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The focus of this article is whether pure literature can contribute to education. As part of the study of modern literature in Swedish upper secondary school, novels about the future were examined, especially some that take a critical position toward modern civilization. In an experiment using the Perspective Text Analysis approach of B. Bierschenk and I. Bierschenk (1993), a master text was chosen that had shown the theoretically rooted dimensionality of "futurism" as a socially valid concept. Students (18 year olds) were given the task of writing about a novel using concepts from the master text, focusing on "public morality" for the analysis. The hypothesis tested was that a novel writer contributed to the edification of the public only if he or she translates some structural dimension in an ongoing process of civilization. To this translation is attached the sense of public morality. The three novels studied were "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (1932), "En levande sjal" ("A Living Soul") by P. C. Jersild (1980), and "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood (1985). The study found that when the students' responses were matched against the master structure, only one of the three novels, Huxley's "Brave New World," met the criterion of being educational with respect to futurism. It contributes to education by mediating an ideology behind a civilization process with a sense of morality. (Contains 18 references.) (SLD)

This article focuses on the perception of the surface and deep dimensions of a society and its relation to competence. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium who were exposed to videotaped projections of model societies on 2 occasions. They responded to 15 statements marking the degree of certainty with which they perceived quality of life in these societies. The instrument measured life quality (LQ) in a society by two factors, Eigenvalue (F1) and Visibility of Social Texture (F2). The model societies were based on three modes of modeling man interacting with his society, specifically on the concepts of: (1) behaviorism; (2) structuralism; and (3) process. The function of these concepts had been made to specify an actual society, namely Sweden. It was assumed that Sweden was familiar to the participants, but conceptually unknown. Between the two video occasions students were given a 9-week course in modern ideas and concepts, especially those from 20th century novels that connect to the three models. The certainty with which the students perceived the Eigenvalue and its conservation in Social Texture in the four societies differed significantly from the first to the second occasion. The first time, the only society that meets the requirements is the society based on behavior modification, while the other three seem unspecified to all the students. The second time there is a dramatic change in that Sweden now was assessed with the highest certainty, and secondly that is was conceptualized mainly by the behaviorist model. The study shows that the students have augmented their conceptual understanding of the dimensionality of a society and have come to "know" the society in which they live. (Contains 1 table, 4 figures, and 25 references.) (SLD)

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the Swedish citizen has developed his (or her) judgment concerning quality of life, attributable to real and simulated civilizations. It builds on a previous research report (B. Bierschenk, 1997) about three model societies that have been studied with the assumptions that: (1) competition implies selection; (2) selection implies independence; and (3) independence implies success. In this article it is shown that "certainty in preferential judgment" (judgment of life quality) constitutes a behavioral expression of survival competence. With a focus on the demonstrative definition of competence as development at the edge of competition and success, the study has generated two topographically derived scales. One is a time scale (T1) that is local and measures ecological variation. The other is a time scale (T2) that is global and measures evolution. (Contains 2 tables, 12 figures, and 8 references.) (Author/SLD)

This study, which includes data collected over a 15 year period, examines to what degree Swedish citizens' judgment concerning life quality is attributed to perceptions of real or simulated models of civilization. Subjects selected for the research study included Swedish male and female teachers, and doctoral students in business administration. The research instrument used required subjects to watch a video series that presented a vision of the U.S. society during the 1970s. The subjects were then asked to respond to questions regarding how they imagine themselves living in that society. Responses were expected to reflect initial assumptions that (1) competition implies selection; (2) selection implies independence; and (3) independence implies success. The subjects' notions of himself or herself as competent and successful in the simulated situation appears to be at stake. Subjects who emerge from "certainty in preferential judgment" concerning the possibility to integrate are seen as demonstrating a fundamental psychological expression of competence. Subjects' competence is judged in terms of perceived appropriateness in ability to meet the demands of certain environments. Findings suggest that Swedish citizens imagine potential life quality within simulated society in terms relative to self-judgments regarding their own competence or success in real-life situations. (Contains 23 references.) (MM)

This article presents a competence-oriented experiment on the comprehension of ideas in modern literature. Comprehension is defined as being indicative of competence as opposed to qualification. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium course on modern literature and society. Students were exposed to three videotaped projections of model societies on two occasions. They then responded to 15 propositions about the quality of life in the proposed societies using an instrument that measured competence of civilization through two factors, eigenvalues (F1) and visibility of social texture (F2). The model societies represent three dimensions of ideas connected to three scientific paradigms: affinity, structure, and process. These dimensions had been related and discussed in conjunction with the literary and cultural concepts of behaviorism, structuralism, and functionalism. Before the participants' second exposure to the video, they were given a recognition test in which they were asked to react to 15 ideas, each of which described an idea discussed. According to the analysis of variance there is a significant degree of difficulty in the ideas but no difference at all between the classes. The degree of difficulty was used to establish a super-ordinal scale that measures comprehension of ideas linked to the cultural dimensions of society. The values on the F1 and F2 competence factors were filtered through the values on the literary scale, making the dimensions of the model societies that describe degrees of competence apparent. These results show that literature is an instrument for perceiving the disparity of a society and for developing competence, provided that its basic idea is transparent. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures, and 16 references.) (Author/SLD)

This comparative study of social care programs at four European colleges in Nijmegen (Netherlands), Malmo (Sweden), Sligo (Ireland), and Lillehammer (Norway) looks at whether graduates from one country would be qualified to work in social care in the other countries. The report is based on analysis of data from official documents, questionnaires completed by students, interviews with administrators and teachers, and visits to the colleges. It contains a general description of each of the four colleges, a comparison of their curriculum timetables, and analyses of their curricula. Also included are sections analyzing student background data and goals; educational goals as expressed by staff; comparisons of curricula and student goals versus staff goals; comparisons of differences in practicum training; and an analysis of the compatibility of the different programs. The study showed that although the programs were fairly compatible, there were some differences; ranging from length of program (168 weeks at Nijmegen to 99 weeks at Sligo), to more stress on action and client need at Nijmegen, to a greater emphasis on theory at Malmo. Two student questionnaires and a list of interviewees are appended. (Contains 42 references.) (CH)

This project dealt with the quality of the child's life in day care centers and aimed at a better understanding of the concept of quality. The project was based on a synthesis of knowledge from various research traditions, as well as theories of education and developmental psychology (such as Bruner, Davydov, Leontiev, Piaget, and Vygotsky). The empirical data were collected mainly by observation. A number of 5-year-old children in Danish, Finnish, and Swedish day care centers were observed three times, each time for about 2 hours. Attention was focused on a single child at a time, on his or her activities, and on the child's interactions with peers and kindergarten teachers. Qualitative descriptions of the observations were analyzed. The preliminary results indicated that the concept of quality involves on the one hand the object of the activity, and on the other hand the child as a subject of the activity with others--children and adults. Further, it seems important for the child to be a subject together with other children, and to initiate activities both on a concrete content level, and on a content level characterized by ideas: metaphors, fantasy, abstract ideas, and symbols. Findings indicated that knowledge of the quality of life from the perspective of the child would enhance the development of the quality of education and care. (WJC)

The consciousness of dizygotic twins in their communication of actions and events as seen in the visual cliff pictures published by E. J. Gibson and R. D. Walk (1960) was studied in Sweden. In the process of communication, many different state spaces are generated. The methodology demonstrates that ecological and biophysical properties of language produce unique morphological profiles. Four pairs of twins were exposed to these pictures in a classroom setting, and the text they built in response to the pictures was studied. The focus is on one pair of dizygotic twins between 16 and 17 years of age. At the kinetic level, stable relationships are identified among naturally occurring periods, mass, and length of text. The relating invariants are demonstrated through a multivariate statistical strategy involving an analysis of variance, an indexing of the size of effects, and a regression analysis. At the kinematic level, adiabatic trajectories are apparent, for which underlying state spaces and interrelated metrics are shown to be dependent on the particular text producer. It is made evident that a certain degree of consciousness is carried by a particular kind of concepts and conceptual relations. Finally, it is concluded that perceiving a phenomenon differs not only in degree but in kind from conceiving its consequences. Results also support the use of the Scanator methodology developed by B. Bierschenk as a way to keep track of unitizing activities. An appendix presents the original Swedish text produced by the four subjects. (Contains 18 figures, 7 tables, and 26 references.) (SLD)

Scanator is an extremely valuable tool in the functional analysis of qualitative stability in text building behavior during writing. Scanator also allows for a detailed investigation of subtle changes emerging in the structural relations of emergent novelties. This study focused on the extension of the application of Scanator to one pair of dizygotic (DZ) twins. Specifically, the study examined whether DZ twins differ in their mental structures as they construct text. The test material consisted of a series of pictures in which a baby is navigating a visual cliff--a sheet of glass between the child and its mother. Subjects wrote a 5-page essay in Swedish, rewrote the essay, constructed an abstract of the essay, then wrote the essay in English. The Scanator results did not indicate any systematic differences. A powerful effect was found in the cohesion of the produced verbal flows, but no such effect was evident in the elasticity of text volume flows. Contains 13 references. (Author/MDK)

This booklet reports on a project for the development of teachers' manuals and students' workbooks for Swedish schools on peace education. The work resulted in five separate teachers' manuals and three students' workbooks for different educational levels. "Schooling for Peace" is seen as an ambitious effort in an area where the lack of teaching materials has been emphasized. A series of reports and miniprints dealing with the task has been published in Swedish. Some aspects of this work are emphasized in this booklet, using mainly texts and examples for the upper secondary school for illustration. (EH)

Experiences of Bosnian adult refugees within the Swedish educational system raise questions of diversity and indications of institutionalized discrimination. Approaches to diversity within the education system reflect those approaches within the social system of the nation. Sweden is presently moving toward a uniform and more restrictive European refugee policy. The reorganization of the Swedish education system has involved an ideological shift toward teacher efficiency, internationalization, democratization, and student orientation. Many teachers are finding themselves caught between mixed loyalties to their peer group or organization and student expectations and needs. The symbol of Janus has been used to represent the identification and manifestation of minority cultures in Sweden where some believe minority culture must be controlled by institutionalized authoritarian means. The adult education system is one of many institutionalized instruments of control of marginalized groups within society. Swedish language teachers who stress the absolute necessity of being able to write and speak fluent Swedish may not be aware of how their teaching may be perceived as assertions of power and control by refugee students. Language is a central component of the idea of diversity. The position is taken that those who persist through pedagogical practice in emphasizing the passive consumption of knowledge and skills are expediting institutionalized discrimination. (Contains 33 references) (YLB)

This study examined children's perceptions of child-rearing norms and values of the culture where the child is raised and provides a cross-cultural comparison of child development in India, Kenya, and Sweden. Children ages 8 through 13 in Kenya were asked questions regarding good and bad behavior and parents' sanctions, the results of which were compared with the previous surveys of India and Sweden. The findings came under four themes: (1) relations to society, parents, teachers, and friends; (2) obedience, adherence to rules or the making of one's own decisions; (3) children's duties, work and school; and (4) personality. The comparison showed that children in India and Kenya have strong relations to their families, while Swedish children are dependent on the social welfare system. Children in India and Kenya consider obeying adults to be good behavior, whereas few Swedish parents tell of teaching their children to obey. In India, school is the child's primary duty; in Kenya the necessary chores at home must be carried out; but in Sweden, no demands are placed upon the child. The results show that cultures support the development of certain character traits in individuals. (AP)

This article presents gender perspectives on the formation of the preschool teacher and the formation of a domain for education and child rearing of young children, commenting on the designation of the professional field of education as "female territory." The report uses the results from two Swedish studies: the first dealing with the period from 1900-1945 and the development of the new profession for caring and education along with its significance as a starting point for redistribution of responsibility for child care; the follow-up study on 1945-1972, a period in Swedish preschool history characterized by the integration of the field into state and municipal structures and by resistance toward the development of a professional domain for early childhood education. Methods used in the studies were quantitative and qualitative textual analysis of the Swedish magazine, "Kindergarten (The Pre-School)," official reports and legislation, interviews, and archival materials. The article addresses political implications for child care and early childhood education, asserting that the development of the preschool field shows the relationship between men and women as more important in deciding roles and behaviors than the gender definition itself. Other issues discussed include the societal and spiritual mother models, sex segregation, patriarchal ideas, paternal protection, and Froebelian theories. Contains 49 references. (BGC)

Drawing from a doctoral research project in progress, this report examined variations and similarities of five Swedish leisure centers for school-age child care and examined teachers' attitudes and behaviors toward the children categorized by the different leisure centers. Teacher-child interaction was observed and videotaped; and these data were augmented by interviews. The teachers also kept diary-notes of their daily activities and reflections, which served to connect the teachers' thoughts and conceptions with what in fact they were doing. The results indicated that there are large variations between the leisure centers, suggesting that systems of interaction are very different as a whole, as are the individual teachers' attitudes and behavior. To complete the thesis project, these differences will be formulated in categories such as group-control, style of leadership (authoritarian or democratic), positive or negative attitudes, and the teachers' ability to capture the children's attention. Contains six references. (Author/AP)

This qualitative study examined preschool programs for 6-year-olds in Sweden and the principles underlying children's activities. Ten preschool groups including preschool teachers, student teachers, and children were interviewed about their conceptions of content and methods of working in preschool. The results showed that the program is founded on factors and principles general to preschools, but also on principles that are specific to 6-year-olds. The activities in the 10 preschools were organized in different ways with regard to the facilities and time allocated to the groups. The teachers believed that the 6-year-olds were more capable of abstract thinking, perseverance, deduction, and curiosity than younger preschool children, and that they required a more challenging environment than younger children. The content and methods for working with the 6-year-olds were based mainly on ideas from Froebel's developmental, psychological, and social pedagogy, but were also influenced by the school tradition. The mission statements of the schools were of secondary importance in the choice of content, but are probably more important with regard to the methods of working. Greater emphasis is placed on children's social development in Swedish preschool programs than on intellectual development. (Author/AP)

This report summarizes two studies which documented the development of prelingually deaf children (N=4, N=40) in Sweden exposed to sign communication during preschool years. The first study involved analysis of video recordings, forming a qualitative description of social strategies used by four children with different social positions in the peer group. The second study compared results from a comprehensive testing program with 15-year-old subjects who had the early sign language exposure with previous results on orally trained deaf students. Results from both studies support the importance of easily accessible communication, i.e., a visual/gestural language mode, to social as well as intellectual development in deaf children. The study of social strategies found increasing importance of sign language. The structure and dynamic development of a group of children also had a great impact on an individual child's chances of success. The deaf eighth graders with early sign language showed superior achievement, particularly in understanding and use of written Swedish, but also in numerical and mathematical tests. (DB)

A Swedish study examined student and teacher perceptions regarding career education (CE) and working life orientation in Sweden's lower secondary schools. Twenty-seven pupils and a total of 30 school professionals (13 teachers, 8 career teachers, 3 school welfare officers, and 6 head teachers) from 3 lower secondary schools were interviewed. The school personnel generally believed the following: the foremost goal of CE is to aid pupils in their choice of educational courses and vocations; the main methods of achieving this goal are provision of career information to groups, individual counseling, and work experience programs; and intellectually weak, socially handicapped, and indecisive pupils should be targeted as priority groups for CE. Pupils generally felt that school is not preparing them sufficiently for working life and that school has not helped them increase their self-awareness as much as experiences outside school, parents, peers, and others have. The following actions were recommended: pupils' experiences should be used as a platform for classroom lessons; syllabi should be linked to society and working life; CE should be provided to ninth-grade students; resources for individual counseling should be increased; and more attention/time should be given to CE in teacher training programs. (MN)

This paper uses a qualitative case study approach to discuss the training of special education teachers in mathematics instruction. The case focuses on a remedial mathematics intervention based on social competence theory with an adolescent with cerebral palsy. Two student teachers attempted to encourage mathematics instruction which focused on the real life needs of the individual student. This report is organized around the group discussion by the teachers in training, which addressed: behavioristic and psychodynamic patterns of human conduct; the aims of mathematics education; appropriate mathematical content for the student with disabilities; necessary special education teacher preparation; constructivist goals for mathematics in teacher education; and a cognitive clinical approach for mathematics in special education. The paper concludes that mathematics studies for the special education student teacher should include: (1) mathematical knowledge; (2) literature on mathematical learning of students with special needs; (3) discussion of old and new beliefs about mathematics learning; (4) observation of students having mathematical difficulties; (5) construction of a remedial program for a special needs student; and (6) record keeping. (Contains 45 references.) (DB)

This is the second paper in a series of three, the objective of which is to describe the fundamental discontinuities of human existence. Self-reference is explored in the first section of this paper, arguing that neither time-space nor developmental dimensions are adequate to explain the problem of self-reference. It is argued that self-reference might indeed be an uncognizable degree of freedom that governs human existence. The founding propositions of the discontinuity theory then state that human existence subexists as difference, time-space, development, and self-reference. The second section maintains that human existence can be modeled as discursive strings encompassing a context-agent enacting an agent enacting an objective, where the objective itself can be an agent enacting an objective, and so on. The general theory of discontinuity is described in section 2. Section 3 encompasses the specific theory of discontinuity that builds on the heritage of classic theories explored in part 1. The theory encompasses three different forms of development: (1) canalization, which includes perspectivizing; (2) correlation, which includes systematizing; and (3) combination, which encompasses organizing. Nineteen figures illustrate the discussion. (Contains 18 references.) (SLD)

A study examined the curricular event in Swedish preschools known as "circle time," a daily event in most schools during which children, teachers, and sometimes parents gather in a circle for 20-30 minutes and share songs, discussion, music, storytelling, and group play. A special theme, such as the environment or a holiday, may also be dealt with during circle time. The practice began in Swedish kindergartens as early as the 1880s and has spread to preschools throughout the country. Through survey questionnaires, ethnographic observations, and interviews at 5 day care centers, the study sought to determine what actually happens during circle time and what the implications are for the participants. The results indicate that the activity is both a ritual, providing security for participants, and a meeting. To the staff, circle time corresponds to a need for structuring activities and indicating obvious changes during the day. To the children, circles are an asset entailing affirmatory meetings, but also a restraint in which discipline and coercion are prevalent. Contains 16 references. (MDM)

This report notes that two cultures may view similar childhood behaviors differently, and cites results of studies that compared Swedish and Indian parents' attitudes toward children to support this statement. The report describes a study that examined parental attitudes and behaviors among Lappish families in Northern Sweden, in which data was obtained from interviews with parents and children and videotapes of family interactions. Subjects of the study were traditional Lappish villagers who still rely on reindeer herding, fishing, and other traditional occupations to earn a living, and have little contact with the Swedish government or welfare system. Essentially, Lappish parents believe that children should be raised as they have always been, that children should "do the right thing," and that children should have the common sense to know what the right thing is. Lappish children are trained to make their own decisions and take responsibility for the consequences, and are expected to follow traditional occupations. They are taught through traditional stories and learn that, through obedience to rules that enable them to function safely in the harsh traditional herder life, they can, ultimately, achieve personal freedom. (MDM)

This pamphlet summarizes a Swedish thesis describing the social situation of hearing-impaired pupils (n=215) integrated in regular classes. Pupils with hearing impairments in grades 1-11 in two counties in Sweden were interviewed, questionnaires were completed by parents and teachers, sociometric studies were carried out, and observations were made. Results indicated that hearing-impaired pupils were less satisfied with their social situation and had fewer friends than their hearing classmates--particularly among teenagers. Younger pupils, pupils not using hearing aids, and pupils with better functional hearing had a more favorable social situation. The thesis concluded that many different circumstances influence the social situation of a pupil with a hearing impairment, including attitudes, behaviors, and personalities of staff and schoolmates; circumstances in the physical environment; and characteristics of the hearing-impaired pupils themselves, such as functional hearing capacity, additional handicaps, personality, and age. (Contains 15 references.) (JDD)

Planetary life support systems are at risk, and clean air, unpolluted water, and arable land are increasingly scarce. Environmental problems such as ozone depletion and the threat of global warming transcend national boundaries and confront our species with fundamental questions about survival, quality of life, and responsibility to future generations. The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the ecological crisis and to discuss the role of technology in the evolution, management, and correction of the crisis. It is suggested that what is needed to correct environmental problems is nothing less than a large scale transformation, including changes in institutions, norms, social practices, values, and lifestyles. Contains 39 references. (Author/DB)

Since 1986-87 there has been, at the Malmo School of Education (Sweden), a special internationalization group with representatives of all the School's boards of studies and the Department of Educational and Psychological Research. This group makes recommendations to the School on grants for different internationalization projects, keeps in touch with current projects, circulates experiences of internationalization activities within the different sections of basic training, and initiates new projects. Last year the internationalization group took the initiative in working out a description of the current internationalization activities at the School of Education and their future direction. This description was accepted by the Board of the School of Education on September 17, 1991, and is reprinted here. (Author)

Assumptions of strong, causal relations between cognition, language, and affection are often made in general and in bilingualism in particular. This paper presents first a set of hypotheses concerning the relation between affection and language in bilingualism. One subset is concerned with language learning, language maintenance, and mental health in migrant children, another with the critical period theory for language learning. A second set of assumptions is concerned with the relation between affection and cognition in general. A third set of hypotheses considers the relationship between language and cognition. Research and statements regarding the three sets are reviewed. The actual relationships are studied by means of canonical correlations, and compared with averaged simple correlations. No systematic correlations between language and emotion, and cognition and emotion could be found. However, the associations between language and non-verbal intelligence, reading and intelligence, and language and reading were found to be substantial. The results agreed with recent neuropsychological, endocrinologic, and perceptual research. Contains 88 references. (Author/LB)

The degree of consciousness of one's own familiar surroundings by high and low achieving students of a technical gymnasium in Malmo (Sweden) was studied through essays written about Sweden as a place to live. Focus was on testing the proposition that an individual's ability to express cognitive integration of experience in covariation with personal knowledge is reflected through natural language, based on the assumption that selective attention and schematic processing are directly built into the process of perception. Essays of 4 students were chosen from 85 submitted. Using these four subjects as coordinate systems and bio-psycho-physical frames of reference, it was demonstrated that the order of performance can be upheld over levels of analysis. The way in which transformations of aggregates of joint textual element complexes become fashioned into single functional unities was also shown. On the basis of these unities, absolute termini (limits) are established and named. These termini provide for the structural connections that specify the informational invariants of one's own referential reality. These invariants also serve as keys to consciousness in the Kantian sense (intuition), and thus give a precise phenomenological description of reality through systemic deduction. (SLD)

A study sought information about the success of the Swedish 9-year compulsory comprehensive school for students with home language other than Swedish. Immigrant adolescents and a sample of Swedish students answered a questionnaire discussing their lines of study after comprehensive school and the students' views on the home language instruction and instruction in Swedish as a second language. The size of some of the immigrant groups was large enough to enable a comparison between language groups. One objective was to examine the development of the immigrant students overall and seek potential causal relationships between certain background factors, the children's home environment, language usage, home language instruction, and study success. The results presented rather small differences between immigrant students and a sample of Swedish students. The most important prerequisite for school success was proficiency in Swedish. Immigrant students with a sufficiently good command of Swedish managed on average as well as Swedish students, in some language groups even better. Without a sufficient proficiency in Swedish, the chances were small that the students completed an upper secondary education. This applied especially to students who had immigrated during grades seven through nine, i.e., at the senior level of comprehensive school. Forty-seven tables and five diagrams are included; contains 29 references. (SG)

Since "enemy imgaes" are important ingredients in preparedness for war, they merit study by researchers interested in peace education and in the psychology of peace and war. This study postulates that images of enemy groups, whether they be foreign countries or various subgroups within one's own country, are an important psychological construct to the willingness of persons to support the use of military force or warfare. The study examines the phenomenon of enemy images among university students in four countries--Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the USSR. The study employed the use of an associative technique in which students were given a verbal stimulus (such as "The United States" or "The Soviet Union) and asked to write all the the words that occurred to them during a two minute period. Seven stimuli were used: the future, avoiding war, enemies of our country, peace, the United States, the Soviet Union, and human rights. The study was conducted during 1988 and 1989. Results included the finding that the attitudes of the university students from the four countries cannot be said to be greatly characterized by negative and stereotyped images of foreign countries or other foreign groups as enemies, or by militaristic attitudes in general. A 32-item list of references is included. (DB)

Discussing the concept of peace education, specifically from a Swedish perspective, this paper offers a rationale for the inclusion of peace education in school curricula throughout the world. Organized into three sections, the first section presents a historical background to current peace education efforts, and focuses on developments since World War II, especially within Swedish schools. The second section seeks to define the content of peace education, and includes a discussion of the intellectual history of war, the arms industry, human rights, developing nations, psychological problems, security policy, and peace and the environment. The third section discusses how peace education is currently put into practice in Swedish schools. An appendix contains an excerpt from a paper on peace education and a 25-item list of references. (DB)

This report summarizes results of research and development projects concerning disabled and elderly people and transportation services carried out at the Department of Traffic Planning and Engineering in Lund, Sweden. This summary is based on 12 previous reports. The first section examines Swedish policy which stresses enabling elderly and disabled people to live as normally as possible in their home environments. Policy components include requiring adaptation of public transport vehicles and local terminals to the needs of the disabled, provision of special transportation services, and an overall community-responsive public transportation system which meets individual needs. Components of such a system are then considered in more detail including the population needing special consideration, the traditional fixed route service, the service route concept (special routes and fully accessible smaller busses); and the Special Transportation Service (a demand based service for the most severely disabled). Discussed in the next section is the provision of accessible public transportation in the future (possibly the development and wide use of low-floor standard buses). Includes 18 references. The 8 appendixes (earlier reports published separately) are available from the Swedish Transport Research Board. (DB)

The paper presents a literature-based comparison of psychodynamic and behavioral approaches in the management of aggression in children. The section on psychodynamic approaches discusses the work of August Aichhorn, Fritz Redl, Nicholas Long, and William Glasser, in addition to discussions of life space interviewing and the importance of the concept of attachment. The section on behaviorism covers early applications, cognitive behavior modification, relaxation training, social skills training, reasons for the popularity of behaviorism, criticisms of behaviorism, and the emergence of "gentle teaching." Common grounds of the two approaches and their place within a larger synthesis are described. Global issues are raised about the causes of violence, such as disintegration of the family and of stable communities. An appendix offers a conceptual design incorporating nine models of remediation. (38 references) (Author/JDD)

This presentation is a brief summary of a book published in Swedish, "Kulturensbarn--Children of Culture." This book is a doctoral thesis which sought to investigate how cultural values, value systems, and norms influence children, which values are transmitted, and how they can be analyzed. The study employed data from families in the Indian state of Orissa and from Sweden. In Sweden, researchers questioned seven families from a group of reindeer herding Lapps and four families from among the religious sect of Laestadians. Interviews were conducted with young people, politicians, child psychologists, and teachers; children were administered questionnaires; and youth in Sweden and India wrote essays. Two types of results emerged. One type dealt with the identification of cultural patterns and how researchers could describe the patterns with the help of underlying structures and elements. The other type dealt with identifying which patterns were most obvious, how researchers could analyze them, and how patterns might harmonize or oppose each other. (SG)

An ecological approach to a psychological study of language is presented in this paper. Such an approach is based on the understanding that the process of perceiving an object or event is based neither in images or pictures nor in verbal or symbolic structures. In order for objects and events to become knowable, higher order cognitive processes must occur because these processes capture crucial qualities of structure and form. In light of the presupposed relationship between function and form, a computer simulation of neurotic behavior is critiqued. An 18-item list of references is included. (DB)

This book describes and discusses the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) study of writing in Sweden. The chapters are as follows: (1) Introduction; (2) Content and Planning of the Study; (3) Schools, Teachers and Pupils in Sweden 1985; (4) The Teaching of Writing; (5) Compositions and Scoring; (6) Relations between Background Factors and the Students' Writing Capacity; (7) Content of the Compositions; and (8) Pedagogical Consequences. Sixty-six references are attached. (SR)

The psychological concept of consciousness is examined in this article. It is argued that the intentionality of an individual's behavior is the key to the measurement and representation of his consciousness. The experiment examined concerns groups of students of business administration and civil engineering as well as professional economists, and their responses to models of future society. Topological structures are formulated based on the groups' responses in terms of various aspects of consciousness as it is here defined. Distinctive aspects characterize the groups such that they can be ordered on a scale from non-consciousness to consciousness. Increasing consciousness implies increasing conceptual autonomy in the respective group's cooperation with its environment, and consequently, also an increase in its chance to survive in competition. A 31-item list of references is included. (DB)

Previous cognitive science research demonstrates how the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) paradigm controls the cognitive processes of differentiation and integration. The present discussion advances the process to the fourth of five phases. Of the four dependent variables emerging at this stage, two are discussed: zero processing and variations in form. A short introduction provides some of the basics governing the process. Discussion of the variables begins with some arguments put forward in cognitive science. In agreement with general conviction, symbol processing results in strings of symbols or sentences on which operations such as addition, deletion, and insertion can be performed according to formally defined rules. By propositional knowledge, statements about the world, and by truth conditions, meaning of symbolic expression is defined. However, meaning (semantics) is not bound to a linguistic context of interpretation. Meaning denotes the knowledge system underlying various approaches to natural language processing. A system's semantics represents the constructor's world view, but also a theory of how it is organized to enable disambiguation of strings of symbols. Consequently, the conceptual base is constructed within formally different boundaries compared to the linguistic base, and the semantic principle cuts across the linguistic/non-linguistic dimension. Implications of this approach to semantic interpretation are discussed. (Author/MSE)

Topological and algebraic scales were compared in the representation of the concept of human worth in behavioral-semantic terms. In a first experiment, seven doctoral students of Business Administration in Sweden explored the notion of worth using definitions from at least 10 dictionaries as the intentional-semantic content. Each subject served as experiencer, observer, and recorder in grouping entries by content. On the basis of the differentiations presented and names proposed for each of the groupings, the prototypical character of the groupings were summarized using the following descriptive names: (1) eigenvalue; (2) reputation; (3) reliability; (4) impartiality; (5) rank; (6) significance; and (7) status. The structural connections were represented topographically. In a second experiment, 180 Swedish high school students, college students, and adult professionals were asked to make preferential judgments about the intentional-semantic content of 50 statements about worth prepared by the subjects in the first experiment. A statistical analysis of choice alternatives then established an algebraic scale. Factor analysis led to the conclusion that the structure of the investigated concept was qualitatively invariant. The topological scale was preferred because it gave a synthetic representation of the underlying structure, while the algebraic scale only gave an analytic representation of details. (SLD)

The aim of this article is to draw a distinction between qualification and competence. Although academic institutions, organizations, companies, and schools are focusing on competence development as the natural answer to new technical and societal demands, no one has provided a satisfactory operational definition of "competence." A dictionary search has shown that different areas of science and the humanities conceive of competence from an analytical point of view, but the Latin word on which the word is based comprises properties of intentionality, adding both dynamic and individual components to the concept. This became the starting point for a study in which a student's competence was examined through Perspective Text Analysis (B. Bierschenk and I. Bierschenck, 1993), an entirely new method for making visible the structural relations of texts. In this study, a teacher of Swedish language and literature at the upper secondary level made visible for himself a conceptual structure that served as a steering instrument for literature study in class and also as the criteria for assessing and grading. He tested a student, who had not been able to qualify to pass the course, and was able to show that the student had produced a structure similar to the one that served as a criterion. The study suggests that by this method it is possible to identify students' competence, which may be deep enough for scoring high on a test despite insufficient qualifications. Competence is found to be beyond qualifications, and a grading system that aims at taking into account every single person's ability, would profit from this new approach. (Contains 2 figures and 23 references.) (Author/SLD)

Due to increasing numbers of immigrants since 1960, especially Finnish children, Sweden began to establish instructional objectives and policies for immigrant children. Stated aims clearly stress that the primary aim in the teaching of immigrant children in Swedish schools is to promote bilingualism. While the short-term aim is to produce functional bilingualism (equal ability to speak and read both languages), the long-term aim is to equalize the learning opportunities for these children in the regular school system. V. P. John and V. M. Herner (1971) propose four models of bilingual education: informal, supplementary, transition, and two-way. The Swedish model is a transition model which uses the native language as a bridge to the national language. The mother tongue (Finnish) is developed to a relatively high degree during pre-school years and the first two years in the compulsory school; Swedish is given subordinate importance until grade 3 when training in the national language is necessary. The objective is to reach functional bilingualism by the end of grade 3. Development in the native language after age 10 is highly dependent upon the individual child and parental support. (EA)

Literature on four methods to effectively use the telephone to reinforce two-way communication in instruction is comprehensively reviewed. A study conducted in Sweden using teleteaching, telelecturing, dial-access, and teletutoring is briefly discussed. A bibliography of 93 items is included. (DS)