Fountain of Knowledge? The Changing Role of the Library at the Upper Secondary School Level. There have been many changes in the Swedish society in general, and in the school system and hence the school library in particular during the last decade. The aim of this master thesis is then to study what students at the upper secondary school level consider to be the optimal school library to meet their specific information needs at school. In addition to and in comparison with this, the aim is also to study the present conditions of the upper secondary school library as described in documents, reports and other studies in this field.

During the past twenty years, the Swedish school systems have slowly changed to becomemore and more performance-driven. Private schools have been growing in general and, likeindependent schools and schools managed by municipalities, they profile themselves. Schoolsare becoming more performance and result-oriented, which has changed the roles of teachersin a dramatic way and is in general, still changing.By profiling students based on theirindividual performance, schools are able to help students identify themselves and their owngoals. The process of profiling is a slow one in which some teachers adapt more quickly thanothers, and one that is critical for other teachers to learn in order to keep up with the demandsof society.Schools, like ordinary businesses, are in constant competition with each other to keep up withthe newest and greatest models of teaching and to rank among the best in high achievements.Perhaps the downside of this modern school structure is that it is often difficult to have aschool where both school management and teachers see eye to eye. School management must heavily focus on the school?s results as a whole.

The focus of this thesis is the library at the Swedish school in Berlin, Germany. Being a school in a foreign country, and playing a role also as a public library, the conditions for the library are somewhat unusual. Considering those conditions, how should the library be organised and developed to meet the users' needs in the best way possible? To put the library in Berlin into a greater perspective, the first chapters of the thesis are dedicated to the issue of school libraries in Sweden; their historical development, their importance in the school curriculum and their present situation. Swedish research in the field of school libraries is presented and includes descriptions of theoretical analysing models.

As in society in general, exclusion of individuals takes place in the school system. Even though schools ? according to the curriculum ? are supposed to cherish diversity, many children are left outside of the community formed during school activities. In order to gainknowledge of how schools can prevent and inhibit exclusion, this work aims to study how the problem is interpreted and managed. The study included six pedagogues: three pre-school teachers and three 1?7th grade teachers.

In this paper, I have conducted a study of what perspectives educational drama has in theory and practice. The study aims to show an example of how and out of what perspectives educational drama is a part of the school?s activity at a geographically distinct school, from kindergarten on to primary and secondary school years. The general attitude of the faculty and their arguments for and against drama constitute the major aspects of this study, which has been carried out through qualitative interviews at a school in Skåne. The results were that pre-school focuses on teaching drama to develop communicative abilities amongst the students (art educational perspective) while secondary school seemingly abandoned this approach and focuses more on using it for personal development, increasing empathy and understanding of other people by taking it to a more emotional level in order to affect for example moral values of the students.

This report describes necessary steps for an implementation of an environmental managementsystem at a secondary school and what would hopefully lead to an environmentalcertification, using ISO14001 ? or as a possibility ? one of the so called environmentalawards. To the largest part, the descriptions and activities are general and can be used at anysecondary school at all, but the current status analysis ? with the started environmentalinvestigation ? and the environmental policy are directly coupled to Wilhelm HaglundsGymnasium. The document should work as a process support for implementation of anenvironmental management system at a secondary school..

The school can be seen as a place that reflects the wider community. Here is a school welfare officer an important representative of the school social work. The main subject of our study is to clarify how the school welfare officers? talk about documentation in the individual meeting with the pupil. Through individual interviews with five school welfare officers in elementary schools in three municipalities in the southern part ofSweden, we have attempted to explore these main research question.In addition to qualitative interviews we have accomplished a survey study that included 178 school welfare officers throughout the country.The result of our two studies demonstrates the school welfare officers? free work where the choice to document or not is wide.

The purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine what attitudes the administrators of the selected elementary schools have towards school library media centers in general but also towards their own respective library media centers. Furthermore, it is to examine the administrators? views on their school librarian?s role in the library media center as well as an integrated part of the school activities. A branch in this purpose is to examine if there is any differences in staffing the library media centers with a library media specialist or a teacher-librarian.

During my practice as a teacher trainee at an upper secondary school it became clear to me that many pupils have difficulties with algebra. Also in a report from the National Agency for Education (1999) you can see that the students algebra knowledge get worse and worse. I was surprised to find that many pupils seemed to get stuck on the level of attainment for the senior level of the nine-year compulsory school. As I have not studied anything about difficulties in algebra during my training to become a qualified teacher I would like to get to know more about this. I also examine why you have to study algebra in upper secondary school.

Swedish pre-school teachers are in the middle of a debate regarding a form of general school competence that today is criticized by mass media. The training and skill development that is used today is an important tool in the development of the organization as well as the people that work in them. This study aims to explain how this training actually is performed and the opinions of the pre-school teachers that actually finish the training. Previous research in this area has primarily been focused at the types of methods that exists from an executive standpoint. This study, instead, aims to shift that focus to the individual worker.

The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of how parents of children in need of special support have experienced their interaction with the pre-school. Our three main areas of interest were to investigate how several parents experienced their contact with the pre-school, if there were any experienced factors that had played a part in the contact with the pre-school and if we could conclude anything about how the curriculum had been followed in these cases, with assistance of the parents? experiences.Our study is qualitative and we chose to interview six parents. We both participated in all of the interviews. The theoretical base of this study is rooted in the phenomenological theory and we also used the framework factor theory to complement our analysis.One of our conclusions was that the parents expressed so many different experiences that we decide not to try compare them in general.

In today?s´ multicultural society increasing numbers of school librarians are faced with a relatively new target group of pupils. This group is linguistically less homogenous than previously and this requires modern adaptations of pedagogic methods.Information literacy and reading promotion are two important topics that school librarians work with. Information literacy is essential for problem based tuition and to increase it requires a well developed language. This study is focusing of the school librarians work with reading promotions.

In this examination project I look into what ways upper secondary school students conceive themselves as politically influenced before they voted for the general election of 2010. The purpose is to examine which influences the upper secondary school surroundings and the classes of civic education are contributing with to students before they voted. As a method, I have used personal, semi-structural interviews on eight upper secondary school students who all voted for a party represented in the parliament. I have asked questions about how they believe their parents, the surroundings of their school and the classes of civic education have influenced them. To separate which influences primarily the upper secondary school and the classes of civic educations have had on the students, I have selected two comparison groups of four students in each.

The concept of IT has developed into ICT (Information- and Communication Technology) over the years. ICT has an increasing impact in society and the Swedish curriculum (Lpo 94) highlights the importance of school to convey lasting knowledge that constitutes the general frame of reference that everyone in society is in need of. The purpose of this study was to find out how teachers perceive and use ICT in secondary school and discover the teachers? vision concerning ICT.The used approach for the study is a qualitative research with a basis of interviews. Four interviews are made with teachers from the early years of secondary school, at two different schools.

The consumption of alcohol in Sweden has increased considerably within recent years. Among youths there has been a tendency towards drinking more frequently and increased volumes. Alcohol habits among students on the high schools auto mechanic line has been given a questionnaire to examine their experience of the immediate after effect of alcohol and how et effects their situation in school. It has been proven that participating students are drinking alcohol more frequently than the average among Swedish high school students and girls more often than boys. The general experiences of alcohol after effect are predominantly negative both physically and psychologically, but the students are not concerned of their alcohol habits having an effect on their school work..