In today?s society teachers will face students of foreign origin. It is up to the teachers to help these students gain the knowledge they need to flourish in society. Despite the fact that mathematics is a universal topic with high status in many countries, studies have shown that mathematics is a subject where a large proportion of foreign students fails. The purpose of this study was to see wherein the problem lies and describe teachers' perceptions of the barriers and the opportunities in mathematics for students with Swedish as a second language.

The overall aim of the study was to take part of teachers' experiences and work force mother-tongue education and literacy development in the Sámi School. The study was conducted through interviews with twelve teachers who teach at two Sámi schools. The focus has been on looking how to work with native speakers teaching at the Sámi School, what factors promote / hinder students' development of their first or second language, and the importance of collaboration between the schools` various professions work with multilingual students reading and writing skills. Through interviews of various categories of teachers, I have tried to visibility problems of the education of minority language children and their reading and writing skills. I discuss the teaching, the importance and the lack / availability of communication and consensus between different categories of teachers.

This paper investigates the methods used by teachers when teaching elementary mathematics to children with Swedish as their second language. The original mathematical terminology derives from Latin, Greek and Arabic, this terminology is not of great importance in this paper, the everyday language spoken in elementary classes when teaching mathematical concepts and calculations to younger children is. The use of everyday language is an advantage for children with Swedish as their second language as mathematical problems presented in a more plain language is easier to comprehend and solve than problems in mere numerals. Special teachers in home language classes often have the task of clarifying the mathematical concepts, introduced to the children during mathematical lessons, in the pupils first acquired language. A qualitative method was used in this study.

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 aim of this master thesis is to investigate how parents? in multilingual families perceive language learning and reading for young children, and how their practice of this can be understood in relation to their language situation and cultural background.This study focuses on the interaction between parents? and young children in the light of the literacy practice. Important concepts such as early childhood literacy and family literacy have been used to study language, culture and literacy practice as phenomena that interact. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural perspective. Through qualitative interviews with seven parents?, it was found that multilingual families have a strong ambition for their children to learn all the languages spoken in the family.

The aim of this paper is to investigate how teachers in Swedish schools abroad reason about their work developing the Swedish language as the students live in a non-Swedish speaking country although going to a Swedish school. Furthermore the study intends to examine the teachers' attitudes towards the impact the Swedish language has upon the school. Research questions:What thoughts do the teachers signify in reference to the language development of the students?How do the teachers reason about the role of the Swedish language in the school?In order to answer these questions, qualitative measures has been used in terms of observations and interviews. The study is based upon a social constructivist perspective with the idea that reality is socially constructed.

In school there are many pupils with Swedish as their second language and these pupils often have less basic condition compared with pupils with Swedish as their mother tongue and the most common root cause is lack of language knowledge, also the time spent in Sweden matters.I have trough questionnaires and literature studies investigated if there, for pupils with Swedish as their second language, is an easier way to figure out how to read and write in Swedish using fiction literature as learning material compared with ordinary ways.In the questionnaires that I performed participated a number of teachers that teach Swedish as a second language. These teachers all work in schools with a big share of pupils with Swedish as a second language.I also tried to evaluate if there was a difference between teachers with a graduation in Swedish as second language compared with these who don?t have a graduate but still work with these pupils.The result shows that I discovered that only the graduated teachers have used fiction literature as a learning material in the daily work and have experienced good results from the pupils, they also knew why they used fiction literarture for reading and writing training.As a teacher it is very important to have the knowledge regarding children that have Swedish as a second language, to be able to support them in a correct way.Despite the pupil can?t speak or read the new language, it has feelings and knowledge about the circumstances that they can?t express.The teachers mission is to knew and have understanding for these circumstances.Keywords: Pupils with Swedish as second language, learning to read and write, fiction literarture, school..

The purpose of our study is to interpret and understand the experiences that parents to multilingual children have towards multilingualism in pre-school. We are also interested in finding out what these parents think about their children?s development in multilingualism both in pre-school and at home. Our study is based on qualitative interviews. We interviewed nine families that have multilingual children in pre-school.  The data we collected from our interviews has been analyzed using socio-cultural and inter-cultural theories along with previous research. The result of our study showed that parents to multilingual children have both positive and negative opinions about the multilingual concept. Most of our informants had positive opinions about multilingualism in general.

The aim of this study was to examine bilingual childrenslexical organization and to investigate weather bilingual children hadundergone the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift in grade four. Thirtychildren from multi-ethnic areas were tested with Kent-Rosanoff wordassociation test in both Swedish and Arabic. The results showed thatmore than 40% of the children had undergone the shift in bothlanguages, 20 % had undergone the shift in only one of theirlanguages and almost 40% had not made the shift in any language. Acomparison with results from monolingual Swedish children in gradethree in a previous thesis, showed that the bilingual children in thisstudy did not reach the corresponding level of lexical organization.The study points to the necessity of including tests regarding lexicalorganization when assessing both mono- and bilingual children withsuspected language impairment. The study also underscores theimportance of supporting mother tongue development in bilingualchildren by for instance adequate mother tongue education.

AbstractThe Swedish society has always been monolingual, but has for the past decades transformed into a multicultural and multilingual society. The aim of this study is to investigate if and in that case how preschool teachers work with language development in bilingual and multicultural preschools. The concept of linguistic and cultural diversity includes several different components, not least the social interactions that are of great importance to every individual's development, learning and participation in the world. By understanding the importance of language, language development and the role of mother tongue in second language acquisition, we look into various researches done concerning the effects of the preschool teachers? opinions, methods used to language developmental primarily for children who are multilingual and how the physical environment is shaped to promote language in multicultural and multilingual preschools.The method used in this study is semi-structured interviews with preschool teacher working in multicultural or bilingual preschool settings.

This thesis is about language planning in Faeroese libraries as seen from the countrys specific situation, with Faeroese as a mothers tongue, but with great dominance of the Danish language within media. The purpose of my thesis is to examine language planning activities within the library, and the consequences this planning has for the system. Different theories about language planning provides a framework for my model of the library as a linguistic eco-system with actors performing status planning, represented by the government with its influence in cultural politics, the librarian with his or her library tasks and the user with his or her needs. The thesis has a qualitative attempt, and the empirical material consists of different documents about the country and materials from interviews made with seven qualified librarians, employed within general libraries in the Faeroe Islands. The analysis shows that the librarian in different ways promotes the Faeroese language within library activities, and because of the attention paid to the user in the public library he/she influences the librarians planning.

This paper aims to examine the mother tongue subject and it´s existence and condition in a school located in the south of Stockholm. I have performed interviews with four teachers about their opinions and attitudes regarding the mother tongue subject in the school were they work. Two of the teachers are teachers in social studies and two of them are teachers in the mother tongue subject. My aim is also to examine whether an interest exists among the teachers to collaborate in between the subjects and what possibilities and conditions such collaboration would have in effect. I have applied a qualitative method based on personal interviews with semi-structured questions as my data acquisition method.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate how people from Iran experience reading in their mother tongue, Persian, compared to how they experience reading in Swedish and if there was a difference. The questions to be answered in the thesis were: What is the dominant purpose when people read their mother tongue and when they read in Swedish. Do they read because they need information, because they want to relax or do they, when they read, reflect on their own lives? The method was qualitative, interviews were conducted with 8 Iranians living in Sweden. The theoretical background consists of a description of theories on reading and theories on language and identity.

The purpose with this thesis is to study how two chosen kindergartens work with language stimulation. The two kindergartens are working under different conditions in respect of the Swedish language. The children in the one kindergarten are bilingual whilst the children in the other are monolingual. The study is aiming to see whether these different conditions have any implication for the pedagogues? way of working.In order to achieve the result, the method of interviews has been used.

Bilingualism and multilingualism have always existed in Sweden. Preschool teachers must provide a stimulating pedagogical environment adapted to bilingual children.The purpose of this examination is to study the perspective of the preschool teachers and their knowledge regarding bilingual and multilingual children. Their knowledge will be examined related to their language experiences. I hope to find similarities and dissimilarities in the preschool teachers? opinions concerning teaching and learning what they actually do when they are teaching.My study is based on qualitative method, based on interviews and repeated observations.