Textbooks are a very influential medium considering the fact that they often introduce students to information they have never read or heard about before, and as such they become very important in forming students? opinions on different matters. In this study I have taken a closer look at five textbooks in history that are currently being used in the Swedish upper secondary school. My aim has been to find out how East Asia is pictured and also how much space East Asian history is given in these textbooks with the postcolonial theory as theoretical basis. My study shows that East Asia is given very little space compared to Europe in these books, with an average of less than a twentieth of the number of pages that deal with European history.

AbstractWhat do the pupils really learn in school? What do the pupils know before they begin schooland what knowledge do they have when they graduate form 5 and should have achieved thegoals? I chose to interview some pupils in the end of nursery school and some pupils in theend of form 5. To limit myself I chose the subject space, because I think most pupils thinkthat space is an interesting subject. The result of my examination was that pupils in nurseryschool have many different thoughts and previous knowledge about space, often on the basisof what they have seen themselves, and that some of the pupils in form 5 have some moredeveloped knowledge while some pupils still got the skill as a nursery school pupil. Myexamination shows that some pupils have learned surprisingly little, bearing in mind that theyhave been in school for five years..

This thesis explores in which ways the portrayal of the event known as the Stockholm bloodbath has changed during the period 1869-1996. This is done through textbook analysis. In Sweden, history has been a school subject since the 17th century, and has throughout its history had a formative role in the Swedish school system. In the middle of the 19th century it was specifically stated that the aim was to help students nurture a sense of national pride and love of country. The aim of the study is to investigate how nationally loaded events have been portrayed in text books, as well as if and how the evolution of said textbooks reflect the evolution of the history subject as a whole.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how gender patterns are described in the modern picture book. Focus is on the description of men and women and their emotions and living conditions. Do the descriptions follow stereotypes in the form of binary opposites strong/weak, active/passive etc. in which one component of the pair, often associated with masculinity, is privileged or are there examples of breach of normative gender? The analysis is based upon forty of 149 picture books that are presented in a children's book catalogue published by The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs Statens kulturråd, in the year of 2000.

The purpose of this study was to gain a clearer picture of how after-school-care teachers? work with fundamental values in after-school care, both practically and theoretically based on the curriculum Lgr 11. I wanted to acquire a broader understanding of the school's core values and what kinds of tools teachers used to cope with their task. I proceeded with two questions:How does after-school care proactively work with core values based on gender, ethnicity and class?How does the work on value issues at after-school care centers compare with Lgr 11?In my study, I used literature studies and a qualitative analysis of five interviews with afterschool care teachers.

The aim with this essay is to look into what literature has been published in 2006 and 2007 for boys between the ages of twelve and sixteen in order to analyse six of the titles. Our two main questions are as follows:?How is the teenage boy depicted in six of these books? - To what extent is the teenage boy depicted in a gender stereotypical way?.We chose the titles for analysis based on our mapping of the published literature and took into account the authors? gender and age as well as the main themes of the books. As theoretical base for our analysis we used Marias Nikolajeva?s table of gender stereotypes in literature.

This master thesis is about access to literature translated into Swedish sign language for deaf at the public libraries. It is by now a well-known fact that there is produced very little literature in sign language for deaf. This is so even though the policies for the library nationally and internationally, and the public law for libraries in Sweden says there should be literature available for all groups of disadvantaged people. People who have problem reading ordinary ink books have the right to get the book adapted into a medium accessible for them. The goal of the Swedish law for disadvantaged says that in 2010 Sweden should be accessible for all irrespective of weather you are deaf or not.

Purpose: This thesis aims to study how students in upper secondary school evaluate sources in their everyday school work and how the role of the school library and librarian officiate in this context.Methodology: A web questionnaire was conducted and 155 students from different schools, with or without school library and school librarian, participated. We coded and aggregated the questionnaires according to the strategies that are used when evaluating sources, identified by Francke, Sundin and Limberg. Cognitive authority, a theory by Patrick Wilson, was also a part of our analysis. Conclusions: The study shows that students use different strategies, separately or combined, as a way to evaluate sources. The teacher is regarded as a cognitive authority and is the main influence concerning source evaluation. It also shows that the role of school libraries and school librarians, in this context, seem to be non-existent.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how diversity takes shape in children?s picture books published in Sweden. Twelve picture books, which touch the aspect of diversity in the categories of gender, ages, culture, nation, ethnicities, language, class, sexuality and functional disorder, were chosen from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs catalogue for youth and children?s books 2006. They have been analysed with the conception of ikonotext and with the theory of Pierre Macherey?s image in the mirror, of how literature reflects the reality of society.

The aim of this paper is to study if implementation of a school library management system called FreeLib has created favourable conditions for the school librarians to cooperate with other professions and become a more forward working place. I have studied relevant literature about school libraries, organisation, digital libraries and documents that regulate school and library activities today as well in the past. In order to fulfil my purpose I have done a qualitative survey with six school librarians from Swedish primary schools with pupils at the age of 6 -16 years old. To identify strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities I found in the material I used a method called SWOT analysis. According to this study the use of the digital FreeLib system has developed a better teamwork between school librarians at different schools.

The aim of this essay was to gain a deeper understanding about how school employees interpret and practice school law regarding cyber-bullying that occurs between pupils on the internet. To examine this we used a qualitative method. We completed eight interviews with five teachers, one headmaster, one school welfare officer and one special educationist. These eight school employees were from four different high schools. In our interviews we found that the school employees thought it was difficult to define different concepts within the school law such as in association with the occupation and offensive behaviour which prohibits them from interpreting the school law in the same way.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to analyse what factors have an impact on the quality of school libraries. The research questions are: How do some school principals, school librarians and school inspectors view quality in school libraries and what has an impact on quality?How do they view some existing quality criteria?How important do they think the integration of the school library into the curriculum is?The theoretical approach is derived from research about school libraries by David Loertscher and by Sharon Markless and David Streatfield. The empirical material has been collected through half structured qualitative interviews. The informants chosen are principals and school librarians from three Swedish primary schools (6-15 years).

This essay discusses how popular literature in general and Stephanie Meyer?s Twilight-series in particular can be useful in the classroom, despite, or rather, thanks to, its inherent problems concerning gender roles, relationships and the power systems within them. The essay takes a reader and teacher centered approach in describing both the problems of Twilight and the ways these problems can be worked with in the context of the school subject Swedish in upper secondary school. It makes an inventory of Twilight?s problematic aspects, and attempts to use them in conjunction with the governing documents of the Swedish school system.