Swedish students' knowledge of both mathematics and reading comprehension has deteriorated in recent years. Scientists are discussing whether there is a connection between these areas and that the pupils deteriorating math skills may have something to do with their increasingly lower results in terms of reading comprehension. To investigate this possible connection, I conducted a survey among students in ninth grade and have come to the conclusion that the scientists are right: this connection absolutely exist. Students who received a high score on tasks designed to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills, also received high results on the reading comprehension test. And students who received a poor performance on the problem-solving tasks, were also low performers in the reading comprehension test.

The pdf is excluding images, because of uncertainties regarding copyrights. Instead I have put links for each picture so you may find them on the Internet. For a list of links to the online sourcematerial, please visit http://del.icio.us/Cyborguppsats.

Abstract__________________________________________________Sara NilssonAnnette OlofssonMatematik ses som tråkigt och svårt? hur kan elevers motivation och självkänsla hanteras?Mathematics is viewed as boring and difficult? how can pupils? motivation and confidence be dealt with?Antal sidor: 42__________________________________________________This report delves into primary school pupils? difficulties in mathematics, with emphasis on their lack of confidence and motivation. By researching literature and Internet sources associated to this issue, an in-depth view of these problems has been illuminated. Two teachers at a Swedish primary school were interviewed, in order to get their perspective of the matter. Questionnaires were sent to two teachers at an English primary school and their responses were returned.

Abstract The purpose of this study is to further understand swedish highschoolstudents perspective on the subject of history. In order to produce an answer a series of qualitative interviews were conducted with six students of mixed ages, ethnicity an gender. Their answers were evaluated using relevant didactic theories focusing on the use of history, historical consciousness as presented by Klas-Goran Karlsson. Motivationtheories according to the RISE model. By Edward Hootstien.

A large number of genocides have taken place in our history. The purpose of this essay is to examine how genocide is treated in five high school history textbooks. I have studied a large number of issues. I have examined which genocides are discussed in the textbooks and which genocides the textbooks don?t discuss.

In this qualitative thesis I have studied the process of street-naming in Budapest. I have done this primarily through examining legislative and street name records in Budapest in order to define a distinctive use of history. In an attempt to concretise public opinion, I designed and distributed a succinct questionnaire and used newspaper articles to create a clear view of the political milieu. Furthermore, I have utilised a typological method to summarise the use of history and elucidate the results. I came to the conclusion that a moral and, to some extent, ideological use of history is dominating the street-naming situation in contemporary Budapest.

This thesis primarily includes a study on whether companies can develop a mathematical activity that supports students' motivation in mathematics. The work was done together with Midroc Electro, a company that pays attention to the difficulty of recruiting and therefore was interested in investigating how the business world would be able to contribute.The thesis can be divided into three stages. The first part comprised by a exploration into research on student motivation regarding mathematics as well as numerous interviews with engineers to see how the research findings did fit with Midroc Electros reality. In these studies it became clear that the student who aims for a profession whose education or work requires math belongs to the group of students who primarily manage their studies in mathematics, that is, those that have the greatest motivation to work hard and complete their studies.Research information and interviews were compared and resulted in the thesis second part, Midroc Challenge. An activity where students primarily came to learn about the engineering profession and secondly how mathematics can be used in the engineering profession.

Museums are a part of the cultural sector that over the last couple of years had to compete with the steadily growing consumption of spectacles. New techniques to attract and amaze the visitors have evolved. Living History Museums has developed a method to simulate past times by building up an environment with reconstructions. History is a non-definite science, there will never be an exact answer to how it really was, for example during the Middle Ages.This essay deals with the difference between reconstructions and authentic artefacts and how they build up an illusion of the past. In what sense does it matter if the artefacts are genuine or not? How do these museums deal with anachronistic phenomena from today's modern world in the historic environment? Additionally I discuss whether or not these reconstructions - of environment, buildings and personal characters - have any influence on the historic narrative given by the museum.

The aim of this paper is to investigate and analyze practices in multilingual classrooms of mathematics in a compulsory school in Sweden where immigrant students have been known to succeed. The school is situated in a suburban and segregated area outside a major city where pupils come from mainly limited socio-economic backgrounds. The rate of second language learners are 70% of all pupils in this school.By using ethnographic methods, mainly interviews and participant observation, data was collected in four mathematics classrooms which corresponded to consecutive ages of education. The data include field notes and observation of artifacts in the environment as well as interviews and informal conversations with teachers and school leadership. Information from the school website, the authority in charge of quality in Swedish schools (Skolverket) and the municipality were also used.The analysis is based on a socio-political viewpoint that power is relational and reflected within schools.

In today?s history teaching in Sweden, role-play and historical re-enactment receive littleattention. Even though many students find history as a subject boring and irrelevant, verylittle is done to improve the mode of teaching. My theses is that this could be done bypresenting new ways of teaching and at the same time find a way to make more studentsinterested in history. The main aim is to investigate if there are ways to offer students anexperience of history by carrying out different interactive exercises with a touch of roleplayand historical recreation.

The objective of this research is to unveil how respective teacher consider about the laboratory working methods in mathematics. The research even includes answers to questions such as, what approaches and attitudes the teachers have and the methods they use when instructing their students when teaching mathematics, what the materials used by the teachers are and how important working creatively is to help the students develop their logical thinking. I also looked into issues that can help understand how and why teachers use laboratory mathematics for students in young ages. As a conclusion the research showed that the teachers aim to the goal that includes helping the students understand mathematics, strengthen their logical thinking and creativity.In the method section qualitative data was used, which contained four interviews with different pedagogues that daily interact with students in elementary school. The reasons for using the method of qualitative data was to help me deeper understand and answer the specific questions I had to the pedagogues and to even compare how different pedagogues differ in their approaches and methods.

This paper presents an analysis of history textbooks used in schools in Sweden and Norway. The intention of the research was to study how the history textbooks describe communism and communistic dictatorship mainly during the cold war. The result of this study is that there were no big differences between Swedish and Norwegian history textbooks, but there are, however, some differences in how communism was described between the authors and also over time. Mostly, the books that were written in the post cold war period were somewhat more critical to communism in the eastern Europe (even thought they mainly handled with Stalin´s communism. And they also set quotationmark between Stalin´s communism and the nazi terror during World War two..

In my study I have chosen to examine the mathematics in children's free play and everyday situations, with focus on sorting and classification. The purpose of the study was to see how children express their mathematical knowledge. I have chosen to use a qualitative method in my examination, here I did observations in a children's group where the children were between three and six years old. I also did interviews with the teacher's on the department to see how they relate to the mathematics and how they formulate the department to achieve as good a learning environment as possible.The result shows that the teacher's approach is incredible important to the children's learning ability and that they are always present to challenge and discuss together with the children. The observation indicates that children use mathematics all the time in their everyday situations and that it is the interaction between individuals and environment that affects children's development. .

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Konservatorsprogrammet15 hpInstitutionen för kulturvårdGöteborgs universitet2012:24.

The subject for this thesis is to examine the portrayal of the local farmer in four different museums in Scania. The purpose is to examine these two questions: 1. Which narrative and museal strategies are used in the portrayal of the local farmer by the local history societies? 2. How do the actors of the local societies relate to the living conditions and hierarchies of the rural society of Scania? The source material consists of guided tours and text material from the museums. The theoretical fields consists of history culture, use of history, historical narrative, museology and rural science act as our theoretical fields. Peter Aronsson, Anna Eskilsson and Maria Bjo?rkroth act as our main theoretical framework. Our research presents two central discourses in the portrayal of the local farmer.