This master's thesis analyses the concept of equality between men and women in parts ofRegion Västra Götaland's area of operation. With critical policy analysis I analyse how theproblem of inequality is represented in the European charter for equality of women and men inlocal life (CEMR) and the Region Västra Götaland's plan of action for the charter. Throughinterviews with people responsible for gender equality in different areas I analyse, withdiscourse theory, the ways in which the concept of gender equality is articulated in differentareas of Region Västra Götaland, and what kind of politics these articulations enables.In the analysis I show that a discursive struggle of how equality is to be defined canbetter be understood as a discursive negotiation. Equality between men and women isunderstood in several ways at the same time, as antidiscrimination and basic human rights, asbalance between the sexes, and as an approach critical of norms and stereotypes. Within thesenegotiations certain understandings of gender are made possible or impossible.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how two students at intermediate level in reading and writing disabilities and two special education teachers perceive the use of assistive tools in school. The questions used to answer the purpose was how assistive tools are used based on students´ perceptions, the purposes for which assistive tools are used based on special education teachers´ perceptions, what opportunities and/or barriers pupils and special education teachers experiences with assistive tools and how it works when assistive tools are implemented based on students´ and special education teachers´ perceptions. Data were collected by interviews. The results show that the assistive tools are mainly used for writing assignments and to ?read-with-ears?, primarily to facilitate the learning process in the classroom.

Today there is a large consensus about the importance of Swedish schools providingconditions enabling students to develop the ability to manage and learn through information technologies (IT). The goal of this study was to describe and examine how national education goals for the use of IT transformed into municipal IT-strategies for the school. A content analysis was conducted of thirty-eight municipal IT-strategies collected from Swedish municipal websites on the Internet. The content in the municipal IT-strategies was compared with the content in both the Swedish education act and the national curriculum. The results showed that the content in the Swedish education act and the national curriculum in fact was translated into municipal IT strategies, but that the range of strategies concerning technology, pedagogy and content in relation to IT was broad.

AbstractEmma Hjalmarsson, teacher studentMaria Talevska, teacher studentTitle: So different yet so alike â A comparative study focusing on the pedagogical leadership in two different cultures.Växjö University, Fall Semester 2005, Department of the HumanitiesGIX 192, Degree project/Religious Studies in Secondary EducationThis paper compares the pedagogical leadership in Thailand and Sweden. By performing interviews, handing out questionnaires and observing class rooms we wanted to compare the relationship between pupils and teachers from one school in Sweden and one school in Thailand.From the pupils we wanted information about their view on teachers; what characterizes the best teacher, what the worst teacher is like and how they would like a teacher to be.From the teachers on the other hand we wanted to know what kind of relationship they would like to have with their pupils and how they work to accomplish that purpose. We also wanted to find out if they put more emphasis on upbringing or knowledge and if there are any religious influences in the education.Finally, we also wanted to see if there was something from the pedagogical view in the Thai school that we could use in education in Sweden..

The consociational democracy model in Macedonia, which came out from a warcrisis and a peace agreement from 2001, in addition, putting an end to the violent conflict, actually admits the division of the society along the ethnic lines. Paradoxically, there is an attempt to bridge the ethnic gap with this model. As a result, the consociational democracy model holds solutions that can be abused if somebody misuses its power and desires to disintegrate the country. The future development depends therefore on the moderate attitude of the citizens, and first and foremost, on the political elites and their commitment to the values of democracy and human rights instead of their nationalistic goals. Furthermore, thepresent democratic consolidation in Macedonia is established on the execution of the peace agreement and the improved effectiveness of the institutions.

This study examines implementation from national law in to local practice in the district of Kalmar to assure newly arrived immigrants orientation in civics. The study takes its starting point in Lipskys theory about street-level bureaucracy.  Questions that are discussed are about how  the education is understood by refugee?s coordinators, civic communicators and the new immigrates, how the organization has been and what role the demography and economic structures has played for the organization. It is a case study where interviews and enquete has been used.

Our interest about interdisciplinary teaching has grown during our time at Högskolan Dalarna and especially during the subject physical education. It became clear that people learn in different ways. The theoretical education in school benefits the visual and auditory strong learners but the kinesthetic strong learners find it more difficult to absorb the information. We argue that integrating subjects is a good way to mix theory and practice and thus gives more students an opportunity to learn the content of the subject. The intention of this examination paper is to investigate the relationship between the attitudes of the teachers regarding interdisciplinary teaching, the practical restrains, possibilities and the presence of interdisciplinary teaching at three different schools.

The aim of this study is to examine Turkish nationalism in order to find what factors that play a part in Turkey's inability to confess and discuss such events as the Armenian Genocide, which took place between the years of 1915.-1923, by the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The factors found and examined closely are collective memory and the use of history. The paper is a case study of Turkey with a theoretical approach, trying to apply theories of nationalism, collective memory and history-writing on Turkish nationalism, in order to find an answer to how these factors stands in the way of reconciliation.Conclusions are that Turkey as a nation is stuck in a romanticization and glorification of the time of their founding leader, Atatürk, and the thought of the pure, homogenous Turkishness. This makes the nation incapable of discussing and accepting what others in this case acknowledges as historical facts. The taboo-making of these matters makes reconciliation today not possible..

In recent decades, demands has emerged that the companies shall take a greater social responsibility for the impact that they have on their environment and that this impact shall be reported, which is known as Sustainability Reporting. The Sustainability Report is based on a number of general principles that ensure the content and the quality of the Sustainability Report. One of these principles is the principle of completeness. In the research, this principle seems to have been interpreted in terms of number of reported aspects and indicators, which can be a limited view where only the existence of the aspects and indicators is observed. By including the degree of the reporting in terms of full, partial and no reporting as well as a comparison between the real and the alleged reporting, our intention is to extend the principle of completeness and to develop a tool that we also apply through an empirical survey in a particular area.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a relatively new method for learning a foreign language. CLIL programs are growing in popularity and more and more schools are adopting it all around the world. There is still no special education for the teachers working with CLIL, though research suggests it may be an effective method for achieving good results.To get a realistic view of the work of a CLIL teacher, I have interviewed four different mathematic teachers who work at CLIL international schools in Spain with English as the foreign language. I have compared their methods and experiences with the main ideas of current research in this particular field.The survey shows that the teachers? views about how CLIL is to be used do not completely correspond to that of the research.

This study examines how and why organizations evaluate training and development within the organizations. The study has a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews, with office and organization development managers. The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about how three large Swedish organizations evaluates training and development programs for staff members. Another purpose is to describe why the organizations evaluate training and development programs and to research if there is a further need to develop the organization evaluation methods. Therefore the research questions are Why and how do organizations evaluate training programs? What further need is there to develop organizations evaluation methods?The conclusion of this study shows that evaluation of the training and development programs are not a high priority among the selected organizations.

The hypocrisy of democracy is to help autocratic rulers to stay in power because it benefits their own country. This thesis examines how the United States of America justified their cooperation with the Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi during the period of 1953-1979, until he was overthrown by his own people. This case-study doesn´t make general conclusions about the US foreign policy towards other countries except Iran.The theoretical starting point for the empirical analysis is the political dilemma of dirty hands. With the analytical instrument, constructed with a normative analysis about the concept of dirty hands, it´s possible to discover which ethical discipline the American presidents had to uphold to justify their actions.There are three different aspects of their cooperation which are lifted in this thesis. The first one is about the circumstances that made them begin their cooperation, the second regards the features of the cooperation.

This thesis examines the relationship between recognition of prior learning and the aim to increase social and ethnical diversity in higher education. Recognition of prior learning is a result of educational politics aiming to broaden social and ethnical recruitment to higher education. By examining if recognition of prior learning rather can, and shall, be seen as part of what Pierre Bourdieu calls educational social reproduction I try to question whether it fulfils education policy goals or not. My results show that persons responsible for recognition of prior learning rather recognise knowledge from prior educational institutions than knowledge gained outside the educational system. Considering this, recognition of prior learning does not quite live up to the aims.

The aim of this study was to explore how young students can be taught during their first year of learning English towards the A1 level according to The European Framework of Reference for Languages, and how the students understand their own learning. The study was carried out in two different classes but with the same teacher, who is qualified to teach English to young learners. The result is based on the analysis of a total of twelve observations of English lessons in two classes in school year one and eight group interviews with the students. Recurrent ingredients through all lessons were activities such as listening to teacher talk, watching films or film clips, singing songs and doing rhymes, using drama activities, talking about the meaning of learning English, practicing guessing competence and learning new vocabulary. The teacher consistently talked about and taught different strategies for language learning.

Human Resources (en benämning för personalarbetet) är ett yrke som idag blir allt populärare. Trots detta visar statistik att en majoritet av kvinnor både studerar och arbetar med personalfrågor. Studien har därför som syfte att undersöka varför Human Resources branschen har en ojämn könsfördelning. Detta görs genom en historisk inblick i branschens utveckling i relation till samhällets förändringar, där en analys av texter ger en bild av dagens personalarbete. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna består dels av socialkonstruktivism och dels av begreppen mjuk och hård Human Resources Management.