The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children?s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children?s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children?s participation and manifestations of children?s participation in everyday library work were also investigated.

AbstractFrom 1st of July 2003 it is compulsory for companies with an average number of ten employees the latest two financial years to account sick leave in the annual report.The government?s purpose with accounting of sick leave was partly to evoke an action from the companies? side in terms of motion as an effect due to the awareness of the level of the sick leave. The government was of the opinion that the companies had too deficient knowledge in sick leave and that the knowledge about causes and costs had to increase.In this paper three companies affected by the compulsory accounting of sick leave have been interviewed. The paper defines to only concern private companies. The companies were interviewed in purpose to form an opinion of whether the companies have changed their health promoting actions due to the application of the law.

Can landscape architecture be seen as an economical asset rather than as a cost? Can well designed outdoor environments affect real estate values? This study investigates the economical value of landscape architecture and its influence on real estate prices. Research results on the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values are here compiled together with a survey made among players on the Swedish real estate market of their attitudes towards the problem. This study shows that the players on the Swedish real estate market often are unaware of the economical effects of landscape architecture pointed out in the compiled research. The study also shows that to use this information in actual projects several steps need to be taken: better knowledge of the problem, more and better compilations of research results, effective channels to spread the compiled information, proper employment and implementation of the knowledge. Extended knowledge of the relation between landscape architecture and real estate values will result in new ways of making money on outdoor environments. This would in turn have consequences for how the real estate business treat outdoor environments and how landscape architects work. The study is divided into four main questions: 1: Is there a relation between good landscape architecture and real estate prices? 2: What is the view of the players on the real estate market in this matter? 3: Is there more knowledge, research and practical models at hand? 4: What future steps can be taken to broaden the knowledge and apply it to real situations?.

Bullying and harassment is a common phenomenon that usually is associated with schools, but bullying among adults at workplaces is not as much discussed. Previous research shows that discrimination occurs in various social areas because of the individual's gender and ethnicity. Based on this there was a reason to suppose that bullying, which is a form of vulnerability, could also depend of belonging to a particular social category. The aim of this study was to get knowledge about the correlation between bullying at the workplace and concurrent collaboration of class, gender and ethnicity. The results of this quantitative study show that there is no correlation between the simultaneous interaction of gender, class and ethnicity towards bullying and harassment.

This paper set out to investigate how teachers of Swedish in Sweden implement the grammar objectives of the curriculum in their teaching, through interviewing six teachers. It has been important to compare their methods to modern research of grammar teaching and teaching in general. They have been asked a series of questions to answer whether or not they use grammar terminology as mediating tools, if they intergrate dialogue among students in grammar teaching and to what extent the teachers? knowledge of and attitude towards grammar influence their teaching methods. The results show that grammar is used as mediating tools primarily when it comes to feedback on pupils? texts, though not to a great extent; dialogue between pupils is rare when it comes to grammar teaching; and the teachers? grammar knowledge and attitude affect the teaching methods, primarily in the sense that seeing value in grammar knowledge increases the teacher?s desire to develop new methods for grammar teaching..

Air tightness in new buildings has been discussed for several decades. But the knowledge in the subject is low. With tougher requirements from the Swedish government about energy consumption for a new building required competences how these shall be met. It's not only the thick mess of insulation that are important, it's also the air tightness. This report is about air leakage in Swedish houses.

The aim of this essay is to analyze the implementation process of the International Baccalaureate?s Diploma Programme in four of the approximately 30 schools currently offering the IB at upper secondary level in Sweden. The starting point is a comparison between definitions in fundamental documents in the national programmes for Natural Science (NV) and Social Science (SP) on the one hand, and the IBDP on the other. The evaluation, based on Program theory, focuses in particular on the consistencies in the Organizational plans of each system.  The basic assumption is that the IB due to a deviating organizational system, different structures, aims and objectives makes a challenge for the dominating educational discourse, to use a concept by Michel Foucault, and that resistance against the IB therefore is to be expected.As a second part of the evaluation five people who either play, or have played the role of coordinators of the IB, and who thereby are responsible for the implementation, have been interviewed. The questions have been focused around in what sense the informants can confirm resistance in their implementation work due to the differences found in the first part of the evaluation, and in what ways it manifests itself.Finally, Michel Foucault?s power structures in connection to discourse analysis have been applied on the results of the two previous parts of the essay.

Human rights have been added to the new curriculum which came into force the 1st of July 2011 in the Swedish Upper Secondary school. The purpose with this master thesis is to compare the old and the new curriculum as part of an examination of what way they affect the Social Science education. Further the analysis focus on what is affecting discourses in the Social Science about human rights, as well as its communication and incorporation in its education. The empirical material consists of the schools steering documents and interviews with Social Science teachers. The theoretical framework is based on human rights education (HRE) and curriculum theory.

The problem, which I want to highlight in this essay, is about my fear of losing face in conversationwith the parents of my text. I'm going through different approaches to find out what is happening inmy meetings with parents. I will also see if the knowledge that I get will help me to get deeperunderstanding of my reactions in different situations and if this opens up new possible ways ofhandling them.In my text there will be two stories where the conversation with parents has been difficult. Theyboth illustrate my uncertainty concerning the unpredictability of conversations with distressed orstressed parents. I can prepare the environment, by cleaning and making it look nice before meetingwith the parents.

This study aims at using discourse analysis to analyze SFI students attitudes to religion and religiosity in an SFI-context. The questions are: How is the discourse constructed and maintained by religion and religiosity of SFI students in an SFI context? How do SFI participants experience that their religion has affected their time at SFI?Using a case study approach, interviews were conducted with a group of SFI students. The results show that the religious discourse in SFI is influenced by the SFI-context and affected based on the current education discourse that exists there. Furthermore, the discourse is designed and maintained by the participants private religious beliefs and the religion of the majority of the group, One canhere speak of a strong social unit forming a plausibility structure The power structure that emerges is that the majority has the power to define the significance of religion and place within the SFI context. In the SFI-context the participants view is that religion is something private that should not be expressed in the school environment.

All inclusive travel has become a popular way to travel abroad. When tourists pay for everything in advance their need for contact with the local people will be reduced. The consequences of this can be dissatisfaction from the local people as they are left out and do not share the financial benefits created by tourism. During the purchasing cycle of an all inclusive travel, it is possible that the tour operator can influence a sustainable development.The aim of this paper is to compare how a large and a small tour operator in their purchase of all inclusive holidays interacts with local players to create sustainable development, thereby creating a surplus value to the customer. The hypothesis is that the amount of knowledge and application of this knowledge regarding sustainable development differs in the purchase process between large and small tour operators.This paper was carried out as a case study.

The thesis of this essay is that the concept of governance is a product of the neo-liberal dominant ideology and that the implementation of governance ideas will lead to a weaker nation-state. Using critical theory the essay constructs an ideal type of neo-liberalism and compares its core values with these of the governance concept as treated by the main literature in the area. The essay then focuses on the issue of the state, and discusses whether the changes leading to a demand for governance have actually weakened the state. Furthermore, the essay presents the practical use of the term governance in the EU and Sweden and problemizes the changes that the neo-liberal domination has led to in terms of power and democracy. Finally the essay discusses alternative views on the changing role of the state.

The purpose of this study is to understand encounter by individual depictions of meetingsperceived by social workers and clients in social services. Thus, we want to understand moreabout how clients and social workers as actors encounter each other in meetings in the socialservices. The study also aims to understand how the two actors affect each other in this typeof interaction and whether there are other influencing factors. We conducted a qualitativestudy by interviewing informants with semi-structured interview questions. The informantswere comprised of three social workers and eight clients.

In recent years, existing solutions for cooling personal computer CPUs have been supplemented by a new product category, factory sealed water cooling loops. These systems, consisting of a water block with an integrated pump, a fan and a radiator, perform well compared to the air cooling solutions but are less effective than larger, custom-built water cooling systems.This project aims to explore the most important aspects of a factory sealed system and to identify possible cost-effective enhancements of the performance.The most significant differences between the different groups of water cooling loops are the block design and the pumping power. The performance of both categories is also largely dependent on the fan power, but increasing fan power has a large negative impact on the noise level.Both radiator size and fan model choice appear, in tests, to be relatively unimportant, presuming that the noise level is kept constant. The position and direction of the fan, however, has significant impact on both the temperature and the sound level.Water blocks can be designed in several different ways, both regarding the heatsink design and the flow direction. In simulation, flow with the inlet centered above the heatsink result in considerably lower pressure drop and slightly higher temperatures than flow through the block, for heatsinks with fin arrays.Creating a competitive product in this product segment certainly seems possible, as there are performance-increasing changes to be made that seemingly has little impact on the production cost.

This study focuses on an analysis of three text books in English, Prime Time, Second Time, and Third Time, written for Swedish pupils between grade seven and nine. The main focus of the study is to investigate to what extent the books may be considered to follow the steering principles of the Swedish education system. The theoretical backbone of the essay is centred on the construction and maintenance of stereotypes, and is written from a social constructivist point of view. In this context, I also reason around power relations and norms in the Western society ? arguments which I, in the main analysis, apply to the books in question.