| 1. |
- Bourbour, Maryam, 1977-
(författare)
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Digital technologies in preschool education : The interplay between interactive whiteboards and teachers' teaching practices
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is aimed at exploring the ways in which a digital technology, the interactive whiteboard (IWB), interplays with preschool teachers’ teaching practices. In the literature and ongoing debates there are different claims about if and how digital technologies can contribute to children’s development and solving preschool educational challenges. The ways children learn from and by digital technologies have been widely studied, however, there is relatively little research on how digital technologies interplay with teachers’ teaching. Correspondingly, the approach taken here to the ways in which digital technologies contribute to early childhood education is based on preschool teachers’ practices and reasonings.In particular the focus is placed on the following research questions. How do preschool teachers reason about the embedding of IWB into their teaching practices? How do preschool teachers use IWB to structure their teaching practices? How do preschool teachers scaffold children’s learning processes in a context where IWB is used? How do IWBs mediate teaching actions? and What is privileged in the IWB-mediated teaching actions?To address these research questions, three sets of empirical data have been collected. These datasets, including interviews with preschool teachers and video observations of their teaching using IWB, were collected in 2012-2013 within the frame of the licentiate thesis and in late 2017 and early 2018 within the framework of the PhD thesis. Analytically, the study is built on a sociocultural perspective that assumes that learning is a constant social process.The findings of this study provide empirical knowledge regarding how preschool teachers reason about their use of IWB in teaching. The findings of the study, further, show that preschool teachers use diverse strategies to structure their teaching practice using the opportunities that IWB offers. The teachers’ use of IWBs exemplifies the ways they take into account the available technological features to support children’s learning within their ZPD.In its identification of scaffolding actions, this study provides rich details about how preschool teachers use a particular digital technology, IWB, in their teaching to support children’s learning and development. Scaffolding is seen as a collaborative process where preschool teachers’ active participation and emotional support plays an important role in fulfilling the given practices, and leads children’s learning to a higher level. By exploring how teachers’ teaching actions are meditated by the mediational aspects of IWB and what is privileged in the IWB-mediated teaching actions, the current study, moreover, contributes to mapping the desirable or undesirable consequences of using digital technologies in early childhood education. It also exemplifies how the use of IWB interplays with preschoolt eachers’ teaching practices.The new dimensions to scaffolding theory constructed in this thesis, further, contribute to expanding of Wood et al. (1976) theory. This can have significance for other studies using digital technologies in educational settings and can contribute to early childhood education, since early interventions, such as the ways preschool teachers support children, are particularly crucial for a child’s learning and their development later on in life.
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| 2. |
- Hachem, Hany, PhD Candidate, 1987-
(författare)
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Educating older adults : Theoretical and empirical examinations of the learning philosophies in older age
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, I theoretically and empirically examine the dominant learning philosophies in older age. Three statements of principles of educational gerontology coalesce into two notorious learning philosophies in older age: humanist and critical. They formulate answers to vital questions about the education of older people. Written in 1990 from a political economy perspective that heavily draws on Freirean pedagogy, the first statement provides a moral and philosophical backing for the practices and aims of a (then) flourishing field by examining the marginalisation of older people in societies. In the same year, the second statement responds to the first with a humanist individualist perspective on the education of older people. It provides a different view on why they choose to learn, the goals for their education, and the role of teachers in enacting said educational goals. Two decades later, the third statement is born. This time, it invigorated a critical but culturalist-leaning perspective. It engages with the focal points in the previous statements and remains loyal to Freirean ideals in the face of an increasingly individualistic and globalised world. Over time, the three statements of principles fuelled a polarising debate around central questions in the education of older people.In this methodologically rich thesis composed of four articles, I recommend and draft a fourth and late modern statement of the principles of educational gerontology, which overcomes agency/structure dualisms characterising the debate surrounding the current principles. First, this thesis confirms that leisure and liberal arts education empowers older people. Second, it attributes to the motives for learning in older age a reflexive ontological security nature that may go hand in hand with that of non-conscious class struggles. Third, it challenges the logic of emancipation embedded in critical educational gerontology and refutes the assumption that older learners are naïve. Finally, it envisages the teachers’ role as emancipators from a less coercive departure point.
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| 3. |
- Isenström, Lisa, 1972-
(författare)
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Att utbilda rättighetsbärare : Med läraren i fokus när undervisning för mänskliga rättigheter i skolans yngre åldrar studeras
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Teaching children about human rights is an important step towards strengthening human rights internationally and schools are considered primary sites for children to develop human rights understandings, attitudes and behaviours. This dissertation explores the teachers’ role in educating children about their human rights. Focusing on the everyday school life of young children, a holistic approach to rights-learning is applied that includes not only learning about human rights but also developing rights-conscious values, attitudes and behaviours. Also included in the concept rights-learning is the formation of a self-conception as a rights-holder. Against this background the aim of this dissertation is to clarify the impact of teachers’ actions on the construction of young children’s rights-learning, and their self-conceptions as rights-holders.Theoretically, the dissertation combines: (i) rights theorisation; (ii) theorisation of differing discourses of children and childhood; and (iii) Foucauldian governmentality. From these, analytical concepts of rights-learning situations, teachers’ rights-teaching mentalities and privileged rightssubject positions are constructed. The data used in the study derives from classroom observations and interviews with teachers, as well as drawing on previous research.The findings highlight that in everyday school practice the teachers’ rights-teaching mentalities will privilege different rights-subject positions for the children and thereby construct children’s rights-learning in different ways. With a holistic approach to rights-learning, as something that occurs in various interactions and situations in everyday school life, the findings presented in this dissertation can provide new perspectives and enrich discussions on teaching and learning children’s human rights.
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| 4. |
- Schoultz, Magnus, 1989-
(författare)
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Seniorers lärande : Intrinsikala värden som hälsoresurs
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis focuses on older adults’ participation in non-formal education where learning does not lead to qualifications for a vocational career. In recent decades learning has been discussed in relation to older adults, where concepts like lifelong learning have been put forward as instruments for facing challenges such as demographic changes and ageing. Research demonstrates that intrinsic aspects of learning, such as the joy of learning, are important for older adults’ participation in education. However, research seldom considers intrinsic values of education as a point of departure. Against this background, the aim of the thesis is to develop a deeper understanding of older adults’ experiences of intrinsic values in organised educational activities and their significance for older adults’ health.The thesis consists of three articles. One article is a review focusing on how the research field has explained the relation between learning and health for older adults. The other two articles focus specifically on the educational practice. One of the articles explores older adults’ experiences of intrinsic values, while the other looks at the teachers’ didactical principles for organising education for older adults. To fulfil the purpose of the thesis and facilitate an in-depth understanding, a synthesis is created based on the three articles, didactic theory, John Dewey’s theory of values and his conceptualisation of experience and Aron Antonovsky’s salutogenic perspective on health. By synthesising the results from the articles and the theories new theoretical explanations emerge as to how older adults’ learning can contribute to their health. With support from the concepts intrinsic values, interaction, continuity, health resources and sense of coherence, the synthesis emphasises that older adults’ experiences of intrinsic values in education can be understood as health resources that contribute to their sense of coherence.
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| 5. |
- Thuresson, Hanna, 1972-
(författare)
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Yngre barns meningsskapande om läsande och skrivande i förskolans literacypraktik
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines the youngest (one- to -three-year-old) preschool children's literacy meaning making practices in preschool. Preschool is the first formal educational setting that children attend, and preschool teachers' actions, teaching, and choice of materials and places for reading and writing activities affect the ways in which children make meaning of literacy. The research focuses on preschool as a specific educational and cultural context and on children’s interaction with their peers and the literacy tools used. The aim of the study is to contribute to the understanding of preschool as an educational as well as a cultural practice for young children by studying how they make meaning of literacy.The theoretical framework for this study is based on a social approach to literacy, drawing from Multimodality and New Literacy Studies. Observations of literacy practices were documented by camera and fieldnotes. The observations took place in four different preschool settings and focused on one- to three-year-old children’s actions.The study identifies eight different meaning making methods in children’s use of different social, material, and bodily resources. These different meaning making methods that children use lead to the conclusion that the norms of literacy in the literacy practices clearly shape children’s literacy meaning making. Despite the children’s relatively minimal experiences of literacy in educational settings they already make meaning of how, where, and with what material literacy is enacted. An important finding for educational settings, therefore, is that literacy is not only a skill, but also a way of learning how to handle objects in different places and to move your body in the setting. Second, children’s meaning making of literacy also contains aspects of breaking with the norms that surround meaning making of literacy. Children challenge and question the literacy habits entailed in educational literacy practices.
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| 6. |
- Vikström, Emma, 1987-
(författare)
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Skapandet av den nya människan : Eugenik och pedagogik i Ellen Keys författarskap
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish author and educator Ellen Key (1849–1926) became one of the most prominent writers on educational matters in Europe at the turn of the 20th century following the publication of The Century of the Child in 1900. It is less widely known, however, that the pioneer of progressive education and children’s rights also advocated the improvement of humanity through eugenics, and publicly endorsed the foundation of the Swedish Institute for Racial Biology in 1921. In previous research, Key’s stance on eugenics has been explained by her evolutionist worldview, influenced by her reading of scientists and philosophers such as Francis Galton (1822–1911) and Herbert Spencer (1820–1903). But can her support for eugenics solely be reduced to the influence of these and other authors? And what role did eugenics play in her educational thinking?These issues are addressed in this thesis, which aims to show how Key strived to create a new kind of human being by consolidating eugenics and education in her work. The analysis identifies several dichotomies that were vital to Key’s knowledge production on eugenics and education: evolution/degeneration; nature/nurture; body/soul; sense/sensibility; and individual/society. These concepts form the thematic structure of the thesis and point to a central finding; namely, that Key’s desire to dissolve such dichotomous thinking is a crucial component in understanding how she combined eugenics and education, as two means to the end of creating a new kind of human. The analysis also demonstrates that Key did not merely adopt the knowledge of others but developed her own ideas on eugenics that even induced two British eugenicists to consider the importance of love in human betterment. Finally, this study illustrates how eugenics was integrated into Key’s pedagogy as part of her educational aim, proposed learning content and ideas about socialisation. In conclusion, the thesis contributes to a discussion of the aim of the educational endeavour to create a better human and the use of pioneers in educational sciences today.
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| 7. |
- Hort, Sofia, 1984-
(författare)
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Skrivprocesser på högskolan : Text, plats och materialitet i uppsatsskrivandet
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to explore how students in a higher education context handle the writing of their final essay. Applying a sociomaterial approach, the study offers comprehensive case studies of students’ writing processes. The thesis attempts to show how student writers handle writing challenges through different technologies and at different places. It does so by implementing the Mobile Technologies Process Logs (MTPL)-method, wherein participating students take an active role to create and gather data on their own writing processes.The results show that some students’ textual work could be described in terms of being comprehensive, and hence handled through varied writing technologies at various writing places. These students write a lot of texts to move the writing process forward. Other writers take a more product-oriented view in their writing, and hence write through fewer technologies, at a few places, and with a wish to finish their final text product directly. Many of the students make explicit how they process the literature through writing texts. The knowledge production, the analysis, which is central to academic writing, seems however more implicit and difficult for the students to handle, specifically if having a product oriented view on writing. The results also show how students mobilize different textual actions to meet challenges that writing an (digital) essay implies. This work is clearly emplaced ,at diverse or at more homogenous writing places.It is significant to make textual strategies as well as the functions of writing technologies and place visible to all students. It seems vital at times where higher education, as well as the students entering this institution, are put in front of a raft of (new) challenges. At the same time as the idea of the bad student writer is prevailing, higher education institutions seem not to teach how an academic writing process could be managed in successful ways. This thesis contributes to this field of inquiry with results on how students’ writing processes can be characterized.
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