Since the 1990?s the Swedish school system has undergone major and recurring structural reforms. Two of the most comprehensive changes has been the shift of primary schools as an integral part of the welfare state to the responsibility of the municipalities as well as the introduction of free school choice for the students. Through two months of participant observations and semi-structured interviews this thesis seeks to answer the question of how these reforms has come to effect the work of teachers in a medium sized public school in a small municipality in the outskirts of Stockholm. Earlier research has shown that public schools in socio-economically vulnerable areas are disadvantaged due to the reformation of the school system (Beach & Sernhede, 2011; Östh, Andersson, & Malmberg, 2013).

In the wake of the electronic revolution digital library has become one of the central themes concerning libraries. The present study takes up the question whether digital library can function in the same way as the conventional library. The question can obviously be posed from different perspectives, e.g. technological-, the user-, or the organizational perspective. The study investigates if (and how) digital library can have the same functions as the traditional library.

AbstractTitle: DREAMING OF A UNITED ?NORDEN? (The North)? Four central Nordic actors about the progress and extent of Nordic cooperationThe Nordic cooperation are often spoken as in terms of a peaceful international cooperation that is built upon a wide range of similarities among its members, such as a common culture, language similarities and a related kind of political system etc. But in spite of the fact that these so called propitious factors are present, many of the attempts that has been made trying to bring the states of the North (Norden) closer together has turned out unsuccessfully. Therefore no far-reaching Nordic cooperation has come to be implemented. The aim of this essay is to find out what the main reasons could be why this has been the case.I have chosen to take a closer look at the motives given by the former Nordic Prime ministers Tage Erlander (Sweden), Karl August Fagerholm (Finland), Einar Gerardsen (Norway) and Mauno Koivisto (Finland).

 The theme of this essay arises from problematic pictures which travel journalism can bring about foreign countries, and in this specific case Mexico. These pictures can be problematic in the way that they can carry colonial elements and form colonial discourses. The main purpose of this study is therefore to investigate the Swedish travel magazines, Vagabond, RES and Allt om resor, and how they portray places and people in the written texts and photographs. This was done with a postcolonial and discourse theoretical framework, whereas empowerment of certain pictures can lead to formation of discourses, myths and stereotypes about places and people in Mexico. The method used to reveal different aspects of the travel reports was semiotic analysis, Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis and critical linguistics.

Uppsatsen undersöker med konstformen ljudkonst och den konstnärliga hanteringen av ljud i fokus en interaktion mellan finkultur och populärkultur. Fokus ligger på aktörer inom populärkulturen som använt sig av konstnärliga strategier med rötter i finkulturen. Undersökningen spårar ljudkonstens historiska bakgrund och främst de förlopp som bidragit till att det är en gränsöverskridande konstform. Den populärkulturella konstvärldens etablering som en social organisation där konstnärlig verksamhet är möjlig undersöks..

The aim of this study is, from a norm-critical approach, to find, investigate and analyse human representation in the visual culture of one preschool in order to understand if the children enrolled are represented or not. The research questions are: In what ways is there imagery of human representations in images and materials designed for play? What skin-colors and origins are dominant in the data collected?We carried out a qualitative study in the form of visual ethnography. This method allowed us to use a combination of different data collection tools such as photography and ethnographic field notes to collect our data. The photographs we took of images and material used for play, was then analysed through semiotic picture analysis.

Abraham is the original patriarch. How does his leadership compare with a modern day popular culture patriarch with his roots in advertising, the shopkeeper Stig, star of the ICA advertising? The essay compares the leadership and masculinity of two male leaders from different backgrounds and settings, and discusses similiarities and differences.

This essay is an examination of the examples in Kant?s Critique of Judgement. The examples which I have focused on all converge in an idea of wildness. These examples of the beautiful are illuminated by a culture-historical perspective, where the literary and scientific travelogue genre is of great importance. Apart from being exegetic and culture historical, my method is also analytic.

AbstractA Problem to Every SolutionThe Corrymeela Community, René Girard and the ambiguous pluralismThe main purpose of this study is to examine how Girard´s ideas of society, culture andreligion have become part of the reflexion in the praxis of Corrymeela Community through the work of Roel Kaptein and how this praxis can shed light over the work with dissonances of faith and values in education in RE, Social Studies and other subjects.In earlier publications I have studied how dissonances of faith and values can beunderstood in educational settings and in connection with issues of interreligious dialogue.The extensive discussion of how differences in culture, religion and value in a pluralisticsociety are to be analysed and treated in pedagogical reflexion seems to increasingly occupyactors in different parts of the educational system. It is obvious that these issues also arebrought into focus as an important field of research. My main interest in this paper is to study how a reconciliation group in the middle of the conflict in Northern Ireland has developed a view of conflict reason and conflict resolution under the influence of the French researcher René Girard and what aspects of this study that can improve the reflection over pluralism and dissonances of faith and values in everyday praxis in education.For a period of more than a decade I have been in contact with actors in the peace process inNorthern Ireland in connection to different educational projects. The attempts to analyse the different aspects of ?The Troubles? and the efforts to find ways out of conflicts and civil war are many and the literature on subjects related to these tragic history of social, cultural and religious conflicts is difficult to survey.

New technological innovations like tablets and smartphones have a taken significant market share on the web and puts new demands on webpages, the user interface and compatibility among different client devices. The full test of a web-based system prior to the publication is often regarded as an important part of the process to create a complete and successful website. This bachelor thesis investigates the possibility to analyze mobile-adapted web sites using a system that first records the visitor's activities and then replays them for an expert analyst to provide valuable information to developers about how their site can be improved.The essay begins with a litterature study on today's most common web development tools and then examines the possibility to apply them during the development of the analysis tool. The work also describes two methods, pair programming and waterfall method used during the project. Three different evaluation methods are presented and one of the models is applied on the finished system.The project results in a web-based analysis tool written mainly in JavaScript using the jQuery library.

This masters thesis shows that the changes in the scientific publishing system have affected the academic libraries. Both technological change and the increased prices on scientific journals have forced academic libraries to take action. Some Swedish academic libraries have started publishing the university s own research material. The issue has in many cases been treated more as a library concern, than as a concern for the university as a whole. Neither has there been a national coordination of these matters in Sweden.

The media industry in general and the newspaper in particular is going through major changes ? technological, logistical, economical ? due to the dropping sales and width of the printed daily newspaper. Few organisations have been spared the necessary rationalizations and cut-downs in staff. All of them are expected to produce more and better content, in more and new channels and platforms, with less resources. Some have been preparing for this a long time, others have never entered the digital world of news.

The aim for the project was to develop a risk analyse tool for measuring the fire safety level in Cultural Heritage buildings of Visby, Gotland. In 1995 Visby were taken into the Unesco:s World Heritage List with the explanation ?Visby is an outstanding example of a Northern European walled Hanseatic town which has in a unique way preserved its townscape and its extremely valuable buildings? One of the demands for the tool was that it should be easy to use and result into a ranking level in examined buildings. The user of the tool is recommended to be personnel in the fire department. To develop the tool a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) method was used.

In this paper we take a look at digital applications to help the user with public transportation. The main goal was to evaluate the problem a user can face when aiming to use the public transportation system, and to create a application for Apple Iphone that can enhance and help the user, no matter if he is familiar with the local public transportation system, or if he is less familiar with it. The aim was that the user wouldnt need any previous knowledge to be able to use our application. We combined Location-Based Services with Realtime-travelinformation and trip planning to examine if this combination could make both of the two different user-groups satisfied. To understand the problematics a user faces when approaching the public transportation-scene, Scenario-Based Design is evaluated as a method to grasp this problem.

The study analyses the planning of the Edsvik Konsthall in Sollentuna and the first 14 years after the opening 1996 until late 2010. The study focused on the cultural discourses that have influenced the Edsvik as result of the choice of managers, the public figures and actions taken by different actors around the art gallery.The influence by different actors is analyzed in the art field terminology defined by Pierre Bourdieu.I have demonstrated how the head of Edsvik Konsthall, because of different social capital and habitus, raised different types of conflicts on the local art field.  .