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- Hjörne, Eva, 1956, et al.
(författare)
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Defining student diversity: categorizing and processes of marginalization in the Swedish school.
- 2007
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Ingår i: 102nd ASA annual meeting, New York. August 11-14, 2007..
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- An interesting issue in the history of schooling is how diversity between students has been, and still is, represented. What are the categories that are used in the educational system to account for learning difficulties and low school achievement? And what are the consequences – for schools, for the children, and even for society – of the adoption of various kinds of explanatory categories. This presentation reports an analysis of how diversity is understood, defined and attended to in the Swedish school at present. To elucidate this complex problem, we will report a case-study of categorizing practices and their consequences that concern the uses of so-called neuropsychiatric diagnoses, notably AD/HD. We will argue that such categories play a very important role in a) mediating between the interests of collectives and individuals in schools (and in society in general), and b) in the formation of identities of children in and out of school. In the present study, an analysis of the interaction between the parents of a boy (5.5 years old) and various representatives of the institution (school psychologist, principal, teacher, preschool teacher) is reported. We have followed so-called pupil welfare conferences, where the problems of this boy have been discussed between the professionals and with the parents (mostly the mother) during two school years. The meetings have been audio-recorded and transcribed. It is shown that the parents and the professionals in school have different explanations of the boy’s difficulties in school. The parents, while not denying that their son causes problems at school, argue that the boy will mature and that the problems will disappear. Among the arguments they make, they claim that they both had problems of the kind ascribed to their son when they were young, and these problems disappeared with age. The parents thus refuse to have their son subjected to a psychological examination. The representatives of the school, however, try to convince the parents that a neuropsychiatric examination of the boy will be beneficial for everyone. The rhetoric of the institutional representatives during this long period include arguments that it will be easier for the school to handle the problems if they know that the boy ‘has’ AD/HD, and they also claim that it will be easier for the parents to relate to their own son when they know what his problems are. In this manner one tries to create an alliance with the parents that a psychological examination ending up in a diagnosis is beneficial to everyone: the teachers, the school, the parents and the boy. The results also show that the IEP for the boy hardly changed at all during the two years of negotiation about the problem. It is also noted that the boy himself has no say in the process when his school problems are discussed. When finally produced, the diagnosis resulted in a placement in a special class, which per se normalises the relationship between the parents and the school. There are no more complaints from the school. Thus, the two year long process of negotiation can be understood as a social and rhetorical drama, where the category AD/HD is the resolution to a complex institutional problem in the modern welfare state.
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- Lantz-Andersson, Annika, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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What’s the problem? Meaning making and learning to do mathematical word problems in the context of digital tools
- 2009
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Ingår i: Instructional Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1573-1952 .- 0020-4277. ; 37:4, s. 325-343
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The general background of this study is an interest in how digital tools contribute to structuring learning activities. The specific interest is to explore how such tools co-determine students’ reasoning when solving word problems in mathematics, and what kind of learning that follows. Theoretically the research takes its point of departure in a sociocultural perspective on the role of cultural tools in thinking, and in a complementary interest in the role of the communicative framing of cognitive activities. Data have been collected through video documentation of classroom activities in secondary schools where multimedia tools are integrated into mathematics teaching. The focus of the analysis is on cases where the students encounter some kind of difficulty. The results show how the tool to a significant degree co-determines the meaning making practices of students. Thus, it is not a passive element in the situation; rather it invites certain types of activities, for instance iterative computations that do not necessarily rely on an analysis of the problems to be solved. For long periods of time the students’ activities are framed within the context of the tool, and they do not engage in discussing mathematics at all when solving the problems. It is argued that both from a practical and theoretical point of view it is important to scrutinize what competences students develop when using tools of this kind.
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- Mauritzson, Ulla, 1949, et al.
(författare)
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Adult Questions and Children's Responses: coordination of perspectives in studies of children's theories of other minds
- 2001
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0031-3831 .- 1470-1170. ; 45:3, s. 213-231
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract The main aim of this study is to shed light on the issue of how children learn to identify what is meant by what is said in communicative practices. The study replicates and extends the well-known work on what is referred to as children's 'theories of other minds'. The focus in the present study is on the interplay between the adult and the child, the nature of the task and the child's position in the communicative encounter. Rather than assuming that children have or do not have 'theories of other minds', we explore the communicative conditions under which children can be made sensitive to the nature of other people's (mistaken) beliefs. The empirical work was carried out amongst children aged three to five, since this is the critical age at which it is claimed that children become sensitive to the fact that other people's perspectives of a situation may differ from their own. The results show that whether or not children 'are able' to adopt other people's perspectives is very much a situated affair and reflects the manner in which they are brought into a position where they can share the framing of the adult. The questions posed are interpreted differently by the children in ways that go beyond the intended difference that concerns perspectivity. The test situation is polysemous in many respects and the variation in responses cannot be reduced to such a simple distinction as the one implied in the theory of mind research paradigm, which represents a monological conception of communication.
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