The aim of my thesis was to examine if educators need to be critical of what they read to the children from a gender perspective. I examined how picture books depict gender and if the books enhances or breaks perception of gender roles. I also examined educator?s perception of gender and if they think picture books can affect children?s perceptions of gender, but also what educators think about gender equality through picture books. The study is based on analysis of five picture books and interview with five educators.The results of analyzes showed that picture books are stereotyped and enhances perceptions of gender roles.

This Master?s thesis explores three contemporary Swedish poets? ? Lars Mikael Raattamaa, Anna Hallberg and Johan Jönson ? understanding of their work as a political activity. By using Jonathan Culler?s theory on literary competence and literary conventions as a theoretical tool for an idea analysis, the three poets' arguments for or against certain literary techniques, and their ideas about readers and reading, are explored and discussed. In what ways are established literary methods questioned by the three poets? In what ways are established theories on readers and reading questioned? In what way can their poetic work be regarded as political? As a background, the debate about poetry in Swedish newspapers and literary magazines is presented, as well as the common focus on readers and reading in social sciences and in humanities and arts.

Open source is growing outside the boundaries of hackers, amateurs and software development, creating a humongous potential in many different areas and aspects of society. The intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that drives open source have been in the subject of much research recently, but how they affect each other when paid and unpaid contributors come together is still hidden in obscurity. In this study I investigate how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation correlates with each other and how those correlations affect paid and unpaid open source software contributors. The literature synthesis is based on of systematic reviews through searches in library databases, identification of articles by searching on the Internet and by reading relevant books. My results indicate that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations continuously affect each other and that paid contributors are more vulnerable since their extrinsic motivation in terms of money is reached only when many other motivations are fulfilled.

This is a study of how four teachers work with pupils? early literacy learning. Interviews were conducted with two teachers who chose to use a specific method, Writing to Read (WTR), for teaching pupils to read, and with two teachers who had not chosen a specific method. The aim of the study was to compare how the teachers worked, their motives for their choice of method, and the ideas the teachers have about early literacy learning. To see whether the teachers? choice of method was related to the individualization of the teaching and their views of pupils? learning in interaction, Vygotsky?s theories about children?s learning have been used.

The aim of this study was to explore and describe how four teachers work with literacy in preschool and grade one, ages 6 and 7. The aim was also to explore the progression of reading and writing as well as the collaboration between teachers in preschool and grade one. The study has a qualitative approach and data was collected through observations and interviews. The findings indicate that teachers in preschool have similar activities and approach to what guides the work. Regarding teachers in grade one it shows that they both are working with reading and writing in a varied way.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and analyse the antagonism between conservation and development which occurs in historical towns.The base of the study is theories in destination development and cultural heritage tourism in historical towns as well as the consequences expressed in these theories concerning conservation and development. The standpoint was that an empiric study needed to complement the theory. This filed study took place in Dubrovnik in Croatia. The thesis identifies the antagonism between conservation and development based on the theoretical research. Moreover the study adds a perspective to the research through the identification of further dimensions of this antagonism.

Purpose: my aim was to explore ways that teachers can support students with dyslexia and what/ which tools some teachers / special education teachers use to facilitate students.Method: I used a quantitative method by interviewing some regular teachers and special education teachersResults: In my study, I learned how some teachers can support students by reading loud to them; a main task for the teachers could be to create the love of reading for the students. That task was reinforced by students' self-image..

Bachelor essay in political science by Marie Åberg, autumn 2011. ?Harm or benefit? A critical view of the theoretical grounds of the international development aid?. Supervisor: Professor Mats Lindberg. The first of the dual purpose of this essay is to present international aid policy ideas and the theoretical grounds of international development aid.

Many research reports mention the fact that a huge number of all system development projects never reach a successful ending; with other words never fulfil formulated goals. By identifying and forming success factors (and in some aspect risk factors) that the project manager in practice can use, this study may be seen as a step in the direction towards minimising the high number of failed system development projects. The purpose of this research report is to investigate how a system development project, where the development process is based on a specific development or process model (in this case the Waterfall model), can and should be driven. I aim to clarify what is demanded of a project leader for the specific development process and give an account for which eventual leadership qualities that can be well suited for given situation in relation to the need for technical competence. Among other things the project manager should inspire confidence, drive, be a decision maker, engage and own some form of basic knowledge in the field of system development.

The Syllabus for Swedish Language and Literature for Elementary School includes literatureand multimodal texts, such as web texts. From a Swedish educational perspective, it isimportant to consider the students' experiences. This study examines a couple of ten year oldsexperiences of literature, film, and social media. It also examines how these medias are usedin School according to the pupils. The theoretical basis for this research is based onhermeneutic phenomenology and the concept of life-worlds.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how the OPACs Online Public Access Catalogue used by public libraries have adapted the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, for the purpose of searching for fiction. This is done by comparing five OPACs to Amazon.com, an online bookstore. The questions investigated are: Have the OPACs developed from the principles of the card catalogue and adapted to the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, when searching for fiction? Can the library catalogue provide the same features as Amazon.com, when searching for fiction? How do the OPACs use the resources that online catalogues provide when searching for fiction, compared with Amazon.com? The thesis is based on two qualitative studies. The first study presents five OPACs from different library systems and examines which features they have in common with Amazon.com.

The purpose of this study was to investigate young teenagers 13-16 reading habits and attitudes concerning todays modern teenage literature especially written for the young teenagers. The study also includes the readers apprehension of the literature and how the target group is reached. The study is based on results from questionnaires, interviews and by compiling summaries of literature relevant to this study. Earlier research has been compared with results from this study. Reflections made by teachers and librarians concerning the youths reading habits are an integral part of the study.

This study is based on my work as a teacher of Swedish language and literature to upper secondary school students, and my interest in developing the teaching of literature by using both new criticism theories and theories of literary perception focusing on reader response. The purpose of the study is to examine the learning process in trying to develop literary competence and to find out how to describe the competence shown by the students. My starting-point is a discussion about literary competence and the theory and model of literary competence by Örjan Torell. In examining literary competence, by how students use their constitutional competence as well as performance and literary transfer competences, Torell´s model shows the possibility and the need for both knowledge of literature and personal reception by focusing on the dialogue between author and reader.The method is qualitative and the empirics are material collected in one senior high school class in the Social Science programme during their second and third year. The material contains written reading logs, written answers to tasks and transcribed recordings of discussions of literature.The analysis shows a variety among the literary competence shown and developed by the students and points to the complexity of understanding the concept of literary competence.

This is the end report of my final exam at Medieteknik. It covers the planning, work process and review of a Flash based web application that I set out to do. The goal was to create a user friendly, interactive e-shop with embedded functionality for playing music, displaying rich media content and researching possible payment solutions, to enable buying music files online. The project involved creating the user interface, the programmatic functionality of a Flash client (an SWF file). Also, setting up an Apache HTTP Server and establishing a working ?bridge? between the Flash client and the web server with Flash Remoting components and AMFPHP.

The purpose of this study was to examine what students themselves think about using computers in school. The study was conducted in a school in central Sweden. The students in focus were students with reading and writing difficulties, dyslexia or language difficulties such as an other native language. A total of eight students were interviewed. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis.