Forming teacher teams is currently the standard way of organizing teachers in Swedish Compulsory Schools. This is the result of a process that started in the 1970s.Traditionally the culture of teaching has been one of isolation. Once the door to the classroom is shut, what happens behind the door is up to the teacher to decide. Over the past thirty years a lot of time has been dedicated to making fundamental changes in the way teachers interact with their colleagues. Today the idea of teachers forming teams is generally accepted but still the core of a Swedish teacher?s job is that of a lone worker.

This study deals with play and the importance of meaning of play in the learning process. The aim is to look in to and analyze four preschool teacher´s beliefs and views about the importance of play for children´s learning and development. The study looks at two different preschools, one based on Reggio Emilia- and the other on Montessori- pedagogy, and the aim is to compare the different views and ways of working that the preschool educators have.The theoretical basis for this study is both rooted in a socio-cultural and constructivist perspective, and deals with the relationships between theoretical concepts mean as play, learning, way of working and pedagogy.The study is based on qualitative research methods that consist of interviews and participant observations. The person?s participants in the study consisted of four active preschool educators, who work in two different preschools.The results of the investigation show that the educators have similar views on the importance of play for the children´s learning process, and this also applies to their way of working.

When foreign children first arrive to Sweden, the first contact they get with the local society is through primary school. Therefore, the primary school have the fundamental role to attend the foreign and their families.The teacher plan for primary schools (Lpfö98) make it very clear that children with foreign background are given the full support in their development in a multicultural society. The aim of this report is to investigate how two pre-school teachers and one school counselors? work with these newly arrived children in preschool to support their integration in the preschool.As the role of the primary school is so vital for children with foreign background in this new society, I would therefore like to take the opportunity to explore and show how meaningful the role is of teachers to integrate these children into the Swedish primary schools.In this report, the theory part is treated based on integration and on the schools suspension to multicultural backgrounds. For this report, I even stress the support of the primary school and how they meet the foreign children and their families.

This is the report on a study made to find a correlation between the Johari window and the games that the possessor of given Johari window enjoys to play. A Johari window is a graph that shows an individual?s ability to receive and give feedback. One obvious correlation was found between individuals enjoying role playing games and their possessing Johari windows showing a good ability to give feedback. The reasoning behind this is that the ability to give feedback is based on the capability to express oneself to the external environment, and that one would need to be comfortable with expressing oneself to an external environment in order to enjoy interacting with the narrative that takes place within the role playing genre..

The purpose of my study is to describe how educators think about the play environment, the nature and its importance for the children's development and learning in preschool. The study is based on qualitative interviews with four active educators. The results of the study show that the teachers regarded the children's interests to a great extent when the different play environments were structured. They are also based on different themes that they have seen that the children were interested in, such as the fire station, hair salon or shop and café. Educators designing not only these play areas for different types of play for the children, but the different environments also have a learning purpose. The outdoor environment however attracts greater interest from children, to where they have more space to move freely in and outdoors, there are no limits to the children.

J.O. Mallander?s Extended Play (1968) is a sound recording, a readymade, of the counting of votes in two presidential elections in Finland, during 1962 and 1968. A voice repeats monotonously: ?Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen?? Although the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen represents, almost personifies, the politics of the post World War II period in Finland, Extended Play does not explicitly address the political. Rather, as this essay argues, it engages in the discourses of power and politics by providing a temporalization of its fixedness, or what Jacques Derrida terms the proper.Extended Play is, in parallel with Derrida?s critique of western metaphysics, a deconstruction in sound that challenges the state ideologies conveyed in the process of the counting of votes, where the presuppositions of the presence of the voice characterizes the ambiguities of power that Kekkonen?s politics of neutrality represent.Mallander?s readymade emerges as a double of the game theory strategies of the Cold War, a mimetic surplus of the administrative control mechanisms of sound recording.

Title: "It is logical, but not logical at all compared to every other logical thing." - A study about how students in upper secondary school reflect about their studies in Pitch and music theory.Pitch and music theory is a compulsory subject for music students in the art programme of upper secondary school of Sweden. The aim of the subject is to develop the students? knowledge about music theory concepts in order to help them play and create music on their own. The aim of this paper is to discuss how students talk about ear training and music theory. Qualitative group interviews were carried out with two student groups from the first and second year of the upper secondary school.

This master thesis deals with the problem of integrated libraries. The number of integrated public and school libraries has significantly increased over time. These libraries are integrated for different reasons, most often because of economic considerations. The goal of the thesis is to investigate librarians´ understanding and perceptions of the professional role in this type of integrated libraries. I have investigated how librarians see and interpret their own professional role, and what factors influence their perceptions in an integrated library.The three main questions are: How do the librarians explain their professional role in an integrated library? How does their professional role change because of the fact that they work in an integrated environment? What factors, according to the librarians, influence and/or change the professional role mostly? The data has been collected through interviews with eight librarians at integrated libraries.

The aim of this study is to observe Swedish preschool children in their natural habitat and without any intervention. Four different observations are made and thereafter analyzed. Throughout the whole study the subject of interest is the children's communication in their play. Children can communicate with each other in various ways, for instance with speech and without speech, i.e. with their physical language, aesthetic and multi language.

In a time of increasing urbanization the human tenure effects on the land has lead to a decrease and fragmentation of areas that are valuable to urban wildlife. These actions have had a detrimental effect on the species and habitats that exist in cities and towns.This paper investigates, through the study of relevant literature and the undertaking of interviews and field visits, the role that biodiversity plays in our society. The current attitude towards urban biodiversity and the responsibility for its promotion within the landscape architect profession has been explored.This paper includes three English case studies and a design proposal investigating how one can work to promote biodiversity on a smaller scale.This paper concludes that urban biodiversity is multi-functional ? being of ecological, social and cultural significance. The landscape architecture profession must be aware of the need to combine a variety of different factors such as economical, social and environmental aspects.

The purpose of this study has been to examine and analyze school counselors? experience of collaboration with other professions in the student health team and the preconditions for their work. The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with six elementary-, and two high school student counselors in a medium-sized town in Sweden. The theoretical approach being used is: role theory, theory of professions and theory about collaboration. The study´s result shows that the school counselors? experience an unclarity in their job assignments and their role is often described as diffuse and vauge.

The aim of the study was to investigate peer interaction among toddlers 12 to 30 months of age and the teachers? ways to direct the children?s play in outdoor free play situations in a Swedish preschool. Data was gathered through direct observation, and the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty in combination with the assumption of children as social actors built the theoretical framework of the study. The results showed that the toddlers used different strategies to invite peers to interaction and made use of strategies in entering ongoing play that previously have been observed among older preschoolers. These strategies, bodily and therefore in accordance with the phenomenological approach, support the assumption of toddlers as social actors that actively engage in and make sense of their life worlds in the preschool.

The aim of this study is to investigate how preschool teachers reason about gender stereotypical and gender neutral toys and other material. I would also like to see how the pedagogues reason about gender segregation when it comes to toys. To investigate the issue, I have interviewed three pedagogues from different preschools. The results showed that the work procedures differed a bit from school to school, although they all wanted to achieve the same goal. A goal that our curriculum mention as well: Not to make a difference between boys and girls.

The purpose of this essay was to examine the role of the acquisition of the Swedish language for integration of adult immigrants given by the seven parties currently in the parliament and other players on the field. The questions were meant to bring light upon the arguments used by the different players concerning the role of the Swedish language, to enlighten which discourses that are constructed, and the contradictions that exist between these. We parted from a postmodern position and used social constructionism to back up our method and theory of analysis; discourse theory. The results revealed three different discourses concerning the role of the Swedish language in the integration process; the liberal discourse, the discrimination discourse and the social democratic discourse. The liberal discourse claims that immigrants have a responsibility to learn Swedish to be able to achieve employment and to provide for themselves.

This qualitative study is aimed to explore the leaders? experiences of difficult conversations in their work. We have examined if they take on a different role during the difficult conversations and how communication can affect their leadership during the conversation. We have also examined the importance of the leaders? ability to distance themselves from the sensitive subject and situation, to maintain their role as leaders.