Title: This is not Africa - West African teaching methods in Sweden. This is a work of "translation". The study started with a musical journey to Guinea, West Africa. It was a field study where I had the opportunity to open my senses towards another culture and another kind of music. I found another learning tradition and decided to try to bring it with me back to Sweden, into the Swedish school system.

During my practice as a teacher trainee at an upper secondary school it became clear to me that many pupils had difficulties with mathematics. 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 Mathematics during my training to become a qualified teacher, I would like to get to know more about this.After studying research done on this subject I made the following approach to the problem:? What fields regarding Mathematics do the pupils themselves find most difficult?? What factors have been contributory causes to these problems?? What are the factors that have helped pupils with difficulties in Mathematics to reach the goals for the syllabuses in Mathematics?The answers to my questionnaire and interviews resulted in the following conclusions:? Pupils find theory of equation and conversion of units as most difficult at senior level of the nine-year compulsory school.? Teaching should be done in special instruction groups to give the pupil the opportunity to develop his/her skills on an individual level.? Pupils find it hard to deal with all moments in Mathematics during the time given for each course.? The pace for teaching Mathematics is too high according to the pupils.? Pupils wish for instructions on a lower level.? There is often a lack of contact between teacher and pupil.? The teacher should use more time to help the pupil receive good self-confidence and increase the motivation for instructions in Mathematics..

Career counselors in schools have for a long time reported a feeling that their work is not as important as teachers work. According to the Swedish Curriculum for the compulsory schools, all staff is responsible for viable counseling for pupils. Therefore, this study focuses on teachers, headmasters and a school executive director view of school career counseling, how they experience the fulfillment of curriculum goals and how it interferes/interacts with their work. To analyze the empirical material we collected from interviews, we used theoretical terms of organizational theory with focus on social structures, differentiation and integration. We also used the career theory of Super.

Detta examensarbete visar resultatet av en undersökning om hur språklärare i engelska, franska och tyska på gymnasieskolan använder sig av autentiskt material i undervisningen och hur de tror att detta påverkar eleverna.En kvalitativ forskningsmetod har använts och därefter har resultaten analyserats med ad hoc-metoden.Resultaten visade att nästan samtliga lärare blandade läroböcker och autentiskt material i sin undervisning för att ge variation. Den främsta anledningen till detta var att lärarna upplever att elevernas motivation ökar dåundervisningen varieras och om eleverna kan se en viss verklighetsanknytning. Vissa skillnader mellan språken påvisades, då engelsklärarna i större grad uppgav att de använde autentiskt material i undervisningen. Lärare ityska och franska menade oftare att brist på material och elevernas kunskapsnivå förhindrade arbetet med autentiskt material. Lärarna påpekade även att kursplanen inte hade någon påverkan gällande materialet, utan attdet var varje lärares beslut att ta..

The Swedish teacher education is continuously changing along with the understanding of learning. The teacher education at Södertörn University has an intercultural profile, which is considered modern and innovative. In this essay, students? experiences from their practical training are analyzed to examine the correspondence between teacher practice and the modern teacher role conveyed by the University. The results show that some students have experienced practical training where the standards of the University?s teacher role were met, whereas others feel that they have not received the practical guidance needed to be able to wholly use their education in their future employment.

This scientific essay is based on four self-perceived situations that all takes place in an outdoor environment. The children are aged seven to nine years. At least one of the children in the groups has some type of concentration difficulties. I have combined my practical experience with literature and previous research regarding outdoor education and children with concentration difficulties. Based on this I have tried to interpret and reflect on the opportunities and problems with outdoor education for children with concentration difficulties, especially so called situational concentration difficulties.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how high school students use their school library for their information-seeking. The theoretical framework is based on Louise Limbergs three categories of students views on information-seeking and Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshtis three categories of students choice of information systems. Qualitative interviews were used and seven high school students were interviewed. The empirical material was compared and divided into 9 categories. The results show that the students see the school library as a place where they can search for information, but its also considered to be a good place to hang out between lessons to study or to meet friends.

Since the beginning of 1940 there have been externally developed tests in Sweden. Their appearances have changed over the years together with the cognitive approach. Nowadays, this kind of tests is going by the name of the national tests, which was introduced in the year of 1994. When the Swedish National Agency for Education received the assignment to develop new purposes and national tests to the third grade students, debate took a bounce. The matter was well discussed; national tests in third grade or not?The national tests thus far carried out four rounds in the third grade and the purpose of my study was to find out how teachers are reasoning about the tests.

Title: Does the teacher play any role? Instrumental music teacher's stories about their music teaching.This paper focuses on how instrumental music teachers describe their own significance for- and relationship to the pupils and if the teacher-pupil relationship has any significance for the pupil's success in music learning. How important are the teachers? What kind of teaching behaviours do the teachers emphasize in their telling? The theoretical background is psychology and educational theory. My research method is qualitative, particularly interviews.

The aim of my study is to investigate methods which class teachers implement concerning aesthetic subjects in elementary classes. It is a qualitative study about five teacher´s working in different elementary schools. This study investigates how and why teacher´s approaches when they integrate aesthetics in other subjects. It also investigates teacher´s attitude towards aesthetics. My study emphasizes on why they use asthetics and what the importance of aesthetics for children is.

Sammanfattning:Syfte och frågeställningarSyftet med denna undersökning är att undersöka vilka material/ hjälpmedel som används för att hjälpa barnen med koncentrationssvårigheter i förskolorna och att undersöka vilka för- och nackdelar pedagogerna ser med materialet/ hjälpmedel.MetodFör att undersöka vilka material/verktyg som finns i verksamheterna gjordes en webbenkät.Webbenkäten korsanalyserades med en intervju som gjordes i en särskoleverksamhet.ResultatResultatet av enkäten visade att pedagogerna använde olika färdiga material samt egenutvecklat material. Det positiva som framkom var att alla barn oavsett behov gynnades av att arbeta med materialet. Det negativa var att pedagogerna ansåg att de hade för lite schemalagd tid att leta efter passande material.Betydelse för läraryrketMin förhoppning är att denna undersökning ska hjälpa pedagoger i förskoleverksamheter med att lättare kunna söka passande material till barngrupperna. Min förhoppning är också att ge pedagoger en liten fingervisning om var de kan finna information gällande hjälpmedel för barn med behov..

This essay is a case study based on two sources of empirical data, qualitative interviews and responses from a questionnaire, which examines upper secondary school students? attitudes to history teaching in a museum context. The students? answers are further analyzed in relation to the concept of historical consciousness. Thus, history teaching in the museum, from a student perspective, and the students? capacity of expressing a historical consciousness in their answers, constitute the core of this essay.

In Eskilstuna and Sweden in general the level of reuse of surplus material containing soils and rocks from excavation is low. In this report the potential for increasing the reuse of excavated material in Eskilstuna by using a web-based earth information database has been examined. The purpose of a web-based earth information database is to connect those who have surplus material with those who need material for a fast and simple transaction. The intention is to give Eskilstuna a more environmentally and economically efficient handling of surplus material by increasing the level of reuse and thereby reducing the amount of surplus material that is wasted and emissions given off to the atmosphere during transportation. The potential has been examined in two different ways, by tracing information about a number of projects to see if excavated material driven to the dump could have been used in another project and by interviewing eight of the work leaders active in Eskilstuna.

The subject of this study is gender norms in the preschool and children who oppose those norms. The aim is to investigate how the discourses are linked with the way in which preschool teachers and teaching assistants talk about children?s gender identity. This study is founded in feminist post-structuralist discourse analysis, which was a basis for the interpretation of the results. My research questions are:? How do educators express themselves concerning gender norms?? What do educators need to work with a gender critical agenda?? How do the educators describe their work concerning gender, gender norms and children who oppose those norms?? For educators who have experience with children who do not identify with the gender they was given at birth, how do educators describe their own treatment of said children, and how would they describe the treatment from the other members of the teaching team?The study consists of qualitative interviews with five educators who were asked questions relevant to: norms, gender, gender criticism and how they work with those topics.I found both positive and negative aspects of gender work in preschool.

Vårt syfte var att undersöka några lärares tankar om hur det är att tillmötesgå elevers behov i en context präglad av olika kunskapsnivåer. Vi lyssnade genom semi-structurerade intervjuer på erfarna lärare och analyserade deras olika sätt att närma sig klassrum innehållandes olika kunskapsnivåer. Vi intervjuade tre engelsk lärare från ett högstadium och fyra lärare från en gymnasie skola. Våra iakttagelser visar att varierad undervisning är det bästa sättet att möta alla elevers behov och att det är nödvändigt att ha extra material till både avancerade elever och svagare elever. Våra intervjuer framhävde också vikten av kontinuerlig bedömning och behovet att individualisera så mycket som möjligt .