Spending a night out in the nature is away for many to experience a slowerpace of life. Refuge cabins are a typeof open-air facility sometimes provided for more far off locations, yet it is in the vicinity of cities and towns that the opportunity for getting out into the natural environment is mostly sought after. Several nature reservs exist around Stockholm with the good intention of promoting the opportunity for outdoor activities. The aim of this study is to investigate how the provision of refuge cabins can be a means of facilitating and augmenting outdoor life experience in a proposed nature reserv to the west of Stockholm.

The landscape architect is similar to the moviemaker in that they both want to mediate an experience with their creations. The landscape architect designs playgrounds and the moviemaker makes movies for children, but how does the relationship between children and nature look like in the landscape formed by the movie maker?s fantasy? The purpose with this thesis is to study how the relationship between child and nature is depicted in a movie as a medium, by analysing ?My neighbour Totoro?, a Japanese animated movie from 1988 by Hayao Miyazaki. The analysis consists of two combined analyses, Experiential Landscape Analysis and Gordon Cullen?s Serial Vision, both of which analyse the relationship between a human being and her environment as well as the emotional changes that occur as she moves in it.

The concept of school forest was drafted in 1970 by the Forest in School organization and is defined as an area occupied by a school for outdoor educational activity. The main purpose of this study was to examine how schools use the school forest in practice, how it can be linked to the forest as an ecosystem service and find out how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning. The study is mainly qualitative in nature and has been based on interviews conducted with educators engaged in outdoor education at four selected schools in a municipality in Sweden. Focus has been on the cultural ecosystem services for school forest, for example the physical characteristics that are considered as positive, forest influence on students' physical / mental health and the educational benefits available to be in the woods. Search has also been made to see how the forest is taken into consideration in the spatial planning and also what a contract agreements involves.

In the project Echoing Nature i have searched a design for an exhibi¬tion concept. That visualizes the natural phenomenon of self-assem¬bling materials in a simplified way. My question is, how can you emo¬tionally re-connect the modern man to nature and raise awareness. I assume my thesis that the experience of a natural phenomenon can inspire us to see a bigger context, provoke curiosity and generate an initial sense of belonging to nature. The result is an interactive sculp¬ture that consists of 3-dimensional Tetris blocks.

The aim of   the study has been to examine the duality that I seemed to find in Karin   Broos works, primarily on the basis of her renditions of nature. The   objective is to study the duality on various plans and to examine which   traces of Intertextuality that may exist.In the study of the duality   I have taken note of how nature is presented in terms of style and form, as   well as that I have seeked cultural references pictorial and symbolic. I have   also examined the images with reference to Intertextuality. The following   questions has been applied during the work:  How is nature produced in the paintings?  What place occupies nature in relation to the people, in the works?  What is being communicated by nature's participation in the works?As a method, and as a   tool for analysis and interpretation of selected works, I have chosen to use   Panofskys iconological interpretative method. As a guide to seek relations of   intertextuality the theories of  Julia   Kristeva has been useful, which  includes thoughts  that new images are created or re-created   in relation to other images all the time and in new contexts.As a result of the   study I have found some kind of expression of balance, though it did not   seemed to look that way from the beginning.

Today in Sweden the concept of the greyzone students that stands between the nine-year compulsory school and special school for mentally retarded children is recognised in different studies and reports. It is not obvious for this group of students to decide which category best can comply with their needs. Should they go in nine-year compulsory school or special school for mentally retarded children? In the last years there have been alarming rapports about how the share of students in special school increases. A study shows that the greyzone students are a group that distinctly is on the increase in the special school.

The purpose with this study is to examine school-leaders?, school-librarians? and teachers? expectations and aims for their school-libraries at two different schools in the city of Växjö. The study is based on these five questions:· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers think about learning?· What function does the school-library have?· What roles do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers have in the school-library?· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers experience the co-operation in the school-library?· How would school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers wish that the co-operation should be?To be able to answer these questions I have done thirteen qualitative interviews and studied literature relevant to the subject. Three different theories are used as a theoretical framework; the traditional perspective, individual constructivism and social constructivism.

This study is an attempt to shed light on problems and possibilities of the school library of the Swedish comprehensive school concerning library law and goals of the school and the school library. Many investigations about the role of the school library of the comprehensive school have been carried through. They have all more or less come to the same conclusions. In spite of Swedish library law and goal documents of the school library, the school libraries are often neglected, if not will and commitment are to be found among teachers. Using a model of the school organisation by Gunnar Berg, three cases of school libraries are presented and analysed in a larger organisational and political perspective.

The aim of this study is to describe how nature is portrayed in swedish poet and critic Aase Berg?s two earliest poetry collections, Hos rådjur (1997) and Mörk materia (1999), and how it relates to notions of humanity, culture and civilisation. The concept of ?nature? is problematized in a short survey of how it has been used by and critizised in ecocritical literary theory, which is used as the main theoretical framework for this survey, with an emphasis on selected theoretical concepts by Donna Haraway. As a methodological starting point, ?nature? is tentatively defined as ?that which does not let itself be subsumed under the human, culture or civilisation?, and this definition is contrasted with how the concepts are handled in the texts.The investigation shows that the relationship of nature to the human is a fundamental theme that provides a structure for both poetry collections.

There is an expression called ?grief of climate? that refers to feelings of powerlessness and heaviness related to the environmental problems of today. A feeling that every move we make has bad consequences for nature. This essay is an investigation of how art in general and jewellery art in particular can be a way of discussing and visualizing current environmental problems and the complex relationship between human and nature. I am discussing how artworks dealing with a dark and dystopian picture of the relation can be seen as the memento mori of our time.

The purpose of the essay was to investigate the way four different educators, at a pre-school with a bilingual profile, work towards strengthening the children?s bilingualism as well as their identity. The research questions concern which guidelines are being used, the educators perceptions concerning children?s bi- and multilingualism and in what way they believe that their pre-school distinguishes itself from others.Qualitative individual interviews and observations were conducted and the empirical data was analyzed using a theoretical framework, constructed of theories concerning language development, ethnicity and identity.The result presented in the study shows that the pre-school not only follows the national curriculum but also their own guideline. The guideline states that there should be both Spanish- and Swedish speaking personnel and that they are ?responsible? for the education in their own language.

AbstractThis project discusses various aspects of children's way to explore nature with their senses. Therefore I conducted a study in two preschools, one nature-oriented and another preschool. This study was carriedout usien the three metods, interviews, observations and surveys. Interview four children from each preschool, observations of each group outdoors during four different occasions and question forms to teachers. The result of the study showed that both teachers and children have a great interest in being outdoors in nature, but it is not always possible to take out all children's groups. The reason is large groups and inadequate staff.

Our lives in urban areas are becoming more and more inactive with negative effects on our mental and physical health. Natural environments and physical activity have the power to both prevent and reduce mental fatigue. Meanwhile we engage ourselves with physical activity, the nature fascinates us with its complexity. In April 2006, some of the visitors to the recreational area of Skrylle were asked to fill in a questionnaire which included questions about their habits within physical activity and the experience of nature. The questionnaires were then divided into two groups: those filled out by persons who exercise on regular basis (i.e. three or several times/week) and those who rarely exercise.

The thoughts of a common school for all children have been around since the 1800?s but was something that was introduced in Sweden first in 1962. When the curriculum for primary school came in 1980 there was a new concept, a school for all. With a school for all it was aimed that all children should have the right to participation and a common education no matter what needs they could have.During my education I have come across the concept a school for all and that is something that interested me. Today?s curricula and school laws aim to ensure that all children have the right to equal education and inclusion whatever needs you have.The purpose of this study is to find out some pedagogues? thoughts and work around the concept a school for all.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.