AbstractA beautiful death ? Manliness in four Japanese samurai moviesThis thesis deals with the samurai and his portrayal in Japanese historic movies and what kind of messages he conveys in form of masculinity to theater audiences. Four movies were chosen, two from the 1960s and two from the 2010s. The reasoning behind this was to look at two eras of samurai movies and if possible try to see differences between them. The history of the samurai, being a man and woman in modern Japan, R.W Connell and famous Japanese authors from different time eras acted as tools to try to answer the questions in hand.

The purpose of my research was to develop new knowledge about teachers' experiences of interaction between teachers and students with weak reading comprehension and how these teachers feel that the phenomenon of interaction is expressed in a school context. A focus-group interview with four teachers who have been employed between 4-25 years have been conducted with a hermeneutic research approach as a basis for understanding teachers' perceptions of the phenomenon of interaction. The results suggest that the interaction and communication is an important part of the work. In the communication and interaction results show that concepts such as dialogue, development , understanding and rhetoric are tools that teachers work with in order to develop a better reading comprehension for students..

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 application is supposed to be run as a simple executable file with flash embedded.

This is a qualitative case study of young womens? experiences of blogging about One Direction on the social media/microblogging platform Tumblr. The aim of this study was to find out what fan blogging is and why fans blog. We did this by creating an account on Tumblr where we invited young women between the ages of 16?29, who had active fan blogs dedicated to One Direction, to answer an open-ended questionnaire.

The goal of this study is to examine what five teacher?s impression of the teacher?s role is in their previous years. How important the ?joy at work? is in relation with the educational progress? And what aspects that contributes to the? joy at work? and what obstacles that stops them. The essay will also go through the concepts of a teacher role, with connection to the theoretical perspectives of Csikszentmihalyi?s Flow and Antonovsky?s Salutogenesis (KASAM).The method I used was interviewing five teachers and I used Larsen?s chapter of ?content analysis? as a basis, I also used Flow and KASAM as theoretical references in my analysis.

Stenebergs sockerbruk is a large log-timber construction, purpose built as a sugar refinery in 1739 and is one of Sweden's oldest industrial buildings constructed entirely out of wood. Despite receiving the status of a listed building (in Swedish: Byggnadsminne) in 1977, there exists today a surprisingly low amount of documentation of the building itself. In order to enhance the existing and lacking building documentation, this case study aims to shed light on the building's log-timber built frame, focusing on how it was constructed, how the long lengths of its walls were handled and what type of joinery and tools were used. A thorough investigation of the building is conducted on site, followed by gathering of information which is then presented through text and illustrations. The findings indicate the orientation of timbers, location of joints and scarfs as well as tool marks which together contribute to the forming of a basis of understanding of the building's construction..

The SK 60 Aircraft has been a workhorse for the Air Force?s training of future pilots since the late 1960s. The aging SK60 aircraft is going out of style, and the system has merely a few years of total running time left. A replacement for the SK 60 needs to be implemented in the coming years, and the Armes Forces Flying School has been commissioned to conduct flight tests on suitable replacement systems. This study will conduct a system analysis of two aircrafts mentioned in the Flying Schools report.

Consumer generated advertising is a new phenomenon in the landscape of communication. Tools such as the Internet enable the consumer to create and spread messages for brands without the permission or control of the brand owner. We carried out a quantitative experiment to investigate the effects of how companies choose to handle these activities as well as how expectations of these consumer generated ads differ from traditional advertising. The findings show that strong brands may benefit from these activities if handled the right way and the brand owner adapts it?s reaction to the content of the ad.

As a result of increased energy prices more and more energy-efficient homes are coveted. An energy-efficient alternative is passive houses, which is characterized by an extremely well insulated building envelope that recovers the heat without the use of radiators or under floor heating. But a passive house requires a higher investment cost than a conventional building project, since it will require more construction materials, training of construction workers, greater land area, and long construction period. But the lower operating cost expects to pay back the higher cost of investment. We therefore question how profitable a passive house is in relation to houses built according to modern conventional building techniques.The aim of our study is to investigate the viability of passive houses compared to convent­ional houses.

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 purpose of this study was to investigate the English writing activities of young Swedes on the site FanFiction.net to determine what type of differences were perceived between this activity and the writing activities taking place in upper secondary English courses, what effects fan fiction had on their English skills as well as what possibilities were perceived in regards to using fan fiction as a tool of learning. Methods used include an interview study along with a textual analysis to determine changes in grammatical complexity, errors and mistakes. Results indicate that partaking in fan fiction-related communities of practice in English can potentially improve language skills. Results also showed that informants valued interaction and practical language use, largely perceiving the formal teaching of English as lacking in opportunities for practical, contextually relevant and creative language use. However, introducing fan fiction and its practices of peer-reviewing in a formal educational setting was also perceived as risky, at the same time as there existed a sense of optimism that the fan fiction format and its practices could both be used to facilitate learning..

The purpose of my research was to develop new knowledge about teachers' experiences of interaction between teachers and students with weak reading comprehension and how these teachers feel that the phenomenon of interaction is expressed in a school context. A focus-group interview with four teachers who have been employed between 4-25 years have been conducted with a hermeneutic research approach as a basis for understanding teachers' perceptions of the phenomenon of interaction. The results suggest that the interaction and communication is an important part of the work. In the communication and interaction results show that concepts such as dialogue, development , understanding and rhetoric are tools that teachers work with in order to develop a better reading comprehension for students..

Following study is about motivation from a student perspective. Based on the prescribed literature and published research, the concept and field of motivation have been illuminated. The purpose of the study was to examine how students in ninth grade perceived their educational motivation and what kind importance they considered it had for their performance in school. The study is also supposed to base upon the result; clarify the differences if any between schools. In an attempt to get a clear image of this a quantitative method in the form of surveys was made on two schools in the Stockholm region. One of the schools had a really good merit value, and the other had a rather poor merit- value. By choosing a quantitative method a relatively large number of students where able to participate and equally large quantity of statistics have been presented. The result point at motivation in the participating students in both schools can increase and decrease through different factors.

The author is active as a musician in the field of historically informed performance practice (HIP) which emanated from the 20th century early music movement. Studying of historical sources has a central role, but the problem of how interpretation and selection of source material is affected by art and music ideals of our time, is commonly acknowledged. Georg Joseph Vogler shows in a series of articles in "Betrachtungen der Mannheimer Tonschule" (1778-1781) how Stabat Mater by Pergolesi could, and in his opininon, should be improved. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how this source can be used from the standpoint of a performing musician: How can I use Vogler?s methods in my playing?The introduction problematizes Vogler?s action in relation to his time, and to ours.

Today we see a fast developing of the market for mobile communication, both in an increased and changed mobile use, but also in the development of new technologies and services. Much that can be performed on Internet/Intranet today with a PC will in some years also be possible to do with a mobile terminal. Mobile Internet will probable take place when new technologies as GPRS, EDGE and UMTS will be in use. These technologies in combination with the development of new terminals and services will bring new capabilities for both companies and private users. This report describes how a portal should be designed in order to meet the needs on the market.