The research places the emphasis, based on, interviews from which teachers are telling, relating and explaining on how they say that they are preventing and discouraging bullying.The conclusion from this study is that the interviewed teachers do, from their viewpoint, understand bullying as psychological and physical harassment problem which is based on a question of interpretation in regards to the victim. The informants do place different emphasis on what causes the problem, if it is a question of the individual or of it is a problem based on the socialization between individuals.

This work is an attempt to study how the ambivalent demands of normativity in the Swedish curriculum is implemented in schoolbooks used for education in the course Samhällskunskap A. For this purpose, different normative theories are applied in conjunction with a qualitative text analysis method comprising the sections which describe the European Union in three different schoolbooks. The results indicate that not one of the selected books uphold all of the demands of normativitity as described by the Swedish curriculum..

It could be argued that theories about gender are something that should be a part of every upper secondary school teachers agenda (knowledge base), because the Swedish curriculum specifically says that schools must encourage and work for equal rights between men and women.The students are supposed tobe encouraged to develop their interest, without judgment, about what femininity and masculinity is.This essay is aiming to find out how gender is used in the teacher program at Södertörns Högskola. The main focus of the essay is to see the possible differences between the curriculum of 2010 and 2013. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis this essay is aiming to examine how gender words are used in the syllabus, study manuals and literature lists for Educational science A (2010) and Educational science I (2013). In what way are gendered terms, like boy, girl heterosexuality and man, part of the text material? Who is represented in the material? And are there any differences between 2010 and 2013?The results show that there is a difference.