Interpret, concretize and set grades - Is it that simple? A study of similarities and differences in local grading criteria in music. The purpose of this study is to examine similarities and differences in local grading criteria in music at schools in a larger municipality in the south of Sweden. The research question is: How have schools interpreted national grading criteria locally and how do music teachers look upon the grading procedure? This study is based on an analysis of the grading criteria at ten schools.

The purpose of this study is through a teacher perspective gain insight to the knowledge former Sodertorn teacher students possess of intercultural pedagogy and if they use it at work. The studies main perspective is the intercultural perspective, which has been the study's lead perspective. This study also made use out of a sociocultural perspective as it fits with the intercultural perspective and puts its mark in the study.This study has used interviews for data collection. Five former Sodertorn teacher students were interviewed, the interview participants work as teachers. These five teachers? experiences and statements were the focus of this study, the teachers had to demonstrate their intercultural skills and how they use these skills in their classroom.

It has long been discussed how to use music in a new way in the field of food and elderly, and in this study, the authors wanted to test this. Music is the language of emotions. It?s a powerful tool, but its effects are difficult to predict (Theorell, 2009). Malnutrition in the elderly is a serious condition that often gets overlooked (Edfors & Westergren, 2012).

During the last decade the conditions for the music industry have been changed significantly. With the dropping sales of physical phonograms and the increasing illegal file sharing, the record labels have been forced to adapt and thus seek alternative sources of income next to the traditional sales of phonograms. Our purpose was to investigate how smaller Swedish record labels adapt themselves to the changing environment within the music industry and which new alternative sources of income they can use to finance their music production. To do this we used a deductive approach where we started by researching theories we thought were relevant to the subject, which we then used to get valuable information out of our informants.From our empirical investigations it appears that the independent record labels are rather positive about the future and that they will be able to survive, even though they will have to change their ways of working to a large extent. Our results show that the record labels as we know then will disappear.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate whether personal development, from the professional perspective, could be a relevant part of the music education department at Malmö Academy of Music. The thesis explores whether students would gain a better understanding of the professional teacher's role through personal development, and also the kind of educational structure that would be most suitable to achieve this understanding. A qualitative focal group interview was used as a method, and the participants where four students at Malmö Academy of Music. The results show that the students generally would be open-minded to integrate personal development in their educational program, and they also have a lot of interesting ideas regarding how a framework for the integration of personal development in the educational program could be structured. A number of suggestions how to integrate self reflection in the educational program are presented in the thesis.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the possibilities of, and interest in, a digital download service at the music departments of the libraries. I chose to conduct my study at the city library of Gothenburg. I studied the legal download services that exist today and I did a statistical survey among the users of the music department, followed up by interviews to see how they took to the idea. From the inquiry I learned that a majority of the users was negative to having a digital service replacing the physical department, although a majority was positive to try a digital service. I also used the inquiry to compare the reasons for downloading music to the reasons for borrowing records from the library, but there was no significant difference.

The purpose of this paper is to study and describe the occurrence and conditions of aesthetic subjects and choral singing in Swedish upper secondary schools 2014. The paper is based on seven recorded individual interviews with three music teachers, four principals and one director of education in three upper secondary schools in Sweden. The study uses discursive psychology and the interviews were analysed with focus on music teachers and school leaders interpretative repertoires and rhetorical strategies and how they use the language to legitimate aesthetic subjects in an upper secondary school context. In the most recent upper secondary school reform of 2011 the aesthetic subjects are no longer mandatory. Today there are different ways to provide opportunities for the students to participate in music activities but since the government no longer decides how it shall be implemented it is up to the management of each school to determine the activities.The statement made by the informants are interesting in relation to the status of music subjects, but due to the limited scope of the paper, no general conclusions can be drawn.

Title: Does the teacher play any role? Instrumental music teacher's stories about their music teaching.This paper focuses on how instrumental music teachers describe their own significance for- and relationship to the pupils and if the teacher-pupil relationship has any significance for the pupil's success in music learning. How important are the teachers? What kind of teaching behaviours do the teachers emphasize in their telling? The theoretical background is psychology and educational theory. My research method is qualitative, particularly interviews.

This study shows the thoughts, hopes and wishes of two male and two female music teachers, in grades 6 ? 9 from four different cities of Sweden. The emphasis lays on usage of digital tools. As the schools now stand before lots of changes in its curriculums; the use of digital tools was the main thing that caught my interest. How has the schools interpreted what this means? What does this mean in terms of purchases for the schools? We already know that many schools are lacking proper facilities to conduct music lessons so this ads on even larger needs.

Our main purpose with this paper was to figure out what makes a magazine successful. We wanted to analyze and examine factors of success for magazines, with a focus on music magazines, from a marketing perspective. Also, we wanted to see specific factors of success for the music magazine Groove. To do this, we interviewed seven people from different areas within the business with different kinds of expertise. We interviewed two people from Groove Magazine, two people from other music magazines and in addition to this, two people from a grand publishing company and also one person from a soccer magazine.

Title: Are we born gifted or can we learn and teach our children to be musically interested? The aim of this study is to evaluate how we influence the development of musicality in children. The study included 30 persons divided into three groups (ten members in each group). Group 1 consisted of pregnant women. Group 2 consisted of parents of babies age 0 to 1 year old and group 3 teenage parents.

The purpose of the present study is to explore differences in the musical opinions and preferences and the quality of written language between pupils of two age groups (12 and 17 resp). Two classes were chosen, one from each age level. Each class/group was also divided by gender. The pupils asked to write an essay on their musical opinions and preferences. The essays were analyzed with respect to musical content and linguistic form.

The purpose of this paper has been to examine the heavy metal band Sabatons use of history and to relate it to societal trends in today?s Sweden. I have examined Sabatons music, album covers and music videos in order to define a certain use of history. To do this I have used a use of history theory and a heavy metal theory. My results showed that some of Sabatons use of history could be defined as commercial and that the societal trends in today`s Sweden have in some cases affected the selection and presentation of events and characters that`s been portrayed by Sabaton.

Title: A study of how active therapist talks about the FMT method. FMT-therapists use music as a means of communication. The method is non verbal and uses musical codes to create a framework for the apprentice. The instruments that are being used are piano, drums, a variety of flutes and whistles. The FMT-method is a musical form of therapy that targets all functional disabilities.

This thesis sets out to examine how feminist struggle can be negotiated, defined and motivated. By using Oral history as a theoretical and methodological framework, three persons narrative are being constructed, explored and discussed throughout the thesis. All the interviewees define themselves as women and feminists and have all practised music in different separatist rock and pop-groups from 1970 to present. Themes as music as political action, and separatism for persons who define themselves as women are discussed. The tree informants agree about some feministic goals such as equality and the right to be able to play and perform music regardless of gender identity, although the means to reach these goals are formulated differently. .