According to the national curriculum guidelines for elementary school, preschool and after-school 2011, (i.e. Lgr11), the Swedish school is based on a democratic foundation. Schools should prepare students to develop an understanding and acceptance of cultural diversity not only in the society as a whole but also how this should be reflected in the morals and ethics between us. The purpose of this study was to describe how teachers in multicultural schools perceptions and experiences on teaching pupils with diverse immigrant origin, and how they apply these cultural expression in practice.In particular, I focus on four teachers in multicultural schools and how they reason about applying cultural expressions that are transmitted at these schools and by them. Explicitly, I review how from policy documents and their own personal pedagogic are reflected in the actual teaching.

The object of this study is to examine the effective functionality of an OPAC-system while a few participants interacted with the catalogue. I?ve used Carl Martin Allwood?s (1998) four designed usability factors to be able to estimate the effective functionality of the online catalogue. Theoretic basis is Human Computer Interaction together with Allwood?s four defined usability factors.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the term balanced collection in relation to Swedish laws and the democratic assignment. The Unesco Public Library Manifesto states that libraries are to formulate a policy defining objectives, priorities and services in relation to local community needs. The Swedish Libraries Act, paragraph 7, states that municipalities and counties shall adopt plans for library services. To fulfil our aim we will answer the following questions. By which terms is the democratic assignment visible in Swedish public libraries collection development policies? Is the term balanced collection used in Swedish public libraries collection development policies? If not, are there categories describing balanced collection? Do the terms in Swedish collection development policies differ to the six categories found by Farooq M.

For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation ? lobbyism ? which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy ? Demokratiutredningen ? was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy.

This thesis examines the establishment of auditors as third party assurers of sustainability reports in Sweden. This is done through a qualitative case study that examines the subject from both a preparer?s and an assurer?s perspective. Empirical data was analyzed using a combination of agency- and legitimacy theory. The study reaches the conclusion that sustainability reporting companies in the study demand a verification service for reported sustainability data in order to increase creditability, meet increased stakeholder demand and increased accounting complexity.

Slovenia and Latvia are two examples of countries which have gone through a successful democratic transition. They were both under authoritarian rule and command economy up until their declarations of independence in the early 90s. Today they have a functional market economy and political pluralism. I have examined transition theories highlighted by Jonas Linde and Joakim Ekman and from these theories sought the explanations to what lies behind the successful transitions of these two countries. The transition in Slovenia was affected by liberalization from within the ruling communist party which then controlled much of the transition process. A relatively large civil society and the fact that Slovenia was not involved in the Balkan War also contributed to the short process.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to do a benchmarking study of the marketing activities at the public library of Valdemarsvik. The purpose is also to describe and get a deeper understanding of benchmarking as a method for improving library activity. Four major problem areas are addressed: How can one use benchmarking as a tool to achieve change? How can one learn with benchmarking? What similarities and differences are there between benchmarking and other similar methods for competence development? Is benchmarking better than other similar methods for competence development? The empirical approach was qualitative and the method chosen was action research.

Democracy has been a part of the Swedish society for a long period of time and it is also a part of the Swedish elementary school curriculum, in which you can find a number of statements that expresses that the Swedish elementary school should socialize the children into becoming role model citizens. This also conjures with the available research that describes schools in general as socializing. This led me to a question that hasn?t been answered: How much of the curriculums reasons for socialization the pupils are based on democratic values and how much of it can be dated back to events prior to the curriculum?The methodological approach is an analysis of ideologies as described by Sven-Eric Liedman and Ingemar Nilsson in Ideologi och ideologianalys. The text is focusing on the fact that a text has two layers; one is the manifest which is roughly the same as explicit or present in the text.

In an effort to strengthen democracy in the union, the EU in 2005 took a new approach to communications policy to reach out to the citizens. The strategic document "Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate" was accompanied by two other documents, and the three of them were the core of this policy. Both democracy and communications work means at EU level a higher complexity than in the nation-state arena. Objective of this study is to examine how the implementation of Plan D has turned out in a democracy renewal perspective. To achieve that answers are sought to questions concerning the goals of Plan D, how they are still present today, what happened in practice regarding the efforts that are highlighted, and how the substance of the activities can be judged from a democratic theory perspective.

This essay focuses on strategies for acquisitions in Swedish publiclibraries. The topic has been occuring in the public debate off andon since the70s. The dominant view has been that librarians haveallowed demand direct the purchases of media and thus haveignored quality literature.This debate has caused me to reflect on the librarians constantdilemma when purchasing media. Are they supposed to chooseliterature that are in demand, or should an evaluation made bylibrarians be the decisive?The previous research has shown that the library profession istraditionally characterized by a non-judgmental approach.

In modern, Swedish political science there are different ways of looking at ?democracy?. A very common distinction is that between three groups of democratic theories: electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy.The nowadays frequently used concept of electoral democracy is often used as synonymous with the older concept of repre­­­­sen­tative or indirect democracy ? frequently regarded as a contrast to the direct democracy of ancient Athens. However, there are also important differences.

Background: Mental health problems among children and adolescents have increased. The school is an important arena for prevention of mental health problems. There is a huge demand for successful interventions. SEL is a method that aims to increase the social and emotional competence among children and adolescents. The program SET applies this method.

The discussion regarding international aid tends to be highly debated for long periods of time. Some individuals are very positive towards aid and some individuals are less positive towards aid. This study aims to broaden the understanding of the aspects behind that. The previous research tends to focus on aid allocation within the EU, or which macro factors could influence which donor countries give to which recipient countries. This study aims to add to the research with which aspects at the individual level can influence the individual's attitude towards international aid from the EU.

This is a case study of work for gender equality, performed by the Employment and Competence Centre (Arbets- och kompetenscenter) in the municipality of Botkyrka. The aim of the study is to explore how gender equality is understood in the context of a municipality, and what underlying assumptions this understanding is based upon. The questions raised are; How is gender equality understood by the personnel? How do they understand gender? To what extent are women and men seen as homogeneous groups and what differences are (un)visible? What other power hierarchies besides gender are seen as important when working for gender equality? The analysis show that gender equality is a blurry vision, mainly understood in terms of equal conditions and rights, equal results for male and female participants and equal amount of women and men employed. Gender is seen as a binary system and differences between the genders are highlighted.

The purpose of this study has been to investigate the views of five teachers on their own leadership, and on the way they make it work in the classroom. The method was a qualitative investigation consisting of separate interviews with five elementary school teachers from three different schools in the southern part of Stockholm. The results showed that a good pedagogic leadership, successful with the pupils, can be characterised as at the same time democratic and "situation adjustable". This includes the ability to formulate the rules of conduct clearly, to take decisions and to create a good working atmosphere in the classroom, so that the pupils can feel secure, and be able to learn and develop. That however, cannot be accomplished if the teacher only maintains a negative communication, reminding the pupils of what is forbidden.