Swedish students' knowledge of both mathematics and reading comprehension has deteriorated in recent years. Scientists are discussing whether there is a connection between these areas and that the pupils deteriorating math skills may have something to do with their increasingly lower results in terms of reading comprehension. To investigate this possible connection, I conducted a survey among students in ninth grade and have come to the conclusion that the scientists are right: this connection absolutely exist. Students who received a high score on tasks designed to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills, also received high results on the reading comprehension test. And students who received a poor performance on the problem-solving tasks, were also low performers in the reading comprehension test.

Reading difficulties is the most common learning difficulty in the western world and it is common that people with reading disabilities also exhibit arithmetic difficulties. Different theories about the cause of the relationship exists, one theory describes the importance of good phonological ability in reading as well as in arithmetic, while another theory describes the importance of a reliable number system and that only a subgroup of students with reading disabilities also have difficulties with arithmetic. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students with reading difficulties (RD), without any known mathematical difficulties, perform on mathematical tasks relative to a control group. The study was theoretically grounded on the Triple code model (Dehaene, 1992), which is a model for numerical information processing that describes how various numerical and arithmetic tasks are processed through three distinct representation systems in the brain, a verbal and a visual representation system and a quantity system. Reading skills, phonological skills, arithmetic skills and number processing skills were examined in 61 students through a variety of tests.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate and illustrate the measures that parents, teachers and school librarians can take in order to influence childrens reading, and, more importantly, how these attempts performed by the adults in the childs environment affect the reading habits of the child. The methods used include qualitative interviews, undertaken with eight students/children, their teacher and a school librarian, and an observation of a book talk in the studied class. Considering that no interviews have been executed with the parents, the results presented regarding the parents prospects of encouraging childrens reading, are therefore to be seen from the perspective of the children, and analysed as such. Three different theories have been employed in order to elucidate the results of the study; Bourdieus theory about the cultural capital transmitted from parent to child; Aidan Chambers theory on the book talk as promoting reading; and Louise Limbergs theory on the levels of the school library and its consequent prognosis of working to promote reading. The results of the study concur with Bourdieus theory, in that the childrens reading habits in most cases seem to have been affected by the amount of involvement that the parents have given to promote their reading.

AbstractThe purpose with this study is to find out how pedagogues, who teach in the early years of primary school, motivate and stimulate all pupils so they want to read a lot of fiction. The research also includes finding out more about why the pedagogues work as they do. The research starts with a study of current literature which deals with how teachers should work with motivation and stimulation in school. To find out how the pedagogues work in school I have made qualitative interviews with four pedagogues who work in the early years of primary school. The result shows that all of the pedagogues motivate and stimulate pupils in similar ways.

This master thesis examines online reading groups with swedish participants. The aim is, by way of introduction, to investigate what kind of online reading groups that exist and how they work. The overall question of the thesis is: how do a conversation about books on the Internet look like? The theory used is Grounded Theory and this is a methodology which has influenced the hole structure of the study. Grounded Theory apply that issues and hypothesis must be created from the collected material, and the author collected for this reason material in the form of survey answers, email-conversations, blogmaterial and articles to draw up exact issues based on this material.The material was sorted into four different categories; social reading, reading fellowship, virtual freedom and anonymity and the issues were formulated according to this categories.

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) hold great potential to support learning activities, for example by providing teachers and students with new and extended spaces for interaction and collaboration. However, this potential appears to be difficult to realize, and despite their perceived learning benefits, the reality is that LMSs are being used primarily for administrative purposes. Meanwhile, external pedagogical tools are successfully put into practice to improve learning outcomes, and the aim of this study is therefore to identify and discuss benefits and disadvantages associated with the LMS as a concept. By interviewing secondary school teachers, we disentangle the idea of integrating administrative and pedagogical aids into a single platform, providing detailed insight into the use of digital tools in secondary education. The study contributes to a deepened understanding of integrated learning environments, and we conclude that there is a conflict between structure and flexibility that needs to be addressed before determining the design of a digital learning space..

While reading in deaf children has been the object of a number of studies, the reading abilitiesof children with mild and moderate hearing impairment and their relation to cognitiveprocessing have not received very much attention. Predictive factors of reading ability inhearing children are well known, with phonological and working memory abilities beingnecessary prerequisites for reading development. Existing studies suggest, however, thatcertain hearing-impaired children achieve a reading level comparable to that of hearingchildren in spite of impaired phonological abilities. In the present study, reading abilities anda range of cognitive processing abilities were measured in a group of hearing-impairedchildren and compared with hearing controls in equivalent school grades. Comparisons weremade at group and school-grade level, and the cognitive profile of hearing-impaired childrenat level with controls (those being within one standard deviation) was discussed.

The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

Earlier research has shown that combining education with entertainment can improve students motivation in school. With this study we aim to learn more about interactive digital learning resources and how they should be designed to entertain and thereby contribute to motivation. We have identified aspects of educational games that also could be considered when developing interactive digital learning resources, to make them more entertaining and motivating. We have chosen to study and evaluate an interactive digital learning resource called ?Grasp the Disaster?, a fictional online adventure created for students in the ages between 13-15.

This article is about Abrahams Children foundation and its teaching method called IE- method. It?s about how a teacher can use the IE- method in the religion lesson. There were some questions in this article that had to be answered and the questions are:- How is the form of the religion classes when a teacher uses the IE- method?- What happens in the class when you study the interaction and the communication?- Does the student?s participation increase when they work with the IE- method?- What are the advantage and the disadvantage with the IE- method?- Can the teacher use the IE- method in other classes?To get to the ?correct? answer I used many methods like, observation in the class, qualitative interview with the teacher (Lisa Andersson) and with four students (Kim, Erik, Amanda, Patrik) and I also used questionnaire.

The study aims to investigate what the iPad in SFI education means for the individual when it comes to becoming literate from having been illiterate. The focus of the study is on reading and writing in combination with individual motivation and opinions on iPad as a teaching tool.The study is based on interviews of three illiterate participants of sfi. The interviews give an idea of the individuals´ attitudes to the iPad and whether they think they learn to read and write with the iPad. The study also discusses what the participants think they cannot learn with the iPad.The study also includes two interviews with teachers, which aims to broaden and nuance pictures of how the iPad works in the classroom. Even the teachers' perceptions of the iPad as a teaching tool are examined.

Background: The Waldorf school was founded by Rudolf Steiner during the early nineties in Austria. The pedagogy is established in the antrophosofical sight of humanity, which contains focus on three watchwords when it comes to teaching. These are the will, the feeling and the thought. Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate how teachers in three Waldorf schools are working during to the curriculum and to bring out the differences and the similarities with the municipal school. This essay is focusing on four themes and theories; artistic learning processes, gender, multimedia and environment.Method: In order to investigate this kind of teaching I choose interviewing as a method, specifically semi structured interviews. Four teachers at three different schools in Stockholm county was interviewed.

The aim of this study was to explore how young students can be taught during their first year of learning English towards the A1 level according to The European Framework of Reference for Languages, and how the students understand their own learning. The study was carried out in two different classes but with the same teacher, who is qualified to teach English to young learners. The result is based on the analysis of a total of twelve observations of English lessons in two classes in school year one and eight group interviews with the students. Recurrent ingredients through all lessons were activities such as listening to teacher talk, watching films or film clips, singing songs and doing rhymes, using drama activities, talking about the meaning of learning English, practicing guessing competence and learning new vocabulary. The teacher consistently talked about and taught different strategies for language learning.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka, beskriva och problematisera Reading Recovery samt att ta reda på varför två nyzeeländska skolor har valt att behålla respektive sluta med programmet. Undersökningen baseras på fyra kvalitativa intervjuer samt en kvalitativ observation, vilka skedde på två skolor där den ena slutade med Reading Recovery för några år sedan och där den andra skolan fortfarande använder programmet. Undersökningen syftar inte till att jämföra de båda skolornas språkundervisning, utan till att ge en bild av hur det kan fungera på en nyzeeländsk skola. Intervjuerna ägde rum på Nya Zeeland och de intervjuade hade olika anknytning till Reading Recovery. I uppsatsens bakgrundsdel beskrivs den tidigare forskningen om uppsatsens tre grundteman, det nyzeeländska skolsystemet, språkpedagogik samt stödundervisning.

The aim of the study is to elucidate how teachers in middle school work with reading literature aloud and their attitudes to their working methods. The research questions concern how the teachers work before, during and after the reading aloud, and also the advantages the teachers find in their method and the obstacles they discover in the work of reading aloud. A qualitative method was used for the study, applying semi-structured interviews. The selection consists of two teachers who have worked in the profession for 23?24 years (Teachers Andersson and Bergström) and two who have worked as teachers for 3?4 years (Teachers Cederqvist and Davidsson).