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 highlight how Swedish primary school teachers teach of and about democracy and based on this then compare with how the primary school teachers in South Africa teaches of and about democracy. This comparison will then highlight what can be developed in the teaching of and about democracy in Swedish schools. The method used in this study is mind maps because it gives a greater depth in the way teachers look at teaching democracy. The result of this comparison is that South Africa's history pervades the entire democracy education in school but both Sweden and South Africa use methods as dialogue and discussion in teaching of and about democracy. Furthermore, the community, curriculum, teacher and cooperation with other teachers also have an influence on how democracy's teaching looks like in schools.

In this thesis I set out to study how the reading of fictional literature is viewed, legitimatized and operationalized in two educational domains: the recently revised steering documents that all Swedish teachers must relate to, as well as a selection of teaching materials designed for education in the Swedish language for upper secondary school. The teaching material I have studied has been recently updated in order to correspond with the new steering documents. I relate my analysis to previous research about the use of fiction in education, and I also combine my analysis of the two educational domains to see whether the underlying intentions of the steering documents have influenced the revision of the teaching material. The outcome indicates that the steering documents? previous focus on culture has diminished although a certain insecurity as to how to use the concept and deal with the issue of whose culture should be taught can be identified.

During the past twenty years, the Swedish school systems have slowly changed to becomemore and more performance-driven. Private schools have been growing in general and, likeindependent schools and schools managed by municipalities, they profile themselves. Schoolsare becoming more performance and result-oriented, which has changed the roles of teachersin a dramatic way and is in general, still changing.By profiling students based on theirindividual performance, schools are able to help students identify themselves and their owngoals. The process of profiling is a slow one in which some teachers adapt more quickly thanothers, and one that is critical for other teachers to learn in order to keep up with the demandsof society.Schools, like ordinary businesses, are in constant competition with each other to keep up withthe newest and greatest models of teaching and to rank among the best in high achievements.Perhaps the downside of this modern school structure is that it is often difficult to have aschool where both school management and teachers see eye to eye. School management must heavily focus on the school?s results as a whole.

Meaningful teaching in physical education ? A study of pupils opinions of the contents and teachers methods to activate and account inactive pupils.Nowadays people in society are getting more and more inactive, and we have during our practice at different schools, noticed that many pupils are uncalled for and inactive at the lessons in physical education. The purpose with the study is to see what pupils in the ninth grade thinks about the contents of the subject and what they want it to contain to make the teaching more meaningful. The study also looks in to different methods that teachers in physical education use to make the lesson feel meaningful for all the pupils and how they work to activate and account inactive pupils. To collect the information we chose to distribute questioners to pupils and do interviews with teachers.

 During our education time, we have heard on several occasions how the high changing rate in the society also influences the education area. That changing process mainly originates from the transform that a school underwent, i.e. the decentralization meaning a delegation of responsibility from a national to local government and the particular school. The main idea that started a changing process goes under the slogan ?a school for everyone?.

In today?s society there is a discussion regarding students? level of knowledge and personalisation. The classrooms consist of heterogenic groups of students with different learning needs and levels of knowledge. The purpose of the present study is to find out how the students who participated perceive the teaching of English as an additional language with regards to personalisation, and how they believe differentiation can help develop and deepen their learning. This study has been conducted using a qualitative method with interviews as the core, complemented by observations. The results have been analysed and interpreted hermeneutically. The results show that those students who have a positive attitude to English education, irrespective of their grade, are those who see the benefit of knowing English outside the classroom, and thereby create a connection between reality and studying English.

The question how teaching should be organized in order to give the students the help and support they need to reach their goals is always of vital interest. All students are unique individuals with different prerequisities, possibilities and needs. Streaming in mathematics could be one solution.The first week at upper secondary school a diagnostic test is carried through. Thereafter, the result is used as a basis for dividing the classes into different teaching groups. Thus, the groups working with mathematics become more homogeneous and the students? previous knowledge is approximately at the same level.

This is a qualitative study of high school students? definition of their conception of a ?good? teacher. Its purpose is to provide increased insight for teachers about students? ideas of the phenomenon. The study is based on the reports of six respondents, which was later analysed according to the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis method (IPA).

In order to be a good teacher according to preferences from outside the school area, there are many different voices to listen to. The different roles that are assigned for teachers are colliding with the latest research from the pedagogical institutions and therefore the role as a teacher of today is in a complex state of mind. Somewhere, between the traditional role of teaching and the moderating ideal image, reality is revealed in the ambivalent role of the teacher of today. In this pedagogical essay on advanced level we are focusing on obstacles that are hindering the moderating teacher?s role, to be fully developed in the classroom.

This paper is based upon a questionnaire and interviews with Swedish secondary school teachers (student of ages from 16 to 18). The purpose of the paper was to get a picture of teacher?s attitudes to astronomy in the physics courses and how this affects their teaching. The questionnaire showed that astronomy is the least prioritized field in physics in secondary school. Teachers seem to generally consider astronomy as the least important field and they spend little time teaching it, many teachers even exclude astronomy completely from their classes.

This essay has it purpose to view the assessment and grading in physical education in the Swedish school. Recently published reports from skolverket prove that boys have higher grades in the physical education than girls. Some mean that the reason of this is that the teachers don´t follow the curriculum. The problems we chose to examine are how much do teachers know how to use and connect the curriculum to their teaching? How much of the information and criterion in the curriculum do the teachers use to grade their pupils? And most importantly we wanted to examine why boys gets higher grades then girls, when the curriculum doesn?t seem to suit boys any better than girls.We have interviewed teachers in a certain district and our study shows that the teachers have good knowledge about the curriculum.

AimThe purpose of this study is to investigate how schools who have a health concentration and schools who haven?t are teaching physical education and if possible compare these schools.This study is based on following questions: How do schools with a health concentration and schools who haven?t, in compulsory school, teach physical education and health. How do physical education teachers describe their teaching and how do the students describe it.MethodMy study is a qualitative study based on interviews with teachers and students from different schools. The interviews have been made on four different schools from all over the country. I have interviewed one physical education teacher and four students, two boys and two girls, from each school.

The aim of this study is to investigate English teachers? communication when teaching English in grade three in Swedish schools. The investigation seeks to find out what language is, and why it is, dominant and how the proportions in the teachers? uses of English and Swedish in time are distributed. The study also describes what attitudes teachers have to the English language and if, if so how, two categories of strategies, namely body language and code switching are used.The study was performed in two steps with different methods for collection of qualitative empirical data.

This essay has it purpose to view the assessment and grading in physical education in the Swedish school. Recently published reports from skolverket prove that boys have higher grades in the physical education than girls. Some mean that the reason of this is that the teachers don´t follow the curriculum. The problems we chose to examine are how much do teachers know how to use and connect the curriculum to their teaching? How much of the information and criterion in the curriculum do the teachers use to grade their pupils? And most importantly we wanted to examine why boys gets higher grades then girls, when the curriculum doesn?t seem to suit boys any better than girls.We have interviewed teachers in a certain district and our study shows that the teachers have good knowledge about the curriculum.