The purpose of this study was to gain knowledge of what preschool teachers think that mathematics in kindergarten is, and if the revised curriculum which came in July 2010 changed their approach. The survey consists of interviews of five preschool teacher and an aspiring preschool teacher. They have shared their experiences and knowledge about what they regard as mathematics in kindergarten. I asked how they interpret the new curriculum for math and if it has made them work in a different way or if they do as the used to. The results that came up where that they felt that their views on mathematics have changed.

Every municipality in Sweden is responsible for offering its citizens adequate childcare. Parents hand in a preliminary schedule to the preschool for when their child needs to be in childcare, and based on this the preschool staff is scheduled. Some municipalities measure the actual time a child is in childcare. The essay idea comes from when I heard that one municipality was thinking of register the children's actual time in preschools. I started thinking on how to solve such a task.

The intention of the study is to investigate pedagogues understanding of physical activities in preschool. Should special activities be planned in order to stimulate children´s progress in motor skills? I also want to find out if pedagogues found the acitivities in preschool curriculum which says that the aim is to develop children´s body perception and teaching children how to care for their own health. I have interviewed seven pedagogues and focus of the question lied within motor skills and the joy of movement among preschool children. The result shows that pedagogues regard it to be important to stimulate motor activities and to encourage joy of movement in preschool.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to investigate teachers´attitudes to and work with outdoor education in preschool. The aim is also to identify the opportunities and barriers that exist to conduct outdoor education. In my research I have interviewed six preschool teachers in a medium sized municipality, where five of the teachers worked in the suburbs to the Big City and one teacher worked in the downtown Big City. All respondents in the study were in favor of conducting outdoor education. The respondents claimed that it promoted children´s health and motor skills. The result also shows that the teachers saw a great opportunity for learning related to outdoor education, by using the resources of nature.

Abstract The aim of this study was to explore and describe the pupils' thoughts on seed and its development into seedling. Twenty nine Swedish pupils at the age of 7 and 10 years old were interviewed about their knowledge of seeds.It turned out that pupils often have so-called everyday belief to describe the natural science phenomenon by connecting their explanations to phenomena in everyday life to which they are familiar. To describe the process of seed developing into seedling is something that most of the pupils believe to be difficult and this resulted mostly in the answer ?it is growing.? Children have some knowledge about what seeds need in order to germinate but they do not mention the importance of oxygen as a component of seed to be able to germinate and grow. They mean instead that it is sufficient with soil, water and sun.The older pupils, however, are more often than the younger pupils able to connect their reflections to a more scientifically correct description based on terms belonging to the phenomena, though these terms sometimes are wrongly used.

This work deals with mathematics teaching in preschool classes. The purpose of my study is to investigate the preschool classes? teachers' aspirations for the children learning mathematics in two different preschools. To achieve my goal, I formulated the following questions to be explored and answered through interviews with five teachers.  Does mathematics in preschool classes have a prominent role in educators' planning? What perception do the educators in the field have about the learning and teaching of mathematics in the preschool classes? How do the teachers understand their own work with mathematics in preschool classes in relation to multilingual students?                                A qualitative interview method was applied.

The enquiry of this work is to look at introduction to preschool in the 1970s and today. The work examines what four books, two from each time period says about introduction, and the guardian's role in their child's introduction. The study is based on three research questions:What view of introduction in preschool in the 70s does the texts show?What is the view in the texts from "today" about introduction in preschool?What view do these texts have about the guardian's role in the introduction?To find out what the texts say about these questions, the method of this work is text analysis. The attachment theory designed by John Bowlby, works as a theoretical framework for this work.The result shows that the texts from both the 70s and from today advocate a cautious introduction, where guardians are involved.

The intention is to focus on the implementation of the tablet in preschools and how the intentions around the introduction of the tablet take shape in different preschools. The method is semi structured interviews where the respondents consist of 3 preschool directors and 6 teachers where the preschool directors work. This is a relevant subject to illustrate, as the tablet has become a tool in preschool where it seems to be different opinions about how it should be used. This study aims to understand how the implementation can take form in different preschools, what kind of similarities and differences we can see with the intentions of the tablet and if there is need of clarification on the workings of the tablets in preschools. The results show that the intentions around the introduction of the tablet in preschool look different in the preschools, and the implementation of this new technology starts in a small scale with help of photographing and videotaping.

The aim of this study is to examine the understanding, preschool teachers, have about their work related to energy conversion in the human body. Through individual interviews, answers have been sought to the following questions: What do the preschool teachers believe they need to know about the link between food and energy? What are the different methods preschool teachers use to workwith the area of energy conversion in the human body?The results show that preschool teachers have knowledge in terms of food and its nutrients as an energy source for the body to cope with. However the more thorough and detailed questions become all the more uncertainty there is about the topic. Preschool teachers on their own initiative do bring up the topic with the children and begin conversations as well as ask questions, perform experiments and demonstrations.

In our essay we examine the different introduction models that are practiced in preschool. The central question is if the different models have any importance (or consequences) for the children?s connection in preschool. In the two different cases we will present, one based upon preparatory training that was applied during the 1990s and another that is currently used today.The purpose with this essay was to get a deeper understanding for the child?s attachment to preschool and for how we, as educators should act during the preparatory training to create a secure foundation for the child.

By conducting qualitative interviews five pedagogues and eight children in the ages three to five have answered questions regarding environmental work in preschool.The purpose of this report was to examine how environmental work is pursued at two preschools and what children at these preschools think about environmental work. Recycling of garbage and small cultivation projects together with the children is what the pedagogues consider being the most common environmental work at their particular preschools. In the professional role of the pedagogue if can be clearly seen what special interests he or she has.Most of the children associate the forest with some kind of snack and animals. Half of the interviewed children also think about animals when they visit the forest. Half of the interviewed children also have an understanding of where peels from fruits should be tossed, but no one knows the meaning of the word environment.

The aim of this thesis is to compare the effectivity of using a natural language and a controlled vocabulary when performing subject searches in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts. 20 topics were created and for each topic two searches were made, one by using a query formulated with natural language directed to the abstract field and the other one by using a query formulated with descriptors from the thesaurus in LISA directed to the descriptor field. The average relative recall amounted to 64,8% for the AB-queries and 54% for the DE-queries. Failure analysis showed that the majority of the relevant documents not retrieved by AB-queries could have been retrieved with other query terms, such as synonyms. In a natural language there are many different ways of expressing a topic, and this tends to have a negative effect on retrieval effectivity.

The purpose of the study is to explore preschool teachers experiences of how immigrant parents become involved in the preschool activities and how their linguistic and cultural background appears in relation to participation.The survey was conducted through individual interviews with eight preschool teachers working in various multicultural preeschools.The results of this survey shows that the preschool teachers perceive that parents with different cultural and linguistic backgrounds are reluctant to participate in various forms of cooperation, such as parent meetings. Preschool teachers believe that the lack of parental participation depends on the parents linguistic and cultural backgrounds, such as different approaches to understand the pre-school educational activity or the view of parenting, and other things such as language difficulties.Another result reveals also a great lack of written methods, because teachers sometimes face difficult dilemmas. To seek itself the right approach in a current situation can be both difficult and time consuming, therefore, the preschool teachers wish that there were already complete methods for use..

In the school subject of the natural sciences it is imperative that the students are given opportunities to ?talk science?, since the dialogues that occur in the classroom have a significant importance for the students? abilities to engage in meaning-making in their learning process. Hence, the student and teacher interaction in the classroom and the feedback given there play a significant role in the students? learning process. The aim of this study is to contribute to the development of formative assessment tools that can mediate the students? meaning-making in natural sciences subjects in upper-secondary school.

The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers' approach to popular culture in preschool. The questions we want answered are: What approach do educators have to popular culture in preschool and what underlies that approach? Is there a high - and low culture in preschool? If educators bring popular culture into the preschool, how then is it used? Do children?s culture influence everyday life in preschool? We have employed qualitative methods to seek answers to our questions. We conducted seven interviews with educators from four different preschools. The starting point for our study was the socio-cultural perspective because we examined people's cultures and how the meeting between them unfolds. We concluded that educators have a very ambivalent attitude towards popular culture in preschool.