The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the position of power / exercise of power are perceived in today's schools from the teacher's perspective. I have examined how students' freedom and democracy education interpreted in real life, and how this affects both teacher and student learning approaches. I would also highlight the need to set standards for children's psychological development related to the consequences will be. I have chosen to perform a qualitative research through individual interviews with five participating teachers from different experiences in different type of school. I have used the hermeneutic method of analysis to analyze the material.

The Swedish metropolitan politics have had the bottom-up perspective as a major principle to evolve the democratic participation in segregated areas. My objective was to investigate if a bottom-up perspective has been used as a method of evaluation in a sample of 10 evaluation reports made about democratic participation in Malmö.The key questions were; In the evaluations:- How was the bottom-up perspective and related concepts defined?- What criterias and theories were used?- What values surfaced?- What methods were used?- Has a critical approach been used?The method used is analysis using the theories of Critical Social Method by Alvesson & Deetz, Values in evaluation by House & Howe and Choices of perspective by Eliasson.None of the analysed evaluations have used participatorial methods. As participation is defined mainly statistically, the criterias are usually quantitative measurements, though the evaluators agree that democracy is a matter of quality. There is a common lack of theoretical basis of analysis and methodology description.

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how the position of power / exercise of power are perceived in today's schools from the teacher's perspective. I have examined how students' freedom and democracy education interpreted in real life, and how this affects both teacher and student learning approaches. I would also highlight the need to set standards for children's psychological development related to the consequences will be. I have chosen to perform a qualitative research through individual interviews with five participating teachers from different experiences in different type of school. I have used the hermeneutic method of analysis to analyze the material.

The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the social identity of students at upper secondary school for physically disabled students. The youths I drew my attention to suffered from severe physical disabilities and therefore received specially adapted education in small classes, but integrated at an ordinary upper secondary school.By "social identity" I mean how the students view themselves as a group, how they value their membership of the group and how they relate to non-disabled students at school. I wanted to investigate the connections between these students' social identity and the problems of marginalization of disabled people in society.According to qualitative methods I interviewed five physically disabled students, aged 18-19, at upper secondary school level taking part of especially adapted education. The study showed that these students regarded themselves as a segregated group at school. None of them associated with non-disabled students at school.

The aim of my study was to describe and interpretate how an international adopted person look back at and describes her learning process individually and in interaction with others. Data are based on one in-depth interview with a phenomenological inspired approach.The findings showed that the interviewee has repressed a great deal of her former life from her country of origin. According to the interviewee, the process of learning in interaction with other people has worked well. She has furthermore never felt that other students have treated her differently based on her appearance. There is some ambivalence in how the interviewee describes this though, which opens up for other interpretations..

The purpose of this study was to examine some teachers thought about the educational indoor environment in free preschool. With free preschool this study means a Swedish specially adapted to parents/adults and their children and for a typical type of children who are 0-5 years old. Questions to the study were:? How do some teachers in free preschool perceive that they are adapting the preschool indoors environment to children and learning?? How do some teachers in free preschool perceive that they are adapting the preschool indoors environment to children and learning to attract children to the pedagogical environment?In this study I used qualitative methods and interviewed five teachers and preschool indoor environment is observed. I applied the socio cultural perspective to my study.

The aim of this paper was to examine how social workers' comprehension of the need of financial aid exists in, and is influated by, the organisation they work in. To investigate this, we asked ourself questions concerning how the social worker view the way that the finicial aid-system and work surrounding it is formed, whether the social worker's understanding of the need of financial aid co-exists with the percieved common understanding of the work place (do the understandings coincide, do the social worker adjust his or her understanding or is it possible to have a separate understanding), whether the social worker feel that he or she have discretion to influence the organisation and how possible conflicts between different views are handled. We felt that a qualitative method would best help us answer these questions. We therefore interviewed seven social workers working in the same organisation. We then looked at our material from an organisational theory perspective, focusing on the individual in the organisation.We found that the social workers were socialised into the organisation and adapted the norms and values that existed there.

Already in the late 1970´s it became clear that the traditional catalogs in libraries were not suited for children, neither their interests nor their way expressing themselves were accounted for. The goal of this thesis is to investigate if and how children?s OPACs (Open public access catalogs) interface design is at present adapted to the presumed audience of children. My method consists of literature studies and an investigation on the graphical interfaces in OPACs for children, according to the five criteria formulated by childrens library consultant Lena Lundgren and IT-consultant Kia Gumbel. The aims are to find out: a) what requirements for children?s OPAC interfaces and their usability are defined in literature and b) what the actual (real) features of the children?s OPAC interfaces are.

AbstractThis study deals with preschool children's ideas about water in our body. Ten children with the age of four to five were interviewed individually, the interviews were qualitative. The children were also asked to draw their answers and answer questions about a picture that represented the excretory system. The results of my study show that children did not have any knowledge about the water being vital for us. Preschool children had no knowledge of why it is important to drink water.

Umeå University currently uses two Course Management System, Moodle and Sakai (Cambro). Both Moodle and Sakai are based on open source code and are today the two more popular choices among Swedish Universities. They both have different strengths and weaknesses both from a technical perspective and a user perspective. This can create problems for a course responsible/teacher when it comes to planning the course structure at a distance course but also when planning the course structure on a campus course that uses a Course Management System. With this as my starting point my formulations of questions become:How do the Course Management Systems that Umeå University uses differs, both from a technical perspective and user perspective?What possibilities is there in the Course Management Systems to use a different Course Structure?Is there a noticeable difference on the view of Course Management System of teachers and students at different departments?The purpose with my essay is to create a basis that course responsible/teacher can use to plan the course structure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the narrative in You are a bad man, mr Gum! to be able to understand and explain the intermedial aspects of the work. I assume an intermedial, narratological and reception theory perspective in my analysis. The method of close reading is used combined with a reader-oriented perspective. I examine the medial aspects of the chosen work through the pictures, the text, and the iconicity of the typographical pattern of the text. To reach my goal, the following questions are dealt with: What is the character of the narration? How do the various media interact in the production of meaning? What is the relationship between the text and the implicit reader? What is the narratological difference between reading the book aloud and silently? The theoretical framework f the paper consists of narratological and intermedial theories.

The housing sector of today represents for almost 40% of the energy consumption, an energy consumption of which the major part consists of non-renewable energy sources. This is not sustainable and utilization of new energy-efficient technologies in buildings can be a step in the right direction, towards a sustainable energy society.This report has been made on behalf of and in cooperation with Älvstranden Utveckling AB in Gothenburg to examine how future energy-efficient technologies can affect the energy demand in energy-efficient multi-dwelling buildings.The report is based on Älvstrandens passive house, Hamnhuset, a house whose energy consumption is far below the BBR's requirements. The report looks at the opportunities for improvement within windows, insulation, solar energy technologies, as well as white goods. Computer simulations are then made to apply the selected technologies into a reference building. Technologies are selected from an energy efficient perspective and no account has been taken of other aspects such as the economy.

A controlled recording in a studio is the basis of all voice treatment. However, this controlled way of recording voice patients' voices can be questioned. The voice use may be different in a natural environment. In children noise related voice problems are investigated in a study about voice and its development (BUG ? Child voice and noise).

Human - Technology - Organization (HTO) is a well-established, general unifying concept in the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK) that represents an approach, knowledge and use of various tools regarding interactions between people, technology and organizational factors. The HTO-perspective is well described in literature but there are few studies on how SHKs staff experiences working according to this method in their investigations. The aim of this study was therefore to describe their HTO-perspective, examine how it is used in the investigations at SHK and describe the investigators experience of working with the HTO-perspective as well as the method's usefulness compared to old methods in accident investigations. A literature study has been conducted in the areas of HTO, Theory of planned behavior (TPB) and safety culture. TPB and safety culture are described in this paper since they highlight the different aspects of a HTO-perspective.

With the starting point in UN peacekeeping operations, this essay investigates the participation of the Swedish armed forces and how the Swedish soldiers perceive their role in those operations. The aim of the study was to explore different perceptions about the Swedish soldiers in international operations. Partly from the Swedish soldiers perspective and how they perceived their own role as soldiers. Partly from the perspective of civilians, like Swedish aid workers, and how they perceive the Swedish soldiers. The third perspective was from a person with mixed experiences from both the military and the civilian work.