Local cultural environment planning in Sweden often comes to rely on municipal heritage plans. These plans are meant to facilitate management of local cultural values, work as a tool for local planning and increase awareness of cultural environments for the public. In the last decades public participation in planning has become more and more of the ideal strategy, challenging the idea of cultural environment planning as an expert-led field. The idea of the field as one that implicates public participation as a strategy has been fortified in Sweden through national goals, government bills and conventions. Nevertheless the implementation of public participation in municipal heritage plans remains quite uncharted. The aim of this study is to explore public participation in regards to how municipal heritage plans are developed and the perception of public participation in cultural environment planning amongst professionals, comparing bigger and smaller municipalities.

This essay is based on students' growing lack of interest in science at school. Both from a democratic and social perspective, this is a worrying factor for the future. Through observation, I investigated how five science teachers conduct their teaching. This is to get a better understanding of how teachers' behaviour in the classroom can affect students' interest in science. With a socio-cultural research approach, I have tried to highlight a few pieces of the puzzle that may explain students' declining interest in science.

The purpose of my research has been to analyze the communi-cation of three cultural heritages and how they are being ex-posed on their respective webpages. The essay has also touched the subject as to how webpages can, through marketing of cul-tural heritages, create a connection to the marketed locations and their cultural environment. A phenomenon you could call ?creating a location?. My study has also resulted in an under-standing of how historical sites as cultural actors position them-selves to attract visitors to the location.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine relevance of the proposition made by new insitutionalists about institutional and technical environment. This proposition originaly made by Meyer & Rowan (1977) has two core assumptions: The first is that all organizations are controlled by combinations of types of demands; technical demands for efficient production and institutional demands to adept to cultural and normative expectations. The second assumption is that there exists a few organizations dominated almost entirely by one typy of demand. Organizations dominated by institutional demands are said to live in an institutional environment, while technical organizations is said operate in a technical environment. This thesis has examined if these assumptions are still applicable in describing organizational interaction with the environment.

The aim of this thesis was to use qualitative approaches to show how teachers in primary school reason on their way to meet and communicate with children who have ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). Research questions of the study were as follows: How does teachers in primary school reason about their way to communicate with children with ADHD? Do the teachers use some specific methods or means of communication with students who have ADHD? Do the teachers reason about their way how to handle conflicts with students who have ADHD? I collected my empirical material through a qualitative interview method. My theoretical starting points were interaction theory and the socio-cultural perspective. I have used these theories to analyze my material.

Our main reason for this master thesis is to find out how librarians get knowledge and understanding about people with disabilities in order to make the library more accessible. Our aim is to study the so-called 4 x 4 education which is an education about accessibility to and within cultural institutions and find out if a specific education is helpful to librarians in this matter. We also discuss what librarians themselves find desirable in an education of this type. Socio-cultural perspective is our choice as background theory. The socio-cultural perspective states that learning depends on social activity and social interaction.

The purpose of my study is to investigate teacher?s perceptions of their mission in the preschool class, and how they work to promote children?s written language development. What methods and working methods they use to awaken curiosity and motivate children to read and write. I am using the qualitative research method to get answers to my questions. I have made four qualitative interviews with four teachers in preschool classes from different schools.My questions are:What conceptions does teachers have about their mission in a preschool class?What different methods and approaches does teachers use to stimulate and wake children?s curiosity for reading and writing development?The theoretical basis for my study is the socio-cultural perspective, where learning occurs in interaction.

The purpose of this essay is to discover what Formative Assessment is used for in practice and also how teachers use the Curriculum for elementary school, preschool and after-school activity 2011 (Lgr 11) in their Formative Assessment work.The questions are as follows:What considerations do teachers take into account when assessing a student?How do teachers view assessment for learning?How do the teachers consider formative assessment works in relation to Lgr 11?I have used a qualitative research method to answer my questions. I have interviewed five teachers regarding their view on and experience with assessment. Using a hermeneutic approach I have tried to retrieve a deeper meaning from my interviewees regarding formative assessment. I have approached formative assessment using the socio-cultural perspective because I believe it to be the best fit.All of the informants believe formative assessment has made it easier to assess students and also that it works very well together with Lgr 11.

This essay aims at understanding the experience of the use of ayahuasca, and similarities and differences between interview protocols and socio-cultural identities. The work is based on field studies conducted in the Peruvian Andes, in the village of Pisac September to November 2009. What has emerged is that the experience does not seem to be dependent on cultural manifestations as much as it is dependent on general human cognition. Theories have been applied on an empirical phenomenological descriptive study. Various brain activities, along with mental mechanisms contribute to a deeper understanding of the findings in the descriptive analysis.It seems that the cultural differences, which I have classed as typological in the phenomenological study, mostly are expressions of meaning for the informants.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the information use among Swedish backpackers, both prior to departure and while travelling. The questions posed in this study are; which artefacts did the backpackers use, in what way were those used as tools of mediation within their social practice and how does a presumptive interaction between backpackers and information sources appear? The empirical material consists of interviews, held with eight backpackers, concerning their information use. The interviews reveal that a number of information sources are being consulted. The most commonly used sources identified in the empirical material are guide books, advice from other backpackers, fiction, TV programmes and periodicals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers' approach to popular culture in preschool. The questions we want answered are: What approach do educators have to popular culture in preschool and what underlies that approach? Is there a high - and low culture in preschool? If educators bring popular culture into the preschool, how then is it used? Do children?s culture influence everyday life in preschool? We have employed qualitative methods to seek answers to our questions. We conducted seven interviews with educators from four different preschools. The starting point for our study was the socio-cultural perspective because we examined people's cultures and how the meeting between them unfolds. We concluded that educators have a very ambivalent attitude towards popular culture in preschool.

Denna studie syftar till, ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv, att ge en djupare förståelse för hur turismen har påverkat destinationen Sharm el Sheikh i Egypten. Studiens resultat visar att destinationen Sharm el Sheikh har påverkats i stor omfattning av turismen, inom den socio- kulturella sektorn, den ekonomiska sektorn och miljösektorn, samtliga av de tre områden som enligt FN är definitionen av hållbar turism.Inom den socio- kulturella sektorn finns det flera problem; den bakomliggande orsaken till många av dessa problem är att ursprungsbefolkningen känner sig förbisedda och inte har getts möjlighet till att påverka utvecklingen av destinationen i en önskvärd omfattning. Den positiva påverkan turismen har haft på den socio- kulturella sektorn är en ökad förståelse för den lokala kulturen.Den största negativa effekten på den ekonomiska sektorn, av turismen på Sharm el Sheikh, har visat sig vara att 97 procent av intäkterna försvinner ut ur destinationen genom ett så kallat läckage. Detta beror främst på att det är utländska ägare av hotellen och all-inclusive anläggningarna. Den egyptiska staten har försökt att minska detta läckage genom att införa en lag som säger att en egyptier måste äga minst 49 procent av företaget, detta tycks dock inte ha gett önskat effekt utan istället har vissa egyptier agerat som målvakter mot en fast ersättning istället för ägandeskap i företagen.De miljömässiga problemen som turismen orsakat i Sharm el Sheikh är också flera.

AbstractThe aim of the research presented in this thesis is to study how interactional strategies are used by children and what these strategies mean or imply in the preschool cultural context. The theoretical point of departure in the study is the socio-cultural perspective (William Corsaro, Roger Säljö, Jim Wertsch). The study is a contribution to the field of research that focuses upon contextual issues and an overall way of seeing the child. This is in opposition to the strong traditional psychological perspective in the development of the child, where a focus upon the individual dominates in special education. This ethnographic study aims to answer the following research questions; What interactional strategies are co-constructed by the children in preschool play? How do the interactional strategies influence the creation of culture in preschool play? The children, 3-5 years olds, and their play situation were in focus.

The aim of this qualitative respondent investigation is to delve into the various views that teachers have concerning the ?One-to-One project?, as well as the use of computers as an aid in teaching. One-to-One means that teachers and students will be equipped with a laptop they can use at home and at school.This essay looks at how several factors have changed as a result of this. These factors are threefold: the role of the teacher, the teaching experience, and the student´s learning process. In order to answer the mentioned questions, four interviews have been conducted at two different high schools in southern Norrland.

The Swedish government published their current proposition concerning cultural politics,Tid för kultur in 2009. Due to this proposition, culture is considered a basic human right we all deserve to be provided with. It contained goals and guidelines for how to enable culture to all citizens, to integrate and enrich the state, the county councils? and municipalities? work with diversity and multi culture in their culture-based institutes. However, there seems to be a lack of strategies in the issue of how to provide our nondependent elderly, suffering age related handicaps and diseases, with this proclaimed necessity.In recent years, there has been a lot of research proving the link between human wellbeing and a stimulating environment.