The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

Since 1998, the Swedish preschool has its own curriculum and with this the preeschool became the first step of a lifelong learning. The aim of this study was to explore how preschool teachers perceive their work before and after the Swedish curriculum was inserted. A qualitative method was used in this study. Four different in-depth interviews were conducted with preschool teachers, all experienced working at least before 1993. The curriculum theory and curriculum history were used to analyze the empirical data.

A qualitative, empirical study on how the nurse understands her role as a pedagogue..

Background: Animals are used in several health care areas and have been shown to promote many aspects of patients? health. Animals have potential for use in nurses? health promotion work. Nurses need a deeper understanding of the importance and health-promoting properties of animal-assisted therapy.Aim: The aim was to describe the importance of animal assisted therapy for patients? health.Methods: A literature review was conducted based on ten nursing science studies with both qualitative and quantitative approaches, which were selected after critical review.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how a public library, as an information center and a meeting place, may contribute to bring Swedes and immigrants closer to one another, which is a prerequisite for integration. To realize this purpose, I have asked three questions. Which conditions and demands are stated in central documents for libraries immigrant activities? What do the library called Biblioteket Västers multicultural activities contain? How does the library conceive its object to strengthen immigrants identity so that its activities, contribute to integration? As method, I have used hermeneutics, which means that I have interpreted the thesis material. In the theory I have described relevant literature and confirmed the importance of identity, language and the majoritys acknowledgement for integration.

This study investigates the internet habits of students in the Swedish gymnasium. The part that internet plays in their lives and their attitude towards the educational system is reflected upon the philosophical background that stretches from Kant to postmodern philosophers such as Baudrillard. The aim is to create knowledge about how the social aspects of the internet affects their concepts of reality and their own and others identities. The method used for the collection of empirical data has been semi-structured interviews, preformed with students in a Swedish gymnasium. The data is then interpreted against the theoretical and philosophical background.

Title: Female leaders within the bank sector. Level: D-level in Business Author: Emma Roos & Fanny Wiklander Supervisor: Maria Fregidou-Malama Date: 2011 ? January Aim: The aim of this study is to examine which factors are behind the low number of female leaders compared to male leaders within the bank sector. Method: We have adapted a qualitative method. This means that the researcher works close to the object of research and tries to understand it. We believe that this is a suitable method for our study since it?s based on seven personal interviews.

The agricultural sector has historically seen stable prices and a relatively constant demand for its products. Companies within the sector have generally had few loans and large sums of money tied in assets. The profitability of the companies has on the other hand been low. Together these circumstances have determined the creditors? demands on the companies within the sector and have formed the rules and regulations that exist today.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate possible links between short selling and the stock market movements using econometric test models. Methodology: A quantitative study carried out on the time series stock lending and OMX Stockholm 30 index. Information is gathered through qualitative interviews with specialists in the field of stock lending, and studies of relevant newspaper articles and reports. Theoretical approach: The theoretical frame of reference is a further consideration of supply and demand theory. The empirical study is implemented by the simple linear regression model and a vector autoregressive model (VAR).

The primary purpose of this essay is to study and describe what student?s self experiences of the media coverage of social work. The theoretical perspectives applied to analyse the empirical data are social constructionism, roles, and construction. The method of this study is qualitative and based on ten personal interviews. The material has been analysed by condensed meaning units and three themes have been used, the media coverage of social work, the relationship between social workers and media and the influence media coverage has on the students.The results given from these interviews show that the majority of the interviewed group considers the media coverage of social work as negative.

Mathematics is a central topic in today's education debate, including discussion of its educational quality and various teaching methods. Today basically two different teaching methods are used; one is the textbook based method, with the book in focus and the other one the laboratory method by which teaching is performed through practical applications. The purpose of this study was to examine four primary school teachers' view of these two teaching methods by means of four relevant inquiries. By interviewing the four teachers, advantages and disadvantages were highlighted and the purpose was achieved. In order to support the analysis, two theories applied; the socio-cultural perspective and the cognitive perspective.

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.

Research question: How does the industrial company Scania work to get more women in leadership positions?Purpose: The purpose of this work is to describe how companies in a male-dominated industry can work to get a higher share of female leaders.Method: This survey was based on a deductive approach with a qualitative method. Theories have been obtained primarily from scientific articles and the empirical part has been collected through interviews from the companies Wiminvest and Scania.Conclusion: The conclusions the study came up with was different elements that companies in male-dominated industries can work with to get a higher share of female leaders. The first thing that companies can do is to join the project BON or similar projects to work on this issue. They can work with workshops and lectures to disseminate knowledge about the topic.

Flow measurement is one of the greatest challenges in order to calculate efficiency in hydropower. Most hydropower plants in Sweden use differential pressure methods for flow measurement. These methods are dependent on constant conditions in the waterways. A change in these conditions, like turbine improvements, prevents differential pressure methods to verify efficiency improvements. Since efficiency improvements can?t be verified by one measurement system, another method, which isn?t affected by changing conditions, can be used.

This paper aims to investigate the systematic risk exposure of Swedish hedge funds using a modified Fung & Hsieh (2004) asset-based style factor model. The results show that the average Swedish equity hedge fund and fund of funds had a significant positive exposure to the equity market portfolio and the spread between small cap and large cap stocks (SMB) during the sample period. This is consistent with our a priori expectations and previous international studies. We do not find the expected systematic fixed-income related risk exposure for the fixed-income hedge funds and fund of funds in the sample. The empirical material used in this study is taken from a publicly available fund database maintained by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen).