Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska (Lincoln Campus), 1991. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-110).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska (Lincoln Campus), 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 99-110).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-136).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska--Lincoln, 1993. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [92]-97).

Children's language development is highly connected to the success of every school. Especially when it comes to the children learning reading and writing skills, regardless of what method the schools use in order to achieve this. An early intervention can facilitate the learning of reading comprehension. Reading aloud and playing with the language learning is the greatest gift we can give our children and students. Children learn how to use a book by turning the pages and see how the words and texts are structured. Together you create a moment of closeness and discover how you can share your thoughts and experiences using pictures and words in the book. The purpose of this study is to gain insight and understanding into how teachers motivates and leads the children towards the discovering their own joy of reading. These also include those children that would rather play than sitting still listening to children's literature. The survey is a series of interviews with six class teachers from pre-schools in a suburb south of Stockholm. The result shows that teachers believe that reading aloud and having follow up book talks are an important part of capturing children’s interest for reading, especially children who do not have their own motivation to be involved in learning to enjoy books. Reading aloud using intonation and different voices stimulates children's curiosity, and in turn this results in children themselves getting involved in the narration.

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk’s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a rhetorical analysis of both book talks. As a complement to the rhetorical theories I use concepts from Readers’ Advisory such as ”book appeal” and ”reading appeal” to talk about what in the books themselves and in reading as an activity can be used as an argument.The results of the study show that in principle all children wanted to read one or more of the books presented in the book talk. To achieve this interest from the children the librarians know how to use the stories in the books and to draw on the arguments from the books themselves. This involves different appeal-elements from the books as plot summary, characters, genre, style and atmosphere. The book talking librarians also used different rhetorical techniques including evidentia, identification, pathos and ethos. Ethos especially in the form of the benevolence or goodwill the book talker shows the audience by including them in the book talk and trusting them to share what they think about the books. This study is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Syftet med denna studie är att belysa hur förskollärare resonerar kring högläsning och boksamtal i förskolan samt deras tankar kring läsmiljöns uppbyggnad för att den ska bli språkligt utvecklande. I denna kvalitativa studie har fem förskollärare intervjuats och tre förskolors läsmiljöer har observerats för att samla in data till studien. Det insamlade datamaterialet har transkriberats och kategoriserats för att sedan analyseras utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Vår studie visar att förskollärare förstår vikten av användandet av högläsning och boksamtal för barns språkutveckling, men att de stora barngrupperna ofta gör att språkutvecklingens syfte försvinner. Förskollärarna hävdar också att högläsningen borde prioriteras mer i verksamheten vilket vi genom denna studie vill fortsätta att inspirera till. / The purpose of this study was to examine what preschool teachers think about reading out loud for children, having book conversations in preschool and their thoughts on the structure of the reading environment in order for it to be linguistically developing. In this qualitative study, five preschool teachers have been interviewed and three preschool reading environments have been observed to collect data for the study. The collected data have been transcribed and categorized and then analysed from a sociocultural perspective. In our study, we have found that preschool teachers understand the importance of reading out loud to children as well as book conversations for children's language development, but with large groups of children the purpose of language development often gets lost. Preschool teachers also argue that reading should be given more priority in the preschool, through our study we want to continue to inspire this.

The purpose of this study is to explore how norms and values are described in children´s literature and compare these descriptions with the democratic norms and values in the curriculum.  The theory is inspired by Dewey’s theory about the democratic society. We use, concepts that we have identified in the preschool curriculum that define democratic values. The selection of books that we studied have been chosen from a digital multilingual picture book service called polyglutt which is used in preschools all over Sweden.  The method we used to obtain the result was visual text analysis with a qualitative method approach. Previous research shows a collective view of which values are important in preschool and society. The common theme that we saw in the analysis result was the value of care which was shown in many ways in both text and illustrations in all the books.  The result has shown different ways the characters can represent democratic values through their actions. The books allow children the opportunity to understand and relate to different values. In the discussion the importance of the opportunities that children’s books can contribute to their knowledge of democracy. We have discussed the importance of the preschool teacher’s purpose and knowledge surrounding the literature that is present in the preschool. / Syftet med detta arbete är att beskriva hur värdegrundsfrågor behandlas i barnlitteratur och jämföra dessa beskrivningar med den värdegrund som presenteras i läroplanen. Teorin är inspirerad av Deweys teori om det demokratiska samhället. Vi använder de begrepp om värderingar som finns i förskolans läroplan. Urvalet av böckerna som vi analyserat har valts från en inläsningstjänst som heter polyglutt och som används på förskolor i hela Sverige. Metoden som tillämpades för att få fram resultatet var visuell textanalys med en kvalitativ ansats. Tidigare forskning visar en gemensam syn på vilka värderingar som är viktiga i förskolan samt samhället. Det som var ett övergripande tema i resultatet var värderingen omsorg där vi kunde se omsorg i både bild och text i samtliga böcker på många olika sätt.    Resultatet visar olika sätt som karaktärerna kan förmedla demokratiska värderingar på genom sina handlingar. Böckerna ger barnen möjlighet till att relatera till och förstå de olika värderingarna.    I diskussionsdelen lyfts vikten av barnlitteraturens möjligheter för barns kunskap om demokrati och vikten av förskollärarens syfte med och kunskap kring den barnlitteratur som ska finnas på förskolan.

Förskolans verksamhet ska arbeta med att ge barnen kunskap om naturvetenskap och hållbar utveckling. Studiens syfte har varit att undersöka hur bilderböcker med bondgårdsmiljöer kan bidra till att uppnå lärandemålet utbildning för hållbar utveckling genom exemplet hållbar livsmedelsproduktion. Genom ett tillfällighetsurval har sex bilderböcker som skildrar bondgårdsmiljöer valts ut. En konventionell innehållsanalys användes för att analysera bilderböckernas text och bild. Resultatet visar att bilderboken kan användas i undervisning med barnen som ett pedagogiskt verktyg för att bidra till att uppnå lärandemålet utbildning för hållbar utveckling. Samtidigt ställer det krav på förskollärarens kunskaper om hållbar utveckling och förmåga att synliggöra och fläta samman de sociala-, ekonomiska- och miljömässiga dimensionerna. Som stöd rekommenderas att förskollärare använder undersökande boksamtal. / The preschool's activities should include giving the children knowledge about science and sustainable development. The purpose of the study has been to investigate whether picturebooks with a farm context can contribute to achieving the learning goal for sustainable development through the example sustainable food production. Through a random selection, six picturebooks depicting farm context was selected. A conventional content analysis was used to analyze the texts and images of the picturebooks. The results show that picturebooks with a farm context can be used as a pedagogical tool to help achieve the learning goal education for sustainable development. At the same time, it puts demands on the educator's knowledge of sustainable development and their ability to make visible the social-, economic- and environmental dimensions. As support, it is recommended that preschool teachers use investigative book conversations.