The role of the quality manager has evolved from being a quality controller to work with a more global business. Within many organizations in Sweden, however, the traditional role of the quality manager's remains and the tasks categorized as quality control still takes up most of the quality manager's time. The survey conducted as part of this master thesis shows that the quality manager in most businesses has multiple roles in addition to the role of quality manager, which can create a role conflict. One consequence of this is that each improvement is not given priority due to time constraints. Although the importance of a clear and committed leadership is the key for succeeding as the quality manager.

Over-investors ? a study of advanced language pupils in the upper secondary school.  The thesis examines the advanced study of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) from a sociological point of view, inspired by Bourdieu.  Founded in official statistics and a specially designed survey its main findings can be said to be that it is mainly pupils with a high amount of acquired educational capital from higher social backgrounds who avail themselves of this opportunity, predominantly girls. The amount of inherited language and transnational capital in the family seems to be of particular importance for the pupils? choice of advanced language studies. French, German and Spanish are the predominant languages of study.

This project is a learning CD-ROM production aimed at first-time parents. It is using both sound and images, moving as well as non-moving. The purpose of the production is to be an interesting alternative to traditional books. We have been looking at similar productions like drivers license educational CD-ROMs and encyclopedias for inspiration and ideas on how to proceed. In order to give the content some dynamics, we've also added the element of 3D-animated sequences.

The present study deals with the importance of play for children's learning in preschool. The purpose is to investigate the importance of play for children's learning in preschool from a pedagogue?s perspective. The study is based on two issues: How does the pedagogue´s who were interviewed reason about the impact the play has on children's development? How does the pedagogue´s approach to make play a learning situation? The empirical data is based on semi-structured interviews with four preschool pedagogue´s.

The purpose of this study was to analyse the concept of empowerment and its meaning in the political document "En Förnyad Folkhälsopolitik" from the present Swedish government, containing guidelines and politics in the area of public health. The underlying question was if it could be considered as representative for some kind of general "empowerment approach" since the concept is central to the very definition of social work by the International Federation of Social Workers IFSW and International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW).By comparing its definition and consequences in the document with a historical review of different contexts of empowerment the conclusion was made that such a common approach doesn´t exist at all. The meaning of empowerment in the central document showed some similarities with the "northamerican" version of the concept represented by the social scientist Charles Murray, which is just one of the political meanings of empowerment. Alternative ways of understanding the concept was also presented such as being a tool of a constant conflict between central political principles or as a fashionable but not important word. Another alternative was to consider it a means of power through witch different political discourses tries to dominate the world..

Objective: To study the evidence on physical activity (PA) as an effective preventive strategy for depression.Methods: A search of electronic databases was performed for articles between 2007 and 2012, both original research and review articles, concerning the link between PA and depression on children, youth and adults. Three reviews, five longitudinal and two cross sectional studies were included.Results:  PA reduced the likelihood of depression in many studies and a sedentary or inactive lifestyle increased the risks for mental health symptoms such as depression. One study showed that low PA in childhood increased the odds of depression as an adult and other studies on teenagers saw a connection and mediation between PA and self-esteem whereas physical fitness showed no mediating effect. Many of the studies and reviews point out the insecurity regarding the dose-response association and the difficulties in defining causality.Conclusion: PA might have a preventive effect on depression. Some evidence exist to support that PA in childhood prevents depression in adults.

This qualitative study examines if an interest in soccer can give the same meaningfulexperiences in a person's life as a religion would. Five soccer fans were interviewedregarding the meanings and impact of soccer in their lives. Two theories in the fields ofsport and religion were used to analyze the data: Antonovsky's sense of coherence (SOC)with its components meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility and Heelasand Woodheads "life-as" and "the subjective-life? derived from the concept "thesubjective turn". It was concluded that the interest in soccer affected the respondents?views of life.The respondents? personal identities were strongly associated with groupmembership, meaning that their interest in common with others was perceived to makeeveryday life meaningful and manageable.

The population growth and urbanisation in low-income countries bring issues of poor living standards and miserable sanitation conditions onto the agenda. If well-functioning waste management systems were developed, this could master some of the problems. The already existing local informal waste handling system that is common in many low-income countries, needs to be developed with proper sorting and composting solutions to decrease the environmental burden and improve the overall situation in the dense cities. This master?s thesis project is performed with the intention of developing functional decentralised waste management units in the city of Pune, India.

Wiklund, Marie-Louise (2007) Lärares syn på specialpedagogens arbete. (Teachers views on special needs educational competence) Skolutveckling och ledarskap, Specialpedagogisk påbyggnadsutbildning, Lärarutbildning, Malmö högskola. Syftet med detta arbete är att beskriva och undersöka lärarnas syn på specialpedagogens arbete. Baserat på lärarnas arbetssituation i skolan vill jag undersöka hur man använder sig av specialpedagoger i dag och se vilka övriga önskemål och behov som finns. Med hjälp av en strukturerade intervjuer vill jag åskådliggöra lärarnas syn på specialpedagogens arbete. Sammanfattningsvis visar mitt resultat på att specialpedagogen är en viktig person i skolan. Att undervisa är vad lärare är vana vid att specialpedagogen gör.

This bachelor?s thesis studies Carl Str?mbergs ?ppeltr?dg?rd, a private garden consisting of a large number of apple trees and varieties. The garden is located outside ?rebro, in N?rke, and is owned by a unit owner association whose goal is to preserve and determine the varieties. Through interviews, articles, site visits and documents from Carl Str?mberg, the purpose have been to get an understanding of who Carl Str?mberg was, how he collected the apple varieties and how that process was affected by the climate amongst apple growing and pomology during that time.

Business is changing and so are society?s expectations. Companies are expected to take responsibility for their trade and the context they are operating in, by looking at socially, economically and environmentally aspects. Many companies handle it by implementing corporate social responsibility (CSR) to their line of action. This is often handled by collaborating with other organisations, such as non-governmental organisations.

The aim of this graduate essay is to elucidate and compare the approach to learning that emerges in texts about the two educational practices Montessori and Reggio Emilia.The guiding research questions in this study are:What do Montessori and Reggio Emilia that learning is about?The mean Montessori and Reggio Emilia that learning goes to?How do you describe the Montessori and Reggio Emilia justification why it is important to learn? Through a poststructural theoretical framework and text analysis the study focused on what has been written about learning in the traditions of Montessori and Reggio Emilia.The results of the study indicate that both Montessori and Reggio Emilia look at the child in a similar way in which the child have the desire to explore and learn. Both pedagogy traditions think that the child will develop into independent people who can change society in the future for the better and with a democratic basis.The study also reveals how the Swedish curriculum (Skolverket, 98/10) is inspired both by the Reggio Emilia and Montessori traditions through describing how preschool should stimulate and challenge the child's development and learning, utilize and strengthen the interests of children to learn to conquer new experiences, knowledge and skills..

The purpose of the study is to explore preschool teachers experiences of how immigrant parents become involved in the preschool activities and how their linguistic and cultural background appears in relation to participation.The survey was conducted through individual interviews with eight preschool teachers working in various multicultural preeschools.The results of this survey shows that the preschool teachers perceive that parents with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are reluctant to participate in various forms of cooperation, such as parent meetings. Preschool teachers believe that the lack of parental participation depends on the parents linguistic and cultural backgrounds, such as different approaches to understand the pre-school educational activity or the view of parenting, and other things such as language difficulties.Another result reveals also a great lack of written methods, because teachers sometimes face difficult dilemmas. To seek itself the right approach in a current situation can be both difficult and time consuming, therefore, the preschool teachers wish that there were already complete methods for use..

The aim of this study was to describe and analyse the perceptions that ten 12-15 yearold pupils with special educational need, who had been assigned a personal computer, have about Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the learning process. Data was collected by personal interviews and observations. Sociocultural perspective and phenomenographic research approach were used as theoretical and methodological frameworks in analyzing and understanding the result. The major conclusions were that most respondents perceived the computer as beneficial assistive technology for learning, but some felt singled out by having a computer to assist in learning. Students had various opportunities to succeed in using their tool depending on e.g.

The aim of this study was to examine if there was a relative age effect in students grade in mathematics. The study was built on regression analysis and Spearman rho on student?s month of birth and their grades. It was found that there is a relative age effect in the student?s grades.