This research addresses the issues of identity and culture in Latvia in the context of the upcoming European Union enlargement in 2004. Political self- determination of Latvia was historically indebted to culture. The phenomenon of cultural identity, so important 12 years ago when Latvian independence was regained, is largely ignored by politicians in the upcoming enlargement process. This is especially worth attention since the 8-th parliamentary elections took place in October 2002. The obvious lack of interest in cultural issues on the part of politicians is compensated by the apprehensions in the society (reflected in mass media) to loose Latvian specific culture and identity when joining the big European family.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyze how to improve the design of a Microsoft Surface SUR40 application. The application in focus was an interactive product browser developed by the company Spree, our external client. Spree is a multi-touch software provider, established in September 2010 and they expressed a need for suggestions for how to improve this application. Our work aimed at revealing how to make the application more suitable for several users and make it easier for them to interact simultaneously on the surface. From a qualitative standpoint we have examined how 17 users experienced the application.

Research in the field of gaming and the gaming culture shows that the culture is characterized by sexism and hypermasculinity, however a majority of this research is conducted in an Anglo-Saxon context. Therefore the aim of this study was to elucidate the Swedish gaming discourse in relation to gender, gendered norms and stereotypes. We also sought to examine the relationship between the editorial content and the blog comments. The study was based on a critical discourse analysis with a gender perspective, applied to five Swedish gaming blogs. By implementing power theory and encoding/decoding theory, we have concluded that there is a discursive struggle, where one part of the gaming culture is characterized by male dominance, while the other part of the discourse is showing signs of resistance to this hypermasculinity.

The intention has been to look at the school system in South Africa and specifically at arts and culture in grade 10 to 12. I have visited a number of classes and interviewed the teachers working at the art centre PJ Olivier in Stellenbosch. By doing this I wanted to get to know the system and to understand the intentions that the curriculum describes.I have all through the study related the areas I?ve looked at to the curriculum to see how well the intentions are implemented. I have also compared everything with the Swedish school system.The curriculum has good intentions but the country has a lot to do before they reach the goals with a school system where everybody is included and where there is ?ubuntu? (Zulu word for humanity or I am what I am because of what we all are).

This study examines how upper secondary school teachers in Västerbotten and Österbotten plan to teach about the Finnish War 1808-09. The study includes written interviews with nine teachers in Västerbotten and eight teachers in Österbotten, who have answered questions concerning school policy documents, content and didactic methods. The purpose has been to examine whether there is a difference in historical culture in how the war is treated in the two regions. Historical culture is here meant within the prospective history lesson, where the pupils encounter history within certain boundaries.The result of the interview study shows that there are differences in structure concerning the school policy documents, but that these differences on the whole are compensated by the widespread interest in the Finnish War by the teachers in both regions. The differences in historical culture can be found within the construction of the content when it comes to the aftermaths of the war as well as the purpose of the teaching.

ABSTRACTHelena Nowachek The purpose of the following study is to focus upon the possibilities and challenges associated with the transference of corporate culture from one organization to another. I have chosen to address this by looking at the franchise company Jobzone, which works specifically with recruitment and outsourcing. As a method I have interviewed three people in Jobzone: one person who is responsible for education, one franchising boss in Sweden and one franchisee. To delineate the concept of culture I apply both Schein?s model, in which he divides culture into the three levels of artifacts, values and basic assumptions, as well as a general theory of communication.

The purpose of the study was to investigate, using data from the sacerdotal culture, t h espouses of five priests. The main questions were: How does the priestly calling affect thespouse? Do the spouses involve themselves with voluntary work? Do the spouses feel thecongregation have expectations? Do the female and male answers differ?The sacerdotal culture has consisted of several elements. The main element is the priest?scalling for his work.

Through a case study at an IT company we have attempted to ascertain how a company's organizational culture affects its designers' way of working. By examining what ?type? of designers the employees are and how this is reflected in their work, we hope to have correctly determined what their organizational culture looks like and thereby have achieved a plausible result in our study.Aside from two interviews with the company's CEO, we also performed eight observations at the company, where we tried to blend in with the employees, to better determine their way of working together.We have found that the designers' trust in their own instincts has led them to rarely act on feedback from clients ? they only pick out the proposals which have a ?mainstream? potential. We have also discovered that their design approach is something they don't feel inclined to discuss amongst themselves. As it is often ?indescribable?, they go with their intuition and unspoken design conventions..

The essay is an evaluative study of student democracy in the Swedish high school, its departure point being the 1994 national curriculum for the voluntary school forms (Lpf 94). We adopted an interview method, the survey units consisting in a number of high school teachers. The analysis has two principal theoretical departure points, involving democracy theory and implementation analysis, respectively. The former is utilized to help identifying what sort of democracy permeates the governing document and high school daily life, the latter to explain actual outcomes.The study concludes that the 94 curriculum is characterized by a strong democracy with emphasis on participatory democratic processes, whereas in practice there is a thin democracy in both classroom and formal student government contexts. Representative processes are given plenty of room although few attempts at participatory democratic components can be identified.A deeper analysis of the result reveals implementation problems traceable to elements of symbolism in the goals.

This qualitative study is done with the purpose of creating understanding for the theoretical democratic content in educational materials for Civic Education courses 1a1 and 1b during GY-11, so teachers create an intentional approach when using educational materials in their democratic education. This was motivated as important considering the reduction in obligatory Civic Education for the vocational programs. The study was conducted using a hermeneutic qualitative reading method where the educational materials, more specifically two series with one book for each course, was read with purpose of creating understanding for the democratic content according to ideal democratic models: deliberative democracy, participatory democracy and electoral democracy. A text voice analysis was also conducted using Bakhtins theory of dialogic and monologue text that contributed to the general result concerning the democratic content. The results show that the electoral democracy ideal is dominant in all educational materials, there is hence no striking difference between the democratic content in 1a1 and 1b educational materials.

Culture is seen as an abstract phenomenon, not easily defined. It is cathegorized as something that affects every person, though it is seldom described how. This study adress how culture, in the form of basic assumptions and accepted behaviors and ways to think affected how young coaches formed their leadership under the influence of their organization. The possible implications for the importance of knowing about ones culture in an organization affect both the recruitment process in organizations and what the organization stands for and what is conveyed through values and ways to act in the organization. The purpose of this study was, through the use of semi-structured interviews with young coaches and organizational leaders and a review of policys, to get the perspective and experiences of young coaches regarding cultural influence on their leadership.

Children and young people's right to culture is a priority in the Government's cultural policy. Creative school was introduced in 2008 with the aim that children and youth should receive professional culture in school and increasing access to culture in all forms of expression and possibilities of their own creation, with starting points in the school curriculum. The purpose of this bachelor is to explore the view, the treatment and the use of Creative school in Värmland. A comparison has been made between professional culture, which conveys the culture and culture Coordinator who develops and co-ordinates the work of culture in schools, based on their experiences of creating school. I have looked at what barriers and opportunities there are in liaison with the school and how creative activities can be integrated into the school's other subjects.

In this thesis the author has through a discourse analysis examined how the concept of culture has been used in the discourse of integration during the late twentieth century in Sweden. The author argues that the integration of immigrating people has been the fundamental method in creating Swedish citizens within the immigrant communities. In this discourse the concept ?culture? has been a constant recurring way of explaining differences among the immigrants towards ?ethnic swedes? and Swedish way of life and establishing difficulties in performing integration outside of governmental policies. When looked upon in terms of discourse the integration process is the possibilities, intents and interests and the actual creation i.e.

The purpose of the study was to investigate, using data from the sacerdotal culture, t h espouses of five priests. The main questions were: How does the priestly calling affect thespouse? Do the spouses involve themselves with voluntary work? Do the spouses feel thecongregation have expectations? Do the female and male answers differ?The sacerdotal culture has consisted of several elements. The main element is the priest?scalling for his work.

This paper aims to describe how religion teachers in Swedish schools teach concerning questions about life issues and popular culture. To research the teachers' didactic approach to these issues, didactics has been defined with three educational questions: what, how and why. The essay focuses on teachers' effective implementation of teaching on life issues and popular culture, which we used a theory of offering meaningfulness describing what subject matter that may be imparted to the students. An offer of meaningfulness can be pursued and can be made visible in the context of what and how performs the teaching and also in the context where the teacher planned the teaching elements. The method that the paper has used is the interviews of four different active religious educators in Stockholm and Uppsala area.