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.

AbstractThe ability to read and write is a very important skill in today?s information based society. Most of us learn how to read and write, but not everyone is blessed to do this without struggle. Dyslexia is a very common learning disability and therefore I found it interesting to study how teachers teach students with dyslexia.By studying the literature and by interviewing teachers, I found that dyslexia is a very complex disability. The teachers have to adapt their way of teaching in a way that a student with dyslexia can participate.

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.

In 2010 there will be a political resolution to ensure that the Swedish society is accessible to all citizens including people with disabilities. For this purpose a national action plan for disability policy "From patient to citizen" (Govt. Bill 1999/2000:79) has been set out with the aim of ensuring that the disability perspective will permeate every sector of society and that the approach and response to people with disabilities will be improved. The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs is responsible for implementing the disability policy in the cultural sector.Since public libraries in Sweden are a part of the public cultural sector, they will also be affected by the political resolution regarding accessibility. The concept underpinning library services for disabled people must be that of equality of access.

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.

The aim of this study is to examine the roles of the children?s librarian in a reading aloud context. To reach understanding in this subject, we have conducted interviews with four Swedish librarians working in public libraries whom are involved with reading aloud practices. Previous research shows that the reasons for reading aloud in libraries are diverse and plentiful. Such reasons can be to spread cultural experiences, help children develop their language skills and promote the library to the public.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

In this essay, I will look at three different Compulsory comprehensive schools in one community and I will compare final grades from students who graduated in spring 2006. I will also examine how the three schools work with students, and in what way they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, so that they could reach goals set by The Swedish National Agency for Education. The aim with this essay is to show differences between schools in the same community and my question is if it is the way you approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties that affects the student?s grades and results.The study is concentrating on three schools in one community and students with dyslexia and reading- and writing difficulties that went to those schools. I have spoken to remedial teacher at each school about how they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, what kind of methods the use, how they investigate if a student is in need of special help and how they grade their students who are in need of special teaching because of their learning disabilities.

The aim of this study is to look at how librarians express theirpart in reading groups organized by public libraries. Thestudy is based on interviews with seven public librarians insouth regions of Sweden. The main theory used to analyse isfound in the article Bibliotekaren som litteraturformidler(1994) written by the Norwegian librarian Jofrid KarnerSmidt, where she talks about five different roles that alibrarian can have in this context and how they appear. Threeof these roles were used in this study: the pedagogue, theliterature expert and the marketer.The interviewed librarians mostly had a similar view on howthey look at their role in the reading group. They saw theirpurpose as to provide all kinds of people with a possibility tojoin in discussions about mutual interests and share variousopinions about books.

Being a trustee within the disability care will, in most cases, put big responsibility on the trustee both as a representative for the klient but also as a representative for the standards of the society. The assignment as a trustee is to strengthen the client and ease his/her way of living in the society. The Swedish legislation that controls the process and the regulation of the trustees, is by the authors of this paper preceived as kind of vauge, leaving a lot of room for interpretation. So  how do trustees comprehend their assignment and how do they actually interpret it? Using material from eight interviews with trustees within the disability care, this paper aims to examine these questions, and focuses only on the trustees and their experiences.

Treatment is both about the actual encounter and how individuals interact as well as the behaviour among the counterparts. Previous research shows that a person?s experience of how he/she is being treated is formed by conditions created by external factors, in literature known as the general view on treatment. The purpose of the study is to show how people with a physical disability experience the treatment from their Social Security Agency administrators. We have compared the empirical material with theories on treatment and power and analysed how this affect the interaction between the administrator and the disabled person.

The purpose of this thesis is to form an idea about the qualitative value and meaning of reading fiction in a psychological perspective and over a lifetime. Seven women, 68-79 years old, were interviewed about their reading habits of fiction in their lifetime. The material is presented as life stories. I use an inter-nordic research project called the SKRIN project which looks upon reading habits from an individualistic and psychological perspective. I also refer to an American study which focus on reading development with roles readers take in different ages of life written by J A Appleyard.

International reading comprehension studies, like PIRLS and PISA, state that the reading comprehension of Swedish students has decreased significantly since 2000. As a consequence, the National Agency of Education has made reading comprehension teaching a prioritised field in terms of further education for teachers. There has also been a change in Lgr 11, the national curriculum for compulsory school, where it is stated that teaching in reading strategies shall be a part of the central content throughout compulsory school. When the pupils reach upper secondary school level, reading comprehension education is no longer a part of the curriculum. Today, students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities currently share the same curriculum as the ordinary upper secondary school.

In primary school reading-books in Swedish language is something that students come across early in school and have done ever since the 1800s. After World War II there have been major changes in society. 1962 there was a school reform where the school turned into a nine-year system of compulsory education. That is why it is interesting to see what reading books contain with regard to notions of children, family and class and how the developments have been from the 1950s until the present time. This study aims to analyze and compare the different aspects of how notions of children, family and class are produced in the reading books for primary school for pupils in third grade, between 1950 and 2009.The research questions were:What are the notions of children, family and class in the reading-books?What differences/similarities exist in the reading books from the 1950s to the  recent decades?What could be the reason?I have chosen to apply qualitative text analysis originating in idea analysis.