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.

The aim of this study is to investigate into the use of discussions in the classroom to help the pupils develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts and operations. The empirical data contain interviews with two teachers and observations from their lessons. The purpose of the interviews was to find out what importance the teachers ascribed to the ability of their pupils to talk about mathematics, and how they organised their classes to encourage mathematical discussions. With the observations, I was able to see the interaction in the classroom and hear discussions between the teacher and the pupils, as well as between the pupils themselves.The interviewed teachers proved to share my own belief in the results of researchers like Malmer (1999) and Löwing (2006) about the importance of verbal discussion, argumentation and reflection during mathematics classes. But convictions derived from the research of others are one thing, the practical application of the wisdom in the classroom another.

Recently I discovered that preschool education has evolved from integration of various subject contents and working methods. The purpose of my study is to investigate preschool teachers' attitudes and ways of working with a theme-oriented approach. I also want to examine their opinions regarding the integration of subject content in terms of mathematics and science subjects (NO) in preschools theme-oriented work approach.My questions for this study are:What is a preschool teacher's attitude and their ways of working to a thematic-oriented approach?What is a preschool teacher's opinions regarding the integration of subject content, especially in mathematics and science subjects (NO) in their pre-schools theme-oriented work approach?I have used myself a qualitative method of investigation to produce materials for my research project. I collected my empirical material for my study from the semi-structured interviews that was done with four preschool teachers in two preschools in Botkyrka municipality.

The aim with this thesis was to acquire an understanding for how individuals handle the feeling of shame in connection with cultural consumption. In order to capture the feeling of shame we developed an interview method called the Backstabber interview technique. We found that the Backstabber interview technique successfully triggered feelings of shame in connection to cultural consumption, which made it possible for us to study the handling of shame. We found that our respondents tended to use different forms of accounts in order to handle the feeling of shame. We categorized them into five accounts with relating sub-accounts.

Aims: Patient associations have been around for some time and research has shown that such associations can influence society, politics and how diagnoses are thought of. This study is a comparative analysis of two patient associations in Sweden. The first association called Attention represents people diagnosed with neuropsychiatric disorders such as ADHD. The other association called RSMH represents people diagnosed with mental illness such as depression. The aim of this study is to explore the social and political agenda of these associations and to explain their relation to biological, psychological and social models of explanation.Method and theory: The method used was a qualitative document analysis using documents produced by the associations themselves as well as documents from media and politics.

SvenskaDetta är en kvalitativ studie som är baserad på semistrukturerade intervjuer. Syftet med detta arbete är att ta reda på hur två matematiklärare och en specialpedagog ser på/beskriver matematik­svårigheter och hur de arbetar med elevernas matematiksvårigheter som de upp­täcker hos sina elever. Jag är väldigt intresserad av att höra vilka matematik­svårigheter och orsaker till matematiksvårigheter lärarna ser hos sina elever samt lära mig hur skolan och lärarna jobbar med dessa svårigheter hos eleverna. Samtliga informanter hade samma svar på mina forskningsfrågor. I resultaten av hela min studie har jag kommit fram till att orsaker till elevernas matematiksvårigheter bland annat är: dåliga baskunskaper, låga baskunskaper förståelse av positionssystem samt begrepp.

AstraZeneca in Mölndal (AZRDM) uses beagles bred at Rååhöjdens kennel in Örkelljunga for their research purposes. The staff wishes to have mentally stable dogs to work with, sine stress can effect the research results. The purpose of this study was to put together the testresults from dogs delivered 2003 and 2004, to see if there is a connection between delivery age and testresult. We have also worked out a method to test if early planned handling of the dogs makes a difference on how the dogs later respond in a testsituation, and tried this method in a pilotstudy. The data that we have based our calculations on is 172 dogs, divided into 108 males and 64 females. We found a significant connection between the age at delivery and the testresult in contactability for female dogs delivered in 2003, where increasing age led to decreasing grades in the test at AZRDM. When looking at the difference in testresults between test number two at the kennel and the test at AZRDM we found a significant connection for female dogs delivered during 2003, ie the difference takes on a more negative value with increasing age at delivery. We found a difference between the two sexes in our calculations.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the base of sociology from an existentialistic perspective. The discussion takes it's position in the debate on the crisis of sociology, and aligns with Alvin Gouldner's understanding of the crisis. Gouldner believed that the crisis of sociology was mirrored in a sociological method that failed to describe the social reality that it meant to describe; a lack in self-criticism and self-reflexivity, a lack in self-containment in relation to state interests and a lack in moral engagement. This raises a number of questions, which I discuss in the essay. What is the role of sociology in our society? How shall we form a method that responds to the social reality that we sociologists aim to describe? How can we make sociology more moral?Existentialism offers a starting point to describe these questions.

This paper aims to investigate abnormal returns for rivals to bidder targets in connection with the announcement of the bid. The study is based on 38 bids placed between September 2006 - January 2011 and 137 rival firms listed on Nasdaq OMX Nordic. We measure cumulative abnormal returns, CAR, for rival firms through an event study. We find that rival firms earn significant positive CAR in connection with the announcement of the bid. This is in line with the two-sided signaling effect presented by Akhigbe et al.

This paper is based on a study of the Christian religious school. In Sweden today, surveys have shown that there is a common fear and negative attitude towards Christian religious schools. Despite this fact these schools increase in numbers, which makes it relevant to investigate what reasons the parents base their decision on when making Christian religious schools their school of choice for their children. The formulation of the question in this paper is therefore based on why the parents choose to place their children in a Christian religious school. Previous research on this topic is very scarce and poor, which makes it a relevant topic to investigate more thoroughly.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like.

The purpose of this study is to create an understanding of how a company selling commodity products works to create interest and loyalty among customers and how to stand out relative to competition. Based upon present theories within marketing communication, a comparison is made with actual market information to understand how well the theory can predict reality. The study is applied to the dairy industry with the company Valio as the bench mark. In total four persons have been interviewed, marketing manager and category manager at Valio Sweden, and also project manager and art director from their advertising agency. The qualitative data obtained has been compared to predications given by theory.

I vilken grad ett barn är fonologiskt medvetet är i många fall avgörande för hur barnets läsinlärning kommer att fortlöpa, varför det är av stor vikt att redan tidigt arbeta för att stärka den fonologiska medvetenheten. En tillfredsställande läsförmåga är central för inlärningen även i andra skolämnen än svenska. Forskning har på senare tid visat att det finns ett tydligt samband mellan läs- och skrivsvårigheter och svårigheter i matematik. I denna studie undersöks huruvida det finns någon koppling mellan tidiga fonologiska svårigheter och matematiksvårigheter två år senare hos en grupp elever. Med kvantitativa metoder och genom analyser av bedömningar i olika diagnos- och kartläggningsmaterial har ett resultat kunnat presenteras som visar att majoriteten av de elever som i förskoleklassen uppvisade tecken på fonologiska svårigheter även hade matematiksvårigheter i år 2.

 In his book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982) Saul Kripke claims that Wittgenstein argues for a certain form of scepticism in his book Philosophical Investigations (1953), namely a new form of philosophical scepticism, a result of Wittgenstein´s idea of language as language games. Nihilism, scepticism of meaning or of concept, constitutive scepticism are other commentators´ different names of the same phenomenon. The philosophy of Wittgenstein accounts for how our words, including the words of mathematics, have no meaning and there are no a priori justified objective facts as to what I mean about a word. We follow the rules blindly and without justification. We are unable to find any facts against this proposal.

SvenskaDetta är en kvalitativ studie som är baserad på semistrukturerade intervjuer. Syftet med detta arbete är att ta reda på hur två matematiklärare och en specialpedagog ser på/beskriver matematik­svårigheter och hur de arbetar med elevernas matematiksvårigheter som de upp­täcker hos sina elever. Jag är väldigt intresserad av att höra vilka matematik­svårigheter och orsaker till matematiksvårigheter lärarna ser hos sina elever samt lära mig hur skolan och lärarna jobbar med dessa svårigheter hos eleverna. Samtliga informanter hade samma svar på mina forskningsfrågor. I resultaten av hela min studie har jag kommit fram till att orsaker till elevernas matematiksvårigheter bland annat är: dåliga baskunskaper, låga baskunskaper förståelse av positionssystem samt begrepp.