THE PAINTING CHILD. A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AESTHETIC PROCESSES OF LEARNING IN RELATION TO DEWEY´S ART AS EXPERIENCE.The aim of this study is to present a discourse analysis made on five-year-old children during art activities in a preschool in Sweden. The questions asked are: how does interaction take place between the children, or the child and the teacher, during art activities? And what does this tell us about the relationship to art in preschool? In Art as Experience John Dewey claims that art is separated from other experiences of life, but that it ought to be close to ordinary life-experiences. Today visual culture is important in society but not in school.

The dialogical plait in individual vocal educationThesis in Music Education by Jannike Huss. Part of the work for the master´s degree. Studies from School of Music, Theatre, and Art, University of Örebro, 2010. Available from Örebro University, SE-701 82 Örebro, Sweden. Original in Swedish.This thesis treats the value of communication for individual vocal education on a higher level.

My point of origin concerning this thesis was an interest for how school may develop students? reading comprehension. International surveys show that the results for Swedish students? performance regarding reading comprehension have declined and the current curriculum, Lgr-11, emphasizes the importance of incorporating this into all school subjects. The special teacher education programme has raised the awareness concerning the importance of including the students and that learning is achieved in an interactive setting.

AimThe purpose of this study is to, from a perspective of a PE teacher, look at how teachers of physical education in elementary school designs and assesses the teaching of swimming. The issues underlying the study are as follows:Which elements are included in the swimming education and how do teachers work with these operations?What does the PE teachers classify as swimming ability and what do teachers experience as obstacles for the students development of swimming ability?How do the PE teachers interpret the knowledge requirement in Lgr 11?MethodThe study is based on six interviews of qualitative nature, with PE teachers from various municipalities in the region of Mälardalen.ResultsThe result yielded by the study is that the swimming classes can take different forms depending on whom the teacher is. Common to all the teachers in the study is that they teach emergency management and lifesaving. When it later comes to teaching how to swim and practice, the teachers who teach in the younger age groups work more concentrated and continuously with swimming, while the teachers who work with the older age groups just checks whether students can swim or not.

In my essay the dilemmas originate from what I have experienced. I have observed myself and some of my colleagues, how we meet children who are lacking the qualifications which school and most pedagogues expect them to have. Focus, in my written experiences, is on children who live in poverty, but how we meet and act toward them is often quite the same independent of what qualifications they are lacking. With the support from literature and theories I reflect and analyse the dilemmas. Through essaywriting I investigate my practical knowledge and I examine how we as pedagogues handle the complex situations encounter when in school and how it is possible to understand why we act the way we do.I think that the knowledge which essaywriting gives me will strengthen me as a person and in my work as a teacher for after-school-center.

Through qualitative interviews with five teachers from three schools, two public schools within the same school management and a Waldorf school, the purpose of this study is to find out teachers' views on the phenomenon of life skills in the lower classes in school. What is the subject, how do teachers work with life skills, and should it be seen as a separate subject or integrated in all school subjects?The results show that the definition of life skills is a term with many interpretations. Two concepts that can be seen as the common denominators in the educators' views on the subject, however is, social and emotional skills. This is something that educators believe develop self-awareness and empathy in children and sees that as important as learning other subjects.

Students? experience of stress is generally considered to be an isolated problem, caused by school work. Students? experience of stress at school can also be affected by exterior influences.This research aims to discover what factors Swedish students, age 13 ? 16, experience as stressful. It also aims to describe how students believe this stress can be reduced.

Today Sweden is both a secular and multi-religious country, of which Christianity historically has been a dominant player. Both processes of individualization and migration have contributed to a changed religious character as the current Swedish social situation represents. An interesting question to consider is how the Swedish school system has been able to adapt to the changed religious climate. This study examines the policy documents for religious education produced for upper secondary school, to see how the role of religion in the processes of individualization and migration, and the changes that these processes have brought the role of religion in today?s society as a whole, are described within them.

It is important that the language in textbooks for foreign language learners reflects the language that the learners would encounter in real life. For this reason, the presence of the thousand most common nouns in two Swedish textbooks in Spanish for upper secondary school is observed in this study. Furthermore, this study aims to examine how these nouns occur in order to determine if their pattern of occurence favours the learning and consolidation of words. The main materials that have been used are A Frequency Dictionary of Spanish by Davies (2006) and the word search program available in the digital versions of the textbooks. The results show that the presence of the thousand most common Spanish nouns does reflect the frequency information presented in the frequency dictionary but not all thousand nouns are included.

This essay takes its starting point in the making of a new national general school curriculum for the Swedish elementary school. The purpose of this essay is to estimate what the policy makers intended with the new policy documents and relate that to how a few teachers perceive these changes. In order to get an understanding of how the teachers view these changes I have done qualitative interviews with four teachers which all work in the Swedish elementary school.Theories on "implementation" and "street-level bureaucracy" are used to analyse my empirical material. My results tell that there is a difference how teachers relate to the new curruculum and the policy makers' intentions with it. That can be explained by the fact that teachers' work is complex and as to they work in a complex organization..

AimThe aim of this study has been to examine how health enhancement teachers in Montana, USA, view the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective.In what way does the health enhancement teacher think the importance of physical activity from a lifelong perspective could be presented?What resources are available for teachers to present the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective?MethodThe issue has been answered through qualitative interviews consisting of six health enhancement teachers, four women and two men, in Montana, USA. One of the teachers worked at an elementary school (for 30 years), three teachers worked at middle schools (20, 10 and 8 years of work experience) and two of the teachers interviewed worked at a high school (30 and 3 years).  ResultsThe majority of teachers feel that a wide variety of activities, adapted to an individual level, and the understanding of a healthy lifestyle are important in order for the teacher to present the value of physical activity from a lifelong perspective.The teachers felt they had sufficient material in order to present the value of physical activity, where the school budget provided the teachers with materials every year. In addition to the budget, all the teachers had 12 hours of professional development every year where they could attend conferences or their own choice of professional development.ConclusionWith the help in forms of professional development offered by the school, conferences, meeting with other teachers, and their own choice of development, the teachers instruction techniques could increase which could help the teachers to find the pupils? interest for different kinds of physical activities.KeywordsPhysical education and health, physical activity, SOC, sense of coherence..

School ground development is becoming increasingly popular in Sweden today and local community settings are also seen as an important resource for education. The debate today raises the question about the whole city?s pedagogic potential. Outdoor education is a pedagogy that comprises outdoor learning with focus on the sensual experiences. Connection to the classroom education is an important part of the pedagogy and so is the place for the tuition.But how should the place for the tuition, i.e.

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to examine the importance of libraries for girls leisure time in secondary school. Focus has been on the use of the library as a leisure activity. Interviews were carried out with six girls of the ages 13 to 16. The conclusion of the study is that the library is of importance for the girls mostly through its books. Reading turned out to be an important leisure activity for the girls and the books provided by the library were of significance for their identity development.

The aim has been to see if physical education (PE) is more an arena for bullying than swedish language education, in a swedish urban school. Furthermore to get an insight in the students sense of exposure to bullying in the locker room and during PE class. In the purpose is also included to analyse the answers in a gender perspective.Questions are: Is PE to wider extent an arena for bullying compared to swedish language education? Is the students? opinion that they feel worried about being and changing clothes in the locker room due to other students bad intentions? Do the students think that boys and girls bully in different ways?The method used is a questionnaire answered by 69 students in seventh and eighth grade in Åsö compulsory school. Furthermore, interviews has been made with a boy, a girl at the school and a teacher in PE to get a deeper insight above the questionnaire.Results of the study showed that the students to a wide extent, 100 % of the girls (g) and 89 % of the boys (b) thought that bullying can look different between PE and swedish language class.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.