This essay, called Motivation and reading comprehension, is a study of the correlation between the motivation to read and the reading comprehension of Swedish students in their final year of school before university level, meaning that they are eighteen or nineteen years old, sometimes more.The relation between the identity of the individual and the learning process has been a matter of scientific interest for some time, and this essay works in that tradition by investigating the connection between how pupils regard reading and how well developed their ability to decode text is.The reading comprehension is measured through a test that consists of a text from the Swedish epic by Vilhelm Moberg, Invandrarna, where the reader at certain intervals throughout the text is asked to mark the correct word from a choice of three. This test has been used and evaluated extensively by Per Fröjd, who has found that the results are reliable and useful.To measure the motivation to read I?ve constructed a survey to be answered before taking the reading test. It focuses on three different parts of reading motivation that are noted as the most important ones by Ivar Bråten. These are the feeling of joy and interest for reading, the goal to acquire knowledge of a specific subject, and the expectations that you have on yourself as a reader.Results show a weak or non-existent correlation between the two factors for the whole of the subjects, but once those who have a first language other than Swedish are removed the correlation becomes significant.

This master thesis is aiming to find out how school libraries work towards children in school years 1-6. The mainfocus is how the school librarians and teachers work with literature and reading. The theoretical viewpoints aremainly the sociocultural theory and the child perspective.The study was conducted with participants from five different schools in Uppsala, in the form of qualitativesemi-structured interviews. The results show that schools work with literature first and foremost in a pragmaticway, with reading-strategies and activating discussions. Very little time is spent on reading for its own sake.

In 1998 years' curriculum for the preschool stands it those children under school age will get possibility that? communicate with the aid of differently expression shapes? and an example that is mentioned in the governing document is song and musical.  The purpose with this study is to examine how the song and the music are used from a language development perspective in three different preschools' activities. In the essay, I review to earlier research around the music?s' and the song's possibilities for the child's linguistic development. In the essay, it is discussed about some important factors that obstruct music situations in the preschool that the curriculum for the preschool (Lpfö98) not specific describes what expression shapes as song and music will contain and that deficiency on musical education at pedagogues.  The method for the study was to collect empirical materials through observations on three different preschools.

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to examine the importance of libraries for girls leisure time in secondary school. Focus has been on the use of the library as a leisure activity. Interviews were carried out with six girls of the ages 13 to 16. The conclusion of the study is that the library is of importance for the girls mostly through its books. Reading turned out to be an important leisure activity for the girls and the books provided by the library were of significance for their identity development.

The aim of this essay is to examine how students in 6-9 grade with reading and writing difficulties are treated and supported by teachers and staff at Ideskolan, a community school north of Stockholm. I have chosen to answer the following question:- How does Ideskolan cope with and support students with reading and writing difficultiesThis has in turn generated the following questions:- How is special education organized at Ideskolan?- Is a diagnose always needed in order to deploy extra support?The method I have employed is observation while participating, together with informal talks and interviews. I have visited Ideskolan twice, one week at the time. The material that the visits have generated is the foundation of the essay, supported by previous research in the field.The essay clarifies what right to special support students have according to law, regulations, curriculum and teaching plans and what they look like in reality at Ideskolan.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the work situation of children's librarians looks like in the year 2000, after the changes in society which took place since the 1980's. Did the tasks of children's librarians change during the nineties, and if so, in what way and why have they changed? Which new knowledge needs emerged for children's librarians during the nineties, and what was the cause of these new needs? Finally I want to know which needs for professional development arose, and how these needs are fulfilled. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with children's librarians, library managers, library consultants, one representative of the Swedish school of Library and Information Studies and one member of SAB's children and youth committee. The study reveals that the identity of children's librarianship is strongly associated with the stimulation of language and reading.

Studies show that some pupils with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) can have difficulties in understanding written texts. The present study seeks to examine whether pupils with ASD differ in their reading comprehension of a factual text and a literary text. Another aim of the study is to obtain a picture of the reading habits of high school pupils with ASD, what reading strategies they use, and how they work with texts in Swedish lessons in school.The study uses texts from PISA surveys from 2009 and 2000. The factual text Varmluftsballongen (The Hot-air Balloon) was taken from the try-out for the 2009 survey and the literary text Gåvan (The Gift) was taken from the 2000 PISA survey. To gain some idea of the pupils? reading comprehension of the texts, the present study used the tasks accompanying the texts, with certain changes in the questions about the text on the hot-air balloon.

The aim of this thesis is to illustrate the content of the democratic values tolerance, personal development and political equality, in relation to the Swedish school?s systems fundamental values, and from there problematize the schools approach towards the Sweden Democrats. By using a qualitative text analysis upon the party program of Sweden Democrats, we have been able to fulfill the aim of the thesis. We have motivated and defined our chosen democracy values from the schools fundamental values and from democracy theory. With the use of an analyze schedule we have been able to go through with the interpretation and analyze of the party program of the Sweden Democrats.

Reading spaceFurniture for reading for the new city library of GöteborgThe main purpose of my project has been to inspire people to read books at the library. I wanted to create something very site specific and chose a room on the second floor of the new city library to work with. To be able to relax, feel inspired and to concentrate on reading, the visitors of the library need to experience a sense of security. My solution to the different conditions or problems in the room and the needs I identified is a seat hanging inside a frame. When sitting down in the seat, the frame is low enough to see over but it is still experienced as a private spatiality.

Author: Elisabeth Wahlberg Title: ??I?ll just get mum to help me?About Young Adults? Strategies for Coping with Reading and Writing Difficulties in Daily Life  This study investigated how seven young adults, who during senior high school underwent a syllable based intervention due to reading and writing difficulties, developed their literacy skills, and what strategies they used to try to overcome reading and writing problems, whether at work, during studies or in their leisure time. The period from when the participants had left school ranged between three and eight years. Qualitative as well as quantitative data was compiled for the study. Qualitative data consisted of  semistructured interviews and quantitative data of tests performed before the intervention and on two occasions after, in order to compare results over time.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this Master?s thesis was to investigate if one can identify a pattern in a family?s reading habits. Our empirical data was gathered in a survey distributed to a family in three generations, between the ages 15 to 82. The family was interviewed in a life time perspective, in a so called life story character. The questions addressed in this thesis concerned how the reading habits and the general attitude toward literature differ between generations in one family.

The purpose of this study is to examine how women?s reading of the Harry Potter books can be understood on the basis of gender theory and reader-response criticism. The empirical data is gathered through qualitative interviews with six female Harry Potter readers between the age of 21 and 35, and is analyzed through several theories regarding gender and reading. The results show that the readers are critical towards many aspects of the books, especially when it comes to the stereotyped depiction of women and men. The books are said to reproduce the gender dichotomy, the gender hierarchy and the heteronormativity in society.

The aim of this study is to describe how pupils in fourth grade talk about their attitude of reading fictional narratives in school and on their spare time, their motives to read and how the school promotes fictional experiences. The study is based on interviews with 18 pupils from the same class, divided in four groups. The interviews were analyzed from a literature reception theory. The result shows that some pupils are very engaged in reading fictional narratives, while others more or less, are forced in to reading, because their teacher wants them to. All the interviewed pupils would like to read exciting, interesting books, but they feel that they don?t get the right support neither from their teacher, parents nor their friends. They describes that they don?t discuss the meaning of reading or things that the reader can read between the lines.

Swedish university libraries traditionally collect recreational readingmaterial only to support the teaching and research interests of theirinstitutions. However many university libraries hold a substantial yetunspecified collection of popular fiction. This thesis investigates theextent of these collections and examines academic librarians' viewsabout students' recreational reading in the academic context and theirattitudes towards the role of fiction and of readers' advisory inacademic libraries. The theoretical framework includes literature andresearch about the benefits of reading for pleasure, collections' rolesand readers' advisory strategies. The empirical material was gatheredthrough quantitative surveys sent to academic librarians in Sweden.The results show that academic librarians are positive about thebenefits of recreational reading for university students.