The main purpose of this C-essay is to answer the question: What have been the consequences and effects of the merit point system on language studies and the parties concerned (teachers, students and principals) during the school year of 2010/11?The merit point system is the result of a political decision and was implicated for the first time in the Swedish upper secondary school during the school year 2010/2011. Being a completely new phenomenon it is of great interest and importance to study its effects.The study in this essay also aims to verify, falsify or nullify two hypotheses very often referred to in the political discussions regarding the merit point system:The merit point system will replace affection and interest as main reasons for language studies in upper secondary school and cause a rectification amongst the students choices of additional courses.The merit point system will have a segregating effect upon society and make it harder for people to rise in society through education in the future.A verification of these hypotheses would imply the appearance of an increased rectification amongst students as well as an orientation towards an in the future more segregated society.The empiric material has been collected and examined with qualitative as well as quantitative methods (questionnaires and interviews) and belongs epistemologically to the phenomenological and hermeneutical traditions..

The purpose of this essay is to discuss and compare different ways of learning new words and expanding your vocabulary in a foreign language. This is done by an examination of relevant literature and available research, as well as by an empirical study with two upper secondary school classes, in which two different methods are put to the test: one traditional method of the kind that is found to be most common in second language acquisition, and one designed to take existing research into account. The results show that, although effective in the initial stages of acquisition, the traditional method, where words are learned in isolation and via translation to L1, results in a very limited form of knowledge. A big part of the words acquired via this method is also forgotten soon afterwards. The other method, where words were learned and tested in its proper context, was found to result in a broader form of vocabulary knowledge, covering more aspects, and that remained over time.

A change has occurred in terms of recruitment to teacher education. From having been an educationof high status and reputation, a reduced application rate has led to lower admission requirementsand thus that students with much lower educational qualifications entering, which in turn means thatthe education status and reputation have been reduced significantly. Mathematics, on the other hand,has always been a topic of high status and reputation. Although there are few students who chooseto study to be a mathematics teacher. By conducting a survey of students on teacher educationtoday, both with mathematics and other approaches, I wanted to get answers to my questions aboutwhat influences students' choice of education: who are the students studying to be teachers inmathematics? Do they distinguish themselves from the student teachers who studies to be teachersin other subject specializations? Pierre Bourdieu's sociological ideas about cultural capitaltransmitted from parent to child constitute the theoretical framework of the study.Early in the study, I noticed that there is a difference between students studying to be a teacher inpreschool, primary or middle school and them studying to be a teacher in secondary and highschool, especially in terms of the mathematics student teachers.

This thesis aims to spread some light over the phenomena of gender construction in the upper secondary school. The background of this thesis is the gender gap in education. Girls are more successful in school and receive better grades than boys. The explanation that is given for this is that pupils are limited by far to rigid gender roles (DEJA 2010). The question is how these gender roles ? and specifically masculinity ? are constructed.

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.

This essay is about integration of theoretical subjects and practical subjects at the vocational training education in a Swedish Upper secondary school. The purpose of the essay was to examine if integration of the subjects increases the students` motivation for, interest in and knowledge of the subject Swedish. Other purposes were to examine how the teachers organize their teaching of Swedish in order to adjust it to the students? interests and to examine the students? attitude towards Swedish as a subject.The essay also describes the recent development of the vocational training education of Swedish Upper secondary school and presents theories about learning and other examinations about teaching of theoretical subjects at the vocational training education.The examination carried through with a questionnaire which was distributed to the students at three programs at the school and interviews with the headmaster and two teachers. The result of the study showed that a small majority of the students believe that integration increases their motivation in and knowledge of Swedish.

The purpose of this Bachelor?s thesis was to explore how principals and school administrators work to develop their school libraries. To narrow our area of study we chose to only include gymnasiums run by the municipality and conducted four semi-structured interviews with two principals and two heads of upper secondary school. We formulated two questions: (1) what perceptions of the school library and its functions can be found among our four respondents? And, (2) how do they work with developing the school library? As a theoretical framework we used Loertscher?s taxonomy of the school leader.

This essay examines the possibilities for the use of ICT for learning in the subject of history. By interviewing history teachers in upper secondary school about their experiences and thoughts regarding the subjects of learning, history and ICT, as well as the relations there between, based on Mishra and Koehlers TPACK model, I come to the conclusion that ICT may enhance learning in history. I also conclude that ICT may create new learning environments in history, where knowledge may or may not grow.The more unique ways of using ICT in history, compared to other school subjects, appears to be the possibility of using a variety of new sources, for example digitized primary sources from archives, that perhaps will motivate students, and make it possible to work from a con- structivistic point of view in history.Other unique possibilities are to satisfy the need of concretizing and visualizing the history being taught, by using a broad range of different media when presenting it. .

This study focuses on teachers? and pupils? experiences of their use of one-to-one computers in civics education in Swedish upper secondary school. The experiences of teachers and pupils will also be put in relation to the content of the formal curriculum. The aim of this study is to investigate whether the access of one-to-one computers has changed teaching and learning within civics. The theoretical approaches used are both Tomas Kroksmark?s theory about traditional versus innovative learning and Ruben Puentedura?s SAMR-model.

Upper secondary schools programme - a qualitative study about the collaboration of the Youth- and family team, the upper secondary schools and the police to prevent drugsAuthor: Åsa GöranssonSupervisor: Björn JohanssonThis essay discuss drug preventative work performed by the members of the ?Upper secondary schools programme?, which is a part of the Youth- and family team of the Social Services. They perform this work in collaboration with the police and upper secondary schools in Örebro.The purpose of this essay is to investigate and describe this collaboration. More specifically, the purpose is to study the contents of documents of the municipality of Örebro concerning drug prevention aimed at youths through collaboration and compare with the actual work that is carried out by the Youth- and family team through collaboration. Further issues dealt with are possible improvements and if the parties concerned feel a need for a documented structure concerning their way of working.I have used a qualitative method and I have interviewed members of parties concerned.

The purpose of this essay has been to investigate if the national test results, in the subject of Swedish B at upper secondary school, are affecting a student?s final grade in varied degree among different teachers. The purpose has also been to investigate if the assessment of these tests is equivalent among different teachers. This particular investigation showed that there are big differences between how teachers grade, in relation to achieved results on the national test. According to the Swedish National Agency for Education, the teacher should take all performance information available into consideration for each particular student.

With this essay we would like to examine to what extent the ancient Icelandic literature could count as a part of Sweden?s literal cultural heritage in schools today, if it through seeking information is possible to say whether this literature have any connections to Sweden. Our questions of issue are:1. What kind of connection is there between ancient Icelandic literature and Swedish literary cultural heritage and what are the ancient Icelandic literature premises? in the Swedish upper secondary school?2.

The aim of this study was to identify and make transitions in Swedish preschool-class-9-years elementary schools visible with a special-needs educational perspective. Transitions in focus were those between preschool-class and primary school, between grade three and four and the last between grade six and seven.In the 1960?th Swedish elementary school were devided into three levels; primary school, intermediate level school and upper level lower secondary school. Those levels were officially removed when the curriculum of 1994 was introduced. However, in some way such levels still exist, for example in organisation and structure of schools, the curriculum and teacher education.How did school leaders design transitions between levels and which tools were used? What kind of information was transferred to help children with special needs and what was the role of the special pedagogue in the transition process?The study was a combination of a quantitative and qualitative method, a questionnaire survey complemented with qualitative interviews with special pedagogues in three schools in a middle-sized Swedish town.The result of the study shows that schools in focus had a work plan.

In the current situation there is not much written about assessment of laboratory work, and the majority of the working physics teachers are retiring and there are only a few newly qualified physics teachers. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how physics teachers assess laboratory work within upper secondary schools, with Gy2011 in mind. The new grade system, Gy2011, has a larger focus on the laboratory work then the earlier system Lpf 94. Skolverket has in their man-ual with examples of assessment two different sorts of laboratory experiments. The first assess-ment is regarding the planning of a laboratory work and the other about how able the pupil exe-cutes laboratory work.

The purpose of this paper is to study the image of Strindberg that is conveyed in four different textbooks for the upper secondary school. How do the teaching authors choose to portray Strindberg? Do they focus on any one particular aspect of his writing? Adjacent to this a subsidiary aim is to see if teaching authors highlight the fictional nature of Strindberg?s works or choose to encourage a biographical interpretation. The work consists of a study of four literary history textbooks in the subject of Swedish for the upper secondary school, from 2000 to 2012. In the selected material the sections focusing on Strindberg and his writings are closely read and critically analysed.