This paper aims at assessing the relationship between female and male part-time employment and the business cycle in Sweden during the years 1987?2005 using quarterly time-series data and two alternative indicators of the business cycle. It further aims at determining whether the share of women working part-time has changed over time. Key results include that the relationship between the business cycle and female part-time employment is found to be significant and countercyclical. No significant effect is however found for men.

Research indicates that a more hands-on education in mathematics could improve how students relate to mathematics. Laboratory mathematics is a way of making mathematics more concrete.  How is the purpose of laboratory mathematics perceived? This thesis has its focus on the pupils? perceptions of the purpose of laboratory mathematics, but the intention of the teacher involved is also investigated. The main research questions asked were:What is the teacher's definition of laboratory mathematics?Which is the teacher's purpose in using laboratory education?How do the students perceive the purpose of the laboratory teaching of mathematics?To answer the questions, I conducted a series of qualitative interviews.

This study has as its purpose to reveal whether female and male entrepreneurs are offered the same kind of conditions in their role of entrepreneurs in their respective media representation. This is studied by analyzing portrayals in the magazine Entreprenör (Br.E. ?Entrepreneur?). Methodologically the analysis will be making use of textual analysis, semiotics and discourse analysis in order to expose the underlying gender perspective(s) in Entreprenör.The entrepreneur portrayals? texts and visuals will be studied in the light of gender and entrepreneur theory, and more specifically on the basis of theories about representation, discourse and stereotypes.The main conclusion of the study is that female and male entrepreneurs are not offered the same conditions in their roles of entrepreneurs in a medium such as Entreprenör.

This essay is about literature instruction in the last three years of Sweden?s compulsory school from one teacher?s and six of his pupils? perspective. The research is analysed from a socio-cultural perspective on learning and literature reception.The empiric material is based on interviews with the teacher and six of his students.The research shows that there is a difference between what the pupils read on their spare time and what they read during Swedish instruction. It also shows that the pupils wants literature full of action where descriptions of people and the setting don?t slow down the reading experience.The teacher is successful in finding literature the pupils appreciate but sees the value of literature on another level ? in the processing of the reading experience.

Castration of dogs holds many reasons and opinions, therefore methods, traditions and rea-sons vary. The approaches have during time changed from mostly surgical castrations to also including hormonal treatments. Castration is used to control the dog's reproductive abilities, for medical reasons and to possibly rectify problems of behavioral nature. How common a particular method of castration is in a country is highly dependent on the country's traditions. In Sweden it is most common with castration for medical reasons, such as possible elimina-tion of diseases, for example, benign colorectal tumors.

The purpose of this essay is to show the opportunities and difficulties of teaching within distance education. I will show this from two different parts of the world. One being Sweden and the other Australia, both countries run a distance education program with similar reasons students whom travelling, some living hundreds of miles from any schools and some students with health and or social disadvantages. This study is based on the actual teacher?s accounts and experiences the opportunities and difficulties in teaching in distance.

The discussion about gender and ideals shown in mass media is a subject of great importance for the society in general. Media is playing an essential part when it comes to establish standards and values and we are constantly exposed to all types of impressions, whether we are aware or not. It is therefore of great importance that we understand how stereotypes are built and to gain a deep knowledge that would enrich the area of Media and Communication Studies.The aim and focus of this study was to analyze how male stereotypes is communicated in print advertising and how visual means of expressions helps to construct the masculinities shown. From a semiotic analysis of seven print adverts appearing in the Swedish lifestyle Magazine Café were we able to gain a thorough understanding about how male stereotypes are communicated and built.The result showed that different kinds of stereotypes are in fact used but it is still a hegemonic masculinity that is predominating. Traditional male characteristics are still in use but we were able to see strong indications of effemination, sexualizing and objectifying.

Our aim with this essay is to examine if social work in the care of elderly tends to be salutogenetic or patogenetic oriented. A salutogenetic oriented activity means that the social workers focuses on the elderly peoples individual possibilities, and collaborate with the receiver of care in order to offer him or her aid and resources for meaningful living conditions. A patogenetic oriented activity on the other hand means that the social workers focuses on the elderly peoples most primary needs, their illnesses and to introduce adequate treatment. We also examine if social workers in the care of elderly tend to prefer male or female characteristic features in the receivers of care. Finally we wanted to find out if there were any gender distinctions, if the appraisal of aid were more affected by a male or female receiver of care.

The purpose of the research is to find out how the teacher of the pre-school looks at the value of the nature Pre-school. To get an understanding of what the nature pre-school enviorment can bring, we are talking about learning, knowledge, and experience combined with the everyday lessons learned from the natural world. The research is a stepping stone on the pre-school teacher?s thoughts and reflections of what a nature pre-school is. This is grounded in a view of how having options for alternative schools lead to wider research, and all conclusions where formed after multiple interviews and analysis.The results showed that the teachers involved are very positive to the nature pre-school environment and learning process.

The aim of this study is to see if the individual developing plans (i.e. individuella utvecklingsplaner) can be used as a tool for the special needs teacher (i.e. specialpedagog) to develop the school in its challenge to meet the needs of every child.  The study is based on contentanalycis and interviews, in order to understand how one school worked with the students´ individual developing plans.The results showed that the school did not use the plans as a tool to develop the education for each and every child, since the plans didn´t affect the tuition.The headmaster did not include the special needs teacher in the responsibility of developing the school.Even though our results showed that the school didn´t use the individual developing plans as a tool for the special educator to develop the school, we still found a possibility for developing the individual educational plans in the capacity of the special needs teacher. The study showed a need of dialogue in which teachers can reflect and problematize their actions and their teaching for the purpose of developing new understanding and new actions in the work with the individual educational plans. We believe that the profession of special needs teacher should supervise these dialogues..

AimThe aim of this essay is to investigate some local curriculum?s interpretation of the upbringing assignment that is expressed in Lpo 94, together with how the physical education teachers in these schools interpret and give expression to this assignment in their teaching. The questions are:? How does the local curriculum interpret the upbringing assignment of the PE teachers?? How does the PE teacher interpret the concept upbringing?? How does the PE teacher work with the upbringing role in their daily teaching?? How does the different experiences regarding to uppbringing and the schools development affect their or the PE teschers? daily teaching?? Is there any difference in the subject teacher?s upbringing role compared to the PE teacher?s?MethodThis study is qualitative and based on four deep individual interviews of teachers, two at the age between 25 and 35, and two at the age of 45 or older. In addition, four local curriculum?s have been investigated with consideration to upbringing.

The purpose of this essay is to identify how the drug user is portrayed in motion pictures. My main questions are: How is the drug use described? How is the male and female drug user depicted? How may the movies contribute to the construction, reproduction and change of gender? The method I use in my research is a qualitative, selective discourse- analysis of a number of movies prominently portraying drug use. A gender perspective is also applied on this paper.The main result of the study is that I have found that the great majority of the analyzed films portray drug use as means for something else. Drug use is often portrayed in the beginning as heavenly but changes to be depicted as problematic.

This study sets out to research the effects of perceptions regarding teacher education as well as the teacher profession in general amongst college students studying to become teachers. The aim of the study is to get a better understanding in what perceptions that constitutes the foundation of the aspects that may affect the students of education by interviewing students about how they perceive their education. The study relies on a sociocultural perspective to analyze the data as well as justify the relevance of the study. The method for researching this will consist mainly of interviews and literature studies. Four students of education, where two are Swedish and two are Finnish, will act as the main source of empiric information.

This paper aims to examine how the beginning of newly examined teacher?s professional life might look like and also highlight the obstacles that might occur during the induction, the time during which the student becomes the teacher. The paper also discusses what support that is available for newly examined teachers in schools concerning the possibility to have a mentor and a period of introduction.A qualitative method was used for this study and interviews were made with new teachers who shared their experiences from the beginning of their careers. The results from the interviews were also discussed from the points of view of the study?s theories concerning different leadership styles.Two handbooks for new teachers, aiming to support them in their new professional role were compared.

In today´s labour market, men and women are segregated, both vertically and horizontally. Exceptions to the rule of gender segregation are few. There is, however, one managerial group where women and men are equal in numbers: school principals. In a short period of time, the distribution in terms of sex among principals in Sweden has changed dramatically. How does gender equality in numbers affect gender equality in a qualitative sense? That is the focus of this thesis.