The local politicians in Sweden are responsible for a great deal of the welfare system why one would assume that there are a lot of demands put on them - demands for certain skills or a certain level of competence. I have in this study tried to find out how the demands on the local representatives concerning the demands for competence and the actual level of competence among the politicians are affecting the local politics. This was done through investigating how the local politicians are perceiving their level of competence and the demands put on them, but also how the employees are perceiving the demands and the level of competence put on the politicians. The study was made in the municipality of Gislaved in Southern Sweden. I was using both quantitative method (an opinion poll among the politicians and employees in the municipality) and qualitative method (interviews with three politicians and three employees and literature studies).In order to investigate the demands for competence I split the concept into ?soft? competence (socially and emotionally based skills), and ?hard? competence (skills based on knowledge, education and experience).

The aim of this study is to explore if and how library managers market their competence in communication with local politicians. It is also our aim to find a definition of the competence of librarians. The report identifies and describes problems and possibilitieswith marketing of competence to politicians on the basis of one Swedish municipality's library managers. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on marketing, competence, the political process and the librarian profession. We have alsocarried out an empirical study where we interviewed ten library managers in onemunicipality, seven politicians in the same municipality and ten representatives for central professional organisations mainly in Sweden.The results are that most library managers don't market their competence because they don?t believe in marketing competence.

The purpose of this study was to look at the experiences of midwives in maternalhealth care encounters with non-european-born women and men, and to determine ifmidwives deem any special competence necessary to handle these encounters well.We gathered information by means of qualitative interviews and semi structuredquestions with eight midwives all of whom matched the inclusion criterias and gavetheir personal consent. Midwives from four district health care centers in Uppsalawere included. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed by means of qualitativecontent analysis.The results reveal the experiences from encounters with non-european patients to betwofold. On one hand the encounter is a positive, exiting experience with anopportunity to learn more about a foreign culture and exchange experiences. On theother hand complications can occur as patients may have unexpected expectationsregarding the health care, have great difficulties with the language or haveexperienced traumatizing incidents, all on top of coming to Sweden alone withoutrelatives.In the encounter with non-european-born patients the midwives consider it importantto have special competence in form of knowledge of other cultures and religions asthis provides a greater understanding of the reasoning behind the patients? decisions.Cultural competence is also important as it helps avoid inadvertently insulting thepatient during the encounter.The special competence held by the midwives has been attained from their basic andspecialist education as well as from self acquired experiences and interests.

A self-esteem that is contingent on affirmation from others leaves the individual psychologically vulnerable. Ccontingent self-esteem has been shown to be either relationship or competence based. The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between relationship based self-esteem, competence based self-esteem, the under dimensions of those, and self-efficacy. Questionnaires were handed out to 69 university students. The results indicated that competence based self-esteem predicted a significantly low self-efficacy.

Background: Competence development has become more important since the pressure on effectiveness is increasing and organisations are expected to constantly improvement. The design of the competence development activities is governed by the strategy which in turn will affect the outcome of the same. A knowledge intense business in which changes recently have taken place is healthcare, a business in which competition also has increased as a result from globalization. Due to this, it is highly important to take care of and improve the competence of individuals. According to this, we have found that healthcare is an interesting business to study with regard to competence development.

This essey discuss competence development for the employees in a unit of the Swedish police authorities. The purpose with this survey has been to show an understanding for how this unit within the Swedish police authorities works with competence development and what kind of competence investments they carry out and also why competence development is important in their organisation. To answer the purpose of the survey and the questions a qualitative method has been used remaining interviews with five involved respondents working in the investigated unit. The result shows that needs for competence development are made clear during meeting for personal development and during the local educational council inventories. Competence development for the employees is prioritated for the policemen comparing to the civil employees on account of that the policemen have a demanding work and they have to develop their work all the time because of the resisting circumstances.

Background:An increasing number of patients with an oncology diagnose will be seen in the future. The oncology care is complex and in great need of nurses with a high level of competence. There is a lack of previous research in the specialist oncology nurses competence and therefore knowledge of their skills can reveal an understanding of their competence.Aim:The aim of the study was to describe the competence of the specialist oncology nurse.Method:Four oncology nurses and two directors of oncology care were interviewed. The interview text was analyzed using qualitative content analysis.Results:The result showed that the oncology nurses had developed six different competences within different areas. These competence areas were assertiveness, patient-centered care, ethical and moral-, pedagogical-, to lead and develop- and theoretical competence.

The Swedish school is today a meeting place for many people with different cultures. The teacher education at Södertörn University have since 2002 been influenced by an intercultural profile. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the intercultural profile of Södertörn University is expressed in preschool- teachers/ teachers work. Is an intercultural approach requested in schools and is intercultural approach useful and applicable in the teaching profession? The report is based on a qualitative study of what intercultural competence means for five preschool- teachers/ teachers who have graduated from Södertörn University.

Syftet med uppsatsen är att genom att belysa teorin om ?Fourth Generation Warfare? (4GW) ur två perspektiv, dels vetenskap och dels propaganda, tydliggöra i vilken utsträckning 4GW kan förstås som ett arbete grundat på vetenskaplighet eller ett arbete som nyttjar propagandistiska tekniker i sitt budskap.Uppsatsen är utformad som en kvalitativ analys, med hjälp av definitioner på vetenskaplighet respektive propaganda, av de texter som William S. Lind skrivit i ämnet.Syftet med uppsatsen är inte att bevisa att begreppet 4GW är propaganda i ordets egentliga bemärkelse, utan endast att visa att de tekniker och argument som används av Lind är ovetenskapliga och har mer gemensamt med tekniker som används i propaganda än med vad som kan betecknas som vetenskaplighet.

The aim of this study is to investigate how employees in consulting companies develop their competence in order to perform their daily work. The focus is on informal competence development. The theoretical framework consists of theories concerning learning and competence development in working life, theories on organizational change and evaluation, a well as professional reflection. The methods applied are narrative research and interviews based on the assumption that knowledge about reality is only obtainable through language and communication.The main results show that competence is developed through experience, social interaction, communication and dialog with co-workers and customers. The post-modern conceptions of the rapid (technical) development and need to be up-to-date has a strong hold on the informants apprehension of working life, as does the notion of not having enough time for all the competence development they would like.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine a proposal for basic class 4 in UDC, which has been empty since 1964, and to pick out a negotiable subject for that proposal. The proposal is analysed from a theoretical perspective based on principles created by S. R. Ranganathan. Three principles are used.

The main aim of this essay was to find out what kind of advantages and/or disadvantages giving marks in pupils order and behaviour can cause for their development of knowledge and emotional and social skills. We let teachers answer a questionnaire about giving marks in pupils order and behaviour. We have also interviewed one person that was involved to prepare the latest curriculum in 1994, Lpo 94, and they decided that Swedish teachers do not have the right competence to judge ones order or behaviour. We have also looked at different theories about: mark as motivation, mark as information, mark as control, self-fulfilling prophecy, emotional disorders and gender, with whom we analyse the fact to give marks in order and behaviour.What we can establish is that giving marks in pupils order and behaviour seems to bring more disadvantages than advantages. Boys mature later than girls and have there for, in general, not as good behaviour as the girls have in the classroom.

Social competence is an effective weapon at all costs on today?s market. In many job ads we can see the words to be socially competent. In our report we have studied the subject?s social competence, relations, relationship marketing and personal networks and looked to the connection these subjects have to one another.

This study is based on my work as a teacher of Swedish language and literature to upper secondary school students, and my interest in developing the teaching of literature by using both new criticism theories and theories of literary perception focusing on reader response. The purpose of the study is to examine the learning process in trying to develop literary competence and to find out how to describe the competence shown by the students. My starting-point is a discussion about literary competence and the theory and model of literary competence by Örjan Torell. In examining literary competence, by how students use their constitutional competence as well as performance and literary transfer competences, Torell´s model shows the possibility and the need for both knowledge of literature and personal reception by focusing on the dialogue between author and reader.The method is qualitative and the empirics are material collected in one senior high school class in the Social Science programme during their second and third year. The material contains written reading logs, written answers to tasks and transcribed recordings of discussions of literature.The analysis shows a variety among the literary competence shown and developed by the students and points to the complexity of understanding the concept of literary competence.

Ethical competence is an important precondition when people are to respond to moral problem situations as efficiently as possible. In these situations it is not easy to make choices and decisions, especially when many stakeholders are involved with various opinions and interests.The purpose of this thesis was to generate a web-based support tool to train and promote ethical competence of the users of this tool.We first created a theoretical basis by studying the major theories of ethics in general and ethical competence in particular. The importance of ethical competence and its main subject, namely, the autonomy in the theoretical part described and specified. In addition has the practical ethical reflection over morality preferred and characterized to the classical ethical passivity over morality. We have also preferred and characterized the autonomous thinking to the heteronomous one.Based on the theoretical base a prototype tool to support the training of ethical competence was designed and developed.