We are living in a multicultural society where people from other countries and other cultures are coming to Sweden, including children. Regardless of reasons why these students have come to Sweden, it is common that they are newly arrived and have to learn a second language, in this case Swedish. This will be a challenge, opportunities and difficulties for the student, students? families and for the school and their staff.The purpose of this essay has been to illumine the teaching methods, models and what materials are used by teachers today to contribute to the best possible second language learning for newly arrived students. In this essay the focus has been on one theory and several model-based approaches.

Over the last decades there has been a steady increase in the representation of women on the political arena. Despite of this there are still fewer women in comparison to men in political organs particularly at the municipal level. It is therefore of great importance to examine which different factors that tend to effect the female representation at this level. Doctor of philosophy at Umeå University Jessika Wide presented in a study from 2000 that the share of women in the municipal councils tended to depend upon cultural, socio-economical and political factors. Other scholars also mean that women have specific interests and therefore are more represented in some areas.

The aim of the study is to show how a selected part of the European Language Portfolio, ELP, can support the assessment process for teachers. All the checklists at level A1 and My Language Goals from the Language Biography, a part of the ELP, are implemented and communicated in teaching in a 4th grade class of students. Two teachers are interviewed and both of their classes are compared in the study. One group worked for two weeks with the selected part of the Language Portfolio and the second group followed the regular curriculum for the same period of time. The teachers are interviewed before and after the ELP through support of mind maps.Results show that by using checklists at level A1 and My Language Goals students become aware of their own learning process.

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.

According to the immigration service forecasts Sweden faces large refugee influxes in the coming years. This means that educators in the kindergarten, preschool and school, will meat children from the war torn countries. In this study, the purpose is to find out the educators different conceptions of war-affected refugee children, because my theory is that their beliefs influence their actions. I wanted to get answers to their beliefs about the difficulties or challengers that children and educators may be faced with. Furthermore, I wanted to know what educators envisioned about their own role?s importance to the war affected refugee children and their perceptions of the Swedish culture, environment, language and school.

The object of this thesis is to direct attention onto female inmates who is a disregarded user group within the discipline of library and information sciences. This study has been performed on location at the Hinseberg correctional institution where nine female criminal offenders constitute the empirical foundation of our inquiry. The question proposed for solution is as follows: Is there a correlation between socio-cultural prerequisites and the reading habits of the female inmates - and if so how can it be described? Among the conclusions that we have drawn from our study is that the socio-cultural environment has an influence on the well-being of the inmates which in its turn has an impact on their reading. However, the effects on their mental state vary and consequently so does also their reading.

The cultural policy area has a tendency to be seen as a consensus area, where there are no big conflicts between the parties. The aim of this master?s thesis is to study the moderate party?s cultural motion 2005/06Kr:233 with the party leader Fredrik Reinfeldt as first author. If consensus rules, the party?s ideology should not be visible in the motion, but the assumption in the thesis is that it is visible.

The goal with this thesis was to look at various aspects of how teachers and students perceived the use of various texts in the collective teaching context in which they are participants. The purpose with that was to provide insight into aspects of the didactic processes that the texts and the usage of them are part of and demonstrate aspects of both the conditions and the opportunities for teaching conducted within the surveyed education. The essay analysis is based on interviews with four teachers and twelve students in a total of four teaching contexts (within subjects: Swedish and SO/Religion) about texts they worked with during a selected period of work.The essay is based on a theory of Kathleen MacCormick and Torlaug Hoel Lökkengaard where reading and writing are described as both an individual cognitive process and a common cultural process, impossible to completely separate from each other. The students description of their use of the texts show how they are influenced by teachers culture of teaching, in turn, influenced by the curriculum. In relation to Wiksten Folkeryd, af Geijerstam and Edling research on students movability in texts in the Swedish school, the survey shows some of the aspects that enable students to develop a higher level of movability in texts within the subject Swedish.

This paper will answer which factors are important for the business relation between a small Swedish import company and a Chinese contractor. The problem is based partly in theories that points to cultural and organizational differences between Sweden and China, and partly in current examples from Swedish companies. The relevant data has been collected by interviews with three small Swedish companies that are currently using Chinese contractors.The result is that the differences between the countries and organizations exist, but that they do not interfere with the inter-company relations. The conclusion is that our result contradictsthe established theories in the field, and that a more comprehensive investigation is warranted..

Syftet med denna studie är att beskriva hur pedagoger använder sig av stödtecken och i vilket syfte de används. Vi belyser begrepp som kommunikation, språkutveckling och interaktion. Vi tar vår utgångspunkt i ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Vidare beskriver vi vad ?Tecken som stöd? (TSS) och ?Tecken som alternativ kompletterande kommunikation? (TAKK) står för.

The purpose of this study was to highlight cyber-bullying and its place in today?s schools. Our aim was to research how schools with bullying prevention programs are equipped to handle and take action against cyber-bullying. Furthermore this study focuses on whether or not schools are responsible for cases of cyber-bullying. We also aimed to present teachers? general views and knowledge regarding this phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate when Swedish and English are used in English teaching and how the pupils view the importance of the classroom language for their language development. My research questions are ?In what situations is Swedish and English respectively spoken during the English lessons?? and ?What are the pupils' opinions concerning the significance of English and Swedish in the classroom for their language development??. To answer my questions, I have used relevant theoretical research and conducted two observations and two group interviews in a secondary school. The observations have given me an example of how it can function in the classroom and the interviews have given me the opportunity to hear the pupils' different perspectives on how it is done in the classroom and their different opinions concerning this matter. According to the research, it is of great importance that the pupils are offered the opportunity to use the English language as much as possible in the classroom.

This paper set out to investigate how teachers of Swedish in Sweden implement the grammar objectives of the curriculum in their teaching, through interviewing six teachers. It has been important to compare their methods to modern research of grammar teaching and teaching in general. They have been asked a series of questions to answer whether or not they use grammar terminology as mediating tools, if they intergrate dialogue among students in grammar teaching and to what extent the teachers? knowledge of and attitude towards grammar influence their teaching methods. The results show that grammar is used as mediating tools primarily when it comes to feedback on pupils? texts, though not to a great extent; dialogue between pupils is rare when it comes to grammar teaching; and the teachers? grammar knowledge and attitude affect the teaching methods, primarily in the sense that seeing value in grammar knowledge increases the teacher?s desire to develop new methods for grammar teaching..

The aim with this study was to investigate how a few teachers in Swedish, at upper secondary school, are using computers in their teaching, and what approach they have towards using computers in teaching. A qualitative study has been made to accive a result, on this matter, were five currently teaching teachers in Swedish, at different upper secondary schools, have been intervjued. The teachers answered questions concerning how and in what speciefic fields of study they use computers, the computer program and -tools they are using and what benefits and disadvantiges they see with computers in teaching. They also answered questions concerning the availability of computers at the schools which they are working. The study showed that the way teachers are using computers in their teaching, and the amount they are using them varied between the teachers; but all are using computers mainly with the purpose to write texts and to search for information. All teachers also had in common that they are using computers not as frequently and in a different way when grammar is concerned. It appered that the teachers were mainly positive to use computers in their teaching, even if some teachers acknowleadged more disadvantiges than the others.

The purpose of my examination work was to show the need for support for students with another mother-tongue than Swedish, so that these students would be able to get through mathematics tuition better. To achieve this purpose, I chose to start from the perspective that presented itself at interviews with two class teachers and two mother-tongue supervisors. I also chose to use the qualitative research interview as study method, as I tried to understand those informing me in a thorough and in-depth way. In my study I have had a sociocultural perspective as starting point where the conceptions teaching, language and communication, support and individualizing are central for the development of knowledge. The questions for my study during this process were as follows: What difficulties, according to the teachers interviewed can occur for second language students in mathematics? What ways and methods of working do the teachers chosen give priority to, so that   the second language students` results in mathematics will improve? The results from my interviews show that the difficulties with mathematics for second anguage students can be perceived as being dependent on a combination of reasons, where amongst other things language plays a central part.