The Government announced a new school reform which aims to support teacher appraisal and professionalism within the Swedish education system. The once well renowned profession is hurting by the decreasing quality of the Swedish education system and the declining number of applicants to the university teacher program. The school reform introduced a new career path for especially skilled teachers to an occupation earlier characterized by a homogenous work force. The Government encourages principals to promote thriving teachers to first teachers, whom will receive an increase in the salary covered by state aid. By supporting these effective teachers, the Government wishes to increase the image perceived and status of the profession and improve the competitiveness of teaching's salary.

Abstract   In this thesis, my aim was to investigate how preschool teachers view their involvement in children's free play. In order to answer this, I chose to do semi-structured interviews with four preschool teachers in three different preschools. My interviews has revealed similarities and support for as how history of research looks at the involvement of educationists. Both research and my results stresses the importance of being active in children's free play and to be a supportive teacher, particulary in conflict situations. For those children who have difficulty entering into the free game its the educationists task to co-play and help the children find the game.

The thesis of this essay is how literary texts are selected in the teaching of Swedish in upper secondary school, and how teachers reflect upon gender in these selections. To answer the thesis question three methods have been used. Firstly interviews were held with five teachers of Swedish, which have been the primary source for the essay. In addition to the interviews, I have examined two literary anthologies used as teaching aid in the teaching of Swedish and lastly I analyzed the literature and authors that the teachers explicitly express that they use in their tutoring. The secondary sources of this thesis contain research on selections of fictional texts, literary canon and students? re-production of gender.

The aim of this qualitative study was to examine and understand how teachers see and handle the signs of child poverty within a classroom context. The paper is based on an interview study involving 8 teachers in 2 Swedish schools for children between the ages of 6 to 12 years old. Poverty is a complex word and there are many definitions of it. What do teachers interpret as signs of child poverty in the school context? How do they act when they think it?s necessary to protect a child from being affected by it, and how can we understand their choice of action with the help of action theory? We discovered that the teachers notice different things as signs of child poverty, and they all react in both different and similar ways.

The phenomena of cyber bullying is relatively new, but it is now more prevalent than ever as children today have access to the internet on a daily basis, in school as well as at home. Although cyber bullying is an increasing problem in today?s society, there seem to be few guidelines for teachers to follow when using the internet with their students in school. The purpose of this study is to investigate who, according to six teachers, has the responsibilities revolving cyber bullying ? teachers or parents.

This essay studies the practice of both the political and the administrative leadership at the municipal level from the point of view of the politicians and the chief officers leadership role, and the relationship between politicians and administrators. I discuss and analyse how politicians and senior officials practice leadership, differences or similarities and if their practice of leadership raises any challenges in a democratic framework at the municipal level. I conducted interviews with the municipal political leader and the head of administration at the municipal level in Karlshamn and Sölvesborg. In the analysis I discuss communication as a leadership process which highlights ?enabling elements? and potentials of the leadership process.

Because of my interest and experience within the field of children and teenagers with an antisocial behaviour and who are acting out I wanted to devote my essay to researching these children through the perspective of the teachers. In this essay I, therefore, interviewed 4 teachers with 4-16 years of experience within this occupation. The method I've chosen can be described as qualitative interview with semi-structured questions to enable the teachers to thoroughly describe their answers without diverting from the original question. The questions that form this essay are: What strategies do the teachers possess to enable stability, a safe work environment and enabling knowledge-sharing for the children that are acting out? What kind of tools do the teachers use when they work with children who are acting out? The results were analysed through the theory of socialization, which simplified can be compared with upbringing.

The purpose of this study is to determine which approach preschool teachers from a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool and a traditional preschool have on children, knowledge, learning and their own role in children?s learning. The two pedagogical approaches have different basic visions; Reggio Emilia follows the thoughts of Lori Malaguzzi and the traditional preschool follows the Swedish curriculum Lpfö 98. The main research questions asked were:What view on children, learning and knowledge does the preschool teacher from a Reggio Emilia inspired preschool have in comparison with a traditional preschool?Which role does the teacher believe that they should take regarding children?s learning?What differences and similarities can be identified in the teachers' perceptions?To carry out this study, I used a qualitative research method.

In Based upon disciplinary foundation... ? A study on teachers? prerequisite for continuing pro- fessional development (CPD) I have examined the prerequisites that teachers in Nacka have for CPD, due to the new school law that states that all teaching must be based upon disciplinary foundation and proven experience. According to a recently published governmental report, as well as international research, not only structural aspects like time and financial compensation are crucial to whether teachers continue their development. Encouragement from the principal and colleagues are also a contributing factor; and not to mention those factors combined.There is a world wide shared consensus among educational researchers claiming that one very important piece in creating a successful school is having a well-educated and updated staff.

There are different ways of developing a second language. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate whether and possibly how music, focused on singing, can improve the development of Swedish as a second language. Through interviews with three vocal teachers, from three different schools in Sweden, and observations of one of the vocal teachers, information about how they work and think about the subject has been collected. The vocal teachers teach groups of second language learners by singing songs made especially for second language learning. The vocal teachers consider singing beneficial in the development of the pronunciation and improvement of the prosody, which affects the students? capacity to sound like a native Swedish speaker.

This is an empirical study based on Physical Education and health (PE) teachers' experiences and builds on, for the study, significant literature. The study is about PE teachers? consideration of gender in the assessment as well as in the selection of lesson content. Semi-structured interviews were employed as method for the data collecting process. Four teachers were interviewed, teachers of PE in elementary and upper secondary school with varied length of professional experience and ages.

This qualitative study aims to investigate some secondary school teacers' attitudes to and experiences of motivation in their second language classrooms. Through qualitative interviews with five teachers some different perspectives on motivation and its function in second language acquisition have come to light. First, motivation is seen as something important and some teachers tend to distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Those who do so tend to value intrinsic motivation more highly. Secondly, teachers believe they can affect students' levels of motivation.

The purpose of the study is to investigate into professional knowledge of the bilingual teachers, compared to monolingual, and what benefits they give to pre-school. Qualitative method was used to get an understanding of informant´s perspective on bilingual teachers. The informants believe that bilingual teachers are able to understand all the children. A bilingual teacher can make the children feel secure. If one has a positive attitude toward bilingualism, the bilingual children also show a positive attitude that in turn contributes to learning and development of the language..

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine whether there is a connection between distance to the schoollibrary and the extent to which teachers are using it as an integral part of their teaching. The study aims to answerif the physical distance to the school library is affecting teachers' ways of working with the library, if it affects thecollaboration between teachers and librarians and finally if teachers that are using a school library outside theschool premises are doing so less as an integral part of their teaching compared to teachers that have access to aschool library within the schools premises.The study is based on qualitative interviews with six teachers in the intermediate stage of the nine-yearcompulsory school, of which three have access to a school library within the school premises and three haveaccess to a school library outside the school premises. The two groups of teachers are compared in order to findout if there is a connection between distance to the school library and the usage of it. Loertscher's school librarymedia program and teacher taxonomy have been used as a theoretical framework.The study shows that the teachers who use a school library within the school premises have a bettercollaboration with the librarians than the ones who use a school library outside the school premises. The studyalso show that theese libraries are an integral part of the teaching to a higher degree.

Introduction: Each year 1200-1300 patients are diagnosed with head neck cancer. Treatment that involves radiotherapy can cause severe side effects for example trismus that affects quality of life.Purpose: To study health-related quality of life in patients who have undergone radiation treatment for head and neck cancer and participated in a intervention group who received training intended to prevent trismus or in a control group who received standard treatment.Method: This is a prospective study in which data is collected from 66 patients participating in a randomized study aiming to evaluate a training program to prevent trismus. Thirty three participated in the intervention group and thirty three in the control group. Both patient groups assessed health related quality of life (HRQOL) with EORTC QLQ C30 and QLQ-H&N35, at start and end of the radiation treatment, and at 3 and 6-months after completing radiation treatment.Results: There is no difference between the intervention and control groups regarding symptoms, functional status and global health, except for intake of nutritional supplements.  For both groups almost all scales measuring HRQOL deteriorated under the radiation treatment. However, 3 and 6 months after end of radiotherapy HRQOL had improved and had returned to the baseline values.