The purpose of this study has been to compare teachers' differing methods of teaching mathematics and their perspectives on the learning process in a municipal school to a Waldorf school. The study has examined which approach best promotes student engagement and learning in mathematics in the first three years of schooling. The study is based on four interviews. The informants? accounts are interpreted using theories from previous research.

Following essay discusses the possibilities of using a gender perspective when studying local governance within a Swedish context. Governance is an international concept used to describe a more lose, informal and network based way of doing politics The main purpose for conducting this essay is that traditional theoretical frameworks used in the study of local politics are not enough to fully conceptualize the complexity of our changing political environment.After a broad summing up of what had been done in the recent decades within Swedish political science on the topic of local politics and gender I came to the conclusion that so far nothing had been written on governance. The next step was therefore to conduct a pilot study to cover the subject matter of governance and gender. The study was based upon interviews with five female politicians in Malmoe city.Results showed that governance, in terms of informal networks did exist, and had influence over the local politics. Some of the networks were male dominated.

The vast majority of parents want their children to succeed and become successful in one way or the other. The very first is that the child will graduate from school. In today?s society which is characterized by career-driven parents, especially mothers, one wonders if somewhere along the way parents are prioritizing their own careers over their children?s school achievements. This might be true in some cases, but in others it could merely be that parents are expecting more from their children?s future.

This thesis aims at studying the European Union?s actions against applicant states. In this case Turkey has been chosen as a variable, because of its unique applying accession.Turkey is a country which has been applying for a membership of the European Union since 1989 and Turkey is the only state which has been searching for membership for more than twenty years. Turkey has been given a lot of critic of not fulfilling the political criteria of the Copenhagen criteria?s.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The ability to tackle NP-hard problems has been greatly extended by the introduction of Metaheuristics (see Blum & Roli (2003)) for a summary of most Metaheuristics, general problem-independent optimisation algorithms extending the hill-climbing local search approach to escape local minima. One of these algorithms is Iterated Local Search (ILS) (Lourenco et al., 2002; Stützle, 1999a, p. 25ff), a recent easy to implement but powerful algorithm with results comparable or superior to other state-of-the-art methods for many combinatorial optimisation problems, among them the Traveling Salesman (TSP) and Quadratic Assignment Problem (QAP). ILS iteratively samples local minima by modifying the current local minimum and restartinga local search porcedure on this modified solution. This thesis will show how ILS can be implemented for MSA.

The word mathematics is often associated to addition, subtraction, division or multiplication. This is not the kind of mathematics that belongs to pre-school. In my essay I have chosen to write about how mathematics is used in pre-school. In the literature it is written that the best way of becoming familiar with mathematics, is to integrate it in the every day life but that there are educators that use traditional mathematics education in pre-school. The questions I would like to answer are:1.

The aim of this essay is to investigate and evaluate the arguments made by municipal politicians in Ulricehamn, regarding the planned Knowledge and Culture Centre. A part from the search for these arguments, I also investigated the attitudes among politicians regarding municipal culture investments in general. I furthermore investigated whether any national, regional, or local culture-political strategies were important in the local debate. The time frame within which the local political culture debate was investigated was from 1997 until present time 2002. The investigation methods used were partly a study of official documents such as political protocols, two articles from the local newspaper, and a clean copy from a web chat, and partly a qualitative study I sent a question regarding the planned Culture Centre to every political party active in the Ulricehamn municipal assembly.

AbstractSince 1990, special needs educators have been working in both primary and junior school. It has not been easy for the special needs educators to take authority when working with broader educational issues due to the varying requirements placed upon them. The object of this study is to examine how certain primary and junior school teachers describe their expectations of special needs educators and their professional role.I have conducted individual interviews with three primary school teachers and three junior school teachers, who have at least five years experience of working within their respective fields. The interviews have been scrutinized, and the results are presented with the help of five different themes. The results were then analysed in accordance with the two perspectives of special needs education described by Persson (2001) those of both the relational and the categorical perspective.Amongst other things the results show that the view of primary and junior school teachers with regards to special needs educators differ one from another.

A qualitative study is presented concerning children?s participation in the local decisionmaking in Swedish municipalities. The study also aims at finding out what are considered to be successful factors and obstacles connected to the implementation of children?s participation in local decision-making. The study contains a summary of the convention on the rights of the child, focusing on article 12, as well as previous research findings concerning children?s participation and factors enabling respectively hindering participation.