In the discourse of teaching it?s often mentioned that the pupil?s previous knowledge and experience plays an important part in the process of learning. For the teachers it?s in general crucial to be familiar with their pupils abilities and skills, talents and shortcomings in order to successfully teach them. Knowledge and an understanding of their pupils, also helps the teacher to organize and customize a successful teaching for each individual.

This thesis aims to examine when democratic consolidation took place in Costa Rica from a maximalistic perspective. The hypothesis is that it?s likely that the democracy was not consolidated as early as 1953 which would be the case if applying a minimalistic perspective. Linz and Stepan?s theory about democratic consolidation has been chosen as the theoretical framework of the thesis and the research has been conducted by using a qualitative text analysis.

Ella Mathematics is a web portal that will completely replace the printed math text book in the Swedish elementary school. When the math education is moved in to the digital world the flexibility and adaptability will increase.In 2011 the Swedish government revised the Swedish school system, which contained a whole new curriculum for the elementary school math education. This has been the foundation for the development of Ella Mathematics and the design of the three different users; student, teacher and parent. The development has been done with Dynamic Product Development methods from the project start in September 2011 until the final exam in May 2012.Ella Mathematics has been developed with the pupil?s math knowledge in focus.

In the end of the last century the interest for youth politics increased in Sweden. The causes for the increased interest were the more obvious youth politics questions and problems, for example the increased youth unemployment. In 1998 the government wrote down national goals and instructions for the youth politic work in a government bill (1998/99:115). This government bill describes how the youth politic work should be carried at a local level in the municipality.The purpose with this study is to investigate young people, in Värnamo kommun, view of their own situation. The study´s focus lies om three main concept; democracy, justice and faith in the future.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the democratization process in Kurdistan on the basis of consolidation democracy with focus on arenas defined by Linz and Stepan (1997), namely economic, political, legal, civil society and arenas of state bureaucracy. Furthermore, I intend to explain Kurdistan?s road toward democratization in Kurdistan from 1991 until today, with a focus on the years 2003-2012. The main results are that Kurdistan has developed conditions that support a future consolidation of democracy. However, there are weaknesses in the economic situation, rule of law and the arena of bureaucracy.

The intention of my studies is to explore the field of musical learning from the pupil's point of view. This master thesis is the second of two Grounded Theory studies based on interviews.In study no1 Learning of music from the pupils' point of view (Pemsel, 2009) I asked ten pupils, soon to be graduates, to express their own experience of musical learning. The selection of informants was made after reading a questionnaire an- swered by a group of 60 pupils attending different programs at a typical Swedish upper secondary school. The ten selected informants had all chosen several music courses their latest years in school. The questionnaire had two purposes; one was to construct musical profiles of the pupils, the other was to select informants for the interviews.

In this thesis I examine the development and expansion of judicial power in Sweden. The concept of judicial review is defined and related to democratic theory, and the various forms of judicial review in use in Sweden are explained. The main focus is on the political and scientific discussion concerning judicial review since the mid 1970s. It is shown that judicial review so far has been used only to a limited extent and that the number of court cases has remained quite stable over time. The main cause of judicialization seems to be the supremacy of EU law following the Swedish EU membership in 1995 and the inclusion of the European Convention on Human Rights into Swedish law.

This essay examines upper secondary school pupils as well as the Swedish National Agency for Educations views on the education in subject of religion. How they describe its purpose, what content the topic should address, how the education should be implemented and what influence the pupils should have over their own studies. This to examine how the views of pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Education correlate and to analyze how it possibly can affect the pupil?s motivation. The survey is conducted by semi-forging tured interviews and text analysis in order to ascertain the pupils and the Swedish National Agency of Educations opinions on the issues.

The evaluation and assessment of a pupil?s knowledge is today an important part of a teachers work. The function of the evaluations for younger pupils (grades 1-3) has assumed a more prominent role in the school system due to the introduction of written assessments as well as national testing in grade 3. One of the purposes of this research has been to find out the teacher?s opinions of the written assessment in grade 3.

The members of the OECD have agreed on giving aid assistance to developingcountries in a way of promoting their own capacity of handling the challengeof poverty and development. The members also cooperate and coordinate theiraid to recipient countries in the purpose of giving as effective assistance aspossible. The aid from these countries is often intended to human rights,democracy and has a humanitarian idea. This is the way from the OECDcountries. The Chinese way of giving aid mostly aimed at the industry of therecipient to promote the economic growth to lift the country out of poverty.The Chinese way do not aim or intend their aid at promoting human rights ordemocracy, often just industry and infrastructure.

Title: What is important knowledge in social studies- An analyse of opinions among teachers in social studiesThe aim of this paper is to increase the awareness about how teachers in Social studies think about goals and substance in the subject. I also want to get a picture about what kinds of problems teacher?s experiences when teaching Social studies. My expectations told me that Social studies are complex to teach, because it derives from several university disciplines such as Political science, Economics, Sociology, Law and Geography, which I believe makes the subject harder to define and what to give priority to. Finally, I want to increase the awareness, if it seems to be any fundamental essence in Social studies as a subject.To achieve my goals with this paper I have studied relevant literature about Social studies.

                                                  AbstractThe development of our society has in many ways changed the relationships between the political parties and the citizens. Fewer citizens are active in political parties, which has contributed to the fact that we see a form of catch-all effect and a development of parties that organizes more in forms of professional organisations. This paper has made a research of modells of democratic ideals and values between leaders and party-members in political parties in the local area. The purpose has been to show how these ideals and values can reflect back on the political development. The result shows that the development has created a form of catch-all effect and a professionalism in the parties.

Pupil achievement and behaviour in schools was earlier seen as given by socioeconomic and biological factors. But since the late 1970s the school effectiveness research has come to give school factors a much greater role for pupils? attainments. Research has shown that schools´ pedagogical and social climate, which is to be seen as a complex product of deeply felt values and norms held by school principals and teachers and developed through practical actions, can explain variations in effectiveness between schools. Effectiveness is here to be seen as a higher mean cognitive and non cognitive student outcome than is expected with regard to initial attainment or family background.

AbstractTitle: A democratic organisation - one click away? A quantitative content analysis which studies the potential of democratic communication through intranet use.Authors: Stina Gabrielsson and Jill Johansson VennelinPurpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is potential for democratic communication within the NGOs through intranet use.Key questions to be answered were: To what extent is authority versus members represented on the intranet Klick?s discussion forum? What/which communication-related functions out of social function, knowledge transferring and debate are featured in the posts published on the intranet Klick?s discussion forum? Are deliberative discussions being practiced in the discussion forumthreads on the intranet Klick? The thesis is based on the theory of deliberative democracy. In order to substantiate the theory has theoretical perspectives concerning participation and involvement also been applied. These perspectives are derived from organizational theory and internal communication.Method/Material: This study consists of a quantitative content analysis of the 477 posts and the 129 discussion threads available on the NGO RFSU?s intranet Klick the 29th of november 2012.Main results: The results show that 63, 4 percent of those who were active in the discussionforum represented the category authority, while the category members were formed by 36, 6 percent.

For the last decades, Sweden has transformed from a state with strong elements of corporatism, to a governance of pluralistic character. This development has opened up to a new form of participation ? lobbyism ? which since has spread and commercialized. Because of this, a report on the state of Swedish democracy ? Demokratiutredningen ? was issued to examine the phenomenon of lobbyism as it was feared to challenge the functioning of a representative democracy.