The aim of this master?s thesis is to study the discourses on culture as developed by EU Commission. The method applied is a discoursebased historical analysis, where analysis of arguments and metaphors are functional to the enlightening of the construction of discourses within EU cultural policy. EU official documents constitute the empirical material studied. The theoretical framework of the thesis draws upon cultural public sphere theory as well instrumentalist cultural policy research.

The aim of the study was to distinguish if there was a difference between how work is perceived and how unemployed are viewed by people in collectivistic and individualistic cultures. A phenomenological approach was used in order to capture the participants life-worlds and their meaning constitution of a phenomenon, in this case the meaning of work and how unemployed are viewed. Subjects from different parts of the world, belonging to either a collectivistic or individualistic culture, participated in this study. Data was collected by self-reports which were analyzed by the method of MCA (Meaning Constitution Analysis) and the software Minerva. The results indicated that there were differences in how individuals from collectivistic cultures compared to individuals from individualistic cultures reflected about the meaning of work.

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.

Focus of this study is an examination of the Swedish school today, its transformation and complexity when also the community outside of school undergoes changes in shape of among other things a different population composition and new political ideas. More specific the aim of the study is to understand how Gustav Adolfsskolan in Landskrona, a compulsory school in south of Sweden, legitimates the language rule that is in effect in the school. It?s a relatively new measure undertaken in the school and both the problems in the school and this measure have been widely discussed in the public media. The theoretical sources of inspiration have come from Weber, Galbraith and Elias and include power relations and dynamics within social mobility when people establishes in new places.

In this essay, I intent to examine history as a school subject in Swedish compulsory school (for children aged 7-16), it contains mostly an analysis of the syllabus for history in the three latest curriculums Lgr 69, Lgr 80 and Lpo 94. The main purpose of the essay is to illuminate the development and the change history as a subject has gone through during this specific time, and my will is also to illustrate the view on knowledge and learning that is revealed in the syllabus for history in today?s curriculum (Lpo 94).The survey shows that in Swedish compulsory school, history as a subject has changed significantly. During the examined years, the contents have been exceptionally broadened and that has lead to increasing demands on the students as it has gone from being directed to the individual and its contiguous history with shorter outlooks on the rest of the world, to requiring the individual to be able to see and understand other parts of the world and different time, on the basis of it?s own history and culture.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the view on reading and reading promotion in the Culture of Reading (SOU 2012:65), based on three different approaches to reading and reading promotion; the pragmatic, the emancipatory and the traditionalistic. The thesis is based on the following questions; which view on reading can be seen in the Culture of Reading and which view on librarians? reading promotion can be seen in the Culture of Reading. To answer these questions, I am going to apply the aforementioned approaches on the Culture of Reading. The Culture of Reading is an official report from the Swedish government and parts of it will be subject to a qualitative content analysis.

Fountain of Knowledge? The Changing Role of the Library at the Upper Secondary School Level. There have been many changes in the Swedish society in general, and in the school system and hence the school library in particular during the last decade. The aim of this master thesis is then to study what students at the upper secondary school level consider to be the optimal school library to meet their specific information needs at school. In addition to and in comparison with this, the aim is also to study the present conditions of the upper secondary school library as described in documents, reports and other studies in this field.

The purpose of this study is to see how adolescent students in high school formulate their thoughts of death and if a belief in transcendent existence affects their thoughts. The study was done on two separate schools, one municipal school and one private religious school, in minor cities in Sweden. The method used was qualitative inquiries and the amount of participants was four from each school, eight in total. The result of the study showed that six out of eight participants had a belief of a transcendent existence, three from the municipal school and three from the religious private school. The result also showed that the participants from the municipal school that had a belief in an transcendent existence also had a belief in a form of ?afterlife?, this was however not reflected on the students in the religious private school where result showed that one out of four had a belief in a form of ?afterlife? and three view death as the final stage of existence..

This master thesis is aiming to find out how school libraries work towards children in school years 1-6. The mainfocus is how the school librarians and teachers work with literature and reading. The theoretical viewpoints aremainly the sociocultural theory and the child perspective.The study was conducted with participants from five different schools in Uppsala, in the form of qualitativesemi-structured interviews. The results show that schools work with literature first and foremost in a pragmaticway, with reading-strategies and activating discussions. Very little time is spent on reading for its own sake.

Background: Acquisitions are a well-known method for increasing company size and strength on the market. But to reach the targets set, more than just a positive economic calculation is required. An atmosphere that supports the company's integration is needed, for which it is of great importance for management to understand the underlying sets of values that exist in the organisation, and to take into consideration the way they might become an obstacle or a tool for a successful integration. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explain and understand how cultural change occurs and how it affects the employee, as a smaller company is bought and integrated into a larger organisation. Procedure: The analysis is based on theories on organisational culture and organisational change.

This study is of a qualitative phenomenological approach. Its background lies in recent reports that show the problem of self-harm increasing among adolescents. The intent of the study was to highlight school counselors? view of self-harm, and their experiences of meeting self-harm through their work. Six school counselors, all employed in secondary school, have participated in semi-structured interviews.

PURPOSE: To find out how identity creating and community utter within the Black Metal culture, to get an insight of why people are drawn to Black Metal, and what function it fills to the adherents/practicians.METHOD: Analyses of interviews done by the authors. In addition to them literature, mainly in book form, is used for theories.RESULT: We have seen that there are shared Black Metal values, despite a strong individualism within the culture. And death is important for the survival of the culture and the individuals..

The aim of this paper is to examine how young men of foreign background are pictured in the realistic adolescence novels of 2009. In my process of work I have used a classical schedule for literature analysis from which I have worked out a few questions to use on my texts. The questions are related to the main characters and some of the most important minor characters ? all are young men with foreign background ? and focuses on aspects of for example where they live, who their friends are and what they think about and dream of.To put these pictures into a wider perspective I compare my results with the well known stereotype picturing of men with foreign background in media. I then discuss how or if this affects the young men?s picture of themselves and the majority society?s picture of them.

Although school librarians have an important role to play in high schools helping teachers and students during their education, Swedish school librarians are often considered to end up left out by teachers and head principals due to school librarians vague and unclear professional role in the school. The aim of this thesis is to attempt to study school librarians own apprehensions of their particular professional role in a high school context, and how their professional role is believed to be apprehended by teachers and head principals. The results are based on interviews made with eight school librarians working in different high school libraries in Gothenburg during April 2002. By using phenomenographic method various existing apprehensions of the specific phenomena that the professional role of the school librarian constitutes of are made clear. The aim of the method is not to study what the profession constitutes of, but rather how it is apprehended by the school librarians themselves.