This study investigates how performance management in primary schools can facilitate learning, relating to theories of efficient schools. This is done through a qualitative study of the performance management systems in two public primary schools in Sweden. The schools selected were similar in all major aspects, except pupil grades, where there was a clear difference between the schools. The analysis revealed differences in how the schools handled the process of management by objectives, the professional development of teachers as well as routines, rules, and policies. We conclude that having a rooted process for management by objectives, professional development of teachers, and clearly formalized values, gives a school a good foundation to support a pupil's learning and development..

Social work has gone from being a primarily philanthropic issue to becoming an academic discipline at university level. To ensure its legitimacy social work must be founded on, and developed through scientific research and documented experience. The purpose of this essay is to review the various arguments on social work in order to evaluate their impact on education, which in turn affects students. In addition, it will demonstrate how different forms of knowledge are valued depending on the contexts. As a means of reaching this objective, the following questions are addressed: ?What are the requirements and recommendations on how the education of social work should be structured, and why are these requirements and recommendations important??, ?How has the education of social work been influenced by the perception of valuable knowledge?? and ?How does the education of social work affect students?? The collected material consists of various arguments concerning the development of social work and the education of social work's formation.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the functions of the public library for parents of infants and how they see the ideal library. The research questions are: How do parents of infants use the library and what are their experience of it? What opinions and wishes do parents of infants have regarding the library? How can library services be developed to better match the needs of the parents of infants? The theoretical approach is based on Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model of the public library?s functions and the model of classification by Ellen-Merete Duvold and Gunnar Sæbø. To answer my research questions I have carried out three focus-group interviews with parents of infants. The study revealed that the public library functions as a cultural centre, a social centre, a knowledge centre and, to a certain extent, an information centre for the parents.

This essay analyses the use of history in the video game Assassin's Creed 2. How have the developers used history in their game? The paper also analyses how the game can stimulate, arouse and mobilize the historical consciousness of the player. The essay presents a theoretical analysis of the uses of history and historical consciousness. This analysis is then linked with the results.

This work deals with mathematics teaching in preschool classes. The purpose of my study is to investigate the preschool classes? teachers' aspirations for the children learning mathematics in two different preschools. To achieve my goal, I formulated the following questions to be explored and answered through interviews with five teachers.  Does mathematics in preschool classes have a prominent role in educators' planning? What perception do the educators in the field have about the learning and teaching of mathematics in the preschool classes? How do the teachers understand their own work with mathematics in preschool classes in relation to multilingual students?                                A qualitative interview method was applied.

This work is about how teachers describe their work with mathematics in a traditional nursery school and a Montessori preschool. Another aim is to study how children mathematise on the two different preschools and to see if there are any differences between the various educational theories and practices mathematising. I have used two methods wich is interviews with preschool teachers, and observation of the children. The results of my study was that differences exist but the biggest difference is the material that Montessori uses. The difference between the teachers' way of teaching mathematics is to Montessori preschool places great emphasis on the material and how it is used, while in the traditional preschool puts the emphasis on learning through interaction with others.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the up till now somewhat shady definition of legitimacy, and to investigate what happens to this concept when it is transferred from the boundaries of the nation state to the realms of the international arena. By creating a model of legitimacy from which an institution can be evaluated, the purpose of this paper is to investigate what legitimacy is and how important it is for the actors within the international society. The next step involves evaluating what makes the UN a legitimate institution and how its foundation is affected by the blatant disregard of its authority by one of its? most influential members.The theoretical framework consists of a summary of what contemporary analysts? views of legitimacy are, which I have incorporated into my own institutional model of legitimacy. The role of institutions is central to all aspects of this study.

Domestic weekly magazines in Sweden are characterized by an emphasis on practical editorial material such as cooking recipes and knitting patterns, and also contain a comparatively large share of reader material. This makes it possible to study the readers through texts produced by themselves. The aim of this study of columns of readers' tips on domestic work is to analyze how readers embody a specific femininity centered around the woman as responsible for the home, in the sense of everyday maintenance as well as aesthetic development. The author defines this femininity as "home maker". The theoretical framework for the analysis is the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and Jonathan Potter's and Margaret Wetherell's model of interpretive repertoire is also used where modality is discussed.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine in what way library users are depicted on images at two academic libraries; the University College of Borås Library & Learning Resources (BLR) and the Gothenburg University Library (GUB). 62 images, from websites and information brochures, are analyzed and the main questions are: How are users represented on images? What activities are shown? What is the difference between BLR and GUB? How can the consequences of the representations be understood? Little is currently known in the LIS-field about how images work as constructors of the social reality. The theoretical and methodological point of departure of the study is discourse analysis, new institutional theory and picture analysis.

The parent-student-teacher conference presumes school responsibility of the development of the student. Teacher, student and parents are supposed to talk freely and in confidence, the conference should lead to a forward looking and long term plan. The parent-student-teacher conference should presume equality amongst the parties. The intention of this paper is to illuminate how the conference can be a way to clarify the process of learning. I intend to do this by showing the practice of four teachers, by making conclusions from their experiences they have made in their practice.

Chemicals in preschools - a study of endocrine disrupting chemicals and awareness among preschool teachers The purpose of this study was to investigate endocrine disrupting chemicals that have been shown in preschools and also the preschool teachers? awareness of these chemicals. There were two methods used for completing this study; a literature study and a practical study. The literature study was made by researching on the internet and in books. The practical study was performed by sending questionnaires to all preschools in Kiruna municipality to study awareness among staff.

Context: In cooperation with ICA, we chose to investigate how much the auditory and visual stimuli in combination affects consumer behavior in grocery store. There are few studies in the area, which gives good practical and theoretical implications.Research question: How much influenced consumers' purchasing, movement and inspection behavior during exposure to auditory and visual stimuli in the fruit and vegetable department of a grocery store?Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how much the auditory and visual stimuli affect consumer behavior in the grocery store. We do this through a quantitative experiment of our partner?s fruit and vegetable section, where we observe customer behavior in stores.

It is common today that many children in Sweden  grow up in families that speak two or several languages. Language and identity building is connected to each other. So is also Languages and learning (Becknert m. fl. 2008:13).

The purpose of this study is to explore specific pedagogical activities that benefit the student's verbal language development and to learn more about how our schools use teaching methods to achieve the ambitions in the governing documents in Sweden. The aim is finding the correlation between theory, research, governing documents and the educational work in our schools. This study contains an empirical survey in intention to see how teachers, pupils and school administrators experience school activities, to see if those activities are formed with the intention for pupils to reach the learning goals according to the governing documents.The aim of this study has been achieved by relating empirical data with theories and previous research on conversation analysis. Goffman's and Norrby's research on the importance of dialogue and previous research on dialogicity studied by Dysthe, Vygotsky and Bakhtin are presented. Those are related to empirical data and show that most teachers realize the importance of integrating dialogues in daily activities and in different learning contexts.

AbstractThe purpose of this work is to try to find out how young people's reading habits among students look at different types of secondary school, ie. both theoretical and practical, and what factors might encourage them to read more. My questions have been; do young people read today? Is there any difference between city, gender or program? What can a teacher do to inspire young people to read more? I have made a questionnaire survey among different students at two different high schools in Skaraborg. The first school is a high school located in a medium sized town, where I made inquiries to the scientific program, social program, Business and Administration Program and the Electricity Program.