The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate how a group of academic librarians perceive distance learners as a user group. We have in our study been influenced by phenomenography, which is both a set of theoretical assumptions and a methodology. The theoretical frame of reference consists of Carol Kuhlthaus different levels of education and Michael Buckland´s information barriers. Using a qualitative method consisting of nine interviews with academic librarians and structural factor such as academic library policies, we have been able to conduct our study. The results of the study are presented in grouped categories of quotations that reflect various perceptions.

This case study examines how a group of upper secondary school students in a multiethnical suburb of Stockholm reason about the theory of evolution. The theoretical background of the thesis is postcolonial and the questions raised were how spread the creationist thoughts are in the group; in what way the backgrounds of the students are relevant to their thoughts; how the students construct the notion of the theory of evolution; how they position themselves and others in relation to the discourse of the theory of evolution; if there are any differences between students at the collage program of natural science and the collage program of social science, and in that case, what differences; and who or what inspires the young in their thoughts about the theory of evolution. To answer these questions both a survey poll and interviews were used. The result of the case study showed that a majority of the students at the investigated school has creationist ideas and that the students profiled on social science have creationist ideas in a wider extent. Another result is that the religious background seems to be relevant to develop creationist thoughts, while the variables gender, home district and educational level did not differ the creationist group from the whole group.

This thesis revolves around NATO?s role in the Ukraine crisis with the startpoint in 2014. Specifically, through conducting a qualitative content analysis of various NATO related material, a study regarding NATO?s security strategy and defense strategy, and the strategies' implications and roles in the Ukraine crisis, was able to be conducted. The purpose was to obtain an understanding of how NATO?s strategy has been interpreted and implemented in relation to the crisis.

How do you see on natural science within preschool? Does education and interest play a role for how the educationalist works with natural science? And is the children?s interest for natural science affected by the educationalist, what does the educationalist think himself? These questions have I under my teachers training and under deputyship in preschool asked myself and these questions lies to behalf for my investigation. I interviewed five educationalists on different preschools for my investigation.My investigation resulted in that I have been able to see a certain conjunction between how you work with natural science in preschool and the educationalist education or interest. What also plays a role is that you often associate natural science with knowledge of nature. The educationalist seems overall positive to natural science, but depending of a lack of knowledge it feels strange and difficult.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how femininity and masculinity is portraited in theeditorials of four Swedish lifestyle magazines; Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Moore and Slitz. Themain questions we based our study on are: What kind of relationship does the editor in chiefcreate with the intended reader? What conception of the world does the editor in chief createin the editorials? How does the editor in chief portray masculinity and femininity?In order to answer the questions above we performed a qualitative analysis of the editorials offour lifestyle magazines published during 2007. We used a discourse analysis with emphasison gender and how the editorials constructed masculinity and femininity and its stereotypicaltraits.Furthermore we based our results on a theory of the socially constructed gender. According tothis theory gender is constructed during our childhood and adolescense by the individuals andthe society surrounding us.

This study aims to find coping resources in two different paradigms of pastoral care using coping theory from the psychology of religion. The intention is to find coping resources that are functional coping strategies to help priests and chaplains in their work with pastoral care. The research questions are: What coping resources can be found in the pastoral clinical paradigm and the contextual paradigm? What are the differences and similarities? The method used is template analysis style where the theories form a framework for the material used to analyse in this study. The theories used for this study are religious coping theory and pastoral care theory.

The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the participants experiences of a parent support group and the effect of their participation on their parental role from a learning perspective. As the parent support group takes place as a group activity, the focus was on the individual learning processes which, in turn, are influenced by both the group itself as well as the leaders of the group. The empirical data was collected from a focus group interview with four mothers, and analyzed using empowerment and coping theories. Based on the participants´ narratives, the result showed that the parent support group had a great social and pedagogic effect on the participants. As a result of the received knowledge in the group from both leaders as well as from other participants, they felt less stressed and more confident in their parental role.

Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att se hur yrkesrollen och yrkesidentiteten hos redovisningskonsulter förändras på grund av de externa förändringar som ständigt sker i branschen.Teoretisk ansats: Litteraturgenomgången är uppbyggd kring två delar. Den första är yrkesrollen och den andra är yrkesidentiteten.Metodologi: Studien använder sig utav en kvalitativ metod för att skapa en förståelse kring hur redovisningskonsulterna själva ser på hur förändringarna har påverkat deras yrkesroll och yrkesidentitet.Slutsatser: Slutsatsen som denna studie har kommit fram till är att fyra externa förändringar: auktorisationen av redovisningskonsulter, införandet av Reko, avskaffandet av revisionsplikten och införandet av K2 och K3 regelverken påverkar redovisningskonsulternas yrkesroll och yrkesidentitet. De har fått en utbredd yrkesroll och den sociala biten har blivit viktigare och även de personliga egenskaperna har förändrats..

The purpose of this thesis is to study how today?s consumer society can be understood from ananalysis of the phenomenon Every Day Carry (EDC). The aim is thus to problematize the daily useof the artifacts that surrounds us and investigate how these can be understood as networks of humanand non-human actors, aswell as identity- and meaning-making practices in today?s consumersociety.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon an eclectic variety of consumptiontheories,Michel Callon?s, John Law?s and Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory,Discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and anethnographic methodology specifically adapted for online research. The empirical material consistsof photographs and commentaries from two EDC blogs aswell as commentaries regarding EDCfrom a commentary field on Youtube.com.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how a local community, and those who dwell within its borders, are affected when a large scale windmill park is planned in its immediate vicinity. I have used a qualitative approach and conducted semi structured interviews to gather empirical data. The study took place in a small Swedish village named Svartnäs, situated in the region Dalarna.I have used the concept of community as a symbolic construction (Cohen 1984), that together with the theory of structuration (Giddens 1984) and the notion of expert system (Giddens 1996) served as my main theoretical perspectives.Even though the windmill park is not built yet, its impact on the people and the local community of Svartnäs has been considerable. In the traces of the new windmill park new options and constraints, that will play an important role in the lives of the people who dwell in Svartnäs, are arising. The windmill project is enlarging old conflicts and is creating a divided village.

This essay is about what considerations foster home secretary may face in their profession and how they use themselves as a tool. We were interested in the family home secretaries as a profession and we found that this area is relatively unexplored. The essay is based on semi-structured interviews with ten family home secretaries from seven different municipalities. To interpret our results, we used Mead's theory of "Mind, Self and Society". Our paper shows that family secretaries are faced with a variety of considerations in the selection of foster homes.

Business incubation is an important force of economic development but relatively unheard of in organization theory. This is partly due to the fact that in organization theory, meta-organization or the organization of organizations has been neglected or left lagging as much theorization has been focused on organizing individuals. With the growing number of business incubators, and meta-organizations in general, the need for understanding a relatively new type of organization is prevalent.This case study of the business incubator Global Business Labs Botswana (GBL) aims to clarify the organizational differences among meta-organizations and traditional organizations on a case level, as well as explain the underlying factors for these dissimilarities. With respect to the nature of this case study no general conclusions are drawn from the results. The inference, however, is that the organization of GBL and its incubated companies differs from the traditional organization in five elementary aspects: the weak hierarchical structure, the operational autonomy of its members, the strong focus on recruitment processes, the member identity and the lack of formal sanctions.

During the last decade working with competence has emerged as a more strategically important area. Today the human resources in a company are considered a competitive advance and the HR-units play a significant role when it comes to HR-management. Different motives for investing in strategies that promote competence development and learning also exist. The purpose of this paper was to examine how the process of competence development was managed at a large global company. The empirical material consisted of four persons who were interviewed and the analysis of the material was inspired by grounded theory.From the analysis four major themes or core factors emerged as central to the interviewed persons' understanding of the competence development process; solid preparatory work in relation to competence development, communication, awareness of responsibilities and finally the taking action and evaluation of the action.

AbstractSince 1990, special needs educators have been working in both primary and junior school. It has not been easy for the special needs educators to take authority when working with broader educational issues due to the varying requirements placed upon them. The object of this study is to examine how certain primary and junior school teachers describe their expectations of special needs educators and their professional role.I have conducted individual interviews with three primary school teachers and three junior school teachers, who have at least five years experience of working within their respective fields. The interviews have been scrutinized, and the results are presented with the help of five different themes. The results were then analysed in accordance with the two perspectives of special needs education described by Persson (2001) those of both the relational and the categorical perspective.Amongst other things the results show that the view of primary and junior school teachers with regards to special needs educators differ one from another.

 Over the past ten years, the pupils' performance and grades has fallen and the number of competent to high school has decreased gradually. The Swedish school has been criticized and the role of the teachers has been questioned, among other by the media. In autumn 2007 Johannesskolan, one of Sweden's tenth worst schools replaced the ordinary teachers of Class 9A against eight of the country's "main" educators with the goal of the class to become one of Sweden's third major. The teachers have the autumn term in which to achieve the goal and the outcome will be measured by national tests in core subjects Swedish, English and Mathematics. The aim of this paper is to examine the role of the teacher's leadership in relation to the pupils' social and intellectual development, and identify common leadership of these eight educators.