An increasing number of students leave the Swedish compulsory school without having a satisfactory grade in mathematics. Causes why students risk ending up with difficulties in the subject of mathematics are debated but one explanation might be that more and more students are diagnosed with dyscalculia. The purpose of this study is to investigate how educationalists identify and organize their teaching in order to help students with difficulties in mathematics to reach the schools requirement and long-term goals that are defined in advance. It is vital to detect learning difficulties at an early stage. Accordingly, it can be avoided that the student starts to develop a negative self-image due to repeated failures and in the same time provide relevant help.

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of manipulative materials in mathematics education with the main focus on grades 4 to 6. With the use of a phenomenological approach all the aspects of this phenomenon was examined. Qualitative interviews, participant observations and comparative content analysis of textbooks has been conducted to investigate the use of manipulative materials in mathematics education. The results indicates that the teachers that were interviewed possesses good knowledge of this teaching method. However these teachers struggled to find time to put this method into practice and there was not enough teachers to attend these classes.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att identifiera de argument ochfaktorer som ligger till grund för valet av ett specifiktstandardsystem, hos några utvalda företag. I uppsatsenpresenteras teorier kring de effekter ett standardiserataffärssystem kan ha för påverkan på en verksamhet, samten redogörelse för SIV-metoden. Teorierna som presenterasär till för att ge nödvändiga bakgrundsfakta kringaffärssystem. Den insamlade empirin från respondenternahar resulterat i sju kategorier av argument, till varför deintervjuade företagen valt ett specifikt affärssystem..

The purpose of this essay is to examine when teachers choose to discuss mathematics withstudents rather then just talk about mathematics. A definition where used to distinguish betweenan interaction that is not a discussion and an interaction that is a discussion. This definition hasbeen created by drawing ideas from other works into making a quite simple definition whichtherefore is easy to observe. The discussions are also separated into two different kinds ofdiscussions. The first and most common category of discussion are one where only imitativereasoning is used.

This exam essay will look at dyslexia, dyscalculia and the connections that may exist between these two phenomena. My purpose, from the beginning, was to investigate if there might be any connections between dyslexia and dyscalculia, or if the consequences that appear as a result of dyslexia, might lead to problems and difficulties in mathematics.   I found it very hard to find literature that deal with dyscalculia, both as a subject of its own and together with dyslexia. Therefore, I was more or less forced to focus on difficulties in mathematics as a result from dyslexia.   From what I have found, dyslexia and dyscalculia cannot be connected, at least not without more research on the subject. Two consequences; an impaired short-term memory and also an impaired spatial ability are both common, both for persons with dyslexia and for persons with dyscalculia. Other than these, there are no connections, apart from the difficulties in mathematics that are directly, or indirectly, caused by dyslexia..

The essay initially intends to find adequate models to describe and forecast monthly data for the Swedish Consumer Price Index sub group Clothes and Shoes 1986-2005. The time series observations during 2006 are considered ?out of sample period? which is used to evaluate the forecasts. The purpose is to perform time series decomposition and to investigate and analyzethe seasonal pattern. The Box-Jenkins approach is used to find adequate ARIMA models.

The purpose of the present study is to describe adult second language learners? experiences of mathematics learning from a past and contemporary perspective. What experiences in mathematics do they bring? What does it mean to learn Mathematics through their new language?The study is based on life-world narratives from five second language students with another native language than Swedish. Today they all study at a Swedish folk high school, at upper secondary level and they have previously studied at this level in Mathematics. The result shows that the meeting with the Swedish school and folk high school context is confusing.

Many researches demonstrates that children who deal with matematics in a meaningful context early in their age, will manage a much wider context later in school. The purpose of this work is to highlight the importence of teacher´s view on matematics and how matematics can be visible for the children when they are in a preschool age. Im trying to promote the importance of mathematics wich characterizes much of our society. Highlighting todays nursay?s and the fact that there is plenty of good enviroments for the learning of mathematics.

Swedish students' knowledge of both mathematics and reading comprehension has deteriorated in recent years. Scientists are discussing whether there is a connection between these areas and that the pupils deteriorating math skills may have something to do with their increasingly lower results in terms of reading comprehension. To investigate this possible connection, I conducted a survey among students in ninth grade and have come to the conclusion that the scientists are right: this connection absolutely exist. Students who received a high score on tasks designed to test students' mathematical problem-solving skills, also received high results on the reading comprehension test. And students who received a poor performance on the problem-solving tasks, were also low performers in the reading comprehension test.

This paper describes a factor analysis applied at the data of the European Union structural indicators. These are the official indicators for wealth and economic development in the European Union with main use to evaluate the outcomes of the year 2000 Lisbon goals for making the European Union the world?s strongest economy by 2010. The purpose of the data is to serve for comparing and ?learning by doing?-policies, but have, due to size and format, so far been hard to use for a good compare between member countries.

Ångest inför statistikämnet (Statistics anxiety) försämrar prestationerna och kan få studenter att undvika statistikstudier. Syftet med studien var att undersöka ifall studenter som upplevde ett stödjande klassrumsklimat (Sense of Community) hade mindre statistikångest. Syftet var också att undersöka om det fanns skillnader i upplevd Statistics anxiety och Sense of Community mellan campus- och distansstudenter. En webbenkät besvarades av 13 campusstudenter och 28 distansstudenter i åldrarna 20-51 år (M=29,4). Statistiska analyser visade inget samband mellan de båda begreppen i analys med samtliga studenter, däremot fanns ett positivt samband för studenter i årskurs två.

Abstract__________________________________________________Sara NilssonAnnette OlofssonMatematik ses som tråkigt och svårt? hur kan elevers motivation och självkänsla hanteras?Mathematics is viewed as boring and difficult? how can pupils? motivation and confidence be dealt with?Antal sidor: 42__________________________________________________This report delves into primary school pupils? difficulties in mathematics, with emphasis on their lack of confidence and motivation. By researching literature and Internet sources associated to this issue, an in-depth view of these problems has been illuminated. Two teachers at a Swedish primary school were interviewed, in order to get their perspective of the matter. Questionnaires were sent to two teachers at an English primary school and their responses were returned.

Uppsatsen ämnar ge en indikation om diffusionen av den tjänsteorienterade arkitekturen SOA, idag och dess framtida diffusion. Genom att operationalisera begreppet SOA med hjälp av litteratur har vi kunnat sammanställa en enkät i syfte att utföra en enkätundersökning. Genom det empiriska material vi samlat in har vi kunnat applicera detta i en modell för teknologisk diffusion, i syfte att ge en indikation i form av en graf för diffusionen av SOA. Resultatet visade på en överraskande hög spridning av SOA då sannolikheten för spridningen blev väldigt hög. Vi misstänker att vissa system- och programutvecklingsföretag tror sig ha spridit SOA utan att de gjort det.

This thesis primarily includes a study on whether companies can develop a mathematical activity that supports students' motivation in mathematics. The work was done together with Midroc Electro, a company that pays attention to the difficulty of recruiting and therefore was interested in investigating how the business world would be able to contribute.The thesis can be divided into three stages. The first part comprised by a exploration into research on student motivation regarding mathematics as well as numerous interviews with engineers to see how the research findings did fit with Midroc Electros reality. In these studies it became clear that the student who aims for a profession whose education or work requires math belongs to the group of students who primarily manage their studies in mathematics, that is, those that have the greatest motivation to work hard and complete their studies.Research information and interviews were compared and resulted in the thesis second part, Midroc Challenge. An activity where students primarily came to learn about the engineering profession and secondly how mathematics can be used in the engineering profession.

Ångest inför statistikämnet (Statistics anxiety) försämrar prestationerna och kan få studenter att undvika statistikstudier. Syftet med studien var att undersöka ifall studenter som upplevde ett stödjande klassrumsklimat (Sense of Community) hade mindre statistikångest. Syftet var också att undersöka om det fanns skillnader i upplevd Statistics anxiety och Sense of Community mellan campus- och distansstudenter. En webbenkät besvarades av 13 campusstudenter och 28 distansstudenter i åldrarna 20-51 år (M=29,4). Statistiska analyser visade inget samband mellan de båda begreppen i analys med samtliga studenter, däremot fanns ett positivt samband för studenter i årskurs två.