Henriksson, Kristina (2009). Assessing student teachers through conversation - an interactional analysis of student-teaching conferencesThe aim of this study is to identify the characteristics of student-teaching conferences. During a school-based education for student teachers, teacher educators from the university visit the student teachers. They also have conversations, so-called student-teaching conferences, with the students school mentors to assess the student teachers knowledge. These conversations aim at assessing the student teachers professional knowledge at the end of a shool-based education.

AbstractThe comprehensive purpose of this essay is to get deeper insight, and more knowledge of how it is possible as an educationalist to integrate Swedish with outdoor education at a junior level. Children learn to read in different ways. In order to improve their reading and writing it is important to be open for alternative ways. In my survey I have chosen to interview three active educationalists. The method I selected was quality interviews.

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to investigate teachers´attitudes to and work with outdoor education in preschool. The aim is also to identify the opportunities and barriers that exist to conduct outdoor education. In my research I have interviewed six preschool teachers in a medium sized municipality, where five of the teachers worked in the suburbs to the Big City and one teacher worked in the downtown Big City. All respondents in the study were in favor of conducting outdoor education. The respondents claimed that it promoted children´s health and motor skills. The result also shows that the teachers saw a great opportunity for learning related to outdoor education, by using the resources of nature.

 Tediousness, fear and boredom are all part of everyday?s life for a student. How can a teacher counteract these feelings of boredom and replace them with a feeling of pleasure of learning? Students have to be motivated and want to go to school every day. By comparing student?s experiences of motivation this essays purpose is to create a theory about factors for motivation in education.

The aim in this thesis is to study what attitude music teachers in Sweden and New Zealand have towards Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in music education and obtain a better understanding of how their attitudes affect the way they use ICT in their teaching. Another intention is to discuss differences and similarities between the teachers´ preferences regarding this issue in the two different countries, and whether it has any effect on teaching. It's a qualitative study based on interviews with music teachers from both countries. Through the answers we can get an impression about how ICT is used in music education, how the curriculum is interpreted when it comes to use ICT in music education and how the teachers' attitudes towards ICT affect the music education. This thesis shows that teachers are positive towards ICT in music education but the attitude, knowledge and the way of using it differs, due to access to technology and different opinions about what is essential in music and what is pedagogical.

The intention of this study is to find out how the English subject takes form and develops in the early years in school related to the curriculum, teachers, teaching material, students and parents. The methods of the survey have been classroom observations, teacher interviews, textbook analysis and a parents´ questionnaire. The findings of this study are that the knowledge of the teacher in and about the English subject can have effect on how the English subject will be presented to the students during the English lessons and the amount of the students oral production of the target language seem to depended on how much the teacher uses the target language in the classroom. The contents of the English lessons was overall structured by the curriculum. The parents and their interest in their children´s education seem to have had an impact on how much focus the English language get.

This thesis examines some special education teachers with experiences of childrendiagnosed with dyscalculia. Problems with mathematics at school may occur to allchildren in all schools. It is therefore important that the teacher knows the variousdisabilities that teachers may encounter. The study is based on four randomlyselected special education teachers, all-working at schools that are related to amedium-sized Swedish town. This work will immerse in the knowledge ofdyscalculia among four special education teachers.The interviews revealed that all special education teachers felt that dyscalculiainvolves specific difficulties in mathematics, their views on dyscalculia is consistentwith current research.

There is a settled stereotype for women and men which give them different possibilities in our society. The schools, which are one of the most important sources of knowledge, have a great possibility to influence. This is the reason why we are interested in how the schools are working with a project, which we will call X henceforth. What was the purpose with the project and what does it contain? What is missing in the former education, since the project was started? Are there any obstacles or prerequisite in the design of the project or in the school teaching on the basis of X? We have done interviews in the gathering of empirical material to find out all the answers to our questions.

The purpose of this Master?s Thesis is to examine and describe how a wiki can be used in the information seeking education. We believe that the preconditions for education and learning are changing; technology and Internet has introduced new tools for the learning situation. To examine this we will describe how the wiki technology can be used in the information seeking education, describe how the goals of the information seeking education are reached when using a wiki and lastly investigate the school librarian?s pedagogical role in wiki-based education.

Abstract:The purpose of this study is to get increased knowledge of how teachers motivate and teach youth about existential questions at junior highchool. My issue for this composition is to find out how ? and how much ? teachers in fact teach about existential questions in the religious education.I interviewed four teachers at junior highschool, with various experiences. One teacher had about thirty years of experience in teaching, and one teacher was quite young and unexperienced.The result indicates that the youth were interested in a lot of existential questions. The study also indicates the teachers view of youth?s identity-work and their existential questions.The resultat is compared with studies of Dahlin, Hartman and Sjödin..

The following study is a discourse analysis of the concept of critical thinking within pre-school teacher education. It considers the following questions: how does the concept of critical thinking appear in policy documents, central to the pre-school teacher education, and which possible conceptions of critical thinking are conveyed by students and teachers active within the education. Additionally, the study seeks to discuss, as well as suggest a possible relation, between the findings of those two questions. In reviewing the material (consisting of five semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and of a selection of policy documents central to the education), I argue the existence of a sort of project within the education, which presents critical thinking as a higher value. At the same time, I argue that the concept is not defined or concretized. This project, however, as I suggest while drawing upon Foucault?s ideas of discourse and government, involves a rather high degree of control.

Then the language learning process and the approach in a preparatory class differs itself from a general class. The methods conducted in a preparatory class are not just focused on teaching as in a more traditional method. Achieving the objectives in a preparatory class depends on the individual student and the cohesion in the group. Students have different backgrounds and knowledge level, therefore it is extremely important that the teachers use different work methods in order to achieve and to promote the students' language development. The aim with this survey is to get the knowledge about what education methods is being used by teachers in a preparatory class.

This study is based on an examination of students? habits of using the Internet in formal and informal environments. The focus within this study is on what kind of activities students use the Internet for and how and if their teacher connect the students actual usage of the Internet to base the education in school on it. What we have discovered in this report is that the student in this examination uses the Internet as a tool for communicative and entertaining purposes. Though, the use of the Internet is different depending on which physical environment it is situated in.

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is a relatively new method for learning a foreign language. CLIL programs are growing in popularity and more and more schools are adopting it all around the world. There is still no special education for the teachers working with CLIL, though research suggests it may be an effective method for achieving good results.To get a realistic view of the work of a CLIL teacher, I have interviewed four different mathematic teachers who work at CLIL international schools in Spain with English as the foreign language. I have compared their methods and experiences with the main ideas of current research in this particular field.The survey shows that the teachers? views about how CLIL is to be used do not completely correspond to that of the research.

AbstractThe purpose of my study was to examine how four social studies teachers in upper secondary school interprets the democratic educational mission and core values, and if they believe that the same values are tools to influence the students' democratic approach and if they think it is possible. It is also the study's minor purpose to make an analysis of my findings and previous research in the area to explain any similarities or differences in the social studies teacher's interpretation and practice of the democratic educational mission and core values. I used qualitative semi-structured interviews as a method in which the interview questions were based on my research questions. The two criteria I had for my sample of respondents was that there would be social studies teacher at a upper secondary school and that I wanted to have two of each sex. Their interpretation and how they think they practice the democratic educational mission and core values are similar.