In Montessori pre-schools early reading and writing is an important feature. By tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers and voicing the sound simultaneously the children connect phonemes to graphemes and normally learn to write between the ages of four and five. 24 sixyear old children who attended Montessori pre-school and 26 six-year old children who had not attended Montessori school were assessed with a test assessing their linguistic awareness.The result showed that the Montessori children were more linguistically aware than the children who hadn?t received any literacy training. The scores of the Montessori children were highest on phonological awareness.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka effekterna av en läs- och språksatsning. Fokus ligger på att identifiera faktorer som påverkar skolor att delta, huruvida dessa har förbättrade elevresultat samt läs- och språkutveck-larnas upplevelser av förändringar i undervisning, lärarkompetens och elevernas måluppfyllelse. Undersök-ningen omfattar två extremgrupper; dels åtta skolor som deltagit, dels åtta skolor som ej deltagit. Data kommer från Skolverkets databaser samt från en enkät ställd till skolornas läs- och språkutvecklare. Den teoretiska ramen utgörs av en pedagogisk samspelsmodell.

The main purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how Swedish upper secondary school librarians and related staff relate to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The research is placed in the all-embracing context of information literacy and source criticism on the Internet. The study was carried out in the form of qualitative interviews and based on two theoretical bases: firstly, the concept of cognitive authority stipulated by Patrick Wilson, and secondly the idea that Wikipedia has a draw towards late modern epistemological assumptions. The latter theory was also associated with the perceptions of knowledge among the library staff interviewed.

Abstract This paper focuses on whether individual development plans as well as action programmes are needed.Pupils in need of particular support get to be involved in an action programme ? the school needs to provide any particular support a pupil needs. However, the individual development plan does not substitute the action programme. Thus an action programme as well as an individual development plan will be provided to students in need of particular support.The individual development plan follows the pupil throughout the entire education, regardless of whether its content changes, whilst the action programme pertains to a limited period of time. Pupils that are not in need of particular support are not likely to need to set goals for themselves in addition to those already set outside of school.

This Masters thesis investigates user education at academic libraries. The increased demand on students to keep themselves updated in the information society of today urges libraries to develop their user education, concerning both content and teaching strategies. The aim of this study is to examine user education at academic libraries, and the approach of librarians in their teaching. The research questions address how librarians implement the user education and what they focus on. We also want to explore what differences and similarities there are between the user educations, and if anything could be further developed within them.

Strategic development is something that concerns all companies, regardless of which industry they?re in. There is extensive research on this topic but one can question if the same theory also applies to E-businesses. Using case studies, this paper looks at strategic development in E-businesses and tries to answer whether strategic development in internet based companies is unique or if existing theory can still be applied. The predominant approach is to look into if E-businesses, due to a turbulent environment, rely less on market research and focus more on internal resources than would be expected by companies in more stable environments.

This essay deals with development in Latin America. We have picked out some factors that the theories in development theory emphasize on. The first section of the study consists of a statistical analysis, were the main purposes are to study the relationship between the independent variables and the dependent and to choose which two countries we should focus on in the next section. The countries we decided to study were Costa Rica and Nicaragua, because these countries have shown very different levels of development. From this study we have concluded that political stability, economical investements and human investments are the most important factors when creating development..

Abstract Tutor - Anders Richtnér History - Theories suggest that Lean Product Development strategies dramatically increase a company's performance through enabling faster T-T-M, Quality and Costs of Product Development. Purpose - The purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate whether the implementation of LPD actually affect corporate performance measurements T-T-M, Quality and Cost, in a positive way. Methodology - This Bachelor thesis is an exploratory investigation of the concept of Lean Product Development within a global IT- company, performed through four case studies, interviews and complementing corporate performance data. Findings - With empirical data and subsequent analyzes in mind, we note the following; it is clear that the project that produced the best results, in terms of T-T-M, Quality and Cost, also was the one furthest in the process of implementing Lean Product Development..

Systems development methods mirror different organizational perspectives, and not all methods are formalised, but what they have in common is the purpose of structuring and supporting systems development processes. Which method would be the most suitable may be determined by the systems development context at hand, because every systems development context is unique. Information is a valuable asset in today?s organizations, and it needs to be protected against both internal and external security threats. In our essay we aspired to find and present suggestions as to how systems developers can include security in the very design based on formalised systems development methods to create systems that are better prepared to meet the security challenges of today.

Purpose: We wish to gain a deep knowledge about product development processes in relation to the aspect of time in companies in highly technological and rapidly changing markets. The purpose is to establish how organizations better can employ time as a resource to make the product development process more efficient. Conclusions: Information we gathered from theory and primary data show that information flow, synchronization and time profit when seeing time in three dimensions are factors which should be reflected in the architecture of a product development process. To illustrate our findings, we decided to create a model..

Detta examensarbete lyfter fram sju olika lärares kunskap om högläsning och på vilket sätt de medvetet använder sig av högläsning i sin undervisning. Avsikten är att lyfta fram hur pedagoger som undervisar yngre barn arbetar med att läsa högt för sina elever.Aktuell forskning kring grundläggandet av läs- och skrivutvecklingen påvisar betydelsen av att läsa högt för små barn. Undersökningens resultat visar att lärare upplever högläsning som ett bra och mångsidigt pedagogiskt redskap. Det framgår dock att de pedagoger med längst yrkeserfarenhet och högst utbildning är de som använder sig av högläsning på ett mer medvetet och komplext sätt. Därigenom synliggörs vikten av att pedagoger har kunskap om högläsningens användningsområden.Pedagogernas insikter som kom fram under undersökningen har relaterats till forskning i ett jämförande perspektiv.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the information needs in the character subjects of the students at a vocationally oriented program in the Swedish upper secondary school. I also examine from which sources the students get the information. I want to create a wider understanding of information seeking processes at a vocationally oriented programme. The main focus is the students? own thoughts and opinions about their information needs and information seeking processes.

Scania som är ett multinationellt företag har som vision att alla medarbetare ska kunna delta och påverka sitt eget arbete, och att hantera dagens läs- och skrivkrav ses som en nyckel till det. Under 2005 startade Scania i egen regi ett läs- och skrivprojekt med mål att höja medarbetarnas läs- och skrivkompetens. 13.5 % av medarbetarna i motormonteringen anmälde sig till läs- och skrivprojektet. För att se vilket genomslag utbildningen har gett har vi anlitats av Scania för att utvärdera projektet. Syftet med vår studie är att utifrån djupintervjuer med Scanias motorbyggare undersöka skriftens betydelse i motorverkstaden samt söka svar på vad läs- och skrivutbildningen har betytt för motorbyggarna.

This master´s thesis in Library and Information Science examines the experiences of children who read to a dog. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the interactions between the librarian, the readingdog-handler, the child-ren and the dogs and what the benefits from the interactions might be. The aim is also to examine how the child-ren express their literacy during the readingsessions and how to develop the readingsessions at a specific library. The author follows a reading dog project for seven weeks, in collaboration with a specific school and library. Action research was used as a research strategy, and since action research is done on the basis of practice, a coll-laboration with the participating children, the librarian and the readingdog-handler was significant in this study.The theoretical framework concists of theory and concepts from the sociocultural theory developed by Ro-ger Säljö, and human-animal studies with concepts from Donna Haraway.