This master thesis is based on the Sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

The overall aim of the study was to take part of teachers' experiences and work force mother-tongue education and literacy development in the Sámi School. The study was conducted through interviews with twelve teachers who teach at two Sámi schools. The focus has been on looking how to work with native speakers teaching at the Sámi School, what factors promote / hinder students' development of their first or second language, and the importance of collaboration between the schools` various professions work with multilingual students reading and writing skills. Through interviews of various categories of teachers, I have tried to visibility problems of the education of minority language children and their reading and writing skills. I discuss the teaching, the importance and the lack / availability of communication and consensus between different categories of teachers.

The aim of this study is investigating how some Elementary School teachers of special classes describe how they use iPad as an educational tool when teaching Swedish. To find out I have carried out an interview investigation. I have analyzed results using theoretical concepts from the Sociocultural perspective, scaffolding and artefacts.The cummulative result shows that teachers describe that they practice linguistic consciousness and that pupils are trained in writing Swedish in this subject. Another result shows how all teachers describe that they work face-to-face with pupils using iPads in Swedish lessons. Further results show how teachers present possibilities of using iPad as an educational tool when teaching Swedish.

This study investigates the difficulties that may arise for students as a consequence of differences that exist in mathematics education between different educational systems. The questions asked are when and why difficulties as a consequence of differences in writing or types of student problems may arise and in which way teachers and students attend to these difficulties. The focus is thus on the written parts of mathematics education and the questions are asked within the frame of general upper secondary education.In order to answer these questions, a Sociocultural perspective based mainly on Sfard?s (2006) participationist theories together with Vygotsky?s (1999) general theories on development and learning is used. An important analytic tool is the discourse concept which in this context means a type of communication that brings some people together while excluding others from the communication.

This study is about how the dialog can help students with special needs to feel participation and inclusion in the class and the teaching. My purpose with this study was to look for how the students with special needs interact with other students and teachers through the dialogue. I also wanted to know if there is any positive and negative effects to teaching students with special need in the classroom compared with the teaching at the special teacher.I have taking purpose of the sociocultural theory in my study because it says that children learn together when they communicate with each other. The theory central words are dialog and scaffolding in the zone of proximal development. I also describe central words like participation, inclusion and students with special needs in the special teaching.I have investigated in four interviews, two of them were with a teacher and a special aids teacher, and two of them were students with special needs.

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 falls within the realm of social studies, specifically social studies in literature, and attempts to establish whether the sub-genre of fantasy literature known as sword and sorcery contains elements which resemble the tenets of fascism. Robert E. Howard is considered the progenitor of the sub-genre and his stories have an influence on the nature of sword and sorcery literature today, 70 years after his death. Howards creation of the sub-genre coincides with the spread of fascist ideologies around the world in the 1930s and the study attempts a societal mirroring analysis of Howards texts. With the help of an analytical model based on fascism expert Robert O.

Jag har genomfört en undersökning där jag har observerat klassrummets fysiska miljö med fokus på dess möblering och utbud av material. Genom att observera två klassrum har jag försökt få en förståelse för hur klassrummets möblering och utbud av material kan gynna elevers lärande och kunskapsinhämtning. Min undersökning är genomförd utifrån forskningsfrågorna; - Hur är klassrummet möblerat? - Vilket material erbjuds eleverna? - Hur använder sig eleverna av materialet och möbleringen?Jag har utgått från ett interaktionistiskt och ett sociokulturellt perspektiv och använt mig av begreppen aktiviteter, interaktioner och verktyg. Förutom det sociokulturella perspektivet har jag även relaterat och jämfört mina resultat till den forskning som tidigare har gjorts på samma område.Det resultat jag har analyserat och diskuterat kring grundar sig på de fältanteckningar jag skrev i samband med observationen samt fotografier från klassrummen.

This study gives voice to which strategies preschool teacher?s use they teach preschool children in different performance tasks. The overreaching aim of this study was to find out what teacher give expressions to, verbally and in action, and what educating strategy they use when the purpose is that the children are to learn something specific. The theoretical starting-point of the study is a phenomenography research which aims in finding and systematizing of forms of thought in terms of which people interpret significant aspects of reality. The study has a Sociocultural perspective which means that the structuring occurs through choice of which activities children have access to observe and engage in, as well as through in-person shared endeavours, including conversations, recounting of narratives, and engagement in routines and play.

The purpose of my report was to find out how music can benefit the language development of children, whilst getting a glimpse of how the educators in preschools use music as a tool for the language development of children. During the course of the report I?ve used the Sociocultural perspective theory as a foundation to stand on, this is most of all visible in my analysis and discussion of the result. In the result we can see that the educators possess insight in the importance of music in childrens development, and that they therefore give music a lot of room in their work. Songs where rhyme and language play are allowed are common elements at the preschool that attracts the children and makes them want to partake. Songs sung with movement is a commonly used combination which also serves to further lift the childrens language development when they, through movement, give meaning to the lyrics. It does however take a devoted educator to make music with the preschool children and to support them and making them want to do it.

This report describes a study of how educationalists, from one preschool group, approach to and respond to children ?s creative activity in preschool. To answer the survey ?s purpose I used four research questions, which is the following:-What function do the educationalists give the creative activity in the working?-How do they see the importance of thecreative activity for thechild and its development?-How doeducationalists considerthat theyrespond to the child's creative activity?-Is thereany norms surrounding creative activity in preschool?The theoretical base of the study is rooted in the Sociocultural perspective, where creative activity and visual arts can be seen as mediating cultural tools. The method is a qualitative interview of five preschooleducationalists.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how parents? in multilingual families perceive language learning and reading for young children, and how their practice of this can be understood in relation to their language situation and cultural background.This study focuses on the interaction between parents? and young children in the light of the literacy practice. Important concepts such as early childhood literacy and family literacy have been used to study language, culture and literacy practice as phenomena that interact. The theoretical framework is a Sociocultural perspective. Through qualitative interviews with seven parents?, it was found that multilingual families have a strong ambition for their children to learn all the languages spoken in the family.

Denna studie handlar om de barn som tycker att skolan är väldigt lätt och om deras rätt att få stimuleras och utvecklas utifrån deras behov. Syftet med mitt arbete är att ta reda på hur pedagoger uppfattar dessa begåvade elever och hur de arbetar för att stötta dem på ett pedagogiskt utvecklande sätt. Efter att ha gått igenom relevant litteratur inom mitt område så använde jag mig av kvalitativa intervjuer för att få svar på mina frågeställningar och genomförde intervjuer med tre verksamma pedagoger.Mina slutsatser blev att begåvade barn inte är något som det pratas mycket om och att det kanske är lätt att det fokuseras för lite på denna elevgrupp. Mina respondenter hade svårt att skilja på begåvade och högpresterande barn men menade att ett begåvat barn är ett barn som lär sig väldigt snabbt utan några hinder. Alla mina intervjupersoner visade dock en medvetenhet kring vikten av att möta varje individ där hen befinner sig och de menade att man tillsammans med eleven måste finna vad just den eleven behöver arbeta med för att fortsätta utvecklas.

The purpose of this study is to carry out a follow-up study of the reading stimulating project Arts in Reading. The project was in progress between the years 2007 to 2009 in Sweden and nearly 80 librarians from 57 public libraries participated. The aim of the project was to initiate new methods fot how to stimulate reading for children. The promoters of the project wanted to initiate the use of new art forms in the work for reading promotion, encourage more collaboration with new actors in the culture area, and co-operate more with the children.The aim of the present study is to investigate to which extent Arts in Reading really succeeded in establishing its goals, whether new methods were brought about, and how this work was done. Another aim is to find out how librarians in public libraries work to develop children's reading.The theoretical framework is based on Ragnhild Söderbergh's term inculturation, Elisabeth Björklund's research on how children acquire literacy, and Lev S.

In today?s individualistic society, I experience a need to bring forward the importance of collaboration. From a Sociocultural perspective, I have chosen to highlight the positive and negative aspects of collaborative learning, with the intention of illustrating the effects for the individual learning and development. I have therefore made an interview with an educationalist, who?s been a teacher all her grown up life, with the intent of illustrating her thoughts on collaborative learning.