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- Cronqvist, Marita
(författare)
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Yrkesetik i lärarutbildning - en balanskonst
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to examine and to increase the understanding of how student teachers implicitly (in action) and explicitly (through oral and written statements) express and learn professional ethics and what these expressions reveal about professional ethics. Previous research has indicated that professional ethics as phenomenon is difficult to separate and to view in the meeting between pedagogue and child. Professional ethics is often unspoken and based on personal feelings and not on formulated knowledge. In this study professional ethics is examined as the student teacher´s lived practice in the meeting with the child. The study is based on life-world theory and Reflective Life-world Research (RLR). This means for example that the phenomenon of professional ethics is examined as it present itself to student teachers and that the researcher must make efforts to be open to the phenomenon, reflect on it and to bridle preunderstandings. Ten student teachers with different orientations to preschool and elementary school have been followed, eight of them from second to fourth semester in periods when university courses and school-based education meet. Empirical data is collected from interviews, observations and different written statements. Findings are presented in three parts: Part 1 presents the issues for each individual student teacher. In part 2 the essence of professional ethics is formulated as seven elements of meaning: 1) that ambiguity requires an approach to responsibility, 2) that external factors can be obstacles, 3) that relationships and learning are interwoven, 4) that experiences should be for a child´s best interest, 5) that inclusion should be available to every child, 6) that authority should be exercised through an atmosphere of joy, respect and safety, and 7) that development occurs when theory and practice meet in reflection. Part 3 is a theoretical presentation. Reflection, self-reflection, judgment and student teachers as role models emerge as the primary tools of professional ethics. These tools are dependent on each other and intertwine cognition and emotion, experiences, theories and practice. In addition to the essence of professional ethics, my conclusion is that learning about professional ethics is based on the student teacher´s life world and takes place in a lifelong learning process. Consequently, teacher education needs to support meta-learning (learning how to learn) and build education on the student teacher´s individual life world as a resource. The student teachers as role models are developed through virtuous actions continuously being performed and through teacher educators acting as role models. Judgment and phronesis are also developed in practice through student teachers´ experiences of balancing between various factors in the complex situation. Since learning is developed in practice and from experiences, school-based education becomes valuable in order to stimulate learning. Another conclusion is that experiences must be discussed and analyzed thoroughly and systematically in education. In this process reflection is crucial. Based on the findings, a didactic model, Didethics, has been created in order to implement ethics in the same way as content (subject) and methods are included in didactics. Through asking questions, the model implements ethics, links it with content and methods and follows ethics through the planning, implementation and evaluation of the learning process.
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| 2. |
- Bivall, Ann-Charlotte, 1977-
(författare)
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Helpdesking : Knowing and learning in IT support practices
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The background of this doctoral thesis is an interest in work achievement over extended time periods in specialized and technology-infused workplaces. Globalization, digitalization and increased focus on customer services are constituent aspects that have been claimed responsible for the current changes in the way work practices and teamwork are organized. In IT helpdesk work, which is the object of study in this thesis, challenges including dissemination of information, keeping up-to-date with technological changes and coordi- nation of people and tasks have been identified as critical. The aim of this thesis is to illuminate how knowing and competence are maintained and shared as participants engage in backstage activities in helpdesk work. The focus is on the nature of the activities that unfolds when employees engage in activities that include interaction as well as artefacts. The empirical material comprises video- and audio-recorded activities of a second-level helpdesk in a large multinational IT provider. Targeted ‘hot spot’ activities are shift changes, quality discussions and introductions of newcomers. Based on a sociocultural perspective, the (re)production of professional practices is understood as continuous negotiations between participants and tools within a situated framework. Methodologically, this implies detailed investigations of authentic activities where interactions and tool use are analysed from the participant’s perspective. Three studies are included in the thesis, each of them provide insights into the organizing of shared knowing and competence. Study One focuses on how tasks and information are communicated between shifts and transformed into workable units and knowledge. Study Two addresses the role of activities specifically arranged for learning and separated from other work tasks. In Study Three, the focus is on introductions of newcomers and what can be learned from interactions with experienced participants and technological tools. The analyses show that knowledge work is a continuous and communicatively-based undertaking. Continuity across shifts relies on several documenting routines and procedures, but shift change meetings provide opportunities for interpretation and negotiation of information as well as coordination of tasks. Talking about work provides a space for reflection and reformulation of team-related quality norms and values as shared foundations for work. Furthermore, inducting newcomers to the specialized and situated practice brings about the very detailed procedures involved in managing everyday work and technological tools. By describing the reasoning and knowing displayed by helpdesk employees, the thesis contributes to discussions about knowledge work and sharing in organizational settings, teamwork, system design and lifelong learning. To conclude, it is suggested that sharing and reproduction of knowing in practice is a collective effort that entails creative involvement by members of the practice.
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| 4. |
- Nehez, Jaana, 1974-
(författare)
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Rektorers praktiker i möte med utvecklingsarbete : Möjligheter och hinder för planerad förändring
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on how principals’ practices in improvement work are formed and how these practices affect principals’ possibilities to work with planned change. The study takes its departure from ten Upper Secondary School principals’ improvement work concerning enterprise education. The study has an action research approach and was carried out between June 2009 and September 2010. The aim of the study is to generate knowledge about principals’ practices in improvement work and of action research as a strategy for principals in planned change in relation to these practices. The theoretical framework is based on practice theories (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Schatzki, 2002). According to these theories, a practice is formed in a project that shows what the practice is aiming for by practitioners’ sayings, doings and relatings. Furthermore, Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) claim that practices are shaped by arrangements outside the practitioners; cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements. Findings show that what becomes meaningful for principals to engage in is not formed only by the aim of the planned improvement work, but also by already existing practices competing for space and by arrangements constraining principals’ possibilities to work with planned change. Many practices and projects were competing on the arena where the improvement work was planned to proceed. Some of the projects, ‘leading the improvement work’, ‘understanding what enterprise education is about’ and ‘making changes for enterprise education’ promoted the planned change. Others, projects like ‘organizing the daily work’, ‘avoiding dispute with teachers’ and ‘pretending to succeed’, constrained the planned change. Furthermore, cultural-discursive arrangements like abstract ideas of what the principals were supposed to create conditions for, as well as social-political arrangements like asymmetric relationships between the principals, and expectations from the local school board for quick solutions, enabled practices that constrained the planned change. Practices and arrangements like those in the study made it difficult for the principals to engage in action research as a strategy for change. Based on the results, principals’ possibilities to work with planned change are discussed in relation to the matter of context, dialogue as an improvement strategy, the aim for the improvement work and demands for quick solutions. The thesis contributes with knowledge about planned change and it contributes to the discussion about what kind of arrangements could support principals to initiate and lead school improvement. It also shows the importance of practice analyses in school improvement processes.
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| 5. |
- Bigsten, Airi, 1957
(författare)
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Fostran i förskolan
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the current study is to generate knowledge about the preschool teacher’s incitements to action in the work they conduct around the upbringing of children, as well as how preschool teachers experience their own actions in interactions with children. The current study adopts a phenomenological lifeworld approach (Merleau- Ponty, 1962/2006; Schütz, 1966). This approach has been chosen in order to be able to understand the phenomenon of upbringing from the preschool teacher’s perspective. The study has been carried out in four different sections at four different preschools. Interaction between nine preschool teachers and 64 children (3-5 years old) at the four different sections was video-recorded. The data was comprised of video observations and interviews using the method of stimulated recall (Calderhead, 1981). In the analyses conducted three themes emerged. The first theme that emerged is The preschool teachers wish to respect each child’s uniqueness. In this theme the ways in which the unique child is met both by the preschool teachers and other children is described. The second theme is The preschool teachers want to achieve order. In this theme the ways in which upbringing finds expression through order are revealed. The third theme Existence: the preschool teachers want to lay the foundations for life in the future, shows how – both in the here-and-now, but also from a future-oriented perspective – upbringing finds forms of expression in preschool. The preschool teachers’ incitements to action indicate a striving to respect children’s rights to being unique individuals, the right to order and predictability, and the right to have hope, both in the hereand- now and in the future. These rights are relational and interrelated with one another. For the preschool teachers these rights are of importance, both from the child’s perspective, but also in relation to others. On occasions the adults can abstain from certain rights, if this is regarded as relevant in the particular situation. Rights also involve a degree of responsibility. Using these concepts, dimensions of upbringing can be identified and analysed, both in research as well as in pedagogical practice. In this way the study can contribute to creating a more in-depth understanding of upbringing and its nature, and can challenge teachers to develop their own practice and thus contribute in the ongoing development of the profession.
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| 6. |
- Lager, Karin, 1974
(författare)
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I spänningsfältet mellan kontroll och utveckling. En policystudie av systematiskt kvalitetsarbete i kommunen, förskolan och fritidshemmet.
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The a im of this thesis is to explore how Systematic quality development work (Sqdw) is enacted in municipalities, preschools and leisure - time centres. In Sweden Sqdw comes within the statutory obligations of preschools and leisure - time centres and constitutes a significant part of teachers’ work. The thesis explores how local policy - makers, a principal and two teachers enact Sqdw policy and transform it into practice. The thesis consists of two parts. The first is the licentiate thesis Organizing Quality: Assess ment Practices in Municipalities and Pre - Schools (Lager, 2010) in which new institutional tools are used to explore how Sqdw is organised by key people in municipalities (Czarniawska, 2005). The second part, which contains the papers Systematic quality dev elopment work in a Swedish leisure - time centre (Lager, Sheridan & Gustafsson, 2015), and ‘ Learning to play with new friends’: Systematic quality development work in a leisure - time centre (Lager, 2015), explores how, through the use of policy enactment tool s, Sqdw is recontextualised in the practice of a leisure - time centre (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). By combining these two approaches both structure and actor are focused on in the analysis of a policy process. In both studies, policy texts, interviews and observations function as data sources and are analysed holistically. Additionally, a meta - interpretation (Weed, 2008) of the three included texts has been carried out and constitutes the concluding findings of the thesis in a synthesis. The findings are d iscussed as recontextualised discourses, norms and traditions in the various actors’ enactment of Sqdw in discursive practices. An educational discourse is recontextualised in the municipalities in focus, highlighting the norms according to routines and mo dels of Sqdw in compulsory schools. When Sqdw is recontextualised in the leisure - time centre a social pedagogical discourse which highlights children’s social and relational learning is reproduced. When quality discourses are combined with the educational discourse, this contributes to the creation of policy technologies and tools that function to unify Sqdw both in municipalities as well as in the leisure - time centre in focus. Policy gaps in the enactment of different discourses create tensions in Sqdw in terms of diverse objectives in the curriculums governing the different school forms. The objectives appear as important in terms of how, in the municipalities, documentation is carried out in a manner that differs from pedagogical practices. Overall, the t hree main findings of the thesis can be summarised as follows: First, different formulations of objectives are important for the documentation of achievement in Sqdw. Second, different discourses are recontextualised in the Sqdw phases. Third, while in the municipal preschool Sqdw is reproduced in an individual educational tradition, in the leisure - time centre it is reproduced as traditional, social pedagogical content in the form of a new way of working.
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| 8. |
- Lundberg, Osa, 1967
(författare)
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Mind the Gap - Ethnography about the cultural reproduction of difference and disadvantage in urban education
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines cultural reproduction of difference and disadvantage in the pedagogical content and practices in urban education. Cultural differentiation is seen as a social and ideological practice that is constructed institutionally in the organization and structure of pedagogy. The objectives of this study are threefold. I examine: 1) how cultural difference is formulated, enacted and conveyed in policy and practice, 2) how pedagogical practices contribute to the (re)production of social and cultural inequalities, and 3) where opportunities for change and transformation in the pedagogical practice can occur. The empirical data is produced by participant observation and interviews with teachers and students. Three different ninth grade classes and the teachers, at the same school, were observed for three years consecutively between 2006 and 2009. A fifth grade class was also observed for one semester. The analysis is informed by theories of sociology of education (Bernstein, 1990, p. 165) and critical race theory (Leonardo, 2009). The analysis of this study highlights the social and cultural reproduction (Bernstein, 2001) in the formulation, realization and transformation arenas (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). Specific attention is given to the relationship between the macro power, in the formulation arena, and the micro practices of pedagogy, in the realization arena, that are intended to compensate for social and cultural differences and disparities. Based on findings, I claim that cultural racism (Ryan, 1976, p. 190), in the pedagogical discourse, allows race and racism to go under the guise of culturally acceptable forms of institutional racism. I argue that `culture´ is used as a metaphor for race and as a rationale to employ compensatory pedagogy (Gitz-Johansen, 2009) as a solution that does not alleviate, but rather accentuates inequality and disadvantages. This study discusses how differentiation along the lines of `culture´ has bearing on allocation of government funding, urban development, school reform, bilingual education, hiring and retention of bilingual teachers, and pedagogical practices aimed at reforming the students’ through compensatory measures. These measures which are intended to enable integration into the mainstream “Swedish” society paradoxically reify and accentuate `Otherness´. The academic contribution is geared towards development of the sociology of school knowledge in pedagogical work, critical pedagogy and social justice education.
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