| 1. |
- Reis, Maria
(författare)
-
Att ordna, från ordning till ordning. Yngre förskolebarns matematiserande
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A starting point for this study was an interest based in my earlier experience that most of the youngest children’s mathematizing in everyday life was unspoken and unknown. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge about how toddlers mathematize and develop mathematical knowledge and understanding through activities with concrete material. The theoretical framework is based on variation theory (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton et al., 2004), combined with ideas offered by Gibson and Gibson (1955), Gibson et al. (1962) and Gibson and Pick (2000). This framework makes it possible to describe subtle differences in how children handle a mathematical content. It holds a non-dualistic ontological position, and sees phenomena from a second order perspective, focusing on ”children’s perspectives” and the object of learning. The collected data consists of 47½ hours of video documentation of 16 toddlers’ everyday activities and arranged situations in a longitudinal study. Situations chosen for analysis is a sub-sample from a larger corpus. “Fine-grained analysis” is performed of four toddlers’ activities with nesting cups and a ring tower and their verbal and non-verbal interaction. The design of the arranged situations was that a new material was introduced, a material similar to one well known to the children. The toddlers themselves chose the material (self chosen activities) and for how long time they wanted to use it. The materials consisted of rings and cups that could be ordered according to their size and slope in series or in a tower. The results show a variety of different ways that the toddler may handle the situation. From the analysis the following categories have been identified: Building a tower without apparent order, Making an order, Bringing and maintain size order, Challenging order, Creating new order to challenge peers’ knowledge. Based on previous knowledge the child distinguished by differentiation some dimensions of variation, particularly orientation, tower property and size, and values within these dimensions of variation. The results show that toddlers discern and open one dimension of variation at a time. The first dimension of variation the children identify and open is the orientation of the cups and rings. Then what tower a cup belongs to and later the size dimension are discerned by the toddler. Finally the toddler discerns that all cups and rings have a certain place in the order, and that all rings and cups are important for the ordering. A conclusion to be drawn is that a previous value within a dimension of variation is later identified as a new value or another dimension of variation. The interest of this research was to study toddler mathematizing “in situ” and focus on how children’s mathematical development is interactively constructed “here and now”. Toddlers’ activity of this kind is a crucial preparation for fundamental arithmetics such as properties of number and basic operations. Structuring and ordering in series are important in relation to sense-making in early mathematizing.
|
|
| 2. |
- Strömberg Jämsvi, Susanne
(författare)
-
Unpacking dominant discourses in higher education language policy : A critical study of language policy in Swedish higher education
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall purpose of the thesis is to investigate dominant discourses operating in the changing of HE concerning questions of language policy. It has been studied at a national level, analysing reports and government bills, and at an institutional level, analysing university language policy, taking Sweden as an example. The research questions address language ideals and language competences. The analyses reveal that discourse strands of economy/market, inclusion and success operate, often entangled with each other in discursive knots, in construing what and how languages are valued, and what kind of language competences academics and students need. An overall finding suggests that economic reasons and market values have become more and more salient in construing ‘language’, concurrently defining participation and prosperity. The findings show that it is primarily Swedish and English, i.e. as parallel languages, that are construed as language ideals. Swedish, as the national language, is constructed as essential for protective and democratic reasons. Academics are construed as protectors of Swedish scientific terminology and as facilitators of Swedish scientific learning. English, as the international language, is at present constructed as essential, or inevitable, for the interests of a liberalised research and educational market. However, the findings suggest a transformation from the 1970s when English was construed as important for reasons of solidarity and worldwide responsibility. English as an obvious and natural foreign language in Sweden is construed for professional, rational and participatory reasons. Multilingualism, beyond Swedish-English bilingualism, is not valued in HE in the 2000s, nor are minority languages or immigrant languages acknowledged in relation to HE. Instead of recognising the potential linguistic repertoire of multilingual students and academics, the findings indicate that perspectives of deficiency prevail. Transnational students and academics are construed as English proficient, and only as English proficient. English-language students are construed as important for universities. Market values and market forces incorporate success for students, but also for universities through these students. The constructs of language ideals and competences in language policy of Swedish universities are interdiscursively connected to the national level. A parallel Swedish-English language ideal construes Swedish as principle and English as more relevant as educational levels get higher. Ideas of linguistic progress for students and of subject-lecturers as language teachers are prevalent. The Swedish language ideal is to a large extent construed in relation to the plain language movement. Commodifying processes operate in the construals of language by externalising language from people, construing it as an added value, an instrument or a technical matter. Finally, the educational implications of the findings are discussed in relation to academic work.
|
|
| 3. |
- Cronqvist, Marita
(författare)
-
Yrkesetik i lärarutbildning - en balanskonst
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to examine and to increase the understanding of how student teachers implicitly (in action) and explicitly (through oral and written statements) express and learn professional ethics and what these expressions reveal about professional ethics. Previous research has indicated that professional ethics as phenomenon is difficult to separate and to view in the meeting between pedagogue and child. Professional ethics is often unspoken and based on personal feelings and not on formulated knowledge. In this study professional ethics is examined as the student teacher´s lived practice in the meeting with the child. The study is based on life-world theory and Reflective Life-world Research (RLR). This means for example that the phenomenon of professional ethics is examined as it present itself to student teachers and that the researcher must make efforts to be open to the phenomenon, reflect on it and to bridle preunderstandings. Ten student teachers with different orientations to preschool and elementary school have been followed, eight of them from second to fourth semester in periods when university courses and school-based education meet. Empirical data is collected from interviews, observations and different written statements. Findings are presented in three parts: Part 1 presents the issues for each individual student teacher. In part 2 the essence of professional ethics is formulated as seven elements of meaning: 1) that ambiguity requires an approach to responsibility, 2) that external factors can be obstacles, 3) that relationships and learning are interwoven, 4) that experiences should be for a child´s best interest, 5) that inclusion should be available to every child, 6) that authority should be exercised through an atmosphere of joy, respect and safety, and 7) that development occurs when theory and practice meet in reflection. Part 3 is a theoretical presentation. Reflection, self-reflection, judgment and student teachers as role models emerge as the primary tools of professional ethics. These tools are dependent on each other and intertwine cognition and emotion, experiences, theories and practice. In addition to the essence of professional ethics, my conclusion is that learning about professional ethics is based on the student teacher´s life world and takes place in a lifelong learning process. Consequently, teacher education needs to support meta-learning (learning how to learn) and build education on the student teacher´s individual life world as a resource. The student teachers as role models are developed through virtuous actions continuously being performed and through teacher educators acting as role models. Judgment and phronesis are also developed in practice through student teachers´ experiences of balancing between various factors in the complex situation. Since learning is developed in practice and from experiences, school-based education becomes valuable in order to stimulate learning. Another conclusion is that experiences must be discussed and analyzed thoroughly and systematically in education. In this process reflection is crucial. Based on the findings, a didactic model, Didethics, has been created in order to implement ethics in the same way as content (subject) and methods are included in didactics. Through asking questions, the model implements ethics, links it with content and methods and follows ethics through the planning, implementation and evaluation of the learning process.
|
|
| 4. |
- Svensson, Malin, 1976
(författare)
-
Hoppet om en framtidsplats. Asylsökande barn i den svenska skolan
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis explores how accompanied refugee and asylum-seeking children experience everyday life in Sweden. During the asylum process, as part of a policy for promoting ‘normal life’, these children have the same right to education as permanently resident children. An ethnographic approach brought out data from combining interviews with participant observation and visual material produced by children. Methodological inspiration was sought in the new sociology of childhood and in its potential to make an eclectic analysis of the empirical data. Study I explores how spatial and temporal dimensions theoretically may guide dialogue with refugee children and interpretation of their visual material. The findings point to how children negotiate opportunities for the future where everyday life takes place, and how conditions for education are perceived in relation to their future prospects. Inquiring into the meaning of school, Study II explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking children, and shows how school is a social place that provides structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. Paradoxically, schools’ limited attention to the children’s predicament risked accentuating the ambivalent social position of being an asylum seeker and thus weakening the benefits of their right to education. Study III examines the challenges teachers face, as street-level bureaucrats, in catering to the needs of asylumseeking pupils and demonstrates how conflicting goals of education policy and asylum policy conditioned teachers’ work and risked undermining the compensatory pedagogical task. In sum, through analyses that encompass how an unsecured residence permit does not prevent children aspiring to their futures, as envisioned in the present, creating a home can be understood in terms of hope. While the asylum process conditions ideas of the future, the thesis contributes to an understanding of how it also shapes how children and teachers, as social actors, construct what is considered to be ‘normal life’ during the asylum process.
|
|
| 5. |
- Göthberg, Martin, PhD, 1959-
(författare)
-
Interacting : Coordinating text understanding in a student theatre production
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present dissertation explores student actors’ and their teachers’ coordination of text understanding in a theatre production – a two-semester process from page to stage in an upper secondary school in Sweden. With an interest in the collaborative work achieved in and through theatre education the research is realized against a background of the role of arts education and reading of literary texts in the neoliberal educational landscape that favors measurable effects of individual achievements. The overarching aim is to explore how text understanding evolves collaboratively as the participants transform drama text into stage text. This aim is pursued by investigating moment-to-moment contingency of unfolding social interaction in theatre activities grounded in a particular drama text. Analytically, such a focus is pursued by employing sociocultural and dialogical approaches to meaning making, creativity and learning. Data has been generated from ethnographic observation and video- and audio recordings of the participants’ staging of Molière’s The Affected Ladies, including the process from the first reading to the last performance. The unit of analysis applied to the data is tool-mediated activities, encompassing the participants, their interactions and the tools used. Three studies are reported through two articles and a licentiate thesis. The studies complement each other as the analytical work moved from ethnographic orientation into finer-grained scrutiny of talk- and action-in-interaction. The research design allows investigation of the micro-genesis of specific text understanding in relation to the overall transformation of a literary text into stage text, in which complexity of text understanding in artistic practice can be demonstrated. The results illustrate the situated, interactional ways in which the participants progressed from a position as newcomers to the drama text into a position of mastering the stage text. The findings show that anchoring text understanding in experiences in the material world developed the student’s perspectives on the text and expanded their action possibilities. They also show that students’ informal and playful role-playing provided the spaces necessary for appropriation of cultural and social interactional means that the students later re-used in rehearsal of scripted dialogue and in the stage text. One of the productive features was the dynamic, laminated interaction, including hybrid role-taking, in which substantial student agency surfaced. Such interaction supported collaborative realizations of meaning potentials in the situated habituation of characters’ manners. Stretched-out over the production period, the micro transitions of text understanding formed salient examples of emergent learning across formal and informal situations. There seems to be good arguments for doing more things with literary texts than ‘just’ reading them, in order to explore their inherent dynamics as layers of cultural meaning. To reduce learning arrangements to what seems efficient to reach measurable goals for the individual appears ill-judged considering the educational potentials of collaborative, creative, explorative and transgressive forms of learning illustrated in the present research.
|
|
| 6. |
- Zimmerman, Fredrik
(författare)
-
Det tillåtande och det begränsande. En studie om pojkars syn på studier och ungdomars normer kring maskulinitet
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Att pojkar generellt presterar sämre än flickor i skolan har ofta hävdats ha en relation till normer kring maskulinitet. Normer kring maskulinitetens negativa inverkan på studievanor har observerats på skolor med en dominerande ”antipluggkultur” eller en dominerande ”ingen ansträngningskultur” bland pojkarna. Vidare har det på dessa skolor uppmärksammats att denna typ av normer även har en negativ inverkan på flickors möjligheter att prestera i skolan. Denna avhandling har sitt fokus på frågan om pojkars syn på studier har en relation med normer kring maskulinitet, samt om förmågan att studera är könad. Dessa frågor har undersökts utifrån en etnografisk ansats på en högstadieskola. Den valda skolan skiljer sig mot skolor med en dominerande ”antipluggkultur” eller en dominerande ”ingen ansträngningskultur”, då en ”pluggkultur” istället dominerar bland pojkarna. Inom denna ”pluggkultur” reproduceras normer som är mer tillåtande vad gäller flickors och pojkars studerande. Att pojkarna anser att man ska studera ambitiöst medför att handlingen ”studera ambitiöst” inte ses som feminin och därför behöver inte pojkarna iscensätta sin maskulinitet genom att ta avstånd från studier, något som är fallet inom exempelvis en ”antipluggkultur”. Dock visar studien att ”pluggkulturen” till trots, reproduceras samtidigt parallella och motsägelsefulla normer som könar förmågan att studera, det vill säga normer som begränsar pojkars möjlighet att studera ambitiöst.
|
|
| 7. |
- Abraham, Getahun Yacob
(författare)
-
Education for Democracy? : Life Orientation: Lessons on Leadeship Qualities and Voting in South African Comprehensive Schools
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study takes as its starting point how teachers understand, interpret and teach social development aspects of Life Orientation in South African comprehensive schools. The specific focus is on lessons on leadership qualities and voting for third grade learners in four schools, each dominated by either Black, Coloured, White or mixed groups of learners. Field work with an ethnographic approach and a qualitative strategy was used to gain access to empirical data. Policy and curriculum documents, guidelines and textbooks were used. Classroom observations in four classes and interviews with 14 third grade teachers were conducted. Theoretical concepts of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction are applied. Ulf P Lundgren’s Frame Factor Theory is used to study school organization. Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogical Devices are considered when examining the different levels of pedagogical activities. To be a teacher in South Africa one needs to attend at least two years of teacher education after completing high school. Teachers in the classes studied underwent their teacher education during apartheid years. Due to limited in-service training, they sometimes experience problems of understanding and interpreting the learning area, which they usually tackle by consulting documents, colleagues or school authorities. The learners’ understanding varied based on their family background and type of school they attended. There were enormous differences in material, financial and organisational resources between classes and schools. The resources for teaching leadership qualities and voting were not, however, different between the classes. The lessons were teacher dominated and direct transmission was used as a method. The way teachers facilitated the lesson on leadership qualities and voting varied but all showed some democratic shortcomings. Apart from answering questions, learners were neither invited nor encouraged to participate to further their understanding of the theme. Limited aspects of leadership qualities were discussed, individual leaders’ roles were emphasised and the teachers picked candidates for class leaders in three of the classes. It was also evident that the class environments were not suitable for critical or creative thinking and democratic upbringing. The schools reproduced norms, values, languages and cultures of the different groups. Officially, teachers emphasised the common national South African identity. This emphasis on national identity could disguise the injustice some groups experience in society.
|
|
| 8. |
- Sjöberg, Lena
(författare)
-
Bäst i klassen? : Lärare och elever i svenska och europeiska policytexter
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure in the recent criticism directed to the Swedish school system and its schools, teachers and pupils, but especially the epidemic of policies produced in order to develop and improve Swedish schools, in particular after the change of government in 2006. The general aim of this thesis is to study how teachers and pupils are represented, and thus constructed, regulated and positioned in a number of current key policy texts. The study also involves a discussion of the construction and regulation practices regarding the school, and its role in society. The main context for the study is policy texts and policy practices related to teacher education. Four studies form the cornerstone of the thesis. Through these policy texts different institutional practices are analyzed. These range from European union policy to examination data from a local teacher education institution in Sweden. A main source of inspiration to the theoretical framework of the study has been provided by the work of Michel Foucault. However, in addition to Foucault's constructionist and poststructural basis, theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, Mark Olssen's social-materialist analysis of policy and Stephen J Ball's policy sociology are also included. The first study examines the constructions and governing technologies in four policy texts within the European Union working programme 'Education 2010'. The second study takes a historical perspective in the construction of teachers and pupils, based on teacher education policy text since 1948, and how the ideal teacher, pupil and school are constructed and positioned genealogically. The third study explores the discursive notions of teacher professionalism and how the regulation of teachers operates through this and other discursive practices by the Swedish government and the Teacher union (Lärarförbundet) during two different time periods, 1995-2000 and 2007-2008. The final study examines student teachers' examination assignments, as a local policy practice, and how the student teachers position the ideal pupil and themselves as ideal teachers. It examines how different policy discourses operate in relation to positioning practices. The thesis shows that current neoliberal discourse order in educational policy today is partly challenged by neoconservative rationalities. Secondly, the thesis shows how each teacher and pupil is governed through several discourses, governing technologies and governing techniques, and how these three entities function relationally in the governing of the subject. In common for discourses, governing technologies and techniques are that they are often very 'seductively packaged', which implies that it is almost impossible to resist and oppose them. Finally I claim that the current discourse order, and its discourses, and governing technologies and techniques imply structural inequalities for teachers, but especially between different pupil groups
|
|
| 9. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
-
Knowledge at play. Studies of games as members’ matters : Kunskap genom spelande. Studier av digitala spel och spelande som kunskapsdomän
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- On a general level, this thesis seeks some answers to the broad question of what one can learn from digital games. With an analytical approach informed by ethnomethodology, the main thrust of the work is an exploration of members’ matters in the area of games and gaming. In response to prevailing discussions about how, where and what gamers learn, the aim is to examine emerging forms of knowledge embedded in practices in and around digital games. The first part of the thesis addresses three themes: the question of whether leisure gaming could be understood to have transfer effects; how games are positioned in a state of restlessness and multistableness; and how the domain encompassing gaming and game development is advancing in terms of professionalization and institutionalization. The second part is comprised of three empirical studies based on two sets of video recordings: collaborative gaming in The Lord of the Rings Online, and assessment practices in game development education. The studies begin to unravel the elusive phenomena of gaming by making some gameplay practices and conventions visible. For instance, the findings suggest that there are specialized coordination practices, developed through long-term engagement with the online game. Furthermore, from the perspective of the institutional framing, it is argued that understandings from other media are not applicable in a straightforward manner, but must be carefully calibrated to matters such as game genre conventions and control over gameplay conduct. By describing the reasoning and knowledge displayed by gamers and game developers, the thesis contributes to interrelated discussions about knowledge development, currently carried out in educational science, interaction studies and game studies. In conclusion, it is suggested that digital games are establishing autonomy from other forms of entertainment media and software industries as a result of the ways games and gaming as multistable objects of knowledge have become deeply embedded in society.
|
|
| 10. |
- Nordén, Per
(författare)
-
Regnbågsungar: Familj, utbildning, fritid
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, rainbow children’s experience in private, institutional and public spaces is examined. More specifically, the aim is to explore if and how social conflict arises on the basis on their queer kinship structure. 28 interviews were conducted with informants that share the experience of growing up in Sweden with one or more homosexual, bisexual or transgender parents. Their age varied from 15 to 37 years of age. The theoretical starting point is taken in Laclau and Mouffe’s (1985/2008) discourse theory along with the Essex colleagues Glynos and Howarth (2007). Glynos and Howarth break down Laclau and Mouffe’s articulation concepts into three elements, which they define as social, political and fantasmatic logics. In order to analyze these logics in empirical data, Glynos and Howarth state that a moment of “Theoretical and critical interventions” (s. 38) is needed. The intervention in this thesis comes from poststructuralism, feminism and queer theoretical perspectives. I specifically draw on Butler (1990; 1993; etc.), Ahmed (2006), Halberstam (2005) and Stockton (2009) in exploring how queer family structures come to matter in everyday life. The first (1) result chapter, Komma ut som regnbågsfamilj, explores the rainbow children’s stories of their parent’s coming-out process. In this chapter I show how coming-out processes affect family life and how everyday life changes through these processes. Broadly speaking, this chapter deals with negotiations that concern nonnormative positions, but also how this relates to family and kinship structures. The second (2) result chapter, Att framträda i utbildningsmiljön, concerns the experience of rainbow children in the different institutions that organize education, such as pre-school, elementary school and high school. In this chapter I show situations where heteronormativity has social implications for the rainbow children’s right to education. The third (3) and final result chapter, Skiftande fritidssammanhang, shows a span but also specific social communities the rainbow children takes part in during their leisure time activities. In this result chapter I show how the informants are stopped or appear unwanted to participate in certain environments. The conflict areas that appear show, like in the previous chapter, that rainbow children experience heterosexism and transnegativity. The interview touches on occasions and situations when the informants are separated from their previous leisure time contexts. This show that rainbow children, even in the most different contexts, always needs to relate to their queer family structure.
|
|
