| 1. |
- Abraham, Getahun Yacob
(författare)
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Education for Democracy? : Life Orientation: Lessons on Leadeship Qualities and Voting in South African Comprehensive Schools
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study takes as its starting point how teachers understand, interpret and teach social development aspects of Life Orientation in South African comprehensive schools. The specific focus is on lessons on leadership qualities and voting for third grade learners in four schools, each dominated by either Black, Coloured, White or mixed groups of learners. Field work with an ethnographic approach and a qualitative strategy was used to gain access to empirical data. Policy and curriculum documents, guidelines and textbooks were used. Classroom observations in four classes and interviews with 14 third grade teachers were conducted. Theoretical concepts of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction are applied. Ulf P Lundgren’s Frame Factor Theory is used to study school organization. Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogical Devices are considered when examining the different levels of pedagogical activities. To be a teacher in South Africa one needs to attend at least two years of teacher education after completing high school. Teachers in the classes studied underwent their teacher education during apartheid years. Due to limited in-service training, they sometimes experience problems of understanding and interpreting the learning area, which they usually tackle by consulting documents, colleagues or school authorities. The learners’ understanding varied based on their family background and type of school they attended. There were enormous differences in material, financial and organisational resources between classes and schools. The resources for teaching leadership qualities and voting were not, however, different between the classes. The lessons were teacher dominated and direct transmission was used as a method. The way teachers facilitated the lesson on leadership qualities and voting varied but all showed some democratic shortcomings. Apart from answering questions, learners were neither invited nor encouraged to participate to further their understanding of the theme. Limited aspects of leadership qualities were discussed, individual leaders’ roles were emphasised and the teachers picked candidates for class leaders in three of the classes. It was also evident that the class environments were not suitable for critical or creative thinking and democratic upbringing. The schools reproduced norms, values, languages and cultures of the different groups. Officially, teachers emphasised the common national South African identity. This emphasis on national identity could disguise the injustice some groups experience in society.
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| 2. |
- Masoumi, Davoud
(författare)
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Quality in e-learning within a cultural context : The case of Iran
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players’ satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. “quality discourse”, “e-learning discourse” and “culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse”, by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to “fit” in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.
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| 3. |
- Alvestad, Torgeir, 1960
(författare)
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Barnehagens relasjonelle verden - små barn som kompetente aktører i produktive forhandlinger
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study investigates the negotiations that take place in play among the youngest children in preschool. What are their negotiations about? How do they negotiate? What kinds of strategies do they use during their negotiations? The study has its focus on learning about fellowship through practice and experience in the negotiations that take place among the youngest preschool children. The study’s relevance also relates to the development of pedagogical practice among the youngest children in preschools. The theoretical platform is comprised of the perspectives of childhood psychology (Sommer, 2004) and childhood sociology (Corsaro, 2002). In both perspectives children are regarded as competent active in producing their own culture and active in calling on information and learning. The main concepts used in the analysis of the empirical data are ‘inter-subjectivity’ and ’the role of others’. The concepts are based on the theoretical frameworks of Daniel Stern (1991) and George Herbert Mead (1962). A group of twenty four children, thirteen girls and eleven boys, aged between two to three, were regularly video recorded. The children were enrolled in day-care groups in two of the biggest cities in Norway. The study reveals that the negotiations that take place among the children are mainly about their relationships, play materials, and the content of their play. They negotiate both verbally and nonverbally. They express their intentions towards each other with words and through gestures, glances, laughter and smiles. They use different strategies in their negotiations that relate to content and intentions. They also seem to develop or change their strategy if, for example, an initial strategy is not successful. Their strategies can be both emotional and connected to solving problems. In addition, they often use humour as a strategy. The study shows that the children who play the most with others and who know each other best, are those who are most successful in their negotiations. They often have a common focus and common intentions, as well as sharing emotional conditions in their play and negotiations. It seems that those children who are the most competent playmates are also those who are most competent in negotiations. The reason for this might be the connection between play and negotiations. To be able to play successfully demands that those sharing the play are prepared for negotiations about relations, play materials and the content of the play. However, the children’s negotiations depend on their previous experiences in this field. The more experienced the youngest children are in negotiations, the more complex and flexible their negotiations might be. A pedagogical consequence of this study is that staff in preschools should support the smallest children by giving them more time to meet and play together. This can give the children extended possibilities to develop their own strategies of negotiations in play. This in turn will support children’s learning in becoming creative, seeking and reflective individuals who create their own space of action. The experiences children are gaining through negotiations in play might also be important for other situations of negotiation, contributions and democratic practice.
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| 4. |
- Bergviken Rensfeldt, Annika, 1969
(författare)
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Opening Higher Education: Discursive transformations of distance and higher education government
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes as its starting point the 1990s and early 2000s political arguments for a more open and flexible Swedish higher education system. At this time, the issues of accessibility and participation were also brought into the debate by revitalized ideals of distance education. In this study, the aim has been to denaturalize and render discursive shifts visible by examining the assumptions and reasonings of “opening higher education.” The empirical material is Swedish distance and higher education policies; Government bills, Government official reports, and replies from universities and university colleges, from 1992 to 2005. The thesis draws on a Foucauldian, post-structural understanding and approach of governmentality, focusing on how discourses take part in a governing that constitutes certain problems, solutions, and rationalities, made visible in policy. The overall purpose has been to analyze how discourses suggesting widened, flexible, and democratic participation involve regulations and orderings of students, institutions, and higher education systems. The thesis includes four studies that demonstrate how discourses of openness become parts of governing distance and higher education; how rationalities of expansion and flexibility are aligned to securing higher education systems and populations, and how institutions and individuals should adjust to flexible and personalized higher education. The first study examines how a post-war, nation-based higher education expansion is re-configured in scale, into regional, IT-based, European and global spatialities. The second study examines flexible distance education in terms of gendered spatial orderings, problematically intended for female populations. The third study explores how a certain ideal subjectivity and self-technology of personalization is embedded in the notions of IT-based Learning management systems. The last study examines the discursive shift from distance education to flexible learning and how a spatial politics and polarizations of study modes (distance/flexible), university localizations (distance/campus), and ideals of distance education (distance/closeness) are produced. The analyses reveal how liberal rationalities and self-organization of individuals, populations and spatialities take part of the governing and how orderings; differentiation of systems and exclusion of populations through spatial affiliation, gender, distance and IT study modes, market and performance logics, are produced.
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| 5. |
- Hasselskog, Peter, 1960
(författare)
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Slöjdlärares förhållningssätt i undervisningen
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avhandlingsarbetets syfte är att synliggöra slöjdlärares skilda förhållningssätt i undervisningen. Hur lärare genomför sin undervisning och agerar i förhållande till sina elever påverkar vad eleverna ges möjlighet att lära. Olikheter mellan lärare relaterar också till att slöjdundervisningen skall vara likvärdig. Forskningen inom det slöjdpedagogiska/didaktiska fältet är sparsam. Kännedom om hur slöjdundervisning utöver den man själv har erfarenhet av är begränsad. Slöjdundervisning har studerats med hjälpa av lärare och elevers beskrivningar genom dagböcker. Dessutom har den muntliga kommunikationen mellan lärare och elever analyserats med hjälp av mp3-inspelningar. Resultatet beskrivs dels i form av fyra konstruerade idealtyper: Serviceman, Instruktör, Handledare och Pedagog. Dels i form av tre huvudsakliga förhållnings¬sätt hos slöjdlärarna: Lärare som lägger fokus på instruktion för nästa steg i elevernas arbete, lärare med fokus på att skapa förståelse hos eleverna, och lärare som i första hand stöttar eleverna genom att hjälpa till med det eleverna ber om. I arbetet diskuteras hur de identifierade förhållningssätten påverkar förutsättningarna för elevernas lärande. Detta beskrivs bland annat i form av olika fokus på eller förutsättningar att lära om, i, med och genom slöjdundervisningen. Den studerade undervisningen utmärks av att vara individualiserad, elevernas inflytande och engagemang är generellt stort. I förhållande till likvärdighet möjliggörs därigenom en anpassning till olika elevers förutsättningar. Däremot ges elevernas egna initiativ och ansvarstagande varierande utrymme beroende på lärarens förhållningssätt. Studien väcker också frågor om hur slöjdlärarna uppmärksammar eleverna på vad som lärs, hur det lärs och hur det relaterar till målen för slöjdundervisningen.
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| 6. |
- Hellman, Anette, 1963
(författare)
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Kan Batman vara rosa? Förhandlingar om pojkighet och normalitet på en förskola
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Abstract Title: Have you Ever Seen a Pink Batman? Negotiating Boyishness and Normality at a Preschool. Language: Swedish with a summary in English Keywords: Performativity, gender, masculinity, normality, pre- school, children, negotiation ISBN: 978-91-7346-689-9 Gender research has long argued that gender is constructed through social processes. This study explores how this is done among children at pre-school. To achieve this objective the study focuses how norms related to boyishness was negotiated among children in their everyday activities. The theoretical framework rests on concepts from post structural feminist theory, queer theory and critical masculinity research. The material is produced through ethnographic method and two years of field work. At preschool girls and boys acted in a wide variety of different ways not distinctly connected to their gendered identities. One main finding in the study is that out of this maze of practices certain acts are made visible and categorized as typical boyish or girlish. Included in these processes of categorization are assumptions about certain behavior as more correct and natural for different sexes, resulting in discursive positions such as “typical” boys, for example. However, this position is ascribed low status both among teachers and other children. The most attractive position is described as the ”competent child”. When norms about gender differences are made relevant these are foremost manifested in negotiations about specific markers and signifiers, such as voices, movements, specific haircuts, colors and toys. The negotiations did usually not concern if a boy or girl could be part of a play but if the appropriate signifiers were used. The issue was not if a girl could take the position of Batman but whether he could wear pink or not. In that way one can say that construing gender preceded actual experiences of sexually defined bodies. In the study it is concluded that the importance of belonging to a specific gender or sex is accentuated in specific spaces, but less relevant in other. The difference between the spaces lies in how they are opened or closed to a normative gaze. This gendered gaze is manifested not only by actually being seen by teachers and children but also in architecture. To evade this normative gaze children created “secret” spaces either by building small shelters or negotiating specific rooms of friendship. A further conclusion is that when age is emphasized norms about gender are equally stressed. The notion of “being a baby” consisted a very strong marker to police the border between being a sexual subject or not. The study brings out the crucial importance age have also for small children in processes of negotiating and naturalizing two different sexes and the importance of being gendered to be understood and normal.
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| 7. |
- Kullberg, Angelika, 1969
(författare)
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What is taught and what is learned. Professional insights gained and shared by teachers of mathematics
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to contribute to knowledge about relationships between teaching and learning in school. The framework used in this research, variation theory, states that, to improve student learning, attention must be paid to what is being learned, the capability that is to be improved and the features (critical features) that it is necessary for the learner to discern. The studies reported here focus on the significance of critical features and are based on two ‘learning studies’ in mathematics, one of the density of rational numbers and one of the addition and subtraction of negative numbers. In a learning study, teachers work together with design, analysis and revision of their teaching of a single lesson with the aim of enhancing students’ learning by gaining insight about features that are assumed to be critical and enacting them in their teaching. The question answered in this research is whether the insight gained in the learning studies about critical features can be shared by other teachers and used to enhance other students’ learning. Two studies based on the previous studies were carried out together with a total of eight teachers and sixteen groups of students. Each teacher enacted two lessons with different conditions in terms of the critical features made use of. The lessons were video recorded and analysed with respect to which critical features were enacted in the lessons and what the students learned as indicated in pre and post tests. It is suggested that the critical features were transferable in two regards, in terms of student learning and in terms of a means of communication that could be shared among teachers. It was indicated that the critical features that were enacted in the teaching constrained what it was possible to experience in the classroom and what students learned. What was taught seemed to be reflected in what the students learned. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that it was not sufficient to simply name the critical features to the students; it seems that they must be discerned in order for learning to take place. It was found that the teachers made use of the critical features that were identified by other teachers in a learning study as a means to plan and teach lessons. This suggests that teachers can make use of the notion of critical features in their own teaching to enhance student learning.
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| 8. |
- Lymer, Gustav, 1978
(författare)
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The work of critique in architectural education
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research reported here is an investigation of instruction and assessment in architectural education. The focus is on the practice of critique, an educational activity in which instructors and professional architects give students feedback on their finished projects. Taking an ethnomethodologically informed approach, the interests of the thesis revolve around questions of how critique is done as an occasioned instructional practice. The empirical material consists of video recordings of critique sessions at a Swedish school of architecture. The core of the thesis consists of four empirical studies. Study 1 deals with issues of professional vision and the ways in which the graphical surface of the presentation is seen. Study 2 addresses the significance of intentions in the setting. The study examines how the relation between students’ stated intentions and the presented designs is treated by participants. Study 3 deals with the use of precedents and references, analyzing how critics respond to students’ ways of handling intertextual aspects of architectural design. Study 4 focuses on the material and spatial set-up of critique—the differing affordances of digital slideshows and posters for presentation and discussion. Critique is found to be a site where architectural proposals are treated for the purposes of instruction as provisional and improvable, and where their significances are detailed in exhibitions of architectural reasoning and judgment. Such exhibiting involves identifying and elaborating on problems and qualities, and articulating values that are visible in the envisaged buildings and their graphical representations. These interpretations may be juxtaposed with the expressed intentions of students, as these appear in verbal presentations or in textual accounts. Their interrelations are inspected and discrepancies are noted and discussed. On the basis of the analyses in the thesis, the function of critique is argued to centre on the juxtaposition of student-produced objects with professional competences for seeing, articulating, assessing, and contextualizing these objects. In organizing the educational program around cycles of production and critique, architecture is provided with a powerful means through which design competences, and the assessment practices that lie at their core, can be made massively present within, and constitutive of, the developmental processes through which students acquire the intellectual, aesthetic, and discursive repertoires necessary for competent architectural work.
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| 9. |
- Masoumi, Davoud
(författare)
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Quality in E-learning in a Cultural Context: The case of Iran
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players’ satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. “quality discourse”, “e-learning discourse” and “culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse”, by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to “fit” in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.
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| 10. |
- Odenbring, Ylva
(författare)
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Kramar, kategoriseringar och hjälpfröknar. Könskonstruktioner i interaktion i förskola, förskoleklass och skolår ett
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the present study, gender constructions are analysed, as they appear in a preschool, two preschool classes and one class in the first grade. The analysis is based on observations of the interaction that takes place physically and verbally between children and between children and adults in various contexts. Theoretically, this dissertation takes its starting-point in the as¬sumption that gender relations vary with the context, which enables multiple forms of femininities and masculinities. This dissertation consists of two studies based on different empirical data. In the first study, video recordings from the FISK project [The Preschool and School in Collaboration Project] are analysed and takes its starting-point in conversation analysis (CA). The second study consists of data produced from a separate fieldwork carried out in one preschool class, for which I am personally responsible. The fieldwork has an ethnographic approach, as I studied the daily activities of the preschool class for a lengthy period of time. Since the study aims to study constructions of gender in educational institutions, I found Connell particularly applicable as he refers to gender patterns as the gender regime of an institution. In the present study, the analysis is focused on constructions of gender as they occur in school interaction, using Connell for discussion at the global and institutional levels. To further understand these processes at an institutional level, Thorne’s work on borderwork and crossing was applied to the study. Conversation analytical theories were used on the first study to analyse the gender structures as they emerge in interaction at the micro level. As shown both in previous research and in the results of the present study, order and discipline are important parts of the daily routines in preschools, preschool classes and primary schools. One way of maintain order and discipline in preschools, preschool-classes and primary schools are by using sub-teachers. In the present study, I argue that what in pre¬vious research is defined as a sub-teacher consists of different functions where gender constructions emerge in different ways. In the present study, I also analyse and discuss the importance of non-verbal actions. The analysis shows that these actions are important recourses of how gender is expressed. What differs from previous research is that boys hug each other and talk about love. Overall, there are few studies that discuss the importance of bodily interaction, which is why the results of this dissertation ought to be considered as new. In the children’s conversations, body, intimacy and love are topics that occur quite often in their conversations. When talking about love, the children refer to persons of the other sex, so by strictly referring to other sex the children are part of constructing the heterosexual hegemony. Gender boundaries are also strengthened by the teachers’ categorisations of the children. On the whole, the analysis shows that the teachers’ use of gendered categorisations lead to constructions of social hierarchies based on gender. Also, the children are part of this in their use of categorisations in child-to-child interactions as a way of positioning themselves.
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