| 1. |
- Abraham, Getahun Yacob
(författare)
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Education for Democracy? : Life Orientation: Lessons on Leadeship Qualities and Voting in South African Comprehensive Schools
- 2010
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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.
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| 2. |
- Masoumi, Davoud
(författare)
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Quality in e-learning within a cultural context : The case of Iran
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players’ satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. “quality discourse”, “e-learning discourse” and “culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse”, by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to “fit” in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.
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| 3. |
- Alvestad, Torgeir, 1960
(författare)
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Barnehagens relasjonelle verden - små barn som kompetente aktører i produktive forhandlinger
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study investigates the negotiations that take place in play among the youngest children in preschool. What are their negotiations about? How do they negotiate? What kinds of strategies do they use during their negotiations? The study has its focus on learning about fellowship through practice and experience in the negotiations that take place among the youngest preschool children. The study’s relevance also relates to the development of pedagogical practice among the youngest children in preschools. The theoretical platform is comprised of the perspectives of childhood psychology (Sommer, 2004) and childhood sociology (Corsaro, 2002). In both perspectives children are regarded as competent active in producing their own culture and active in calling on information and learning. The main concepts used in the analysis of the empirical data are ‘inter-subjectivity’ and ’the role of others’. The concepts are based on the theoretical frameworks of Daniel Stern (1991) and George Herbert Mead (1962). A group of twenty four children, thirteen girls and eleven boys, aged between two to three, were regularly video recorded. The children were enrolled in day-care groups in two of the biggest cities in Norway. The study reveals that the negotiations that take place among the children are mainly about their relationships, play materials, and the content of their play. They negotiate both verbally and nonverbally. They express their intentions towards each other with words and through gestures, glances, laughter and smiles. They use different strategies in their negotiations that relate to content and intentions. They also seem to develop or change their strategy if, for example, an initial strategy is not successful. Their strategies can be both emotional and connected to solving problems. In addition, they often use humour as a strategy. The study shows that the children who play the most with others and who know each other best, are those who are most successful in their negotiations. They often have a common focus and common intentions, as well as sharing emotional conditions in their play and negotiations. It seems that those children who are the most competent playmates are also those who are most competent in negotiations. The reason for this might be the connection between play and negotiations. To be able to play successfully demands that those sharing the play are prepared for negotiations about relations, play materials and the content of the play. However, the children’s negotiations depend on their previous experiences in this field. The more experienced the youngest children are in negotiations, the more complex and flexible their negotiations might be. A pedagogical consequence of this study is that staff in preschools should support the smallest children by giving them more time to meet and play together. This can give the children extended possibilities to develop their own strategies of negotiations in play. This in turn will support children’s learning in becoming creative, seeking and reflective individuals who create their own space of action. The experiences children are gaining through negotiations in play might also be important for other situations of negotiation, contributions and democratic practice.
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| 4. |
- Bergviken Rensfeldt, Annika, 1969
(författare)
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Opening Higher Education: Discursive transformations of distance and higher education government
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes as its starting point the 1990s and early 2000s political arguments for a more open and flexible Swedish higher education system. At this time, the issues of accessibility and participation were also brought into the debate by revitalized ideals of distance education. In this study, the aim has been to denaturalize and render discursive shifts visible by examining the assumptions and reasonings of “opening higher education.” The empirical material is Swedish distance and higher education policies; Government bills, Government official reports, and replies from universities and university colleges, from 1992 to 2005. The thesis draws on a Foucauldian, post-structural understanding and approach of governmentality, focusing on how discourses take part in a governing that constitutes certain problems, solutions, and rationalities, made visible in policy. The overall purpose has been to analyze how discourses suggesting widened, flexible, and democratic participation involve regulations and orderings of students, institutions, and higher education systems. The thesis includes four studies that demonstrate how discourses of openness become parts of governing distance and higher education; how rationalities of expansion and flexibility are aligned to securing higher education systems and populations, and how institutions and individuals should adjust to flexible and personalized higher education. The first study examines how a post-war, nation-based higher education expansion is re-configured in scale, into regional, IT-based, European and global spatialities. The second study examines flexible distance education in terms of gendered spatial orderings, problematically intended for female populations. The third study explores how a certain ideal subjectivity and self-technology of personalization is embedded in the notions of IT-based Learning management systems. The last study examines the discursive shift from distance education to flexible learning and how a spatial politics and polarizations of study modes (distance/flexible), university localizations (distance/campus), and ideals of distance education (distance/closeness) are produced. The analyses reveal how liberal rationalities and self-organization of individuals, populations and spatialities take part of the governing and how orderings; differentiation of systems and exclusion of populations through spatial affiliation, gender, distance and IT study modes, market and performance logics, are produced.
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| 5. |
- Kullberg, Angelika, 1969
(författare)
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What is taught and what is learned. Professional insights gained and shared by teachers of mathematics
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to contribute to knowledge about relationships between teaching and learning in school. The framework used in this research, variation theory, states that, to improve student learning, attention must be paid to what is being learned, the capability that is to be improved and the features (critical features) that it is necessary for the learner to discern. The studies reported here focus on the significance of critical features and are based on two ‘learning studies’ in mathematics, one of the density of rational numbers and one of the addition and subtraction of negative numbers. In a learning study, teachers work together with design, analysis and revision of their teaching of a single lesson with the aim of enhancing students’ learning by gaining insight about features that are assumed to be critical and enacting them in their teaching. The question answered in this research is whether the insight gained in the learning studies about critical features can be shared by other teachers and used to enhance other students’ learning. Two studies based on the previous studies were carried out together with a total of eight teachers and sixteen groups of students. Each teacher enacted two lessons with different conditions in terms of the critical features made use of. The lessons were video recorded and analysed with respect to which critical features were enacted in the lessons and what the students learned as indicated in pre and post tests. It is suggested that the critical features were transferable in two regards, in terms of student learning and in terms of a means of communication that could be shared among teachers. It was indicated that the critical features that were enacted in the teaching constrained what it was possible to experience in the classroom and what students learned. What was taught seemed to be reflected in what the students learned. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that it was not sufficient to simply name the critical features to the students; it seems that they must be discerned in order for learning to take place. It was found that the teachers made use of the critical features that were identified by other teachers in a learning study as a means to plan and teach lessons. This suggests that teachers can make use of the notion of critical features in their own teaching to enhance student learning.
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| 6. |
- Lymer, Gustav, 1978
(författare)
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The work of critique in architectural education
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research reported here is an investigation of instruction and assessment in architectural education. The focus is on the practice of critique, an educational activity in which instructors and professional architects give students feedback on their finished projects. Taking an ethnomethodologically informed approach, the interests of the thesis revolve around questions of how critique is done as an occasioned instructional practice. The empirical material consists of video recordings of critique sessions at a Swedish school of architecture. The core of the thesis consists of four empirical studies. Study 1 deals with issues of professional vision and the ways in which the graphical surface of the presentation is seen. Study 2 addresses the significance of intentions in the setting. The study examines how the relation between students’ stated intentions and the presented designs is treated by participants. Study 3 deals with the use of precedents and references, analyzing how critics respond to students’ ways of handling intertextual aspects of architectural design. Study 4 focuses on the material and spatial set-up of critique—the differing affordances of digital slideshows and posters for presentation and discussion. Critique is found to be a site where architectural proposals are treated for the purposes of instruction as provisional and improvable, and where their significances are detailed in exhibitions of architectural reasoning and judgment. Such exhibiting involves identifying and elaborating on problems and qualities, and articulating values that are visible in the envisaged buildings and their graphical representations. These interpretations may be juxtaposed with the expressed intentions of students, as these appear in verbal presentations or in textual accounts. Their interrelations are inspected and discrepancies are noted and discussed. On the basis of the analyses in the thesis, the function of critique is argued to centre on the juxtaposition of student-produced objects with professional competences for seeing, articulating, assessing, and contextualizing these objects. In organizing the educational program around cycles of production and critique, architecture is provided with a powerful means through which design competences, and the assessment practices that lie at their core, can be made massively present within, and constitutive of, the developmental processes through which students acquire the intellectual, aesthetic, and discursive repertoires necessary for competent architectural work.
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| 7. |
- Masoumi, Davoud
(författare)
-
Quality in E-learning in a Cultural Context: The case of Iran
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players’ satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. “quality discourse”, “e-learning discourse” and “culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse”, by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to “fit” in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.
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| 8. |
- Olander, Clas, 1956
(författare)
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Towards an interlanguage of biological evolution: Exploring students´ talk and writing as an arena for sense-making
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to explore what is involved when learning science, by focusing on students’ appropriation of the school science language. The aspiration is to explore relations between, on the one hand, content-oriented aspects of making sense of a specific area in school biology, and on the other hand, more generic patterns that are linked to learning in general: the influence of different social languages, and also the conceptual, epistemological, and ontological constituents of learning something. The strategy for empirically exploring what is involved when students make sense of biological evolution from a language perspective includes examination of instances in the classroom where meaning and sense of terms as well as semantic patterns are articulated in writing and talking. The analytic attention is on, on the one hand, students’ individual writing, and on the other, students’ talk in peer group discussions. The latter has guided the main part of the work, and one conclusion is that the students frequently shift between different social languages, mainly a colloquial and a scientific language. Both languages are a productive resource in students’ appropriation of the school science language. This is understood to rely on the establishment of an arena, an interlanguage discourse, where scientific terms and theories may be introduced, negotiated, and made sense of, in particular in relation to colloquial language and everyday experiences. In that way, this interlanguage discourse is an arena for sense-making. The students most frequently start their talk as a negotiation concerning conceptual notions that is linked to a discussion about epistemological pattern and sometimes the talk also is linked to ontological framing. The students negotiate the meaning of conceptual notions, which has both colloquial and scientific origins, for example variation, randomness, need, and development. Irrespective of the origin of the notions they are an asset in the students’ sense-making process. Epistemologically the students make their argumentation plausible by referring to resources, for example names or theories. Furthermore, they structure their explanations both with internal logic, for example causality or teleological reasoning, and external linking between specific examples and general ideas. In each of these dimensions, the argumentation can have different quality. Links between the general and specific can be systematic rather than sporadic, explanations can be causal rather than teleological, and resources can be theories rather than names. Ontological framing is mainly done as negotiations about what is allowed to talk about or whether agency matters in a school science discourse.
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| 9. |
- Vigmo, Sylvi, 1958
(författare)
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New Spaces for Language Learning. A study of student interaction in media production in English
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis project takes as its starting point an interest in foreign language learning as a social and cultural activity. Globalisation and digital media have contributed to changed conditions, especially for learning English. These changing conditions offer opportunities and new arenas as well as a challenge for current educational practice. Against this background, the research questions aim to explore foreign language learners’ activities to contribute to our understanding of these changing conditions. The context the digital media environment represents differs from the educational context, and holds different spaces for language activities. The overarching aim in this thesis has been to investigate the linguistic activities of a group of learners of English in school as they engage in a film production. The foreign language learner is here seen as a producer of language and as participating in several practices. Of specific interest was to explore emerging hybrid practices through the analyses of foreign language learners’ activities in an educational context that integrates adolescents’ media literacy repertoires. These research interests were realised by means of an intervention study, Design-based Research (DBR), at upper secondary level. The intervention in existing practice also involved the teacher as the designer of the foreign language-learning task itself. The empirical data mainly consist of video data, which captured the foreign language learners’ activities in one specific case when engaged in a film production. Other empirical data produced during the study consist of classroom observations, learners’ artefacts e.g. paper-based storyboards, teacher interviews and the learners’ final film production. Interaction analysis was applied for the analysis and the foreign language learners’ spoken interaction was analysed in-depth during the production process: from a focus on characters, a narrative, to the editing of their footage. The results from this study demonstrate diverse language learner foci, which display various interrelationships between the digital media resources, adolescents’ media repertories and the language learners’ linguistic production. Digital media offered new spaces and opportunities for language production, spoken and written, and for representing language in use, but were also shown in some cases to constrain the learners. Improvisation and scripted talk during the digital media production led to negotiations and strategies, which involved a playful approach to words, code switching and the use of adolescents’ media experiences as resources. The results from the analyses discuss emerging hybrid practices and potential implications for foreign language education, and point to reasons for looking beyond the common classroom discourse for further research and development.
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