| 171. |
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| 172. |
- Lager, Karin, 1974
(författare)
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I spänningsfältet mellan kontroll och utveckling. En policystudie av systematiskt kvalitetsarbete i kommunen, förskolan och fritidshemmet.
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The a im of this thesis is to explore how Systematic quality development work (Sqdw) is enacted in municipalities, preschools and leisure - time centres. In Sweden Sqdw comes within the statutory obligations of preschools and leisure - time centres and constitutes a significant part of teachers’ work. The thesis explores how local policy - makers, a principal and two teachers enact Sqdw policy and transform it into practice. The thesis consists of two parts. The first is the licentiate thesis Organizing Quality: Assess ment Practices in Municipalities and Pre - Schools (Lager, 2010) in which new institutional tools are used to explore how Sqdw is organised by key people in municipalities (Czarniawska, 2005). The second part, which contains the papers Systematic quality dev elopment work in a Swedish leisure - time centre (Lager, Sheridan & Gustafsson, 2015), and ‘ Learning to play with new friends’: Systematic quality development work in a leisure - time centre (Lager, 2015), explores how, through the use of policy enactment tool s, Sqdw is recontextualised in the practice of a leisure - time centre (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). By combining these two approaches both structure and actor are focused on in the analysis of a policy process. In both studies, policy texts, interviews and observations function as data sources and are analysed holistically. Additionally, a meta - interpretation (Weed, 2008) of the three included texts has been carried out and constitutes the concluding findings of the thesis in a synthesis. The findings are d iscussed as recontextualised discourses, norms and traditions in the various actors’ enactment of Sqdw in discursive practices. An educational discourse is recontextualised in the municipalities in focus, highlighting the norms according to routines and mo dels of Sqdw in compulsory schools. When Sqdw is recontextualised in the leisure - time centre a social pedagogical discourse which highlights children’s social and relational learning is reproduced. When quality discourses are combined with the educational discourse, this contributes to the creation of policy technologies and tools that function to unify Sqdw both in municipalities as well as in the leisure - time centre in focus. Policy gaps in the enactment of different discourses create tensions in Sqdw in terms of diverse objectives in the curriculums governing the different school forms. The objectives appear as important in terms of how, in the municipalities, documentation is carried out in a manner that differs from pedagogical practices. Overall, the t hree main findings of the thesis can be summarised as follows: First, different formulations of objectives are important for the documentation of achievement in Sqdw. Second, different discourses are recontextualised in the Sqdw phases. Third, while in the municipal preschool Sqdw is reproduced in an individual educational tradition, in the leisure - time centre it is reproduced as traditional, social pedagogical content in the form of a new way of working.
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| 173. |
- Lagerlöf, Pernilla, 1972
(författare)
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Musical play: Children interacting with and around music technology
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis explores young children and music learning in the ecology of music technologies. The research is a part of an EU project called MIROR (Musical Interaction Relying on Reflection) that had the intention to develop software for music learning designed to promote specific cognitive abilities in the field of music improvisation. The overarching aim of this thesis is to explore activities where children (and adults) interact with and around the music technology MIROR Impro, and what this participation allows and supports children to learn, including musical learning. The research focuses on the participants’ interaction with each other and in relation to the instrument connected to the software. Participants in the empirical studies are 4-8-year-old (with an emphasis on 6-year-old) children in a Swedish preschool and in an afterschool centre. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural perspective. A point of departure is the understanding of learning as an act of participation in communities of practice rather than as an individual, cognitive process of internalizing knowledge. According to this perspective, learning is situated in a context and mediated by cultural tools (physical such as musical instruments as well as discursive ones) which are included in the unit of analysis. The results are presented in four empirical studies. Together, these studies show that despite the technology being launched as self-instructive and work as an ‘advanced cognitive tutor’, in situations where a more experienced participant is engaged and interact with the children, their opportunities to learn in and about music is enhanced. In these contexts, the teacher is vital to help the children to conceptualize and identify musical possibilities. The make-believe play communicatively frames the activity in a way that creates meaningfulness and helps children make sense. By interacting verbally with the children as a co-creator, the teacher goes into dialogue with them about a musical content and thus provides opportunities for emerging music learning.
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| 174. |
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| 175. |
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| 176. |
- Larsson, Jonna
(författare)
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När fysik blir lärområde i förskolan
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation includes four separate empirical studies, and is directed towards what happens when physics becomes a learning area in preschool. It is about children and preschool teachers exploring and working with physical phenomena such as friction, sound, floating and sinking. The study is anchored within a cultural-historical perspective which highlights communication and interaction in social contexts and that learning takes place in all types of practices in which the child participates. By the use of a videorecorder, a range of activities conducted in Swedish preschools constitutes the sampled data material. The first study is about children's opportunities to learn about the phenomenon of friction in preschool, the second look into how preschool teachers alters between the context and the concepts and in which way this contributes to emergent science about sound. The third, and the fourth studies aims to generate knowledge about the ways in which children’s understanding of floating and sinking are expressed and how the teacher foregrounds the science content in the same activity. Together the studies’ findings show that abstract phenomena are concretized by the children and teachers in interaction and that there are different characteristics of children's encounters with physical phenomena. Further the studies’ show that establishing intersubjectivity and expanding children’s initial explorations are of importance. The preschool teachers take responsibility for the content without limiting children's opportunities to participate and influence the activities. This means that children and preschool teachers try a variety of pathways in a supportive and moderately challenging environment. Thereby children's emergent science is supported and physics is constituted as a learning area.
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| 177. |
- 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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| 178. |
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| 179. |
- 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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| 180. |
- Lindbäck, Jonas, 1982
(författare)
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Värsta bästa skolan - Om unga i förorten och segregationen i skolan
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses education and schooling for youth in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Gothenburg, Sweden. Over the last two decades or so we have seen an increasing difference in students’ performance and background between schools in Sweden. Schools in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in the metropolitan areas are affected the worst, and in some of these schools about half of the students lack upper secondary qualifications. This thesis builds upon data from one of these schools called Björkskolan. The overall aim of this study is to investigate what it means to be a student at Björkskolan and what significance the school and education has for the students. The following questions are examined: How do schooling and education acquire meaning for the students? How do the students describe their own opportunities and limitations in relation to school and education, and what are the different student positions that emerge in everyday school life? How do teachers and students view the learning that occurs at the school and the conditions in which it takes place? The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork that took place over a one-year period with students in 8th and 9th grade. Besides fieldnotes, interviews with students, teachers and school staff form the basis for the analysis. Theoretically, the thesis primarily draws from urban theory on territorial stigmatization and postcolonial influenced theories on difference and othering. In summary, the results show how the students negotiate representations of their school and their neighbourhood, and how they create alternative representations that question the dominant perceptions. The teachers and school staff are, just like the students, affected by the structural conditions in the segregated city, and this has implications for teaching as well as other aspects of daily life and work in Björkskolan. Furthermore, the study demonstrates how the students position themselves as learning subjects in different ways, and that anti-school culture explanations for poor school results can neither be attributed to the girls or the boys. On the contrary, the students show a positive attitude towards education and identify strongly with the school.
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