It is important that children develop their communicating skills to be able to interact withother persons in different social contexts. Without the necessary skills, the child will struggleto understand others, as well as to be understood. My qualitative research takes place in a preschoolclass at a primary school in Stockholm, where I from a sociocultural perspective onteaching and learning aim to clarify how the students’ ability to develop their linguisticperformance and their communicative competence is stimulated within this primary preschool’seducational framework. Empirical data was collected both through observations ofthe daily activities in the pre-school class as well as through interviews of three employedteachers. My research indicates that the educational framework in this pre-school class is structured tocomply with the official Swedish Curriculum, Lpo. 94. The students’ linguistic performanceand their communicative competence were well stimulated through a diverse set of organizedactivities and their own unstructured play. My research also concludes that the educationalframework was built around a constant interaction and collaborative measures between theteachers and the students, as well as among the students themselves. I can from thesociocultural perspective hence conclude that the students are given all the tools needed todevelop their linguistic performance and their communicative competence.

The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which verksamhetsidé is seen within the Swedish educational context. In Sweden, the concept verksamhetsidé is used for an idea or a set of ideas related to the practice of an organization, for instance a school or a school district. Although the importance of such shared ideas is often pointed out by practitioners as well as researchers within the field of school development, there is little consensus about their meaning. When it comes to questions about the actual function and character of such an idea, or set of ideas, little guidance is found in the literature. This thesis seeks to contribute to such knowledge. In order to describe variations in the ways such ideas are seen as well as in the ways working with such ideas are seen, a phenomenographic study was carried out. The empirical data consist of deep interviews with 14 school directors of education in one larger city in Sweden; each responsible for several schools and preschools in one district. As directors they were all involved in the process of developing a verksamhetsidé, to guide all educational activities in the area. Results suggest that verksamhetsidé can be seen as a trademark, as putty, as a compass, as a map, or as a shared perspective. Each of these conceptions is used as a label for a category of description, and together they constitute one of the study’s outcome spaces. When it comes to working with such ideas, another variation is found. This variation is described through the concepts of top-down implementation and bottom-up sensemaking. Moreover, the data suggest no correlation between a certain way of seeing a verksamhetsidé and a certain way of seeing how to work with it. / Människors sätt att se varierar. Samtidigt verkar det vara av betydelse att medarbetare i skolan och förskolan utvecklar gemensamma sätt att se åtminstone vissa aspekter av verksamheten. Att bygga upp och fördjupa förståelsen av en gemensam idé framställs i skolutvecklingsforskningen som en viktig aspekt av skolans och förskolans ledarskap. I den här avhandlingen beskrivs variationen i sättet att se verksamhetsidéer, och arbetet med sådana, som den framträder i en grupp skolchefer med övergripande ansvar för pedagogisk verksamhet. Variationen diskuteras sedan i relation till olika sätt att se skolutveckling och ledarskap, samtidigt som avsaknaden av koppling mellan specifika sätt att se verksamhetsidéer och specifika sätt att se arbete med sådana problematiseras. I den avslutande diskussionen framhålls särskilt betydelsen av att de som befinner sig i skolans eller förskolans praktik utvecklar kunskap om variationen och använder sig av den för att bygga upp ny kunskap med relevans för verksamheten och arbetet i den. Till grund för de resultat som presenteras ligger en intervjuundersökning genomförd i en större svensk stad, i vilken det vid tiden för studiens genomförande pågick ett arbete med att bygga upp en, för all pedagogisk verksamhet i staden, gemensam verksamhetsidé. / <p>The original ISBN number of this work ( 978-91-7063-520-5 ) has been replaced by a new one: 978-91-7063-571-7.</p>