Parenting is increasingly seen as a profession which requires training and support with the purpose of creating improved interaction. A central question appears to be how the concept of interaction is defined. The aim of this study is to examine how training programs, trainers and parents perceive this concept, whether they define it the same way and whether trainers succeed in reaching parents with the message of what it actually is that will improve in the area of interaction. The study uses a phenomenological approach and a qualitative method.The research subject is the parental training program Komet, a manual-based education program for parents. The goal of the program is to offer families training in methods that have strong scientific support in order to reduce conflicts and to improve the relation and interaction between children and parents.One important result of the study is that parents and trainers viewed the concept of interaction from different perspectives.

Dogs have been held as pets for thousands of years. Dogs held today usually get some sort of training some time during their life. You can train dogs for many different reasons such as general obedience or you can train them for competition. When training a dog every behaviour is followed by a consequence. These consequences are positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment and negative reinforcement.

In this essay I have chosen to explore how computers are used in preschools. The study was done as a survey. How does preschool seize the children´s culture? In today´s society ICT and computers are a big part of children´s everyday life and reflects on their upbringing.Since I am using computers as a pedagogical tool in teaching the children at my preschool, I find this topic interesting to explore.Are the teacher´s using computers for an educational purpose with the children at preschools or are they using it in other ways?Do the teachers think they have the required knowledge to computers usage in teaching the children in a pedagogical way?What is the teacher´s attitude towards computers in preschool?The essay starts with a introductorial background section where I talk about my own experiences of using computers with the children in my preschool, and then referring to the society then and now, school law, curriculum, teachers' computer skills, media situation amongst children and young people, computer use in preschools/schools and health effects. I have composed a survey based on the answers of 50 teachers in 30 different preschools and in nine different municipalities.The result of the survey is reported and concludes with a part of discussion, where the results are put up against the introductorial background section.

This study was aimed to investigate why team sport coaches use group training as a part in their build-up training. Issues covered in this study are: "What motives have coaches in team sports that use group exercise as part of the build-up training?" and "What are the positive and negative aspects experienced trainers of using group exercise as part of build-up training in team sports?". It was a qualitative study, seven interviews were made with team sport coaches that has used group training as a type of exercise in their built-up training in collaboration with Friskvårdskompaniet. The results showed that the reasons why group exercise were used was different from coach to coach for example one motive was to increase the players physically ability.

In Montessori pre-schools early reading and writing is an important feature. By tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers and voicing the sound simultaneously the children connect phonemes to graphemes and normally learn to write between the ages of four and five. 24 sixyear old children who attended Montessori pre-school and 26 six-year old children who had not attended Montessori school were assessed with a test assessing their linguistic awareness.The result showed that the Montessori children were more linguistically aware than the children who hadn?t received any literacy training. The scores of the Montessori children were highest on phonological awareness.

In my study I have participated at the Fifth Dimension / Active Worlds site in Villa Gymnastiken in Ronneby, where I have worked both as an assistant to the project leader and as a researcher, but also as a participant together with the children. The children are working in a virtual world called Femtedim, created in a internet-based program named Active Worlds Education Universe. The Femtedim-world are bridging together two physical worlds in Ronneby and Copenhagen. My main focus is on an intervention that occurred in the 12th of March when the research-team in Copenhagen, which runs the project in Denmark, decided to create a new challenge for the children since some of them started to get bored. They added gravitation to the Femtedim-world, which lead to a few different reactions among the children. Most of the children didn´t like it and were very hostile towards the idea that they would not be able to fly around freely in the Femtedim-world.

The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of computer consumption among boys in ninth grade, and to see if there were any differences with regards to physical activity, sleeping habits, breakfast habits and BMI. The study has cross sectional design with a comparative and a quantitative structure and is based on a former study called ?Food & Health 2007?.  The respondents were represented by 181 boys in ninth grade, recruited from ten different schools in the county of Uppsala, who were answering questions about media consumption, breakfast habits, physical activity and sleeping habits. Daily computer consumption was reported up to one hour for 12 % of the respondents, one to three hours for 65 % and over three hours for 42 %. The boys who had a high physical activity level were less frequent in computer consumption while those who had a low physical activity level spent more time by the computer.

AbstractThe Swedish society has always been monolingual, but has for the past decades transformed into a multicultural and multilingual society. The aim of this study is to investigate if and in that case how preschool teachers work with language development in bilingual and multicultural preschools. The concept of linguistic and cultural diversity includes several different components, not least the social interactions that are of great importance to every individual's development, learning and participation in the world. By understanding the importance of language, language development and the role of mother tongue in second language acquisition, we look into various researches done concerning the effects of the preschool teachers? opinions, methods used to language developmental primarily for children who are multilingual and how the physical environment is shaped to promote language in multicultural and multilingual preschools.The method used in this study is semi-structured interviews with preschool teacher working in multicultural or bilingual preschool settings.

Statistics regarding children, who are overweight, shows alarming results in many parts of the world. Overweight may cause serious consequences, as for instance heart- and vascular diseases. Research is pointing out that hereditary, social, behavioural and cultural facts may promote developing overweight and it is of great importance to find out how to prevent overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. The purpose of the literature study was to compile primary and secondary preventions against overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. The result showed that prevention through education, recommendations, healthy eating and exercise may be usable in the work to prevent overweight among children and adolescents.

Art in the city can be invisible until we talk about it. Letting children see public art in the context of play and narrative is a way to enhance creative thinking and knowledge as well as making the art visible. By creating a prototype for an art walk for children this study was able to create a scenery of children using different kinds of mediated narrative combined with a physical environment and movement. The theoretical framework of the project was picture books (Rhedin, 1991) transmedia (Jenkins 2006, Ryan 2004) and public art (Kwon 2002). The project?s aim was to create an empirical context for primary school children to explore public artwork.

Statistics regarding children, who are overweight, shows alarming results in many parts of the world. Overweight may cause serious consequences, as for instance heart- and vascular diseases. Research is pointing out that hereditary, social, behavioural and cultural facts may promote developing overweight and it is of great importance to find out how to prevent overweight and obesity in children and adolescents. The purpose of the literature study was to compile primary and secondary preventions against overweight/obesity in children and adolescents. The result showed that prevention through education, recommendations, healthy eating and exercise may be usable in the work to prevent overweight among children and adolescents.

The purpose of this study is to stress what experiences men working in the earlier school years share about being a minority group and what thoughts they have about why other men tend to avoid this profession.In this survey I have interviewed four male teachers in the earlier school years. In previous research it is claimed that men choose not to get a teacher training for the earlier school years partly because this profession is known to be dominated by women where it is difficult for men to feel at home. It is also claimed that teachers in training choose the later school years in order to focus more on teaching than looking after the children. None of the interviewed men sees it as a problem being a minority group, neither during training nor in teaching. What the men in this survey state as the main reasons for why other men do not choose to become teachers are the low levels of status and salary.

Background: The request for the Reggio Emilia practice has expanded enormously the last couple of years within the Swedish preschools. This particular practice describes the environment as a third educator. This third educator is supposed to work as - not only a tool - but also a support to ease children's learning experiences and help develop their mind. Previous research has shown that design of, for instance, furniture has a way of affecting the children's learning process and development.Aims: The purpose of this study is to see how two different teams of preschool educators on two differed Reggio Emilia inspired preschools work and handle the physical indoor environment. Method: We started out by contacting Reggio Emilia inspired preschools.

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

In this thesis the positioning of children and adults in the context of children?s rights in SouthAfrica and Sweden are examined. With theoretical terms as children in vulnerability and adults incharge the analysis examines how South Africa and Sweden has been using the UN children?sconvention to empower children and for what consequences in the positioning of children that hasshown. And that adults are positioned as a powerful group with a responsibilty of protectingchildren.