This report is a qualitative study on children aged three to five years who are in the Swedish preschool. The purpose of the study is to investigate how five experienced preschool teachers view the way children between three and five years acquire basic mathematical concepts, basic numeracy and geometry. The aim is also to find out whether teachers feel that the size of the group of children affects their learning.The study contains information about what preschool teachers think about the way children learn mathematics and how the size of the group of children affects this learning. From the results it can be seen that children learn Mathematics, both in everyday situations and when playing. Moreover, the group size does not seem to affect the mathematical learning of the child.

This study was designed to describe and understand how children perceive and explain mathematical situations. During our work based training we have met several students who have been insecure in the subject of mathematics and therefore come to think that it's difficult and boring. The questions we have asked ourselves are why and how this insecurity occurs. In preschools around the country teachers actively worked to create opportunities for children to meet and discover mathematics. The question is whether the teachers are aware of how children perceive mathematics and how children think in mathematical situations. We chose to conduct a qualitative study using different methods of data collecting in order to approach the children's world.

Our main reason for this master thesis is to find out how librarians get knowledge and understanding about people with disabilities in order to make the library more accessible. Our aim is to study the so-called 4 x 4 education which is an education about accessibility to and within cultural institutions and find out if a specific education is helpful to librarians in this matter. We also discuss what librarians themselves find desirable in an education of this type. Socio-cultural perspective is our choice as background theory. The socio-cultural perspective states that learning depends on social activity and social interaction.

The students are usually eager to develop their mathematical learning. However, the Skolverket can see that this eagerness passes in the early years of school. A study shows that a varied mathematical education creates enthusiasm to learn, which can decrease the negative view of mathematics.The purpose of this study is to see how five pedagogues use laboratory mathematics, their approaches to laboratory mathematics as well as to find out their role in the laboratory education. The result of the study is based on interviews with the pedagogues, who are all teachers for students in year F-3. All of the pedagogues work in a laboratory way, but to different extents.The study shows that the pedagogues aim to make the mathematics as concrete and everyday as possible.

In this study, the aim is to show how the social services fails to implement a specific rights law (LSS) wich is supposed to have the function of protecting the wellfare and provide specific rights to people with severe mental disabilities. By applying chritical theory on this case the aim is to provide an alternative answer on why it is possible for the social services to ignore these peoples rights.By revealing the power structures in the encounter between the system and a person with mental dissablilities, I conclude that people with mental disabilities does not fit in when it comes the social sevices way of implementing the law and further more that a private person is extreamly exposed to the systems arbitrariness..

Syftet med denna studie är att undesöka vilket matematiskt innehåll förskollärare synliggör vid användning av bilderboken Lilla nollan och dom andra. För att besvara studiens frågeställningar har både observationer och kvalitativa intervjuer använts. Två förskollärare från en förskola valdes ut. Barnen som deltog vid observationerna var 4-5 år gamla. Resultatet visar att förskollärarna synliggör ett brett matematiskt innehåll i den ovannämnda bilderboken.

The aim of my study is to investigate how last year students in upper secondary schoolunderstand certain mathematical concepts, in particular the unit circle and its trigonometry.I have used intentional analysis to interpret student?s actions when they solve certain tasks onthe basis of a cognitive, situated and cultural context.Interviews with four university teachers in mathematics about the unit circle, trigonometry,and mathematical understanding, serve both as background for the study and as basis for adiscussion, where I relate students understanding to what the teachers want new students toknow about these concepts when they begin university studies in mathematics.The students were arranged in three groups with three students in each group. Each group waspresented with two tasks, one in which they were asked to calculate the cosine values for onepointed, one blunt and one straight angle, each located in a separate triangle. They were alsoasked to decide whether the points (0,71; 0,71) and d (1 2 , 3 2 ) are located on the unit circleor not.My conclusion is that students mainly have an operational conception of the unit circle andtrigonometry. The lack of structural conceptions result in difficulties in seeing connectionsbetween the concepts in unfamiliar situations.

This study has examined how teachers in primary education with experience of inclusion look on inclusive education. The study was based on the concept of inclusion and how it is made possible in primary school. The study was conducted using semi-structured qualitative life-world interviews with three teachers in primary education with included pupils with learning disabilities in their class. The results show the complexity of having a pupil with learning disabilities in class. To interpret, follow and then assess under two syllabuses are seen as difficult.

The purpose of the study was to examine if parents' way ofcommunicating with their children changed after participation in ComAlongcommunicationcourse, and if changes remained over time. The studyinvolved 39 parents of 25 children with communicative disabilities. 33 of theparents had participated in ComAlong, the other six had not participated, buthad a partner who had participated in the course. Video recorded parentchildinteraction was analyzed and coded with the instrumentKOMMUNIKATIV. Results showed that parents used a significantly moreresponsive communication style and used significantly more augmentativeand alternative communication after ComAlong.

Thanks to I have got to explore different teaching ways around the problem solving in a year 3, in a multicultural school which is located south of Stockholm, I have been able to answer my question at issue in my degree work. My question at issue on this investigation and the purpose with my degree work was to explore different teaching ways that promotes pupils with another mother tongue than Swedish, to develop reading comprehension and to get a better understanding of mathematical concepts in problem solving tasks. On this investigation have I chosen to teach these pupils to explore, reach and gain a deeper understanding of what teaching about problem solving promotes these pupils. I have when it concerns choice of method and material collections assumed from a qualitative investigation and gathered the material with help from participation notices and interviews. I have in my investigation reached the conclusion that those pupils with another mother tongue than Swedish developed reading comprehension and got a better understanding of mathematical concepts in problem solving tasks by being taught in a creative and varied teaching. A creative and varied teaching as I taught those pupils in contained:the pupils had to work with living-related problem tasksthe pupils had to work in pairs to resolve problem solvingthe pupils had to work in larger groups to resolve problem solvingthe pupils had to work in a creative way, by writing and drawing pictures and do their own mathematical fairy tale in problem solvingthe pupils had to work with manipulatives to resolve problem solving in half classes..

The purpose of this thesis was to examine teachers? perception of communication in the Mathematics lesson. I wanted to find out how teachers look at communication as a didactic manner and how they view their role in encouraging communication and discussion during the Mathematics lesson and what communication can contribute to students? learning in Mathematics, according to their beliefs. I have chosen a qualitative approach; I have interviewed six Mathematics teachers working in three different schools.

Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka undervisning och lärande under en matematiklektion som präglas av traditionell skolmatematik. Metoden för undersökningen var en deltagande observation av en matematiklektion i åk 3 på gymnasiet. Med hjälp av begreppen matematikens lärandeobjekt, matematiska resurser, eleven som lärande aktör och sociomatematiska normer har jag tolkat de resultat som genererats från observationen. Två slutsatser som kan dras av undersökningen är att eleverna stimuleras till att bli oberoende lärande aktörer i undervisningen av traditionell skolmatematik samt att det i första hand är läraren som synliggör potentiella matematiska resurser för eleverna. Medvetenheten om elevernas användande av matematiska resurser skulle kunna påverka elevernas lärande genom att läraren synliggör matematiska resurser på ett mer medvetet sätt..

According to the National Agency for Education 06-06-2010 are approximately 115 000 students graduating from Secondary School in the year of 2010.Out of these students, we know that thousands of them are hampered by reading and writing disabilities in various degrees. Have these students been given the best support needed when it comes to writing and reading?Compensation may be perceived as a goal for the pupil to catch up with the rest of the educational group or as a vehicle to go round the difficulties. In Sweden, diagnosed dyslexics are not allowed to use speech synthesis, a compensatory technical aid, during the 9th degree national tests.This study?s purpose is to discover if the usage of speech synthesis during the national test of Swedish and reading comprehension might work as a motivation booster for the students and consequently increase their test scores.This is a quantitative study including study including 15 pupils with diagnosed reading and writing disabilities.

International reading comprehension studies, like PIRLS and PISA, state that the reading comprehension of Swedish students has decreased significantly since 2000. As a consequence, the National Agency of Education has made reading comprehension teaching a prioritised field in terms of further education for teachers. There has also been a change in Lgr 11, the national curriculum for compulsory school, where it is stated that teaching in reading strategies shall be a part of the central content throughout compulsory school. When the pupils reach upper secondary school level, reading comprehension education is no longer a part of the curriculum. Today, students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities currently share the same curriculum as the ordinary upper secondary school.

People with certain types of disabilities have the legal right to ask for an individual plan. The idea is that the plan should be a tool for the disabled to get more power and influence over the planned actions that involves their lives. The aim of this thesis was to study the individual circumstances of interpersonal power and influence in the work of individual plans. The study was done with a qualitative approach, where three executing officers and three individuals were interviewed. The results show that the conditions for the individual?s influence are far more complicated than at first glance.