| 1. |
- Andersson, Ninnie
(författare)
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Communication and Shared Understanding of Assessment : A phenomenological study of assessment in Swedish upper secondary dance education
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to describe and explore the phenomenon of assessment in dance education within the Swedish upper secondary schools’ dance orientation. The phenomenon was researched based on teachers’ experiences of assessment in dance education and formulations in the syllabi for upper secondary school. Life-world phenomenology constituted a base for the study. The methods used in the investigation were document analysis, observations, teachers’ written and verbal reflections and interviews. Documentation of observations was made through field notes, video recordings and sound recordings. The generated material was analysed based on Spiegelberg’s (1960) seven stages of phenomenological analysis. Syllabi from Lpf94 and Gy11 were researched to describe and analyse in what ways dance knowledge becomes visible. In total, five teachers and three schools were involved in the study. Within the framework of the course Dance technique 1, observations of dance education in ballet, contemporary- and jazz dance were made as well as of ten grade conferences. The teachers read the field notes and were able to change formulations in case something was misunderstood or it needed to be commented on in the form of teachers’ written or verbal reflections. Interviews with four of the observed teachers were made and the conversations related to what appeared in the observations. Comprehension of teachers’ experiences resulted in a description of the phenomenon and answers to the research questions. The study is communicated through four intertwined papers. The result reveals various conditions for assessment in dance education. Two themes appeared in the overall findings of the study, namely: The design of the assessment practice and Communication within the assessment practice. The syllabi appeared as one condition among others for dance education in upper secondary school including views of dance knowledge that appeared through analysis of the syllabi. In the assessment practice, it was seen that teachers’ conduct of assessment involved conditions for formative assessment to emerge. Conditions in order for communicated assessment to become meaningful for the students also emerged, including shared understanding. The teachers expressed various conditions for the assessment practice to became visible, namely the students’ participation, their own actions, as well as the overall school context. The study contributes to the dance educational research field through making teachers’ experiences of assessment in Swedish dance education visible. The thesis discusses dance teachers’ various approaches to syllabi, how the teachers’ conceptions of quality influence the assessment practice, and finally the importance of shared understanding of communicated assessment is emphasised. Furthermore, collegiate discussions are brought to the attention as a way to improve and reflect upon assessment.Keywords: upper secondary school, dance education, assessment, life-world phenomenology
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| 2. |
- Backman, Ylva
(författare)
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Students’ Reasoning about Learning and Well-being in School : On the epistemic privilege of Swedish early adolescent students
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The recent emphasis on performance in standardized testing of Swedish students is visible in reports from both national and international agencies. According to the reports, there has been a steep decline in the internationally measured performance of Swedish students in school since the 1990s. In fact, the performance of Swedish students in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has declined more dramatically than any other OECD country in the last decade. This has influenced a national debate about factors promoting knowledge acquisition. Alongside the drop in performance, young Swedish people’s mental problems have increased since the 1990s. The impact of one’s well-being on performance has been widely acknowledged in previous research, and two explicit targets in both current andprevious Swedish national curriculum for the compulsory school are learning and well-being. Meanwhile, the importance of encouraging early adolescents’ (10–14 years) participation in improving their own standards is acknowledged in several recent reports from influential non-governmental organizations such as the WHO and UNICEF. However, advancing students’ development requires a keen understanding of their current situation, something impeded by the fact that data on early adolescents is relatively scarce. Furthermore, a large amount of previous research has been focused on risk factors related to illness in children, rather than factors promoting well-being. The aim of this thesis is to explore early adolescent students’ reasoning about learning and well-being in school. A qualitative design with open-ended writing tasksand interview questions was constructed in order to facilitate the incorporation of students’ reasoning about learning and well-being into the research, in accordance with the study’s salutogenic point of departure and the specific standpoint epistemology that I propose and use in the thesis.The empirical data includes (1) written reflections by 200 students in grades 5–9 from 11 classes in four different schools (rural and urban), which were part of the Swedish compulsory school system and which were located in two municipalities in the northern part of Sweden, and (2) interviews with 24 students, from 12 to 15 years old, from two municipally run schools, which were also part of the compulsory school program in northern Sweden. Four sub-studies were conducted and presented in four journal articles. The data in sub-studies I, II, and IV consisted of the written reflections described above, while the data in sub-study III consisted of the interviews described above. The first sub-study concerned early adolescent students’ previous positive experiences and indicated that the students found aspects both within and beyond the classroom relevant for having a good time in school. In more detail, the students’ positive experiences concerned (i) interaction with teachers, (ii) freedom of choice regarding work and workmates, (iii) the atmosphere for discussions, (iv) school subjects and success, (v) learning processes in outings, (vi) friends, and (vii) primary (basic) needs. The results show a perceived complex relation between learning and well-being in school, which may well be studied further in future research. The second sub-study investigated students’ preferred states of affairs. The students emphasized a variety of views of what kind of structures, content, actions and attitudesmay have a positive impact on the learning environment in school. The variousreflections provided by the students were understood as falling under four themes: (i) influencing educational settings; (ii) striving for reciprocity; (iii) managing time struggles; and (iv) satisfying well-being needs. Besides providing perceived opportunities for change in school concurring with previous research, the results also point towards great variety and certain inconsistencies in the students’ perceptions about factors promoting learning.In the third sub-study, the interview data was analyzed using a distinction between decision methods and criteria of rightness, which has rarely been used in empirical research. Six forms of variety in the students’ moral reasoning were found, denoted as follows: (i) interpersonal variety in decision method dimension, (ii) intrapersonal variety in decision method dimension, (iii) interpersonal variety in criterion of rightness dimension, (iv) intrapersonal variety in criterion of rightness dimension, (v) interpersonal variety between the two dimensions, and (vi) intrapersonal variety between the two dimensions. The use of the distinction between decision methods and criteria of rightness enabled a nuanced understanding of varieties in students’moral reasoning, and may be useful in large-scale studies, for example, to explore the rate of occurrence of each respective form of variety. Future research could also examine the potential context dependence of the different forms of varieties. In the fourth sub-study, five perceived bidirectional crossovers of subjective wellbeing (i.e., perceived two-way transmissions between happiness and other aspects within the school domain) were noted in the students’ written reflections. These were: (i) happiness and learning, (ii) happiness and school engagement, (iii) happiness and appreciation of subjects or lesson content, (iv) happiness and others’ happiness, and (v) happiness and prosocial behavior. Besides providing novel hypotheses aboutbidirectional crossovers of subjective well-being, this sub-study supplied a systematic framework for interpreting qualitative outputs and provided conceptual as well as analytical direction for future research about happiness in education. I provide a definition of the formal expression “bidirectional crossovers” of subjective well-being, which may provide analytic categories for future research, while the more informal expression “circles of happiness” could be used in education, allowing teachers and students to conceptualize everyday events in the classroom. In the final parts of this thesis, students’ reasoning about the conditions for and effects of learning and well-being in school in all the four sub-studies are compared with previous empirical research through the use of established and novel definitions and theory. The comparison shows considerable correspondence between the students’ reasoning and previous research, providing evidence to the effect thatSwedish early adolescent students’ reasoning is trustworthy regarding the conditions for and effects of learning and well-being in school. There are also novel researchgenerating hypotheses formulated directly based on the students’ reasoning. The trustworthiness and novelty of the students’ reasoning about the conditions and effects of learning and well-being in school provides evidence for an epistemic privilege for the students participating in this study. This constitutes a starting point for futureresearch in which the claims about epistemic privilege in the standpoint epistemology proposed here can be further tested for Swedish early adolescent students in general.KEYWORDS: education, epistemic privilege, happiness, learning, moral reasoning, standpoint epistemology, well-being
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| 3. |
- Gardelli, Viktor
(författare)
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To Describe, Transmit or Inquire : Ethics and technology in school
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Ethics is of vital importance to the Swedish educational system, as in many other educational systems around the world. Yet, it is unclear how ethics should be dealt with in school, and prior research and evaluations have found serious problems regarding ethics in education. The field of moral education lacks clear and widely accepted definitions of key concepts, and these ambiguities negatively impact both research and educational practice. This thesis draws a distinction between three approaches to ethics in school – the descriptive ethics approach, the value transmission approach, and the inquiry ethics approach – and studies in what way (if at all) they are prescribed by the national curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school, how they relate to students’ moral reasoning about technology choices and online behaviour, and what pedagogical merits and disadvantages they have. Hopefully, this both contributes to reducing the ambiguities of the field, and to answering the question of how ethics should be dealt with in education.The descriptive ethics approach asserts that school should teach students empirical facts about ethics, such as what views and opinions people have. The value transmission approach holds that school should mediate some set of predefined values to the students and make sure the students come to accept these values. The inquiry ethics approach is the view that school should teach students to reason and think critically about ethics and to engage in ethical inquiry.The role of ethics in the curriculum has not been studied in light of the above distinction, in prior research, and such an investigation is undertaken here. The results suggest that ethics has a prominent, but complicated, role in the Swedish national curriculum. Although no explicit distinction is drawn or acknowledged in the curriculum, all three approaches are prescribed throughout the curriculum, albeit to different degrees. In the general section of the curriculum, the value transmission and inquiry ethics approaches are more extensively prescribed than the descriptive ethics approach. It was found that most of the syllabi contained explicit references to ethics, while some only contained implicit references to ethics, and two syllabi lacked references to ethics altogether. In the syllabi, the inquiry ethics approach is the most dominant, both in the sense of being present in the most syllabi, and in the sense of being more strongly prescribed in many of the syllabi where several approaches occur. The value transmission approach has the weakest role in the syllabi. In total, the inquiry ethics approach is the approach most strongly prescribed by the curriculum. But prior research has shown that inquiry ethics is very rarely implemented in the classroom. In this thesis, it is found that the inquiry ethics and the value transmission approaches are incompatible, given certain reasonable interpretations, which makes the finding that inquiry ethics is rarely implemented less surprising, since value transmission is practiced in schools.The students, in their moral reasoning about technology choices, reasoned in accordance with several classical normative theories – including consequentialism, deontological ethics and virtue ethics – and in doing so, they expressed reasoning that in the discussion is found to be in conflict with the values of the value foundation in the curriculum. These findings complement earlier findings, for example that students in their actions contradict the value foundation, by adding that such conflicts also exist in their reasoning. The existence of these conflicts is found to be problematic for a value transmission approach.Many of the students defended very restrictive views on disclosing personal information online, and prior research as well as the present data has shown that adults typically hold views that are very similar to these, concerning how they think that young people ought to act online. On the other hand, youths’ actual online behaviour, as reported in earlier studies, differs considerably from this. In line with this, the students also seemed to endorse a form of private morals view, according to which moral choices are simply up to one’s own taste, which would yield an escape exit from the restrictive views mentioned above, and permit any behaviour. In the discussion, it is argued that this is the result of an attempt at value transmission from the grown-up community, probably including teachers, which might seem to work, since the students claim to hold certain views, but which likely instead constitutes a false security, since these values are not actually accepted, but only paid lip service to, and the adults are therefore wrong in their belief that the students are protected by a certain set of values (that they think the students are upholding), since the students in fact do not uphold, and therefore do not act based upon, these values. This situation risks making the students more vulnerable than had no value transmission attempt been taken in the first place. Hence, the attempted value transmission runs the risk of counteracting its purpose of helping the students acquire a safe online behaviour.Throughout the moral reasoning mentioned above, extensive variations in the students’ reasoning were found, both interpersonally and intrapersonally, both in the decision method and in the rightness criterion dimensions, as well as in between the dimensions. The existence of such variations is a novel finding, and while possible applications in future research are discussed, it is also noted that this existence constitutes a reason to question the successfulness of both the value transmission and the inquiry ethics endeavours of the educational system.The results and discussions described above highlight the importance of investigating the merits of the different approaches. Several arguments that arise from the material of this thesis are presented, evaluated and discussed. The ability of each approach to fulfil some alleged key aims of ethics education is scrutinised; their abilities to educate for good citizenship, to educate for quality of life of the individual, and to facilitate better educational results in other subjects are all investigated, as well as the ability of each approach to help counteract the influence from online extremist propaganda aimed at young people and to promote safe online behaviour in general.It is concluded that the inquiry ethics approach has the strongest support from the material of this thesis. Some consequences for school practice are discussed, and it is concluded that changing the role of ethics in the curriculum would be beneficial, downplaying the role of value transmission and further increasing, and making more explicit and clear, the role of inquiry ethics. It is also shown that there are strong reasons for the inclusion of a new subject in the Swedish compulsory education with special focus on ethics. Some possible causes, and some consequences, of this is discussed.
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| 4. |
- Iqbal, Sarfraz
(författare)
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Ensemble View on Designing Pedagogical Online Information Security Laboratories
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Distance education and e-learning in the field of information security is gaining popularity. An online information security programme is supposed to include plenty of hands-on exercises, but in most cases the lab experiments are unavailable to distance students that represent a challenge in online education. In information security education, virtual labs facilitate hands-on learning in distance education. An online information security lab is an artefact which involves a collection of systems and software used for teaching information security, and which is accessible through the Internet. However, the design, development and implementation of an online InfoSec lab has many challenges. This research is motivated from an on-going information security lab development initiative at Luleå University of Technology (LTU).Thus, the researcher focused on the question of how we can design a pedagogical online InfoSec lab which is flexible, usable and adapts to different educational contexts. The current literature about online InfoSec labs still lacks well-specified pedagogical approaches and concrete design principles. This hinders the accumulation of technical and pedagogical knowledge for the implementation and use of online educational InfoSec labs. Moreover, the literature focuses mainly on details of technical lab implementations, whereas the pedagogical elements of the curriculum and the rationale behind them were ignored. This leads to inadequate guidance about how the instructor and the learner can make use of the lab to pedagogically align the course objectives, teaching / learning activities and assessment methods. In order to design an online InfoSec lab to improve flexible hands-on education and security skills development the Action design research (ADR) approach was chosen. The ultimate goal is to design an ensemble IT artefact as a result of emerging design, use, and refinement in context through continuous interaction between technology and organization during the design process. Following the IT-dominant BIE process of ADR approach made it possible not only to develop the lab and instantiate it in different courses but also to formulate design principles and abstract the findings to a generalizable level. Furthermore, a framework for evaluation in design science research (FEDS) was adopted for evaluation purposes. The framework was used to conduct formative and summative evaluations. Feedback from all the stakeholders including teachers and students showed that the online InfoSec lab is a usable learning media for hands-on education from a distance.This research contributes by showing the design, development and implementation of an online InfoSec lab aimed at the improvement of hands-on education and evaluation of its use in context. Following technology as a development project perspective of an ensemble view, my research work at its current status contributes by serving two major purposes. First, this study proposed a conceptual design model of an online InfoSec lab comprising important building blocks or entities. The study conceptualizes the online InfoSec lab as an ensemble artefact. This study unfolded the black-box tools view of the lab so as to understand and explain the important building blocks (entities of the lab), and the interrelationships of the entities. This study provides conceptual clarity given the existing literature on online InfoSec labs, by recognizing the stakeholders and explaining their roles for each entity in the proposed conceptual model of an online InfoSec lab; this is a view which has not been recognized or discussed in similar earlier works. Second, the study suggests design principles for implementing a conceptual model of an online InfoSec lab in different educational contexts. The emerging design principles were shaped during this research work together with the other stakeholders. The design principles such as Contextualization based on programme goals, Contextualization based on course goals, Pedagogical alignment of lab activities, Flexible learning, Collaboration among lab stakeholders, Scalability, User friendly interface with properly arranged resources and targets and Isolate the InfoSec lab incorporate the socio-technical perspective, which ensures that the resulting artefact developed using these principles should be an ensemble artefact. The design principles can provide support to practically construct, implement and test the online InfoSec lab. The study introduced a productive learning media (InfoSec lab) that is designed to meet the active learning preferences of distance learners of information security, such as support for flexible and individualized hands-on learning. Practitioners wishing to include lab activities in their courses and programmes can utilize this knowledge to understand fully how much human and technical resources are needed to design the lab and conduct exercises.
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| 5. |
- Kassaeyan, Kasra
(författare)
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Factors Affecting Upvoting Intention On Social Bookmarking Sites
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Technological developments of last decade have changed how people communicate and how companies operate. With the emergence of the Internet, and specifically of the interactive web or Web 2.0, traditional word of mouth evolved to a new, more collaborative form where users can easily obtain, share and compare information about products or services with each other. This phenomenon, referred to as electronic Word of Mouth (eWoM), is at the heart of this dissertation. People share, like, bookmark or recommend content and resources to each other on a variety of platforms, including so-called social bookmarking sites. Their collective opinions can have asignificant impact on brands, and the shared electronic word of mouth can present a boon to firms when consumers praise and promote their services and products through votes etc. In order to maximize positive eWoM, managers require a clear understanding of when and why users decide tovote on social bookmarking sites. Despite the significant promises, this research topic of “voting intentionality” is little understood. Thus, this study concentrates on understanding “upvoting” (positive eWoM) intentionality on social bookmarking sites. In order to explore this phenomenon, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) are combined to form a conceptual framework and research hypotheses. In terms of the empirical context, data were collected from Reddit, currently the biggest (in terms of members) and most active social bookmarking sites (in terms of content posted and upvotes casted). Upvoting data were collectedthrough voluntary participation in a web survey. To analyze the 342 usable sample cases and to test the model, structural equation modeling SEM statistical techniques were employed, using SPSS and AMOS software packages. The structural model testing results indicate that a series of factors (e.g., perceived behavioral control and attitude toward voting for posts) significant influence upvoting intention among members of Reddit. The framework developed here contributes to our conceptualization of the dissemination of electronic word of mouth, and the findings help marketingpractitioners integrate social bookmarking sites into their social marketing campaigns to boost and improve the overall marketing performance.
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| 6. |
- Mars, Annette
(författare)
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När kulturer spelar med i klassrummet : En sociokulturell studie av ungdomars lärande i musik
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avhandlingen undersöker ungdomars lärande i musik utifrån ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. De två delstudierna är genomförda med en teoretisk utgångspunkt som gör gällande att människor lär sig musik i samspel med andra människor samt att de använder sig av medierande verktyg i de lärsituationer de deltar i, vidare involveras den proximala utvecklingszonen, samt muntlig och skriftlig lärandekultur. Eftersom lärande inte endast sker i skolmiljö utan överallt där individer gemensamt skapar kunskap har de empiriska studierna genomförts både utom och inom skolan som institution. Genom att studera ungdomar som musicerar och skapar musik tillsammans, och i interaktion med sina lärare, har deras medvetna eller omedvetna val av medierande verktyg för musikaliskt lärande i olika kontexter synliggjorts. Syftet med den samlade studien är att synliggöra, beskriva och analysera musikaliskt lärande så som det blir synligt bland ungdomar i högstadieålder, inom ramen för grundskolans verksamhet och i frivilligverksamhet ur ett sociokulturellt perspektiv. Studiernas metodologiska grund återfinns i musiketnologisk teoribildning och i avhandlingen beskrivs hur musiketnologi och musikpedagogik förhåller sig till varandra. De valda metoderna utgjordes av observationer och intervjuer, vilka dokumenterades med videofilm och fältanteckningar. Analysarbetet genomfördes med kvalitativ analysmetod i fem olika steg, där stegen delvis skiljde sig åt i de två delstudierna.I studie I visade resultatet att elevernas musik- och lärandekultur framträdde när de lär och undervisar andra. Vidare framträdde ungdomarnas kulturella bakgrund genom deras val av verktyg för lärande och samlärande. Ungdomarna verkade vara mer benägna att ändra sitt sätt att undervisa andra än att ändra metoderna för sitt eget musikaliska lärande. Resultaten i studie II visade att musikläraren skapade ramar som eleverna kunde förhålla sig fritt till, vilket gjorde eleverna såväl trygga som fria. Musiklärarens sätt att organisera undervisningen liksom hans pedagogiska kompetens möjliggjorde elevernas musikaliska lärande och musikskapande. När eleverna skulle komponera och samspela använde musikläraren sig av flera olika verktyg i sin undervisning. Vidare synliggjordes hur en skriftlig lärandekultur genomsyrade de pedagogiska valen. I studie II visade resultaten att elevernas val av verktyg när de lär och undervisar sina kamrater var desamma som deras lärare använde. En skriftlig lärandekultur blev synlig i hur eleverna använde verktyg och artefakter för att lära och skapa musik tillsammans. Implikationerna av delstudie II kan sammanfattas med att musiklärare behöver veta hur möjligheter för lärande i grupp skapas, samt när elever behöver lärarens kunskap och vägledning för att befinna sig i en proximal utvecklingszon.Resultatet i den samlade studien visar på vikten av en musiklärare som inte bara har gedigen ämneskunskap utan också har kunskap om vilka medierande verktyg och artefakter elever behöver i varje specifik situation, samt kan bedöma vilka kunskaper elever redan har och vilken utveckling som är möjlig. När elever arbetar tillsammans i grupp för att lära verkar betydelsen av lärarens kunskap och pedagogiska förmåga vara avgörande för att en god miljö för lärande och utveckling ska kunna skapas. Vidare framkom att lärande i muntlig och skriftlig lärandekultur skiljde sig åt vad gällde verktyg och artefakter. Ungdomarna i de båda lärandekulturerna använde en bred repertoar av verktyg och artefakter på primär och sekundär nivå, medan läraren använde artefakterna på sekundär och tertiär nivå. I en skriftlig lärandekultur tyder resultatet på att verktyg och artefakter hade sitt ursprung i någon form av skriftlighet och de användes för att förklara hur musiken skulle framföras. I en muntlig lärandekultur utgjordes artefakten av den klingande musiken och de medierande resurserna användes för att förklara vad musiken ville förmedla.
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| 7. |
- Wenngren, Johan
(författare)
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Team activities in concept development : Addressing open-ended problems
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The concept development stage is a fundamental part of the development process; in this early stage, teams define what constitutes the problem and find direction for the subsequent problem-solving activities. Concept development that searches for innovative results starts from a problem formulation, or design brief, that should not be too precise; keeping parts open for interpretation and alternatives is important for allowing for the possibility to create new solutions. However, handling such open-ended development problems is a challenge as they do not point to a specific solution from the start. The difficulties that the development team encounters in order to find a way forward are the focus of this thesis. Thus, the purpose of this thesis is to identify, describe and discuss how teams explore and define open-ended problems in concept development. Fundamentally, teams have to explore and define open-ended problems in order to retrieve answers needed to undertake purposeful actions. The exploration and definition procedure creates stepwise understanding of sub-problems as open-ended problems typically have interdependencies. This implies that the team must suggest a number of representations before they can propose corresponding alternative solutions. The failure to adopt such a procedure leads to a risk of fixation and prematurely closing the definition of what constitutes the core issues of the design problem. This study specifically shows that confronting the design brief or task is an essential activity in the resolution of open-ended problems. Moreover, a number of practical steps for iteratively managing open-ended problem resolution are proposed. The study in this thesis is based on an explorative approach utilising experiments and observations as methods for data collection. The empirical data come from a workshop format (i.e., an innovation contest), teams on student projects and, to some extent, companies. The contribution from this thesis to engineering design relates mainly to the social and participatory aspects of innovation in concept development. The contribution to practice is mainly the formulation of iterative steps; these could be applicable to different types of open-ended problem resolution. One additional area of application may be a more modern type of product development in the manufacturing industry — namely, where product logics and service logics are interlinked.
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