To read and understand are essential competences for everyone in our society; at the same time reading comprehension among Swedish pupils is on the decline. The Swedish school must therefore try to improve their instructions to increase the students' reading comprehension. The aim of the study was to describe how three reading comprehension strategies, if possible, could improve the reading comprehension for the students, including children with learning disabilities, when reading texts of natural science in a third-grade class. The three strategies that were introduced were: to activate prior knowledge, to structure information and to record contents. The questions of the study were: How are the three strategies introduced in the classroom? Can the children with learning disabilities see any benefits for their reading comprehension when working with the strategies? How do the children with learning disabilities experience working with the strategies? Can the teacher see any benefits when working with the strategies? Is it possible to see any differences among the students' results, before and after completed intervention? Method: The results have been collected through observations and qualitative interviews, which make this a qualitative study.

The public sector is a major purchaser of goods and services. By setting requirements for environmental and social considerations in public procurement, an authority has the possibility to use consumer power to influence the actors in a market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate public procurement of textile products in a municipality, in order to gain knowledge about factors that may be important for the use of environmental and social criteria. Håkan Hydén´s (professor in sociology of law) norm model was used as the basis of the analysis, where the conduct was investigated along three dimensions of the norm ? willingness, knowledge and system conditions ? in order to identify underlying factors that can influence the process.The results ? analyzed by using interviews and documents ? show that the procurer's willingness, motivation and knowledge are important factors in this context, as well as the political priority of the municipality.

Learning words have shown to be a very crucial part of learning a second language and the one most important factor to make pupils with Swedish as a second language succeed in school. To make sure that all pupils get the right conditions to learn from all subjects and their entire content a wide vocabulary is necessary. Even so it is found that there are shortcomings regarding this kind of teaching in Swedish schools.Through interviews and observations of two teachers that teach pupils with Swedish as a second language, and also with a short reading test for the pupils, the possible strategies that these teachers use for learning words have been studied. The result shows that the teachers are using several strategies and that they are actively working with transmitting these to the pupils, but there are some areas that need developing..

The purpose of this study has been to compare the present with the future syllabus of mathematics. With a text analytical approach has questions about how the structure is different, how the look at knowledge has changed and which learning theory that characterizes the two syllabus been answered. As a theoretical framework I adopt three different learning theories, behaviourism, cognitivism and the socio-cultural perspective. The pervious research I have looked at is the concept of knowledge an the underlying theories to previous curriculum. During the increase results in the greatest difference seen in the structure.

This has been a practical innovation graduation project withthe focus of studying the impacts of downsizing on a learningorganization. The study took place at Karlsson Spools in Sala.This has been a part of an ongoing EU project funded by theEuropean Social Fund, ESF. We have, with the help ofinterviews and surveys, gathered information on the presentsituation and with the help of theoretical studies built aframework on how a learning organization is viewed intheory.During our study we found that there are many componentsto a learning organization. The company in question hasdisplayed some qualities that characterize a learningorganization such as a plan to train and further develop theiremployees. The problem we found was lack of communicationand how this has resulted in a less successful outcome of theongoing courses.

The study has got three aims. The first purpose is to implement the Newman et al.s rampage theory (2004) in a more dominant European context. In this way, the theory?s strengths and weaknesses can be exposed. The second objective is to look at the motive.

Motives and reasons behind a decision to change the asylum process in Sweden are the central concern for this thesis. A symbolic political perspective will be applied in order to elucidate the symbolic factors that have influenced the decision process.The Aliens Appeal Board in Sweden will close down at the end of March 2006 and all pending and future cases will henceforth be decided by three administrative courts. This will be done in order to enhance the principles of legal certainty by making the process more transparent and oral. It is an extensive reform, but since very few amendments are made to the applicable substantive law it raises questions about the actual motives behind the change.One reason that seems to have had a major impact on the decision to close down the Aliens Appeal Board is the fact that the board is perceived as a symbol for an inhuman asylum policy. Transferring the process to the courts might ease the attempt to increase the legitimacy of the asylum process.

The intention of this study is to interview teachers in order to create a picture of how they look at their work with IUP (Plan of individual development). The main question formulated in my study is in what way IUP can become a contribution to the learner´s development. All teachers who participated in the interviews believe that the purpose of the document is to be proactive, developing and positive for the pupils. The teachers also believe that it is intended to serve as a clarification for pupils as well as teachers. It´s clear to see that the IUP generally is believed to be a supportive resource in education.

The occupational therapist uses meaningful activities to promote health and accomplish functional progress. The professional role is to support and enable for the client to change his/her life. One way to accomplish this is to use the group as a tool. Knowledge is needed about how learning works and which teaching methods exist to promote learning, so it is adapted after the clients´ personal way of learning. The aim of this study was to investigate which pedagogical approaches occupational therapists use in group activities.

The purpose with our essay was to examine what favourable factors there are for women to get out of drug abuse and from a gender aspect interpret how these factors are used in the treatment of female drug-addicts, regarded from the treatment personnel view. The questions we have focused on are: What are the favourable factors for women in the way out of the addiction. How can the use of favourable factors be interpreted from a gender aspect. In what way is the knowledge about these favourable factors used in the drug abuse treatment.To fulfil the purpose whit our examination and to get answers to our questions we performed an explorative examination and applied a qualitative method in the form of a half structured interview with five persons.The main features of the results in our examination were that unisexual treatment, the group and the friendship between women, children and pregnancy and professional and private social network were considered as the favourable factors for the women out of their addiction. Certain factors were used in the treatment as a way to socialize or resocialize the female drug-addicts to predominant social models of how a woman should be like..

The purpose of this qualitative study is to understand and examine the problem andreason why second language pupils have difficulties reaching the goals of thecurriculum in ?Swedish as a second language?. The study is based on interviews withtwo second language teachers and Vygotskijs and Antonovskys theories. The interviewswith teachers gave a broader view on why these difficulties exist and whatconsequences might occur. This analysis shows that there can be different reasons as towhy pupils can not reach the goals in their second language that are set for them.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to analyse the reading- and writing-approaches: the LTG-method and the whole language-theory. The attention is to perform a comparative literate-study to distinguish their similarities and differences, and examine which one of the approaches that is most clearly anchored in the syllabus of the subject Swedish. The starting-point of the study is the questions: Which similarities respectively differences have the LTG-method and the whole language-theory? Which one of these theories is most clearly anchored in the syllabus of the subject Swedish? The study has shown that both the whole language-theory and the LTG-method can anchor in the syllabus for Swedish. However the whole language-theory has stronger hold in the syllabus, as the whole language emphasises the meaning of literature for reading- and writing-learning, and considers the pupils reflection during their learning-process and conquered knowledge-goal.

The aim of this Master thesis is, from a sociocultural perspective, to investigate the views the teaching librarians at Södertörn University Library (SHB) have on learning, information literacy, and their own pedagogical role, and how their views affect user education and their ideas about the future of user education.The research questions used were: How do the teaching librarians view learning? How is this view reflected in their work with user education? How do the teaching librarians envisage user education in the future, and how do they work to reach that goal?Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teaching librarians at SHB. The interviews were then analysed using qualitative content analysis.The results of the study show that the teaching librarians at SHB share a sociocultural view on learning, and take a communicative oriented approach to user education. They believe that communication and interaction support learning, and in the classroom they stimulate discussions both between librarian and student, and between the students themselves. In the future, they hope for improved collaboration between librarians and academic staff, and that user education will become a natural element of the curriculum..

This study puts emphasis on an international discourse describing how cities frequently compete against each other, and also describing factors that cities should enhance to make themselves more competitive. The discourse in this study has therefore been used to seek understanding how three different municipalities Borlänge, Karlstad and Malmö strive for growth by applying central factors from the discourse on the municipalities strategic documents. What the study shows is that the central factors from the discourse strongly imprints the strategic documents, but the presence of the factors varies between the municipalities and also to what meaning that lies behind the strategic goals..

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library.