The aim of this paper is to examine the experience of two Swedish women who survived the tsunami catastrophe in Thailand 2004. Through their biographies, Sävstam and Ernsth-Ohlsson have revealed their experiences, before, during and after the tsunami catastrophe. Coping theory is used to explain how they cope with the consequences of the tsunami catastrophe, and how culture affects the coping process. Pargament´s (1997) theories in coping are used to examine this paper. Pargament argues that the coping process is influenced by the culture context of the individual.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse and problematize the concept of culture and its changes during the 1960s. By examining articles out of the periodical Ord&Bild 1962-1972, I show how an aesthetically marked concept, closely related to the concept of art, changes into an anthropological perspective where attention is drawn to the social, economical, political and ideological aspects. This change is viewed in relation to the works of three prominent cultural theorists from the 1960s: Raymond Williams, Marshall McLuhan and Herbert Marcuse.The change that the concept of culture undergoes can be illuminated in several ways. Epistemologically questions of art, its objectivity and relation to reality, are replaced by questions of the function of art and of its role as reproducing ideas and norms of a bourgeois society. Economical and social aspects are used as critical factors in discussing the role and conception of culture, a perspective that gives the discussion a political and ideological edge.

AbstractJohannes Åberg 2012: Har längden betydelse? ? En kvantitativ studie av elevers textstrukturer.Does the length matter? ? A quantitative study of student text structures. Essay writing is one part of the national test in the school subject Swedish. Here the student gets the opportunity to demonstrate that it is able to follow instructions and produce a coherent text. The examinator's task hereby becomes a troublesome process with subtle distinctions between rights and wrongs.

The purpose of this study was to examine how Swedish high school students view school staff members, in general, but in particular school counselors. The research questions focused on getting the students descriptions of the staff members roles and functions within the school. The study was conducted using focus group interviews. The answers were divided into themes and then analyzed using role theory and previous research. The results showed that the students relationships with family, friends and previous knowledge about the staff members in school, affects their willingness to seek the support of school staff members.

The globalisation of the world is believed by some to homogenise individuals from different national cultures. However, the values and norms of an individual are deeply rooted in their national culture and are therefore difficult to change. Since birth these values and norms are learnt through interaction with others within a specific national culture. The differences in values of a national culture are shown in the cornerstones of the nation. These cornerstones are language, aesthetics, religion and social institutions.

The aim of this study is to discuss how public officials, who are implementing integration policies, describe and relate to ?immigrant women?. The analysis is based on interviews with eight public officials. Drawing on perspectives from discourse theory, multiculturalism, western feminism and postcolonialism, the diskussion tries to place the interview statements within a theoretical debate concerning the concepts of culture/ethnicity and sex/gender. The picture of the ?immigrant woman? seems to be somewhat revised.

The essay is an evaluative study of student democracy in the Swedish high school, its departure point being the 1994 national curriculum for the voluntary school forms (Lpf 94). We adopted an interview method, the survey units consisting in a number of high school teachers. The analysis has two principal theoretical departure points, involving democracy theory and implementation analysis, respectively. The former is utilized to help identifying what sort of democracy permeates the governing document and high school daily life, the latter to explain actual outcomes.The study concludes that the 94 curriculum is characterized by a strong democracy with emphasis on participatory democratic processes, whereas in practice there is a thin democracy in both classroom and formal student government contexts. Representative processes are given plenty of room although few attempts at participatory democratic components can be identified.A deeper analysis of the result reveals implementation problems traceable to elements of symbolism in the goals.

As a Swedish landscape architecture student living in Australia for five years, I have often wondered if my memories and my associations with the landscape and the nature in Sweden, are the same as other Swedish people living in Melbourne. Most of the Swedish people who live here in Melbourne remember and associate Sweden?s nature and landscape with where they grew up or where they used to live. The plants that most of the Swedish people I asked missed from Sweden were associated to special feelings or activities. The general type of landscape people remember from Sweden is that of a landscape covered in forests, which you can walk freely through. With these memories as a foundation and with inspiration from the Swedish landscape architect Thorbjörn Anderson?s way of creating places, by letting a few strong changes play against the existing elements,2 but also with consideration of the climate and the severe shortage of water that is current in Melbourne, will I create a design concept for the garden surrounding the Swedish Church in Melbourne. A design concept that will generate memories and associations to Swedish landscapes..

The purpose with this essay is to study how students in elementary school are placed within the subject called ?svenska som andrasspråk?, or SVA. SVA is a subject specially designed to deal with the complications that students with a different native language encounter when trying to learn Swedish.  National school documents state that a student is to be offered SVA if he or she has a different native language than Swedish and if the headmaster decides it?s ?needed?. In this work I focus on the different factors which are involved in the headmasters decision whether a student should be in a SVA-class or a normal Swedish class.

This essay deals with the rationale and aims for doing cultural or aesthetic activities and projects in schools, and gives special focus to a specific group of students, attending schools provided at special residential homes for young people (sa?rskilda ungdomshem). These homes receive young people with psychosocial and substance misuse problems and who show tendencies towards criminal behavior. The essay investigates how working with a cultural project in schools at these residential homes is justified and also elucidates how this specific group of students and their problems are constructed in the documents surrounding the project. The essay will further ponder over possible educational and pedagogical consequences of these constructions.The investigation has its theoretical frame work in curriculum theory.

My study is about a preparation class in a selected municipality. It is based on the child¹s perspective, and it tries to highlight the school situation of new arrivals in a school where the majority of the pupils are of Swedish origin. The purpose of my study is to visualize how the education for newly arrived children is organized in the municipality, and to get an understanding of a range of student?s view of the schooling in the preparation class as an introduction to a regular class.To reach my goal, I have used qualitative methods, based on qualitative interviews. The interviews were made with six newly arrived pupils, and one interview was made with the deputy head of the school, which is in charge of immigrant education in the municipality.

Is there such a thing as unadulterated nature? All that surrounds us is culturally modified by man somewhere along our past. But culture is only a fictitious conception itself, created in an attempt to break the world into controllable objects.So in what do we find culture? In everything? In the objects or the stories they embrace? Who chooses what?s worth saving and how to save? Choosing what is culture is made from personal, ingrained dichotomies of what?s important and what is not. A selective eye creates a distorted truth, which could have unintentional long-term effects.This thesis will give a historical account of the archaeological discipline?s development in tending to our cultural heritage.

Gavlegårdarna is in the state of an invisible dissatisfaction situation from the students on the University of Gävle.This paper shows how the students feel about their housing situation in Gavlegårdarnas student apartments. It is a basis of change that hopefully will open up Gavlegårdarnas eyes and minds for changes.In this paper we come up with solutions for Gavlegårdarna to create a more satisfying student-housing situation, for the students on Högskolan i Gävle who are situated in Gavlegårdarnas student apartments..

The aim of this essay is to investigate and evaluate the arguments made by municipal politicians in Ulricehamn, regarding the planned Knowledge and Culture Centre. A part from the search for these arguments, I also investigated the attitudes among politicians regarding municipal culture investments in general. I furthermore investigated whether any national, regional, or local culture-political strategies were important in the local debate. The time frame within which the local political culture debate was investigated was from 1997 until present time 2002. The investigation methods used were partly a study of official documents such as political protocols, two articles from the local newspaper, and a clean copy from a web chat, and partly a qualitative study I sent a question regarding the planned Culture Centre to every political party active in the Ulricehamn municipal assembly.

AbstractThe ability to read and write is a very important skill in today?s information based society. Most of us learn how to read and write, but not everyone is blessed to do this without struggle. Dyslexia is a very common learning disability and therefore I found it interesting to study how teachers teach students with dyslexia.By studying the literature and by interviewing teachers, I found that dyslexia is a very complex disability. The teachers have to adapt their way of teaching in a way that a student with dyslexia can participate.