The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

My essay is written from a basis of one of my own experiences were a child is perceived by us pedagogues as lonely and introverted, as well as having trouble socialising because of, what we can see, difficulties making himself understood verbally. I want to highlight how I as a pedagogue can respond to and strengthen children who are outside but still with the group, in a certain sense. I want to reflect on how we can deepen our understanding of these children and how we can facilitate for children who do not follow the norms of society when it comes to communication. I will analyse and draw conclusions with the help of theorists such as Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotskij and interpretations of these, but also look at it from a sociopsychological perspective as the interactions between people and environments play a large and distinctive role in preschool. The purpose of this essay is to enlighten how different we can see and experience situations in preschool.

According to international and national literacy studies (PISA, PIRLS) Swedish boys are inferior to Swedish girls when it comes to reading. There can be numerous reasons to that statement. One is that Swedish teachers require more knowledge about communication as an important component in literacy. In spite of this shortcoming, Swedish girls manage to gain sufficient literacy. Why is that? The aim of this survey was to examine if there were any differences between girls and boys regarding communication skills when they begin in school.The main questions taken in account were:Which differences and/or similarities in communication skills are discernible between boys and girls this particular preschool?How do boys and girls communicate with each other in different room contexts on this particular preschool?           To be able to answer the questions, I adopted observations and audio recordings from children aged five.

This study is about differences in knowledge regarding animals. In the study five year old preschool children from a city were compared to five year old preschool children in the suburbs with multicultural background. The study is also about where children´s knowledge about animals comes from and how educators can make a positive difference. To find this out standardized interviews was used on 23 children from four different preschools, two preschools in the suburbs with 15 children and two preschools in the city with 13 children. A survey was sent out to the educators within these preschools to gather background information on what the children do regarding animals.

AbstractThe aim of this study is to retrieve knowledge about how teachers in the preschool talk about children?s participation and influence in the work of pedagogical documentation, and what they think about children?s integrity associated whit it. I have used qualitative interview as method, and I have interviewed five teachers from four different preschools. The result from my study shows that the teachers don?t see so much of children?s participations and influence in the work of pedagogical documentation.

This thesis is about a language-stimulating activity, called the Book Teddy, which take placein Markaryd, a small municipality in southern Sweden. The activity is described and someexamples given of the Book Teddy's visits to the homes of parents and their preschool children.Similar activities in Värnamo, Kumla and Borås, which have been inspired by the BookTeddy are also described.Facts about children's psychology, language development and child language illustrate theimportance of stimulating language acquisition in the early years. An important example is"The Bristol Study", a longitudinal study of preschool children.A questionnaire was sent to 93 parents, whose children were bom in 1991. 53 parents or57% answered. The analysis was made out of these 53 questionnaires.

The purpose of this study was to find out what pedagogues in preschool think when it comes to children?s influence and how they do to give the children opportunity to express their thoughts and point of views and thereby influence their situation.The literature review treats the conception of the competent child and shows that having child perspective is important in meeting children. The literature review implies that participation and influence means sensitivity to children?s expressions and that pedagogues lets these expressions influence the activities in preschool. It is not about children always getting their ways, but that they are respected and are given space to think freely.Searching for pedagogues? thoughts on children?s influence and how they do for giving it, I interviewed six persons, working at six different preschools.

Play is an important part of children´s everyday life, it is through play children develop. Play occurs a lot in kindergarten and in this study, the aim is to examine how play activities play is used in preschool teaching and the role of the teacher´s in the play. Video recordings of play activities done and qualitative methods (conversation analysis) has been used to analyze the video recordings. The results of this study show that play are widely used as a pedagogical tool in preschool. It is through play children develop.

The purpose of my study is to describe how educators think about the play environment, the nature and its importance for the children's development and learning in preschool. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four active educators. The results of the study show that the teachers regarded the children's interests to a great extent when the different play environments were structured. They are also based on different themes that they have seen that the children were interested in, such as the fire station, hair salon or shop and café. Educators designing not only these play areas for different types of play for the children, but the different environments also have a learning purpose. The outdoor environment however attracts greater interest from children, to where they have more space to move freely in and outdoors, there are no limits to the children.

AbstractThis study deals with NTA in preschool and the purpose of the study is to find out how the NTA project works out in practice. In the empirical study I have used questionnaires as a research method (Trost2001). Questionnaires have been sent to preschool teachers in the whole of Sweden to get as good a selection as possible. The responses received have been processed and analyzed. The results are reported below.The majority of the teachers thought it worked well to work with the NTA.

The purpose with this study was to find out about the preschool toddler?s peer-cultures. I also wanted to understand how these peer-cultures were shown.My questions are as following:What is it that the children interpretive and reproduce in their play?How do children gain access to play?How do children exclude each other?What position of status can be seen in children´s play?I used observations as the method to find the answer to these questions. These observations where implemented during five occasions at two different preschools.

How do gender and socioeconomic backgrounds affect students? academic performance, educational choices and attitudes towards education? Moreover, does class play the same role for girls and boys? In order to find this out, I surveyed students in a small province located in the northern inlands of Sweden. The survey was answered by nearly every student in the ninth grade of that year, a total of 160 people. The results revealed that girls in this area have less faith in their capabilities than boys, despite getting much better grades. Many more girls than boys want to go onto college or university studies.

Undersökningen som grundar sig på intervjuer med nio pedagoger i sex flerkulturella förskolor utgår både från styrdokumentens förespråkade sociokulturella tänk liksom ett socialisationsteoretiskt perspektiv. Studien synliggör att såväl språkliga ? som kulturella dilemman dagligen uppstår såväl mellan hemmet och förskolan, som mellan vuxna med olika religionstilllhörighet. Studien tydliggör att ett interkulturellt perspektiv inte föreligger i möten mellan olika kulturer, vilka därmed sker utifrån pedagogernas individuella reflektioner kring egna ? och andra kulturer.

The main problem that is seen in schools is that teachers sometimes don not reflect on what kind of pupils they have in the class and therefore do not adapt their way of communicate, which can lead to confusion and misunderstandings from the pupils side.In this essay I have study a teacher?s way to communicate with her pupils depending of what kind of class she has. The main question is How the dialogue between teacher and pupils looks like, and after that there are two more questions that are answered.The method in this essay is of a qualitative form where the observation is the main method to gather the empiric parts. The analysis is also of a qualitative form.The theoretical frame is taken from different scholars but the main focus lies in the subject of communication and dialogue and how these subjects are depending on the relationships  between people. But there are also a theory from Bahktin were he points out how to succeed with a dialogue in a classroom.The conclusion in this essay is that communication and dialogue in the classrooms are important regardless what kind of pupils you as a teacher have.

Små barn visar tidigt intresse för naturkunskap och det är förskolans uppdrag att fånga upp och ta tillvara detta intresse. Examensarbetet syftar till att undersöka hur förskollärare arbetar för att stimulera barns intresse för naturkunskap. Studien baseras på sex kvalitativa intervjuer med förskollärare från tre olika förskolor i en medelstor svensk stad. Studien behandlar hur förskollärare ser på innebörden av ett utforskande arbetssätt samt hur de tar barns intresse för naturkunskap vidare. Resultatet är att förskollärarna stimulerar barns intresse för naturkunskap genom att vara närvarande, ställa framåtsträvande frågor, fotografera händelser, diskutera i arbetslaget och genom att arbeta efter ett temainriktat arbetssätt.