The purpose of this study was to explore preschool- and primary school teachers? perceptions of fairytales, why they use fairytales and what thoughts they have about the impact of fairytales on children?s reading and writing development. We interviewed seven teachers and three preschool teachers in northern Sweden to find out how work with fairytales is carried out in preschool and primary school. We also interviewed twelve pupils who were seven and eight years old to find out what they thought of fairytales in primary school. The result showed that preschool- and primary school teachers had a positive attitude towards fairytales and the opportunities provided by fairytales.

From autumn 2008 Sweden has reinstalled the Special Education Needs teacher education. For future special education teachers and active teachers in the field, it is important to know the history and be aware of future visions to create a good role for the Special Education Needs teachers. This study examines attitudes towards special education and Special Education Needs teachers amongst school principals and classroom teachers at seven schools in Umeå municipality. School principals were interviewed, and a survey was handed out amongst the selected General Education teachers. From this it appears that school principals have a picture of special needs education and Special Education Needs teachers' work that corresponds well with the objectives of the school's governing documents.

This study, a document analysis with a qualitative approach, explores children, under 18years, who have been subject to measures of child welfare in the city of Malmö during theyears 1935-1937. It also explores the school's role in this context. The questions that the studyis guided by is: How was children described in the Child Welfare documents in Malmö duringthe years 1935-1937? And what role did the school have in Child Welfare work and whatmotivated this? The theoretical approaches are Foucaults theories of power, control anddisciplining.It appears from the study that the school and child welfare authorities had a close cooperationwith the purpose to control the upbringing and disciplining of the children. It was through theupbringing that the deviant child would become a "normal", docile and good, industriouscitizen.

The intention of my studies is to explore the field of musical learning from the pupil's point of view. This master thesis is the second of two Grounded Theory studies based on interviews.In study no1 Learning of music from the pupils' point of view (Pemsel, 2009) I asked ten pupils, soon to be graduates, to express their own experience of musical learning. The selection of informants was made after reading a questionnaire an- swered by a group of 60 pupils attending different programs at a typical Swedish upper secondary school. The ten selected informants had all chosen several music courses their latest years in school. The questionnaire had two purposes; one was to construct musical profiles of the pupils, the other was to select informants for the interviews.

Pupil achievement and behaviour in schools was earlier seen as given by socioeconomic and biological factors. But since the late 1970s the school effectiveness research has come to give school factors a much greater role for pupils? attainments. Research has shown that schools´ pedagogical and social climate, which is to be seen as a complex product of deeply felt values and norms held by school principals and teachers and developed through practical actions, can explain variations in effectiveness between schools. Effectiveness is here to be seen as a higher mean cognitive and non cognitive student outcome than is expected with regard to initial attainment or family background.

Sweden's school voucher reform has made the Swedish school system into one of the world's most liberalized. The debate concerning the ownership of Swedish schools is intense and the Swedish Minister of Education is open to restricting private equity owned companies from running schools. Interestingly, fewer calls are heard for restricting smaller profit-driven companies from owning schools. This essay aims to examine whether or not the quality of education provided by an individual school changes if it is acquired by a large private equity owned school group. This is done by conducting a comparative study on four independent schools recently acquired by AcadeMedia, Sweden's biggest private equity owned school group.

The purpose of this study is to the increase knowledge and understanding of the meeting between children with Arabian as native language and a Swedish school library. The study is made as a qualitative investigation built on interviews with eight-year-olds and eleven-year-olds. Only the childrens needs and views are considered. The study is centred on twelve key issues and aims to document the childrens thoughts and views of reading as well as their reading habits and their use of the school library. Through the childrens own words their evaluation of reading and literature, their abilities to assimilate the text and their de facto use of the books can be known.

This study investigates certified and non-certified teachers in Sweden and how they themselves view the status of their profession. Teacher certifications were introduced to Sweden in 2011, under the assumption that it would raise the status of qualified teachers. Recent results from international studies showed that Swedish students have fallen in rank compared to other countries around the world, and one of the proposed solutions proposed to this was to raise the status of teachers, as well as their pay. A higher status would then solve other issues, such as the low number of applications to university courses related to teaching. This study asked high school teachers, through an online questionnaire, what their views were on the status change the reform was supposed to create.

The technical evolution has a great influence on the public libraries. Electronic media becomes more and more common. This Master´s thesis is based upon the Swedish Library law 9§ (SFS 1996:1596) which says: Public- and school libraries should pay special attention to children and teenagers by offering books, information technology and other media, adapted to their needs, to encourage development of language and stimulate reading. From this point of view we have examined why the children´s departments in public libraries offer CD-ROM games which are based upon characters from the literature, how they are used in the daily activity and how they can contribute to the development of the children´s department.We have made literary studies and empirical investigations including interviews, observation studies etc. The results from this studies shows that both young and adults appreciate the CD-ROM games.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how students in a Swedishjunior high school (grade 7-9) view their possibility to participate in thecollection management of their school library, and how the schoollibrary works to involve the students when purchasing media. The studyhas resulted in a model for easy and effective involvement of studentsin the collection development.To achieve this aim both quantitative and qualitative methods are used.A survey in three classes in the school, observations at the schoollibrary and a qualitative interview with the library assistant have beenperformed. The collection management at the school library isdescribed using the School Library Taxonomies developed by DavidLoertscher and two models for participation developed by Roger A Hartand Harry Shier. In the survey, the students are asked about their libraryand reading habits, their perception of their own participation in thecollection management of the library and their opinions of theimportance of student participation in the library.The results show that all students view the possibility of participation as something important, but not all of the students are willing to be active themselves. The proposed model for effective involvement of students in the library focuses on simplicity, voluntariness, distinct information and visible results..

The aim of this essay has been to find out whether the individual development plan does make it easier to teachers to discover any needs of the students to get education or material changes and by that make adjustments in the classroom. I chose to seek information by interviewing special educators at four compulsory schools, since they have an overall apprehension of how the work is carried out at the school, especially the work with students in need of any form of extra support.All students at the Swedish compulsory school shall have an individual development plan. The purpose with the plan is, besides that the student is to be given possibilities to form his own pedagogical and social goals, that the teacher shall get early signals if a student may be in need of getting education and materials changed and adjusted for to easier manage his studies. The individual development plan of the student should have the function as a tool to the teacher to facilitate for his students.The answer of my question can be sum-up in a no, the inherent potential in the individual development plan is not utilized by the teachers that seem to have the apprehension that the plan is for the student all by him/herself. The teaching staff has obviously not understood the use they can get out of it. .

The purpose of this essay is to examine progression in user education atprimary and secondary school levels, specifically the role played byschool libraries, librarians and strategy documents in securingeducational progression. Progression is examined in the user educationprovided by the five schools, part of the same municipal schoolmanagement area which share the same strategy plan. The area, NorraFäladen, was awarded School Library of the Year in 2011 for its work,making it particularly interesting for this essay's purpose. The studycombines interviews with the area's three school librarians, who dividetheir time between the five schools, with an analysis of the strategydocuments that regulate user education within Norra Fäladen. Theanalytical framework is based on: AASL's model of progression in usereducation (Standards for the 21st-century learner); Ekström's model forsuccessful and active strategy documents; Kuhlthau's theory of thelibrarian's role in the information search process; and Limberg'staxonomy of the role of the school library.The study shows how a number of concurrent factors and prerequisitesinfluence how goals for progression in user education are met.

In July 2010 the curriculum Lpfö 98 was readjusted and was enhanced with new chapter, and the purpose of this essay is to study how preschool teachers discuss and describe how their conduction to the new chapter 2.6 of the readjust Curriculum Lpfö 98. I want to understand how they experience their work with the documentation.My question formulations are:How do three pre-school teachers reason around what they document in the pre-school?Which practical conditions do the pree-school teachers claiming to have on the pre-school to perform the documentation?How do they describe that they use the documentation to advance the tutoring in the preschool?In order to find out more, I interviewed three pre-school teachers, and analyzed the results I got based on prior research on documentation, and quality in preschool. My results show that the main focuses for documentations are how the children interact with each other, how they react and behave with new materials or activities. My informers emphasize that the main purpose of documentation are to be able to show the children their own process of learning.The practical conditions differ among my informers, which can lead to consequences when they want to make documentation and/or use the documentation for its purpose.  My results also indicates that the documentations are used to plan the pedagogical activities in regard to the children?s interests and according to the curriculum Lpfö98 rev.2010.

The purpose of this study is to stress what experiences men working in the earlier school years share about being a minority group and what thoughts they have about why other men tend to avoid this profession.In this survey I have interviewed four male teachers in the earlier school years. In previous research it is claimed that men choose not to get a teacher training for the earlier school years partly because this profession is known to be dominated by women where it is difficult for men to feel at home. It is also claimed that teachers in training choose the later school years in order to focus more on teaching than looking after the children. None of the interviewed men sees it as a problem being a minority group, neither during training nor in teaching. What the men in this survey state as the main reasons for why other men do not choose to become teachers are the low levels of status and salary.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how Islam and Muslims are portrayed a) in results from studies on Swedish teaching materials, and b) in articles in Swedish media newspapers. The study was conducted through two separate studies. In the first study, five previous research reports on how Islam and Muslims are portrayed in Swedish teaching materials were analysed in order to discern the main results regarding the portrayal of Islam and Muslims. In the second study, newspaper articles from 11 Swedish newspapers were analysed in order to discern which central themes emerge in the description of Muslims and Islam in said newspaper articles, as well as which properties and features are attributed to Muslims and Islam in the articles studied. In both studies, the data was analysed inductively through a qualitative content analysis.