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.

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 aim of this bachelor thesis is to investigate the lending of video games at the public libraries in Sweden. The thesis focused around a web survey, which was sent out to all public library directors, as its research material. The results were compared with those found in a master thesis by Olle Berg and Thomas Nyström from 2008. This was done to gain a better understanding of why the libraries provided video games. The other results of the survey were analyzed with a quantitative method.The results indicate that half of the responding libraries provide video games for borrowing.

The purpose of this essay has been to study if all the districts in the city of Malmoe get to be seen in the city?s biggest newspaper, Sydsvenskan. Is the reporting proportional? What images is the newspaper offering the citizens? Do they match the reality? Or are some parts of Malmoe in the dark, in a media shadow?Research done in the past has shown that Stockholm in many ways is in a media shadow. The same pattern was shown in Gothenburg.

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..

This study discusses the European Union´s influence regarding the Cyprus Conflict since 1998, when the EU began the official membership negotioations with Cyprus. The first aim of the study is to investigate in what way the EU has tried to practice influence concerning the Greek- and Turk Cypriots, but also Turkey, since Turkey is seen as a relevant party in the conflict. The second aim of the study is to examine what effects the EU´s influence has led to for the parties involved. The theoretical approach in the study is the theory Normative power, the theory stresses that Europe and the EU practices non-military power, and is able to do so because of the fact that the EU is based on internationally acknowledged desirable norms, as democracy and human rights and liberties. The result of the study shows that the EU has been an active participant concerning the Cyprus Conflict by successfully influencing the Greek- Cypriot government and Turkey e.g.

The aim for this thesis is to study the international gender equality work from a perspective of the concept of universalism and particularism, with the United Nation?s Declaration of Human Rights, and especially -?The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women?, in focus. The shadowreports of Namibia and Sweden are used as examples of how countries with different historical, political and social contexts are working with gender equality.A theroetical framework is constitued by theories as postmodernism, postcolonialism and feminism with basis from social constructionism. The thesis is methodological influenced by Critical Discourse Analysis. Notions from former studies were also used as tools in the analysis.

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.

Ångermanland has at the last five years lost 420 hockey players. This is a qualitative study that focus on investigating the main problems of dropouts among young hockey players and how ice hockey associations in Ångermanland act to find solutions to the problem. The main questions of the study are: How can the dropout problems in Ångermanland be understood or explained in terms of youth operators' perspective and what are the potential strategies that the ice hockey associations are using to deal with the dropout problem and what approaches to youth hockey is reflected in the youth operators' statements? The study was based on semi-structure interviews with 6 different ice hockey sports clubs in Ångermanland. The results showed that the leadership programs ought to be more educational, and more oriented toward understanding the children instead of mainly technical learning objectives about how to shoot, dribble, and skate.

It might seem obvious that public opinions should be included in the planning process. However, it is not clear to what extent. Statutory forms of public participation attract little interest since many people feel that it is hard to make a difference. The purpose of this study was to engage those that normally do not get to speak their mind in the planning process. In this study, two methods for conducting ?on-street surveys? were investigated.

This paper?s main goal is to study how religious studies teachers and religious studies teacherstudents reason concerning armed religious conflicts, with fundamentalism and terrorism ascentral concepts. The study does this with the use of semi-structured interviews. The resultsare analyzed with a phenomenographic analysis with the interviewees? understanding of thecentral concepts being the target of the interviews.