Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate how context-specific and generic scaffolding affect upper secondary school students' conversations during laboratory work in chemistry and find out if meaningful exploratory conversations taking place that increase the students' understanding. Theory: Previous studies show that there are difficulties for students to both handle practical material in laboratory work and create meaningful conceptual understanding. It needs to be more minds on than hands on. This study has a socio-cultural basis where language is an important basis for thinking. Previous studies show that the exploratory conversation is important for creating understanding.

It is extremely important that the construction of the environment where children and youngsters spend the majority of their days supports the progress of their mentality. That is why I in this study will investigate what a certain amount of teachers consider of the interplay between learning and environment and how they thought a satisfactory environment structure eras of learning and also what the teachers consider to be missing at this point.The schools where I gathered my material are located in Thailand but they use the Swedish curriculum as a starting point and the students at these schools are mostly Swedish speaking.An important element that I came across was the impact of the surrounding on how to shape and use the environment as a tool in the teaching. Thailand?s climate is different than the Swedish climate; I want to investigate if that has any effect in the teaching.The educational environment in schools includes not only the classrooms but also every other space closely connected. Earlier scientific research as well as those people that I used as objects for interviews agrees regarding the fact that a suitable and stimulating environment are one of the most impact on how well children learn.

The purpose of this study was to analyze recent appropriations of works of art in advertising. Why was art infused into magazine advertisements, how were the works of art tampered with to achieve commercial goals, how well did they function together with the ad copy? What did these advertisements want? What did the artwork contribute to the commercial message? These were some of the questions asked in the study that involved a closer look at four appropriations: one based on a battle painting by the Swedish 1900th century artist Carl Wahlbom, with a commercial message printed on top;  one a collage including an 18th century portrait of Marie Antoinettte by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun; one advertisement was influenced by Dutch 1700th century still lifes, and, finally, one paraphrased Velázquez?s famous painting Las Meninas from 1655. Companies behind the advertisements featured a Swedish trade journal, a fashion exhibition in Paris, a shop for kitchen utensils in Stockholm, and an up-scale department store in Madrid.The ads, in different ways based on works of art, were evaluated as reasonably successful commercial messages. These ads, however, hardly qualified as works of art in their own right ? if that was the intention.

No abstract.

Language of text: SwedishNumber of pages: 90.

I två analyser av filmerna; Do The Right Thing av Spike Lee (1989) och Hemligheter och lögner av Mike Leigh (1996), har jag undersökt  hur och varför samhällsproblematik  som berör klass- och rasfrågan presenteras på film utifrån hur cultural studies teoretiskt förhåller sig till problematiska relationer mellan kulturella identiteter i USA och Storbritannien. Jag kom fram till att identifikationen av den kulturella identiteten var olika i respektive länder; USA och Storbritannien. I USA var rastillhörigheten utgångspunkten för den kulturella identiteten och i Storbritannien var det klasstillhörigheten utgångspunkten för den kulturella identiteten..

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.

AbstractIn the research made on the subject, homework, there are a lot of differences in the opinions regarding the meaning of homework/home assignments in the educational system today. Do they fill a purpose or do they only create social rifts and injustice.For my essay I chose to find out what attitude senior-level teachers have towards homework and what meaning it is considered to have on the students learning ability.My research is based on interviews with six senior-level teachers who all teach different subjects.The results showed that all of the interviewed teachers used some kind of home assignments in their teaching.Ultimately, the conclusion I reached is that the homework should be well prepared and given a lot of thought. The homework should also be interesting and meaningful to the students to promote the learning process..

The aim of this essay is to investigate to which extent the novel Kvinnor och äppelträd by Moa Martinson can be classified as a polyphonic novel. The concept polyphony was established in literary theory by the Russian language theorist and literary critic Michail Bachtin in 1929, in his book Problems of Dostoevsky?s poetics. In order to understand and comprehend the concept of polyphony I have used an interpretation due to the literature scholar Robyn McCallum. She notes that the characters in a polyphonic novel function as focalizers.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to study howuniversity librarians in a South African context relate to theconcept of information literacy. We investigated differencesand similarities in approaches to user education andinformation literacy. We have based our study on thefollowing research questions: What are the prerequisites foruser education at the University of the Western Cape? Howdo these prerequisites influence librarians' approaches toinformation literacy and user education at the University ofthe Western Cape? We have used a sociocultural theoreticalperspective and Hofstede's cultural dimensions in orderto pay particular attention to the cultural and social contextof user education.

This thesis examines the implications of a shorter  intensive action research  project on  the formative assessments  key  strategies  four  and  five  that  are  activating  learners  as  learning  resources  for  one another and activating learners as owners of their own learning.  The research questions were ?How do the pupils experience the formative approach?? ?What didactic consequences does the formative approach  mean  for  the  role  of  the  teacher??  and  ?How  does  the  formative  approach  affects  the pupils?  results  on a  short term??. The results were that the  majority of the pupils liked the approach and that they felt like their efficiency increased. The didactic consequences were that the teacher had to spend more time on evaluation but had more time during the lesson to listen to and discuss with the pupils. The pupils? results were not changed in comparison with the control group..

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the library needs of distance students. This user study has a student perspective and concentrates on the main question of which way library needs might be expressed by distance students. Associated topics addressed by this study include; the problem of learning centres lacking their own library support, how distance students look upon library support as a concept and whether distance students prefer public libraries or university libraries, and why they make this choice. These questions may give the answer to how distance students deal with information literacy. Theories chosen by the study are in the fields of pedagogical and library science, the social cultural theory by Roger Säljö and in Tom Wilson's theories on user studies and information needs.

Structuring education so that students can discover connections between schoolwork and their everyday lives is a crucial task for a teacher. This is especially true in today?s school system that seeks to foster a spirit of lifelong learning, since educational motivation depends on being able to connect to the tasks at hand. In a system where these connections are not present, students will be motivated only by institutional mechanisms such as test results and grades. This leads to them using a number of techniques for ?optimizing the system? by getting maximal results for minimal effort. This essay looks at two pedagogical movements that aim to decrease the gap between schoolwork and students? reality.

This study investigates communication and data in information systems. The paper deals, more specificly, with communication in a CRM-system implemented in a Swedish-founded company in Beijing, China. It discusses cultural, political, linguistic and gender based dilemmas that can arise from the use of a CRM-system in an international and bilingual environment. Fifty-nine interviews were conducted in Sweden and in China, either in Swedish or English. The result of this study shows that communication in the information system is affected by factors, that are not originated in technical shortcomings of the system, but rather from cultural, political, linguistic and gender based pre-knowledge among individuals.

AimThe aim of the study is to examine how future teachers of Physical Education view the subject, the occupation and their attitudes about the future and create an understanding about this through these research questions:In what way do the teacher students justify the subject Physical Education?How do teacher students view the future of the subject and the occupation?According to the teacher students, what and whom affect the subject? Is there a difference between the teacher students?views and attitudes depending on if they are currently in their second or last year of their education?MethodThis study use qualitative methods in order to create a deeper understanding for the participants? views and attitudes. Eight teacher students of Physical Education were interviewed. The interviews were between 27-57 minutes. They were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed from a socio-cultural perspective as well as Bernstein?s theory of classification.ResultThe participants justify the subject in words such as that it gives the students? knowledge about how to uphold a decent standard of living and an understanding for the correlation between physical activity, nutrition, health and wellbeing.