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| 235. |
- Rinne, Ilona
(författare)
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Pedagogisk takt i betygssamtal
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to explore how grades are explained and understood in grade conferences between teachers and students in Swedish upper secondary school. The empirical material is based on 149 video-recorded conferences of nine teachers and their students and was collected during spring semester of 2007. The theoretical frame of the study is phenomenology and hermeneutics, which means that grades are understood as lived. The analysis focuses on existential aspects of teachers’ and students’ interaction according to van Manen’s (1991) description of the tact of teaching. Two intertwined dimensions of teachers’ work are considered in analysis: curriculum-based and ethical. The results are presented in two parts: the first part consists of general descriptions of characteristics of the conferences. By means of a hermeneutic process of interpretation, two themes were revealed: conferences that end in agreement between the teacher and the student, and conferences that end in disagreement. Dissatisfaction with the teacher’s grading was showed by students in only seven of 149 conferences. This division between agreement and disagreement forms the basis for the second part of the thesis. It is divided into two sections. In the first section five themes are defined: grades as taken for granted, grades as responding to students’ presumed wishes, grades as encouragement, grades as “borderline”, MVG as a starting point for grading. In the second section three themes are analysed in relation to grade conferences that end in disappointment: teachers try to avoid disappointing students, teachers handle disappointment, teachers respond to criticism. The analysis of conferences that do not end in agreement shows that students can not affect teachers’ decisions about grading unless teachers let them. The results show several existential aspects of grading. A common starting point for grading among teachers is to assume that students should get the highest grade, which is not always the case among students. A central aspect of grade conferences is teachers’ benevolence towards students. This aspect indicates that grading includes dimensions that are not expressed in the policy documents. Grading is, in a broader sense, a human-existential action where student’s emotions, in particular, are taken into consideration by the teacher. Grades can be given with the purpose of encouraging students and teachers seem to try to avoid disappointing their students by giving a lower grade than students expect. The results give rise to several questions. Why do teachers act as they do? Why do they seem so concerned about making sure that students are satisfied with their grades? One possible explanation can be seen in the relational aspects of the profession, another in the intimacy of the conference, where teachers and students meet face to face. In such a situation teachers attempt to avoid ending up in an awkward position where they disappoint their students. Teachers can also be pressurized by their principals or students’ parents into giving high grades, which can be explained by the increased influence of economic factors in schools and growing competition among schools. This study provides an understanding of the complexity of grading, that grading is not such an unequivocal action as is suggested by politicians and policy makers. Further research about the aspects of teachers’ work related to existential aspects of grading is therefore suggested.
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| 236. |
- Rocksén, Miranda, 1968
(författare)
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Reasoning in a Science Classroom
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In research on science education, there is a need to further understand the relation between longer and shorter processes of teaching and learning in the classroom. With a theoretical framework based on dialogical theories of communication, this thesis investigates three aspects of the formation of a science classroom practice: the making of conceptual distinctions, classroom organisations and the making of connections between lessons. The empirical material consists of eleven video recorded lessons on biological evolution in grade 9 (15 year old students). The analysis connects different levels of classroom interaction and patterns in the communication over several lessons as well as the details of particular situations. The empirical findings of the thesis are presented in three studies. The first study shows co-existing meanings of the word explanation and three conversational structures that the teacher used for making distinctions between them. The second study shows how small-group activities are used for coordinating the pace of students’ participation in these lessons. The third study shows strategies for link-making and a topic trajectory including questions that were raised in relation to survival and extinction of species. The conclusions point to the significance of coordinating the communication so that patterns such as those described can provide learning opportunities for students.
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| 237. |
- Rolfe, Victoria, 1987
(författare)
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Exploring socioeconomic inequality in educational opportunity and outcomes in Sweden and beyond
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This doctoral thesis aims to explore Sweden’s achievement gap in international assessment and how this may have developed in the context of a network of educational inequalities. Theoretically grounded in the Model of Potential Educational Experiences (Schmidt, Raizen, Britton, Bianchi, & Wolfe, 1997), the thesis investigates how the relationship between the intended and attained curriculum is moderated by actions at the classroom level. Teacher implementation of the curriculum provides opportunities for students to learn yet is a source of inequity in the school system. Student socioeconomic background and the amount of subject content (or Opportunity to Learn – OTL) they are exposed to are judged to significantly influence student outcomes. Socioeconomic inequality of outcomes has been perennially observed in educational assessment and has been a topic of investigation since the mid-twentieth century, while a body of literature suggests that there is an equality gap in OTL, with more advantaged students offered more content coverage through their mathematics lessons. This compilation thesis features an integrative essay and three empirical studies, which apply statistical analysis to data from two international large-scale assessments, PISA and TIMSS. Study I investigated the measurement of socioeconomic status over time in Sweden. After establishing which questionnaire items consistently appeared in PISA, a measurement model bespoke to Sweden was constructed from 2000 data. The model was found to be replicable and trustworthy over time, establishing an alternative measure of SES applicable to 15 years of Swedish PISA data. In Study II socioeconomic inequalities in opportunity and outcomes in mathematics and science, and the question as to whether unequal opportunities perpetuate unequal outcomes were investigated in 78 countries using 4 cycles of TIMSS data. Achievement gaps were observed near universally. These achievement gaps were strong and increased across the cycles of TIMSS. Opportunity gaps were less frequently observed, and evidence that schooling exacerbates socioeconomic inequalities in outcomes was confined to a select group of countries including England, Malta, Scotland, and Singapore. Sweden’s achievement gap was consistent across the time points, and an opportunity gap was only observed in half the cycles. Finally, schooling mediated the effects of SES on achievement in only the 2003 cycle for Sweden, suggesting equitable mathematics provision in Sweden. Teachers are essential to the implementation of the curriculum, and their actions affect the experiences of students. Multiple inequalities in Swedish classrooms were explored in Study III. The 2015 TIMSS cycle was grouped by whether or not teachers were mathematics specialists. Overall, Swedish mathematics students experienced substantial gaps in achievement, opportunity and teacher quality. However, differing patterns of inequalities emerged in the grouped model. Among classes with specialist teachers there was a moderate opportunity gap, while those with non-specialists had a teacher quality gap. In both groups there was a socioeconomic gap in teacher perception of school ethos towards academics. The findings of this study underscore the importance of having high-quality teachers in mathematics classrooms as a temper of outcome inequity. Collectively, the findings of the constituent studies confirm the persistence of the achievement gap in Sweden and globally, contextualize the opportunity gap in Sweden, and underline the importance of item choice and construct measurement when modelling inequality using international data. Suggestions are made for further research integrating the thesis’s contribution to construction measurement into trend analyses of opportunity gaps, and combining register and international data to parse how changes in teacher education may affect equality in Swedish classrooms.
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| 239. |
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| 240. |
- Runesdotter, Caroline, 1951
(författare)
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I otakt med tiden? Folkhögskolorna i ett föränderligt fält
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Folk high schools have often been out of synchronisation: both behind the times and as pioneers, and always eager to keep up with their unique identity. There have been variations over time and simultaneously. Folk high schools are diverse. Folk high schools are economically vulnerable and dependent on external funding. Reduced governmental subsidies and new forms of governance introduced in the 1990s have challenged the institutionalized ways to consider and to run the Folk high schools. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate changes in instutituional logica and identities over time. As the title of this thesis, Folk High Schools in a changing field, suggests, one of the key concepts of the discussion is organizational fields. Organizational fields are perceived as organizations with common structures and aims, operating in a nonlocal environment, kept together by a common meaning system and the conviction that they need each other. The concept of organizational fields is one of the fundamental ideas developed within new institutionalism in organization theory. New institutionalism’s focus has shifted from the individual organization to interaction between organizations and the environment. An organizational field is kept together by cultural frames or patterns of meaning. By employing the concept of organizational field as a tool it has been possible to analyze how the ideas and identities of folk high schools are constructed. The results show that a comprehensive diversification of folk high schools has taken place. The schools have differentiated themselves over time and from each other in terms of their activities and owners. Their relations to the environment are increasingly based on business commissions. The results also show that the school’s activities are increasingly short term focused and quickly carried out. This leads to new and more temporary relations. In the long term, this challenges the common meaning system and the very idea about folk high schools’ uniqueness.
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