| 1. |
- Heurlin-Norinder, Mia, 1949-
(författare)
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Platser för lek, upplevelser och möten : Om barns rörelsefrihet i fyra bostadsområden
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is the result of two studies concerning children’s independent mobility, which means the freedom for children to walk or bike on their own or together with friends but without being escorted by parents. The studies are accomplished in four different areas and are also searching for different environmental qualities. The areas differ concerning traffic planning and architecture but also concerning commercial and cultural choice. The aim is to understand and describe how places are constructed and designed when they are used and experienced in a positive – or a negative – way by children. I emphasize, that we – through the responses in meeting with other people – learn hidden and visible rules and also how to change perspective and roles. I therefore focus on the meeting between children and other people but also on meeting between children and places. The issue is: What do places look like – what qualities or qualifications – can be notified as important to children to perceive coherence that consequently make them learn to control their environment and develop to harmonious grown-ups. The main questions are: In what degree can children’s independent mobility be related to the planning and design in the four areas? Why do some neighbourhoods/places appear as more important to children than others, making children use them in a varied way? Is it possible to describe qualities in neighbourhoods in a way that can be interpreted as meaningful for children’s development?In the first study 732 children in grade two and five in compulsory school, filled in a questionnaire and the questions focused on how they got to school, to friends, to activities etc. The results showed that in the area with more traffic than the other three areas, children were more often taken by car to school and to leisure activities. Even international research in the nineties did show that children had lost the accessibility to their neighbourhood. In the second study, 32 children in the same areas guided me around in their environment showing me the way to school and places they used to visit. At the same time they told me what they liked or disliked in their neighbourhood. Afterwards they were interviewed and they also had the opportunity to fill in so called “mobility maps”. The content in this text mainly focuses the second study. From the children’s statements, a summary of the most important differences looks as follows:I The accessibility in neighbourhoods and places: i.e. children’s independent mobility – or if they had to be escorted by grown-ups – and if they could fiddle about.II Children’s play and activities: i.e. if they had something to do, if they played in pairs or in groups and if play could take place without planning.III Children’s experiences of places and people: i.e. if they had something to show me and to tell me, if there were any meetings with other persons, if the children talked about their own yard and appreciated green areas, if they had fun or not, if they were afraid being out and if they told me any memories from some places.The theoretical framework is based on Johan Asplund’s theory on social responsivity and G. H. Mead’s theory on social relations and his view of the importance of objects. The study also is based on three different place theories as expressed by David Canter, Christian Norberg-Schulz and Clarence Crafoord and Asplund’s view of place and placelessness. This study has made it clear that everything children do in their neighbourhood can be related to concrete places and things but it differed concerning what and how they played, what they experienced and what the meetings looked like – if any.Environmental qualities arise, as I have interpreted my results, when neighbourhoods and places are safe, when there are landmarks, places for meetings, possibility of orientation and sense of locality and when the places are varied and challenging. Conclusions are drawn regarding differences in social responsivity, if there is a sense of having a place of one’s own – that in the same time is shared by other people – and if places are responding. From these statements place identity can be seen as a merging of the qualities in places and the perceived sense of place as described above. To have opportunity to investigate the neighbourhood is also an important part of children’s informal learning. They learn how to read the surroundings and how to find the way in a town or in an environment. They get to know the neighbourhood and the world outside and so they also learn how to behave and how to control themselves and even the life. Results showed though that the children in the four areas made those experiences but, certainly, in different ways.
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| 2. |
- Arfwedson, Gerd B., 1932-
(författare)
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Reformpedagogik och samhälle : en komparativ studie av pedagogiska reformrörelser i USA och Tyskland från 1890-talet till 1930-talet
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The study is a comparative, text analytical and humanistic approach to the inquiry into the reform movements in education from the 1890'ies to the middle of the 1930'ies in two countries, Germany and the United States of America. The study also utilizes some newer concepts, as Foucault's concepts of 'discourse' and 'regime of truth'.The comparison is doublesided; it deals with both progressive or reform practice and progressive or reform theory in the two countries. Both practice and theory is (as always) embedded in a specific social and political context. The primary aim is the understanding and mapping of the reform practice and the reform theory, but a second aim is to understand them with account taken to the background of their different contextual conditions. The study will show, that there are some differences between German and American reform practices, but it will also show that the practices in the two countries are much more alike than the theories. It will be shown that the theories are more dependent of the specific historical and cultural traditions, more dependent of a national consensus and a national political basis than is practice. The whole reform movement can, from a social point of view, be understood as the educational answer to the fact of a new industrial era - from an educational point of view it can be understood as an exhange of one curriculum theory for another.The empirical research material, representing reform practice, consists of about a dozen or more rather long discussions of reform schools in each country. In USA these reports and descriptions come from educational researchers visiting schools and in Germany from teachers. The empirical material, representing reform theory consists of philosophical and theoretical issues and discussions among the professors of philosophy and education in each country. A starting-point for the analyses of reform practice is some curriculum principles, expressing the new educational faith in students' freedom, in manual work, and in the need for communication and community life in schools. A starting-point for the inquiry into reform theory is its background of philosohical and ideological views of society and individual, views, that are important features of the theory. During this early reform period several educational sciences were established in both countries. A main interest in this part is first the study of the very kind of sciences which were emerging in USA and Germany, second the differences between them, and third their consequences for the relation between school policy, theory and practice.
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| 3. |
- Emsheimer, Peter
(författare)
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Lärarstudenten som subjekt och objekt : kritiskt tänkande och disciplinering i lärarutbildning
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The dissertation poses the problem of control in teacher training. Control is defined as a process in which someone wants someone else to adapt to a specific model of knowledge, to thought patterns, social relationships, and obedience. The main question is:How is control performed in teacher education and what is the relationship between control and exploration?The purpose is to expose problems in teacher training that are related to forming and controlling student teachers, vs encouraging exploration and experimentation and studying how students critical thinking is developed. Data in this dissertation were gathered from interviews with 13 students participating in teacher education. The theorization based on the empirical study is made after the presentation of the material. A hermeneutical approach was used to interpret the interviews.Results are reported in eight chapters in which the interviewees' statements are categorized according to themes. The categories are based on the authors' understanding of the statements in the material. Among other things, students report that they rarely have opportunities to discuss two or more opposing viewpoints that are presented at the same time and with equal importance. Differences between teachers are neglected and sometimes hidden, which will make critical examination more difficult. Interviewees also report that there are small possibilities to work with own experiences from their practice in schools. The education is often perceived as fragmented. Moreover, modeling as a working principle in teacher education is discussed. It can encourage critical discussions if the model is used as something to examine but if it is presented as the only one it can lead to imitative learning. However, the interviewees perceive the education as an uplifting life experience which has forced them to exceed their previous capacities. It has also played an important role in the development of their thinking.The theoretical part is focused upon seeking answers on mainly existential issues, in order to highlight the theoretical possibilities of free and critical thinking. The questions of human freedom, tradition and possibilities to break traditions are discussed. Another question is the disadvantages and advantages of taking into consideration learners previous experiences. In an interpretation of Deweys' educational philosophy, the fundamental character of reflection and its consequences for critical thinking in education is examined.The concluding discussion emphasizes the necessity for education to be open to allow and encourage students' testing of arguments. Only on the basis of what is explicit and in a variety of alternating models it is possible to make a personal choice and develop critical thinking.
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| 4. |
- Juhlin Svensson, Ann-Christine
(författare)
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Nya redskap för lärande : studier av lärarens val och användning av läromedel i gymnasieskolan
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation consists of previously published reports with a summary. The main purpose of the empirical studies is to describe and analyse the function and use of educational media in teaching through the understanding and actions of teachers and librarians. The theoretical frames of reference are "framefactor", curriculum and steering theories. In the summary a new theoretical perspective is adopted. Based on new institutional and sociocultural theory, the use of textbook and information technology is reanalysed as cultural tools.The result is based on three empirical studies. In six upper-secondary schools 35 teachers, librarians and school principals were interviewed about their understanding of textbooks and information technology and the results indicated that the pedagogical aim and structure of textbooks are the main reasons for their use. To obtain a deeper investigation an observation study of three teachers use of educational media in the classroom was carried through. Their use of different types of educational media indicated that their own style/strategy in the classroom determined in what way the textbook was tied to teaching. The case studies were followed by a survey of twenty upper-secondary schools. The main result confirmed the tradition with textbooks and showed that teachers who often use textbooks had more traditional ways of acting in the classroom than teachers who more seldom or never used textbooks. More flexible learning strategies for pupils appeared when teachers had a positive attitude towards information technology.The last part of the dissertation analyses the significance of the historical formal and informal rules and traditions for educational media as mediated means and the possibility for change. The textbook is a cultural tool shaped for the school with its institutional limits. Information technology, in contrast to textbooks, has not been shaped as a unique artefact for education. Teachers used information technology according to the restraints and rules in the activity system as a complex technology they still have not completely appropriated.
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| 5. |
- Rosenqvist, Mia Maria
(författare)
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Undervisning i förskolan? : en studie av förskollärarstuderandes föreställningar
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In Sweden an increasing number of children enter school at the age of six rather than as before at the age of seven. There is an increasing need for cooperation between preschool teachers and school teachers. When these two professional groups meet, they use different professional vocabularies. The concept of teaching (Sw. 'undervisning' close to instruction) is not used by preschool teachers, while it is a central concept for school teachers. With this background the purpose of the investigation is to describe and interpret preschool teacher student's images about the concept of teaching in preschool.Three main questions were investigated:How do preschool teacher students discuss teaching in preschool context?What meaning (signification) do they put into the concept?Do the students change their ideas about preschool teaching during their training?The data collection was carried out from the autumn term of 1991 up to and including the autumn term of 1993 at the preschool teacher training at Högskolan Dalarna.Four groups of students were asked to have leader-less discussions about teaching. As a starting point they were provided with pre-constructed questions. Students' statements were analysed by means of Kansanen's model of three levels of thinking; action level, first thinking level and the second thinking level. In the results was shown that a part of the students changed their earlier ideas. As the project proceeded, two of the groups became able to see the difference between teaching and learning and also accounted for ideas about what preschool teaching might be. While talking about teaching the students created new concepts, they used terms like "forest teaching", "teaching play", "secure play" and "care lesson". The kind of teaching they talked about was called "child teaching".The results also brought forward three comprehensive images, of preschool teaching: Synonymity Images, Traditional School Images and Child Care Images. Synonymity implies that the students understand teaching as synonymous with the occurrence of learning. Traditional School Images imply that the students are of the opinion that the teacher is the one who is active and instructs the pupils what to do. Child Care Images imply an outlook on teaching that it must not be noticed, the child must not be influenced directly, but more indirectly by means of material and playing.The analysis indicates that some of the preschool teacher students have changed their images during the series of discussions about the same concept, from a more restricted to a more expanded and reflective outlook on teaching in preschool. Some students have changed their views, while others have not or only to a little extent. The rapidity of this process differs between students.It seems that the training played a minor part for the students' reflecting on teaching in preschool. The investigation shows among other things that the training does not expose them to challenges that make them develop their thinking and ideas on teaching and learning. It also seems that a conscious and reflective planning is an important prerequisite for seeing the daily teaching in a perspective and being able to reflect upon it. Nothing seems to indicate that the students during their trainee periods have analysed the relationship between teaching and on the other hand learning an the children's activities such as free play.The fact that students only to a limited extent carried out the discussions at the second thinking level indicates that pedagogical and other theories should be studied in the preschool teacher training so that these theories later may function as efficient and forceful tools in the work.
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| 6. |
- Ajagán-Lester, Luis, 1949-
(författare)
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"De Andra" : afrikaner i svenska pedagogiska texter (1768-1965)
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines the way in which the image of the Sub-Saharan peoples is presented in the schools texts used in Sweden. The concept of ‘educational texts’ includes both used reading books and school texts for teaching geography. This study primarily concentrates on educational texts from 1768 up to 1965.The guiding questions of this research are as follows: What are the social factors that have contributed to shaping a certain image of Africans? What kind of messages concerning Africa may be detected in school texts? What type of emphasis can be perceived (in Africa’s discursive field)? What messages emanating from other cultural contexts have led to the elaboration of Swedish texts about Africa? How was the Swedish mental chart about Africa structured? What social identities led to the making of such texts? What type of ‘knowledge’ has been excluded from these school texts?The theoretical guidelines that organise this research are founded in Mikhail Bakthin’s critical discourse analysis and dialogism, the socio-semiotics approach and Raymond Williams’ notion of selective tradition. Raymond Williams’ notions of dominant culture transmission indicate that this process is characterised by selectivity of existing knowledge in a given historical period.The material has been classified into four periods. The first embraces the period from 1768 to 1850. It is characterised by its emphasis on the cultural differences between Africans and Europeans, who were considered sub-human and civilised, respectively. The second period - 1850 to 1920 - introduced the racial bias into the corpus of school texts. The metonymic language identifies Blacks with inferiority and Whites with superiority. During this period, school texts reproduce without criticism the colonialist’s arguments. The texts are permeated by oppositions of the type ‘we, the civilised’, ‘they, the barbarians’, ‘culture’ vs. ‘non-culture’, ‘religious’ vs. ‘pagans’, etc.The third period covers texts from mid-1920s till the end of the 1950s. School texts are impregnated of virulent scientific racism. Craniology and the idea of hereditary racial superiority or inferiority structure the examined texts.School texts of these three periods tend to monology and single-emphasis. In the early 1960’s - the last period under examination - witnesses the emergence of texts without racist contents. This period saw the appearance of books providing space for a large variety of voices and their main feature is dialogical. The stress on the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ gives way to the ‘similarity’ among cultures. This was the period of the gradual disappearance of such way of thinking that opposes ‘civilisation’ (us) and ‘barbarous’ (them).Our research indicates that the processes of selection of school knowledge play a fundamental role in cultural reproduction. The fact of having conceded a privilege position to some knowledge and disregarded others, led to the emergence - for almost 200 years - of a clear object in school discourse: the “alien-inferior-other”.
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| 7. |
- Andersson, Cecilia, 1961-
(författare)
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Rådjur och raketer : Gatukonst som estetisk produktion och kreativ praktik i det offentliga rummet
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the visual expressions of Street Art that occurs in the public space, and by doing so, to study this specifi c practice, and also elucidate the relation between public space as a democratic idea, a place for freedom of speech and as a planned, aesthetically shaped place. The intention is to throw light upon a central part of many young peoples lives in a didactic aspect. In this thesis I discuss Street Art as an informal image making in public space that young people use as tools to make meaning, but also as a form of resistance. The methodologies used in the study are ethnography and visual ethnography, where observational studies of Street Art as practice, interviews and interpretation of photographs (my own, and my informants) are performed and analysed. Theoretically, the study has a didactic and semiotic approach but I also rely on Cultural Studies as a research fi eld in order to be able to pick up different kinds of theories. From three platforms; public space and public place and places for Street Art, aesthetic learning processes within this specifi c practice, and fi nally the expanded fi eld of Art and the similarities and differences between formal Art and Street Art I have outlined four themes; ephemerality, the criteria for Street Art practice, how the work is being done, as a collective and individual practice, the struggle of space in public space, and fi nally high and low in Art and culture. By describing and analysing this informal image making light is thrown upon the aesthetic learning process that occurs, the didactic aspect of this practice and the communication that the images articulate. As a result, the study shows that Street Art, in spite of its illegal mark, points out that it is an aesthetic production and a creative practice that consists of resistance, meaning making, achieving knowledge through practice, and above all a way to use the city, to become a part of the city. The thesis contributes with the suggestion that this informal aesthetic learning process is a way to form identity, make meaning, take part of public space, and through symbolic resistance demand ones rights of expression.
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| 8. |
- Andersson, Lars, 1942-
(författare)
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Militärt ledarskap - när det gäller : svenskt militärt ledarskap med fredsfrämjande insatser i fokus
- 2001
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Since 1996 peacekeeping operations are a high priority for the Swedish Defence Forces. The experiences from these operations will influence the future military lead-ership education and training and the writing of this thesis should be regarded from that perspective. My main purpose is to examine military leadership in order to im-prove the leadership education and training within the Swedish Defence Forces. I have posed three research questions. What important steps have been taken in the develop-ment of leadership within the Swedish Defence Forces during the last century? How does this development of military leadership stand out in relation to the development in other countries? How is military leadership managed in international operations?This thesis begins with a survey of the leadership in the Swedish, Norwegian, American, and Israeli armies. The central part comprises studies of two Swedish bat-talions in Bosnia. The leadership in the Swedish Defence Forces has a very good repu-tation, due to the extensive reforms in educational leadership. However, as a military commander it is not sufficient to be a good and successful educator. You are also ex-pected to be able to conduct your unit in peacekeeping operations as well as at war. In general Swedish officers have not had that kind of experience, foremost due to the fact that Sweden has not been in a war for almost 200 years.Throughout the case studies I have used a multi-method technique, in which an im-portant part of the method was direct observation. I stayed with a UN-battalion for three months and with another battalion, which was under NATO command, for one month. In the thesis I give an inside perspective of the leadership of the battalions in Bosnia. I illustrate different leadership problems that have appeared throughout my study and describe the environment that the peacekeepers lived and worked in. In the discussion I change focus from the two case studies to the socialization process of the Swedish officers. I relate to the French sociologist Bourdieus´ theoretical concepts when I explain the role-conflict that Swedish officers are facing during international operations. The Swedish Defence College has started a programme to develop leader-ship for the twenty-first century. The biggest challenge is to deal with the general per-spective of the whole organization and its core values in relationship to the role of leadership. Other challenges are the insufficient coordination in the military leadership education and the existing communication problems between different officer groups. I wrap up the thesis with a proposal of a strategy that will help the progression of the Swedish military leadership.
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| 9. |
- Andersson, Mona, 1939-
(författare)
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The early childhood environment rating scale (ECERS) as a tool in evaluating and improving quality in preschools
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Author and title: Andersson Mona: The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) as a Tool in Evaluating and Improving Quality in Preschools. Key words: Preschool, preschool classroom, environmental quality, consciousness, process quality, self evaluation, standardization, validity, reliability, quasi-experiment.This is an empirical study exploring the use of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) for the evaluation of environmental quality in preschools.A standardization of the ECERS to Swedish preschools has been carried out. The procedures and findings of this standardization include several tests performed to ensure that the Swedish version of the ECERS would be both valid and reliable.The main hypothesis in this study is that the ECERS can be used to improve environmental quality. This hypothesis was tested in a quasi-experiment. Three separate samples in different preschools were chosen: a Control group, an Information group and an Intervention group. These three groups were evaluated by an independent evaluator before and after the study. The Control group received no information about the ECERS. The Information group as well as the Intervention group received information about the possibility of using the ECERS as a means for the staff to improve quality. In addition, the Intervention group was allowed extra resources such as two hours a month for discussions concerning the results of individual evaluations made by the staff in each classroom.The findings showed an improvement in environmental quality, in the Information group from a mean value of 3.8 to 4.6. In the Intervention group the improvement was even more substantial, from 3.2 to 4.7 whereas the Control group showed a small improvement of 4.1 to 4.3. A statistical sign test of significance was carried out. The changes in the Control group were not significant, while the changes in the Information as well as the Intervention groups were found to be significant at the 95 percent level. It seems as if the hypothesis, that the use of the ECERS could improve environmental quality in preschools, is verified.In supplementary questionnaires and interviews, it was documented that preschool teachers could make better use of their potential competence as they became more conscious of it through the use of the ECERS.
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| 10. |
- Andrée, Maria, 1974-
(författare)
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Den levda läroplanen : en studie av naturorienterande undervisningspraktiker i grundskolan
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to develop knowledge about what students actually learn in lower secondary school science, regardless of intentions and policies. This is conceptualized as a study of the lived curriculum. During the last decades, new ways of organizing classroom work have evolved in Sweden. Students are to an increasing extent expected to take responsibility for what, when, and how they study. The aim of this thesis is therefore delimited to the study of which lived curriculum is constituted in such an individually organized science classroom practice.The theoretical foundation is a cultural-historical activity-theoretical perspective on human learning and development. The point of departure is that what we learn must be understood as an aspect of the activities we engage in. The research approach is ethnographic; field studies were conducted in two science classes, grades six and seven (ages 12 to 14 years old), in a Swedish midsized compulsory school during one school-year.The first result is that two different practices are discerned in the studied science classroom. One classroom practice is a criteria-based practice, where students work individually with local school criteria determining what students must be able to do in order to get a pass or a pass with distinction in the natural science subjects. The other classroom practice is a laboratory practice, where students do laboratory experiments and write laboratory reports. The second result is that students, in both practices, participate in different actions; either production and reproduction of correct answers or development of conceptual relations. These actions correspond in varying degrees to different motives; as a consequence, different scientific formation is made possible in the two different actions. A third result is that classroom practice supports student participation in the action of reproducing correct answers; while participation in the development of conceptual relations is a more risky and uncertain endeavour. However, there is evidence that students’ ways of participating can change, to a more qualified, as conditions for work change.A conclusion is that work in science classroom practice cannot, as suggested in previous research, be comprehended in terms of cultural border-crossings, between a culture of science and student cultures. Rather, work in science classroom practice must be conceptualized in terms of schooling.
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