The purpose of this study was to examine how pre-school teachers in Montessori inspired and traditional preschools can work with build and construction with the older children, and what views the pre-school teachers might have on the subject.  The study was implemented through qualitative semi-structured interviews with pre-school teachers. The investigational method was chosen due to the fact that I wanted to gain knowledge about the pre-school teachers? views and perspectives on build and construction activities, and how they might work with it. Another reason was to examine how the view on, and the work with build and construction can resemble and differ between Montessori inspired pre-schools and traditional pre-schools.The result shows that there is both similarities and diverseness between the Montessori influenced pre-schools and the traditional pre-schools, when it comes to how the pre-school teachers reason and work with build and construction.

Humans have always been fascinated by the thought of bringing non living objects to life. We wanted to explore the possibilities of trying to create an artefact that the audience would consider possess emotional states and have a life of its own. TaS is a interactive chair that functions as a social entity. The idea is to try and enhance the bond between human and artefact, based upon the emotional connection. We try and produce, enhance and maintain this bond through curiosity based interaction. Bachelor thesis in Interaction Design by Andreas Eriksson, Johanna Lund and Fredrik Lundh, spring term 2008, Malmö University, K3 School of Arts & Communication..

The purpose of this study was to explore young people's participation and experience of participation in child protection investigations. The study was conducted using qualitative methodology and is based on interviews with four adolescents aged 13-19 years old who have experience of child protection investigations. Our chosen method has made it possible for us get a deeper understanding of young people's own experiences of participation. In order to analyze the material we have used Shiers (2001) model of children's participation, symbolic interactionism, and some concepts relating to shame and pride.The results show that all adolescents have had the opportunity to be heard during the investigations, but it is different to what degree they feel that someone has listened to them.Two of the young people have been involved in their investigation, been listened to and have had impact on the decisions taken. The results indicate that it does not seem to be the external factors, such as how many meetings they have had, or what quality it was on the information, that matters if the social worker did not manage to convey to the young people that what they told was of any importance.

The purpose of this study was to examine how school counselors in a specific municipalityviewed their work situation, if they experienced stress and how they would handle that stress.Five school counselors out of eight in the specific municipality participated in qualitativeinterviews where they could describe their feelings and thoughts. Their experiences wasexamined and analyzed with the theories of coping and empowerment. The results showedthat there were unhealthy levels of stress in the profession amongst the five counselors. It alsoshowed that the uttermost reason for the experienced unhealthy stress was the feeling of notbeing able to give as much time and help to the pupils as they want and need. The reason forthis was that an increasing number of pupils were, and are, experiencing unhappiness and arein need of seeing the school counselor.

This is a study on individual development plans (IDPs) in pre-school and their relationship with the teaching performed. Skolverket does not mention the IDPs in their steering documents for pre-school, and have in a separate memo discouraged from the use. Yet reports show that many of the pre-schools in Sweden are using IDPs. Teaching in pre-school is expected to be a mixture of care and learning without clear boundaries to the scientific topics pre-school aims to introduce children to. The purpose of this study is to investigate if the use of IDPs affect the teaching in pre-school.

The public library is an institution that throughout history has been associated with anumber of social codes, that seem to be deeply rooted in the minds of the public. Thesecodes regulates how users act and interact in the library environment and as a library useryou have to obtain knowledge about these social codes.This master's thesis aims at studying how these codes are transferred to children in the earlyschool-age, how children react to the social codes and what effects they have on thechildren's development into library users.The empirical material used in this study consists of observations and interviews. Theobservations are conducted during two school classes visits to a public library and focuseson the interaction between librarians, the children and their teachers, and the interviewswere conducted with the two librarians responsible for the library visits.The theories used in this master's thesis consists of symbolic interactionism, in the form oftheories by George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, Peter L. Berger and ThomasLuckmanns theories regarding the concept of institutions. Another theory that's used in thismaster's thesis is the one concerning the social aspects of information literacy focusing onthe concept of epistemic communities as presented by Kimmo Tuominen, Reijo Savolainenand Sanna Talja.The result of this study is that the social codes are communicated to the children primarilyby the teachers rather than the librarians.

The purpose of this study has been to compare teachers' differing methods of teaching mathematics and their perspectives on the learning process in a municipal school to a Waldorf school. The study has examined which approach best promotes student engagement and learning in mathematics in the first three years of schooling. The study is based on four interviews. The informants? accounts are interpreted using theories from previous research.

In recent years there has been a growing interest directed towards focusing on the importance of clear evidence for interventions in social work. To enable the measurement it?s necessary to develop concrete models with manuals on how social work should be designed. Evaluation of the benefits is made in relation to how well the method can detect evidence of clear measurable results. When measuring the result it?s of importance to emphasis on pre and post the situation, not the situation where social work takes place.

The word mathematics is often associated to addition, subtraction, division or multiplication. This is not the kind of mathematics that belongs to pre-school. In my essay I have chosen to write about how mathematics is used in pre-school. In the literature it is written that the best way of becoming familiar with mathematics, is to integrate it in the every day life but that there are educators that use traditional mathematics education in pre-school. The questions I would like to answer are:1.

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.

The purpose of this study was to examine social worker?s own experiences of dealing with gender perspectives in child welfare cases. With a constructionist perspective, this study is based on a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews. Six social workers were asked to reflect on their work and their methodology, and how it relates to gender perspectives when assessing children and adolescents in child welfare services.The result shows that there is a lack of control and review that children are given a gender neutral treatment. It also shows that there was no explicit protocol for how to take a gender perspective into account when assessing children and adolescents needs of welfare services.

The purpose of this study was to examine how the authorities in Sweden collaborate when it comes to discourage trafficking for sexual purposes. More specifically the aim was to find which directives and problems the work of the individual authorities constitute in and how does it affect collaboration with other authorities. The study was based on interviews with six respondents, which have experience working within this field. Three themes were identified: what is collaboration, different perspectives, regulatory frameworks and different fundamental values within the organisations. The study concluded that collaboration is affected by several factors such as the absence of knowledge about trafficking for sexual purposes and the laws which regulate confidentiality, difficulties in defining collaboration as a concept and the authorities different ideas about what have to be done in the context of discouraging trafficking for sexual purposes.

This study illuminates chosen parts of the present opportunities, in the Western World, for parents and children to choose which school the child will attend (freedom of choice), along with possible consequences that may follow. My research questions are: 1) Do tendencies show that freedom of choice leads to increased segregation, and if that is the case, how is it manifested and does it matter? 2) What relations between the student composition of schools and teachers' expectations and attitudes toward students are there? 3) Do the results from previous studies match with the result from my interviews? The methods used for answering the questions are literature studies and interviews made with six teachers who are working in two upper secondary schools in the northern part of Sweden, i.e. three from each school.The result shows that freedom of choice, regarding schools, seems to lead to student compositions that contribute to increased segregation in societies. It leads to more homogenous student compositions, in the form of ethnicity and social class, in schools in general, with consequences like different expectations and attitudes among teachers depending on the status of the composition.

The purpose of this study is to find out what children think they learn of taking part in activities organized by the school. I started my study by summarize three essays about informal learning. The results are based on three interviews of totally six children in the age of nine at a school in Stockholm. I interviewed the children using a semi structured method and asked them what activities they prefer to do after school and what they think they learn there, and from their friends. The results emanating from essays which were investigating similar topic..

The aim of this study was to explore and increase understanding of how a team of colleagues at an upper-secondary school in Sweden works with students with special education needs. The team works with a group of students where the majority have experienced school failure in elementary school. The focus of the study has been to analyze a project that the school undertook 2013 to improve students? results and improve their chances to successfully graduate from their program. Data was collected from relevant documents and interviews with members of the project at hand.