The purpose of this graduate work is to seek knowledge about how children?s right to participation and influence is interpreted and understood in a specific context and also to examine how this right can be conditioned and shaped by the pedagogical practice of early childhood education.The focus of this study has been to examine the arguments and attitudes towards the right to participation and influence as a pedagogical practice as it is understood in early childhood education. Additionally, I have been interested in studying the affordances and restrictions that early childhood educators experience when dealing with children´s right to participation and influence.The platform used for data collection is Facebook and the informants recruited were active participants in forums regarding democracy in preschool education. In the second phase of the study I conducted online focus groups with these participants.For the analysis of the material I have adopted a poststructuralist perspective, starting from Jaques Derridas philosophical texts and use of deconstruction.The results show the complexity in early childhood education´s democratic mission. What becomes clear is the importance for the teachers to adopting an open, ethical and democratic approach in order to make children´s right to participation and genuine influence possible in the everyday reality of early childhood education. .

Music has a role to play in every country and every culture. Sweden today is a country whith many different cultures, religions and music genres. The purpose of this investigation is to study how immigrants youths profit from music education on the basis of music teachers' perspectives. Questions at issue are: are there immigrant children/ youths who can not take part in music education? Have the students' religions any importance? Do the parents question the offered education? Is there more opposition to some specific kind of music? Are teachers avoiding to present some music? Can music education help the immigrant youths to form their identities? I have used questionnaires and I have made five interviews.

The local wind band in Lilla Edet, Lilla Edets Musikförening, springs from work and activities in the late 19:th century. Since then, the band has developed from a brass sextet to mixed wind band. It has been an appreciated contribution to the society on festive occasions. Yet, it seems like the band more and more has lost it´s useful purpose. Also, the recruiting of new members has ceased, as the music school has trouble with attracting pupils to learn to play wind instruments.The reasons for this reduced interest are more then one.

This thesis aims to investigate and discuss the possibility for women in the early Christian church to make music, which in the ancient Roman society was something complicated. Afemale musician was looked upon as decadent and dissolute. This idea, in combination with the music ideals of the church influenced by the Neoplatonic movement, and the Pauline statement (1 Cor. 14:34-36), cast women to be completely prohibited in participating even in the psalmody during the service. My purpose is to discuss how this was looked upon in different Christian regions, using the church fathers as the main material source, since this has not previously been well documented or studied..

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 aim of this paper is to illuminate and discuss the political and ideological aspects of Early Medieval Nordic music. Due to shortage of sources, this issue has been overlooked until now. Did Early Medieval Nordic music meet the requirements for political and ideological use? In what ways could music potentially be used politically and ideologically? Was music used as a political and ideological tool? This is examined by a contextual analysis combining music history and historical archaeology. The survey consists of a background account, focusing on the potential of music and some requests for political use, and three case studies, where musical reflections of societal tensions is investigated in folk music lyrics, Icelandic sagas and church art.

Titel: Rockmusic preferences in the rock programme. Popular culture, music preferences and repertoire inside a teaching institution. This paper raises some questions about the popular music that exists outside as well as inside institutions. From the example of popular music and rockmusic the students of a music teacher education programme based on rock music are asked for their taste for music in a brief questionnaire. The answers are compared to those concerning the music they used to like before they entered the education as well as the music played on the ensemble lessons at the programme.

The purpose of this study was to investigate into the praxis based sociocultural tools that are utilized to enhance language development in early childhood education. Four pre-school teachers were involved in this study. Two were recruited from an independent pre-school "Maria Montessori", practicing the pedagogical philosophy developed by Maria Montessori. Two were from a public pre-school herein named "Kvasten", which has no official philosophy but where the teachers (like in many Swedish pre-schools) work in a general alignment with the principles of Reggio Emilia pedagogics. The theoretical fundament of the study lies in the general theories of language development and education of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotskij, and the comparative element mainly concerns the variations in pedagogical praxis between the two pre-schools, and the way the teachers reason about language development.

Bakgrund: Early childhood caries (ECC) är en kariesform som drabbar barn i tidig ålder. Sjukdomen karaktäriseras av ett snabbt progressionsförlopp och drabbar ofta släta ytor på de primära tänderna.Syfte: Syftet med litteraturstudien var att beskriva förekomsten och identifiera riskfaktorer till early childhood caries (ECC) bland barn mellan 0-6 år i Europa.Metod: Materialet som användes i litteraturstudien är vetenskapliga publikationer som huvudsakligen inhämtats från den medicinska databasen PubMed. Resultatet bygger på en sammanställning av 15 vetenskapliga artiklar som publicerats mellan 2000-2014.Resultat: Förekomsten av ECC varierade från 13.0-85.0 % i olika länder och populationer i Europa. Lägst respektive högst förekomst sågs hos barn i Sverige. ECC associerades med mat-och munhygienvanor samt med flera socioekonomiska faktorer, där föräldrars utbildning, arbetssituation och etnicitet var av störst betydelse.

Title: Music teachers' practising of music - thoughts and values from a few music teachers. This study is about music teachers' valuation of practising music. The study is focused on the music that these teachers are devoted to but is not a part of their teaching in music. The papershows how the relation between music teachers and their ability to be devoted to practising music of their own choice, affects them as individuals. The study is carried out at a Swedish upper secondary school which has an educational programme that is focused on music.

This study is an examination of how conditions for formal and informal music education look like in two townships in South Africa. The purpose of this examination based on different actors' experiences is to find out whether the children in South Africa receive some form of music education and if so, how they think it can help the children in the surveyed areas. The information was gathered both through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a music teacher, music therapist, creative music facilitator, students, and people who have worked for Sida and partly through unstructured observations. The results show that children in the surveyed townships do not receive any formal music education through the school but they sometimes can get music education through a NGO project (Non Government Organization) which usually runs by an enthusiast and is funded by various aid agencies. My examination also showed that for the children in the surveyed areas music education can be an alternative from being on the streets, giving a positive group experience, the ability to express themselves, fend off young people from drugs and criminality and bring together various grouping.

This is a qualitative study aiming to find out how and why teachers work with art, music and movement in the English subject in the early years. In this study we have conducted a background study of previous research and as a starting point and as a point for reference we have relied on education policy documents like The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and the Swedish curriculum for the English school subject. Our research has consisted of interviews with six teachers and ten observation occasions in a total of three different primary schools. Our result show that there seems to be a consensus in both theory and praxis when it comes to integrating art, music and movement in learning and teaching of English in the early school years. The use of methods including art, music and movement in early language learning seems to promote the language development for all students but especially for young learners that require extra support for their language development.

My interest in examining what happens when you as a teenager are exposed to five or six times the amount of time as ordinary classes to music education derrives from my own experience as a music teacher at a school which has those kind of special music classes. During my career as a music teacher in grades 4 ? 9 in Swedish compulsory school I have taught music classes as well as ordinary classes for 18 years. During this time I have often wondered what this exposure means in retrospect. Is it the conquering and mastering of music skills that students remember when they?ve grown up to young adults, or is it something else?The aim of this study is to find out what it means for teenagers to have music as a school subject every day of their years in Swedish high school.

Events that have effected music teachers? view on education - Interviews with four violin-teachers. The purpose of this research is to find out what forms the violin-teachers view on how education shall be operated. Through qualitative interviews, four violin-teachers from around Sweden have told about their growing up, higher musical education and what is current. The result shows that the higher musical education and their own teachers throughout the years are factors that have partially shaped their views.

Is culture accessible to all in Sweden or do challenges in accessibility begin in childhood? During the academic year of 2010/2011 the Schools for Music and Arts in Göteborg participated in a project entitled En kulturskola för alla (A School for Music and Arts for All). This thesis' objective is to describe the project as well as examine the method the Schools of Music and Arts use to include children with disabilities and what suggestions can be made to further develop the project. Through En kulturskolla för alla, approximately 200 children with disabilities now haave better teachers. The project included 18 music and arts teachers from eight schools.