This essay, with the title: Among children, laser swords and lions. ? How do we approach and utilize the cultural experiences of children? is an approach to participate in a scientific discussion in the field of cultural experiences. This text is an attempt to show the importance of paying attention to, how children express themselves, and place their activities in social and cultural contexts. By doing so and approaching children and their activities with an intercultural point of view, I can use my new found knowledge and use it to stimulate their future learning progresses in different fields.

The purpose was to investigate whether using two type of interventions (i.e., Four rooms of change in school and EQ- workshop) in addition to curriculum guidelines can affect character development in children 10-12 years of age. The data was collected using the test Junior Temperament and Character Inventory (J-TCI; Cloninger, CR, 1994) in three elementary schools among students in fifth grade who had been involved in any of the two interventions for the past two years or no intervention at all.The J-TCI scales were used to, besides the seven personality dimension it measures, create a self-constructed empathy scale. A total of 55 participants were included in the study (girls n = 26 and boys n = 29). Statistical testing with MANOVA showed no significant main effect on empathy or any personality trait. There was however an interaction effect between intervention and gender on the character traits.

The purpose of this examination was to make a qualitative study focusing on children's influence from a gender perspective. The study is based on interviews. We wanted to investigate teachers' perception of children's influence in the preschool.Earlier research on children´s influence and gender has also helped us in the conclusion of this examination.The survey consists of ten interviews with teachers of varied work experience in the preschool. We also chose to interview teachers in other positions, since this is often the case in preschools today. From the result we can see that there are different levels of skill and awareness regarding the topic of children's influence from a gender perspective.

AbstractIn this work, I have chosen to write about children in grief. Since children in grief is a large area, I have chosen to focus on how preschool handles and works with children who has loosed a parent, siblings or a play-mate by death. The aim of this work is to contribute knowledge about how you in preschool can handle and work with children in grief. To get answers to my questions, I have studied the current literature in the field. I have also interviewed five people with experience and knowledge of work with preschool-children affected by grief.

AbstractThe purpose of the study was to examine if manual signs used as support to spoken and written language can be a god mnemonic for learning of word-pictures. I performed my study as an experiment in which I made a Memory game with word-pictures. I played the game with the children twice. The first time, we played without manual signs and the second time I used sign as a support. I observed the children and noted the words they learned to read with and without the support of manual signs.

This report is written on commission by WSP Acoustics. The report studies the outdoor sound levels on school yards in Stockholm. The questions given by the company to be answered was what are the actual sound levels at diffrent school yards with low traffic noise and how can you construct a facade element that reduces the sound level from the outside and meet the indoor requirements. Mesurements for four hours was done at eight schools set north and south of the city centre. The measurement period included one school break and one lunch break.

Different abilities are of importance to pragmatics, there among hearing. Hearing impairment can affect language development and also pragmatic ability. The aim of the present paper was to study the pragmatic ability in terms of request for clarification in children with Hearing Impairment (HI) in conversation with children with no known hearing impairment, henceforth normally hearing (NH). The present study also describes requests for clarification sequentially in detail, and also highlights points where there may be observable differences between children with and without hearing impairment. Eight conversational pairs consisting of one child with HI and one NH child were studied.

This study intends to examine why the Swedish children?s programme Bolibompa is produced the way it is during a larger catastrophe. Our intention was to find out how the editorial staff, in the children?s department in the public service television of Sweden (SVT),was handling the Estonia disaster, the September 11 attacks and the Asian Tsunami. To accomplish that, we first had to find out how the children?s programme looked during these catastrophes and also understand how the editorial staff was working with children?s programme during ordinary days.To achieve our purpose we have been interviewing five persons from SVT, who was involved in producing the children?s programme during these three catastrophes.

This essay deals with the issue of children and stress, and the impact that stress can have on children. The purpose has been to explore how I, in my role as teacher, can prevent children from developing stress in preschool, and how I can prevent stress to develop inside of my own department. My essay is structured as follows: First, I describe my practical work with children. Then I analyze some research literature on stress, and finally I reflect over what I have described earlier and try to connect the practical with the theoretical.In the practical part of this essay I describe the various events that I have observed during my work in preschool, where I have seen how stress can affect both children and teachers. Then I describe how the increasing size of children?s groups can create stress because of the noisy environment of the department.

AbstractWhat do the pupils really learn in school? What do the pupils know before they begin schooland what knowledge do they have when they graduate form 5 and should have achieved thegoals? I chose to interview some pupils in the end of nursery school and some pupils in theend of form 5. To limit myself I chose the subject space, because I think most pupils thinkthat space is an interesting subject. The result of my examination was that pupils in nurseryschool have many different thoughts and previous knowledge about space, often on the basisof what they have seen themselves, and that some of the pupils in form 5 have some moredeveloped knowledge while some pupils still got the skill as a nursery school pupil. Myexamination shows that some pupils have learned surprisingly little, bearing in mind that theyhave been in school for five years..

The aim with this paper is to examine the political background of the schools comission to integrate pupils with special needs in the public school. These following questions are examined: What political documents are the elementary? Which ones are juridically binding for the schools? What are the experiences for  parents of children with special needs in the school? The method used for this paper is mainly litterature-studies. The four documents which are examined are: skollagen, Läroplanen 94, FN:s barnkonvention och Salamancadeklarationen. The theoretical frame for this paper is political documents, curriculums and how schools concretize the special education.

The aim of the study was to examine collaboration and professional perspectives on the best interest of the child in regards to working with unaccompanied asylum seeking children. Firstly, our result show that counselling is available for the unaccompanied children from case workers, staff, school counsellors and emergency psychiatric care. All of the participants in this study describe the need for long-term counselling for unaccompanied children, however, providing the long-term counselling is not the primary purpose of the organisations in question. Therefore an additional service-provider working with counselling is a necessity. Secondly, the study explores the participants? professional perspectives on the best interest of the child.

This study was designed to describe and understand how children perceive and explain mathematical situations. During our work based training we have met several students who have been insecure in the subject of mathematics and therefore come to think that it's difficult and boring. The questions we have asked ourselves are why and how this insecurity occurs. In preschools around the country teachers actively worked to create opportunities for children to meet and discover mathematics. The question is whether the teachers are aware of how children perceive mathematics and how children think in mathematical situations. We chose to conduct a qualitative study using different methods of data collecting in order to approach the children's world.

In this experience-based essay, I give examples of events that take place during a typical day at preschool. By highlighting these everyday events, I discuss around the parental role and its importance for children and child development. I apply a historical review when it comes to views on children and child rearing, and reflect on different approaches that we have towards the children. In the discussion, I reflect on the Childs need for boundaries, and thereby try to understand why we act differently in this respect. To gain more knowledge and understanding of the events I have taken help from theories in literature and from my own practical knowledge.

In focus of this study lie students of an upper secondary school in a multicultural district, where more than 60 % of the students fail to reach the national goals for education. Since this particularly exposed group of students receives little attention during my studies in the Special Educational Teacher Programme, I have felt an ever growing urge to examine this group closer. As a basis for this study stands theories on how children and youths, in particular those of immigrant background, need holistic consistency and continuity in order to be able to build a positive development of identity. The purpose of this study is to explore the possibilities of developing parent cooperation in a multicultural district, through finding out what teachers and parents expect and desire from parent cooperation. I also want to find out how parents and teachers think that a working parent cooperation affects the student.