One trend that can be seen in the EU countries is that employees want to exit from the workforce before they turn 60 years. A Dutch study of some EU countries has noticed that an early retirement from labor in many countries is considered as a social right. This has created an ?early exit-culture?. Large early outflows of the labor have created an institutionalization, the right to cease work early.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

In this essay, I will look at three different Compulsory comprehensive schools in one community and I will compare final grades from students who graduated in spring 2006. I will also examine how the three schools work with students, and in what way they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, so that they could reach goals set by The Swedish National Agency for Education. The aim with this essay is to show differences between schools in the same community and my question is if it is the way you approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties that affects the student?s grades and results.The study is concentrating on three schools in one community and students with dyslexia and reading- and writing difficulties that went to those schools. I have spoken to remedial teacher at each school about how they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, what kind of methods the use, how they investigate if a student is in need of special help and how they grade their students who are in need of special teaching because of their learning disabilities.

The aim of this study is to look at how librarians express theirpart in reading groups organized by public libraries. Thestudy is based on interviews with seven public librarians insouth regions of Sweden. The main theory used to analyse isfound in the article Bibliotekaren som litteraturformidler(1994) written by the Norwegian librarian Jofrid KarnerSmidt, where she talks about five different roles that alibrarian can have in this context and how they appear. Threeof these roles were used in this study: the pedagogue, theliterature expert and the marketer.The interviewed librarians mostly had a similar view on howthey look at their role in the reading group. They saw theirpurpose as to provide all kinds of people with a possibility tojoin in discussions about mutual interests and share variousopinions about books.

The purpose of this thesis is to form an idea about the qualitative value and meaning of reading fiction in a psychological perspective and over a lifetime. Seven women, 68-79 years old, were interviewed about their reading habits of fiction in their lifetime. The material is presented as life stories. I use an inter-nordic research project called the SKRIN project which looks upon reading habits from an individualistic and psychological perspective. I also refer to an American study which focus on reading development with roles readers take in different ages of life written by J A Appleyard.

The purpose of this graduate work is to seek knowledge about how children?s right to participation and influence is interpreted and understood in a specific context and also to examine how this right can be conditioned and shaped by the pedagogical practice of early childhood education.The focus of this study has been to examine the arguments and attitudes towards the right to participation and influence as a pedagogical practice as it is understood in early childhood education. Additionally, I have been interested in studying the affordances and restrictions that early childhood educators experience when dealing with children´s right to participation and influence.The platform used for data collection is Facebook and the informants recruited were active participants in forums regarding democracy in preschool education. In the second phase of the study I conducted online focus groups with these participants.For the analysis of the material I have adopted a poststructuralist perspective, starting from Jaques Derridas philosophical texts and use of deconstruction.The results show the complexity in early childhood education´s democratic mission. What becomes clear is the importance for the teachers to adopting an open, ethical and democratic approach in order to make children´s right to participation and genuine influence possible in the everyday reality of early childhood education. .

International reading comprehension studies, like PIRLS and PISA, state that the reading comprehension of Swedish students has decreased significantly since 2000. As a consequence, the National Agency of Education has made reading comprehension teaching a prioritised field in terms of further education for teachers. There has also been a change in Lgr 11, the national curriculum for compulsory school, where it is stated that teaching in reading strategies shall be a part of the central content throughout compulsory school. When the pupils reach upper secondary school level, reading comprehension education is no longer a part of the curriculum. Today, students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities currently share the same curriculum as the ordinary upper secondary school.

The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the syllable as an alternative to the phoneme at the basic reading and writing. This report is based on a qualitative analysis of Håkanstorp school´s approach to the basic reading and writing in class. Their approach to reading and writing is controversial, as it is based on the syllable instead of the phoneme, as usual in the traditional reading and writing. The education result, I have found, is that the syllable leads to a very clear and structured working procedure, which ultimately leads to class teachers being able to work from a diagnostic approach. This structure, with many parts of the course helps educators to clearly follow what level students are at.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether the reading promotion project called ?A book?s all sides?, together with the activities of the book-event, can stimulate young people?s reading. The research questions are: How do the project leaders plan and organize activities for the book-event? How do the young people respond to the activities at the book-event? Do the young people get interested in the book which is presented at the book-event? Which connections between Vygotskij?s theory and the activities can be found in the book-event? The theoretical approach is based on Lev Vygotskij?s socio-cultural theory. To answer my research questions I have implemented four qualitative interviews and two interviews with the adult activity leaders and observed a book-event in the classroom.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate in what manner librarians and pedagogues can cooperate in order to help students with reading and writing problems and consequently enhance their information literacy. I aimed to investigate why cooperation between these professions is necessary. Also, I wanted to find out how the general support is on the schools regarding students with reading and writing difficulties, and if the school librarian knows what the special educator can contribute with and vice versa. Lastly, I focused on what knowledge the performers of these professions have about reading and writing difficulties and to what degree their knowledge is based on scientifically proven methods.The two theoretical points of departure are 1) theory of cooperation built upon Louise Limberg?s and Lena Folkesson?s three categories of cooperation 2) and Aidan Chambers?s reading promoting model named the circle of reading.

 The aim of this thesis is to examine men's attitudes towards literature, and how social norms affect their book reading, in order to contribute to the knowledge of why men's book reading is decreasing. This is realized through a discourse analysis of literature recommendations in men's lifestyle magazines.Two magazines, King of Sweden and Magazine Café, are examined through critical discourse analysis. Theories of discourse are combined with theories of gender to explore how gender stereotypes affect men's reading habits.The analysis shows that ideals of masculinity have a great influence on the book recommendations. Social norms, associated with gender, also seem to have significance to whether or not a book is considered suitable for men to read. These are, inter alia, norms of heterosexuality and violence.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how librarians perceive the importance of staff reading groups in helping to make fiction more accessible to adult users of public libraries. The study also examines how librarians perceive the learning processes in such groups, and what these learning processes involve and how they appear. The empirical data was acquired via observations of four staff reading groups and interviews with seven public librarians who took part in the groups. In part, the empirical data is interpreted by means of Lena Wilhelmsson?s analytical tool, which deals with changes of perspective within an organised group.

 This study examines the way Swedish students in Upper Secondary School respond to two excerpts from a classic Swedish novel. The paper?s aim is both to give an overview over some of the theoretical concepts concerning the field of reader-response criticism, and to describe and analyse what the students experience in their first meeting with an older text. The background to my interest is the many studies showing that young readers regard reading of fiction in school as boring. By using the method of written reading responses I want to contribute to a deeper understanding of how an older text can be received, understood and engage its readers.

The purpose of this master thesis is to show how a chosen actor in form of the Swedish union organization IF Metall (the Swedish union for metal- and industrial workers) works with pro-reading activities. The project being scrutinized is the Read to me dad-project which aims at fathers who are not used to reading activities within the LO-group (the Swedish Trade Union Confederation). The methods used are interviews and literary studies. The theoretical background of my discussion is based on three education ideals. The neo-humanist ideal emphasizes the personal improvement through literature.