Effects of climate change, urbanization and global homogenization are resulted in the degradation of land and losses of natural habitats. Ecological design integrates nature into urban environment by respecting natural ecological principles and processes and creating resilient urban biotopes which also can be used by local urban communities. The aim of the thesis is to answer the research questions: How ecological design principles can be applied for re-design of Toledo Riverfront (with requirements of the design competition)? and What is the ecological design in landscape architecture? I participated in the USA design competition with the aim to create a vision and redesign of Toledo Riverfront in Ohio State, USA. The site is located in the south point of Lake Erie. As a result of a long industrial activity, riverfront of Toledo had been transformed into inaccessible and abandoned brownfields. In my proposal I applied ecological design principles on three scales: the city of Toledo by reinforcing of ecological connection and creating green corridors along the river; the intermediate scale by suggesting public parks along the river front and on the fine level by proposing detailed design including remediation of the site and use of dredged material.

The purpose of this thesis is to study to what extent the UN millennium development goals have influenced Sweden?s development policy. The research method that I have used is a qualitative text analysis and I have studied the ideas in governmental texts and millennium development goals reports from 1995-2008.My hypothesis is that the basic ideas that has symbolized Sweden?s development policy has not changed much since the adoption of the millennium development goals in year 2000. This hypothesis is based on different ideas that the basic perspectives in international development policy are rather constant.My conclusion is that many of the areas that are affected by the millennium development goals already are prioritized areas within Swedish development policy, for example poverty reduction and gender equality.

The aim of this dissertation is to examine and compare William Easterly?s and PGU?s (Shared Responsibility: Sweden's Policy for Global Development) different views on development and international development cooperation. The methodological approach chosen in this study is an analysis of ideas based on the following questions:1. Which principles should be applied to development and international development cooperation?2.

The main purpose of this study was to examine how preschool teachers are working to promote each child's language development and whether they can ensure that they do that. Therefore I wanted to find out what a good language development implies for each teacher, how they work to promote each child's language development in daily practice, how they measure the actual language development and also what conditions the teachers have, to engage in a language development way to work. For the study, I chose a qualitative method, with structured interviews and all together I interviewed six preschool teachers, within the same organization in a suburb close to Stockholm.  The results showed that there is an ambiguity, among the preschool teachers, in what a good language development means, but it can be stated that they do have a language development way to work even if it needs to be developed. Further on, it has emerged that the teachers have the tools to measure children's language development, although they do not have the conditions yet to use the method to the fullest. About the preschool teachers own conditions in order to operate in a language development way to work, I concluded that they have a strong foundation to build on, but they still have much work ahead of them.

The market for management training programs is growing and the supply of the service is increasing and getting further diversified. A consequence is a market with a wide variety of definitions of the very concept of development, and subsequently a wide variety of practices and methods to achieve development. The individuals that are subject to these programs seldom know what they are purchasing, or what to expect. When assuming a transfer of the developers view on development to the subject, a need for a greater understanding of the concept arises. The purpose of this thesis is to understand what views on development do exist among management trainers and map underlying dimensions of the views to increase the understanding of the concept of development.

A high degree of urbanization with growing cities has raised a need of transforming closed landfill sites for giving them new uses. This study aims to investigate how old landfills can be re-used, what has lead to the new uses, and for what and whom the transformed site will be an asset. The method used is a case study of four different landfills in Stockholm county, Sweden. The case study is analyzed in the light of former studies regarding re-use of degraded urban areas, so called brownfields, and in particular studies and reports of landfill re-use. The result indicates that old landfill sites is identified as an area with possible values if transformed properly, in the case study area especially as green structure and recreation areas.

Old industrial sites bear witness of the unsustainable industrial developments in the past. Today many of them stand abandoned and empty, old structures lacking function in our present society. We have in this thesis participated in a visionary student competition arranged by IFLA, International Federation of Landscape Architecture by developing a proposal based on a vision of how Stockholm can stimulate a greener development. We have done this by turning an unsustainable industrial site in the city into an ecological node; Arboretum Lövholmen. Our aim is to develop an entry for IFLA?s visionary student competition by creating a new sustainable design for the industrial area of Lövholmen in Stockholm. We have worked with the following research questions: How can we create a visionary design proposal for Lövholmen that promotes sustainable development with the help of ecological design? How can the competition format be a design tool? How can the working process developing a competition entry progress? The competition demands have shaped our working process and functioned as a platform for the structure of this thesis.

Fytoremediering är en relativt ny saneringsmetod men har de senaste åren blivit mer uppmärksammad inom forskning. Fytoremediering bygger på växters naturliga förmåga att rena förorenad mark, vatten eller sediment. Detta görs genom ett antal olika processer där växter kan ta upp, omvandla eller stabilisera ämnen och på så sätt sanera föroreningar på ett biologiskt hållbart sätt. Våra städer blir alltmer tätbefolkade i och med befolkningsökningen i världen och en stigande inflyttning till städerna. Det finns många outnyttjade postindustriella områden i dagens städer som lämnat efter sig förorenad mark, vatten eller sediment som kan utgöra en risk för människors hälsa, djur och natur. Dessa så kallade brownfields kan få en ny användning och på så sätt undviks exploatering av värdefull natur och åkermark. Med hjälp av växter kan dessa brownfields saneras samtidigt som platsen får ett nytt liv i form av till exempel en park för rekreation.

AbstractIn my work on language development in preschool the purpose was to examine how and to what extent the pre-school supports children with special needs in their language development. Trough qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers, I wanted to see how they work with language development in preschool. In the study, Main questions asked in the inquiry :How do teachers and support children?s language development?What techniques, resources and tools available to facilitate language development? The conclusion that I made from my inquiry is that the primary language stimulation methods teachers use to encourage children?s language development are rhymes telling, books reading and song singing based on active selection of pieces that match the children?s maturity level.And how they are using different language stimulation techniques Karlstad model, TAKK (Signs of augmentative and alternative communication) and TRAS (Early registration of language development) to promote children?s language development. Keyword: Language development, language stimulation, treatment, communication, methods..

My aim with this diploma work is to find out if the students consider development deliberations as a good forum in order to promote their knowledge development or not. I have also examined if the development deliberation is experienced as giving for the pupil or not, what I have been studying from the pupil's perspectives.MethodI have implemented three qualitative interviews with three students from class nine in a compulsory education that lies in Botkyrka municipality. There, I have also an implemented questionnaire survey with two half classes from same class.Materials To my study I have linked literature where research aims himself in on how teachers have worked with development deliberations in the school.Results Students that I have interviewed does consider development deliberations as a knowledgep romoting forum, but most as a forum for clear about study results. The students in the survey consider development deliberations as giving only when the result turns out to bee good.Importance for teachers As each development deliberation is unique, you can not come to a certain implication that all deliberations are experienced in the same way as the result shows. But that can last stakeholder for the teacher is to see how one development deliberation can to be experienced of several students.

AbstractMy purpose of the investigation is to enter deeply into the knowledge of the Individual plan of the development and to examine how teachers, pupils and parents look at the Individual plan of the development and the purpose of the Individual plan of the development in school. My question of the main problem in this investigation was to examine the expectation on the Individual plan of the development from teachers, pupils and parents and if the Individual plan of the development has been influence the cooperation of parents and the influence of the pupils also how and if teachers, pupils and parents apprehend some kinds of changes.The review of the literature begin with a closer study about our document of control, witch are the curriculum of the compulsory school (Lpo 94), The National Agency for Education General Advice for the Individual plan of the development (2005), a study of the development of the cooperation of the parents and the influence of the pupils under the years of research about it.I have in my investigation used qualitative interview in different forms like the ordinary interview, interview on telephone and focussed group interview with teachers, pupils and parents. The result of my conclusion from the investigation is that the information and the knowledge of the Individual plan of the development are important to be able to increase the influence from the pupils and a different cooperation from the parents in the development of the school with the Individual plan of the development. My examination is small and not generalised but I believe that it still can represent the attitude of the Individual plan of the development. The consequence of the investigation shows that pupils and parents have vague idea of the Individual plan of the development.

An ever-increasing population, urbanization and visions towards sustainable cities clarifies the need of densification. When densifying existing urban areas adding storeys could serve as a residential densification, which would also meet the market demand for centrally located apartments. An increased understanding of the potential of vertical densification gives way to the aim of this thesis to increase the amount of centrally located housing.This thesis provides knowledge of adding storeys and how property owners can identify opportunities in their existing building stock.The first question, What kind of residential densification takes place in Sweden today? highlights ways of residential densification; development of brownfields, infill and adding storeys, where adding storeys is what this thesis then focuses on. The result came through a literature review that also clarified important factors when adding storeys.

Learning organizations and organizational development are interesting subjects that does not examine municipal organizations and private organizations an equal amount.  Furthermore, there exists little research on the effects of competence development for individuals in a leadership role within organizations. Because of this, we wanted to examine the impact of competence development in business modeling and how it affected local government activities. Competence development is used by organizations to develop their business and achieve a greater competitive advantage, but does competence development for individuals in a leadership role lead to organizational development? This paper examines competence development in the form of a business modeling course via the Bitstreamproject and the effects that occur within three municipalities as a result of the competence development. By interviewing three participants and four coworkers within different municipalities and studied the data from the Bitstream project, we can not conclude that competence development within business modeling leads to organizational development, only that it exists a tendency for it.

Abstract This paper focuses on whether individual development plans as well as action programmes are needed.Pupils in need of particular support get to be involved in an action programme ? the school needs to provide any particular support a pupil needs. However, the individual development plan does not substitute the action programme. Thus an action programme as well as an individual development plan will be provided to students in need of particular support.The individual development plan follows the pupil throughout the entire education, regardless of whether its content changes, whilst the action programme pertains to a limited period of time. Pupils that are not in need of particular support are not likely to need to set goals for themselves in addition to those already set outside of school.

Strategic development is something that concerns all companies, regardless of which industry they?re in. There is extensive research on this topic but one can question if the same theory also applies to E-businesses. Using case studies, this paper looks at strategic development in E-businesses and tries to answer whether strategic development in internet based companies is unique or if existing theory can still be applied. The predominant approach is to look into if E-businesses, due to a turbulent environment, rely less on market research and focus more on internal resources than would be expected by companies in more stable environments.