Studies in the recent years have showed that the preschool playground is important for both the physical and emotional development of children. The Botkyrka local government has decided to improve their preschool playgrounds in order to take advantage of these studies. The administration of childcare and education in Botkyrka is arranging a network between the different preschools where they work together to improve their outdoor environments. The network is arranging workshops and seminars where people from the different preschools can come and gain inspiration for improvements of their own preschools. The administration of properties has created a document where they describe the changes that are supposed to be made to the different outdoor environments. Through the administration of properties and the person who is responsible for the outdoor environments I was introduced to their work with the preschool playgrounds.

Reading and analyzing literature has a long tradition of being an essential part of the teaching of English in Sweden. As the offers of entertainment have increased in popular culture with the introduction of computer games, internet and other media, interest in reading novels has decreased. Literature is still a compulsory part of English teaching and the question is how teachers of today use literature and what kind of literary instruction they use.The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the literary instruction discourse in pedagogical texts, lessons, created by and for English teachers of Swedish Upper Secondary Schools. The lessons have been collected from the site lektion.se, where teachers are able to share knowledge and lessons. The study uses an analytical method based on Norman Fairclough´s Critical Discourse Analysis in order to analyze the lessons.

Sweden is divided according to an ethnic boundary, which divides people in "we" and "the others", "Swedes" and "immigrants" (Ålund, 2002). We believe this is due to the fact that society categorises immigrants all the time as a homogeneous group with fixed and static qualities, resulting in a situation where you cannot represent yourself as a person. Instead you are represented on the basis of your ethnic belonging. Young immigrants often grow up under other conditions and find themselves in more vulnerable situations than Swedish youths. The purpose with this paper was to investigate young people with different ethnic backgrounds, their thoughts and feelings about their identity, group belongingness and future.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how a group of students experience their learning when working in groups, and determine if they prefer to work individually or in groups. This study will also investigate what the students believe that they learn when working in groups. The study is based on these two questions:How and what do students perceive that they learn from working in groups?Do the students in my study prefer to work in groups or individually?The method I have used to retrieve information has been to interview four different students. The interviews were individual; I did so to get a deeper view of how students perceive their own learning in groups.

Captured in the room of Göran Tunström?s spoken language, fenced behind his barrier of manic words. This essay is about the limit of language and world?s necessity to be spoken to be experience, about telling as a manufacturer of meaning and a subject?s motion between fiction and reality. Based on the novel Skimmer from 1996, my purpose is to identify ?a linguistic room? in Tunström?s narration and show how this room is given an existential character by its temporal and spatial dimensions.

The purpose of this thesis is to collect knowledge of techniques and materials for planning roofgardens. Gardens built on top of buildings is not a new phenomenon, already in the beginning of the century architects were experimenting with roofgardens. During the Modern Era roofgardens appeared as a part of the design and worked well together with flat roofs and the ideas of light, air and greenery. Today the most common kind of roofgarden is on a ground-level joist that hides parking or other underground functions. The most important difference between planning a roofgarden and a garden on the ground is the limitation of the load of the roofgarden. Plants, paving-material and equipment must be chosen with this in mind. A light and thin layer of soil demands plants with small needs for water and nutrition.

Historically the library has owned more than silent, book-filled halls; it has been a center for learning and ideas, a source of both freedom and oppression, in other words, a medium for knowledge, truth, and power. Cultures have been divided into powerful and powerless through access to the library's content; those who have - and those who do not have - access to information determine which voices are heard and which are ignored, thus determining the outcome of the future. This thesis investigates how The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence portrays the relationship between knowledge and power using Michel Foucault's discourse theory. More specifically, how this relationship is manifested through the structures and norms of society, and how the library as a place and institution serves as the means by which this relationship plays out. An established classic like Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is placed as a contrasting reference point to help deepen its thematic message of information control and cencurship. Furthermore, the agency of one of the main characters is also examined in the light of Anthony Giddens' stratification model, as an actor with the potential to move beyond the confines of the power structure. The analysis demonstrate how knowledge, truth, and power remain continuously thematically relevant within literature, and how the reality of our time may be better understood through literary contributions.

The aim of this paper is to get a deeper understanding if research about international relations has any practical meaning. The main focal point is about the importance of the scholar idea soft power, and its meaning on foreign policy actions through expressions. A quantity and quality method is used. The point of the main theory that concerns international relations takes a rationalistic perspective, and expands it to the notion that ides can have an impact on policy outcomes. Three different types of research utilization can be traced to determine in which way an idea is getting implemented.

The aim of this paper is to examine the youth library PUNKTmedis' work methods to adapt itself to the youth. Improved communication with this user group is the starting point for the new work methods. We have chosen to view the increased cooperation between the library and the youth as an adjustment to market demands. We have noticed the possible existence of an antagonism between on the one hand the traditional role of the public library of adult education and on the other hand an adjustment to the market demands. Adult education and the adjustment to market demands is seen as contributing to the image of PUNKTmedis.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the debate concerning Agnes von Krusenstjernas Fröknarna von Pahlen-novels from a ideological analytic perspective. This debate came to be called The Krusenstjerna feud Krusenstjernafejden and was most intensive in the years 1934-35 after Porten vid Johannes and Älskande par had been published. We examine 8 articles using a text analytic method. We have limited ourselves to public material that is available in Swedish press and Swedish magazines. Our ambition is, through this, to determine the articles authors political point of view and ideas of preference.

Abstract The internationalisation of a company is enabled by integration of markets. New markets mean new revenues, but also demand capital to finance the expansion. To bring in new capital may offer new possibilities but also higher debt-equity ratios, which affect how external interested parties value the company. This thesis, inspired by previous and mainly US based research, researches the debt-equity ratio of Swedish multinational and domestic companies, sampled from the Stockholm Stock Exchange. The research questions have focused on the impact of certain internationalisation variables on the debt-equity ratio; how does the debt-equity ratio differ between international and domestic companies? Can a difference be explained by the degree of internationalisation? Can a difference be better explained by the presence of international ownership? By measuring the concept internationalisation as both trade and presence, the questions were operationalised into four hypotheses.

This is a qualitative study inquiring ?What does it entail to be a sex worker in Sweden today?? Four female sex workers were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. Using methods for reflexive analysis, interpreting the interviews and their context theoretically through notions of Competence and Stigma, the results of this study shows that sex workers may be both competent agents and stigmatized. This informs the understanding of sex work, stigma and how learning, subjective room for action and social agency can be aggravated or hindered by stigma. The results are viewed in the context of Swedish legislation against sex purchase in relation to previous research which shows that said legislation is problematic.

The Master Thesis has been carried out in cooperation with Silva Sweden AB and the objective was to develop a new product concept within the product category for everyday exercise. The purpose of the thesis was to use and analyze methods and tools which aid creativity and concept creation in order to make method recommendations for future projects.During the thesis a number of customer needs were identified, which in turn were translated into 20 concepts. On a concept decision meeting a pedometer-based concept was chosen for development. The new pedometer is in addition to counting steps also able to measure and calculate the user?s total climbed height during a day and present this graphically in comparison to famous monuments or distances.

The objective of this graduate work is to gain a better understanding in how pre-school educators are able to work with music in their pre-school activity to promote child development. We also want to enlighten possible factors for the development of children based on music and to form our own ideas of whether teachers choose to apply music in their didactic practice or not.The point of this essay has been to attempt answering on what importance music makes for children's development and learning in pre-school, and how teachers could work with music in pre-school in order to promote children?s development. Our data consists of six interviews and two observations realized at a pre-school in Södertälje.We took heed from the theories laid out by Lev Vygotsky's which describe four different levels of development that includes educational development in social interaction between teacher and child. Our choice of this theory is inspired by our seeking deeper understanding of Vygotsky's theory´s application to the aesthetic approach in the interaction in meaning making and learning.The result of our study confirms previous theory and research in that music as a form of expression has a major impact on children's development.

The aim of this Master thesis is to describe why and how public librariesuse the social networks Facebook and Twitter. The focus is to study whatbrought about their use, how the work is carried out, ideas and objectivesbehind the use and what libraries actually convey on the networks. Themethodology is twofold: semi-structured interviews with responsiblepersonnel at four Swedish public libraries, and an ethnographic contentanalysis of four months of the libraries' status updates and tweets onFacebook and Twitter. The theoretical framework consists of a model forthe roles of the public library in society, and of discourses about thepublic library in media.Results indicate that social networks are used to market, make accessibleand inform of the library's resources and services. Furthermore, networksare used to communicate/interact with followers and to inspire people toread.