| 1. |
- Pedersen, Helena, 1968-
(författare)
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The School and the Animal Other : An Ethnography of Human-Animal Relations in Education
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How human-animal relations are expressed and negotiated has significance for the situation of animals in society and offers insights that contribute to our understanding of how we organize relations between humans as well. This critical ethnographic investigation is positioned at the intersection of education research and the interdisciplinary area of human-animal studies. It uses participant observation, interviews with students and teachers and critical discourse analyses of texts and other artefacts used in the schools investigated to contribute cross-curricular perspectives on how human-animal relations are configured in the daily activities of both vocational (animal caretaker) and university preparatory programs. Building on central ideas from the Frankfurt School, the study proposes a platform for a critical theory of human-animal relations in formal education that embraces species-inclusive versions of critical pedagogy as well as gender and postcolonial analyses. In this vein, the study explores how social processes and practices in and outside the classroom enable certain human as well as animal subject positions while disabling others. A primary question is how a species-discourse intersects with categories formed around conceptions of gender, race/ethnicity, and class. A variety of ascribed animal representations and positions embedded in these processes are identified.The study argues that human-animal relations are characterized by indeterminacy and contradiction. While the school may educate to achieve improved conditions for animals inhuman society, it is at the same time involved in a process of social and cultural reproduction that normalizes the accessibility of animal bodies for human purposes. At the heart of this reproduction process lies boundary work around the animal as “other”. Such conceptualizations at times conflict with the views of animals that students bring with them to school and they therefore receive guidance about the “appropriate” position of animals in society; guidance that at the same time allows students to keep intact a sense of self as caring and moral actors toward animals. The school has a repertoire of concrete strategies for achieving this, and the effects of these strategies are identified as key components in a hidden curriculum of human-animal relations. The analyses show that these effects constitute a shared frame of reference of commonsense knowledge about animals in which contradictions embedded in human-animal relations can be comfortably accommodated. In addition, analytical tools borrowed from postcolonial theory are proposed that contribute to understanding the operations of hegemonic discourses of human-animal relations in the classroom as well as the effects generated by resistance to these discourses.
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| 2. |
- Lindahl, Britt
(författare)
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Lust att lära naturvetenskap och teknik? : en longitudinell studie om vägen till gymnasiet
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study was to follow a group of pupils from the age of twelve until they leave lower secondary school at the age of sixteen to describe and analyse how their attitudes towards and interest in science and technology develop and change but also how this and other factors such as ability, understanding of scientific concepts, gender and home background influenced their choice for upper secondary school. The sample consists of 80 pupils, the whole age group in a school. Data was collected using observations, interviews and questionnaires. The analysis built on the theory of planned behaviour and conceptions research. Many pupils have a positive attitude towards science but often a more positive attitude towards other subjects. They have duties to their parents but these are not strongly expressed. Their self-efficacy for science follows the same pattern as their attitude; they think they are good in science but not as good as in other subjects. For most pupils it seems as if attitude together with self-efficacy are the strongest determinant for their choice. These determinants are influenced by different factors. Girls and boys perceive science teaching differently but it seems as if the boys are on their way to developing the same critical attitude as the girls have had since long ago. The social background is important as many of the pupils who choose science are from well educated homes but even this group is loosing interest. Good ability is a necessary factor but does not guarantee science will be chosen. Neither has good conceptual understanding a crucial importance but on the other hand there are many pupils who say that they would not choose science as they do not understand science in the way it is taught. Another finding is that many pupils even at Grade 5 have an idea of their future career which later on is the same as their choice for upper secondary. If science shall have a chance in their lives the pupils must have a positive experience of science from the beginning of primary school through all years. Once they have lost their interest it is very difficult to get them back. The competition for their attention is intensive and the older they get the more difficult it will be to catch their interest and allegiance.
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| 3. |
- Emilson, Anette, 1964-
(författare)
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Det önskvärda barnet : Fostran uttryckt i vardagliga kommunikationshandlingar mellan lärare och barn i förskolan
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this research is to acquire knowledge about fostering young children, as expressed in everyday interactions between teachers and children in Swedish preschools. The three empirical studies in this doctoral thesis investigated partly specific democratic values such as participation and influence and partly the values that teachers explicitly or implicitly encourage and how these values are communicated to children. The thesis takes a critical approach in order to also acquire knowledge about important fostering aspects that can move hierarchal power structures towards a fostering of values characterized by intersubjectivity. In order to understand the interactions, the concepts of communicative and strategic action (Habermas, 1984) are used, as well as strong and weak classification and framing (Bernstein, 2000). Preschool fostering is also analyzed from a double perspective, with a starting-point in Habermas’ (1984, 1995a) concepts of the system and the life-world. The fieldwork took place with three different groups of toddlers in Swedish preschools. Forty-six children (aged 1 to 3 years) participated, as well as their ten teachers. The data consisted of videotaped observations of teacher and child interactions. The first study investigated how a toddler’s participation can be understood in two kinds of educational activities where the degree of teacher control differs. The results showed how strong classification and framing risk restricting children’s participation and how a weak classification and framing can promote children’s opportunities to participate on their own terms. Important issues for children’s participation were found to be a participant teacher who creates meaningful contexts, where teacher control is about being emotionally present, supportive and responsive. The purpose of the second study was to investigate how very young children can exert an influence in circle-time situations in relation to teacher control. The results showed that the children do, in fact, make choices, mostly based on several fixed alternatives, and that they do take the initiative, sometimes to express an opinion or a right, sometimes to express what they want to do in circle time. It was also found that the influence young children are able to exert varies with the control the teacher exercises. It is evident that strong teacher control is maintained in different ways and that strong control does not necessarily limit children’s influence; it depends on the nature of the control. Children’s influence increases when the teacher’s control over the what and how aspects of communications is weak, and is characterized by closeness to the child’s life-world and a communicative approach. The third study examined the values that teachers explicitly or implicitly encourage and how these values are communicated to children. The analyses resulted in ten specific values embedded in value dimensions of discipline, caring and democracy. These, in turn, can be divided into different social orientations – both collective and individualistic. The values are communicated differently and the what aspect of the communication (the value) is interrelated with the how aspect of the communication; how teachers communicate influences and sometimes changes the communicated value. In order to change power structures in teacher and child interactions, three aspects of importance have been identified: teachers’ closeness to the child’s perspective, their emotional presence and playfulness. Theoretically, the aspects are within the framework of communicative action and contribute to the understanding of what the theory might mean in communication with the youngest children in the educational system.
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| 4. |
- Hjalmarsson, Marie, 1961-
(författare)
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Lojalitet och motstånd : anställdas agerande i ett föränderligt hemtjänstarbete
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to shed light on the dynamics and the complexity in the relationship between power and resistance in labour, from an employee-perspective. This is done by describing and analyzing how a group of employees in municipal home help services interpret and make use of their possibilities to act in relation to a process of change, initiated by the management, involving new technology. Hand-held computers were implemented by the management and the home helps were supposed to use them to register their daily work performance. A theoretical framework based on power and resistance in accordance with Michel Foucault and Jon McKenzie, together with Ackroyd & Thompson’s concept of self-organization, is used. The study has an ethnographic approach. The empirical material is based on a combination of participant observation, interviews and document analysis. Two major periods of observations were conducted. The first period focused on understanding the work performance and its routines. During the second period, the use of (or rather attempts to use) the hand-held computers was in focus. The interviews with 11 home helps focused on the meaning and content of their work with regards to work performance, skills and knowledge, possibilities and limitations and their opinions of the ICT project. Five management representatives, a local councillor, a software consultant and a union representative were also interviewed in order to grasp a management perspective. The results show a pattern in the actions of the home helps. It is a rational way of acting where adaptability, responsibility and reliability permeate thoughts and actions. It functions as a premise for how the home helps interpret their possibilities to act at work. They address their loyalty in several directions: to the care recipients, but also to their colleagues, to the management and to the organization as such. This rationality of loyalty is reproduced by the home helps but also by the management. The home helps are to a certain extent aware of the loyalties in their actions and every so often they use them in a conscious way. They reflect on how strong the loyalty should be and towards whom or what it should be directed. The actions of the home helps at work in general and in relation to the ICT project in particular is characterised by loyalty and consent rather than by formal resistance. The home helps don’t show any formal resistance but they do self-organization. They strive towards a relative autonomy and to maintain their dignity. This way of acting is however related to the rationality of loyalty that has a regulating influence on their informal resistance. Despite the limited and informal character of the self-organization of the home helps, it can be considered subversive. It has a possibility of undermining the exercise of power and it creates an alternative professional identity to the one offered by the management
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| 5. |
- Hjalmarsson, Maria
(författare)
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Lärarprofessionens genusordning : En studie av lärares uppfattningar om arbetsuppgifter, kompetens och förväntningar
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis presents a study of the gender order of the teaching profession. It focuses on how teachers perceive meanings of the gender order in their work. It also focuses how the gender order is expressed in the interviewees’ understandings and interpretations of their assignment and work.The theoretical concept gender contract (Hirdmans, 1988, 2007) is used to interpret and analyse how teachers apprehend their work tasks and how these are carried out. Lindgrens (1985, 1999) studies of majority- and minority positions at a work place are relevant as that the amount of women and men in schools’ lower grades differ. The theoretical concept gender regime (Connell, 1996) is used to study how the overall gender order is expressed in different schools. Connell (1999) describe a hierarchy of masculinities which is used as a tool to understand how the male teachers reason about expectations from others.The thesis is primarily based on an interview study among fourteen teachers in grade three to five in an urban municipality. Some data from a questionnaire, answered by approximately 600 teachers who work with children 10-12 years old, are also included.Results show that social dimensions are intervened with pedagogic-didactic aspects, but at the same time talked about as disturbing teachers’ main assignment. Social dimensions are described as taking a lot of teachers’ time and energy, but also as “that all round”. Especially the male teachers discuss aspects as caring and relationships to pupils and describe these aspects as a source to challenge in work. From a gender perspective, it is interesting to note that it is mostly female coded aspects, i.e. relationships that are described as “that all around”. Contact with parents is highly emphasized and influenced by aspects of ethnicity. Several teachers state that norms in the pupils’ home environment and norms in school differ. Because of this, contact with parents includes dilemmas.Partly because of that, it can be hard to delimit the teacher role from the private role.Even if tasks related to social dimensions in work are described as “that all around”, the importance of the teachers’ social competence is emphasized. The teachers maintain that competence in work does not have anything to do with the gender of the teacher. Especially younger teachers tend to emphasize abilities and competences of the individual. At the same time, it seems that women and men partly handle different kinds of tasks and that certain tasks get gender coded, which corresponds to the regulations of the gender contract through which the gender order is established.Several male teachers state that they have worked as teachers for smaller groups of pupils with special needs, without having the relevant educational background. These men also told that they were recruited to handle instable groups of pupils. Thereby, they are expected to behave like “real men”, i.e. perform a hegemonic masculinity, and if they don’t they run a risk to be seen as unmanly. Feelings of shame are discussed only by male teachers. This shows that not only women but also men “suffer” of the gender order.The male teachers dwell upon strong expectations from parents to “uphold peace and quiet” in a way that female teachers don’t. However, when focusing the corresponding theme in the questionnaire, the picture changes. 91% (n=366) of the female teachers and 86% (n=235) of the male teachers feel to a high degree expectations from parents to “uphold peace and quiet”.
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| 6. |
- Holfve-Sabel, Mary-Anne
(författare)
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Attitudes towards Swedish comprehensive school : comparisons over time and between classrooms in grade 6
- 2006
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of the study is to understand student attitudes towards different aspects of school using data from the late 1960s and 35 years later, and to analyze the impact both from teachers and students on classroom climate. Another important aim in order to accomplish this is to develop suitable instruments and methods. The starting point of the empirical work was a 40-item attitude questionnaire that was used in the Didactical Process Analysis (DPA) project conducted in Göteborg in the late... mer 1960s, which comprised 60 classrooms and 1600 grade 6 students. This attitude questionnaire was reanalyzed using two-level confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the reanalysis resulting in seven factors describing differences in student attitudes within classrooms, three factors describing attitude differences between classrooms. The original 40-item questionnaire was expanded with 31 new items concerning school environment, teaching and interaction between the students, and between the teacher and the students. This instrument was administered to 78 classes, with the participation of 1696 students and 78 teachers in Göteborg. The first objective was to compare the attitudes of students now with the DPA investigation 35 years ago using identical items. The analysis focused both on item-level data and on factor scores computed from the two-level CFA model. The results showed a general improvement in attitudes. A differentiated picture was seen on the within-class level with significant changes in peer relational factors but not in school factors. The present curriculum with its focus on interaction aspects of learning may have implemented changes in relational patterns and created a more positive student attitude. On between-class level all three factors had increased their levels of attitudes, but the variation among classes was wide. The second objective was to analyze differences between the points of view of students and their teachers, and to analyze which factors explained classroom differences in attitudes. Differences in teacher-student perspectives were seen on item level. The students’ attitudes emphasized the importance of positive interaction with both teacher and peers. Teachers noted the level of work ambitions, stress and disturbance among students. The factors of most importance for classroom differences in attitudes concerning work atmosphere and social relations were a sensible management of deviancy, and creation of a safe and orderly environment.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Johansson, Monica
(författare)
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Anpassning och motstånd : En etnografisk studie av gymnasieelevers institutionella identitetsskapande
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Nearly all pupils in Sweden continue their studies at upper secondary school. A central point of departure in this thesis is therefore to examine how the upper secondary school deals with its now both complex and difficult to interpret task of ”one school for all” and to describe and analyse the creation of identity for pupils within this institution. How the creation of identity occurs in different programmes during the pupils’ period of education is specifically studied with a theoretical starting point in Anthony Gidden’s structuration theory complemented with theories that concern pupil adaption and resistance. The study was conducted at a municipal upper secondary school and used critical ethnographic research and document analysis. The programmes that were included in the study are the individual programme, the health care programme and the technical programme. Five pupil groups were followed for three school years. The results show that the differentiation of pupils within the education system is strengthened in the everyday activities of the upper secondary school. At a general school level, an explicit pupil identity is sought after, but in the different programmes different possibilities for the pupils to achieve this are discerned. The pupils are faced with different demands and expectations depending on which upper secondary school programme they are studying at. This applies to both their performances and the social relations of the positioning processes involved in being a pupil. The creation of pupils' identities is formed and developed in different ways and can also be related to the prevalence of special support, as well as to gender, social background and ethnicity. During their education most pupils strive towards adapting to the pupil identity that the school, at a general level, seeks. But they do so with varying degrees of resistance. In the thesis, the results are discussed in relation to the increased marketisation of the education system where individual performance, control and the evaluation of pupils are becoming more and more central. There is a need to critically examine these questions since they have such significant consequences for the future of young people.
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| 9. |
- Mattsson, Anita
(författare)
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Flexibel utbildning i praktiken : En fallstudie av pedagogiska processer i en distansutbildning med en öppen design för samarbetslärande
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to examine the pedagogical processes that evolve in an "open" design for online learning realized in relation to a specific setting. The study describes and analyzes pedagogical activities in a distance education course in higher education that uses an asynchronous conference system for communication and interaction. The study's theoretical framework is based on the CSCL field, and a socio-cultural perspective, where the aim of the research is to create artefacts and environments that support meaning making in practice. The study was conducted in an authentic environment and can be described as an ethnographic exploratory case study. The analysis focuses on how the practice is established and constituted over time. The unit of analysis is ongoing interaction between nine groups of students and their teacher. Some overall patterns has been analysed and three models of division of labour emerged in the study. The produced assignments mirror the negotiations the groups’ members have in understanding how and when they will be working with the assignments. The course had a weak educational framing and the participants were responsible for their own learning. The teacher's instructions were intentionally broad and vague, an open design, which allowed the students to use their creativity in the work. Even if the teacher was responsible for monitoring the students' discussions, she did not participate because she thought it was too difficult to understand when her active participation supported the students and when it did not. The relations between and within the structuring resources were used in learning communities and the students acted in relation to them. To understand how to divide and allocate tasks, and how to solve problems, is not only done in relationships and people's thinking, but also implicit in learning communities. This means that teachers have to design courses in new ways. The requirements for participation, interaction, and communication, must be determined. The way in which an assignment is formulated structured the students' way to solve the assignments.
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| 10. |
- Nilsson, Lars-Erik
(författare)
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"But Can't You See They are Lying?" Student Moral Positions and Ethical Practices in the Wake of Technological Change
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Today it is considered important that modern digital technology be implemented and that all citizens learn to use it. Students already use mobile phones, personal digital assistants, computers, and their applications to do much of their work. This includes searching for and retrieving information, and collaborating on assignments and writing. Recently, claims have been made in both the media and academic research that student technology use is an important factor underlying an increase in student attempts to deceive on exams and other graded work. For example, it is assumed that students sometimes use the Internet to download other people’s essays, then handing them in as their own, and to make patchwork compositions of other people’s texts using the copy and paste functions. Such claims, however, risk not considering other changes that have occurred, for example, changing forms of exams/assessed assignments. Accordingly, one aim of this thesis has been to go beyond the categorization of students as cheaters and their use of digital technology as the use of unauthorized aids when discussing student use of technology in exams/graded assignments, and consider what rights and duties and what other subject positions are being made available for them. Four studies have been conducted, the first into the work of high-school students on research reports and the other three into interaction in disciplinary inquiries. These studies illustrate how exams/graded assignments and assessment in general introduce dilemmas for students and how it is important to consider how these dilemmas are solved in practice before making assumptions about technology use as cheating. As a contribution to the debate about students’ moral values and their use of technology, this work has demonstrated the importance of distinguishing between actions and the meaning ascribed to them as acts. A general observation is that student use of technology is generally met with suspicion. Cheating functions as a device for making good texts appear as possible downloads, texts with uneven quality as possible patchwork, inadvertent textual overlaps (i.e., unintentional near reproduction of the wording of a source) as intentional plagiarism, and student references to technical problems as probable rationalizations. From a methodological perspective, the utility of investigating cheating as an interactional accomplishment is demonstrated. This approach has made it possible to investigate how students reason about using existing texts and asking others for help. As well, the application of a dynamic perspective on subjectivity has made a theoretical contribution. Through this perspective, it is possible to criticize the normalization of students as cheaters based on how they use technology. That their actions could as easily make other positions available to them is shown.
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