In the curriculum for Swedish pre-school the focus is mainly on five concepts. These are care of the children, learning, influence, rearing and security. These concepts are to characterize the activities of the pre-school in Sweden.Back in time the focal point of pre-school activities for young children was mainly on security. The learning part became more prominent as the children grew older. When speaking to teachers and parents I do sense that some believe this is the case even nowadays.

The aim of this study is to investigate how and in which form students come in contact with practical applications in the upper secondary school course Chemistry B. The study is based upon the assumption that all learning is situated in a social environment. The theoretical framework is the design theory perspective, which entails an assumption that the pedagogical tools affect the knowledge content.The empiric materials in the study are collected through three methods: textbook analysis, classroom observations and questionnaires. Two groups of students and their teachers were observed during a section of the relevant course. The textbook analysis focuses upon the same course section in the textbooks of the two groups and compares these books with the relevant section in a third textbook.

Laboratory work is a big part of chemistry education in high school. During our student training placement we have noticed that the laboratory work is not fully utilized to develop students´ chemistry knowledge. This problem made us want to investigate how the laboratory work in chemistry could be set, to become more meaningful for students. We introduced two preparation methods, and examined the outcome of students learning experiences and their acquisition of chemistry knowledge. This was examined both through surveys and observation.

The National Arts Council[1] has made an evaluation on obstacles and success factors for the interaction between culture and school. In the evaluation report they concluded that teachers and cultural workers have different views on culture and knowledge which creates confusion in their interaction. Thus I became interested to investigate teachers and cultural workers views on culture, aesthetics, and the knowledge that they think the students / children / young people should get from culture and aesthetics. This work is based on qualitative interviews with four teachers and four cultural workers. I compare their views with each other and link it to different research perspectives on culture and aesthetics in school to get an understanding of the similarities and differences in their approach, and what implications it can have in the school?s learning processes. In this work, from a didactic point of view, I found that when the teachers and cultural workers are talking about culture, the why-perspective differs.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain insight into educators? views and work with circle time in preschool. To find out, I have referred to the following questions: How is your circle time performed in preschool? What objectives have teachers with the circle time? What impact has your circle time for the children in preschool?I have chosen to carry out qualitative interviews with three preschool teachers. After the interviews, I compared the educators? response to previous research.The survey shows that the circle time is one of the day´s highlights for preschool children.

The idea to create authentic learning situations where students are highly integrated made me want to try to develop a new method in the course Restaurant and Catering B MAKU 1208 (another field practicing cuisine). In my quest to do just the practical part as rewarding, stimulating and efficient as possible for the student, I planned for a training model with   focus on group interaction.The implementation of the model for learning was to strengthen students confidence both in themselves and in each other, stimulated to greater cooperation and it has also provided an incentive to the student's own development but not least, a growing self-confidence for many students. Several have also had an increased sense of knowing something, to have something to contribute and that their labour input actually was needed. While highlighting that further education to seek knowledge strengthens the individual's skills and consolidates and increases deeper knowledge in the professional field.In conclusion, training should be done in both individual and group basis for optimal learning process..

In this essay, I will treat the view of learning and musicianship among educated and uneducated musicians in improvised music. The survey is based on six different interviews with musicians in improvised music. In my inquiry, I have found that there are some differences between the two groups in their view of the subject..

Today many children have limited experiences with the outdoors or nature. In most suburbs where people originate from many countries and have various ways of understanding nature is it perhaps in preschool that several children for the first time experience nature.This survey is qualitative and the main research methods are participant observations and interviews. The theories used in this study are mainly based on the thoughts of Dewey and Vygotskij as well as on ideas from outdoor education and different ways or ideas of understanding nature.The purpose with this study is to make clear in what ways nature is used by the teachers in preschool activities and how this work is done in preschools in multicultural suburbs. Questions at issue are: What way of understanding nature are the teachers trying to convey to the children? How is nature used in the ordinary outdoor activities by the preschool teachers? What are the teachers experiences of success and problems in this work?The conclusion is that nature is used in preschool activities in many ways.

Swedish as second language: A qualitative Study of Teachers view of pupils learning ability the Swedish language as the second language.

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

This report investigates digital games with focus on differences and similarities between children?s point of view when it comes to games focusing on learning compared to those focusing on entertainment. The approached group was children, 7 years old. The study contains investigations and analysis of how these children used games in both school and home environment. The most used theory ?8 theories of fun? by Marc LeBlanc (2004) raises the most important parts making a game fun.

Skolan är en del av samhället och måste därför följa den utveckling som sker. För att lärarna skall kunna möta detta och erbjuda eleverna möjligheter till lärande är de i ständigt behov av pedagogisk utveckling. Det finns olika metoder och modeller för hur kompetensutveckling kan ske där valet av metod beror på verksamheten och den enskilda läraren. Denna studie syftar till att pröva och utvärdera om och på vilket sätt videodokumentation kan implementeras i en skolas verksamhet och bli ett användbart redskap för lärarnas pedagogiska utveckling. För att pedagogisk utveckling skall vara möjlig krävs det att läraren reflekterar över sitt görande.

Title: This is not Africa - West African teaching methods in Sweden. This is a work of "translation". The study started with a musical journey to Guinea, West Africa. It was a field study where I had the opportunity to open my senses towards another culture and another kind of music. I found another learning tradition and decided to try to bring it with me back to Sweden, into the Swedish school system.

The purpose of this study is to describe how the employee appraisal is perceived by managers, employees and representatives from human resources departments. The empirical material con-sists of 15 interviews: respondents were two representatives of the human resources departments, four unit managers and nine employees who work at a state institution or municipal management. In the study, I adopt a sociocultural perspective, with the communicative relational perspective. The latter is a special education perspective in which the interpenetration of participation, com-munication and learning emphasized.The result shows that the majority of employees would like to see that the talks will be held more frequently than once a year. One of the managers has in cooperation with his co-workers devel-oped a model based on that each year, in addition to salary talks, have an individual conversation, a conversation with each group and individual follow-up talks.

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa mönster i barns utelek på två olika förskolor utifrån ett genusteoretiskt perspektiv. Ett ytterligare syfte är att försöka se om det framträder några skillnader i lekmönster mellan de två förskolorna utifrån det faktum att den ena förskolan sedan åtta år tillbaka bedriver ett aktivt genusarbete och den andra inte gör det. Tidigare forskning visar att pojkar och flickor använder förskolegården på lite olika sätt och att de leker delvis olika lekar. Data samlades in vid ett observationstillfälle på respektive förskola och grupperades under olika teman för analys. Det genusteoretiska perspektivet har gett verktyg för att analysera lekmönstren, vilka bland annat avspeglar samhällets genusordning.