Currently, new knowledge domains and professions emerge as a consequence of societal changes that transform that conditions for work and work integrated learning. Integration work directed to newly arrived immigrants is one example of such a new professional knowledge domain. In civic orientation, which is the empirical case in this study, quality, standardization and dialogue are explicit strategies that impact the planning, organization and decision-making in everyday work. The interest in this thesis concerns the professional knowledge that is developed in activities aiming to provide heterogeneous groups of immigrants an orientation in the Swedish society. By making activity systems the prime unit ofanalysis and scrutinizing the ways in which integration workers make use of a stipulated course material and interactions in a specific context, the aim is to contribute to the understanding of the pedagogical and communicative knowledge that is developed in practice. The analytical approach takes its point of departure in a socio-cultural perspective on workplace studies. Three separate studies have been carried out in which the empirical data consist of observations,interviews, video recordings, field notes and documents from various integration offices.The results show that different perspectives on knowledge and culture becomes relevant in local discourses on quality in integration work. What distinguishes the integration workers professional knowledge concern seeing and understanding the heterogeneity of immigrants' cultural backgrounds and bridging boundaries.Culture function as an organizing element in work that makes it possible to make distinctions and organize a contextually relevant content that can be elaborated together with the members in the groups. Such work imply transformation of procedures and it is shown that the integration workers develop their knowledge from specific situations to understand the significance of textually mediate dimeanings in other situations. Knowledge is developed as the integration workers move between different situations and activities. It is concluded that the meaning-making involved in bridging between different cultural contexts relies on extensive knowledge in and about the recognition of the other and of interactions based on equal grounds. Negotiating agreements with the members of the groups about how common possibilities and responsibilities can be understood is central for respecting heterogeneity in the process and is at the core of the integration workers professional knowledge. Considering the future development of integration work, cumulative structures are needed that recognize and support the development of the integration workers professional knowledge within as well as between organizations and other related fields of practice and in relation to higher education.

This investigation is about how the Civic Orientation Course within Umeåregionen has been received among newly arrived refugees. The purpose of the essay is to research how the Civic Orientation has worked within the Umeåregion with focus on the municipality of Umeå, with both a perspective of transmitter and receiver. The Civic Orientation Course is a legal right for all refugees between 18-64 years in Sweden and it is an introduction to the Swedish society. To do this, interviews have been done with one Social Consultant from Umeå kommun and three newly arrived refugees. The requirements on interviewed newly arrived refugees have been that they have finished the Civic Orientation course and are over 18 years. To answer the investigation questions; what kind of information and through which communication channels have Umeå kommun addressed their communication to newly arrived refugees, how have the information from Umeå kommun been received among the newly arrived refugees and how cultural and social differences may matter in the receiving of the information, three theories have been used; orientalism by Said, Shannon and Weaver “Model of Communication” and the Encoding/Decoding by Hall. The result shows that language is the largest barrier for newly arrived refugees to interact within the Swedish society, even though it is not the purpose of the Civic Orientation to teach Swedish the course has to give ideas about where interaction can happen with other Swedes. Overall social and cultural experiences have been the purpose to the distance between refugees and Swedes. The interviewed are pleased with the course and the teachers but lack information about how they in certain specific situations are supposed to act in the Swedish society.

In Swedish primary school, the subjects geography, history, social studies or citizenship education and religion are integrated and known as one school subject called civic orientation. Through history, the civic orientation is characterized as a subject with a strong role to bring up a specific form of citizen. In civic orientation, there is mandatory content which the teacher must relate to. The mandatory content is based on certain views of children’s abilities and needs and thus sets the framework which either enables or limits the children. But the teacher also has the freedom to add content based on his/her own personal view of children’s needs and interests, and at the same time the curriculum also leaves room for interpretations. The purpose of this study is to analyze how the child in primary school is described, or what representations of the child are dominating in the civic orientation curricula. Furthermore, the aim of this study is to compare these representations to what three different teachers express when they motivate their didactic choices in civic orientation. The purpose of the comparison is to see whether the teachers are maintaining or questioning these representations of the child when they relate to the content expressed in the civic orientation curricula. The result shows that the content of the curricula is based on ideas that the child is socially and cognitively immature and therefore in need of simplification and protection. The teachers contribute to both questioning and maintaining these ideas, but their statements also reflect structural conditions of the school.

Background: The growing number of migrants, and refugees in particular, can have complex impacts on healthcare systems as they face pressures of responding to new healthcare needs. Refugees report lower levels of self-assessed health and psychological well-being compared to host populations, but paradoxically, many refrains from seeking care although they perceive the need to. Health promotion and improved health literacy has been identified to improve service utilization and health outcomes of refugees. Aim: Investigating perceptions of health communicators in implementing a Swedish version of the teach-back method for improved health information recall – Förstå Mig Rätt (FMR) – in the Swedish civic orientation for newly arrived refugees. Method: Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to explore the utilization of FMR. Content analysis was used to analyze the data, and an integrated model for health literacy by Sørensen et al. guided the discussion in examining how FMR contributed to improved health literacy. Findings: Three themes emerged from the data: (i) Appreciating the impact of FMR; (ii) valuing the role of a communicator and; (iii) practical challenges of implementing FMR. The findings demonstrated an overall appreciation for the method but implicated changes in the layout for further improvements. Conclusion: FMR serves its purpose of ensuring recall and understanding of health information among newly arrived refugees attending the Swedish civic orientation. For optimal utilization, groups should be adjusted for participant educational level while further clarification on restating information, and extended time for dialogue, is recommended.