In this thesis I set out to study how the reading of fictional literature is viewed, legitimatized and operationalized in two educational domains: the recently revised steering documents that all Swedish teachers must relate to, as well as a selection of teaching materials designed for education in the Swedish language for upper secondary school. The teaching material I have studied has been recently updated in order to correspond with the new steering documents. I relate my analysis to previous research about the use of fiction in education, and I also combine my analysis of the two educational domains to see whether the underlying intentions of the steering documents have influenced the revision of the teaching material. The outcome indicates that the steering documents? previous focus on culture has diminished although a certain insecurity as to how to use the concept and deal with the issue of whose culture should be taught can be identified.

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva hur pedagoger använder sig av stödtecken och i vilket syfte de används. Vi belyser begrepp som kommunikation, språkutveckling och interaktion. Vi tar vår utgångspunkt i ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Vidare beskriver vi vad ?Tecken som stöd? (TSS) och ?Tecken som alternativ kompletterande kommunikation? (TAKK) står för.

Forskningen om internationellt adopterade barn har visat att dessa barn löper en större risk att få språkliga problem, jämfört med sina jämnåriga kamrater. Framförallt har problemen förknippats med svårigheter med abstrakt tänkande, även svårigheter med matematik har uppmärksammats. Forskning visar att de språkliga svårigheterna finns hos närmare hälften av alla internationellt adopterade och det som framkommit är att svårigheterna kan uppstå av två orsaker. De orsakerna som nämnts är i första hand den så kallade språkbrytningen medan den andra orsaken beror på brist på bra mat och uppmärksamhet som ofta uppstår på institutioner såsom exempelvis barnhem. Språksvårigheterna som kan uppstå är dock i de flesta fall möjliga att överbrygga.I detta arbete har intervjuer gjorts med tolv föräldrapar som sammanlagt har 22 internationellt adopterade barn som adopterats mellan tidigt 70-tal och 90-tal.

The study deals with the causes of unjustified differences in pay between women and men in the banking sector. The purpose of this paper has been to examine how a gender project implemented in the private banking organizations from a gender-and implementation perspective. The aim of the project examined is to even unjustified differences in pay between men and women in the banking and finance sector. The main issues are: ? How has the project been implemented and what are the real and perceived results? ? How can the opportunities and barriers to successful implementation course with emphasis on gender? The method used is a qualitative study, where the empirical material consisted of focus group interviews.

The purpose of this master thesis is both to interpret the articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child from a public library point of view and to investigate how childrens librarians in the county of Norrbotten view their working situation in their relation to the users. This purpose leads to the main question: How do the childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant describe the present and the future of the childrens library activities in the sparsely populated regions in the county of Norrbotten? The subquestions are: What articles from the Childrens Rights Convention are the most relevant for the public library? In what way can you notice the Childrens Rights in the way the childrens librarians work towards the users? What part of the childrens library activity is the most important according to the childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with childrens librarians and the childrens library consultant of Norrbotten and field observations. The result of the study shows that the articles we found most relevant for the public library are 2, 3, 6, 12, 13, 14, 17, 23, 28/29, 30, 31 and 42. The Childrens Rights can be noticed in several ways in the childrens library activities.

This thesis has two purposes: (1) to analyze the emptiness in Blodbok by Christine Falkenland, and (2) to analyze my own reading of the same book. I have chosen to focus on how emptiness is expressed through the body, the language and the place in Blodbok, because of the deep impact these seem to have on the emptiness. The thesis discusses what kind of emptiness that is described, what it does to me as a reader, and how it is connected to other works by Falkenland. Cultural politics of emotions by Sara Ahmed, Uses of literature by Rita Felski and Pouvoirs de l?horreur by Julia Kristeva together form the theoretical framework.Blodbok is a poetry collection, about the loss of a mother.

The purpose of this study is to explore specific pedagogical activities that benefit the student's verbal language development and to learn more about how our schools use teaching methods to achieve the ambitions in the governing documents in Sweden. The aim is finding the correlation between theory, research, governing documents and the educational work in our schools. This study contains an empirical survey in intention to see how teachers, pupils and school administrators experience school activities, to see if those activities are formed with the intention for pupils to reach the learning goals according to the governing documents.The aim of this study has been achieved by relating empirical data with theories and previous research on conversation analysis. Goffman's and Norrby's research on the importance of dialogue and previous research on dialogicity studied by Dysthe, Vygotsky and Bakhtin are presented. Those are related to empirical data and show that most teachers realize the importance of integrating dialogues in daily activities and in different learning contexts.

The personnel policy program for the employees in studied municipality includes guidelines for the working environment, saying that health promoting activities is offered to all employees.                              Objective: To investigate how these activities were used and how the staff perceived the activities offered. The aim was also to find out how well the information about current health promotion efforts reached the staff.Method: A qualitative approach was used in the form of interviews. The sample consisted of municipal employees from seven different work sites.  A total of 12 women aged 32-52 years participated. The interviews were recorded and a hermeneutic theory was used to interpret the results.Results: The results showed that most informants used some form of fitness activity. In most cases health care-time was used for anything from walking to organized workouts. The great barrier was lack of information and lack of trained and dedicated health motivators. In several cases, informants had no knowledge about what a health motivator is supposed to do. The informants own suggestions for health promotion interventions included stress management and foot care.Conclusion: The survey showed that respondents were poorly informed about which wellness activities the municipality offered. The result could also be interpreted as a communication gap between the local authority, health motivators and the employees. A request for group activities was detected.  .

This thesis has the purpose that through a text analysis examine how four schoolbooks for high school treats the religions Judaism and Hinduism. The schoolbooks are from the years 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2009. The perspectives are from a religious viewing point, that means that the women are religious, Jewish feminists and Hindu feminists. The theories used are written by these women and are academic litterature.  The questions are how are women represented in the schoolbooks, is the feminist critique present or are the two religions represented and described in an invariable way, and is the description of Judaism and Hinduism consistent with the curriculum?The text analysis used in this examination means that reality is organized through and by the language used by the actors in that reality.

The aim with this thesis, based on five childrens librarians statements, is to highlight their view of their work, and what they deem to be of importance when working with small children within the library sphere. My main question is as follows: What motive compels childrens librarians in their work with small children, and will Vygotskys theories be recognised in their statements. I have two questions as a base for this main question: How do childrens librarians work with small children, and do they utilise any special methods in their work? How do childrens librarians view their work tasks, and what do they deem to be of importance regarding small children and libraries? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews. As a theory I have decided to concentrate on Vygotskys thoughts on imagination and creativity, the Zone of Proximal Development, and childrens language development.

This thesis examines the deregulation reform of the Swedish railroad industry, focusing on passenger transport between 1988 and 2005. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the effects from the deregulation reform on prices, market concentration and to determine whether SJ (the state owned incumbent) has been conducting strategic behaviour in order to prevent new entrants to the market. The chosen method consists of interviews with the MD at SJ between 1988 - 1998 Mr Karl-Erik Strand, the transportation researcher at SSE Mr Gunnar Alexandersson. Statistical sources and companies financial reports have also been used. The results that I have found were besides the fact that the market concentration is still significant high and the profitability among the operators low, is that the prices has increased more than CPI during the period but the competitive tendering has resulted in lower government subsidies after the deregulation.

The purpose with this essay is to study how students in elementary school are placed within the subject called ?svenska som andrasspråk?, or SVA. SVA is a subject specially designed to deal with the complications that students with a different native language encounter when trying to learn Swedish.  National school documents state that a student is to be offered SVA if he or she has a different native language than Swedish and if the headmaster decides it?s ?needed?. In this work I focus on the different factors which are involved in the headmasters decision whether a student should be in a SVA-class or a normal Swedish class.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate international students? views regarding information seeking and use of information sources. A further aim is also to investigate the possible factors influencing information seeking in relation to everyday life for international students. Interviews were carried out with eight international students, 20-35 years old from three continents. They were to stay in Sweden for at least five months for the purpose of studying.

Construction projects are organized in different shapes and disturbances in the information flow in these processes can lead to problems, such as delays and/or a lower quality. Therefore, a well-functioning interaction between actors and a well thought out-communication at an early stage is of crucial importance. The main question is "How does the communication of decision and information flow in the building process and what barriers and opportunities can be observed?". This diploma work has been written with guidance from Bjerking AB and to answer this question, a collection of empirical data conducted via semi-structured interviews.

ALMI Business Partner operating in the years 2008-2010 a project called Vivan which is about innovations made by staff in the health care profession. The project Vivian is to bring new products to the market by establishing new companies. We have looked at why health care professionals to a lesser extent than other professionals choose to start businesses. Another question raised is why it is mostly men who have chosen to start their own business in the female-dominated health profession. Traditionally, men have as an advantage over women in the corporate market in Sweden.