The Third International Assessment of Educational Progress (TIMMS) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) during the last decades regarding the results of mathematics teaching shows that China have a better performance than Sweden?s.Swedish teacher-guidelines focus on developing student?s individual interest and confidence for mathematics. In the Chinese teaching-guidelines for Mathematics Curriculum Standards, Ordninary Senior Secondary, the focus is given on: Elevate their mathematics literacy necessary for future citizenship and Development of citizen´s qualities (s.3).Teachers are the primary factors that impact teaching and learning of mathematics. Two teachers from Sweden and two from China were interviewed and their methods were compared in my study. The aim of my study was to understand mathematics teaching in China and Sweden.

The present project is a first step towards a new Swedish assessment tool to examine phonological ability in preschool-aged children. The work consisted of developing a word list with words that was considered to reveal a child?s phonological ability and to try out the word list on pre-school children. The reason was to make sure that the words existed in the vocabulary of the children in the chosen ages. A word list consisting of 109 words, which convey relevant phonological information, was created.

The aim of this study is two folded. We wish to investigate if there is a value premium from hedging jet fuel exposure for American and European airlines. We also seek to answer if airlines can affect their probability to default by using Risk Management. During the period 2003 ? 2006 there existed a value premium for airlines that hedged their expected future consumption of jet fuel.

During recent years, financial innovation has given rise to numerous structured investment opportunities aimed towards the general public. These have enabled private investors to engage in high-risk investments offering as much as 400 per cent leverage while oftentimes not fully having grasped the risk involved. The issuers of these securities have been criticized for using advertising of a too aggressive and misleading nature.By presenting 819 potential investors with two different investment opportunities yielding the same return over a six day period, we have aimed to assess whether the inclination of being affected by judegmental heuristics varies with factors such as knowledge, overall attitude towards the asset class, risk appetite and experience from previous investments.We have observed that investors' perception of the attractiveness of an investment can be distorted by altering the information presented to the investor. However, our findings show that this tendency decreases with an increased level of knowledge, experience and risk appetite..

I följande studie kommer rekryterings- och utvecklingsmetoden Assessment Center (AC) attstuderas. Syftet med studien är att utifrån verksamma organisationers erfarenhet av AC skapa en ökad förståelse för; metodens innebörd, vilka argument som ligger till grund förorganisationers användande av metoden samt dess värde för organisationer. Studien är avkvalitativ karaktär och fokus fästs vid tolkning och förståelse av AC baserat pårespondenternas subjektiva uppfattningar och upplevelser. Studiens teoretiska referensrambehandlar; Human Resource Management, rekrytering, personalekonomi, Talent Management och Assessment Center. Empiri har samlats från sex verksamma organisationer, varav fem organisationer vilka arbetar med AC samt en organisation som har påvisat ett eventuellt intresse av att utveckla ett AC.

Among farmers in Sweden hedging of product prices is a relatively new way of thinking. A deregulated market and a more volatile price picture are consequences of the free market and the movements towards globalization. The effects of globalization are largely a demand- and supply driven market. These factors give the farmers incentives to stay informed and to act on their own in order to manage their price risk exposure.The overall purpose with this study is to analyze the farmers? attitudes and awareness of price hedging and to examine what type of decision processes that characterize hedging decisions.The study covers the period 2006 until 2008 and the crops oil seeds, barley (malt), milling wheat, feed wheat, oats and feed oats.

To understand the motives, and perhaps more importantly the barriers, for farmers to convert from conventional to organic farming is of great interest for policy makers as well as for academics. In Sweden and in other EU countries, proposed targets of the area in organic farmland have failed to be reached in spite of different kinds of policy measures. Most studies agree that the average profitability seems to be comparable to or better in organic than in conventional farming. This would indicate that there must be other factors of importance which can explain the low particiapation rate. A higher perceived risk in organic farming with respect to yield and price is frequently brought up as a potential explanation within a qualitative framework.

This paper presents a project and literature overview about how risk management and quality sometimes goes hand in hand and sometimes in two different directions. Meaning that the risk management can affect product or process quality differently depending on what risks an organisation chooses to control.The purpose with this paper is to get a deeper understanding about how risk and quality works together with IT-support and therefore we have been actively participating in a project with a risk management company called Zert. A literature study and a qualitative interview study have also been undertaken to see what the customers and the other researchers have written, to be able to make proper conclusions on the subject.To easily work together and get the information that was needed, four methods where used. Besides the qualitative interview and literature study the think-out-loud, card sorting and a variation on the extreme programming method where used to help visualize and improve communication both with Zert, the costumers and among ourselves.Zert is a risk management company that helps other organisations to control their different types of risks that they might be taking, by offering a system where the risk management process is held and providing consulting services by helping within the processes. Both Zert and their customers see the communication, knowledge and teamwork as something important as well as the quality within the work, processes and the end result.

Riskanalysverktyget failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) som analyserar kompo-nenter och signaler är beroende av att designen av fordonets elsystem finns tillgängligt och utförs därför sent i utvecklingsprocessen av elsystem. Detta medför att vissa fel inte analyseras i tid och kanske måste designas bort i efterhand vilket kan leda till ökad sy-stemkomplexitet samt längre och dyrare utvecklingsprocesser.Målet med examensarbetet är att genom en litteraturstudie ta reda på om det finns me-toder eller arbetssätt som gör att Scania tidigt i utvecklingsprocessen av elsystem kan genomföra funktionsanalyser i sitt riskanalysarbete med FMEA samt analysera dessa.Resultatet av detta examensarbete visar att det är möjligt att påbörja FMEA-arbetet tidigt i utvecklingsprocessen av elsystem om ingenjörerna utgår från ett funktionsperspektiv i riskanalysarbetet där de listar och rangordnar de funktioner som tillsammans realiserar en eller flera funktionaliteter samt deras felmoder, feleffekter, feldetektering, allvarlighet, sannolikhet och frekvens. Med hjälp av en FFMEA kan ingenjörerna tidigt i utveck-lingsprocessen av elsystem snabbt och effektivt hantera de identifierade säkerhetskritiska funktionerna.En befintlig funktionalitet på Scania har brutits ned i funktioner och en FFMEA har genomförts på dessa som en demonstration på hur en FFMEA kan genomföras och se ut..

Two ecological models of nitrogen processes in treatment wetlands have been evaluated and compared. These models have been implemented, simulated, and visualized in the Modelica language. The differences and similarities between the Modelica modeling environment used in this thesis and other environments or tools for ecological modeling have been evaluated. The modeling tools evaluated are PowerSim, Simile, Stella, the MathModelica Model Editor, and WEST. The evaluation and the analysis have been performed using McCall?s factors for software quality (McCall et al, 1977), a correlation analysis and the Constant Comparative Method (Glaser&Strauss, 1999).

This report represents a comparison between two different tools used to create an online store that was developed by two students at the Technical University in Jönköping. The web shop will be of great benefit to both customers and administrator in a food firm known as Mattias' Livs. The company wanted an online store that facilitates the sale section and gives a full control of their stocks. The aim of this thesis is to create an online store that offers customers the ability to shop online and help the staff to operate the company in a simpler and more efficient way, which reduces the need for human resources and thus leads to less costs for the company. The aim also includes a comparison between the two different tools used to create the online store.

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) hold great potential to support learning activities, for example by providing teachers and students with new and extended spaces for interaction and collaboration. However, this potential appears to be difficult to realize, and despite their perceived learning benefits, the reality is that LMSs are being used primarily for administrative purposes. Meanwhile, external pedagogical tools are successfully put into practice to improve learning outcomes, and the aim of this study is therefore to identify and discuss benefits and disadvantages associated with the LMS as a concept. By interviewing secondary school teachers, we disentangle the idea of integrating administrative and pedagogical aids into a single platform, providing detailed insight into the use of digital tools in secondary education. The study contributes to a deepened understanding of integrated learning environments, and we conclude that there is a conflict between structure and flexibility that needs to be addressed before determining the design of a digital learning space..

The present study aims to examine how teachers write polemical articles. This genre often occurs in national standardized tests in Swedish schools. The study seeks to analyze argumentative structures in the articles. It also categorizes assessment notes written by the teachers in response to each others? articles, by interpreting response texts.    The examination shows that there is uncertainty among the teachers about how to create structures in argumentative text types.

Internationaliseringen har ökat under de senaste åren, och företag väljer att lägga delar av verksamheten utomlands. Tidigare forskning undersöker sambandet mellan denna diversifiering och dess konsekvenser för företagen. Gränsöverskridande diversifiering och företagsförvärv bör enligt tidigare forskning ge en lägre systematisk risk då risken sprids ut över flera marknader.Syftet med studien är att se om tidigare forsknings resultat går att tillämpa idag när svenska företag gör gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv. Vi har valt att applicera en event study-metodik för att undersöka detta samband enligt marknadsmodellen. Studien undersöker 66 svenska fall av gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv, gjorda under perioden 2005 ? 2007.Resultatet visar att tidigare empiri, att företagen skulle ha lägre systematisk risk efter ett gränsöverskridande företagsförvärv, inte går att tillämpa idag på de svenska företagen.

The aim of this small thesis is to investigate if the probability of business failure is higher at the time of divestment than at the time of acquisition for portfolio companies that have been subject to private equity ownership. The background for this thesis is the widespread critique aimed at private equity firms, claiming that they increase the risk in their portfolio companies. We have performed a study of 53 buyout transactions, involving Swedish manufacturing companies, covering a time span of 13 years, from 1995 to 2007. We find evidence of an increased risk of business failure for the portfolio companies with a short forecasting horizon (within one year). The absolute increase in the sample is however small.