| 1. |
- Strömberg Jämsvi, Susanne
(författare)
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Unpacking dominant discourses in higher education language policy : A critical study of language policy in Swedish higher education
- 2019
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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.
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| 2. |
- Göthberg, Martin, PhD, 1959-
(författare)
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Interacting : Coordinating text understanding in a student theatre production
- 2019
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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.
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| 3. |
- Bergnell, Anneli
(författare)
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Med kroppen som illustration : Hur förskolebarn prat-skapar naturvetenskap med hjälp av multimodala och kroppsförankrade förklaringar
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to combine three research areas, namely preschool, science and illustrations, in order to examine (a) how modes are combined when references to the body are made or the body as such are used to explain scientific concepts and phenomena in preschool science education, and (b) how do the children handle, explore, discuss and talk science when approaching multimodally illustrated scientific contents in the studied activities. Four studies were conducted, all of which were built on empirically generated questions and were theoretically grounded in cultural-historical and multimodal perspectives. Participants were preschool students, aged 4-6 years, from three preschool groups, as well as their teachers and two science centre guides. Specific focus was directed toward activities where adults and children use their bodies or refer to their bodies to illustrate scientific concepts, for example, “the water circle” in a board-and-dice-game (study I); “water has the power to lift,” in experiments relating to a life-jacket (study II); stability in a drama-play and related experiments (study III); and evaporation in embodied illustrations and hands-on activities (study IV). The empirical material consisted mainly of video recordings. A multimodal approach was adopted for the analyses.The results indicate that multimodal illustrations may be complicated for this target group. Difficulties were found to intensify, rather than decrease, by the fact that different modes and elements were often intricately combined in the same illustration, presumably with the intention of providing instruction as well as entertainment. From the four studies, it became evident that, even if the current natural science offered in preschool education often is conducted as “discovery learning”, the assumption that children can learn complex content without support cannot be left unquestioned. This thesis illustrates the crucial role played by a guiding teacher when it comes to concretizing abstract scientific phenomena for young children. A conscious introduction of bodily-based elements in multimodal illustrations may be useful on such occasions. However, even with such seemingly transparent components included, we cannot take adequate meaning-making for granted.
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| 4. |
- Arvidsson, Elin
(författare)
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Physiological responses to acute physical and psychosocial stress- relation to aerobic capacity and exercise training.
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Exercise training is an effective method to promote health and to prevent development of disease. Both physical and mental health have been shown to benefit from exercise training. It has also been speculated that physical exercise might affect responses to acute psychosocial stress. In an acute stress situation, several physiological systems respond to ensure survival and it is suggested that exercise training may influence these stress systems. The main purpose of this thesis was to study physiological responses to acute physical and psychosocial stress and possible associations with aerobic capacity and exercise training. The thesis is based on four papers analysing data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The participants were healthy individuals who reported themselves as untrained at screening. The RCT included testing of acute physical and psychosocial stress. Before and after the tests, hormonal and autonomic responses were assessed. After initial testing, the participants were randomized to either an intervention- or a control group. The intervention consisted of regular aerobic exercise training conducted for six months. At follow-up, the same tests were repeated for both groups. The main findings were that most participants showed an increase in the studied variables in response to acute stress. Aerobic capacity did not seem to have any relation to hormonal or blood pressure responses to acute psychosocial stress. Neither did the subjective perception of stress at the psychosocial stress test correlate with the actual physiological response. Due to methodological issues, it was not possible to evaluate the effects of exercise training. Thus, in healthy individuals, the stress systems seem to respond adequately to acute stress, irrespective of level of aerobic capacity or type of stressor.
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| 5. |
- Bergentoft, Helene, 1964
(författare)
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Lärande av rörelseförmåga i idrott och hälsa ur ett praktikutvecklande perspektiv : Movement capability. Development of teaching practice in physical education and health
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this investigation was to explore how the connections between teaching and learning about movement capability in the school subject physical education and health can be developed and transferred through research in practice development. Three research questions guided the investigation (1) What areas regarding teaching of movement capability in the school subject physical education and health have been studied in relation to teachers’ teaching assignment? (2) What necessary prerequisites are required to systematize and transfer research in practice development on movement capability between educational contexts? (3) What linkages are made visible between the treatment of learning content, the teaching design and students’ learning through variation in lesson design? Cultural-historical perspective and variation theory were used as frameworks and the methodology, mixed method research. The empirical data consists of published articles, video-observed lessons, recorded meetings with teachers and students, pre- and post-tests. The findings position the thesis in a guided teaching perspective. Moreover, findings show how the connection between teaching and learning about movement capability systematically can be developed and transferred between teaching contexts through iterative processes with revised lessons based on students’ knowledge. By the use of variation theory, understanding of the meaning of movement capability became more nuanced and itemized. The results also illustrate how the collaboration between teachers and researchers generated development of science-based teaching of movement capability.
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| 6. |
- Cerna, Katerina, 1986
(författare)
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Designing for learning and knowing: Nurses in chronic care and patients' self-monitoring data
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on nurses’ work practice in chronic care and their learning and knowing in relation to their patients’ self-monitoring data. It is anticipated that self-monitoring data used as a support for healthcare professionals’ work will help to overcome the current challenges the healthcare system is facing. Because of the way nurses’ work builds on learning and knowing in relation to data produced by patients, they will be expected to be able to use this kind of data when delivering care to the patients. However, we need to learn about what happens when a self-monitoring tool is developed and implemented in chronic care nurses’ work practice. The aim of this thesis was, therefore, to specifically investigate the nurses’ learning and knowing when they have access to the patients’ self-monitoring data. These issues were explored using a design ethnographic approach in a pelvic cancer rehabilitation clinic. Study I found that the nurses in chronic care intertwine the patients’ lived experience with the nurses’ medical knowledge and clinical experience to support the patients’ learning about their disease. Study II found that nurses manage the complexity of qualitative phenomena and mobile application features as a way to participate in a design process of a self-monitoring tool. Study III revealed the changes that occur in nurses’ work practice when they gain access to their patients’ self-monitoring data. Finally, the following themes across these studies were identified. First, mutual learning points to the different levels of learning that the nurses need to cope with. Second, the translation work of nurses builds on creating connections among the patients’ lived experiences, what the nurses are able to do, and the self-monitoring tools.
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| 7. |
- Fransson, Dan, 1980
(författare)
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Game demands and fatigue profiles in elite football – an individual approach -Implications for training and recovery strategies
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The physical activities performed during a football game are of intermittent prolonged character, including explosive actions and running at different speeds. The prolonged intermittent activities are conjoined with periods where physical intensity is markedly increased. The intense periods and prolonged activities affect the physiological and metabolic systems which provoke fatigue both temporarily throughout the game as well as towards the end of a game. Therefore, physical training in football should aim to reach physiological and metabolic adaptations to be able to resist fatigue in order to perform optimally throughout the game. Furthermore, post-game recovery and restoration of performance seems to be a slow process. Physical game demands, training responses and recovery can vary largely between players and needs to be studied with individual emphasis. The aim of the thesis is to improve the understanding of physical game demands, fatigue profiles in male elite football players with an emphasis on individual differences and implications for fitness training strategies. Running distance and in-game fatigue profiles were investigated through an analysis of game activity data from top-class football players (n = 473). Post-game fatigue and recovery profiles were examined using maximum voluntary contraction in various muscle groups after a simulated football model in competitive players (n = 12). Inter-individual relations between physical game demands and physical response in different small-sided game formats were investigated with global positioning system techniques on professional players (n = 45). Finally, muscular adaptations and physical performance responses of two different training protocols (four weeks of small-sided games or speed endurance training) were examined by means of pre- and post-intervention muscle biopsies and performance tests on 39 competitive football players. The results demonstrated that all playing positions indicate temporary fatigue after intense periods during a football game. However, after shorter intense periods central defenders were the only position that did not show a decline in running performance. A large inter-player variation in running performance between and within playing positions was found. Post-game fatigue showed large inter-player differences between various muscle groups and between players. Muscle performance in all investigated groups had recovered within 24 hours post-game except trunk-muscles, which was back to baseline values within 48 hours post-game. The physical response in small-sided game formats differed from game demands on an individual level. High intensity training was more potent in up-regulating muscle oxidative capacity and physical performance compared to small-sided games. In conclusion, individual differences in game demands and fatigue profiles are large and need to be considered when planning training. Small-sided games seem not to be the most appropriate training method to meet the individual game demands of all individual players. Thus, in order to increase exercise performance and associated physiological adaptations, additional high-intensity training should be considered for some individual football players.
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| 8. |
- Jonsson, Linus, 1986
(författare)
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An empowerment-based school physical activity intervention with adolescents in a disadvantaged community: A transformative mixed methods investigation
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- It is important for the health of adolescents to engage in regular physical activity. The majority of adolescents do not, however, engage in sufficient physical activity to meet contemporary guidelines, and adolescents of low socioeconomic status appear to be less physically active compared to adolescents of high socioeconomic status. As such, the overall aim of this thesis is twofold. First, the thesis aims to gain insight into adolescents’, from a multicultural community of low socioeconomic status, views on physical activity. Second, the thesis aims to describe and problematize the development and implementation of an empowerment-based school intervention, in a Swedish multicultural community of low socioeconomic status, and to evaluate the effects of the intervention focusing on basic needs satisfaction, motivation, and objectively measured physical activity. This compilation thesis is based on four papers and is written within the ‘How-to-Act?’-project which has its starting point in a two-year empowerment-based school intervention. For the purpose of the ‘How-to-Act?’-project, one intervention school (n=54 7th graders) and two control schools (n=60 7th graders), situated in a multicultural area of low socioeconomic status in Gothenburg, were recruited. For paper I and II, focus group interviews were conducted with adolescents (n=53) in the intervention school, before implementation of the intervention, to illuminate what they convey concerning factors that facilitate respectively undermine their physical activity. Paper III describes and problematizes the development and implementation of the empowerment-based school intervention, which was continuously developed and implemented through cooperation and shared decision making, focusing on physical activity. For paper IV physical activity was measured with accelerometers and basic needs satisfaction and motivation through questionnaires at baseline (7th grade), midpoint (8th grade), and endpoint (9th grade), to evaluate the effects of the intervention. On the one hand, the adolescents’ voices illuminated that, within their environment, it is difficult to establish healthy physical activity habits. More specifically, the adolescents expressed a profound awareness of tempting screen-based activities as undermining their physical activity, and several stereotypical gender norms were highlighted as undermining the girls’ physical activity. On the other hand, the adolescents mentioned that they enjoyed engaging in physical activity. According to the adolescents, enjoyment related to physical activity was promoted through variation and options, experiencing and developing physical skills, and the presence of peers. The adolescents also suggested that social support facilitated their physical activity, and proposed some ideas on how the school could become more supportive of their physical activity. Through the empowerment-based school intervention, the adolescents were offered opportunities to engage in a variety of physical activities and to assess and critically reflect upon health-related information and recommendations. Further, the intervention involved the adolescents in the decision-making process and thus, arguably, facilitated participation and empowerment. Nonetheless, the development and implementation of the intervention led to a number of ethical dilemmas that required cautious consideration. During the course of the two-year intervention, there was a credible decrease in controlled motivation, autonomous motivation, and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. There were no credible effects of the intervention on controlled motivation, autonomous motivation, or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Future school-based physical activity interventions, in multicultural areas of low socioeconomic status, are recommended to include multidimensional intervention approaches across contexts to counteract the decline in physical activity during adolescence and to achieve lasting change in adolescents’ physical activity.
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| 9. |
- Meyer-Beining, Janna
(författare)
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Assessing writers, assessing writing : A dialogical study of grade delivery in Swedish higher education
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Assessment feedback has been discussed as an important resource for providing students with a sense of their current performance relative to institutional expectations and with the information needed to close apparent gaps. Pointing out that this involves complex sense-making processes, recent research has stressed the need to change the nature of assessment feedback from teacher telling to student/teacher/peer dialogues. However, there is still very little empirical research that has explored the sense-making processes that become evident in such feedback dialogues in situ. This dissertation approaches assessment feedback as a unique type of communication and illuminates the issues that become relevant as participants make sense of an assignment and its institutional assessment in the context of face-to-face grade delivery in Swedish higher education. The empirical focus is on the grade conference, a specific type of assessment activity that here involved a student and his or her former supervisor. The analytical work of this dissertation is based on a corpus of ten video- and audio-recorded grade conferences from a graduate module on environmental sustainability assessment where grade delivery was connected to a student-written scientific report. In three separate studies, these recordings were approached from sociocultural and dialogical perspectives, with a particular focus on the ways in which feedback communication was situated in different streams of sociocultural activity and achieved in instances of coordinated communicative action. The findings suggest that assessment feedback, as a type of communication, involves complex forms of sense-making on two interconnected planes: in the first place, participants in the ten grade conferences made sense of their communicative roles and responsibilities in the current feedback activity. Here, teachers were found to take on a particularly pivotal role, providing guidance for student participation in each meeting. Secondly, participants also made sense of the situated meaning of the performance grade that was being delivered and on the written report on which it was based. This involved intricate negotiations of accountabilities – as student, author, assessor and supervisor – that suggest that this type of assessment feedback provides room for broader, disciplinary, discussions of what it means to be a writer, a student and a supervisor in (Swedish) higher education. These findings give support to recent calls in the literature for more dialogue in feedback, but also suggest that such dialogical feedback activities need to be designed in a way that permits disagreement and questioning of institutional reasoning, as it needs these instances of uncertainty for participants to lay open and make sense of the many assumptions that underpin the assessment of student writing – as knowledge production and knowledge display – in higher education.
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| 10. |
- Nordenström, Elin, 1978
(författare)
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Feedback and instructional guidance in healthcare simulation debriefings
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall interest of the thesis concerns how students reflect upon and provide feedback on their own performance under the guidance of teachers. This interest is explored in the context of debriefing conversations that followed on simulation-based team training scenarios for healthcare students. The thesis is informed by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, two closely intertwined perspectives with roots in sociology. The empirical material consists of video recordings of simulation-based training conducted at two Swedish universities. In addition, video data of feedback conversations for students at a Norwegian upper secondary school is used as a basis for investigation and comparison in one of the empirical studies. The thesis addresses questions related to how the teachers, referred to as facilitators in the setting under study, work to elicit and guide student reflection and feedback, how the students approach and accomplish such tasks, and how conceptual models and principles of “good practice” feature in the activities. These questions are scrutinised in three empirical studies. Study 1 shows how video in combination with instructional questions by the facilitators is central to how the students perceive and talk about their own simulation performance. Study 2 demonstrates the characteristics and differences between student and facilitator feedback, and what instructional functions the facilitators’ feedback contributions fulfil in relation to those of the students. Study 3 examines and compares sequences in which students in two different settings assess their own performance in response to teacher questions with the aim to demonstrate the divergence between the real- time organisation of these activities and the models and principles advocated in the pedagogical literature. Overall, the results show that self- and peer feedback are complex activities that present students with difficulties of both interactional and subject-matter character. Teachers therefore have a central role in initiating and setting the agenda for the feedback discussions, keeping them active and on track, directing the students’ attention towards relevant aspects of their own performance, and demonstrating how these aspects are related to principles, standards and discourses of the students’ future professional practice.
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