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- Aldrin, Viktor, 1980-
(författare)
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Prayer in Peasant Communities : Ideals and Practices of Prayer in the Late Medieval Ecclesiastical Province of Uppsala, Sweden
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study has been to identify, explain and delineate praying among peasant communities in the ecclesiastical province of Uppsala, Sweden. Four aspects have been examined through the perspectives of ideals and practices, namely the standards of prayer, devotional prayer, prayer in times of need and prayer cultures. The standards of prayer considered the physical and mental behaviour of the praying peasant woman or man. The most ordinary way to act during prayer was to stand with hands together, palm against palm, and to pray in the vernacular often using mental themes to enhance the devotion. Devotional prayers were foremost the three ‘standard’ prayers Paternoster, Hail Mary and Apostolic Creed, and could be used separately or combined. Prayer in times of need was possibly considered a matter of praying to saints, something that cannot be proven to have been either practiced or recommended on other, ordinary occasions where God and the Virgin Mary were considered the proper recipients of prayer. A few authentic prayers exist that were possibly said by peasant women and men in connection with miracles and these show the ability to construct elaborate prayers and to propose businesslike agreements with saints. These three prayers were required knowledge for a peasant woman or man and were put to the test in order to become a godparent, and were therefore made available in the vernacular by the parish priests. Ways to maintain the prayer cultures were through mnemonic techniques, and indulgences stipulating and confirming prayers used or to be used in connection with certain churches, days and places within the churches. Name saints could also be used, since the person and the name saint were considered to have a special bond. Prayer could also be used as protection for the living; since a prayer was considered to generate either merits or favours from a celestial patron to his or her client. The prayer life of those belonging to peasant communities was both elaborate and full of nuances.
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- Karlsson, Göran, 1954-
(författare)
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Instructional technologies in science education : Students’ scientific reasoning in collaborative classroom activities
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study originates from an interest in how students interpret scientific concepts demonstrated with animated instructional technologies. Currently, science education makes use of diverse kinds of instructional methods. For the advancement of instruction, new technologies have continuously been employed. Such new instructional technologies have always been accompanied with expectations that they should reform teaching. The availability of IT in schools and the selection of animated displays for instructional purposes provide new opportunities for education. This thesis accounts for three empirical studies of students’ collaborative work with instructional technologies. For the purpose of studying students’ scientific reasoning, two kinds of animated instructional technologies were designed. The three studies focused on designing and exploring the whole educational intervention and are located in the area of design-based research. They provide detailed analyses of secondary school students’ collaboration on an assignment of giving a joint written account of the instructed concept. Analytically, this is done within a socio-cultural framework that uses interaction analysis inspired by ideas from conversation analysis and ethnomethodology. Study I and Study II report observations from instructional technologies that deal with the flow of materials in the carbon cycle. The two studies were connected, as the outcomes from the first study informed the educational framing of the second study. Study III reports findings from a sub-study of a design experiment where students worked in a virtual laboratory to learn about the solubility of gas in water. The results from the studies show that students’ reasoning was influenced by several aspects, such as the characteristics of the animated display, language use, school cultural norms, the formulation of the assignment and the students’ pre-knowledge. The analyses also evinced that the students’ interpretation of a demonstrated concept often diverted from a canonical scientific one, which warns against assuming that the collaborative meaning-making of animated instructional technologies automatically leads to a creation of the desired scientific concept. These findings emphasise that when designing and applying animated instructional technologies in education, one has to consider a wider context where assignment formulation, teacher guidance, school culture and semiotic processes influence how students approach and frame their assignment.
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