AbstractC-level essay in political science, by Frida Orlinder, spring semester 2008Supervisor: Susan Marton?Good contracting? ? A study of contracting in public procurement regarding the transportation of school children?Over the last decades models influenced by the market have been gaining influence in public administration all over the world. New Public Management has been presented as a theoretical ?shopping basket? from which concepts can be applied to the administration of municipal services. The purpose of this essay is to investigate in an explorative way how New Public Management (NPM) views contracting and the role of the internal customer in contracting.

The purpose with this study is to examine what kind of support there is for school libraries at the selected independent upper secondary schools and how these schools ensure that libraryservices is available to their students and their teachers. The purpose is also to examine what attitudes the administrators of the schools have to school libraries and teaching in information seeking. A qualitative method with interviews was used to fulfil the purpose. As a theoretical basis of the study Loertschers taxonomies of the school library media program and Limbergs three levels of pedagogic research were used and the interviews were analysed with these two theoretical frameworks as a background. The result of the study showed that neither one of the three examinated schools has a school library which means that they use the public library instead.

The purpose with this study is to examine what kind of support there is for school libraries at the selected independent upper secondary schools and how these schools ensure that libraryservices is available to their students and their teachers. The purpose is also to examine what attitudes the administrators of the schools have to school libraries and teaching in information seeking. A qualitative method with interviews was used to fulfil the purpose. As a theoretical basis of the study Loertschers taxonomies of the school library media program and Limbergs three levels of pedagogic research were used and the interviews were analysed with these two theoretical frameworks as a background. The result of the study showed that neither one of the three examinated schools has a school library which means that they use the public library instead.

This is a qualitative study about child poverty within the school environment. The purpose is to examine how financial resources can affect the social standings of teenagers and how that affects them in school; how the school system view and work with child poverty as well as how they act within the legal framework that requires the school to be free of charge. This was done through analyzing earlier research and conducting five interviews with personnel at three schools for children ages 13-15. Our results show that social standing can be affected by a lack of financial resources, partially due to not having certain mobile phones or brand clothing, partially because they cannot afford to join in on social activities. Furthermore, teenagers view child poverty as shameful and a risk factor for social exclusion.

In Sweden there is a long ongoing discussion about computer and cellphone usage during lectures in school. The discussion has mainly covered elementary school up to college students, but this topic is at least as relevant for university students. Today cellphones are so advanced; you can do everything with one that you previously only could do with a computer, the difference is that everyone is carrying one with them all the time. This study shows how concentration during lectures is affected by the cellphone accessibility and usage. With this study we want to find out how university students perceive cellphone usage affects their own concentration during lectures.

The purpose is to analyze if the students have any use of their computer education at a senior high school level or if there is a demand for them to proceed studying. Does the students background have any importance or is it their own motivation that makes the student advance to higher education.In this report we ask ourselves the question, if the students have any use of the knowledge gained at senior high school in computer studies at a higher level. Do the students have any chance for employment based on their senior high school grades in computer studies after graduation?  Do the schools that follow the senior high school guidelines within programming and databases give these students an advantage towards those that have not received the same fundamental education?The method used for the survey is a group questionnaire.  The questionnaire was distributed at one and the same time and then collected to examine the results. The survey results showed that students who seek work based only on their senior high school grades, received only a temporary position for different lengths of time.

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of a blog in the classroom. This paper describes why the teacher created the blog and how the blog is used by teachers and pupils in and outside the classroom. The study also describes teachers? thoughts regarding future use of the blog. Seven primary school teachers were interviewed and the material was analysed using a multimodal design theoretical perspective on learning (Selander & Kress 2010).The conclusion of the study was that the teachers created and designed blogs to give parents, pupils, relatives and others an opportunity to have an insight into the pupils? school day.

The study is aimed at investigating the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj ?i?eks theories ofthe ontology of the subject, the crisis of our modern society and his views on how theology,especially Christian theology, can provide the answer for the threats to our society.My main object is the article Descartes and the post-traumatic subject (2008)where ?i?ek elaborates thoughts about the subject and our capitalistic society. To be ableto grasp these thoughts in full I have undergone an investigation not only on the writingsof Slavoj ?i?ek, but also on the philosophers to whom he owe much of his theories,such as G.W.F. Hegel, Friedriech Schelling, Karl Marx and Jaques Lacan.In the study I have shown how the subject is, according to ?i?eks psychoanalytictheories, decentered.

During the later parts of the 20th century there occurred several changes to the Swedish public sector. These changes aimed to effectivize and decentralize the governance model in the public sector. One of these changes was the municipalization of the school system, put forward and proposed by the social democratic government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This study aims to examine and compare that times different parliamentary parties' opinions on the municipalization of the school system. The source material consists of government bills, and in direct relation to the municipalization of the school system.

The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians? views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau?s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians? view of pedagogical work are also made.The method used is qualitative interviews.

Children with concentration difficulties are to a great extent a problem in schools and therefore it becomes interesting to see how possibilities around these children can appear in pre-school. From a pre-school teacher?s perspective, the study aims to provide a deeper understanding of how outdoor education can influence children with concentration difficulties. The method of the study is a qualitative research run-up with interviews that intends to describe pre-school teachers? views.

This essay is about local history in history teaching in two cities; Kalmar and Vetlanda. The purpose was to see how teachers in Kalmar and Vetlanda define local history and what kind of local history they teach their students. I have also examined what benefits of didactics the teachers see in teaching local history. In order to find out I interviewed four history teachers at three schools in Kalmar and two history teachers at one school in Vetlanda. Some of the interviews were carried out over the telephone and the rest at the teachers´s schools.

Purpose of this study is to describe and analyze school social work in rural area and being alone in social work at the school welfare/health team and how this affects the individual, professionally and privately.The theoretical framework highlights the empirical data through Goffman's dramaturgical perspective. The study highlights school social workers role on the scene as Goffman divided as the front and rear arena and how school social worker find strategies to cope with it alone work it takes to be a counselor in rural areas.One way to handle her role involves acting in one of the following three characters: the self-employed, infiltrator and tough guy.The study describes how the social worker harboring the stress in the profession; through recovery - physical and mental, on the back stage, backstage.On stage there are other players such as student health team, which also acts and affect what happens on the front stage.School social workers are working hard to position itself in relation to other professions in student welfare/health team and to have a mandate to act.In the analysis, it appears that the school social workers want a clearer role profession/ occupation profession and mandate to act, which may be complicated by today is the only counselor in student welfare/health team lacking identity. There is also a desire for further/ continuing education, but this is seen as an organizational pitfall when the manager does not have the same educational background as school social worker.Ultimately, it is the peripatetic life as a social worker at the school who is considered the most exhausting part of the work as a school social worker in a rural area. There is a great desire among the interviewed school social workers to have fewer schools to relate to and work on..

In all times school has defined and categorized pupils from a hypothetical normality. The National Agency for Education is today critical to how the municipalities provide for the necessity of special support for pupils with difficulties in school.Pupil`s assistants has been a growing profession in school during the last decade and their importance for the pupils is relatively unexplored. The aim of this study is to find out how the pupils think about having pupil`s assistant during the obligatory school on the basis of the ideas of power, knowledge, involvment and understanding. The study is based on qualitative interviews, consisting of half-structured questions, with eight pupils that have or have had pupil`s assistant during their time in senior compulsory school. The result notifies that the pupils feel powerless in school, they have no opportunity to affect and they do not think they are someone that could make any change.

This paper examines the amount of influence that upper secondary school pupils of the Swedish voluntary school system. The curriculum clearly states that democratic values are to be instilled with the pupils at an early age, and that the pupils are to have a degree of democratic influence over their tutelage. This paper is based upon a survey, which involves one hundred and fourteen pupils at the Malmö Latin gymnasium. The hypothesis argues that upper secondary school pupils in Sweden have very little knowledge in this area and it contradicts much of the previous research done in this field. The pupils´ ages vary from fifteen to eighteen years of age.The survey shows that the pupils of this school have little or no knowledge of their democratic rights within the school boundaries.