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.

This research shows and analyses how pupils in ninth grade in the nine-year compulsory school look at being multilingual, at the Swedish language and at Swedish as a second language. I also want to know if language and culture knowledge are taken care of in school as it says in official documents for the Swedish school and as it also is desired in an intercultural education. For my research I do eight interviews in a suburb school south of Stockholm.My work includes a limited account for the current research about being multilingual, Swedish as a second language and about the close relationship between language and culture. The applied theory is a social constructivist theory which in short can be explained like that we construct social structures that have consequences on the individual as well as on the society.I show in my research how the view of the world around the pupils influences their view on their languages, their school and their neighbourhood. I also draw conclusions from my interviews that language knowledge is little appreciated in school and that Swedish as a second language has a low status..

The following essay describes a study made in Sweden in the autumn of 2010 at Södertörn University. The main purpose with this study is to find out and describe how people´s own understanding of being multilingual has influenced them. The objective behind this is to create a wider understanding for the phenomena. Therefore, the phenomenological perspective is used to describe the subjective reflection of a phenomena, in this case multilingualism. A qualitative method is being used for data gathering, implying conversational interviews with six multilingual people born in the 1970s and 1980s.The results show that the people interviewed mostly use their mother tongue in conversations with their parents and relatives today.

The Swedish curriculum points out mathematical communication as one of the importantabilities that students need to develop. Previous studies show that students have not been given the right conditions to develop this ability sufficiently. The purpose of this study is to investigate how some Swedish teachers interpret mathematical communication and how the work with this takes place in their classrooms.The investigation consists of qualitative interviews with six teachers in the grades of Fk-3. The interviews have been focused around the teacher's interpretation regarding mathematical communication, how this is reflected in their work in the classroom and also if they see any advantages or difficulties in working with mathematical communication with their pupils.The result of the study shows that the teachers are well aware of the importance of communication and they have a will and an intention to let the pupils communicate mathematically. Mathematical communication is emphasized mainly as important for the pupil's learning and understanding.

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..

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.

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.

AbstractThe Swedish society has always been monolingual, but has for the past decades transformed into a multicultural and multilingual society. The aim of this study is to investigate if and in that case how preschool teachers work with language development in bilingual and multicultural preschools. The concept of linguistic and cultural diversity includes several different components, not least the social interactions that are of great importance to every individual's development, learning and participation in the world. By understanding the importance of language, language development and the role of mother tongue in second language acquisition, we look into various researches done concerning the effects of the preschool teachers? opinions, methods used to language developmental primarily for children who are multilingual and how the physical environment is shaped to promote language in multicultural and multilingual preschools.The method used in this study is semi-structured interviews with preschool teacher working in multicultural or bilingual preschool settings.

In today?s´ multicultural society increasing numbers of school librarians are faced with a relatively new target group of pupils. This group is linguistically less homogenous than previously and this requires modern adaptations of pedagogic methods.Information literacy and reading promotion are two important topics that school librarians work with. Information literacy is essential for problem based tuition and to increase it requires a well developed language. This study is focusing of the school librarians work with reading promotions.

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.

The objective of this research is to unveil how respective teacher consider about the laboratory working methods in mathematics. The research even includes answers to questions such as, what approaches and attitudes the teachers have and the methods they use when instructing their students when teaching mathematics, what the materials used by the teachers are and how important working creatively is to help the students develop their logical thinking. I also looked into issues that can help understand how and why teachers use laboratory mathematics for students in young ages. As a conclusion the research showed that the teachers aim to the goal that includes helping the students understand mathematics, strengthen their logical thinking and creativity.In the method section qualitative data was used, which contained four interviews with different pedagogues that daily interact with students in elementary school. The reasons for using the method of qualitative data was to help me deeper understand and answer the specific questions I had to the pedagogues and to even compare how different pedagogues differ in their approaches and methods.

This study is about which opinion active teachers are having when it comes to integrate religious traditions and ceremonies in their teaching. The aim is to study the religious traditional ceremonies part and how they are being defined in the Swedish classrooms in primary school. Together with literature, research and the discussion in this study, I came up to a few conclusions of how religious ceremonies will be integrated and how it looks like in Swedish classrooms. In this study of literature and research overview, the literatures are intended to provide an insight about how the Swedish school system went from a Christian education to a school that was separate from the church. In the chapter called Literature and research overview the literatures are written by scientists and therefore this chapter is based on research.

The purpose of this study was to see how the teacher works with children´s language and what working methods they use to develop language, as well as knowledge, among the children in a multilingual school.The main questions for the essay:? What reasons the interviewed teachers about language development?? What approach do the interviewed teachers describe that they use in their multi-lingual children?s group?In order to collect empirical data to my study I chose to use a qualitative method, which consisted of interviews with four teachers in a multilingual class. The study is based on a socio-cultural perspective where social interaction, blocking, communication and language use is the main tool for children's learning and development.The results of my study revealed that teachers realize that when they involve teamwork in class it enhances the activity among the children. In particular when the bilingual children use the language actively in different contexts where they communicate and discuss with each other in the teaching subject. When the children use language in different contexts it also enables them to develop linguistically and in terms of knowledge.

In my study I have chosen to examine the mathematics in children's free play and everyday situations, with focus on sorting and classification. The purpose of the study was to see how children express their mathematical knowledge. I have chosen to use a qualitative method in my examination, here I did observations in a children's group where the children were between three and six years old. I also did interviews with the teacher's on the department to see how they relate to the mathematics and how they formulate the department to achieve as good a learning environment as possible.The result shows that the teacher's approach is incredible important to the children's learning ability and that they are always present to challenge and discuss together with the children. The observation indicates that children use mathematics all the time in their everyday situations and that it is the interaction between individuals and environment that affects children's development. .