The aim of this thesis is to investigate the points of view of three groups of actors about their local learning center and its collaboration with the library. By interviewing groups of actors from the municipal sector, the library staff and students, I aim to investigate their associations of the learning centre, what kind of services it should offer, and how they understand the role of the library staff in specific collaboration between the public library and the adult education administration. The study design is based on Gunnar Grepperud?s and Terje Thomsen?s three missions for a local learning centre; the mission of a broker, a meeting place and a motivator. I also use Carol Kuhlthau?s levels of mediation as an approach to investigate how the actors want the library staff to work in relation to the centre.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the usability of the Umeå University library catalogue Album. The aim is to evaluate the catalogue in order to establish if there are any problems that could be solved by modifying the catalogue. The following questions are answered: How should a good catalogue be designed? Which problems are common when using a library catalogue? Is Album user friendly? Are there any problems that occur when using Album and how can the catalogue be changed to avoid the problems? To answer these questions I have performed a usability test in which five persons, all students, got to carry out twenty tasks in the catalogue and talk about what they were doing and thinking while doing the test. This method is a usability method called Think Aloud.

The basic principle of the integrated school according to the Salamanca Declaration is that all children, whenever possible, should be taught together, regardless of any difficulties or diversity. It has been shown that students with neuropsychiatric disorders are having much more difficulties to achieve the targets than the average student. Pupils with neuropsychiatric syndrome will always be present in school and we who are working in the business must be better at learning to adapt to them so that they too can achieve proficiency in school.Mathematics is perhaps the topic that Swedish students generally have most problems with,and it will not obviously be easier if you have some form of neuropsychiatric disability.In our future role as special education teachers, we will mentor and support other teachers in the complex educational environment that exists today. The aim that has been built up is thus partly to explore how mathematics teachers work with included students with neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as how teachers wishing to become supervised by specialeducation teachers in mathematics. The study is conducted from a sociocultural perspective.A sociocultural perspective on learning means that all people are learning all the time in social settings.

There are different ways of developing a second language. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate whether and possibly how music, focused on singing, can improve the development of Swedish as a second language. Through interviews with three vocal teachers, from three different schools in Sweden, and observations of one of the vocal teachers, information about how they work and think about the subject has been collected. The vocal teachers teach groups of second language learners by singing songs made especially for second language learning. The vocal teachers consider singing beneficial in the development of the pronunciation and improvement of the prosody, which affects the students? capacity to sound like a native Swedish speaker.

This paper presents the results of a study of dyscalculia. It is a retrospective archival study implemented with a deductive approach. On the basis of established research and theory 18 analytical categories were formulated, before a deductive thematic analysis of empirical material, consisting of journal data of 17 students investigated for dyscalculia, 14 girls (82.4%) and 3 boys (17.6%).The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the concepts formulated in research on dyscalculia and actual mathematical difficulties as those found in practice of students at school.All pupils had early and long-term difficulties with mathematics, while not showing any difficulties in other subjects. Most have had an unsatisfactory learning environment. All had normal intelligence but difficulty with certain cognitive, self-regulatory and linguistic features.

AbstractTitelEffektmätning av ett utbildningsprogram ? genom lärande utvärderingEngelsk titelEffect Measurement of a Training Program ? through Learning by EvaluatingHandledareLars HolmstrandExaminatorMagnus SöderströmDatumJuni 2011Antal sidor77Nyckelordutvärdering, lärande, effektmätning, lärande utvärdering, formativ utvärderingKeywordsevaluation, learning, effect measurement, learning by evaluating, formative evaluationThe aim of this study was to investigate which effects a competence development effort has had on individuals and group, as well as in which way formative elements of evaluation possibly could have contributed to learning. The target group of the study was employees (eleven), their managers (seven) as well as co-ordinators (two) of a maintenance department at a nuclear power plant. The training program lasted from December 2009 to May 2010. The study was in progress as of September 2009 when a decision was made at the maintenance department?s training board to carry out the evaluation.

AbstractIn this essay, policy change and learning is studied in the case of the Social Democratic Party and their policy concerning independent schools. Their policy differs clearly from the right-wing parties. Between 1991 and 1994, the right-wing government made substantial reforms concerning independent schools. The question posed in this essay is whether the policy of the Social Democratic Party has changed as a result of these actions, and if they have approached their right-wing counterparts.Using the Advocacy Coalition Framework, defining a policy as a result of the values the actor holds, the question is studied by applying the theory's assumptions of policy-learning across coalitions. The argumentation of the Social Democratic Party, as it is expressed in official text documents before and after the right-wing government, is analysed.

The purpose of this study is from a teacher?s perspective to examine how schoolteachers experience the possibilities of learning from each other within their work team and to shed some light on how teachers believe that cooperation affects their ability to learn and improve on a daily basis. My research questions are: What is the general discussion among the teachers concerning daily capacity building from enhanced teamwork? How important is well-functioning cooperation between co-workers for learning and daily capacity building? What are the prerequisites for a well-functioning learning situation within the work team?The study is based on five qualitative interviews with teachers within the same school but from different teaching backgrounds based on what grade they teach, what subjects they teach, and they belong to different work teams within the school. The interviews are semi-structured.The results have been analysed from a perspective based on the theories of organisational pedagogy and learning organisations.The results implies that the work teams does not function as a forum for exchanging experiences and learning from each other.

The aim of this study was to examine how the interviewed primary teachers in two schools situated in the Stockholm area understand themselves as teachers in relation to their image of the good teacher. The research questions were: How do the informants discuss their image of the good teacher? How do the informants describe their own role as a teacher?A qualitative method, by interviews made with four primary teachers, was used to collect data for the examination. The results from the interviews were analyzed and discussed from the theories and earlier research concerning the role of the teacher and what they describe as the good teacher. The theoretical connection of this study was based on the theories of Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner, Dewey, Dreikurs, Kounin and Glasser concerning the relationship between the role of the teacher and learning.

The purpose of my empirical study is to see if and how teachers meet the students needs of physical activities in the daily work in the classroom. I also want to explore how different teachers see the connection between the concepts: physical activity and learning. To fulfill the purpose, I have chosen to ask four questions that I will work on in my study.How much and what type of physical activities do the students do in a typical day at school?What happens with the students when they have had a moment of physical activities in the classroom?Do the teachers see any connection between the physical activity and the pupils' ability to concentrate?How do teachers look upon the relationship between physical activity and learning?To get answers to my questions, I have observed and interviewed five teachers. I have compiled and analyzed the results.

Syftet med studien är att bidra med sådan kunskap att det nybildade e-learningsföretaget kan skapa ett så attraktivt utbildningspaket som möjligt. Vi (författarna) vill lyfta fram vad som bör tänkas på vid marknadsföring av utbildningspaketet mot en potentiell kund. Om kunden anammar produktidén är det även intressant att ta reda på vilka befintliga utbildningar/kurser utbildningspaketet kan bli ett alternativ eller ett komplement till. Dessutom vill vi se om det är troligt att kunden kan anamma utbildningspaketet inom en tidsperiod av ett år..

This thesis examines and measures differences in effciency between L1- and L2 language use for solving referential problems. Quantitative measures used in the study were time and error frequency. Qualitative measures, such as how the tasks and the participants own performance were experienced, were measured by an post interview and two questionaires. Two different tasks, a sorting task and a construction task, in which each informant was given the role as a constructor or instructor, were used for data gathering. A total of 20 dyads, divided in two language groups (English and Swedish) participated in the study.

Vi har i en tidigare kurs genomfört en uppgift innehållande bråk, då vi upptäckte att elever hade svårt att lära sig framförallt sammansatta bråk. Vi blev intresserade av att ta reda på hur man skapar förutsättningar för att eleverna ska lära sig bråk, vilket är denna studies syfte. Studien syftar även till att upptäcka vilka aspekter som är kritiska för att lära sig bråk samt ta reda på hur dessa kan varieras i undervisningen vid elevernas lärande av bråk.I studien används en learning study som kan ses som en typ av aktionsforskning där lärare forskar i sitt eget klassrum. Inom learning study används variationsteorin som är en guidande princip för att förstå och skapa förutsättningar för lärande. Lektionerna som genomfördes av oss, blivande lärare, vid tre olika tillfällen videofilmades.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how organisations are working with repatriation of employees who have been working abroad, especially regarding how their experiences and competences are being utilised and transferred within the company. A qualitative abductive method is used, since the aim is to obtain an understanding of this phenomenon. The main source of information has been 21 interviews. The interviews were executed in two steps; a preliminary study with nine Swedish organisations was followed by our main study, containing 12 interviews with repatriates, their colleagues, and personnel employed at the International Assignment departments at Scania and Volvo. The conclusion of this thesis is that large Swedish companies, which have Swedish employees working abroad do not seem to be working with repatriation according to suggestions given by the theories, even though their performances are better than earlier research implies.

National Agency for Education for the results of national sample results show that students with another mother tongue than Swedish have low results with a larger percentage than majority students. Research shows that this depends on their mother tongue and the importance of language in the subject to learn.The purpose of this study was to examine how teachers experience, plan and implement their teaching field of mathematics in the preparatory class. The focus is on two perspectives; an intercultural perspective and a social perspective. The newly arrived pupils in the preparatory class come from different parts of the world which leads to an intercultural classroom being formed. The aim of the social perspective is understand how students integrate into the social in the classroom.I use qualitative methods through interviews.