AbstractIn the fall of 2003 a project was started in the Swedish building sector that is called BASTA (the building sectors’ termination of especially harmful substances). The project is operated by the building companies NCC, Skanska, PEAB and JM, the Swedish Building Industry and the Swedish Environmental Institute IVL. The purpose of the project is to create a common environmental assessment system for the entire building industry and with the help of this system phase out the use of especially harmful properties from building products.In a large sense BASTA works like this; On the BASTA web site there is a database, to which a supplier can register the company and the company’s products. Only those products with a substance content that fulfil the demands of the BASTA system, is to be registered. As it is the supplier himself that carries out the registration of the company and the company’s products to the system, the BASTA-organisation annually controls that the companies that are registered in the database, fulfils BASTA’s demands.Since NCC is one of the companies that operates BASTA, BASTA is probably going to be the environmental assessment system that is recommended for the company in the future.

My interest in examining what happens when you as a teenager are exposed to five or six times the amount of time as ordinary classes to music education derrives from my own experience as a music teacher at a school which has those kind of special music classes. During my career as a music teacher in grades 4 ? 9 in Swedish compulsory school I have taught music classes as well as ordinary classes for 18 years. During this time I have often wondered what this exposure means in retrospect. Is it the conquering and mastering of music skills that students remember when they?ve grown up to young adults, or is it something else?The aim of this study is to find out what it means for teenagers to have music as a school subject every day of their years in Swedish high school.

Investment costs for eight different type housing systems for dairy cows has been calculated in order to compare the building costs as a function of herd size, shelter type and automatization. A commercial calculation programme for building was used and complemented with prices of equipments specific for dairy cow building. Herd sizes were 120, 250 and 400 cows. The milking equipments were automatic milking system (AMS), parallel parlour with 32 stalls (2x16) and rotary parlour with 24 stalls. Shelter was either insulated equipped with automatic cable driven scrapers on solid alleys, automatic feed wagon on rails, or uninsulated with manual manure handling and a tractor driven mobile mixer wagon on a drive-through feeding table. Building cost per cow or per kg milk was calculated using an average life time and 6 % interest rate and annual milk yield is 9 500 kg/cow and year. Structure effect 3-4 % higher for an insulated structure than in an uninsulated for 400 and 120 herd respectively. This is much lower compared to what is normally argued.

Background: Overweight is a health problem throughout the western world. Child health care (CHC) nurses and school nurses meet many children and their families and have the opportunity to work with prevention. The purpose of this study was to investigate the CHC - and school nurse´s experiences and reflections in the work on obesity in children. The aim was also to investigate the structural conditions CHC- and school nurse feel the need for this work. Method: The study had a qualitative approach with descriptive design.

The aim of this investigation was to determine if, and in that case how, the resources of personne1 in what in this essay will be referred to as the department of students' health in four industrial municipalities had changed from 1999 until 2004. The establishment of the department of students' health could be discussed and analys ed in regard of a few concepts from new institutionaI organizational theory and studies on implementation. The investigation answers the following questions:What differences were there between the municipalities regarding the children's accessibility to the department of students' health?What differences were there between pre-school, compulsory school and upper secondary school within the municipalities regarding the children's accessibility to the department of student's health?The municipalities were commissioned by the government to combine school health service, student welfare and the field of remediaI teaching in order to establish a new section, the department of students' health. The study was carried out quantitatively.

Background: There have been several reforms within the Swedish educational system since the 1960´s, not only within the elementary school but also within the teachers? education and the school leaders´ educational program.Aim: My aim with this study is to explore if teachers´ expectations and experiences of school leadership have changed since the many educational reforms began in the 1960´s.Method: For this study I have a used a comparative design. By making qualitative interviews with five teachers born in the 1940´s and five teachers born in the 1980´s I have then analyzed the result.Result: Regardless of the 40 years of age difference and the multiple reforms within the educational system in Sweden the result shows that the teachers in this study did not have any clear expectations on their school leaders as they started their careers..

Stress is something that has increased in recent decades among adolescents. Several reports indicate that young people today are more stressed because of the many demands they wear. They should be good in school, achievement expectations, get an education or job, make choices and think about their future. The purpose of our essay is that we want to explore and gain an understanding of how young people in the third grade in high school looks to stress. To conduct this study, we used a qualitative approach, by doing interviews with 10 high school students attending third grade at Västerviks gymnasium. The result we got out of the interviews was that young people experience stress differently, depending on their different as individuals. We found that there are different causes of stress, such as school, media, friends, demands from various quarters and choosing education.The interviews showed that some kind of stress was possible to handle for the adolescents, for instance by making schedule. Some stress from society was, on the other hand, more difficult to avoid..

The objective with this study is to investigate the school introduction of newly arrived students, by focusing on the latter years of high school, by comparing two schools method of working.This was done by a qualitative survey based on half structured interviews and existing school documentation.The questions of the study targeted the schools method of working, how well the education was adapted to the students and if it was appropriate to them. We also asked about the school resources to meet the need of the newly arrived students. Our theoretical assumptions were based on Haugs? terms ?including integration? and ?excluding integration?, Lahdenperäs? theory about intercultural education, Vygotskijs thoughts about adapted education and finally Blossings? description of different cooperative cultures. Our results showed that school introduction for newly arrived students were formed from the schools? view on learning development and adapted education.

The thesis aims to increase our understanding about parents reasoning about the elementary school choice by studying which factors parents perceive as important during the decision making process and also by giving meaning to Pierre Bourdieu?s concept of capital through the parents perspective. The empirical material comes from seven BNIM-interviews made with parents, which has been analyzed according to the thematic field analysis.The results show that the parents are not especially concerned about making an active school choice. Stability, closeness, friends, rumors, development and adaptability to the reality are the factors that are perceived as the most important in the decision making process. The school choice has a limited meaning as an investment in social capital, from Bourdieu?s perspective.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how two elementary schools work with Swedish and Swedish as a second language through four teachers thoughts and perceptions. My issues are: How do the teachers perceive the Swedish classes in the school, and how do they perceive that they are conducting it? Which examples of material for teaching do the teachers show me and how do they use it in each school? Do the work with Swedish and Swedish as a second language in the multi-ethnic school and the more mono-ethnic school differ according to how the teachers perceive they are conducting it? Do the teachers think that the equivalent education that is part of the curriculums values and mission always is maintained and why/why not? My study is performed from a sociocultural perspective. My conclusions are that the teachers from the multi-ethnic school are more aware of how to work with Swedish or Swedish as a second language regardless of the students ethnic or national origins. Some aspects of how the teachers work with Swedish are equal with each others, but there are differences to.

In this study the author will search on how, co-operation between teachers and guidance counse-lors in school works. The study was too looking for if guidance counselors experiencing if they can feel cooperation in school, when they work by themselves in their profession, and if the guidance counselors feel a part of the whole school.Total interviewed four guidance counselors in elementary school, in a medium sized town somewhere in Sweden. The author have used qualitative methods for allow guidance counselors to answer free and not influence from other parametric.The result demonstrates that all guidance counselors believe that it is important to have coopera-tion with teachers in schools. Most of the guidance counselors believe that neither the directors nor teachers really know what skills guidance counselors possess. The respondents describe that they often turns to teachers who believe that guidance is an important part of the school's work for students..

The design of buildings is today considered to be crucial for obtaining sustainable development. Research concerning sustainable building is considered to be a Swedish area of strength and development projects as Hammarby Sjöstad and Bo01 are often pointed out as Swedish prime examples of sustainable building. Some still argue though, that that these projects should not be presented as sustainable, due to its incompetence to meet their objectives. This contradiction has attracted my curiosity. By doing this study I hope to gain understanding about the difficulties Bo01 and Hammarby Sjöstad are surrounded with and its significance for sustainable development.

In the thesis we discuss South African teachers? conceptions of democracy in general and school democracy in particular. The essay is based on interviews with twelve teachers, working in South African high schools. We have asked questions concerning different views of democracy, such as what the term means to the teachers and how they define a democratic school. We take our stand in different theoretical approaches such as school being the ultimate link between a state and its people to make the citizens think and act democratically.

Researchers, planners, and government agencies agree that road safety for children must be a priority and in particular that children should have a safe and secure way to travel to and from school regardless of age or the distance travelled. In Sweden, child traffic safety is a key part of the country?s Nollvision, a long-term traffic policy goal of ?no deaths or serious injuries?. Unfortunately, many countries have recorded increases in child traffic accidents as the percentage of parents who drive their children to school and thus congestion around schools has increased. Common strategies include traffic safety education for children, the redesign and improvement of traffic infrastructure, bicycle training, and carpooling.This thesis assesses the traffic problem around Ludvigsberg School in the district Valbo in Gävle, Sweden.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to find out what mathematical content primary school children encounter in their free options at school.Through observation, the study defines mathematical areas that primary school students encounter in their free options at school. We want the study to show the reader the mathematics that students continuously meet without associating it with regular mathematics as taught in school.A number of mathematical areas have been defined in the analysis of the observations. These areas have subsequently been discussed more thoroughly. Finally, the areas have been arranged in a grid system to clarify the results.In our study, we have discovered that mathematics exists in all the observed situations the students participated in.We believe that observation as a method can give teachers a tool for helping students associate practical actions during their free options with the more theoretical aspects of formal teaching of mathematics. We discuss this further in the study..