The Swedish school is today a meeting place for many people with different cultures. The teacher education at Södertörn University have since 2002 been influenced by an intercultural profile. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the intercultural profile of Södertörn University is expressed in preschool- teachers/ teachers work. Is an intercultural approach requested in schools and is intercultural approach useful and applicable in the teaching profession? The report is based on a qualitative study of what intercultural competence means for five preschool- teachers/ teachers who have graduated from Södertörn University.

This study is about how to develop younger teens problem solving ability and their Social Competence. The study carried through by using a qualitative method, two observations and ten interviews. The observations where preparatory for the structured interviews. The respondents where pupils in a class were it is an ongoing project which purpose is to develop childrens problem solving ability and social skills with cognitive training and an empowerment based reasoning model that is called rahyab. Rahyab is a Persian word and it means path- finding.

Ethical competence is an important precondition when people are to respond to moral problem situations as efficiently as possible. In these situations it is not easy to make choices and decisions, especially when many stakeholders are involved with various opinions and interests.The purpose of this thesis was to generate a web-based support tool to train and promote ethical competence of the users of this tool.We first created a theoretical basis by studying the major theories of ethics in general and ethical competence in particular. The importance of ethical competence and its main subject, namely, the autonomy in the theoretical part described and specified. In addition has the practical ethical reflection over morality preferred and characterized to the classical ethical passivity over morality. We have also preferred and characterized the autonomous thinking to the heteronomous one.Based on the theoretical base a prototype tool to support the training of ethical competence was designed and developed.

Learning organizations and organizational development are interesting subjects that does not examine municipal organizations and private organizations an equal amount.  Furthermore, there exists little research on the effects of competence development for individuals in a leadership role within organizations. Because of this, we wanted to examine the impact of competence development in business modeling and how it affected local government activities. Competence development is used by organizations to develop their business and achieve a greater competitive advantage, but does competence development for individuals in a leadership role lead to organizational development? This paper examines competence development in the form of a business modeling course via the Bitstreamproject and the effects that occur within three municipalities as a result of the competence development. By interviewing three participants and four coworkers within different municipalities and studied the data from the Bitstream project, we can not conclude that competence development within business modeling leads to organizational development, only that it exists a tendency for it.

The purpose of this study is to examine immigrants' experiences of social services' treatmentand their expectations of social services. In this study we have used the following questions:how immigrants have experienced the treatment of the social service, the way in whichimmigrants would like to be treated by social services as well as what kind of beliefs andexpectations immigrants have concerning the social services' duties and powers. We haveused a qualitative method in the study that consists of ten semi-structured interviews. Thetheoretical concepts we have used are culture, ethnicity, cultural competence, professionalismand social psychology. The survey reveals a majority of negative experiences, such as afeeling of being ?tossed around?, suspicion and discrimination by the caseworkers due to theethnicity of the respondents.

The purpose of this study has been to describe and analyze how seven Swedish preschool teachers and two special education teachers think and work with children who show a lack of social skills. The study method has been semi-structured interviews with the educators which have been analyzed and sorted under different themes/categories. The theoretical framework used in this study is sociocultural, relational and categorical perspectives. These perspectives have been chosen in order to better understand how teachers see their role in supporting children in need of special support. The environment in the preschool is found to be of great help and the teachers? approach is of great importance.The research emphasizes the importance of integrating thinking, feeling and behavior.

The aim of this two-year masters thesis is to look for the Swedish public library´s core business, using theories about competence. The approach is qualitative. It is done by studying the Unesco Public Library Manifesto, the Swedish library legislation, the education in library and information science, two important Swedish library related journals and by asking public librarians about their work and point of view regarding competence.The research shows mainly two sides of the core competence of public librarians: information technology competence and literature knowledge. The conclusion is that the two meet in the idea of mass education, which could therefore be called the Swedish public library´s core business..

Testing and analysis of measurement data is a major part of the workday for development engineers within the section Fluid and Emission Treatment to assure the quality of products developed by Scania CV. The ineluctable variation and therefore uncertainty of results can be quantified and discussed with the use of statistical methods.The overall objective of this study is to examine how the competence of development engineers can be improved within the area of statistics. This has been done by relating the concept of competence with the use of statistical methods to analyse experimental data and by investigating which factors that influence the competence of the engineers. Observations of the daily operations, interviews and a focus group with development engineers and a workshop with management personnel, has been used as research methods in this study.The results show that the desired competence, from the perspective of the individual, consists of knowledge, motivation and support. It is important that none of these parts are neglected when the competence of engineers is to be strengthened.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate teacher humor by critically examining it from an interpersonal- and humor communicative-perspective; and to discuss teacher interpersonal humor communication-skills in relation to the Swedish high school curriculum, collegial relationships and pedagogical aspects. The study?s empiric material consists of semi-structured interviews with six high school-teachers currently working at the same school, but of different age and gender. The interviews indicate that the informants all have developed humor competence, an interpersonal communicative-skill that allows them to use humor efficiently. Moreover, the result demonstrates that the teachers have various humor approaches but that they all use humor in the classroom for much of the same reasons.

This is a qualitative study inquiring ?What does it entail to be a sex worker in Sweden today?? Four female sex workers were interviewed in semi-structured interviews. Using methods for reflexive analysis, interpreting the interviews and their context theoretically through notions of Competence and Stigma, the results of this study shows that sex workers may be both competent agents and stigmatized. This informs the understanding of sex work, stigma and how learning, subjective room for action and social agency can be aggravated or hindered by stigma. The results are viewed in the context of Swedish legislation against sex purchase in relation to previous research which shows that said legislation is problematic.

The concept competence is considered to be difficult to define. Therefore, it may be problematic to define competence in business and to evaluate the level of skills of employees (Thomsen, 2010). In this study the aim has been to identify key competencies for employees working as purchasers for Skanska Nordic Procurement Unit (NPU). These key competencies will afterwards help Skanska NPU to evaluate purchasers? level of competence.The theoretical framework of the study consists of three different parts.

Several studies have shown that the Swedish labour market for different reasons is characterized by ethnical discrimination and that people who have another cultural background than Swedish are being excluded. Most studies done within this area have been focused on why it is harder for immigrants to enter the labour market and identifying the contributing mechanisms for this phenomenon. Instead the aim of this study was to see how the immigrants view their own cultural identity and background and how they perceive that their cultural competences are being valued when they apply for a job. To examine this, the following problematic was used: How does a person who has been brought up with both the Swedish culture and another culture look at using this as a cultural competence when they apply for a job. Two different theories were then applied to analyze the problematic, Erving Goffman´s theory about Stigma and Norbert Elias theory about the Established and the Outsiders.

Large retirement numbers and fierce competition of available labour, results in municipalities have to be more attractive as an employer. One way for the municipalities to fulfil their staffing requirement is partly to increase their recruitment efforts, and partly to educate their existing employees. Discussions about the supply of competence are therefore pressing within municipal activity. The aim of the study was to investigate how the concept of competence is used within a municipal administration. The method that has been used is Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis, a method that allows multi dimensional analysis.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate teacher humor by critically examining it from an interpersonal- and humor communicative-perspective; and to discuss teacher interpersonal humor communication-skills in relation to the Swedish high school curriculum, collegial relationships and pedagogical aspects. The study?s empiric material consists of semi-structured interviews with six high school-teachers currently working at the same school, but of different age and gender. The interviews indicate that the informants all have developed humor competence, an interpersonal communicative-skill that allows them to use humor efficiently. Moreover, the result demonstrates that the teachers have various humor approaches but that they all use humor in the classroom for much of the same reasons.

The purpose of the thesis is to map the meaning of ?international competence? in Swedish company boards of directors. The study is divided in a qualitative part and a quantitative part. The qualitative study consists of a discourse analysis where variation in interpretative repertoires are identified to enhance the understanding of the nature of reasoning related to the meaning and importance of the issue at stake. The discourse analysis is conducted on an empirical material from 27 interviews with decision makers in recruitment processes to Swedish company boards of directors.