This study aims to examine preschool teachers' thoughts about the child libraries functions. The purpose is to highlight preschool children's early read and writing skills, before they even can read and write, which is a theory called emergent Literacy.This is made by conducting five qualitative interviews, with the intention to investigate how the preschool teachers think about the cooperation and the function of the child library, partly for their own work with the children and partly for their organization. By using a tablechart which shows each preschool teachers mostly common thoughts in the interview and by using a model based upon Harrysson and Joelsson (2006) model, which shows the functions of the public library in the society. The results of the study are presented in the four categories of the model which are; to borrow, to learn, to ask and to find, to reside. These are functions that the preschool teachers see with the library, for their work with the childrens' early Literacy.

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.

The objective of the present study was to highlight preschool children?s encounters with children?s literature, in a heterogeneous language context.  The idea was to identify significant features in the linkages between the reading of children?s literature, didactic activities and children?s learning, language development and emergent Literacy activities.  Our interest was directed towards the activities connected with read-alouds, as well as the preschool teacher?s perceptions of those activities.  The empiric material was collected by use of participant observations of four read-aloud sessions. After the observations the preschool teacher in charge of the observed read-aloud was in-depth interviewed. In addition, the physical print environment in the actual preschool was observed. The results indicate that the physical and social reading environment interact with each other.  Furthermore, the preschool  teachers? approaches and ways of working with literature does not always optimize the language, Literacy and content area  learning opportunities for the children.

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.

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.

I denna uppsats jämförs och diskuteras gynnsamma faktorer för elevers läs- och skrivutveckling. Jag lyfter fram tre olika forskares syn på vad som kan ha en positiv inverkan för elevers utveckling på området och sätter det i relation till gynnsamma faktorer för lärande i stort. Frågeställningarna berör likheter i forskarnas metoder, lärarrollen samt lärande utifrån individ- och grupperspektiv. Som jag skrev ovan så fokuseras arbetets kring tre huvudtexter. Dessa texter är Judith Langers Effective Literacy Instruction (2002), Palincsar och Browns Reciprocal Teaching (1984) och Graham, Harris och Santangelos Self-Regulated Strategy Development (2008). Dessa tre texter ger tillsammans en bild av faktorer som kan vara av betydelse för både läs- och skrivutveckling. I resultaten av studien kommer bland annat vikten av att eleverna lär sig strategier fram.

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.

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.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to investigate how the relation between users and librarians is affected by higher education librarians? talk about information Literacy. The thesis uses Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis in analysing four articles written by Swedish higher education librarians and in answering how information Literacy, users and librarians are constituted. The analysis indicate that the questions have no distinct answers, there are discrepancies between, as well as within the texts.

Denna uppsats granskar fem kommunala 1:1-satsningar, det vill säga projekt att ge en egen dator till varje elev. Syftet med uppsatsen är att jämföra beslutfattarnas visioner med elevernas upplevelser av det faktiska användandet. Utifrån detta är målet att identifiera hur stor vikt bilden av det medialiserade samhället hade vid beslutet av dessa satsningar och eventuellt fortsätter ha i det nuvarande användandet av tekniken. Frågeställningen fokuserar på hur stor roll bilden av det medialiserade samhället spelade i beslutsprocessen. Dessutom har ett par underfrågor formulerats för att tydliggöra arbetet.Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk grundar sig främst i medialiseringsteorin och media Literacy.

This essay covers the subject of children with language disorders. We are two educators writing an experience-based essay on our preschool experiences and the literature with the subject of speaking disorders and verbal development. The main focus of this essay is how educators can recognize and stimulate children with language disorder. The starting point in the essay is two experience-based events from preschool which tells of two different boys, aged three and four. Both boys have some kind of verbal disorder and one of them also has Down´s syndrome.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine three Swedish librarians views on their role regarding their local learning centre and its adult students. The thesis also tries to find out whether the persons responsible for the local learning centres in these municipalities regard the libraries as a resource in this context and if the municipalities express the importance of such a cooperation in documents. Previous research in information seeking and learning is presented and a survey of lifelong learning, local learning centres and libraries is made. Relevant theories, such as Loertschers taxonomy, Kuhlthaus approaches of library skills instruction and levels of mediation as well as Bruces categories of information Literacy, are presented and later used in the analysis. A qualitative method was found to be most appropriate for this study, as the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.