This thesis investigates gender equality at a few Swedish elementary school libraries, and how school librarians at these libraries work with gender equality issues. It is a semi-structured interview study conducted with staff at seven elementary school libraries. Several policy documents state that the school should be a gender-equal environment, but previous research shows that there is still a lack of gender equality, and that staff often treat boys and girls differently. It also shows that boys and girls are often portrayed in a gender-stereotypical way in children?s literature.

The purpose of this study is to describe and understand how children?s participation and influence is described in the curriculum of preschool. The purpose includes how educators perceive, working with and what opportunities and challenges they believe that there is in the process of participation and influence. The methods I used were qualitative text analysis and e-mail interviews. I studied text in the curriculum and interviewed four educators to find out their views on children's participation and influence.

The purpose of this thesis has been to examine preventing child sexual abuse in four elementary schools in Stockholm, Sweden. The study is based on qualitative interviews with school counselors. The aim of this thesis was to find out how and if elementary schools in Sweden work with preventing child sexual abuse. The aim was also to examine how the school counselors reason about the schools efforts to prevent child sexual abuse. Their statements was analysed with Foucault?s theory about sexual history to get a deeper understanding for why people reason the way they do when it comes to issues like this.

This two years master's thesis examines the experience of children who read to a dog. The theoretical framework is inspired by sociocultural theory developed by Roger Säljö and the concept carnival inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin. The sociocultural theory has been chosen because it emphasizes the role of practice, instruments and communication in learning and the concept carnival has been chosen to analyze the experience of reading to a dog.The method used is qualitative interview and observation. A total of eight interviews and two observations when children read to a dog have been collected. One interview is with a teacher and seven interviews are with the children (six children participated and one child was interviewed twice).

In my opinion, the city is a place fit as much for children as for grown-ups. I have noticed, however, that this is not a view shared by everyone. Does not the urban space belong as much to children as to other people? Yes, of course. Today and in the future most people will live and grow to be adults in cities. I would even take it as far as to say that without children, there will be no real city.

This study conducts a qualitative examination based on five interviews with children?s librarians. The aim is to bring up and analyse the attitudes of the librarians towards reading promotion activities for children outside of school and investigate their experiences of participation in a summer reading challenge project.The first theory used to analyse is Jofrid Karner Smidt?s thesis of five different roles that a librarian can have on literary preferences. The second is her theory of how librarians view their promotion of literature.My interviews shows that the librarians in the study have a common opinion and enthusiasm regarding children's pleasure reading.

Sweden has an obligation to report child abuse suspicions to Social Services. According to Socialtjänstlagen (swedish constitution) 1 § Chapter 14, all employees in agencies affecting children, such as schools, have a responsibility to report their suspicions. Research shows that many abuses are not reported. The consequence of this is that Social Services does not hear about all cases of abused and harmed children. One profession where reporting is mandated is school counselors.

The purpose of this study is to examine how pre-school teachers think about the importance of circle time in regard to the child's language and social development from a sociocultural perspective. Furthermore the study will include what role the educators? have during the circle time.To answer our purpose we have chosen the following question:What is the role of the teachers in the circle time?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's social development?What are the teacher?s thoughts about the circle time?s importance to children's language development?The study is constructed on qualitative methods, where we conducted structured interviews with six preschool teachers and observed their circle time to collect our empirical material. The study is also based on Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective which says that all learning takes place through relations and interaction with other people in the cultural context you are in. The results have shown that pre-school teachers are aware of the circle time?s importance to children?s development, and purposely plan the circle time to give children the opportunity to develop both socially and linguistically skills..

This is a study on how eurythmists/educators describe the relationship between the practice of eurythmy and learning in young children. I wanted to find out what concepts these eurythmists/educators use when speaking of learning in relation to eurythmy. In addition I would also like to explore what eurythmists and educators think that children learn when practicing eurythmy. The method of this study is interviews with two educated Waldorf teachers, as well as two educated and practicing eurythmists, in a fenomenological interview setting with open questions. The theories of Merleau-Ponty, on the phenomenological body, has been used when analyzing the interview material - that is; through the understanding of a physical learning in these theories on the phenomenological body I have tried to understand and analyze the interview material.

The purpose of this study was to look at the common opinion about children in Cambodia. By interviewing the professionals in different help organizations we studied the common opinion about children in general and the common opinion about children who are exposed to sexual trafficking. The ambition of the study was also to see if the common opinion about children in Cambodia affects the help that is available for the children who are exposed to sexual trafficking.This is a qualitative study including semi structured interviews with seven professionals who work with vulnerable children. The interview guide focused on the themes: children?s needs, sexual trafficking, children?s rights, childhood, children?s sexuality and gender.

AbstractThis research is about pre-school children?s conceptions of the river and the water environment. The aim of this study was to apply a new teaching method based on the outside learning, as well as to test the method and see if it works, i.e. if children get more knowledge this way compared to ordinary methods like teaching in the class-room which involves showing pictures and discussion of them.The main questions in this study were how children get new knowledge through outside learning and how effective this learning method is, i.e. how much they noticed and learned about the river and the water environment as a result of that outside observation.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze children?s picture books regarding whether and in what form gender stereotypes can be seen in these. The purpose is also to evaluate whether the findings correlate to the different regulatory documents libraries have to abide to.       The study comprises five books, who are part of a selection of books especially chosen by Uppsala City Library to be used by primary school children aged 6-9. The method used is the study of text as well as illustrations, as the theory of this thesis is that the two cannot be separated, but has to be seen a unit. Other theories used in the analysis include Nikolajeva?s schedule of male/female properties and theories on gender.      The result of the study shows that gender stereotypes are in majority regarding the characters in the books, but that the opposite also exists.

The purpose of this study is to investigate what kind of idea a group of students in third grade, who attends a school in the Stockholm area, have on group work in school and how they think it affects their learning.The study is based on two questions:What opinion do the students have about group work?What opinion do the students have about how group work affects their learning?The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview six different students, where the interviews were both individually and in groups. I started by interviewing students individually and then had a group interview. The idea with the group interview was to end it all with a brief discussion about the thoughts that came up during the individual interviews. I chose a selection of six students, four girls and two boys which they all were at the age of 9 and go to the same school.The socio-cultural and structural perspectives, is those theoretical perspectives that my study is based on.

In primary school reading-books in Swedish language is something that students come across early in school and have done ever since the 1800s. After World War II there have been major changes in society. 1962 there was a school reform where the school turned into a nine-year system of compulsory education. That is why it is interesting to see what reading books contain with regard to notions of children, family and class and how the developments have been from the 1950s until the present time. This study aims to analyze and compare the different aspects of how notions of children, family and class are produced in the reading books for primary school for pupils in third grade, between 1950 and 2009.The research questions were:What are the notions of children, family and class in the reading-books?What differences/similarities exist in the reading books from the 1950s to the  recent decades?What could be the reason?I have chosen to apply qualitative text analysis originating in idea analysis.

AbstractThe subject of this paper is children?s thoughts and feelings about the forest and on the importance of the schools for their students? thoughts. The aim of this paper is to find out if there are any attitude differences towards the forest in schools in the city and in the countryside. To fulfil this purpose the work has been divided into two questions,1 Do children have different thoughts about the forest, depending on where they live?2 Does the school affect their students? thoughts about the forest?Two schools with different locations in the country have been visited.