Popular culture is a phenomenon of growing importance in the society today. Children and teenagers are increasingly using popular culture in their everyday life to reflect and answer questions about their identities and the meaning of life. Swedish primary and upper secondary schools are expected to prepare their students for adulthood and to provide them with tools to explain understand and problematize contemporary society. From this perspective it is relevant to question whether the schools achieve this and whether the instruction given there represents the contemporary society. For the purpose of knowing more about how popular culture is perceived and dealt with in the Swedish education system, this study examines how eight textbooks in Religious Education (RE) and the national curriculum for upper secondary school discuss and treat popular culture.  The study focuses on when and in what ways the textbooks mention popular culture and if the curriculum provides any supportive base for including popular culture in religious education.

In this essay we discuss how the decentralisation of the Swedish school system affects the concept of ?equal opportunity school?. We investigate the development from both a historical and contemporary perspective, in order to identify changes over time. The central question of the essay is how the decentralisation of the school system affects the teacher?s perspective and experiences of the government?s framework about ?equal opportunity school?? The analysis is based on four qualitative, semi structured, direct interviews with respondents both active in municipal schools situated in the Malmö council and with more than thirty years of experience in their profession. Our analysis of the interviews show that both respondents experience the overall situation in the schools has deteriorated from an equal opportunity aspect since the decentralisation of the school system.

The purpose of this study is to explore how teachers at Swedish upper secondary schools perceive the so-called value words and knowledge requirements of religious studies 1 as defined by the present curriculum for upper secondary school 2011 (Gy11) how they consider themselves to apply these value words in their teaching, and whether they consider the knowledge requirements as alegitimate basis for equivalentassessment. My studyis based oninterviewswithfour teachers in religious studies at four different upper swcondary schools in the municipalityof Jönköping, Sweden. The results of my study show that the interviewed teachers perceive the value words in the knowledge requirements of religious studies 1,as defined by the present curriculum Gy11, aredifficult to interpret and that the value wordsare not definitive, but interpretable. All teachers use the knowledge requirements in theirplanning of teaching,but also in teaching where they are to concretize the knowledge requirements and value wordsthrough their own examples. Half of the teachers, however, experienced a lack of interest in the knowledge requirements by the pupils, which make it even more important to discuss knowledge requirementswith them, while the teachers?assessment has to rely on these knowledge requirements.

Marks do not only work as an acknowledge of the effort that has been made under a long period of time, but also as a receipt for eligibility to further studies. Within the political debate, marks have often caused a big discussion among the political parties. That is due to the obvious difference between the political parties on the left, and their counterparts on the right. However, there is one thing that they all have in common. Everyone of them have plans of measure within their political agenda, regarding the use of marks.The aim of this study has been to try to understand the way pupils think about marks.

The aim of this study was to analyze the assessment of the national tests seen from the teacher?s perspective. The national tests are performed in the Swedish school, classes 3, 5, 9, and the upper secondary school (gymnasiet). There has been an ongoing discussion regarding assessment and grading for a long time and it is of high interest now more than ever. The last control assessment done in 2009 by the department of school inspections on the order of the Swedish government, showed big differences between the assessments done by the teachers, and the assessments completed by the department of school inspections.

The purpose of this essay was to study whether the UN convention on the Rights of the child is implemented in the Swedish executory authority, in cases that include compulsory auction of property belonging to families with children, in the southern area of Sweden. I have especially focused on questions concerning whether civil servants work with child consequence analyses, whether they have been offered education in child competence at work, to what extent they have listened to and taken into account the child's own voice in the execution process, and finally to what extent civil servants have had contact with the social welfare committee.The study was based on qualitative telephone interviews with seven civil servants working with cases that comprise compulsory auction of property belonging to families with children.The conclusions of my study are that there exists no specific child perspective regarding the UN convention on the Rights of the child in the civil servants work regarding compulsory auction of property belonging to families with children. Neither do they work with child consequence analyses nor do they listen to what the child has to say in the execution process. The civil servants have not been offered any kind of education concerning child competence. Regarding contacts with the social welfare committee, the result shows that this is, in general, not based on systematic procedures..

Summary The purpose of this research is to find out if technology is being used in pre-school activity, to what extent, in which way and what part the pre-school teachers believe they should have in the process. To gather information for the research, questionnaires were sent out to all pre-schools in a municipality in central Sweden. Based on that information two were chosen for observations and interviews. The work with technology in pre-schools may vary. Some pre-school teachers believe they do not adopt any technology at all when asked and all this because of their own lack of interest or knowledge, while others believe it is contained in all of their educational activities.

A pilot-study was used to investigate, types of assistance, assessed needs, outcomes and effects of special-needs assistance given to a subsample of compulsory school pupils in an effort to develop an evaluation strategy for identifying educational impacts of specific special-needs inputs.  Preliminary results indicate a tendency for postive outcomes for most pupils in the pilot group (n = 11) but also that many pupils have residual difficulties.  Pupils with residual difficulties mostly required special education asssitance with Maths, English or Swedish.  More pupils also needed support with behavioral difficulties.  More research and an expanding knowledge base is required in order to effectively evaluate outcomes of teacher support.  Schools need help in devising different methods of assistance and particularly for pupils with behavioral difficulties..

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how principals apprehend the school library. In order to respond to this I formulated three questions: How was the improvement of the school libraries carried out in one municipality? Is the school library experienced as a part of the schools organization? How is the use of the school´s library experienced? To be able to answer these questions, for the purpose of this thesis, I have studied relevant literature on school libraries, the school organization and literature on qualitative methods. I have made six qualitative interviews. The objects of the interviews were three librarians and three principals.

The purpose of this essay was to understand why the pupils of upper secondary school are unable to pass the Mathematics A level. As method, I chose interviews, since the personal and various experiences of the informants are very important for the validity of this essay.This study has shown that the students lack motivation and consider Matematics boring. They haven?t been able to fathom the connection between the subject and how it van be used in everyday life. If the pupils? are to pass their Mathematics A level, they need time, further recourses and teachers who are apt and attentive pedagogues.Additionally, the teachers need more knowledge when it comes to methodology and didactic styles..

My intention with this paper was to investigate how the teachers in pre-school thinks about the physical environment in pre-school. Both the significance for the pedagogical activity and the children?s involvement in the design. I have done five interviews with pre-school teachers. The result shows that the pre-school teachers consider that the size of the premises and the availability to the material is important factors for children?s development and learning.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine and present the programmes and activities of school library centres in order to see what functions (purposes) they can fulfil in a municipality and also if and how they can contribute to school library development. In order to fulfil my purpose I have made qualitative interviews with five librarians from school library centres. The theoretical framework is primarily based on David Loertscher?s.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie med kvantitativa inslag var att ge en bild av elevers välmående på ett ridgymnasium samtidigt som jag ville belysa betydelsen av elevers gemenskap och trivsel. Sammanfattningsvis tyder resultatet av min studie på att elever som går på ett ridgymnasium och dagligen får bedriva studier parallellt med hästar mår bättre psykiskt och känner sig nöjda och tillfreds, samt utvecklas som människor. Samspelet mellan eleverna och deras hästintresse skapar en känsla av att eleverna känner sig nöjda med sig själva..

The purpose of this study has been to analyze the image of Strindberg in today's upper secondary school. How is the author portrayed in the textbooks and teaching aids, and which parts of the authorship does the textbook and teaching aids authors choose to focus on?  This work has been implemented in the form of a textbook and teaching aids survey where eight textbooks for the upper secondary school from 1989 to 2008 has been analyzed with focus on the sections that consider Strindberg and his authorships.What emerges when studying these textbooks and teaching aids is that they give a rather synonymous picture of the man and the author Strindberg. Big focus is aimed on private life and the scandals that the author more or less voluntary became a part of. The majority of the textbooks treats matters as ?the misogynist? and ? the critic of society? and the so called Inferno crisis, and also when one discusses the literary works it is done in the light of the author's own life and accomplishments.When it comes to the author's literary production it is a very limited selection that is presented to the students.

The aim of this study is to investigate how five boys in grade 3 of compulsory school structure and use language when they write narrative texts retelling and assessing personally experienced events. This is studied by interpreting how the boys use genre steps that are typical of the structure of personal narrative texts and by detecting and naming different linguistic features in the texts. The material in the study consists of five boys?personal reports and the method, which is based on the theories of genre pedagogy (see Johansson & Sandell Ring 2012:28ff, 223f), comes from systemic functional linguistics. A central finding of the study is that the boys structure their texts in varying combinations of genre steps which commonly occur in texts of a narrative kind.