This essay is about local history in history teaching in two cities; Kalmar and Vetlanda. The purpose was to see how teachers in Kalmar and Vetlanda define local history and what kind of local history they teach their students. I have also examined what benefits of didactics the teachers see in teaching local history. In order to find out I interviewed four history teachers at three schools in Kalmar and two history teachers at one school in Vetlanda. Some of the interviews were carried out over the telephone and the rest at the teachers´s schools.

Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

The purpose of this this thesis is to evaluate the books that the Library Project "Give me five" uses accoring to their own project objective. Starting in the discussion of censorship that took place in Swedish media, the goal of the project is to defend picture books that portray child's inner and outer worlds. Some of the books are selected by librarians and some preschool teachers themselves have chosen. I have a in a thematic analysis examined if the books' themes meet the requirements of the project goals and if there is any difference on the books that preschool teachers chosen and the ones that the librarians have selected. I have in a image analysis investigated whether they have used books that challenge children's imagery, and if the books portray children's outer world.

The purpose of this study was to identify the way in which history textbooks from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s used for grades 7-9 depicts World War II from a eurocentric perspective. A qualitative textual analysis was used to achieve the purpose. Three history textbooks from each decade was included in the study, also comparisons have been made to see any changes over time. The study used John M. Hobson matrix describing how the Occident and the Orient are defined from a eurocentric perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which characteristics the female and male characters have in five selected horse books in children's literature. I have analyzed five horse books by Professor Maria Nikolajeva?s gender roles schedule. I have chosen to do a qualitative text analysis and the questions I chose to ask for the books are: Which characteristics does the girls and the boys have in the selected horse books according to Nikolajeva?s gender chart? What is the relationship between the main characters and the horse/horses according to the theories of Backman? What does the typical horse book look like today? What I come to conclusion in my paper is that all the horse books I analyzed have female main characters, and the girls in these books about horses take a lot of space and demonstrate themselves strong.

In this essay, I compare ten different depictions of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916. These depictions are all from books published between 1924 and 2000, which deal with a wider context of the history of Ireland or Northern Ireland. I relate the depictions to the point in time when they were written, the geographic focus of the book, and the views that the author expresses about the present and the future, and about the significance of history. The main result of my essay is that the depictions differ in a way that seems connected to whether or not there was an ongoing violent conflict in Ireland at the time the books were written. Texts written when the political violence was present, or close, in time and location, are likely to be written either in a neutral tone with concern about objectivity, or incorporating the Easter Rising events in context of an ongoing socialist struggle.

The aim of my thesis was to examine if educators need to be critical of what they read to the children from a gender perspective. I examined how picture books depict gender and if the books enhances or breaks perception of gender roles. I also examined educator?s perception of gender and if they think picture books can affect children?s perceptions of gender, but also what educators think about gender equality through picture books. The study is based on analysis of five picture books and interview with five educators.The results of analyzes showed that picture books are stereotyped and enhances perceptions of gender roles.

The purpose of this survey is to better understand how students in Swedish upper secondary school perceive knowledge in history. 44 students from two different schools took part in the survey. The students partaking were asked to make a rough plan for a course in history, in which they were to both suggest contents of the course and also motivate their choice of content by arguing their view of the purpose of knowledge in history. The results of the survey were then compared to the curriculum of the history subject. The survey shows that a majority of the students asked find modern history, especially World War 1 & 2, and Swedish history to be of importance.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate if gender stereotypes are mediated to children between 0-3 years through books suitable for their age. This thesis concerns books that are available in public libraries. The content will be analysed by using a combination of methods, both content analysis of all the books in our study and a qualitative analysis of a smaller number of these books. With inspiration from both Robert Connell and Yvonne Hirdman and their theories of gender and gender stereotypes, this material was read and we wanted to examine if books for very young children might establish stereotypes. Our analysis showed that many known stereotypes are common in these books.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the usage of and attitudes towards electronic books among graduate and PhD students at Karlstad University. The main questions are: How do graduate and PhD students use electronic books? To what extent are electronic books used compared to printed books? To find the answers, a user study was carried out at Karlstad University library. The results show that a majority of the respondents are aware of the possibility to use electronic books but prefer to use printed ones if they have to choose. Many respondents also complained about difficulties reading a text on the computer screen.

The purpose of this essay was to do a research about if the language in Swedish role-playing books is used correctly and if the composition along with the possible language errors makes the books hard to understand.This research was also about to find out why these problems occurs and if the authors are aware of them.I choose books from two Swedish role-playing games, Eon and Drakar och Demoner. I read them trough, noted the mistakes made and put them together in a scoring table. I also did a LIX-test on the books and interviewed one of the authors.The results shows that the books to Eon is harder to read than the books to Drakar och Demoner and this agrees with the vision the authors of the books claims to have.The results also shows that it is not only the language mistakes and the composition that makes the books hard to read, but also the choice of difficult words and badly formulated rules..

This study revolves around calculating the extent of appearance of both anonymously and named men and women as well as determining whether or not Yvonne Hirdman?s gender theory is applicable on two versions of a Swedish educational history textbook called Epos: historia: för gymnasieskolans kurs A (2008) and Epos [historia] 1b (2012), published for two different curriculum. Our qualitative investigation of two parts of the book?s content proves that the two principles of gender system are present in both books, although to a lesser extent in the latter version. Calculating the material, results have shown that anonymous men and women are almost equally presented in Epos 2012, which is not the case in the 2008 version.

The aim of my thesis was to examine if educators need to be critical of what they read to the children from a gender perspective. I examined how picture books depict gender and if the books enhances or breaks perception of gender roles. I also examined educator?s perception of gender and if they think picture books can affect children?s perceptions of gender, but also what educators think about gender equality through picture books. The study is based on analysis of five picture books and interview with five educators.The results of analyzes showed that picture books are stereotyped and enhances perceptions of gender roles.

Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

The purpose of this study is to analyze picture books from a gender perspective. The books are found in a book box that the libraries send out to preschools. This study is based on the following questions:How are boys and girls portrayed in picture books?Do the picture books encourage or discourage the principles of equality found in the Curriculum for the Pre-School and the equality work conducted in the preschools?I performed a qualitative text and picture analysis of 12 picture books. I used Maria Nikolajeva and Kajsa Wahlströms schedule of typical masculine and feminine qualities and activities when analysing the picture books.