During my practice as a teacher trainee at an upper secondary school it became clear to me that many pupils have difficulties with algebra. Also in a report from the National Agency for Education (1999) you can see that the students algebra knowledge get worse and worse. I was surprised to find that many pupils seemed to get stuck on the level of attainment for the senior level of the nine-year compulsory school. As I have not studied anything about difficulties in algebra during my training to become a qualified teacher I would like to get to know more about this. I also examine why you have to study algebra in upper secondary school.

In this thesis I have discussed about conflict management in school, from a teacher´s perspective. Focus has been on Swedish schools, especially on the teachers who are active in primary school. Several perspectives have been given, including an intercultural approach which has been the most recurrent. The importance of teachers? emotional maturity, knowledge about democracy and values, as well as teacher?s impact by being a sharp leader in different ways are other subjects the essay has touched.

The purpose of this essay was to examine six high school welfare officers' experiences and work with students suffering from social phobia and discuss the welfare officers' view on social phobia from a psychiatric, cognitive and a knowledge theory. The study consists of qualitative interviews with welfare officers from several different high schools and attempts to answer the following questions: What previous experiences do welfare officers have of students with social phobia? How do welfare officers become aware of students with symptoms of social phobia and bring forth their problems? How do welfare officers describe their social work with students suffering from social phobia?The welfare officers' experiences of students with social phobia varied but turned out to be less salient than the amount of research in the area would suggest. The theoretical knowledge also varied, as did the acquiring and use of theory. These findings were then analysed on the basis of Rosmari Eliassons thoughts on knowledge, leading to the conclusion that the interviewed welfare officers do not construct their work on praxis-knowledge.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the development of profitability and capital structure in Swedish quoted companies during the period of 1990 to 2004. Further, the aim is to determine the relationship between profitability and leverage in order to conclude whether the choice of capital structure supports the pecking order theory or the trade-off theory of capital structure. The findings show that return on assets fluctuates between 3 and 11 percent and that return on equity fluctuates between 3 and 22 percent during the period. Further, the leverage and the cost of debt have decreased. This indicates lowered financial risk in Swedish quoted companies in the period between 1990 and 2004.

The study aims to investigate student participation as a tool for democratic development in secondary school from a student perspective. Furthermore, students' perceptions of the school's work with student participation in formal and informal contexts are also investigated, with basis in the teaching structure. The results are based on interviews conducted with students who all attend the same class in their last year of high school. Subsequently, an analysis is made based mainly on three different theories: democracy, curricula and sociocultural theory. The result shows that students feel that they are able to practice student participation but the amount of influence they get differs between individuals depending on devotion and commitment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether there is a difference between the respondent groups preparers and non-preparers position in IASBs question if a reversal of previously impaired goodwill should be prohibited. The background is an exposure draft sent out by the IASB and we examine the answers, in form of comment letters, sent in by the respondents to reach our purpose. Our method is positivistic in the sense that we study already existing theories when we create our hypothesis which gives our assumption about how the result of the respondent?s answers will be. Our data, which we have collected from the comment letters, is qualitative secondary data.

This study?s purpose was to examine which main forms of teaching methods that occurs in the Swedish nine-year compulsory school and how often learning through social collaboration take place. The study contained literature and interviews with eight teachers. Our research-questions were: What is the teacher?s opinion about different teaching methods, their opinion about learning and teaching and if there were any difference between the teachers teaching younger or older students regarding teaching methods? Our conclusions of this study were that ?lecture-methods? is the most common among teachers.

With this thesis I have examined the views of religion among six comparative religion teacherstudents, with the perspecitve of their life stories. I have also examined what stance they want to take due to their personal beliefs in their forthcoming teaching. To achive this I have used in-depth interviews among the six soon examined teacher students, and within the interviews I have had a particularly focus on turning points of the students? life stories. Later on I have used their turning points in an analysis with the hypothesis of ?Rites des Passage? and ?Structure and Anti-Structure?.In my survey I have found a significant relationship between the students? life stories - inparticularly their backgrounds and tourning points - and their views of religion.

This study intends to examine teacher´s thoughts and perception of esthetic activities at preschools. I have chosen to restrict the esthetic area to the significance and function of clay to the teachers and children. On the basis of the belief that children can, and need access to a variety of ways to express themselves, we used the interviews to take part of teachers work and thoughts concerning clay, and the esthetic work. I have in this qualitative study addressed four questions: How do the teachers use clay in preschool activities? What do the teachers think about clay as a tool in the educational work at the preschool? Are the teachers working from the perception of children?s rights to express themselves in different ways and with the help of different tools? What function does clay fill for the children?I have interviewed eight teachers and taken part of both older and more recent theories around children and the creativity in esthetic contexts.

Do teachers? expectations of their pupils become a part in the judgement of which grade a pupil will receive in the end?Several of the polical parties in Sweden have recently been argueing that teachers should be able to give pupils a grade in how they behave in school. Several newspapers also have reported that pupils today have gotten lower results for the last few years and more pupils do not get approved in all subjects. Because many of the studies about pupils results focus on the pupils? skills, I deciced to focus on the teachers part in how a pupil get a better grade or not.In the study I have been looking at a small community in the south of Sweden.

In this study we aim to research teacher opinions on sexual education and how it is conducted within schools in Sweden. From their view of the education we want to elucidate the different factors of success and tribulation that the sexual education contains. The teacher opinions, which are collected through semi-structured interviews, reflect many different aspects of the sexual education. Though the informants possess different positions within schools they all seem to have some what the same idea of what successes and tribulations the sexual education contains. Furthermore all of them agree on one thing, the students want more sexual education.

The purpose of this investigation is mainly to study if pupils have enough knowledge concerning the water cycle and the life of the plants?, and what kinds of household word they have, to discuss pollution within these areas. I also studied how the pupils? knowledge are holding up against what the course-plans says, since it have come to light by other investigations that knowledge are insufficient within the nature-oriented (No) subject in school.The survey has carried out on 28 pupils in a 5th grade, with help of a questionnaire survey. Their teacher has been interviewed and I have studied their local course-plans and also the pupils? schoolbooks in No.The result of the questionnaire survey indicates that the pupils had insufficient knowledge within the areas of plants? life and pollution, something their teacher had a presentiment about.The conclusion is that they need to go out more often in the nature and see how the plants and the environment are affected by different factors.

My point of origin concerning this thesis was an interest for how school may develop students? reading comprehension. International surveys show that the results for Swedish students? performance regarding reading comprehension have declined and the current curriculum, Lgr-11, emphasizes the importance of incorporating this into all school subjects. The special teacher education programme has raised the awareness concerning the importance of including the students and that learning is achieved in an interactive setting.

The purpose of this study was to do a narrative survey of the discussion about violence in partner relationships that is held in research literature. The question at issue was: How do research literature discuss violence in partner relationships, with focus on heterosexual relationships? The eight primary documents that have been chosen are written by researchers, professional therapists, National Counsil for Women's protection (Nationellt Råd för Kvinnofrid, NRK) and Swedish Government Official Report (Statens Offentliga Utredningar, SOU). To investigate the theories, discover the similarities and differences between them and how they can complement each other, the documents statements has been analyzed with a dialectic-hermeneutic approach and social constructionism and discourse theory.The research findings showed that the gender perspective theory, the psychodynamic theory and the social psychology theory have a few things in common, but that they on the whole are different and contradict each other. The gender perspective theory dominates the discussion but needs to be combined with the other theories to give a more all-embracing understanding.

Changes in the society engender changes in the practice of the auditor profession. Stricter laws, more detailed recommendations, and demands from the auditor?s clients have increased. The auditor constitutes a profession and therefore it is important that there is a trust since the auditor is the one that certifies the quality of the company?s economical information.