| 11. |
- Bradley, Linda, 1961
(författare)
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Language learning and technology. Student activities in web-based environments
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The impact of the web as a communicative arena, based on the use of social software, has changed conditions for communication on all levels of society; privately, at work and in education. This has opened up for multicultural communication, frequently with English as the lingua franca. Exploring how the web and web-based technologies afford learning activities is something that is related to practical and theoretical interests in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). These interests are also the foundation for this thesis. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of how web-based environments can change the conditions for language learning. Within a socio-cultural framework, the thesis explores activities and student interaction in web-based learning environments in language learning for engineering students in higher education in Sweden. The main research question is how web-based language learning activities contribute to the development of language competences. There are four more specific questions: How are web-based technologies situated in language learning environments? What forms of activities and student interaction evolve? How can web-based peer reviewing contribute to language learning? How can intercultural exchanges contribute to language learning? The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises four case studies of educational designs including student activities in blogs and wikis. Data consists of logs of student driven web-based activities and interviews. The first study investigates how students use a wiki as their joint workspace. The results show that the students either use the web page or the discussion forum on the wiki, entailing both a form-based and a content-based focus. Three types of activity patterns emerge: contributing and writing together; evaluating and peer reviewing; and arguing and discussing. The second study explores rationalities of student co-production of texts on a wiki. The patterns of interaction in groups can be characterized either as co-operation or collaboration. The results show that the collaborating groups are more frequent in giving peer response. When writing together,collaboration with contributions from diverse perspectives changes the dynamics not only of text production but the text in itself. This has potential for language learning since the students become involved in many levels of text production, from very detailed linguistic aspects to discursive and semantic aspects. The third study investigates student interaction in a poetry blog exchange with native-English speaking students from the US. In the blogging activity, the students share their interpretation of poems by a Swedish poet. The analysis of the blog postings uncovers four themes of student interaction: blogging in an educational environment; displaying cultural belonging; forming threads that thematize content and meaning of poems; and discussions of language and translation issues in an intercultural environment. Study four investigates an intercultural exchange, targeting student peer-reviewing in a wiki. The procedure of giving comments to and receiving comments from peer students from another culture offers diversity to text revision processes. Being engaged in an intercultural peer review exchange offers opportunities in getting an insight into different ways of expression, conditions of giving and receiving feedback, cultural differences when meeting someone from outside of one’s own disciplinary field and from another country and with another language background. This is in line with core issues of intercultural exchanges that concern mastering expressions of other cultures than one’s own. The four studies contribute to the understanding of how web-based environments can be used in language learning. They display a range of productive student interaction such as discussing, collaborating, and responding through text. In conclusion, they demonstrate that educational designs utilizing web-based writing technologies offer a space to develop discursive, linguistic and cultural competences.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Johansson, Stefan, 1980
(författare)
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On the Validity of Reading Assessments: Relationships Between Teacher Judgements, External Tests and Pupil Self-Assessments
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to examine validity issues in different forms of assessments; teacher judgements, external tests, and pupil self-assessment in Swedish primary schools. The data used were selected from a large-scale study––PIRLS 2001––in which more than 11000 pupils and some 700 teachers from grades 3 and 4 participated. The primary method used in the secondary analyses to investigate validity issues of the assessment forms is multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with latent variables. An argument-based approach to validity was adopted, where possible weaknesses in assessment forms were addressed. A fairly high degree of correspondence between teacher judgements and test results was found within classrooms with a correlation of .65 being obtained for 3rd graders, a finding well in line with documented results in previous research. Grade 3 teachers’ judgements correlated higher than those of grade 4 teachers. The longer period of time spent with the pupils, as well as their different education, were suggested as plausible explanations. Gender and socioeconomic status (SES) of the pupils showed a significant effect on the teacher judgements, in that girls and pupils with higher SES received higher judgements from teachers than test results accounted for. Teachers with higher levels of formal competence were shown to have pupils with higher achievement levels. Pupil achievement was measured with both teacher judgements and PIRLS test results. Furthermore, higher correspondence between judgements and test-results was demonstrated for teachers with higher levels of competence. Comparisons of classroom achievement were shown to be problematic with the use of teachers’ judgements. The judgements reflected different achievement levels, despite the fact that test-results indicated similar performance levels across classrooms. Pupil self-assessments correlated slightly lower to both teacher judgement and to test results, than did teacher judgements and test results. However, in spite of their young age, pupils assessed their knowledge and skills in the reading domain relatively well. No differences in self-assessments were found for pupils of different gender or SES. In summary, a conclusion of the studies on the three forms of assessment was that all have certain limitations. Strengths and weaknesses of the different assessment forms were discussed.
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| 14. |
- Jonsson, Agneta, 1958
(författare)
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Att skapa läroplan för de yngsta barnen i förskolan. Barns perspektiv och nuets didaktik : Creating curriculum for the youngest children in preschool. Children's perspectives and didactics of the present moment
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes as one point of departure the concept of the expanded curriculum where curricula encompass both the formal steering documents, as well as that which goes on within the framework of preschool education and through the actors in preschools. The overarching purpose is therefore to generate knowledge about what conditions for learning the work of teachers make possible when curricula are created in preschool settings for children aged between 1 and 3. The purpose is also to contribute with knowledge about what these created curricula would mean for children’s agency, and the importance they can have for children’s opportunities for learning and development. The three empirical studies consist of digitally recorded interviews with teachers and video observations with a focus on teachers’ communication with children in preschool. The discussion in the overarching text is constructed around three aspects that emerge in the overall results of the studies. First, the studies reveal how teachers’ work can be likened to a limiting curriculum which, on the one hand, is entirely child-centered, with the children as seen actors, but, on the other, can be interpreted as entirely teacher-centered. Secondly, there is the discussion about the affirmative curriculum, where children are presented as affirmed actors. In other words, content becomes those things that children are interested in, and their modes of expression are seen, affirmed and often repeated. Finally there is the discussion about the possibilities and dilemmas related to an expanding curriculum where children are regarded and treated as real actors in the sense that their intentions and expressions are taken seriously as relevant challenges. The current curriculum text for Swedish preschool can, in this sense, be seen as an obstacle in that its formulations are extremely broad-based, as discussed related to the results of this thesis.
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| 15. |
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| 16. |
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| 17. |
- Larsson, Kristoffer, 1974
(författare)
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Kritiskt tänkande i grundskolans samhällskunskap. En fenomenografisk studie om manifesterat kritiskt tänkande i samhällskunskap hos elever i årskurs 9. : Critical thinking in compulsory school civics. A phenomenographic study of 9th grade students’ critical thinking in civics.
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Cultivating students’ critical thinking skills is recognized as a highly important educational goal in many societies in the western world, not least in Sweden. Despite this the research community has so far produced little substantial knowledge on critical thinking and calls for new research approaches have been made. In this study the phenomenographic perspective is offered as such a new approach, addressing, as it does, critical thinking in civics among Swedish 9th grade compulsory school students. According to phenomenography, students’ critical thinking is delimited by the way of experiencing a phenomenon that induces critical thinking. Thus differences in students’ critical thinking are linked to differences in the way of experiencing the phenomena inducing a manifestation of critical thinking. The empirical investigation in the study revolves around how 19 9th grade students experience four different tasks designed to induce critical thinking about philosophical and political views of justice. In broader terms the main aim of the study is to describe the students’ different ways of experiencing each particular task and furthermore, to link each specific way of experiencing a particular task to a specific type of critical thinking in relation to that task. Another aim is to make suggestions on how the kind of empirical results emanating from the main aim can be used in education practice to enhance 9th grade students’ critical thinking in civics. The study’s empirical results show how the way of experiencing a particular task plays a decisive role for the type of critical thinking made possible in relation to the task. A more powerful way of experiencing the task is delimited by a more powerful type of critical thinking in relation to the task. A less powerful way of experiencing the task is delimited by a less powerful type of critical thinking in relation to the task. With these results as a backbone, the study takes on an extensive discussion of how the results can be applied in education practice in order to enhance 9th grade students’ critical thinking in civics. The discussion deals with different suggestions for how the teacher can make the students’ ways of experiencing more powerful, in relation to tasks and content in civics that “call for” critical thinking, by using the phenomenographic theory of variation.
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| 18. |
- Lilliestam, Anna-Lena, 1952
(författare)
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Aktör och struktur i historieundervisning. Om utveckling av elevers historiska resonerande
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Historical reasoning is the organizing of information about the past in order to describe, compare, and/or explain historical phenomena. In this study I investigate the ability to reason historically in terms of agent and structure in an educational context. What does it mean to reason historically in this specific way? What does it take for students to develop this ability? Two main materials are used: texts, where students reason historically in terms of agent and structure, and lessons where the objective is to make it possible for the students to develop this ability. I look for qualitative similarities and differences in how the students reason, aiming at a pedagogically meaningful categorization that allows critical aspects of the ability to be identified. The analysis of the lessons deepens this understanding. The difference between a temporal description of chains of events on one hand, and reasoning about agents and structures on the other, is shown to be crucial. The students must discern what reasoning in terms of agent and structure is: a synchronous discussion of the relative importance of structural factors and factors concerning agents in a historical situation. Students must also discern that structures can be of different kinds, as can agents; that relevant factors must be selected; that connections between the factors should be made explicit; that these factors may be developed by further explanation, by an assessment of their relative significance, by making comparisons, or by making causal connections. The results also indicate that the objects of learning tend to change when enacted in the classroom: from the ability to reason historically towards the historical content, and towards temporal accounts of chains of action. A relationship is seen between the teaching in the different classes and how the students reason. Counterfactual reasoning is found to be useful in making it possible for the students to develop their understanding of structures, and as a tool for formative assessment.
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Sträng Haraldsson, Monica, 1948
(författare)
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Yngre elevers lärande om naturen. En studie av kommunikation om modeller i institutionella kontexter
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to draw attention to and examine how young students (approximately 5-13 years) are involved in communication about nature, what approaches to nature are mediated in the social practices of preschool, school, and a science center, and how functional these approaches may be as providing learners with tools for making sense in other situations in everyday life and society. Empirical investigations were carried out by observations, tape recordings and video recordings of interaction in different educational contexts and presented in three studies. The first study is about a group of preschool children (5 years old) and their teacher visiting an exhibition about the water flow at a science center and the teacher communicating with the children about their visit during circle time at the preschool. The second study is about conversations about the water cycle between teachers and young students (8-10 years old) at a primary school, with a prop in the form of a photograph taken in a real rainforest. The third study is about students (12-13 years old) working in pairs in a computer-simulated micro world of ecological processes on an African savanna. Taking a sociocultural perspective, the results indicate that in all the studied contexts, the conversations between the students and teachers were characterized by being indistinct, i.e. not being conducted within a distinct discourse. The students had difficulties following the teachers’ communication strategies. It seemed to be important for the teachers that the students themselves understood what the conversation was about and to arrive at the right answer. Students’ possibility to express their knowledge is closely dependent on the adults’ strategies. The most successful strategy for students is to follow the teacher’s way of speaking. This leads to the fact that some students succeed to talk in such a way that is expected by the teacher in the conversation. When the teacher is absent the students make sense by referring to their previous experience. Without support by the teacher the students thus thematize nature on their own terms. In the investigated activities the models are handled as if being self-illustrative. Models, as such, and how they are related to what they refer to was never explained by the teachers in the studied activities.
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