The purpose of this study is to investigate the teaching of literacy in two schools in different countries, South Africa and Sweden. The basis for the comparison was the decline of the two countries in the international PIRLS assessment. The aim of this essay was thus to identify possible similarities or differences between the two countries, possibly contributing to the decline in the literacy level of young students. The study was conducted by interviewing teachers of young children in South Africa and Sweden about their views on teaching literacy. The research shows that there are several factors contributing both positively and negatively to the literacy of young children.

This Masters thesis is a study in library and information science, that examines literature as a tool for young people in their identity creation. Both scientists and teachers have found that teenagers like to identify themselves, when reading literature. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how youths construct their identity through reading in relation to the purpose that libraries and cultural politics have in youth novels. The starting point of this study is the sociologist Thomas Ziehe and his idea about identity try-out identitetsutprovning and Erving Goffmans dramaturgy perspective. The main question is: what is the relation between young peoples identity creation in youth novels and in their reality in proportion to the young peoples reading of youth literature and the science about their reading? The question is answered in three parts.

In the 1980?s the moose population in Sweden grew explosively due to big changes in the silviculture with clear cuttings instead of single-tree selection. Clear cuttings brought big areas of young forest and therefore a lot of fodder in one place. Since this change, the discussion about how to manage the moose population has grown into a very big problem. Forest owners think that the population needs to be strongly reduced because of all the damage that is done to the young forest when the moose seeks its food, and the economic losses because of that.

The purpose of my study was to examine adoptive parents' experiences of adopting children older than three years of age. I wanted to look into what kind of information, help and support every adoptive parent had received. I also wanted to examine if the adoptive parents worried about anything concerning the children's emotional needs and in what way the adoptive parents prepared themselves for this, before the adoption. I asked the adoptive parents about their knowledge regarding the children's experiences from the time before the adoption and how things had been going since the children came to Sweden. To achieve my purpose I interviewed six adoptive parents from five families, with a total of eleven internationally adopted older children.The research findings of my study showed that a risk exists for older adopted children to suffer emotionally because of earlier experiences.

The Internet has become a communication system that includes a direct and personal communication as well as traditional mass communication. For example, the Internet has become a channel for self-publishing. It provides opportunities for discussion and blogs can be woven together into a dialogue between network users. The conversation is both personalised and addressed to the wider community. Our study is based on how fashion bloggers perceive their role as a fashion blogger, and how young women, 18 to 30 years old, in Sundsvall, perceive fashion blogs.We chose to conduct qualitative research and held qualitative interviews and focus groups. Since fashion blogs are a relatively new phenomenon, we chose to do interviews with the active fashion bloggers, Nina Johansson and Karolina Skande, to use them as informants.

This study aims to examine how adolescents with diabetes describe and value their experience of participating in a support group and how they describe the issues of being a teenager with diabetes. This is a qualitative study and we have interviewed three young women who have been participating in a support group. The results of the interviews were analyzed through a phenomenological method and then compared to earlier research and interpreted through symbolic interactionism and Erikson's development-theory, which were our theories of choice. Our findings support earlier research when stating that support groups are important and necessary for adolescents with chronic illnesses. Our interviewees stated that they think that one of the most important benefits of support groups is to meet other people in their situation; same age and same chronic illness..

The aim of this study was to, with a social constructivistic approach, examine how parents,regarded as neglecting their children, are depicted in 12 LVU-legal cases from the Supreme Administrative Court in Sweden. By using a document analysis influenced by discourse analytical tools, we found that there are repeated descriptions of the parents, which constructs an image of parents as shortcoming in the care of their children. The categories lack of emotions, mental disorder, substance abuse and physical maltreatment were the main reasons for child neglect that the parents were described from. Attitudes towards authority, aggression and immaturity, lack of insight, and deficiencies in the home were repeated in the description of the parent. We further found that mothers were regarded as more responsible of the children compared to fathers.

Our language bear traces of who we are and of the culture we live in. As human beings we create language in interaction with other people and with our society. Media and commercials are other factories that strongly influence our everyday life as well as our language. With this study we would like to illuminate how our surroundings influence our language. We focus on the language of young people and their use of symbols, phrases and expressions when they reflect on relations.

The purpose of this study is to better understand, from a foster parent perspective, how the integration process of the foster child is carried out in the foster family. The purpose is to identify the challenges and success factors in the process. The study is based on a qualitative method. The data consist of interviews with six foster families. The study?s theoretical framework is mostly based on system theory and also on the theory of ambivalence.The results show that most of our families considered five factors to be important in order to facilitate the integration process.

 An analysis in the work of Martin Kellermans comic ?Rocky? of the interaction between the male and female characters and of how each of their gender are portrayed. We are going to find out if it is probable for young adults to be affected by any eventual gender-stereotypes that we can find in ?Rocky? or if ?Rocky? consolidates a stereotypical image of men and women that young adults might have developed through different media. We conduct this analys by first reading through random seleceted ?Rocky? books and present some of the comic strips where men and women interact with each other or discuss the opposite sex..

A lot of young athletes have great dreams but only a few reaches the stars. Which ways make it possible for the dreams to come true?This study has made a small research on the Swedish NHL professionals have made their way to the NHL by looking at data about their choices during his career, and tried to see if there is any connection between their paths to every hockey player's dream, the NHL. Results of the study show that there is a anatla different ways to go, but some are more common than others..

This study represents seven adolescents? perspective on online poker gambling. The purpose of this study is to analyze and describe adolescents? thoughts and experiences of online poker gambling, thus gaining a deeper knowledge and understanding of how gambling affects youths in their living conditions and in their identity development. This was done by studying the symbolism and meaning that gambling has in these youths every day live and in their identity development.

The aim of our study is to gain understanding of how parentsperceive their own, the preschool's, and the library's efforts to stimulate preschoolers' enjoyment and yearning to read, as well as what types of collaborative efforts the parents seek.The study is based upon qualitative interviews with parents, both mothers and fathers, to preschool children (aged 1.5 to 6 years old). The analysis does not offer any generalizations. We have chosen to use a sociocultural perspective as the theoretical starting-point of our study, our thoughts being that we learn together with and by the help of others. We consider this perspective to be closely related to Aidan Chambers's "The Reading Circle", which we have chosen to use as our tool of analysis.It turned out that the parents perceived their own reading stimulating role as crucial, even if they did not consider all they did as reading stimulative. Some things, such as discussing the book while reading, occurred naturally but is also an important part to stimulate reading.

Background During the child?s first year of life there is a continuous contact with the Child Health Services (CHS) and the parents feel confident and involved. After the first year, the visits to the CHS is reduced at the same time as the everyday life changes for the family as the child starts going to day-care and the parents often go back to work.Aim To examine what it is like being a parent to children aged one to five and what kind of parenting support parents of children aged one to five are in need of.Method Semi-structured interviews were used to interview 25 parents in 21 telephone interviews and one focus group with 4 parents. The recruiting of parents was done on site at one open day-care and with the help of CHS nurses in Sweden. There were 10 men and 15 women.

The purpose of this study was to find out how young children are allowed to influence and affect their daily lives in preschools, as well as teachers? views on the latter. My interest in this topic is born out of my experience of working with both younger and older preschool children. My view is that democratic work with older children is largely based on direct verbal communication while with toddlers it is based on an adult?s interpretation of a child?s often non-verbal expressions.