Torstensson, Niklas (2012): Anledningar till olikheter mellan Svenska kommuners skolkvalitet (Causes behind the differences in Swedish municipality´s quality of school) Örebro University.This essay is an explorative case study that will compare four Swedish municipalities quality of local school system against the municipality ´s backgrounddata and a governing document: Skolplan. This study begins in a previous benchmarking study made by one of Sweden?s teachers unions Lärarförbundet. This is a statistical study that ranked the Swedish municipalities against each other?s according to their accomplishments in a number of areas related to their school systems.

The purpose has been to, by the means of literature studies and conversation, give landscape architects, teachers or other interested people an increased understanding of school gardens as a phenomenon. One episode in the essay describes school garden?s historical background and how its ideology has changed as the society has developed. A conversation with a spokesperson for Södermalmsskolan in Stockholm, depict how a communal public school handles the management of a school garden today. I have also wanted to present the conditions that society and the schools organisation has put on the management of the garden on this particular school. In the year of 2007 Södermalmsskolan got the opportunity to found its school garden thanks to the environmental campaigns that were realized by the city of Stockholm.

AimThe aim of this study has been to examine how health enhancement teachers in Montana, USA, view the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective.In what way does the health enhancement teacher think the importance of physical activity from a lifelong perspective could be presented?What resources are available for teachers to present the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective?MethodThe issue has been answered through qualitative interviews consisting of six health enhancement teachers, four women and two men, in Montana, USA. One of the teachers worked at an elementary school (for 30 years), three teachers worked at middle schools (20, 10 and 8 years of work experience) and two of the teachers interviewed worked at a high school (30 and 3 years).  ResultsThe majority of teachers feel that a wide variety of activities, adapted to an individual level, and the understanding of a healthy lifestyle are important in order for the teacher to present the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective.The teachers felt they had sufficient material in order to present the value of physical activity, where the school budget provided the teachers with materials every year. In addition to the budget, all the teachers had 12 hours of professional development every year where they could attend conferences or their own choice of professional development.ConclusionWith the help in forms of professional development offered by the school, conferences, meeting with other teachers, and their own choice of development, the teachers instruction techniques could increase which could help the teachers to find the pupils? interest for different kinds of physical activities.KeywordsPhysical education and health, physical activity, SOC, sense of coherence..

During my practice as a teacher trainee at an upper secondary school it became clear to me that many pupils have difficulties with algebra. Also in a report from the National Agency for Education (1999) you can see that the students algebra knowledge get worse and worse. I was surprised to find that many pupils seemed to get stuck on the level of attainment for the senior level of the nine-year compulsory school. As I have not studied anything about difficulties in algebra during my training to become a qualified teacher I would like to get to know more about this. I also examine why you have to study algebra in upper secondary school.

The aim of this study is to examine if and to what extent the personnel at the local school perceive offensive treatment through the social media among the students and what the personnel thinks about the responsibility of the school to prevent this type of abuse. Offensive treatment through the social media has become a common occurrence among youth and affects health in both psychological and physical ways. As offensive treatment through the social media often takes place outside of school in the students spare time the responsibility of their health is unclear. But since it affects their school results the school has a responsibility to act, which is confirmed by legislation. However, the legislation does not mention offensive treatment through the social media and the school has no distinct guidelines to prevent this form of offensive treatment.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the library needs of distance students. This user study has a student perspective and concentrates on the main question of which way library needs might be expressed by distance students. Associated topics addressed by this study include; the problem of learning centres lacking their own library support, how distance students look upon library support as a concept and whether distance students prefer public libraries or university libraries, and why they make this choice. These questions may give the answer to how distance students deal with information literacy. Theories chosen by the study are in the fields of pedagogical and library science, the social cultural theory by Roger Säljö and in Tom Wilson's theories on user studies and information needs.

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine how libraries at Swedish colleges and universities make Open Access journals in physics available to users. We examined if, where, and how the 50 Open Access journals that are listed in the Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) under the heading Physics (General) were made available to the public at 19 Swedish colleges and universities. We also examined possible patterns regarding qualities in the Open Access journals and to what extent the libraries made them available. For this descriptive statistic was used. The selection of library portals that were included in the study were those Swedish colleges and universities that teach physics.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to study how librarians at public libraries make the literature with state supported distribution available through marketing. By qualitative interviews with nine heads of libraries the thesis examines how the library staff in each library market the state supported distribution by the Swedish Art Council. My theoretical framework is based on Philip Kotler's thesis on marketing. My conclusion is that the library staff rather market the library as whole, than focus on just one specific type of books. The attitudes toward the state supported distribution are a mixed one, but the library staff is glad for what is given..

This report describes an interview study of Swedish elementary school teacher?s view on stu-dent influence. The objective is to find out about teachers' approach to student influence, what do they think happens with students that are allowed to influence and what are the negotiables and non-negotiables when it comes to student influence in elementary education? And do the teachers really want their students to have influence?According to the official policy documents for the Swedish school system the Swedish school shall work towards a democratic school. Not only should the students be educated about de-mocracy but they should also learn to use democratic values and processes.

Högstadietiden är en period då ungdomar ställs inför ökade krav och förväntningar, både från sig själv och omgivningen. Ofta blir stress en del av vardagen. Syftet med studien var att undersöka hur ungdomar i årskurs nio upplever stress. Studien genomfördes genom fokusgruppsdiskussioner och innehållet bearbetades med kvalitativ tematisk innehållsanalys. Nio flickor och fyra pojkar deltog i studien.

This qualitative study is about the individual supportive conversation with the school welfare officer in upper secondary school. The main aim of the study was to find out what the pupils get out of a series of conversations with the school welfare officer and what it means for the pupils that the welfare officer belongs to the school organization. Six qualitative interviews were held with pupils who had conversation contact with the school welfare officer during their time at upper secondary school.I found that these pupils and welfare officers were oriented towards change and solutions. I found that the most important thing for the pupils was to achieve a good and trusting relationship with the welfare officer. After this the pupil starts a process of change in cooperation with the welfare officer, with the aim that the pupil should be happy and satisfied with the current life situation.

I have conducted a study and examined the significance and extent of bullying. I will also examine whether any students in grade eight have been victims of bullying during the past year and where bullying was carried out in school X. The second objective is to explore what students think about the concept of "taunting". I have used various theories of researchers to get an understanding of what bullying is, where it occurs, causes, and suggestions for measures. To get an answer on the purpose and issue a quantitative method was used in the form of a survey. Target group for the survey consisted of students from grade eight schools in X which is located in a suburb of Stockholm. Two classes of grade eight in School X carried out the survey during the same day.Results showed that bullying occurs at X school, but that the proportion of boys has been more subjected to bullying than girls. The majority of the students in the both classes believed that most cases of bullying occur in school hallways, playground and cafeteria. It may be one reason why school X does not have guards or other members of staff. The majority of students also considered in the survey that the concept of "taunting" is to call each other by words of ?genitalia". I think that the use of foul language has become common in today's schools.  .

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look on how some of the university libraries of Gothenburg have evaluated their electronic services (such as search-systems, Internet-based services, CD-ROM etc.). The information technology has made its way into the library field during the past century and needs to be evaluated and quality measured to ensure the best possible service to the users. Since evaluation of electronic services is a new area in the evaluation field, some problems has arisen in terms of choosing evaluation strategies and finding the appropriate performance indicators for the evaluation process. The main questions asked in the thesis are; - Which are the most common theoretical strategies for evaluation? - How do some of the university libraries of Gothenburg perform evaluation in practice? - How does the various strategies for evaluation apply to the context of this thesis? The results show that specific strategies for evaluation aren't used in the reports discussed in this thesis.

Investigations concerning adolescent mental health shows a negative development. Many pre-vious studies have focused on young women's mental health. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate young men's (17-19 years) experience of their mental health. Qualitative interviews were used as a method. The participants were six young men who all go to high school in a major municipality in the county of Gävleborg.

This dissertation was made since we wanted to investigate the conception called quality within the school sector. What it means and if there is something that can give an explanation of how they  at look at the conception within the school sector. This will be the benchmark through the dissertation, trying to find out the most important things which might be equal to quality within the school.To find the answers of our questions we will read literature according to the subject. To get an increased understanding we will interview some people within the school efficacy, and give students a survey to fill in.The most important results from our investigation is to look at everything in its entirety, not only look at what grades students get. Even though this the most narrated sign of quality.