This thesis tackles the subject concerning arguments as a conceptual basis forunderstanding the general strategy of the European Union Commission on issuesconcerning EU-harmonized environmental taxes, politically delicate and intergovernmentaldependent. The Commission's official proposals, communications and other relevant documents are subject to inquiry, where the theoretical bases are that harmonized environmental taxes in the EU is an issue conceived as supported by academic debate, and where the institutional arrangement in relation to an European-national dimension alongside the discursive context, allows meaningfulspace for arguments. The study makes a distinction between substantial (environmental cancerns in itself) and instrumental (other benefits, mostly economic ones) rationality as a foundation in various types of arguments.The study's main findings are that the Commission's official documents over the past 20 years, have been trying to keep a strong image of reason and knowledge based arguments for an EU-wide environmental tax reform. In particular, the types of arguments tend to appeal to the Member States by stressing the instrumental rationality in a European environmental tax reform, indicating the value of good arguments as a part of the Commission's main strategies. In sum, this may have further theoretical suggestions concerning questions of environmental and elimate change policies in a European context or other more general studies relying on theoretical assumptions of logics of argument, legitimacy or studies of motives behind action strategies in politically sensitive issues such as taxation at supranationallevel..

This master?s thesis studies library teaching at two university libraries, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Södertörn University in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to study views on information literacy, how these views affect teaching practice, and how the teaching of information literacy is connected to, on the one hand, German and Swedish learning culture and, on the other, the local community of practice at the studied university libraries. The theories applied in this paper are learning culture and community of practice as developed in the works of Judith Ricken and Etienne Wenger. The methods that have been used are qualitative, semi-structured interviews that were conducted at both university libraries.It was observed that the teaching practices were highly connected to learning cultures.

With examples from a single classroom situation, several educational moments show what goes on between the teacher and the student. The teacher?s responsibility in the learning process is, with a gesture frozen in the air of the moment, to lead and follow the student in her tentative efforts at seeking knowledge. Initially, it is an attempt to shed light upon the "not yet seen" with a certainty that the student herself possesses the capacity and the aptitude to reach greater insight and clarity in her understanding. The Validation/Feil Method presented in this instructional situation illustrates how best to communicate with elderly people suffering from Alzheimer?s dementia.

With theories of creativity and aesthetic learning processes as a basis, this study explores the usage of the concept of creativity in the curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school (Lgr11) and in the various syllabi?s commentaries and the assessment guidelines for the subject of Sloyd produced by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The purpose of the study is, to examine to which extent an education and assessment that is directed towards the development of creativity among pupils in the subject of Sloyd, is underpinned and supported for in these texts, and furthermore how these wordings relate to the various other subjects? wordings about creativity. Creativity is a concept around which there is no proper consensus.

This article seeks to examine the effects alcohol abuse have on the growth of women and how, as adults, their lives are affected by this. It tries to encourage a better understanding and knowledge of these experiences and how instances of support and help have influenced the subject?s life, from childhood through to adulthood. Through 10 qualitative interviews of adult women, all affected by childhood alcohol abuse, the article tries to get a better understanding of how these women coped under these circumstances. The article attempts also to better understand how the women?s experiences of support during childhood have benefited them and how they feel as adults today..

The pupose of this study is to qualitatively study how teachers at a high school work with the schools demokratic mission under the management by objectives and what the policy document says and how the students can partcipate in different issues. My question fomulations are: What does it say in the governing documents about schools democratic mission and student influence? How do teachers concretely work to implement the values of democracy and student influence? How can the class councils used as part of the school's democratic mission? The theoretical frame of the study is about the school democracy mission and the possibilities and limits.  Futhermore a brief review of the fundamental values of the school are presented, followed by how the democratic process works.I used the qualitative analysis in order to find a lot of information about a small amount. Its strength is to convey a lot of information about a small number of observations and if the material is small in size.

The main object of this master thesis is to examine whether domain-analysis could be used toorganize the collections in a library serving interdisciplinary studies, and in that case - howthat could be done. The thesis is based on a case study of a library for Asian studies, which alsoserves as a library specialized in that subject in the Nordic countries. The author has used, i.e.interviews and observations examining who the users of the library are and how these seekinformation. A theory part deals with some earlier studies of information users within arts andsocial sciences, and these are compared to the users of the examined library.The thesis states that one has to look at the different disciplines in which research is done (andcould be done) at the institute to which the library belongs, and that subject terms could beadded to the various documents from the view of those domains..

In preparation for the autumn term in 2011, the Swedish elementary school adopted new syllabuses regarding, inter alia, the civic education (Sw. Samhällskunskap). The civic education has traditionally been a disciplinary subject with a main purpose of mediating democratic values as well as providing generalorientation in the society. Generally, the civic education intends to reflect the world in which people live in, being a complex society which to a large extent is regularly affected by global aspects and developments.      The purpose of this study is to review all the elementary school?s syllabuses relating to the civic education with specific focus on the globalisation perspective.

Earlier studies and research on the subject of perception and social media during the working process resulted in a change of the problem. At first the focus of the study was to examine how social media affects the perception of a brand although later on the problem had to be developed to instead examine if social media reflects the perception of a brand. The purpose of this study is to figure out if social media reflects consumer?s perception of a brand. This will contribute to company?s knowledge on how important social media is in their branding and will give pointers on how many resources that is necessary to spend on branding in social media.

This essay is about children in grief. This subject is very wide, therefore I have chosen to focus on childrens questions in relation to losing someone close to them. I got the idée for this study in 2004 when the tsunami hit south Asia.The result in this study reflects three different pedagogues experiences about how they have experienced childrens questions when they have lost a person near to them. During this study I have reached the knowledge that as an adult you should answer childrens questions straight and honestly. It is important that children get information about what has happened, they must get a chance to participate.

This essay is about children in grief. This subject is very wide, therefore I have chosen to focus on childrens questions in relation to losing someone close to them. I got the idée for this study in 2004 when the tsunami hit south Asia.The result in this study reflects three different pedagogues experiences about how they have experienced childrens questions when they have lost a person near to them. During this study I have reached the knowledge that as an adult you should answer childrens questions straight and honestly. It is important that children get information about what has happened, they must get a chance to participate.

The supply of raw materials has always been an important issue in the Swedish Forest industry. Buying timber from local suppliers is important. To ensure raw materials to their industries the forest company must offer good prices and good business deals to their suppliers. The aims with this work are to find out how the contact between private suppliers of raw materials and how the forest company can be developed. To be able to do a complete study of the problems connecting with this subject a quality interview study has been done.

This study examines how management consulting firms work with business- and functional strategy and how these strategies are interrelated. More specifically we focus on business strategy (business unit level) and knowledge strategy (functional level) and whether these are aligned or not, i.e. whether strategic congruence exists.A number of recent studies have examined the importance of business strategy and knowledge strategy in management consulting firms separately, but few have pointed out the importance of the alignment between them. With this study we contribute to the strategic field of research with a model that describes how management consulting firms should work with their knowledge strategy given their business strategy. The model is developed through a synthesis between theories in the field of strategic congruence, business- and functional strategies and thereafter tested by an empirical case study of six management consulting firms.

Advertisements have become a regular part of our everyday lives. We walk past them on the street; we admire them on the subway and even invite them into our living room in between prime time showings. The reality is that in today's modern times there is no escaping the daily bombardment of advertisement. To distinguish themselves from the continuous noise of the industry, advertisers battle to find unique ways to capture the attention of consumers. But is it possible that some advertisers take their techniques to an extreme in the struggle to be remembered This thesis aims at investigating whether it is possible to offend a consumer through an advertisement due to its extreme simplicity.

We are working on the development and design of an approach to agents that can reason, react to the environment and are able to update their own knowledge as a result of new incoming information. In the resulting framework, rational, reactive agents can dynamically change their own knowledge bases as well as their own goals. An agent can make observations, learn new facts and new rules from the environment, and then update its knowledge accordingly. The knowledge base of an agent and its updating mechanism has been implemented in Logic Programming. The agent?s framework is implemented in Java.