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- Westlund, Barbro, 1953-
(författare)
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Att bedöma elevers läsförståelse : En jämförelse mellan svenska och kanadensiska bedömningsdiskurser i grundskolans mellanår
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to describe and analyze what assessment discourses of reading comprehension are more prominent by comparing five Swedish and five Canadian teachers in the province of BC in Canada. Based on a teacher perspective on how to develop and assess reading comprehension, the investigation concentrates on teacher discourses and their alignment with other discourses of reading comprehension within the two school systems.The method used is mainly based on classroom observations and transcriptions of tape-recorded interviews. The ten teachers in grade 4 were interviewed for 30 minutes almost every day in the afternoon during a school week. The analysis of the teachers answers were made in three steps: within each singe interview, within the Swedish and the Canadian teacher group respectively, and between the two compared teacher groups. The theoretical perspectives used to analyze the data were Critical Discourse Analysis, theories of feedback, and socio-cognitive theory.The answers within each teacher group showed a homogeneous pattern, but the comparison between the two groups showed considerable differences. The results demonstrated that the Swedish teachers seemed to be more of “instruction givers” and “assessment controllers”, while the Canadian teachers seemed to be more of “comprehension instructors” and “ongoing assessment controllers”. The teacher discourses in both groups were aligned with other assessment discourses in their respective school systems. The Canadian teacher group used a much more elaborated meta-language when talking about reading comprehension assessment. In their way of referring to feedback they also focused on their own teaching in a way that was not found within the Swedish teacher group.
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| 2. |
- Elm Fristorp, Annika, 1958-
(författare)
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Design för lärande : barns meningsskapande i naturvetenskap
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study was to describe and analyse the design of learning environments and how children in preschool, preschool class and primary school create meaning and learn from the teaching aids offered to them in scientific activities planned by teachers.The theoretical reference frame was obtained from multimodal and design-oriented theory, with its focus on the creative dimensions of learning and detailed aspects of how learning takes place. The study is based on video-observations and constituted an in-depth study of a limited number of occasions spent in preschool, preschool classes and the first year of primary school when science lessons were in progress. Four children’s groups, thirty-six children and five teachers took part in the study, from different schools and municipalities. The children are aged between three and seven. The video-observations have been transcribed as text and analysed with analytical concepts found within the theoretical framework.The results show that considering the number of children in the children’s groups, relatively few children take part in the scientific learning contexts. Changes in the balance of power were evident in the learning settings and followed the interaction patterns that were identified in the children’s groups. The results also show that children create representations – both individually and corporately – in new or different ways that are made up of analogies expressed in terms of equivalent, existential, expressive and figurative analogies. The children’s verbal expressions that corresponded with the responses expected by the teachers were highly valued, were paid attention to and were recognised as know-how. This meant that many of the potential meanings that exist in children’s meaning-making in science become invisible. The results have educational implications for teachers’ work at the local level and for teacher training.
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| 3. |
- Tebano Ahlquist, Eva-Maria, 1955-
(författare)
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Skolans levda rum och lärandets villkor : Meningsskapande i montessoriskolans fysiska miljö
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines the school’s physical environment as a place of learning, and takes its starting point in the phenomenology movement, inspired both by Merleau-Ponty’s thesis of man’s physical relation to the world and by the existential analysis represented by Heidegger which implies a mutual relationship between man and the world.Such a view rejects a standpoint which describes man as being divided between a material body and a thinking soul. Instead, there emerges an embodied self which engages in meaningful interaction with its surroundings. The choice of this standpoint has implications for the design of the school’s physical environment. Montessori pedagogy is one of the activity-based pedagogies which have designed the physical environment in line with this theory. The purpose of the study is to understand, but further to visualise, the way in which the conditions for learning for children and adolescents are created in schools, from pre-school to lower secondary level, which follow the Montessori pedagogy. The material for the empirical study has been gathered from Europe and the US and from differing social contexts. The reason for this is to discover what distinguishes the prepared environment. The study also discusses the way in which the argument for a form of schooling which is based on activity, from the early 20th century to the present day, has been addressed through the architectural design of schools.The thesis shows that the rich array of didactic material in the schools observed offers pupils the opportunity to perform activities which create meaning. The organisation of the environment provides the pupils with the necessary conditions to concentrate fully on their work and to complete their tasks without interruption. I see the didactic continuity which prevails from pre-school to the lower secondary school in the Montessori schools studied as a prerequisite if the pedagogical activity is to offer meaning and create the conditions for learning in the way demonstrated by the empirical studies.
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| 4. |
- Wermke, Wieland, 1979-
(författare)
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Development and Autonomy : Conceptualising teachers’ continuing professional development in different national contexts
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates teachers’ perceptions of continuing professional development (CPD) in Germany and Sweden with a questionnaire study comprising a total of 711 mainly lower secondary teachers. Three conceptual terms are elaborated and explained. Teachers act in a CPD marketplace that is constituted by several sources of knowledge which offer opportunities for teachers’ development. How teachers act in the marketplace is a key part of their CPD culture. The study reveals similarities in the two cases regarding the importance of colleagues as well as informal development activities, but there are also significant differences. One the one hand, German teachers can be described as more active in their CPD than their Swedish colleagues in relation to particular aspects of their profession such as assessment, and more suspicious of knowledge from elsewhere, on the other.In order to understand the differences, I argue for an extended focus on the impact of the national context, in terms of socially and historically significant structures and traditions of the teaching profession. The thesis focuses on a crucial aspect with a particular explanatory value for differing CPD tendencies in various national contexts: Autonomy from a governance perspective. This phenomenon, which does indeed change across time and space, is investigated from a socio-historical perspective in both contexts, building on Margaret Archer’s analytic dualism of structure and agency, and a dual pronged model of teacher autonomy. The latter distinguishes institutional autonomy, regarding legal or status issues, from service autonomy related to the practical issues in schools and classrooms. Since these dimensions can be either extended or restricted, different categories evolve which enable us to understand the differences between the two cases.Finally, by using the findings on the German and Swedish teaching profession, a theoretical framework is presented that relates the certain forms of teacher autonomy in particular national contexts to likely CPD cultures that teachers share.
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