The Swedish school lunch is somewhat unique in its conception and has been an area of increasing interest in the years. Areas of recent interest have focussed predominantly on food, nutrition, health, and more recently sustainability. The aim of this thesis is to explore how children experience, interpret, interact with and make sense of the process of ‘doing school lunch’ in elementary schools in Sweden. Whilst national and local policies offer guidance as to how the Swedish school lunch should be executed, little consideration has been given to the complexities of the mundane and everyday interactions that children encounter on an almost daily basis. Through seven semi-structured interviews and the participants mapping their movements through this activity, children’s own experiences and understandings of ‘doing the school lunch’ are explored From an ontologically position of constructionism as the point of departure, I have utilised Reflexive Thematic Analysis to critically analyse the collected data and generated themes. The children describe how different spaces, adults and peers contributed to their experiences during the prescribed time of the school meal. Faced with intrusions of their personal space and time, I would argue that the children construct and influence the school meal environment into predominantly a social space and time with peers, within the constraints presented to them.

The purpose of this study is to gain a deeper understanding of what preschool educators think about gender work and how they work with gender in preschool. The aim is also to contribute to a broader understanding of the educators way of promoting gender equality in preschool. The study is based on a qualitative method were eight preschool educators were interviewed. Previous research has also highlighted gender, which has also been our central research area. The theory is based on West and Zimmerman's “Doing Gender” theory and Connell's theory "About Gender". The results of the study show different ways of working with gender and the importance of gender work in preschool. Gender work at preschool was evident through conversations with the children, language usage and preschool materials. The importance of gender work was expressed through the educators' norm-critical approach and their approach to non-gender-aware colleagues. The final discussion shows a link between previous research and our results, but also how a gender perspective in the work with the children benefits society as a whole.