Kalmar Municipality has in 2008-2010 made an effort to educate managers on gender, with the goal of mainstreaming gender into public activities so that all citizens should feel safe in that treatment and services are designed and resources are distributed equally to both sexes living conditions and needs. The overall aim of this study was to examine whether the training effort has paid off, and how gender mainstreaming has been implemented in the different activities. We have used a qualitative approach, which we examined through interviews managers' approach to gender equality.Gender was generally described as an important issue of all respondents, and all were working to mainstream gender into their activities and workplaces. The results show that the operational and management needed clearer directives and strategies in their efforts to promote gender equality. Education was necessary because personal definition of gender may differ from the control contents of the documents.

AbstractThe purpose of my study was to examine how four social studies teachers in upper secondary school interprets the democratic educational mission and core values, and if they believe that the same values are tools to influence the students' democratic approach and if they think it is possible. It is also the study's minor purpose to make an analysis of my findings and previous research in the area to explain any similarities or differences in the social studies teacher's interpretation and practice of the democratic educational mission and core values. I used qualitative semi-structured interviews as a method in which the interview questions were based on my research questions. The two criteria I had for my sample of respondents was that there would be social studies teacher at a upper secondary school and that I wanted to have two of each sex. Their interpretation and how they think they practice the democratic educational mission and core values are similar.

This is a thesis in Personal- och Arbetslivsprogrammet at Dalarna University with thepurpose of evaluating an education initiative in Borlänge kommun. The educationCoaching Leadership is an initiative for the managers in the organization to exercisegood leadership and the education also serves as an incentive for managers. Eightbusiness managers and one from the HR staff have completed the training. Out of thetotal 9 participants in the training, six of them took part in this evaluation. Based on thethesis aim and questions we wanted to explore participants' attitudes to the education,and what skills and abilities they have acquired on the basis of educational goals andcontent.

AbstractReading books to children is often an integral part in preschool activities. The purpose of thisstudy is to investigate how educators think about the educational function of literature inpreschool activities. I have in my study used qualitative interviews with active educators andobservations to answer my questions about why the educator reads to the children, how theeducator thinks about the choice of literature and if the literature can contribute to thechildrens development and if so, how. The knowledge- and research background presentsliterature and previous research done on the subject. The results of my study shows that theeducators have many thoughts about the importance of literature in preschool.

The purpose of this study is to explore specific pedagogical activities that benefit the student's verbal language development and to learn more about how our schools use teaching methods to achieve the ambitions in the governing documents in Sweden. The aim is finding the correlation between theory, research, governing documents and the educational work in our schools. This study contains an empirical survey in intention to see how teachers, pupils and school administrators experience school activities, to see if those activities are formed with the intention for pupils to reach the learning goals according to the governing documents.The aim of this study has been achieved by relating empirical data with theories and previous research on conversation analysis. Goffman's and Norrby's research on the importance of dialogue and previous research on dialogicity studied by Dysthe, Vygotsky and Bakhtin are presented. Those are related to empirical data and show that most teachers realize the importance of integrating dialogues in daily activities and in different learning contexts.

Secondary schools have for decades debated whether they promote social reproduction which is considered to generate the homogeneous student compositions. The gap between the academic programs and vocational education programs is considered to increase. What in recent years has appeared in research is that the gap is increasing most tend to be in the specific academic program, particularly in science. This paper's intention is to describe the science program at a local level and the pupils who were admitted to the science program autumn 2009 on the basis of an educational sociological perspective. The survey consisted of a census in which all students were given the opportunity to answer a questionnaire.

AbstractThis degree project focuses on the questions how teachers´ within the four socially oriented subjects? history, geography, religion and social science use the textbook, and their attitudes towards textbooks. The method used in this project was interviews with teachers. Previous research shows that teachers use the textbook to a great extent. Studies also show that teachers? way of educating depends upon their individual educational attitudes.

This is a thesis in Personal- och Arbetslivsprogrammet at Dalarna University with thepurpose of evaluating an education initiative in Borlänge kommun. The educationCoaching Leadership is an initiative for the managers in the organization to exercisegood leadership and the education also serves as an incentive for managers. Eightbusiness managers and one from the HR staff have completed the training. Out of thetotal 9 participants in the training, six of them took part in this evaluation. Based on thethesis aim and questions we wanted to explore participants' attitudes to the education,and what skills and abilities they have acquired on the basis of educational goals andcontent.

This is a thesis in Personal- och Arbetslivsprogrammet at Dalarna University with thepurpose of evaluating an education initiative in Borlänge kommun. The educationCoaching Leadership is an initiative for the managers in the organization to exercisegood leadership and the education also serves as an incentive for managers. Eightbusiness managers and one from the HR staff have completed the training. Out of thetotal 9 participants in the training, six of them took part in this evaluation. Based on thethesis aim and questions we wanted to explore participants' attitudes to the education,and what skills and abilities they have acquired on the basis of educational goals andcontent.

The aim of this study was to describe and to analyze needs and social efforts concerning unaccompanied/separated asylum-seeking children. The responsibility for the reception of this target group was transferred on July 1, 2006 from the Swedish Migration Board to the municipalities that sign an agreement with the Swedish Migration Board. Eight qualitative interviews were carried out with representatives for transit-residents and assigned municipalities in Skåne. Our main questions were: How has the reception of unaccompanied/separated asylum-seeking children been planned, how do the municipalities and the transit-residents consider their needs and what is the level of qualifications and competence within the municipalities in order to work with unaccompanied/separated asylum-seeking children on the basis of social efforts? We chose to clarify our findings on the basis of the attachment theory, which is applicable during the critical emancipation phase that the vast majority of the unaccompanied/separated asylum-seeking children find themselves in.

The aim of our study is to gain understanding of how parentsperceive their own, the preschool's, and the library's efforts to stimulate preschoolers' enjoyment and yearning to read, as well as what types of collaborative efforts the parents seek.The study is based upon qualitative interviews with parents, both mothers and fathers, to preschool children (aged 1.5 to 6 years old). The analysis does not offer any generalizations. We have chosen to use a sociocultural perspective as the theoretical starting-point of our study, our thoughts being that we learn together with and by the help of others. We consider this perspective to be closely related to Aidan Chambers's "The Reading Circle", which we have chosen to use as our tool of analysis.It turned out that the parents perceived their own reading stimulating role as crucial, even if they did not consider all they did as reading stimulative. Some things, such as discussing the book while reading, occurred naturally but is also an important part to stimulate reading.

The aim of this study was to determine the self-perceived learning needs in patients with Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). CHD is the leading cause of death worldwide. Poor compliance is one of the causes of rehospitalisation. Patients suffering from CHD need education in order to manage their disease and prevent readmission to hospital. As hospital stays diminish the time available for patient education is limited.

The aim of this study is to see if the individual developing plans (i.e. individuella utvecklingsplaner) can be used as a tool for the special needs teacher (i.e. specialpedagog) to develop the school in its challenge to meet the needs of every child.  The study is based on contentanalycis and interviews, in order to understand how one school worked with the students´ individual developing plans.The results showed that the school did not use the plans as a tool to develop the education for each and every child, since the plans didn´t affect the tuition.The headmaster did not include the special needs teacher in the responsibility of developing the school.Even though our results showed that the school didn´t use the individual developing plans as a tool for the special educator to develop the school, we still found a possibility for developing the individual educational plans in the capacity of the special needs teacher. The study showed a need of dialogue in which teachers can reflect and problematize their actions and their teaching for the purpose of developing new understanding and new actions in the work with the individual educational plans. We believe that the profession of special needs teacher should supervise these dialogues..

This essay has an aim to map out the discourses in the debate around local self government and national equivalence, which are both essential democratic values. The essay is delimited to the area of the comprehensive school. Interviews have been made with key persons in different positions in a selected municipality. I also use material that has been written in the context of Ansvarskommittén. The material is analysed using an integrated discourse analysis.

This masters thesis concerns the Public Library Service in Eastern Africa, Tanzania. Our subject was developed through a feasibility study that gave us comprehension that developing countries have individual problems concerning books and libraries. We understood that the main problems were the libraries financial situation and their dependence on aid. We also understood that the libraries do not have the resources to satisfy the society as a whole. The major questions raised in this study are: - How do the regional librarians describe their work situation? -Which role do the Regional Librarians have in society? Data was collected through interviews and observation, and the study is a qualitative case study.