| 1. |
- Reynolds, Ruth, et al.
(author)
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Globalization and classroom practice : insights on learning about the world in Swedish and Australian schools
- 2013
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In: Nordidactica. - Karlstad : CSD Karlstad. - 2000-9879. ; :1, s. 104-130
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Globalization and global education implies changes to practices at the classroom level to adapt to new imperatives associated with technology use and awareness, and environmental sustainability. It also implies much more. It implies that teachers apply their classroom pedagogy to take account of students’ new found global understandings of which they, and the school community, is largely unaware. This article addresses and discuses three key consequences of globalization for classrooms worldwide; an increased diversity of experience of the students within the classroom, an increased competitiveness of educational outcomes between national states and subsequently some standardisation of curriculum across nations to enable this, and an increased emphasis on teaching skills and values associated with intercultural understanding. Young children’s map knowledge and their resultant, and associated, interpretations of the world from a comparative study a from Swedish and Australian primary classrooms is used as examples of some of these implications of the impact of ‘global culture’ and ‘global issues’ on current and future classroom practice.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Thorp, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Controversially uncontroversial? : Swedish pre-service history teachers’ relations to their national pasts
- 2020
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In: Acta Didactica Norden. - Oslo : University of Oslo Library. - 2535-8219. ; 14:4, s. 1-21
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This article presents a study of how Swedish pre-service history teachers narrated their nation’s past. Previous research on national history education has generally focused on the treatment of conflicts in national history and what challenges that poses for history education. The present study seeks to complement and broaden this research through its focus on a country where national history is generally perceived as uncontroversial and the debate on national history is generally characterised by consensus, and on what strategies future history teachers use when recounting the national history of Sweden. Using a qualitative approach, we asked our respondents to “Tell us the history of Sweden in your own words” in writing. The study finds that the vast majority of the respondents approach their national history in a way that reinforces a traditional view of Swedish national history. These narratives are generally presented in a way that does not engage with or show how perspective and position affects our rendering of history, which has often been regarded as problematic in history educational research. At the same time, these results also show that our respondents are well familiar with the dominant way of perceiving the Swedish past, something that could also be argued to be valuable in history education, depending on how we choose to approach national history.
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| 4. |
- Vinterek, Monika, et al.
(author)
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Narrating the nation : Swedish and Australian pre-service history teacher’s conceptualisation of their national history.
- 2016
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In Australia national history and the teaching thereof continues to be controversial. Concerns over whose history is being taught in schools (Blainey, 1993; Donnelly, 1997), parallels anxieties over what the public knows about their nation’s past (Ashton, Connors, Goodall, Hamilton, & McCarthy, 2000; Ashton & Hamilton, 2007). In Sweden, on the other hand, national history does not have a dominant role in public discourse or research on history education. This lack of attention could, however, also be problematic (Lozic, 2010; Nordgren, 2006).Using an open-ended narrative methodology inspired by Canadian researcher Jocelyn Létourneau (2006), the Comparing our Pasts (COP) project aimed to determine and compare what Swedish and Australian pre-service teachers, as an important group when it comes to their future influential position in schools, know, understand, and believe to be important about their countries’ past. This paper reports on the preliminary analysis of the pre-service teachers’ narratives, comparing their perception of the nation as a geographical, cultural, or constitutional entity as well as Swedish and Australian stories of foundation and conquest. Furthermore, the paper examines the way the participants framed their narratives and the lens they used to relate and interpret their respective national histories and their understanding of the nation and the past.
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| 5. |
- Vinterek, Monika, 1956-, et al.
(author)
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Tell us about your nation’s past : Swedish and Australian preservice history teachers’ conceptualisation of their national history
- 2017
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In: Yearbook (of the International Society for History Didactics). - 1608-8751. ; 38, s. 51-72
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Comparing our Pasts (COP) project aimed to determine what Swedish and Australian pre-service history teachers know, understand and believe to be important about their nations’ past. In this study pre-service history teachers were asked to write a short history of their nation in their own words without using outside sources of information. This article reports on a preliminary analysis of resulting texts, comparing and contrasting their conceptualisations of Sweden and Australia and what aspects of history were manifest in the analysed data. Given that the participant group is situated in two different national contexts, this study aims to analyse how the pre-service teachers’ narratives of the nation can be understood as influenced by the national historical cultures of Sweden and Australia. The results show that the respondents’ narratives expressed both similarities and differences that highlight the pertinence of a historical cultural approach to history education and pre-service history teacher training that may be linked to the differing national historical contexts. These results are then used to argue the importance of an awareness of historicity in order to highlight and stress how our views of and approaches to national history is contextually contingent. This poses a challenge to history teacher training both in Sweden and Australia.
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| 6. |
- Tegmark, Mats, et al.
(author)
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What motivates students to read at school? Student views on reading practices in middle and lower-secondary school
- 2022
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In: Journal of research in reading (Print). - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0141-0423 .- 1467-9817. ; 45:1, s. 100-118
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Reading amount is decisive for individual students' academic success as well as for the general strength of democratic societies. Still, the amount of both leisure-time and school-related reading is decreasing. To reverse this trend, more knowledge of what drives students' school reading is needed. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), the study is based on structured interviews with 259 students in Grades 6 and 9 from 14 different schools. Descriptive statistical analyses were made to map students' perceptions of themselves as readers and their school-related reading practices and to find out what regulates students' motivation for in-class reading. Although students express a strong will to become good readers, our data indicate that students are mainly driven by controlled motivation for their school-related reading; autonomous motivation was only expressed by a minority of students in Grade 6. What would make students read more are mainly text and instruction related factors such as more interesting texts and more time allocated to reading. Our results point to a great potential for more in-class reading across the curriculum, reading sessions that need to be regularly scheduled using carefully selected texts. In line with SDT, our findings highlight the importance of fulfilling students' need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy in order for them to develop more self-determined behaviour, such as leisure-time reading – which in turn will boost their reading self-concept. Highlights What is already known about this topic Students who practice reading more tend to become more competent readers and therefore develop a more positive relationship with reading and themselves as readers (reading self-concept). Autonomous motivation strongly predicts reading achievement, whereas controlled motivation negatively predicts reading outcomes. The amount of both leisure-time and school-related reading is decreasing in many parts of the western world, highlighting the need for schools to find new ways of engaging students in reading practices. What this paper adds Students want to be good readers and know that they need to read more to become good readers. In contrast to leisure-time reading, students' school-related reading practices are driven far more by controlled than autonomous motivation, especially by the time they reach secondary school. Students would read more if they were provided with more interesting texts, the possibility to choose, and if more class time were allocated to reading. Implications for theory, policy or practice Autonomy-supporting reading sessions need to be regularly and amply scheduled across the curriculum to ensure reading practices that can develop reader competence. Schools need to ensure that students have access to a variety of texts to choose from according to both personal interest and level of difficulty. Educators need to design reading practices that fulfil students' need for competence, relatedness, and autonomy in order for them to develop more self-determined behaviour and a more positive perception of themselves as readers.
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| 7. |
- Vinterek, Monika, 1956-, et al.
(author)
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Amount of Text Read at School and the Motivation for Reading : A Large Scale Study in Grade 6 and 9
- 2018
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In: European Conference on Educational Research, Bolzano, Italy, September 4-7, 2018. - Berlin.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This paper reports on some preliminary results from the project “To read or not to read: A study of reading practices in compulsory school” funded by the Swedish Research Council. The aim of the project is to develop knowledge of existing reading practices and to find out what kind of teaching that promotes such practices in a way that enables students to learn from reading. The decline in students’ reading literacy is something that concerns and worries many European and other Western countries. But surprisingly it is difficult to find large scale studies focusing on how much students read at school. To be a good reader one needs to practice (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Campell et al., 2001); it takes more than 5000 hours of reading to achieve a well-functioning reading capacity (Lundberg & Herrlin, 2005). To learn from text one needs to be able to read a longer text (Topping et al., 2007; Merisuo-Storm & Soininen, 2014). Prior research in the field further shows that it is important for students to read different types of texts (Kuhn & Stahl, 2003) and thus develop vocabulary and reading skills in many subjects (see, for example, Biemiller, 2001).The amount of reading, at school or at leisure, correlates positively with reading ability (Anderson et al., 1988; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1997; Taylor et al., 990). In our study we therefore are interested in the total amount of coherent and continuous text students read during an average school day in all their subjects, with a particular focus on reading habits in Swedish (L1), English (L2), Chemistry, and History. We also want to find out how the amount of reading correlates with the students’ self-assessed motivation for their school-initiated reading activities. In the first part of the project there is a predominantly quantitative focus in which we seek to find out the extent to which students read continuous prose texts – fictional as well as non-fictional – as part of their everyday school work, and how their reading is related to different types of motivation. The second part of the project has a predominantly qualitative focus where a limited number of groups will be selected for a series of closer classroom studies of teachers as well as students through observations, interviews and questionnaires in order to find out what characterizes the reading practices of these schools and classes. This paper will report on some preliminary results from the first part of the project where the following research questions are to be answered:To what extent do students in years 6 and 9 read continuous prose text—fiction as well as nonfiction— as part of their school work?What kind of motivation do students express for reading nonfiction and fiction texts in different school subjects?What is the nature of the relationship between students’ reading motivation and the extent of their reading in school?What differences in the interest of reading and in the reading habits among females and males, between school years 6 and 9, and between schools can be detected?
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Vinterek, Monika, 1956-, et al.
(author)
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The Decrease of School Related Reading in Swedish Compulsory School – Trends Between 2007 and 2017
- 2022
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In: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. - : Routledge. - 0031-3831 .- 1470-1170. ; 66:1, s. 119-133
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Even though the importance of extensive reading practice is well documented, as are students’ changing leisure-time reading habits, we still have little knowledge of how much students read at school. Therefore, this study investigates how many pages of continuous and coherent text, nonfiction as well as fiction, students in middle and lower secondary school read during an ordinary school day. Comparing data from two large-scale surveys, in 2007 and 2017, our analyses indicate that the proportion of students who read one full page or more has decreased significantly. There are still more students in middle school compared to lower secondary who read nonfiction, whereas the reading of fiction is now equally low. We conclude that the growing achievement gap among Swedish students on reading literacy tests is mirrored in the widening divide between students who still read extensively at school and those who do not read at all.
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