This essay studies the relationship between politicians and municipal chief officers from the point of view of the bureaucracy and its role in democracy and the substance of the chief position. I conducted interviews and observations with politicians and senior officials from the local public administration in Bromölla. The roles of the chief officer and politicians have certain common characteristics which makes it difficult to separate them. Senior officials working full time in contrast to part time politicians give them an advantage in the political process. Budget cut backs both enhance the role of politicians and chief officers in the administrative organisation.

This thesis which is about working with mathematics teaching has no effect/impact on performance and understanding of pupils. The study is intended to gain insight on working in mathematics education which has an impact on performance and understanding of students who are ethnically Swedish and foreign ethnic. In order to compare the ethnic Swedish and foreign students of ethnic understanding, I judged from their performance on the tests taken in year three. The qualitative approach permeated the work, both interviews and observations which were included in the survey. The qualitative study was chosen to get an understanding of how mathematics teaching is conducted in two different areas.

Swedish public administration has for the last few decades undergone reforms aimed at making it more efficient. A substantial part of these reforms have concerned creating clearer roles for politicians versus officials in the public sector, i.e. giving politicians a responsibility for setting goals and steering activities and public officials the role of implementing them.This study aims to examine one reform following this path that is under implementation in a Swedish public authority; Försäkringskassan, the Social Insurance Agency. The purpose of the reform is to increase the organization?s effectiveness and the rule of law.

This study is based on qualitative and hermeneutic methods. The investigation summarises how four textbooks present Buddhism in (school) subject Religion, such as texts and images. Two of them are used in Religious studies A, the rest is used in Religious studies 1. The study rests on the theories of orientalism and christocentrism, where both can be related to the concept of making secondary. In the research background there are descriptions of how the western world looks upon Buddhism in a historical perspective, but also how Buddhism in a modern age is represented.

The purpose of this study is to investigate four students in grades six by interviewing them. It will find out how they personally perceive their own learning in group work and why they work in groups. In my investigation, I will rely on these two questions:How do my subjects reflect on their own learning during group work?Why do my subjects think that they work in groups?For my study, I selected four students from the same school, two girls and two boys, who are 11 to 12 years old. The interviews were individual because I wanted to get a deeper view of how students perceive their own learning in groups and why they are working with a group of other students.

This study aims to highlight and analyze eight secondary teachers' views and thoughts on mathematics. Hopefully this study will provide a deeper understanding of how teachers think and reason about their subject and how this affects their teaching. The study was conducted using a qualitative interview method, based on interviews with eight middle school teachers who teach in school mathematics for grades 6 - 9. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed and analyzed. After the interview analysis one can conclude that the teachers? thoughts concern three main themes: the importance of mathematics, children?s lack of basic knowledge and the teachers? lack of time.In discussion and analysis the teachers conceptions of the own subject is being analyzed, and that is the foundation of this study.

We studied the initial process of reading, with a focus on typography, whether it ispossible to increase childrens lust to read in the age six to seven years old, byadjusting the typography and graphic design. We conduct this study through qualitative and quantitative studies, mainlyinterviews with a main focus on children in this particular age were used. In additionto the interviews a questioniare were sent out to a selection of students. The studyalso contained an interview with a pedagogue as well as studies of the current andexisting textbooks and teaching aids that is used on the school we are looking into.During the study we consulted educated pedagogues to get an understanding of thechildren and their learning and to be able to approach them in a suitable way.The theories we have been using were mainly from a typographic point of view.Other areas we explored were theories about reading processes. This study showedthat every child needs a method that is suitable for them and that the materialprovided today is typographically inconsistent. The childrens and teachers needs andwishes in typography did not correspond with the current teaching aids design. From this study the followning points were made about how to design a textbook forchildren in the first grade:? The typeface should be a sans serif.? The point size should be bigger than 12 points.? Text should be aligned to the left.? Sentences should be short without becoming abstract.? To maintain focus on the text the layout should be simple and unbarked.? The format should be designed after the pourpose of the publication, forexample when it is a complement to the textbook, the format should be of suchcharacter that it is easy for the children to bring home.? There should be a typographical consistency through all of the materialsprovided to the children..

The purpose of this essay is to describe what difficulties and challenges are for teachers of religious education at upper secondary school. The essay is written from a teacher's perspective, where the focus is on the teacher's perceptions of the difficulties and challenges of teaching religious education. The methodology for the collection of information was done through qualitative interviews. Previous research shows that one of the challenges in the teaching profession is the interpretation of the curriculum, and then which of those is correct. The essay shows that the biggest challenges that teachers experience in the subject of religious education is the students' prejudice against different religious groups, and also the difficulty of getting students to understand the purpose of what is being taught.

This comparative case study, which is based on a most similar system design,investigates why the Chávez government has attained a lower degree of democracy than the Kirchner and the Lula governments. In order to develop asupplementary theory about why governments in general achieve various degrees of democracy I compare these governments and examine what policies that differ them and why. My results show that these governments? policies differ concerning the rule of law, militarization, and negotiations with economic groups and anti-regime parts of civil society. I have found numerous answers to why some of these governments (and governments in general) have democratic policies within these four areas and why some do not.

The aim of this study is to examine the attitude among teachers towards working in subjectspecific groups, so called professional learning communities. The questions being asked arewhat the teachers want to acquire from working in them and how they consider them to beorganised.Previous research show that professional learning communities are means of strengtheningteachers and their teaching from criticism from outside stakeholders such as local politicians,but also parents. They are also means of developing the teaching and the individualteachers at schools.A qualitative study has been made at a Swedish secondary school and is reported in thisstudy. It was done in a hermeneutic discourse and when analysing the results four categoriesof answers appeared. It showed that the teachers working in professional learning communitieswanted to acquire a qualitative discussion regarding what should be taught and in whatway that should be assessed.

The political and civil unrest during the last years of the First World War had a profound impact on the political life in many European countries. Academic research on the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the development of the parliamentary system during these years, often focus on the civil unrest and the mobilization of the labour movement during the spring of 1917, and the impact on Swedish politics of the Russian and German revolutions.This study is an examination of the relation between the Swedish labour movement and the Finnish Civil War of 1918. The general aim of the study is to examine how different levels and organisations of the labour movement acted in regards to the situation in Finland, and how these different levels and organisations interacted with one another. A second aim of this examination is to better understand during what kind of processes of the Swedish labour movement?s history that the Finnish Civil War occurred, and how it affected them.The conclusion of the study is that the there was a disparity between the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (SAP), which at the time was part of the Swedish government together with the liberal party, and the grassroots of the labour movement, organized in trade unions, and in the local organizations of the SAP and the Social Democratic Left Party (SSV).

AbstractEssay in political Science (c-level) by Karin Forsling, Spring 2007A school for the best interest of the child? - The Swedish School System according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.Supervisor: Stig MontinThe purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Swedish governments work with the im-plementation of this convention and what progress has been made. The inquiry of this study is to describe how the changing in the Swedish School System correspond to the national strat-egy for implementation of UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Sweden and how the political protagonists.I have read some of the most relevant documents from the authorities and organisations work-ing with children?s rights in Sweden and papers and communications from the political pro-tagonists.Since UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified by Sweden in 1990 the work for implementation has been quite successful but there are still lots to do. There are still some problems in School such as bullying, insulting, insecurity and lack of peaceful and harmoni-ous school environment.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how practicing teachers have included their education in their teaching profession. The five teachers who were interviewed expressed that they lack experience in dealing with administrative issues, conflict management, parental contact and how to manage stress. There has been prior research on how teachers perceive their everyday working lives. Those results showed that teachers are becoming stressed by not knowing how to handle certain situations.My results showed that the teachers were to busy so they created their own methods on how to deal with phenomena that the education have not treated or discussed. The interviews were analyzed with the help of two constructivist concept, authenticity and activity .Authenticity focuses on knowledge is created and constructed by everyday situations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether intensive teaching of reading strategies at an individual level can affect reading comprehension for students in second grade. A quantitative method with quasi-experimental design is used. All students in the experimental class trained on reading comprehension strategies at their particular level five times each. Before and after training a reading comprehension test was made. The reference class did the same test.

The purpose of this paper was to carry out and evaluate a pedagogic ICT-project, where the computer was implemented in art class. Focus was on the consequences of collaboration and also on the students? understanding of their own performance, compared to techniques in traditional art class.The study was qualitative and began with studies in literature. The contents of the literature are the foundation of the discussion, especially theories concerning the learning process, IT and computer-based learning. In the project, three different groups of students from upper secondary school attended and they where given tasks to solve in the image editing program Paint Shop Pro.