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.

Many workplaces around the world use some kind of presentation software as an aid during presentations. At Westinghouse Fuel Service in Västerås they experienced that they didn´t know how to use this medium to its fullest extent. They wanted to increase awareness of presentation skills with PowerPoint among the employees, to improve their internal and external communication. A desire they are certainly not alone to have in the working life.My research studied how to design guidelines for the use of presentation software, so the users can easily absorb the message and find motivation to use the guidelines. In order to adapt the guidelines to their users, and thus create major opportunities for them to absorb the message, I based my study on the concepts legibility, readability and reading value.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

The academic underachievement of looked after children is well known. By involving foster carers in a Paired Reading intervention a Swedish project tried to address this issue, replicating a successful British trial. The aim of my thesis was to study the variations in the foster carers? experiences of this literacy intervention. Reading reports from 100 children were collected and qualitative interviews with 15 foster parents were analyzed using concepts from motivational psychology.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine how children describe their experiences of their own reading, with focus on different aspects of reading: Choice of reading, reading environment, response to reading and book talk. Our aim is also to examine which approaches to reading their stories illustrate. The research is founded on semi-structured interviews with six children aged 10, in connection with book talks. For analysis we used Åse Hedemark?s study Barn berättar : En studie av 10-årningars syn på läsning och bibliotek as well as Aidan Chambers? theories concerning reading and reading environment.

This study centres on learning to read and methods for teaching Reading skills. The aim is to provide a survey of the concept Reading skills and the methods developed on the basis of different theories and the methods preferred when teaching children in primary school and why. The study is based on interviews with eight teachers who are working on a dailybasis teaching Swedish in preschool class or lower primary school. The result of my study is that the majority of teachers do not use a specific method, but rather combine several different methods, thus adapting instruction to each individual pupil. .

The main purpose of this study is to investigate in what ways librarians and schoolteachers can co-operate and combine their professional skills in order to help and motivate children with reading and writing disabilities, and how audio books can be useful in this work. The main source of information is interviews with teachers from ten schools in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. Those teachers, their schools and their local libraries all took part in a project spanning from 1993 to 1996, aiming at increasing the use of audio books in combination with the corresponding printed versions in work regarding the here addressed problem. This study was made with a qualitative empirical method supported by a normative theory belonging to the new institutional theory school. There are no statistical conclusions in the report.

Children with Reading and Writing Difficulties and Their Language and Cognitive AbilitiesA Comparison with Children with a Cochlear ImplantAbstractThe aim of this study was to examine the cognitive abilities that are important for reading in children with reading disabilities, children with a cochlear implantation and typically developed children. 64 children aged 10-12 years participated in the study. To answer the question at issue we used the following tests: Block Design from WISC III, PPVT III, TOWRE, SL 40 and a few chosen tests out of the SIPS battery. On tests of the lexical access children with reading disabilities performed at the same level as hearing children, while the children with a cochlear implant performed significantly lower. Test of the phonological and complex working memory showed that children with reading disabilities performed significantly higher than children with a cochlear implant, but at the same time lower than typically developed children on the test of phonological working memory.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

Abstract Svanvik, Robin (2013). Läs: spela! En jämförande studie av elevers uppfattningar om datorspel, skönlitteratur och lärande. Svanvik, Robin (2013). It Reads: Play! A comparative study of students' beliefs about computer games, fiction reading and learning. This essay is part of a masters degree of pedagogy and investigates the experiences of 10 high-school students concerning playing computer-games-off-the-shelf (COTS) on the one hand, and reading fictional, printed novels on the other. The aim of this study was to learn more about the students' thoughts about playing COTS and reading novels; also, what differences and similarities there might be between these activities. Furthermore, I wanted to know what they thought they might learn from these activities. The theoretical point of departure for the study is twofold: Firstly, a theory of learning as expressed by Illeris (2007) and, secondly, a sociocultural perspective on learning, represented by Säljö (2000, 2005/2010) which includes the educational benifit of both playing COTS, represented by Gee (2007), and reading fiction, represented by Probst (1990) and Langer (1995). The method used in this study is mainly qualitative by nature.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the view on reading and reading promotion in the Culture of Reading (SOU 2012:65), based on three different approaches to reading and reading promotion; the pragmatic, the emancipatory and the traditionalistic. The thesis is based on the following questions; which view on reading can be seen in the Culture of Reading and which view on librarians? reading promotion can be seen in the Culture of Reading. To answer these questions, I am going to apply the aforementioned approaches on the Culture of Reading. The Culture of Reading is an official report from the Swedish government and parts of it will be subject to a qualitative content analysis.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to analyse school librarians and teachers perspective of childrens reading and reading progress, the impact of informational texts on childrens reading and how school librarians and teachers work/teach to improve their students understanding of informational texts. We also intend to study what consequences school librarians and teachers believe that childrens reduced understanding of informational texts can have in the long run and how this could be improved. The theories applied encompass different literature-pedagogical strategies, theories about reading purpose and direction of the reading process together with a theory that shows the school librarys function in the education. The empirical material has been collected through interviews with one school librarian and one teacher at three different schools. The material has then been analysed and interpreted from theories and earlier research.

This essay examines the decline of reading comprehension in Swedish schools, and also aims to provide insight into the debate concerning a literary canon and its usage in schools. While some claim that the literary canon is only a list of irrelevant white dead men which only serves to perpetuate feelings of alienation in, for example, female students, others see it as a means to bring society together using the only literature that stood the test of time. This essay will look to studies concerning reading comprehension, and questions regarding reading habits which our own students answered. It will also explain the different viewpoints of both sides of the canon debate.There are several studies that show this decline in reading comprehension, PISA and PIRLS being the foremost of them. They point to a trend where the Reading skills of boys are much worse than those of girls, a trend which still has not panned out.Bloom and the different researchers who are the basis for Verhaest's thesis are of the opinion that canonical literature serves a purpose in that it teaches students aesthetic literary values.

The aim of this Master thesis is to analyse the interaction in between reading and writing based on young writers experience. My approach was to investigate how writersread literature and how they look upon their reading in relation to their own writing.Seven young people has been interviewed in this qualitative study, based a theory about their reading and reading habits. They were asked questions about reading habits and theirview upon the connection between reading and their own writing.Previous studies of Swedes´ reading habits prove that relaxation and pleasure are the most common reasons for literary reading. This differs from the present study, where my findings shows that writing people, more than other, read literature, in the way people in general read non-fiction. That is with a purpose beyond the actual ?situation of reading?.

The aim of the study is to investigate how teachers in grades 1­­­­­­­­­­­?3 use reading aloud to develop the pupils? reading comprehension and how they reflect on the method. The study is based on interviews with four teachers, all of them working in these grades. The interviews have been interpreted hermeneutically and the statements compiled in accordance with the aim and research questions. The results indicate that all the teachers are aware that reading aloud can be used as a resource to develop pupils? reading comprehension.