The purpose of the study is to explore preschool teachers experiences of how immigrant parents become involved in the preschool activities and how their linguistic and cultural background appears in relation to participation.The survey was conducted through individual interviews with eight preschool teachers working in various multicultural preeschools.The results of this survey shows that the preschool teachers perceive that parents with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are reluctant to participate in various forms of cooperation, such as parent meetings. Preschool teachers believe that the lack of parental participation depends on the parents linguistic and cultural backgrounds, such as different approaches to understand the pre-school educational activity or the view of parenting, and other things such as language difficulties.Another result reveals also a great lack of written methods, because teachers sometimes face difficult dilemmas. To seek itself the right approach in a current situation can be both difficult and time consuming, therefore, the preschool teachers wish that there were already complete methods for use..

The aim of this study is to increase knowledge and understanding of free play or free fun time importance for children of age around five years in preschool, in order to promote children?s development and learning. The focus was on exploring and better understanding of teacher?s and educators? approach to the free fun play time as a tool in their educational work, and also about their own role in this context as well as analyzing of forms, rules and structures spontaneously created by groups of children having free play fun time. Another important moment of this study was to give more light on approaches to this issue in education theories by Piaget, Vygotsky and Freud among others.As to the practical experimental part of the study it has been performed at a preschool and kindergarten in a suburb at the outskirts of Stockholm, with four employed educators there and with groups of children of age around five.

This is qualitative study of, four teacher´s views on the use of iPad in teaching and learning. In addition, I will examine the disadvantages and advantages of iPad use as a teaching tool in preschools.My questions are:What is the practical use of tablets in preschools today?Are preschool teachers using the tablet as a teaching tool? If so, how?Is the use of tablets in preschools contributing to children´s social interaction, as well as between children and teachers` social interaction?The purpose of this study was to find out how the four teachers uses the iPad as a teaching tool in the interaction between children in preschool. I have chosen to use Vygotsky?s and John Dewey´s theories.

The first aim of this study is to describe how the public employment service (PES) producesoccupational descriptions. The second aim is to analyse the conditions for that production.Method: The empiric material consists of seven qualitative interviews with employed at PES,operational plan for the team working with descriptions on occupations and observation notes.The overall theme in the study is Foucaults perspective on power. The conditions forproduction of occupational descriptions are understood in the light of the governmentality perspectiveand the concept of employability. Bourdieu´s concept habitus, symbolic violence and capital are usedto articulate the officials? values and experiences.Eight officials at PES produce the occupational descriptions.

The aim for this essay is to investigate the importance of studying religion in an upper secondary school in Närke county, this is done by distribution of a questionnaire. The importance is studied both on the individual level and on the societal level. The result shows that although the students do not have a big interest in religious studies still the subject has an importance on both an individual and a society level..

Undersökningen handlar om en kommuns arbete med implementering av surfplattor i förskoleverksamheten samt pedagogernas upplevelse av den nya tekniken i förskolan. I studien belyses pedagogernas syn på surfplattan som ett pedagogiskt verktyg. I undersökningen användes kvalitativa intervjuer som metod. Valet föll sig naturligt då det är en primär metod för att få fram den information man söker. I resultatet visar det sig att kommunen inte hade någon plan på hur arbetet med surfplattor i förskolan skulle se ut.

The subject of religion in Swedish schools is the single most talked about topic in the curriculum. One explanation could be that it is the oldest subject in Swedish schools and the topic has undergone the biggest change through time. This process of change has been anything but undebated. The subject of religion within schools has met debates through almost its entire history, partly from the state and from the church, but also from the teachers and the students. Debates concerning the existence of Christianity in Swedish schools as well as the Swedish traditions constantly reoccur in today?s government debates and various media but in different versions.

The purpose of this study in the psychology of religion is to explore the process of an individual?s shift in orienting system, from a religious to an atheistic. The materials used are autobiographical accounts obtained from two books. One that has been used as a primary source and one as a secondary. By using Rambo?s process oriented theory of religious conversion relevant themes and categories were chosen and later subjected to further analysis using Pargament?s theory of religion and coping.

For many individuals gambling gives an opportunity for relaxation and social relations. The positive effects of gambling are for most individual?s considerable more than the negative effects. Even if gambling gives positive effects there is individuals that cannot control there gambling and therefore develop an addiction which disturb there life situation and health. The aim of this study was to describe which personal characteristics distinguish people with a pathological gambling and which psychological, physical and social consequences this pathological gambling causes for the individual.

The essay discusses how to look at a equality plan of a academic department experiences the, gender equality in general and how power is portrayed from a gender perspective in the academic department. Through the use of qualitative interviews and a short survey the results have shown that few of the staff members have knowledge about the equality plan and few are familiar with its contents. Furthermore results show that the academic department is run hierarchyilly and that both vertical and horizontal gender segregation exists.The climate at the academic department is characterized by the will to work with gender equality but so far there have only been few exercised or planned efforts to do so. The gap between theory and practise is wide, the will to be seen as an equal academic department concerning equality of men and women seems important. The conscious or unconscious strategy of covering up the real gender equality seems to be done by focusing on the numerical equality..

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in which aspects the public library is affected by its local community. This is re-searched by means of an exemplified case study of a Swedish public library in which we analyze governing documents and the library website with respect to environmental scanning and mar-keting of library services.The research questions are: How are the local community?s demands on the public li-brary being described in the governing document? How is the public library?s response to the demands of the local community being described in the operational plan? How are the demands of the local community, as shown in the governing document and the operational plan, re-flected in the marketing of library services on the library website?Our conclusions are that:The demands of the local community are described in a general fashion in the governing document, but there is a lack of concrete political guidelines.The public library's response to the demands of the local commu-nity is described to some length in the operational plan, but not with respect to economical factors.The demands of the local community are reflected to some length in the marketing of library services on the library website. Many of the overall themes that we identify in the governing document and the operational plan can be found in the marketing directed towards important target groups..

 During our education time, we have heard on several occasions how the high changing rate in the society also influences the education area. That changing process mainly originates from the transform that a school underwent, i.e. the decentralization meaning a delegation of responsibility from a national to local government and the particular school. The main idea that started a changing process goes under the slogan ?a school for everyone?.

The main purpose of this study was to examine own and social influence on perfectionismwith individual athletes. The participants (n= 96) of this study represented ten different sportsand their ages was between 15 and 44. An interview with four of the participant wasconducted. The instruments used for this study was the Positive and Negative PerfectionismScale (Terry-Short et al., 1995) and for the interviews questions was based on own and socialinfluence. The results showed that there was a relationship between positive perfectionismand own influence, negative perfectionism and own influence, negative perfectionism andsocial influence.

The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of how the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL) presents discourse views and multilingualism. This is of importance, due to the impact the European Council?s education collaboration has on the Swedish syllabus for languages. The research perspective of the thesis is to solely focus on discourse views and multilingualism: comparing two analytic frameworks, by applying a qualitative text analysis. The first being based on two different models of discourse strategies and the latter based on two studies on how multilingualism is treated in Scandinavian school situations.

The aim of this essay is, firstly, to ? through a text analysis ? compare the curriculum of Waldorf education in Sweden (in the essay referred to as ?WL?) to the Swedish national curriculum ?Lpo 94?, to uncover possible differences and similarities between these documents, and, secondly, to present the roots and educational philosophies that these two curricula, respectively, are based upon. The purpose hereby is to be able to trace, describe and explain the differences between the pedagogical practices of Waldorf education and that of conventional Swedish schools.In the essay, a historical investigation of the main traditions of ideas behind the Swedish national curriculum is briefly carried out, where I swiftly present the educational philosophies of John Dewey (1859-1952) and Lev S. Vygotsky (1896-1934). Next, an investigation of the worldview and philosophy of Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) is effectuated, where I attempt to bring to light Steiner?s anthroposophical and holistic worldview ? a worldview that throughout the 20th century has developed into an international and wide-ranging anthroposophical movement ? as well as his concepts of knowledge, science and educational philosophy.