| 1. |
- Reis, Maria
(författare)
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Att ordna, från ordning till ordning. Yngre förskolebarns matematiserande
- 2011
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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.
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| 2. |
- Sjöberg, Lena
(författare)
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Bäst i klassen? : Lärare och elever i svenska och europeiska policytexter
- 2011
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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
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| 3. |
- Alatalo, Tarja, 1961
(författare)
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Skicklig läs- och skrivundervisning i åk 1-3: Om lärares möjligheter och hinder
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study focuses on teachers’ opportunities and obstacles to perform skillful reading and writing instruction. It’s about the ability to accurately identify where students are in their reading and writing process and to help them develop good reading skills. It is also about the ability to recognize signs of difficulties that students may have in their written language development and to know what efforts are needed to help them advance their reading and writing skills. The research is based on teachers’ own statements and survey responses on the external conditions for teaching and on their approach, attitudes and knowledge in reading and writing. The empirical material consists of interviews, surveys and test data. The interview study was conducted with eight teachers. The questionnaire was answered by 249 teachers, while the knowledge test was conducted of 269 teachers and 31 special education teachers. Many of the teachers in this study have lack knowledge in the structure of language and common Swedish spelling rules. Furthermore, it appears that a large part of them are unaccustomed to explaining, in detail, students’ reading development and find it difficult to systematically describe the aspects of daily literacy instruction. The overall picture is that many teachers teach without having tools to reflect on how their education really affects students’ reading and writing. These shortcomings make it difficult to conduct effective literacy instruction. Once students have learned to decode or if they have reading difficulties, many teachers seem to one-sidedly focus on getting students to read more. The consequence could be that those who would need to practice more on the technical basic of reading or comprehension strategies are left without support. Lack of variety and individuality in fluency and comprehension training can challenge the students’ reading and writing development. The teachers in the study, who have the old junior school teacher and elementary teacher education, have the highest amount of knowledge of reading and writing (the test). Good education can provide student teachers with professional skills that they may develop further in their careers. Knowledge of the meaning of phonological and phonemic awareness as well as knowledge of how to count phonemes seem to be important for knowledge of reading and writing (the test). Knowledge of basic reading processes can be obtained by systematic and structured work with students’ linguistic development, and through continuous dialogues with experienced colleagues on how and why questions. This is one important way to work also in teacher training. When essential professional skills are established in the teacher education, in practice students will obtain the school’s learning goals.
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| 4. |
- Risenfors, Signild, 1957-
(författare)
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Gymnasieungdomars livstolkande
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis describes and analyses views of life and religion, as a component of „view of life‟,among young people in a Swedish upper secondary school that in the words of the youngpeople themselves is „multicultural‟. The concept „view of life‟ is rooted in a Scandinavian research tradition, and is based on a stipulative definition provided by Jeffner (1973), which includes„view of world and man‟, „values and moral‟ and „attitudes towards life‟. Thedefinition is formulated in a society where secularization is an on-going debate. However, in that secularization is contested, religion has re-emerged in a society increasingly characterized by religious pluralism, but also privatization according to religion. Views of life and religion have become political as well as private issues and, in school, are discussed in relation to the „fundamental values‟ and the subject of „Religious Education‟. In such discussionsthe aim is to help students to form an own view of life, just as long as it is consistent with the normative standards of „fundamental values‟.The focus of this thesis is directed to young people‟s articulations. An ethnographic approach has been adopted and the data consists of field notes, letters and interviews (individually and in groups). The fieldwork has taken place in four graduating classes of a single school year. Using analytical concepts from discourse theory the focus of the analysis is on how the youngpeople articulate the three dimensions of „views of life‟, linguistically and physically through narratives, reflections and staging.The most prominent results of the thesis are that, as well as the positioning of religion, views of life are directed towards the self. Articulations about „being yourself‟ appear as a very open concept that can be filled with different content. In accordance with the notion of staging, the young people demonstrate andtest identity with the quest for „authenticity‟ being central. Through high expectations of the „good life‟, vulnerability is also noticed, especially in the anonymous letters.With regard to values and morals a consensus-perspective appears to a greater extent than specific values. Value questions and moral issues dominate in the public arena while ontological and existential questions dominate in the individual letters and interviews. Here the concept „view of life‟is brought into a field between the private and the public and is especially evident in the subject of Religious Education.Although religion is articulated in terms of tolerance and freedom of choice, these concepts are given connotations of a half-hearted attitude and a consensus perspective rather than interest and curiosity for the faith and religious life of „the Other‟.However, if a religious positioning becomes a political issue, the half-hearted setting is challenged. There is also a difference between those having acquired a religious literacy and those who have not.
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| 5. |
- Bjervås, Lise-Lotte, 1960
(författare)
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Samtal om barn och pedagogisk dokumentation som bedömningspraktik i förskolan - En diskursanalys
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The preschool, nowadays an intergral part of the educational system, is to be found within a welfare state and a knowledge economy, within a society characterized by the idea of lifelong learning. As a conse-quence of this, the preschool is also a part of a strong culture of assessment and measurement of children’s development and learning, and for this purpose there are different tools which may be used by teachers. In Swedish preschools, it is common that teachers carry out pedagogical documentations where they try to capture what is happening in pedagogical practice by video recording, taking photos and writing down what children express during selected moments. The overall aim of this study is to investigate how teachers talk about children during their planning meetings when they are trying to understand together the children in relation to the documentation they have made. Two different teams of teachers in preschool, in total ten teachers, have been followed during planning meetings, each team in the course of about half a year. Data has been constructed through taperecording when the teachers were talking about the children during these planning meetings. The teachers’ utterances have been interpreted in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of communication, including his thoughts about the dialogical voice, and with analytical tools derived from Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The results of the thesis show that the teachers’ conversations about the preschool children are multifaceted. Discourses coexist in the utterances. Sometimes discourses are involved in hegemonic struggles, and sometimes they work together. The teachers talk about preschool children both as children with an essential identity and as children who take the subject positions which the context offers. When the teachers talk about the children they go back and forth between these images of children’s identity but in spite of this, above all the teachers talk about the preschool children in a manner which describes the children as children with a lot of competence. In the utterances the teachers primarily are discussing the competencies of the children. The teachers look upon the pedagogical documentation as a tool which supports the children’s possibilities to show themselves as competent children, a tool which may help the children to use compe-tencies they already have but also to cross boundaries and become even more competent. In the utterances the teachers also agree with each other about the idea that preschool children may be limited by their age. The teachers seem to talk about the preschool children in a manner that show that they are searching for the point where the children’s capacities reach their limit, and there is nothing in the context that may help the children to cross this border. The teachers also emphasize the responsibility they have to create favourable conditions for the children’s development and learning. The children are assessed by the teachers in relation to the preschool program they take part of. The moment when the teachers document the children’s activities stands out as a critical moment when the teachers may disturb the children in their processes. In the teachers’ utterances they express that the use of pedagogical documentation in preschool offers many advantages for the preschool children and these advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Fridlund, Lena
(författare)
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Interkulturell undervisning – ett pedagogiskt dilemma. Talet om undervisning i svenska som andraspråk och i förberedelseklasser
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Abstract Title: Intercultural education – A Pedagogical dilemma. Professional talk about the teaching of Swedish as a second language and in preparatory classes. Language: Swedish with an English summary Keywords: second language learning, bilingual education, special education, inclusion, exclusion, social constructionism, difference dilemma. ISBN: 978-91-7346-707-0 A central point of departure in this thesis is to investigate how schools deal with the difficult and complex task of ‘a school for all’ while some students are being taught in Swedish as a second language (SSL) and in preparatory classes. How teachers and principals justify and describe a separate teaching of SSL for some students is examined through a theoretical perspective of Berger and Luckmann’s social constructionism and is complemented with theories that concern profession, interaction, inclusion and exclusion. The study was conducted at a primary school and used ethnographic research and document analysis. The fieldwork focused on the ‘professional talk about’ a separate teaching of SSL and in preparatory classes and how such discourses are formulated by teachers and school principals. The empirical material was collected during a two-year-period, and includes analysis of interviews, observations and documents. For analytical purposes, terms such as Fulcher’s ‘inclusive and divisive discourse’ and Minow’s ‘difference dilemma’ were used. The document analysis shows that on a general level multicultural and multilingual skills are emphasized as assets while the documents otherwise reflect that diversity is considered as a problem implying multicultural and multilingual skills to be dealt with within a divisive discourse. The teaching of SSL as well as in preparatory classes is conducted ‘by the side of’ or separate from other school activities. If discourses could also be adopted to include the spatial, apart from what is said and written, then the premises could be seen as an expression of a divisive discourse. All professionals, regardless of mission in the educational activities, are doing their best in order to legitimize the separation of second language education. The reasons why some students are taught in separate groups and classes are formulated in terms of their different behavior, special needs of peace and quiet, the need for basic education, and upbringing. The results indicate that students are ‘formed’ in order to fit within a separate educational activity. With the exception of the SSL teachers, the other participants in the study express a sense of the ‘difference dilemma’ and harbor an ambivalent attitude towards this kind of separation. What therefore appears as a paradox is that SSL teachers, whose mission is to contribute to and facilitate integration with the help of second language education do not justify the SSL activities primarily in terms of language development. Instead it seems to be the case that it is the professionals in SSL who emphasize that the students are different from others and therefore need something else. Ideas and perceptions of students depend on the context and the institutional based activities, where ‘talk about’ a separate education is expressed. It is in the regulatory texts, curricula and syllabi that the conditions for institutional workings are created, which leads to specific discourses and ‘talk about’ pupils’ different abilities and needs.
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| 8. |
- Hansson, Åse, 1952
(författare)
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Ansvar för matematiklärande. Effekter av undervisningsansvar i det flerspråkiga klassrummet
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to contribute to knowledge about crucial conditions for students' mathematics learning, and more specifically what role mathematics teaching plays in that process. Also taken into account is the effect of group composition in terms of family background or language skills, and also the relation between group composition and teaching design. The study is based on the assumption that it is essential for students’ performances if the teacher in the multilingual classroom takes responsibility for key dimensions of mathematics teaching. The study is a secondary analysis of TIMSS data, produces by IEA, from 2003 focusing on mathematics for Swedish students in 8th grade. Based on theories of learning and teaching have important dimensions of mathematics teaching for which the teacher should take responsibility been identified. It has then been investigated how these dimensions of responsibility for students’ mathematics learning are related to achievement, and also how they are related to different group-compositions. Unlike traditional models of mathematics teaching, the model developed in this study simultaneously highlights three dimensions of teacher responsibility. The first dimension concerns teacher's responsibility to actively and openly support students in their mathematics learning by for example highlighting and explaining the mathematics content, questioning and conversing with students and organizing instruction so as to create conditions for interaction and various social activities. The second dimension concerns teacher's responsibility for handing over responsibility to the students for their own construction of knowledge by for example encouraging them to their own reflections and reasoning about mathematical problems. Finally, the third dimension concerns teacher’s responsibility for highlighting the content relevant to the grade as object of teaching. The results show that when teachers through actively teaching and guidance take responsibility for students' mathematics learning it will affect the performances positively. The results also indicate that this is of particularly importance for students with weak skills in the language of instruction. However, the results show that mathematics education in Sweden is characterized by pedagogical segregation. In groups where many students are likely to have needs for support, teachers take a less responsibility for students’ learning than is done in other groups. The thesis discusses that pedagogical segregation and the responsibility that in Sweden for a long time has been put on the students themselves for their mathematics learning may have contributed to the negative knowledge development in mathematics
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| 9. |
- Knutsson, Beniamin, 1974
(författare)
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Curriculum in the Era of Global Development - Historical Legacies and Contemporary Approaches
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the last decade there has been an avalanche of policies and political rhetoric worldwide, stressing the importance of equitable and sustainable global development. The Swedish Government’s response has been the inception of a coherent Policy for Global Development (PGD). In the aftermath of these policy reorientations, a renewed interest in how school curricula should respond to the global challenges of our time has emerged. In Sweden, one obvious effect has been an increasing prevalence of programmes, subjects, courses and projects where global development issues constitute a central knowledge content. This knowledge content constitutes the object of study in this dissertation and throughout it is referred to as global education. Despite the invigoration of global education in recent years it is not a new phenomenon in the Swedish curriculum. There is in fact a tradition that can be traced back to the 1960s. Yet, global education in Sweden has been relatively neglected by didactic research and this thesis attempts to redress some of this neglect. The thesis is based on two basic assumptions. Firstly, that the historical place and character of global education in the curriculum can only be understood in relation to the evolution of Swedish development cooperation. Secondly, that the curriculum should primarily be understood as a political, rather than pedagogical, problem. The overall aim of the thesis is to examine historical legacies of, and contemporary approaches to, global education in the Swedish school system. The thesis is composed of three sub-studies. The first is a desk-study, which outlines the intellectual history of development (1945-2008) with some specific references to Swedish development cooperation. The second sub-study sketches the history of global education in Sweden (1962-2008) based on documentary research and interviews with 15 informants. The third, contemporary, sub-study exposes different ways of conceptualizing and approaching global education by means of constructing a five-fold didactic typology based on interviews with 15 upper secondary school teachers. Through abductive data-theory interplay, the dissertation has further developed a theoretical and conceptual apparatus largely inspired by development theory and curriculum theory. The dissertation can be thought of as a didactic contribution in its entirety. However, breaking it down, five basic contributions can be discerned. Firstly, a conceptual contribution is offered through the introduction of a new operational definition of global education. Secondly, some theoretical contributions are offered via the abductive process. Thirdly, a historiographic contribution is offered through the comprehensive history of global education in Sweden. Fourthly, contributions of relevance to professional practice are offered through the construction of a didactic typology and through critical input as regards Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Finally, a few policy-relevant contributions are offered in terms of critical reflections regarding Sida’s information work, PGD, ESD, and international exchange programmes in the education sector.
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| 10. |
- Thulin, Susanne, 1953-
(författare)
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Lärares tal och barns nyfikenhet : kommunikation om naturvetenskapliga innehåll i förskolan
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to generate new knowledge about how children and teachers communicate scientific contents in preschool. The general research question is formulated as: How do the object of learning and the act of learning appear in communication about scientific contents in preschool? This thesis is a collection of three (previously published) empirical studies and takes shape in the encounter between a projected knowledge acquisition task for preschool and the educational tradition of preschool.The research approach is based primarily on phenomenography focussing on developmental pedagogy. The results are discussed in relation to situated learning and the assumptions about the task of preschool characterising the social practice that is brought to light. The thesis is based on the assumption that teachers are bearers of taken-for-granted ideas about what the ‘good preschool’ is, and that these ideas affect the way they interpret new tasks.The empirical basis consists of video observations from two preschools working with different thematic projects: Life in the tree stump and How soil is formed. The analysis is delimited to the verbal communication occurring between children and teachers about the scientific content. The children are aged between three and six years. All observations have been transcribed to text and analysed according to the following research questions: Study I: (i) What is communicated as the object of learning in the theme work about natural scientific phenomena in the preschool studied? (ii) What acts of learning appear in the communication of the object of learning? Study II is a re-analysis of the linguistic usage in the empirical data from Study I. Research questions of Study II are: is there any systematic pattern in the use of anthropomorphic speech regarding (i) who uses this language, (ii) when it is used and (iii) what it is used for? Study III is delimited to children’s perspective, and the research questions are: (i) What do children ask about during theme work with a natural scientific process in preschool? (ii) Can any tendency towards change be discerned with regard to what kind of questions children ask in the course of the theme work?The results have thrown light on what natural science is in these preschools, a questioning teacher, an education ideal as an interpretative framework and children’s meeting with the object of learning. The results are discussed in relation to a feasible didactic perspective based on the educational ideal of preschool and in relation to a critical didactic perspective concerning teachers’ will, courage and competence to make the content visible. Finally, with the implementation of the raised knowledge task for preschool in mind, prominence is given to the need of critical reflection over the role of language as maintaining a discourse and the concepts established.
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