This degree project shows how four language teachers teach foreign languages with focus oncommunicative competence, and how their vision of teaching correspond to their reality in the classroom. How do they motivate the students in class and are the conditions good enough tohelp the teachers reach the national goals? A teacher?s vision is formed by his or her education and experiences. However, there are a number of factors which can help or hinder a teacher to reach his or her ideal teaching. Among these factors are the curriculum, the preknowledgeof the students and available technical resources.

Title: How do you get a pupil from Year 7-9 in secondary school to communicate in German?  Five high school teachers views on how to develop pupils oral communicative skill within the German language The aim of this essay is to explore Swedish secondary school teachers, from Year 7-9 in the German language, opinions regarding which work models and verbal strategies that are used and taught in order to foster the pupils oral communicative skill in the classroom. To achieve this aim, semi-structured interviews with five teachers are used.The results show that the teachers find that they encourage the pupils to speak German through creating possibilities for them to practise their oral language skills. The teachers also emphasize that they believe that alternating assignments in groups or pairs, where the students get the chance to be creative, activates the pupils to speak German the most. They also express an awareness for the fact that open or information questions encourage the pupils to use their creativity and speak more German.

The essay is an evaluative study of student democracy in the Swedish high school, its departure point being the 1994 national curriculum for the voluntary school forms (Lpf 94). We adopted an interview method, the survey units consisting in a number of high school teachers. The analysis has two principal theoretical departure points, involving democracy theory and implementation analysis, respectively. The former is utilized to help identifying what sort of democracy permeates the governing document and high school daily life, the latter to explain actual outcomes.The study concludes that the 94 curriculum is characterized by a strong democracy with emphasis on participatory democratic processes, whereas in practice there is a thin democracy in both classroom and formal student government contexts. Representative processes are given plenty of room although few attempts at participatory democratic components can be identified.A deeper analysis of the result reveals implementation problems traceable to elements of symbolism in the goals.

Jag har genomfört en undersökning där jag har observerat klassrummets fysiska miljö med fokus på dess möblering och utbud av material. Genom att observera två klassrum har jag försökt få en förståelse för hur klassrummets möblering och utbud av material kan gynna elevers lärande och kunskapsinhämtning. Min undersökning är genomförd utifrån forskningsfrågorna; - Hur är klassrummet möblerat? - Vilket material erbjuds eleverna? - Hur använder sig eleverna av materialet och möbleringen?Jag har utgått från ett interaktionistiskt och ett sociokulturellt perspektiv och använt mig av begreppen aktiviteter, interaktioner och verktyg. Förutom det sociokulturella perspektivet har jag även relaterat och jämfört mina resultat till den forskning som tidigare har gjorts på samma område.Det resultat jag har analyserat och diskuterat kring grundar sig på de fältanteckningar jag skrev i samband med observationen samt fotografier från klassrummen.

Policy document conversion in practice ? a qualitative study of five upper grade teachers approach to the 2011 policy documents in history.This essay examines five upper grade teachers approach to the new 2011 policy documents in the history school subject, as well as it?s impact on the teachers class room activities. Also, the study examines what factors have influenced this conversion process. Colleagues, the school management and the Swedish Skolverket (the Swedish school management organisation, controlled by the Swedish government) are in this study the main external influences that are studied. The study is carried out with an organisation theoretical approach, witch states that controlling the schools practical activities is hard, taking in to account a great variety of ?problems? that follow a teachers every day work.

The purpose of this study is to compare different ways to teach mathematics in the school's lower age groups, and to examine whether certain practices increase students' desire and motivation to learn the subject. The questions used to determine the purpose is the following: What vision has the students in the class at maths? How does the teaching of mathematics in the class look like?What vision has the students in the class at working with different approaches in education?Does the traditional approach  and the options that I am examining meet the steering documents requirements?  The essay is organized as a qualitative study. The study was conducted in an elementary school in Sweden, third grade. The methods used included interviews with students and observations in the classroom.

The purpose of this text is to show how social class is (re)produced and created in the short stories?Draksådd? byMaria Sandel and Ivar Lo Johanssons ?Nya tänder? from Statarna I and to point out ways that the short storiesmay be useful from an Educational Perspective. Maria Sandel was the first (recognized) female author to writein the genre of Working-Class Literature in Sweden and Ivar Lo-Johansson is a recognized authorship who ismost famous for his novels portraying Statarna. The analysis focuses on how the teeth motif is portrayed in theshort stories. My analysis proves how the teeth motif is important in portraying the construction of class.

AimThe main aim of this study was to find out how teachers reflect on their work with developing pupils? interest towards mathematics in grade nine. As a teacher in mathematics, it is important to be aware of different views on interest towards mathematics and how it is possible to work in that direction. Since developing interest towards mathematics is written the in syllabus as criteria for teaching mathematics in grade nine, it is important to know and take an active role in finding ways to approach the issue.Main issues? How do teachers in grade nine reflect over their work with development of interest towards mathematics?? How are teachers? Beliefs Systems reflected in their work with interest?MethodThe main focus of this study was teachers? perspective on their own work on developing interest towards mathematics.

With examples from a single classroom situation, several educational moments show what goes on between the teacher and the student. The teacher?s responsibility in the learning process is, with a gesture frozen in the air of the moment, to lead and follow the student in her tentative efforts at seeking knowledge. Initially, it is an attempt to shed light upon the "not yet seen" with a certainty that the student herself possesses the capacity and the aptitude to reach greater insight and clarity in her understanding. The Validation/Feil Method presented in this instructional situation illustrates how best to communicate with elderly people suffering from Alzheimer?s dementia.

Individual adaption to the student´s needs is a recurring main theme in the new Swedish curriculum (Lgr11). The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine how teachers work with individual adjustment for students with reading and writing difficulties. The study was based on five questions;In what way do teachers organize their teaching in the classroom individually for students with reading and writing difficulties?What methods do they use for student´s with reading and writing difficulties?What difficulties do they encounter in their teaching?How do the teachers reason to curriculum goals regarding individual adaptions?How do they think about their own knowledge regarding reading- and writing difficulties and dyslexia?The method for my study was qualitative interviews. Five teachers were interviewed in semi-structured interviews.

According to the national curriculum guidelines for elementary school, preschool and after-school 2011, (i.e. Lgr11), the Swedish school is based on a democratic foundation. Schools should prepare students to develop an understanding and acceptance of cultural diversity not only in the society as a whole but also how this should be reflected in the morals and ethics between us. The purpose of this study was to describe how teachers in multicultural schools perceptions and experiences on teaching pupils with diverse immigrant origin, and how they apply these cultural expression in practice.In particular, I focus on four teachers in multicultural schools and how they reason about applying cultural expressions that are transmitted at these schools and by them. Explicitly, I review how from policy documents and their own personal pedagogic are reflected in the actual teaching.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to contribute to the understanding of high school teachers information seeking behaviour in the transition from university studies to occupational practice. The theoretical framework encompasses theories of professional socialization, the sociology of knowledge, of professions, and of library and information science. The empirical material has been collected through interviews with six recently qualified high school teachers in different subjects. The interviews have been analysed on two different levels; first on a descriptive level and then on a theoretical level. The major findings are that the academic context limited the student teachers information seeking and they did not have the opportunity to choose cognitive authorities on their own initiative.

The purpose of this degree project is to clarify how five Kenyan Life Skills teachers discuss about hiv and aids education. Furthermore, to reveal whether the validity claims in their verbal communication refers to facts, morality or personal experiences. This, I will study by examine the teachers knowledge of, and attitudes towards, the disease. The teaching methods they are using and the basis of their validity claims. I have chosen to use semi-structured interviews as method and the theoretical framework is based on Jürgen Habermas theory of universal pragmatics.My result shows that there is a dilemma about whether the respondents knowledge is sufficient or insufficient.

For a long period of time there have been discussions about the need to modernize, to keep up with the changes in our society. The schools as a result have to keep up and adapt in order for the education to be up-to-date. This includes the technological developments. Many steps have been taken and mighty sums have been invested in order to keep up the pace ? but are there any consequences from these kinds of investments? In this report I?m going to take a closer look on a recent addition to this phenomenon that were installed by means of a top-down approach and study the teachers and how they have adapted and view the change in their environment ? namely the newly installed interactive writing-boards.The questions I will study include how the teachers express their view about the installation of the interactive writing-boards.

In today?s individualistic society, I experience a need to bring forward the importance of collaboration. From a sociocultural perspective, I have chosen to highlight the positive and negative aspects of collaborative learning, with the intention of illustrating the effects for the individual learning and development. I have therefore made an interview with an educationalist, who?s been a teacher all her grown up life, with the intent of illustrating her thoughts on collaborative learning.