The teaching of modern foreign languages within Swedish educational system has been a subject of a number of alarming reports in recent years. Several studies have shown that students lack motivation to learn any language but English. Of particular concern is the young males? underachieving and disinterest in foreign languages. In the meantime, a number of international studies and the statistical data from Swedish national agencies of secondary and higher education (Skolverket and Högskoleverket) have indicated that Russian is one of the languages that are favoured by males. The primary goal of my case study was, therefore, to examine students? motivation to learn Russian and their attitudes towards language, community and Russian-speaking people.

The thesis aims to analyze strategic, cultural and structural aspects of Grameen Bank and its micro-credit project, in order to identify key success factors. A case study was performed with an inductive and qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews. The data was collected by field observations and interviews on site in Dhaka, Bangladesh and surrounding areas.The main conclusion is that the critical success factor of Grameen Bank is the relationship focus, guiding and aligning its strategy, culture and structure. Also, local offices have been observed to utilize practices not permitted by the bank?s management, ultimately increasing the organizational efficiency..

Denna studies syfte är att belysa hur engelsklärare i Norrbotten och främst i Luleå kommun väljer läromedel till sin undervisning i lågstadiet och vilka kriterier de använder sig av för att göra detta. För att besvara detta användes en blandning av kvalitativa forskningsintervjuer och kvantitativ analysmetod med totalt fem intervjuer och 45 enkätsvar. Resultatet visar att de flesta lärare inte använder den traditionella läroboken utan använder sig av egenhändigt producerat material och material lånat från internet, samt sådant de lånar från varandra. Resultatet visar även att de flesta lärare är medvetna om kopplingen mellan läromedel och läroplanen. De slutsatser som kan dras av detta är att det faktiskt finns kriterier för valet av läromedel, men att alla inte använder sig av samma..

Background: Sweden is a country where vitamin D deficiency seems to be common, partly because of its geographical position, which reduces the availability of UVB radiation, but also that people avoid sunlight due to increased skin cancer risk. Research shows that vitamin D plays an important role in the prevention of many diseases such as cancer as well as autoimmune and neuropsychiatric diseases.Vitamin D is a fat soluble pre-hormone and a collective name for closely related compounds which act as hormones after undergoing a transformation in the body.Humans can utilize vitamin D through diet and produce it in the body by exposing the skin to the sun. Previous observational studies and epidemiological studies have established a hypothesis that there seems to be an association between vitamin D supplementation and reduction of depressive symptoms.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate if vitamin D supplements may decrease depressive symptoms.Methods: This work is organized as a literature review and article search is made in the database PubMed in January 2012. Keywords used were ?vitamin D and depression? and inclusion criteria were: randomized clinical trials, be conducted on humans, written in English.

Unwanted vegetation on the land of electric transforming stations is a problem, in the sense that it contributes to higher fire risks and also constitutes an obstacle for people performing maintenance operations at the station. Such unwanted vegetation is controlled using herbicides and mechanical measures. Since the use of herbicides implies environmental hazards, there is a need to find alternative ways of fighting the unwanted vegetation. Investigation into suitable plants for ground cover, trials in the greenhouse, trials in the field, soil analyses and compilation of experiences from similar trials are parts of this work. The paper also contains analyses of possible environmental benefits and economical gains. There is also a final discussion of some proposals regarding alternative weed controlling methods.

The focus of this two year master?s thesis in Library- and Information science is the study of two Swedish Public Library buildings with the examples Lomma and Halmstad. The main goal and purpose of the thesis is to try to uncover which views and values of the public library are expressed in the examined libraries; and to what extent these views manifests are shown in its architecture.The theoretical framework is based on Raymond Williams?s cultural concepts of effective, dominant culture and the two extremities of this culture, called residual and emergent cultures. A second aspect is Yi-Fu Tuans concepts of Space and Place.

The aim of this essay is to describe the historical development of the intercultural teacher training program at Södertörn University in Stockholm. I have also examined how the intercultural teacher training program was started, how and why it became intercultural and how the people in charge of the development of the teacher training program discussed intercultural science. The teacher training program has been an active part of Södertörn University since 1998, but it became intercultural in 2002. I have studied these questions through documents from the Södertörn University archives and literature by the funders of the education. The study shows that the university profile, ambitions and motives have been a key factor in the decision to make the teacher training program at Södertörn a multi-cultural one..

The purpose of this essay is to study uses of history in a complementary teaching material in the subject of history. The material in question is a 170 page book titled Hitler och Stalin- En bok om ondska. In English, ?Hitler and Stalin- A book on evil?. Essential to the study is that it is expressed within the material that it might be used as the basis for a discussion of the threats against an open democratic society.

The teaching of modern foreign languages within Swedish educational system has been a subject of a number of alarming reports in recent years. Several studies have shown that students lack motivation to learn any language but English. Of particular concern is the young males? underachieving and disinterest in foreign languages. In the meantime, a number of international studies and the statistical data from Swedish national agencies of secondary and higher education (Skolverket and Högskoleverket) have indicated that Russian is one of the languages that are favoured by males. The primary goal of my case study was, therefore, to examine students? motivation to learn Russian and their attitudes towards language, community and Russian-speaking people.

This thesis deals with tactics for information seeking in electronic databases. An important aspect is knowledge of the relative value of different subject access points. The method used here is literature studies. Nineteen empirical studies are described and analysed with the purpose to compare the relative value of different subject access points. The studies examined compare the relative value of subject access points in relation to each other or in relation to different scientific disciplines.

AbstractHuvudfrågeställningen för uppsatsen är hur invandrarungdomar upplever och hanterar sin livssituation i de två kulturella världar de eventuellt lever i, den ursprungliga och den svenska kulturen? Undersökningen är utförd kvalitativt och baseras på fem intervjuer. De intervjuade har haft sin primära socialisation i hemlandet och under tidig ålder flyttat till Sverige. Teoretiskt utgår uppsatsen från Berger & Luckman, Jenkins, Ålund och Deniz vilka med sina skilda teorier förklarar varför identitetsprocessen och tillhörigheten är komplexfyllda för invandrarungdomar. Tidigare forskning har visat att invandrarungdomar upplever skilda problem i sin vardag därför att de lever i utkanten av två skilda kulturer.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between urban transformation and the occupation movement in Sweden, aiming to identify the movement's characteristics and comprehend its changes over time. By analyzing qualitative material collected from occupants active within a span from the 1980 to the present, we examine how the occupation movement has evolved. We investigate the motivations behind the movement, the lifestyle of occupants, and their potential gains to get a better understanding of the culture. We explore the prefigurative politics of the resistance where occupant activists create alternative lifestyles aligned with their desired future, bypassing the wait for broader societal changes. Finally we inquire the current possibilities of creating and defending meaningful urban spaces and social scenes..

The main purpose of this examination paper has been to do a review of recent scientific and evaluated studies performed on children 0-15 years of age, treated with an animal as an assistant to the therapist/professional. The key term is Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT). Our focus has been to describe in what fields these kinds of studies have been performed, what the results are and how effective they have been. As a supplement to our study we have performed 8 short telephone interviews with professionals in the same field of occupation corresponding to the studies we have summarized. Our results concerning the studies show that there has been a positive outcome in the treatment of children and adolescents and AAT.

The daily newspaper market in Sweden has been a mighty strong media market, except for major market crisis which occurred in the 1990s in Sweden, that led to several newspapers came into an economic crisis. One of the actions that many Swedish newspapers did was to reduce the physical size of the newspaper from broadsheet to tabloid. After studying several academical studies from scientists and students who claim and show in their results that the tabloid tendencies has spread out in the editorial content I discovered that the common thing for these studies where firstly, that there were not many studies that showed the tabloid tendencies of the editorial content in a longer historical perspective, secondly that the studies jointly studied tabloidization tendencies (how the editorial content changed from writing about hard news to write about soft news) in the editorial content of newspapers that have changed the physical format size. The material that was analysed was tabloid tendencies in news articles in two daily Swedish newspapers, Jönköping-Posten (broadsheet) and Aftonbladet (tabloid) in the years 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The goal was to see if or how much of the editorial content of news articles that changed over time by tabloid tendencies in individual daily newspaper as well as a comparison of the various newspaper formats.This lead to the purpose of this master study:To investigate if it exists tabloid tendencies in the editorial content of news articles in the Swedish newspapers Aftonbladet and Jönköping-Posten between the 1950s to 1990s.In addition this purpose was operationalized from theories of tabloidization, the main theories that are used in this master study is developed by the researchers Shelly McLachlan and Peter Golding and their definition for tabloidization range, form and style.The best tool to analyse the material that have been gathered was to use of quantitative content analysis.

Domestic weekly magazines in Sweden are characterized by an emphasis on practical editorial material such as cooking recipes and knitting patterns, and also contain a comparatively large share of reader material. This makes it possible to study the readers through texts produced by themselves. The aim of this study of columns of readers' tips on domestic work is to analyze how readers embody a specific femininity centered around the woman as responsible for the home, in the sense of everyday maintenance as well as aesthetic development. The author defines this femininity as "home maker". The theoretical framework for the analysis is the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and Jonathan Potter's and Margaret Wetherell's model of interpretive repertoire is also used where modality is discussed.