This study examines patterns of consumption during the 1780s in Öjaby and Virestad parishes. I have examined the clothes and jewelry in estate inventories using the concept of status. Then I have used Pierre Bourdieu's theories to understand fashion mechanisms.I have identified five different groups, each distinguished by their Formal wear. Men have similar clothes but in Virestad they have more items and more silver. Four people were divergent, they choose other materials and models.

The purpose of my study was to explore how preschool educators in Kenya look at children's influence on teaching. Researchers have argued that the Formal educational system in Kenya today is a remnant of its days as a colony when people were expected to blindly follow rules without questioning them. I have used qualitative interviews as a method in order get the most concrete understanding of educators? views on the influence from children. The educators I interviewed were based at a school I visited in Kenya.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the situation for youths leaving foster care and entering adult life. The study examines the services provided by the social service in the Stockholm area when a youth is leaving foster care, and if a recent change in the legislation has had any impact on the operating procedures of the social service. The study includes interviews with youths who recently left foster care, as well as information collected from social service offices through a survey, supplemented by interviews with practicing social workers. All the assembled data have been analyzed using Ecological Systems theory with focus on the child perspective and the term significant others. The study shows that the respondent youth have trouble identifying the Formal ending with social services, as well as the support they received or were offered.

Studies of the information needs of library patrons are necessary in order for the library to serve the community. Alas, studies of non-heterosexual persons are rare in the field of Library and Information Science in Sweden. This study aims at examining the information situation of women in same-sexed parenthood by means of analysing their situation as norm-breaking. The study is done through examining the specific information needs of this group, how they seek and receive information, what barriers they encounter and what function the library has in this information situation. A queer theoretical approach to heteronormativity in combination with McKenzie?s two-dimensional model of information seeking is used to perform a qualitative analysis of the material.

The essay's aim is to explain how responsibility distribution between private and public bodies, primarily within three important service areas, can be visualised in light of the fact that they have experienced different forms of readjustment. We have chosen to study this by looking at the restoration work taking place after the hurricane Gudrun swept across southern Sweden on January 8-9, 2005; and we have chosen to concentrate on the service areas of electricity- and telephone supply, and public transport. The responsibility distribution has been depicted by carrying out qualitative interviews with employees within both private and public bodies included in the restoration work. The conclusion produced is that there were obscurities in the Formal responsibility distribution between private and public actors taking place in conjunction with the hurricane restoration work.In a deeper analysis, the result can be explained by a ?several hands? problem arising since the number of actors has increased as the public sphere has adopted leadership forms influenced by the private business sector.

Syftet med vår studie var att ta reda på hur pedagoger tillvaratar barns informella kunskaper och hur de konkret arbetar för att utveckla barns begreppsuppfattning i matematik med hjälp av språket. Vi avsåg även att undersöka förutsättningarna för en sådan undervisning. Vi ville se till både individ-, grupp- och organisationsnivå. Ytterligare en specialpedagogisk frågeställning som vi avsåg att undersöka var hur barn i behov av särskilt stöd gynnas av detta arbetssätt. Vi genomförde tio kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer, som var delvis strukturerade, med pedagoger som arbetar med språket på ett medvetet sätt i sin matematikundervisning.

This thesis on the sustainable urban development has the intent to discuss the conservator?s position in alteration of the built environment. An essential component of the thesis consists of a case study in the form of an entry in an open architectural competition for the development of Furuset, an urban residential area in Norway. The thesis? discussion is based on two approaches to change and socio-economic transformations, considered being dominant within the heritage theory and practice: the production of ideas and great narratives and conservation as an instrumental tool.

Several theoretic and environmental psychological models establish a connection between the environment and the reactions of humans and the research support that there is a mutual influence between individual, environmental and behavioral factors. You often assume that a person both can influence and be influenced by the surrounding environment. This is evident, but it is less obvious how a given physical design influence people?s immediate behavior in the city. The aim of this study was to investigate if the physical design of a place influences people in an urban environment and to investigate how the behavior is influenced.

This is a qualitative study that explores the involvement of the relatives in the special housing based on the perspective of fourteen interviewees working in elderly care, at special housing.The purpose of this study is to analyze the nursing staff's view of the involvement of the relatives and the presence of care provision at special housing. The study is to find out what can constitute support or obstacles to the relatives.Three questions have been presented as the structural basis upon which the objective finds its conclusion. These questions try to explore and identify the forms of support that can help relatives in their involvement in elderly care. There are opportunities and obstacles for the involvement of the relatives in the care of the elderly as well as expectations of nursing staff on the role of the relatives in the care of the elderly which the following study focuses on.The research reflected in this study involves the care staff and their experiences and views on the relatives who have their older live permanently in residential care.In conclusion, the study identifies similar reasoning among respondents regarding to key aspects of the relatives at the special housing. They emphasizes that relatives are needed there and they are important resource for both the residents and the staff.The results indicate that there may be both opportunities and obstacles for the involvement of the relatives.

Ever since Lipsky wrote about street-level bureaucrats in 1980 the main belief has been that certain characteristics of their jobs make it exceptionally difficult to severely reduce their discretion. However, discretion comes at a price and if public servants abuse their power the legitimacy of government is at risk and ultimately even the democracy.This thesis address this question by analysing the Swedish employment service which in the beginning of 2001 started a project called ?Af Sverige? trying to improve internal rule of law. By comparing two local and fairly equal jobcentres and how the street-level bureaucrats within use their discretion, I seek to find support for my hypotheses that organizing local jobcentres according to the principles of machine bureaucracy plays a significant part in reducing discretion.My findings show that a jobcentre characterised by strict rules, few units, good communications and a forthright manager who delegates Formal power to the employees results in a stricter and more uniform application of regulations among the street-level bureaucrats. My conclusion is therefore unambiguous.

The purpose of my study was to see what kind of relationships there were between the youth and the social workers in the treatment home Hassela in Klintehamn, Gotland. The social workers work for six weeks day and night by living together with the youth. I also wanted to examine what happens when there were conflicts between them as signs of tensions in the relationships. In addition to this I wanted to study the relations between power and influence in their relationships where Hassela strives for democracy. My questions were the following; How do the youth and the staff describe the relationships between them? How do conflicts work between them at Hassela? What does the relationship between power and influence look like?The study is based on qualitative interviews with four clients and four social workers.

The aim of this thesis is to examine Social science teachers infor-mation seeking in their professional role.The focus in this study has been on what sources the teachers use for information seeking, examine and analyze their information practices and how they state their reasons for using different in-formation sources, and finally how these teachers experience con-ditions related to information seeking and how these conditions in-fluence their information seeking.This study is based on four semi structured qualitative interviews. The empirical material from the interviews has been compared to earlier relevant research and analyzed with a theoretical frame-work, which includes conceptions from a sociocultural perspec-tive, a matrix over different kinds of information sources devel-oped by Höglund och Persson and McKenzie?s model of infor-mation practices.The results of this study are:- These teachers use both Formal and inFormal sources and external and internal sources. Digital sources are important and these have consequently been added to Höglund och Persson?s original matrix from 1985.- Information practices tend to overlap each other, for example ac-tive seeking (more specific and prepared information seeking) and active scanning (less specific), which are the two most common information practices among the teachers.

The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians? views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau?s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians? view of pedagogical work are also made.The method used is qualitative interviews.

The aim of my study is to investigate how last year students in upper secondary schoolunderstand certain mathematical concepts, in particular the unit circle and its trigonometry.I have used intentional analysis to interpret student?s actions when they solve certain tasks onthe basis of a cognitive, situated and cultural context.Interviews with four university teachers in mathematics about the unit circle, trigonometry,and mathematical understanding, serve both as background for the study and as basis for adiscussion, where I relate students understanding to what the teachers want new students toknow about these concepts when they begin university studies in mathematics.The students were arranged in three groups with three students in each group. Each group waspresented with two tasks, one in which they were asked to calculate the cosine values for onepointed, one blunt and one straight angle, each located in a separate triangle. They were alsoasked to decide whether the points (0,71; 0,71) and d (1 2 , 3 2 ) are located on the unit circleor not.My conclusion is that students mainly have an operational conception of the unit circle andtrigonometry. The lack of structural conceptions result in difficulties in seeing connectionsbetween the concepts in unfamiliar situations.

The aim of this work is to understand the recruitment of candidates to the local representative assembly in the municipality of Täby. The method used is qualitative interviewing, of a total of eight local politicians in Täby. The theory in which this work rest upon is based on a new-institutionalist perspective. Of great importance is the thoughts of the politicians involved in the recrution process, what do they think were the reasons that controlled the order of priority in the party list among the pool of candidates? Were there any obstacles for minorities in the politics like for example foreigners, women or young people? The study is taking it?s departure from the politicians who candidated in the election of 2002-2006 and the ones which are candidating to the election this coming autumn.In conclusion the aim is to understand the reasons that gives some of the candidates electable places to the assembly, and what the actors themselves think are the conclusive qualities that matters the most.