The purpose of this study is to examine the changes in law and other types of politicialregulation regarding unauthorized absence during the reformation of the Swedish schoolsystem in 2010. How was this ?new? approach on unauthorized absence established; whatmade it possible and which view on ?unauthorized absence? does it implicate? The study hasa discourse analytic approach in which it examines central policy documents regarding thetopic of inquiry. The study has found that the alliance-government?s education policy onunauthorized absence is pervaded by one hegemonic discourse termed the mono-culturaldisciplinary discourse.

This essay shows how the concept of virtue can deepen our understanding considering processes of empowerment. A virtue is understood as a trait of character, manifested in habitual action, that it is good for person a to have. Virtues are interpreted as socially constructed. Empowerment is presented as a process toward self-confidence and self-determination where recourses and freedom propels the development toward power for the individual, the household and the community. Why does the concept of virtue deepen our understanding? It is argued that our theoretical perceptive of empowerment needs to better encompass values, norms and practise.

This thesis studies path generation for industrial robots of six degrees of freedom. A path is defined by connection of simple geometrical objects like arcs and straight lines. About each point at which the objects connect, a region, henceforth called a zone, is defined in which deviation from the defined path is permitted. The zone allows the robot to follow the path at a constant speed, but the acceleration needed may vary. Some means of calculating the zone path as to make the acceleration continuous will be presented.

AbstractOil rich states all over the world share a common feature. They are less likely than other states, depending on other resources, to be ruled democratically. In this essay Saudi Arabia has been studied with the purpose of trying to find which mechanisms that lie behind why oil rich states do not have institutions or institutional change that promotes democracy.Saudi Arabia has the world's largest known reservoir of oil. The oil brings huge revenue each year to the Saudi Arabian government. Why have Saudi Arabia not developed democratically when their economic growth suggests that to be a natural step? Under the framework of historical institutionalism and path dependency theory, I have used process tracing trying to track the mechanisms behind Saudi Arabia's authoritarian rule down.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to describe by a gender approach what ideas and values are expressed in the novel One Night at Bullar Lake and how they do coincide to a tendency. We also want to discuss authority and class divisions and how these can be connected to the novel and the author. Our final question is to examine in what way the voice of the female author is represented in the novel. To approach our material we use Yvonne Hirdman?s theories about the construction of sexes and Susan Sniader Lanser?s work about voices of female authors, as well as Horace Engdahl?s studies about the silent voice in literature.

The similarity between the Russian and the Indian, in a Cold War context, may be ambiguous considering the ethnic-social variables and the period in time from where the Indians relate. However, by analyzing these, as well as other, characters in the exhibition of movies, we could learn something about the ideology of the time from which the movies derive.This study examines ideology and movies in the Cold War era and concludes that the Indian, for example, may be representing the values of the common public enemy, originating from the Cold War ideology. The movies examined, regardless of influence of distinct Cold War themes or lack of such themes, carry attributes that give evidence of typical Cold War ideology. The fear of communism and common enemies connected to a Cold War context, the thought of America as the land of the free ? with the horizon in the ending of the movies as metaphoric to freedom ? and the moral rhetoric that connects to the American thought of a duty as a global savior, are all signs of the Cold War ideology.Even though the messages are somewhat clearer and more distinct in the movies with Cold War motifs, the fact that ideology is projected through other movies as well should be considered essential for the continuing study of movies as cultural artefacts..

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to investigate the views Swedish elementary school teachers produce on the subject of ethics. The teachers? thoughts on selection among ethical notions is described and also how these notions are assessed. The essay proceeds from the central content and the knowledge requirement in the syllabus of religious knowledge.The empirical survey is based on qualitative scientific interviews with four teachers employed in grades 4-6 at different schools.The teachers find ethics in its current state of the syllabus hard to define and they find encounters with parents and pupils difficult in their tasks. The selection of ethics is decided by previously planned basic values education or from conflicts erupting during schools hours.

Open access (OA) is a publishing model aimed at increasingthe access to academic research results. The object of thisstudy was to contrast nine colleges and four fundingorganizations in Scandinavia with mandatory OA-policies,and to study how they put OA into practice.Inspired by the Open Access Spectrum (OAS), a tool used toappreciate the OA of academic journals, the aim was tograde the policy documents of the colleges using the OASmodel.The study also compares how the colleges implementtheir OA-policies as well as how, and if, the demands fromthe funding organizations are reflected in the policies of thecolleges.The findings show that the OAS is not a tool designed forgreen OA and that all the information needed for the scale tofunction was not found in the policy documents we studied.A selection of the colleges has some demands in theirpolicies, although most of them allow exceptions to be madefrom the mandatory policy. This is shown to be mainly aquestion of academic freedom, and copyright, or rather thanthe degree to which the scientist and the publisher can cometo an agreement on allowing the information to be accessiblethrough OA.The study proposes that the way to change this may be toincrease the demands on OA in the policies, and that the bestsolution might be in stipulations within the employmentcontracts between the individual colleges and scientist..

This paper examines how Hinduism and Buddhism are portrayed in three textbooks for an upper secondary school course in religion and is limited to a selection of books published in 2009. Based on a qualitative content analysis, the paper examines the extent to which there is an intentional division, that is to say a line between ?them and us? in the ways in which the religions are described, and to what extent the description of these religions in the textbooks are Eurocentric. The study focuses on whether or not there is a ?them and us? perspective in the different books and if so, the ways in which this approach is evident.The result of this study shows that traces of a ?them and us? perspective can be found in all three books.

The purpose of my study is to explore teachers reasoning regarding the motivation of students in religious education. I investigate the teachers' expectations of the students' behaviors which are being judged by the teachers, in order to assess whether the students their classes are motivated or not.                      In order to present views of the teachers? reasoning, the study uses qualitative method and is based on interviews, conducted with eight different high school teachers.The results show that teachers tend to expect the motivation of the students to contradict their own expectations before starting a course or they presume that the expectations are going to be confirmed in class. Furthermore teachers seem to have preconceived ideas regarding how motivated or un-motivated students behave in class.

The main purpose of the culture is to serve people and represent the people's social will and freedom. Culture does not exist in a vacuum but shaped and framed by political and artistic structures that are not neutral, and this is why the artwork itself cannot be an independent business. The public function of art can be understood as a defense of the ideals of democracy. But today, when political power is often replaced by hegemony, the role of art and functions are changing. How these changes reflect to the identity, reality and truth of society? What political functions are fulfilled when art becomes ?public?? The issue of democracy is linked question of people?s power in a democratic society where power is legitimized in social space.

The purpose of this essay is to study how parents of children with disabilities young people make their choice of support and service LSS. The study takes its lead from questions designed to determine which interventions parents use for their children. What parents think about today's choice and if satisfactory, or if they have other wishes. It is also about how parents experience the freedom of choice and participation in the selection of interventions. Furthermore how the parent discuss the topic of choice from childhood and parental perspective.

According to the directives of Lgr11, learning about Christianity should be an important part of religious education in secondary school (7th-9th grade) in Sweden. A school teacher must therefore have good knowledge of the field and of different aspects of the beliefs of the various Christian traditions.This essay is about how salvation is conceived of by two members of the laity in each of three different Christian traditions: the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of Sweden (which is Lutheran). As a theoretical perspective for my analysis, I have chosen the official views of salvation of these three churches. That is to say, views of the members of the laity have been compared with the official views of the respective churches. It is thus a very limited qualitative study aiming at finding out how the views of the laity conform to the official creed concerning salvation and whether there are any differences here between the churches.

This essay is investigating what type of sources we trust, depending on how the information in these sources is created and provided. To exemplify, the sources Wikipedia and Nationalencyklopedin (the Swedish National Encyclopedia) were used, each one representing different approaches. The first is a representation of the collective intelligence, where anyone can contribute with their knowledge to the public ? freedom under responsibility. The latter represents peer-reviewed knowledge, desirable enough to have people paying for it? true and unaffected.Based on theories of source criticism, collective intelligence, expertise and the different generations of digital natives and digital immigrants, two focus groups were conducted and analysed.

In search of a stage language that resonates in historical disciplines, I have explored the possibility to expand my performing arts through the language of Indian classical Odissi, through different forms of storytelling. In my work I have focused primarily on two projects inspired by the original scripts of Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan. I have outlined examples of methods and techniques used in the process.The work also shows how Odissi has evolved from a religious and philosophical tradition of temple dance; into modern stage theatre performance.The work aims to connect Odissi with western performing art. In this process I have been using my own knowledge about Odissi as a tool in combining both the traditions, a fusion in action.I will physically examine the artistic idiom, the characteristics, the actions and deeds found in stylized Odissi imagery and symbols, traditionally used to embody mythological and epic stories. A rendezvous between East and West.