| 1. |
- Strömberg Jämsvi, Susanne
(författare)
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Unpacking dominant discourses in higher education language policy : A critical study of language policy in Swedish higher education
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall purpose of the thesis is to investigate dominant discourses operating in the changing of HE concerning questions of language policy. It has been studied at a national level, analysing reports and government bills, and at an institutional level, analysing university language policy, taking Sweden as an example. The research questions address language ideals and language competences. The analyses reveal that discourse strands of economy/market, inclusion and success operate, often entangled with each other in discursive knots, in construing what and how languages are valued, and what kind of language competences academics and students need. An overall finding suggests that economic reasons and market values have become more and more salient in construing ‘language’, concurrently defining participation and prosperity. The findings show that it is primarily Swedish and English, i.e. as parallel languages, that are construed as language ideals. Swedish, as the national language, is constructed as essential for protective and democratic reasons. Academics are construed as protectors of Swedish scientific terminology and as facilitators of Swedish scientific learning. English, as the international language, is at present constructed as essential, or inevitable, for the interests of a liberalised research and educational market. However, the findings suggest a transformation from the 1970s when English was construed as important for reasons of solidarity and worldwide responsibility. English as an obvious and natural foreign language in Sweden is construed for professional, rational and participatory reasons. Multilingualism, beyond Swedish-English bilingualism, is not valued in HE in the 2000s, nor are minority languages or immigrant languages acknowledged in relation to HE. Instead of recognising the potential linguistic repertoire of multilingual students and academics, the findings indicate that perspectives of deficiency prevail. Transnational students and academics are construed as English proficient, and only as English proficient. English-language students are construed as important for universities. Market values and market forces incorporate success for students, but also for universities through these students. The constructs of language ideals and competences in language policy of Swedish universities are interdiscursively connected to the national level. A parallel Swedish-English language ideal construes Swedish as principle and English as more relevant as educational levels get higher. Ideas of linguistic progress for students and of subject-lecturers as language teachers are prevalent. The Swedish language ideal is to a large extent construed in relation to the plain language movement. Commodifying processes operate in the construals of language by externalising language from people, construing it as an added value, an instrument or a technical matter. Finally, the educational implications of the findings are discussed in relation to academic work.
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| 2. |
- Abraham, Getahun Yacob
(författare)
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Education for Democracy? : Life Orientation: Lessons on Leadeship Qualities and Voting in South African Comprehensive Schools
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study takes as its starting point how teachers understand, interpret and teach social development aspects of Life Orientation in South African comprehensive schools. The specific focus is on lessons on leadership qualities and voting for third grade learners in four schools, each dominated by either Black, Coloured, White or mixed groups of learners. Field work with an ethnographic approach and a qualitative strategy was used to gain access to empirical data. Policy and curriculum documents, guidelines and textbooks were used. Classroom observations in four classes and interviews with 14 third grade teachers were conducted. Theoretical concepts of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction are applied. Ulf P Lundgren’s Frame Factor Theory is used to study school organization. Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogical Devices are considered when examining the different levels of pedagogical activities. To be a teacher in South Africa one needs to attend at least two years of teacher education after completing high school. Teachers in the classes studied underwent their teacher education during apartheid years. Due to limited in-service training, they sometimes experience problems of understanding and interpreting the learning area, which they usually tackle by consulting documents, colleagues or school authorities. The learners’ understanding varied based on their family background and type of school they attended. There were enormous differences in material, financial and organisational resources between classes and schools. The resources for teaching leadership qualities and voting were not, however, different between the classes. The lessons were teacher dominated and direct transmission was used as a method. The way teachers facilitated the lesson on leadership qualities and voting varied but all showed some democratic shortcomings. Apart from answering questions, learners were neither invited nor encouraged to participate to further their understanding of the theme. Limited aspects of leadership qualities were discussed, individual leaders’ roles were emphasised and the teachers picked candidates for class leaders in three of the classes. It was also evident that the class environments were not suitable for critical or creative thinking and democratic upbringing. The schools reproduced norms, values, languages and cultures of the different groups. Officially, teachers emphasised the common national South African identity. This emphasis on national identity could disguise the injustice some groups experience in society.
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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- Eklöf, Anders, 1956-
(författare)
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Project work, independence and critical thinking
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis studies how students do projects in a Swedish upper secondaryschool. The students have to produce products and at the same time provethem self as independent in relation to the teachers, and negotiate therequirements of the project setting and the written instructions within thegroup. The study focuses on what comes out as problematic for the students,how they solve these dilemma situations and what resources are used in orderto do so.A choice was made only to analyse student group interaction in parts ofthe project process where the teachers were not physically present thus fillinga research gap.The empirical material was collected during three years in sex secondaryschool classes through filmed sessions of groups or pairs working with theirproject.Each of the four articles primarily focuses a special dilemma; structure,independence, instructions and critical thinking. By combining Goffman’sframe analysis with the concepts of risk and uncertainty from a Risk – societyperspective, issues related to what it means to do project work asindependent, critical 21st-century learner are illustrated and discussed.The choice to look only at situations in which students have to managewithout the aid of a physically present teacher illuminates several practicalconsequences like an unwillingness to go to the teacher and ask questions andan increased concentration on and interpretation of the written instructions. Adevelopment of Miller and Parlett’s (1974) discussion of student approach tocues are suggested. The concept of the cue choosing student are constructedin order to better respond to demands from an individualised interactionsociety. The study also emphasises how the students have to balance differentframeworks in order to be both authors and assessed students. Byimplementing a risk society perspective new ways of analysing andunderstanding independence and classroom interaction is suggested and arecontextualization of critical thinking proposed.
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| 5. |
- Göthberg, Martin, PhD, 1959-
(författare)
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Interacting : Coordinating text understanding in a student theatre production
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present dissertation explores student actors’ and their teachers’ coordination of text understanding in a theatre production – a two-semester process from page to stage in an upper secondary school in Sweden. With an interest in the collaborative work achieved in and through theatre education the research is realized against a background of the role of arts education and reading of literary texts in the neoliberal educational landscape that favors measurable effects of individual achievements. The overarching aim is to explore how text understanding evolves collaboratively as the participants transform drama text into stage text. This aim is pursued by investigating moment-to-moment contingency of unfolding social interaction in theatre activities grounded in a particular drama text. Analytically, such a focus is pursued by employing sociocultural and dialogical approaches to meaning making, creativity and learning. Data has been generated from ethnographic observation and video- and audio recordings of the participants’ staging of Molière’s The Affected Ladies, including the process from the first reading to the last performance. The unit of analysis applied to the data is tool-mediated activities, encompassing the participants, their interactions and the tools used. Three studies are reported through two articles and a licentiate thesis. The studies complement each other as the analytical work moved from ethnographic orientation into finer-grained scrutiny of talk- and action-in-interaction. The research design allows investigation of the micro-genesis of specific text understanding in relation to the overall transformation of a literary text into stage text, in which complexity of text understanding in artistic practice can be demonstrated. The results illustrate the situated, interactional ways in which the participants progressed from a position as newcomers to the drama text into a position of mastering the stage text. The findings show that anchoring text understanding in experiences in the material world developed the student’s perspectives on the text and expanded their action possibilities. They also show that students’ informal and playful role-playing provided the spaces necessary for appropriation of cultural and social interactional means that the students later re-used in rehearsal of scripted dialogue and in the stage text. One of the productive features was the dynamic, laminated interaction, including hybrid role-taking, in which substantial student agency surfaced. Such interaction supported collaborative realizations of meaning potentials in the situated habituation of characters’ manners. Stretched-out over the production period, the micro transitions of text understanding formed salient examples of emergent learning across formal and informal situations. There seems to be good arguments for doing more things with literary texts than ‘just’ reading them, in order to explore their inherent dynamics as layers of cultural meaning. To reduce learning arrangements to what seems efficient to reach measurable goals for the individual appears ill-judged considering the educational potentials of collaborative, creative, explorative and transgressive forms of learning illustrated in the present research.
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| 6. |
- Jonasson, Kalle, 1976-
(författare)
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Sport Has Never Been Modern
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sport has often been understood as a set of formalised physical contests, and moreover as something inherently modern. New conceptions of the term implicates that sport ought to comprise all physical activity. However, the studies and approaches that describe the range and tension between those positions are lacking. The thesis addresses this lacuna and suggests that the aforementioned conceptions could be inquired as the narrow (physical contest) and the broad (physical activity) understanding of sport. The work presented in this thesis sets out to outline a theoretical and methodological framework that could comprise the different conceptions of sport. This framework is laid out with inspiration from Bruno Latour’s symmetrical anthropology. The empirical material was collected from an array of sources with a broad range of ethnographical methods. Four sporting practices (break time football, parkour, eSport, and company table tennis) that embody the tension between the broad and the narrow are inquired into in the articles. The comprehensive framework that the thesis seeks to outline takes form in shape of the different concepts (“dromography,” “minor sport,” and “the art of tracing”) constructed within the articles. It is concluded that the broad understanding of sport threatens to hollow the term. However, the narrow understanding of sport tends to downplay the material dimension of modernity. It is argued that the connection between the material and the social dimension of sport, with regards to categories such as age and gender, mustn’t be neglected in the study of sport. Furthermore, it is argued that the competitive element of modern sport is related to modern science in an unexpected way that adds new understanding to the ontology of modernity in general.
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| 7. |
- Reis, Maria
(författare)
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Att ordna, från ordning till ordning. Yngre förskolebarns matematiserande
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A starting point for this study was an interest based in my earlier experience that most of the youngest children’s mathematizing in everyday life was unspoken and unknown. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the knowledge about how toddlers mathematize and develop mathematical knowledge and understanding through activities with concrete material. The theoretical framework is based on variation theory (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton et al., 2004), combined with ideas offered by Gibson and Gibson (1955), Gibson et al. (1962) and Gibson and Pick (2000). This framework makes it possible to describe subtle differences in how children handle a mathematical content. It holds a non-dualistic ontological position, and sees phenomena from a second order perspective, focusing on ”children’s perspectives” and the object of learning. The collected data consists of 47½ hours of video documentation of 16 toddlers’ everyday activities and arranged situations in a longitudinal study. Situations chosen for analysis is a sub-sample from a larger corpus. “Fine-grained analysis” is performed of four toddlers’ activities with nesting cups and a ring tower and their verbal and non-verbal interaction. The design of the arranged situations was that a new material was introduced, a material similar to one well known to the children. The toddlers themselves chose the material (self chosen activities) and for how long time they wanted to use it. The materials consisted of rings and cups that could be ordered according to their size and slope in series or in a tower. The results show a variety of different ways that the toddler may handle the situation. From the analysis the following categories have been identified: Building a tower without apparent order, Making an order, Bringing and maintain size order, Challenging order, Creating new order to challenge peers’ knowledge. Based on previous knowledge the child distinguished by differentiation some dimensions of variation, particularly orientation, tower property and size, and values within these dimensions of variation. The results show that toddlers discern and open one dimension of variation at a time. The first dimension of variation the children identify and open is the orientation of the cups and rings. Then what tower a cup belongs to and later the size dimension are discerned by the toddler. Finally the toddler discerns that all cups and rings have a certain place in the order, and that all rings and cups are important for the ordering. A conclusion to be drawn is that a previous value within a dimension of variation is later identified as a new value or another dimension of variation. The interest of this research was to study toddler mathematizing “in situ” and focus on how children’s mathematical development is interactively constructed “here and now”. Toddlers’ activity of this kind is a crucial preparation for fundamental arithmetics such as properties of number and basic operations. Structuring and ordering in series are important in relation to sense-making in early mathematizing.
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| 8. |
- Sjöberg, Lena
(författare)
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Bäst i klassen? : Lärare och elever i svenska och europeiska policytexter
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure in the recent criticism directed to the Swedish school system and its schools, teachers and pupils, but especially the epidemic of policies produced in order to develop and improve Swedish schools, in particular after the change of government in 2006. The general aim of this thesis is to study how teachers and pupils are represented, and thus constructed, regulated and positioned in a number of current key policy texts. The study also involves a discussion of the construction and regulation practices regarding the school, and its role in society. The main context for the study is policy texts and policy practices related to teacher education. Four studies form the cornerstone of the thesis. Through these policy texts different institutional practices are analyzed. These range from European union policy to examination data from a local teacher education institution in Sweden. A main source of inspiration to the theoretical framework of the study has been provided by the work of Michel Foucault. However, in addition to Foucault's constructionist and poststructural basis, theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, Mark Olssen's social-materialist analysis of policy and Stephen J Ball's policy sociology are also included. The first study examines the constructions and governing technologies in four policy texts within the European Union working programme 'Education 2010'. The second study takes a historical perspective in the construction of teachers and pupils, based on teacher education policy text since 1948, and how the ideal teacher, pupil and school are constructed and positioned genealogically. The third study explores the discursive notions of teacher professionalism and how the regulation of teachers operates through this and other discursive practices by the Swedish government and the Teacher union (Lärarförbundet) during two different time periods, 1995-2000 and 2007-2008. The final study examines student teachers' examination assignments, as a local policy practice, and how the student teachers position the ideal pupil and themselves as ideal teachers. It examines how different policy discourses operate in relation to positioning practices. The thesis shows that current neoliberal discourse order in educational policy today is partly challenged by neoconservative rationalities. Secondly, the thesis shows how each teacher and pupil is governed through several discourses, governing technologies and governing techniques, and how these three entities function relationally in the governing of the subject. In common for discourses, governing technologies and techniques are that they are often very 'seductively packaged', which implies that it is almost impossible to resist and oppose them. Finally I claim that the current discourse order, and its discourses, and governing technologies and techniques imply structural inequalities for teachers, but especially between different pupil groups
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| 9. |
- Zimmerman, Fredrik
(författare)
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Det tillåtande och det begränsande. En studie om pojkars syn på studier och ungdomars normer kring maskulinitet
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Att pojkar generellt presterar sämre än flickor i skolan har ofta hävdats ha en relation till normer kring maskulinitet. Normer kring maskulinitetens negativa inverkan på studievanor har observerats på skolor med en dominerande ”antipluggkultur” eller en dominerande ”ingen ansträngningskultur” bland pojkarna. Vidare har det på dessa skolor uppmärksammats att denna typ av normer även har en negativ inverkan på flickors möjligheter att prestera i skolan. Denna avhandling har sitt fokus på frågan om pojkars syn på studier har en relation med normer kring maskulinitet, samt om förmågan att studera är könad. Dessa frågor har undersökts utifrån en etnografisk ansats på en högstadieskola. Den valda skolan skiljer sig mot skolor med en dominerande ”antipluggkultur” eller en dominerande ”ingen ansträngningskultur”, då en ”pluggkultur” istället dominerar bland pojkarna. Inom denna ”pluggkultur” reproduceras normer som är mer tillåtande vad gäller flickors och pojkars studerande. Att pojkarna anser att man ska studera ambitiöst medför att handlingen ”studera ambitiöst” inte ses som feminin och därför behöver inte pojkarna iscensätta sin maskulinitet genom att ta avstånd från studier, något som är fallet inom exempelvis en ”antipluggkultur”. Dock visar studien att ”pluggkulturen” till trots, reproduceras samtidigt parallella och motsägelsefulla normer som könar förmågan att studera, det vill säga normer som begränsar pojkars möjlighet att studera ambitiöst.
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| 10. |
- Magnusson, Maria, 1960-
(författare)
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Skylta med kunskap : en studie av hur barn urskiljer grafiska symboler i hem och förskola.
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The topic of this study is to generate knowledge about children’s understandingof graphical symbols. These forms of knowledge are prevalent in contemporarysocieties, for example, in the form of letters, numbers, road signs, maps, andcomputer icons. More specifically, in this thesis is scrutinized in detail howchildren develop symbolic skills and how this can be supported througheducational activities. The theoretical basis of the study is variation theory(Marton & Tsui, 2004). This theory conceptualizes learning in terms ofdifferentiation and integration. Two empirical studies are reported. The first isabout two children, Olle and Lasse, who both are in the age span four to fiveyears. How these children handle graphical symbols in the form of producingsigns that they put up in their homes are followed over time. Hence, thechildren’s own make and use of symbols in their everyday life are studied. In thesecond empirical study, the findings from the first study and theoretical insightfrom variation theory are orchestrated in a preschool center with two teachersand twelve children, to see if these principles can be functional in supportingchildren’s development of symbolic understanding. Both studies are based onvideo data. The findings are that a particular pattern of variation entitled,‘contrast’ is functional in developing such insight, while another pattern ofvariation entitled, ‘induction’ is not. In addition, meta-communication is arguedto be important not only for the researcher to gain access to the child’sunderstanding but also to the child’s development as such. The theoreticaldistinction made by Vygotsky between ‘pseudo concepts’ and ‘concepts (proper)’is used to discuss the findings.
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| 11. |
- Henry, Alastair, 1963-
(författare)
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L3 Motivation
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis was to study secondary school students' motivation to learn a second foreign language in addition to English. In addition to the empirical investigation of L3 motivation over a program of study and the testing of the widely-held assumption that L2 English impacts negatively on L3 motivation, the aim was also to contribute to the conceptual development of self-based motivation theory by examining the evolution and development of language-speaking/using selves, and by addressing the issue of interference between different self-guides. In Studies I and II the L3 motivational trajectories of two samples of secondary school students (n=532, n=169) were mapped across grades 4 – 6 (Study I) and grades 6 – 9 (Study II), with a particular focus on differences in the trajectories of girls' and boys' ideal language-speaking/using selves. The results of Studies I and II revealed a pattern where initial gender differences, although remaining stable after a year of learning, thereafter follow different developmental paths. While boys' ideal L3 selves declined by the end of grade 9, girls' ideal L3 selves became stronger. Although a similar pattern was found for L2 English selves, the gender gap here was not as marked. In Study III the hypothesis that, as a result of negative cross-referencing between ideal L2 and ideal L3 selves, L2 English would have a negative effect on L3 motivation was tested in a sample of 9th grade students (n= 101). Analysis of the data indicates that students are aware of the ideal L2 English self in L3 learning situations and support was found for the hypothesised negative effect on L3 motivation, with the impact being stronger among boys. In Study IV the hypothesised processes of negative cross-referencing were examined in a series of in-depth interviews with four participants selected using a maximum variation sampling strategy. Analysis of the data revealed that when cross-referencing takes place, some students seem to invoke counteracting resources. In the discussion of the findings it is suggested that, rather than interference, competition may provide a conceptually more coherent descriptor of the processes of cognition that take place in the working self-concept when more than one possible language self is active. The implications of the findings for theoretical development are discussed in relation to both qualitative applications of the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2005), and the proposed ID component in the Dynamic Model of Multilingualism (Herdina & Jessner, 2002). Finally, the educational implications of the findings are discussed and a series of proposals for classroom interventions are put forward
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| 12. |
- Alatalo, Tarja, 1961
(författare)
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Skicklig läs- och skrivundervisning i åk 1-3: Om lärares möjligheter och hinder
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study focuses on teachers’ opportunities and obstacles to perform skillful reading and writing instruction. It’s about the ability to accurately identify where students are in their reading and writing process and to help them develop good reading skills. It is also about the ability to recognize signs of difficulties that students may have in their written language development and to know what efforts are needed to help them advance their reading and writing skills. The research is based on teachers’ own statements and survey responses on the external conditions for teaching and on their approach, attitudes and knowledge in reading and writing. The empirical material consists of interviews, surveys and test data. The interview study was conducted with eight teachers. The questionnaire was answered by 249 teachers, while the knowledge test was conducted of 269 teachers and 31 special education teachers. Many of the teachers in this study have lack knowledge in the structure of language and common Swedish spelling rules. Furthermore, it appears that a large part of them are unaccustomed to explaining, in detail, students’ reading development and find it difficult to systematically describe the aspects of daily literacy instruction. The overall picture is that many teachers teach without having tools to reflect on how their education really affects students’ reading and writing. These shortcomings make it difficult to conduct effective literacy instruction. Once students have learned to decode or if they have reading difficulties, many teachers seem to one-sidedly focus on getting students to read more. The consequence could be that those who would need to practice more on the technical basic of reading or comprehension strategies are left without support. Lack of variety and individuality in fluency and comprehension training can challenge the students’ reading and writing development. The teachers in the study, who have the old junior school teacher and elementary teacher education, have the highest amount of knowledge of reading and writing (the test). Good education can provide student teachers with professional skills that they may develop further in their careers. Knowledge of the meaning of phonological and phonemic awareness as well as knowledge of how to count phonemes seem to be important for knowledge of reading and writing (the test). Knowledge of basic reading processes can be obtained by systematic and structured work with students’ linguistic development, and through continuous dialogues with experienced colleagues on how and why questions. This is one important way to work also in teacher training. When essential professional skills are established in the teacher education, in practice students will obtain the school’s learning goals.
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| 13. |
- Baldwin, Richard
(författare)
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Changing practice by reform : the recontextualisation of the Bologna process in teacher education
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the thesis is to investigate a specific case of curriculum change; that of organizing teacher training courses around learner outcomes in line with the Bologna process. The investigation is an example of a practitioner research case study and looks at how official Bologna policy messages are re-interpreted and recontextualised at the local micro level. A variety of methods are used to collect and analyse the data produced. A form of discourse analysis, as well as a survey of research literature, is used to identify policy discourses connected with the Bologna process. At the local micro level, local documentation as well as teacher talk in planning meetings are analysed to throw light on how the Bologna process was implemented. A number of discourses were found in policy documents; including the need to modernize higher education and to move towards a more student centred approach to learning. The thesis shows that these discourses were mediated locally by a regulative discourse portraying teachers as role models who have the task of passing on knowledge that is essential for the students to obtain before entering the profession. Instead of challenging the pedagogic identities for teachers and students, the introduction of learning outcomes acted to strengthen the fundamental vertical relations between teachers and students, cementing and confirming the level of control that teachers had over all aspects of the curriculum. Changes made in connection with the introduction of learning outcomes had a minimal influence on practice and were contested by some teacher educators. Teacher educators resisted and mediated the changes made by continuing to use their traditional practices.
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| 14. |
- Bergnell, Anneli
(författare)
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Med kroppen som illustration : Hur förskolebarn prat-skapar naturvetenskap med hjälp av multimodala och kroppsförankrade förklaringar
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to combine three research areas, namely preschool, science and illustrations, in order to examine (a) how modes are combined when references to the body are made or the body as such are used to explain scientific concepts and phenomena in preschool science education, and (b) how do the children handle, explore, discuss and talk science when approaching multimodally illustrated scientific contents in the studied activities. Four studies were conducted, all of which were built on empirically generated questions and were theoretically grounded in cultural-historical and multimodal perspectives. Participants were preschool students, aged 4-6 years, from three preschool groups, as well as their teachers and two science centre guides. Specific focus was directed toward activities where adults and children use their bodies or refer to their bodies to illustrate scientific concepts, for example, “the water circle” in a board-and-dice-game (study I); “water has the power to lift,” in experiments relating to a life-jacket (study II); stability in a drama-play and related experiments (study III); and evaporation in embodied illustrations and hands-on activities (study IV). The empirical material consisted mainly of video recordings. A multimodal approach was adopted for the analyses.The results indicate that multimodal illustrations may be complicated for this target group. Difficulties were found to intensify, rather than decrease, by the fact that different modes and elements were often intricately combined in the same illustration, presumably with the intention of providing instruction as well as entertainment. From the four studies, it became evident that, even if the current natural science offered in preschool education often is conducted as “discovery learning”, the assumption that children can learn complex content without support cannot be left unquestioned. This thesis illustrates the crucial role played by a guiding teacher when it comes to concretizing abstract scientific phenomena for young children. A conscious introduction of bodily-based elements in multimodal illustrations may be useful on such occasions. However, even with such seemingly transparent components included, we cannot take adequate meaning-making for granted.
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| 15. |
- 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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| 16. |
- Bredmar, Anna-Carin, 1966-
(författare)
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Lärares arbetsglädje : Betydelsen av emotionell närvaro i det pedagogiska arbetet
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis aims to explore teachers’ ‘work enjoyment’ and thereby deepening our understanding of teachers’ work and professionality. Positive emotions in teachers’ work are an underestimated and under-researched dimension of teacher practise and professionality. Through interviews that have generated the empirical material, the work enjoyment of nineteen teachers is focused on and analyzed from a phenomenological lifeworld approach. The results are presented in two parts; the first one consists of descriptions of teachers’ work enjoyment that reveal seven themes of meanings that signify joy in teachers’ work. The themes include Supporting meanings, which are mood, power source and presence awareness, as well as Widening meanings, which are context and connectedness, rhythm and balance, opening and after heat. In the second part of the result the meanings of the phenomenon are interpreted further and conclusions are drawn. The conclusions highlight the importance of the relation between lived experiences and teachers’ work enjoyment. These themes are To be present, To feel a rhythm, To be “occupied” by work, To be both personal and professional and Teachers’ work as a tapestry of life. Enjoyment of work is fundamental; i.e. like a safe floor to stand on. The experience of joy also means opening and involves an expectant foreshadowing. Based on a safe floor, teachers can open up to different options of how to be or to act. Joy as opening extends across time and space through the longing and hope that it is connected to. In times of struggle, joy enables teachers to find their way back to what is meaningful in their work. Teachers’ work enjoyment is related to the involvement in children’s development and learning. The result shows how work enjoyment provides emotional presence in teachers’ work, both letting oneself be involved by work and involving oneself in the work. Emotional responsiveness is enjoyment of work; it makes the teachers relate to their work with openness and insight. Such responsiveness contributes with sensitivity to the whole classroom situation and towards what is essential in their work, and shows how the emotional and the rational are intertwined. This study provides an understanding of the meanings of teachers’ work enjoyment and what lived experiences of joy can imply for ordinary schoolwork. Given the results of this study it is problematic that positive emotional dimensions of teachers’ work are a relatively unexplored area. The study indicates that work enjoyment is of fundamental importance to teachers’ work.
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| 17. |
- Carlsson, David
(författare)
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Vad är religionslärarkunskap? : En diskursanalys av trepartssamtal i lärarutbildningen
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- From an overall perspective, the aim of this thesis is to investigate teachers’ knowledge in relation to Swedish teacher education and to the school subject religious education (RE), by exploring constructions of essential knowledge for an RE teacher. Two research questions are in focus: What RE teacher knowledge is discursively constructed in teacher education supervision trialogue and in interviews with student teachers, teacher educators from school and teacher educators from university? How are those discourses constructed in supervision trialogue between student teachers, teacher educators from school and teacher educators from university? The results are based on empirical material consisting of six observations of teacher education supervision trialogues (three-way conferences) in RE and interviews with RE student teachers, RE teacher educators from upper secondary school and RE teacher educators from university, both before and after each trialogue. This empirical material is worked through and analysed using discourse analysis that mainly draws on the perspectives of Norman Fairclough. The findings give rise to an order of discourse regarding essential RE teacher knowledge. Three discourses are constructed. The dominant discourse is called “Knowing one’s subject” and refers to an RE teacher’s capacity to master the content, problematise it and both know and teach the content in an up-to-date manner. The second discourse is entitled “Knowing and meeting the pupils”. Within this discourse, it is important for a teacher in RE to be familiar with, and use, the pupils’ different pre-understandings and to communicate with the pupils in the RE classroom. The third discourse is called “Knowing oneself”. This discourse highlights the importance of being objective, reflective and being a leader. Moreover, the analysis shows that the discourses are primarily constructed as complementary in relation to one another. There seems to be a common agreement among students and teacher educators about the fact that RE teachers need to know the subject, know the pupils and know themselves. However, discursive conflicts can arise when discourses are initiated in an antagonistic manner. These RE conflicts imply neither consensus nor hegemony. Antagonistic discourses reflect aspects of dominance mainly in relation to discourses, i.e. RE teacher knowledge, but also in relation to positions.
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| 18. |
- Economou, Catarina
(författare)
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"I svenska två vågar jag prata mer och så" : en didaktisk studie om skolämnet svenska som andraspråk
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its point of departure in recent criticism directed at the Swedish school system, especially regarding the fact that students with a foreign background do not get the same opportunities or attain the same results as Swedish-born students. The general aim of this thesis is to study and analyse multi-lingual students’ situation from a critical didactic perspective, focusing on content and teaching in Swedish as a Second Language in upper secondary school. The legitimacy of and views on the subject are examined, as well as how the students are selected and categorised. The role that fiction has in the context of the subject is also investigated and discussed. The main sources of inspiration for the theoretical framework of the study have been the works of Nussbaum and Cummins. In addition, theoretical and methodological approaches are drawn from McCormick ́s socio-cultural model, Rosenblatt’s reading forms, as well as Tengberg, and Goodlad’s curriculum theory. The methodology used in this thesis is ethnography as well as curriculum and text analysis. The thesis consists of four articles. Article one, “The secondary school subject of Swedish as a Second Language – is it necessary?” examines the subject from different angles. The second “Swedish and Swedish as A Second Language – two equal subjects?” compares and analyses the two curricula. The third “Reading Fiction in a Second Language Classroom” and fourth “Multilingual Pupils’ Reading of Doctor Glas” consider the role of fiction within the subject, examining how a group of second language learners interpret and discuss the novels and how they interact with each other in relation to the literary texts. Furthermore, the last two studies analyse what forms of reading the students use. The thesis shows that the subject Swedish as a Second Language is still subordinated to the first language subject Swedish, with fewer cognitive challenges, as the aims of the curriculum reveal. Swedish as a Second Language focuses more on linguistic forms, often in isolated contexts, and less on meaning-making, e.g. reading of fiction and personal development. It also indicates that second language learners, in this context, are competent readers, able to understand and make meaning of different novels, use different forms of reading as well as make use of their broad experiences of different cultures in relation to literary texts. Finally, the thesis concludes with a discussion about the content in a future, new and inclusive subject of Swedish that is necessary to develop in today’s multicultural and globalized society.
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| 19. |
- Eklöf, Anders
(författare)
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Project work, independence and critical thinking
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (populärvet., debatt m.m.)abstract
- This thesis studies how students do projects in a Swedish upper secondaryschool. The students have to produce products and at the same time provethem self as independent in relation to the teachers, and negotiate therequirements of the project setting and the written instructions within thegroup. The study focuses on what comes out as problematic for the students,how they solve these dilemma situations and what resources are used in orderto do so.A choice was made only to analyse student group interaction in parts ofthe project process where the teachers were not physically present thus fillinga research gap.The empirical material was collected during three years in sex secondaryschool classes through filmed sessions of groups or pairs working with theirproject.Each of the four articles primarily focuses a special dilemma; structure,independence, instructions and critical thinking. By combining Goffman’sframe analysis with the concepts of risk and uncertainty from a Risk – societyperspective, issues related to what it means to do project work asindependent, critical 21st-century learner are illustrated and discussed.The choice to look only at situations in which students have to managewithout the aid of a physically present teacher illuminates several practicalconsequences like an unwillingness to go to the teacher and ask questions andan increased concentration on and interpretation of the written instructions. Adevelopment of Miller and Parlett’s (1974) discussion of student approach tocues are suggested. The concept of the cue choosing student are constructedin order to better respond to demands from an individualised interactionsociety. The study also emphasises how the students have to balance differentframeworks in order to be both authors and assessed students. Byimplementing a risk society perspective new ways of analysing andunderstanding independence and classroom interaction is suggested and arecontextualization of critical thinking proposed.
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| 20. |
- Hedberg, Marie, 1977-
(författare)
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Idrotten sätter agendan : En studie av Riksidrottsgymasietränares handlande utifrån sitt dubbla uppdrag
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study aims to describe and analyse the actions of the school coaches at the National sport upper secondary schools in light of the conditions that govern and shape the activities at those schools.The theoretical standpoints are based on Lave and Wengers' (1991) theoretical concept community of practice, and as an explanatory theoretical framework Scott's (2008) interpretation of new institutional theory is used. In the analysis of the coaches’ space for actions given the current conditions, Berg's (2014) free space theory is used.The study has a qualitative approach and the design is based on four case studies, where interviews and document analyses have been used to produce the data.The main findings can be summarized in that the cultural-cognitive conditions are very strong, whereas the regulatory and normative conditions play a less significant role. The coaches belong to a community of practice, where the sport’s inherent culture becomes the reference point for how the practice will be run, even though they are part of the school.
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| 21. |
- Johansson, Eva M., 1956-
(författare)
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Det motsägelsefulla bedömningsuppdraget : En etnografisk studie om bedömning i förskolekontext
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines the assessment practices and discourses in Swedish preschool in times of changing principles for state control and steering. These practices and discourses are analyzed in relation to theories about state control, and about cultural and social reproduction in education. The study was conducted with an ethnographic approach in two preschools located in areas that differ in terms of socio-economic status and ethnic diversity. The results show that pre-school teachers express ambivalence towards assessment as an aspect of their work. An increased focus on children's learning and on mastery of specific assessment formats and discourses are on the one hand constructed as signs of being professional – and thus function to increase their professional status. On the other hand, by their association with school, the same features seem to conflict with the values and discourses that constitute preschool teachers' professional identity. In their talk about assessments, the preschool teachers tend to focus on how assessments should be expressed (form) rather than what they are targeting (content). Furthermore, the assessments tend to concern social and behavioral aspects rather than the children's learning. As much as promoting institutional development and children's learning, the assessment practice can thus be seen as a sort of assessment game. Finally, the results suggest that the norms and focus of assessments to some extent both indicate and reinforce the institutional culture of different preschools, thereby exposing children to different socializing messages. This is problematized in regard to the role of education to promote justice and equality.
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| 22. |
- Jonsson, Agneta, 1958-
(författare)
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Att skapa läroplan för de yngsta barnen i förskolan : barns perspektiv och nuets didaktik
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes as one point of departure the concept of the expanded curriculum where curricula encompass both the formal steering documents, as well as that which goes on within the framework of preschool education and through the actors in preschools. The overarching purpose is therefore to generate knowledge about what conditions for learning the work of teachers make possible when curricula are created in preschool settings for children aged between 1 and 3. The purpose is also to contribute with knowledge about what these created curricula would mean for children’s agency, and the importance they can have for children’s opportunities for learning and development. The three empirical studies consist of digitally recorded interviews with teachers and video observations with a focus on teachers’ communication with children in preschool. The discussion in the overarching text is constructed around three aspects that emerge in the overall results of the studies. First, the studies reveal how teachers’ work can be likened to a limiting curriculum which, on the one hand, is entirely child-centered, with the children as seen actors, but, on the other, can be interpreted as entirely teacher-centered. Secondly, there is the discussion about the affirmative curriculum, where children are presented as affirmed actors. In other words, content becomes those things that children are interested in, and their modes of expression are seen, affirmed and often repeated. Finally there is the discussion about the possibilities and dilemmas related to an expanding curriculum where children are regarded and treated as real actors in the sense that their intentions and expressions are taken seriously as relevant challenges. The current curriculum text for Swedish preschool can, in this sense, be seen as an obstacle in that its formulations are extremely broad-based, as discussed related to the results of this thesis.
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| 23. |
- Langelotz, Lill
(författare)
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Vad gör en skicklig lärare? : en studie om kollegial handledning som utvecklingspraktik
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure from the on-going debate about teachers´(collective) ‘continuing professional development’ (CPD). Teachers’ CPD through an imposed nine-step model of peer group mentoring (PGM) is focused on. The study draws on data from a two and a half yearlong interactive project that took place in a teacher team in a Swedish school. The general aim of the thesis is to study a practice of professional development in a teacher team involving peer group mentoring and to find out how and what kind of teachers’ expertise that is constructed. Furthermore, the aim is to examine how the PGM-practice was constrained and enabled and what kind of CPD was made possible. The theoretical and methodological framework is mainly based on practice theory. Practices and practitioners are seen as mutually interrelated. Practice architectures (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008) are used to uncover the relations between the PGM-practice and its historical, material-economic, social-political and cultural-discursive conditions. Furthermore, Foucault’s notion of power was adopted as an analytical tool to examine how power came into play during the mentoring sessions and how the teachers’ discursively constructed a ‘good teacher’ and teachers’ expertise. The methodological approach is action research. A main finding of the thesis is that professional and personnel development may be imposed through peer group mentoring. Furthermore, democratic processes increased during the PGMmeetings and seemed to have an impact on classroom practice and the practice of parent-teacher meetings. The results show how the PGM–practice and its outcomes are deeply interconnected to global and local historical, material-economic, social-political and cultural-discursive arrangements which constrained and enabled it. When economic cut downs (i.e. materialeconomic arrangements) began to take effect in the local school, along with a neo-liberal discourse (i.e. cultural-discursive arrangements), democratic processes were challenged and threatened. The focus in the PGM discussions shifted from the teachers’ perceived need for pedagogical knowledge development to talk about students as costs. The constrained nine-step model disciplined some individuals more than others. The teachers disciplined each other through e.g. confessions, corrections and differentiations. Inconsistent discourses about good teaching and teachers’ know-how were constructed and the teachers positioned themselves and each other as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ teachers. The interactive research approach partly enabled the PGM-practice but at the same time effected the teachers’ positioning of each other. The interactive research approach disciplined both the teachers and the researcher. Anyhow, power relations became fluent and mutual among the participants. A collegial approach and the ability to carry out reflexive cooperation were both fostered by the model and articulated in the PGM-practice as important teacher skills.
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| 24. |
- Ljungblad, Ann-Louise
(författare)
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Takt och hållning : en relationell studie om det oberäkneliga i matematikundervisningen
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This microethnographic classroom study takes its point of departure in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It examines opportunities and obstacles for children to participate in democratic educational relationships, which in this context refers to the emergence of the students’ selves as unique persons. The microethnography explores how the teacher-student relationship is embodied in teaching, in communicational flow as well as when communicational dilemmas arise. Through a relational turn an increased understanding of situated teaching is being sought, by exploring interpersonal educational relationships. Four mathematics teachers and 100 students from compulsory and upper secondary schools and schools for children with learning disabilities have participated. Video-documentary methods have been used to closely follow and record the teachers in the teaching situation. A meaning-making dialogue was constructed afterwards where the teachers had the opportunity to view the recorded video sequences, and to articulate their interpersonal communication. The aim, from a relational perspective, is to provide extended understanding and knowledge of the teachers’ acknowledgement to students in situated teaching. The classroom study shows empirically how teachers relate to students and contributes to knowledge within the relational field, of value for both student teachers and teachers in practice. The study contributes to the field of inclusion by empirically exploring what Biesta describes as the incalculable. Teachers’ acknowledgement to students is explored by micro-analysis when, in a relational creating of meaning, the teachers search for Who the student is. The teachers create pedagogical meetings that embody a curiosity for unique children. The result highlights a moment of particular importance; at that second, when the new and incalculable emerges in the teaching moment, the teacher refrains from assessment, and listens and creates a space for the student to speak with her or his unique voice. In line with Lövlie’s tact the momentary teacher’s glance, tone of voice and gestures emerge as a sensuous aesthetic improvisation. The teacher’s pedagogical tact when meeting unique children can be understood as an incalculable tact, which cannot be planned. A pedagogical art form becomes visible as a creative process in teaching and reveals how the teacher’s pedagogical tact and tactfulness can create a space for the emergence of the student’s self. Hence, the teacher’s pedagogical tact can meet the incalculable and is of great importance in mathematics teaching. The study also provides an understanding that there are no relational differences between teachers’ pedagogical tact in relation to students’ different ages, different levels or different types of schooling. By highlighting existential dimensions, of what co-existence and co-operation as a teacher imply relationally, the microethnography brings out an essential pedagogical dimension for all teachers. The results further show the importance of respectful and trusting teacher-student relationships. The teachers have an open and tolerant pedagogical stance, where what the students bring forth that is new is embraced and can pass into the dialogue. Hence, in the maintaining of a teacher-student relationship a constant tactful act of balance is required from the teacher, in each situation. In the moment, a responsible stance appears where the teacher takes responsibility for both teaching and for their relationship to the student. Thus, students do not end up carriers of the difficulties of teaching. The study points toward the incalculable as a relational alternative, an unfinished process that teachers must live each day – a lived ethic. In accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the results of this study indicate a pedagogical responsible stance providing unique children opportunities to participate in democratic educational relationships.
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| 25. |
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| 26. |
- Masoumi, Davoud
(författare)
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Quality in e-learning within a cultural context : The case of Iran
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Higher education institutions in general and virtual institutions in particular are experiencing pressure to become more competitive all over the world. Such striving for excellence can be associated with and seen as a consequence of globalization that is propelling the reshaping of higher education. Further, a number of failed e-learning projects along with the accountability movement in higher education have significantly amplified concerns about quality in e-learning. Accordingly, there are worldwide calls for enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning specifically in the context of the developing countries. Such calls for quality enhancement, accountability, added value, value for money, self-evaluation, and role players’ satisfaction in higher education settings cannot go unheeded. This study attempts to reduce the gap between the investigated discourses, i.e. “quality discourse”, “e-learning discourse” and “culture and cultural-pedagogical discourse”, by developing a comprehensive e-quality framework that is sensitive to specific cultural contexts. Until recently, these discourses have seldom converged, especially in the context of developing countries. Taking a pragmatic approach in this development research, a mixed methods research was adopted in this study. This approach allowed the researcher to investigate this complex phenomenon using a variety of evidence types and perspectives. Addressing the concerns regarding enhancing and assuring quality in e-learning, a comprehensive e-quality framework is developed by taking into account the pros and cons of the previous models, frameworks and studies of e-quality. This e-quality framework provides a structure for enhancing and assuring quality in virtual institutions. Taking the Iranian virtual institutions -as a case of developing countries-, the study then investigates how culture and cultural-pedagogical issues can be integrated when developing and implementing an e-quality framework. Next, addressing embedded cultural-pedagogical dimensions in Iranian virtual institutions, we look at how the e-quality framework can adapted to “fit” in other cultural contexts. Finally, the e-quality framework is validated - in terms of its usefulness in a specific context - with respect to the Iranian virtual institutions. This study outlines a conceptual model, i.e. a culture-sensitive e-quality model, to demonstrate how the cultural and cultural-pedagogical issues can be built in and taken to account when developing and implementing an e-quality framework.
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| 27. |
- 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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| 28. |
- Risenfors, Signild, 1957-
(författare)
-
Gymnasieungdomars livstolkande
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis describes and analyses views of life and religion, as a component of „view of life‟,among young people in a Swedish upper secondary school that in the words of the youngpeople themselves is „multicultural‟. The concept „view of life‟ is rooted in a Scandinavian research tradition, and is based on a stipulative definition provided by Jeffner (1973), which includes„view of world and man‟, „values and moral‟ and „attitudes towards life‟. Thedefinition is formulated in a society where secularization is an on-going debate. However, in that secularization is contested, religion has re-emerged in a society increasingly characterized by religious pluralism, but also privatization according to religion. Views of life and religion have become political as well as private issues and, in school, are discussed in relation to the „fundamental values‟ and the subject of „Religious Education‟. In such discussionsthe aim is to help students to form an own view of life, just as long as it is consistent with the normative standards of „fundamental values‟.The focus of this thesis is directed to young people‟s articulations. An ethnographic approach has been adopted and the data consists of field notes, letters and interviews (individually and in groups). The fieldwork has taken place in four graduating classes of a single school year. Using analytical concepts from discourse theory the focus of the analysis is on how the youngpeople articulate the three dimensions of „views of life‟, linguistically and physically through narratives, reflections and staging.The most prominent results of the thesis are that, as well as the positioning of religion, views of life are directed towards the self. Articulations about „being yourself‟ appear as a very open concept that can be filled with different content. In accordance with the notion of staging, the young people demonstrate andtest identity with the quest for „authenticity‟ being central. Through high expectations of the „good life‟, vulnerability is also noticed, especially in the anonymous letters.With regard to values and morals a consensus-perspective appears to a greater extent than specific values. Value questions and moral issues dominate in the public arena while ontological and existential questions dominate in the individual letters and interviews. Here the concept „view of life‟is brought into a field between the private and the public and is especially evident in the subject of Religious Education.Although religion is articulated in terms of tolerance and freedom of choice, these concepts are given connotations of a half-hearted attitude and a consensus perspective rather than interest and curiosity for the faith and religious life of „the Other‟.However, if a religious positioning becomes a political issue, the half-hearted setting is challenged. There is also a difference between those having acquired a religious literacy and those who have not.
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| 29. |
- Schwartz, Anneli
(författare)
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Pedagogik, plats och prestationer : en etnografisk studie om en skola i förorten
- 2013
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is part of a Swedish Research Council financed project called The School and its Surroundings (Omvärlden och skolan: Vetenskapsrådet, 2005-3440) and is based on a thorough examination of the pedagogical practices that took place in a particular school in a multicultural suburb. A main aim was to analyse these practices and the pupils’ responses to them in relation to descriptions of the school and its needs, attainments and difficulties as provided by the pupils, teachers and others,including the media. The pedagogical practices of the school are based on a particular kind of pedagogy, called Monroe pedagogy. This pedagogy is characterised by strong leadership and places high expectations on pupils. Using ethnographic data, obtained from fieldwork and interviews, and an analysis informed by Bernstein’s theoretical concepts the thesis provides an analysis of the regulation of social interaction in the school and the pupils’ experiences and appreciations of this regulation. As a pedagogical discourse Monroe pedagogy exhibits principles of strong classification and framing (Bernstein, 2003). The thesis is composed of four articles and a kappa. Article one, “Bracketing” backgrounds for an effective school, describes Monroe pedagogy in relation to the school day and pupils’ results. Article two, Pupils’ responses to a saviour pedagogy: An ethnographic study, elaborates on the feedback that pupils at the studied school provide on their education. Article three, The significance of place and pedagogy in an urban multicultural school in Sweden, examines how the location of the school in a ‘multicultural suburb’ is used to attribute deficiencies to pupils and the need for strong leadership and a visible pedagogy. Article four, Complexities and contradictions of educational inclusion: a meta-ethnographic analysis, describes the importance of place for educational expectations and performances in relation to the stigmatisation of the suburban reach and its residents. Collectively the articles depict, principally through an analysis of pupils’ responses, how Riverdale School sells a success concept, based on orderliness, motivation, responsibility and hard work, and how the staff and pupils at the school identify with and believe in this concept. The articles also demonstrate how the pedagogy in use actually fails to become a saviour discourse in practice, as promised, but instead strengthens exclusion and maintains the image of a failing pupil who will be saved from, her-his background and her-his place of residence.
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| 30. |
- Thorsen, Cecilia, 1976-
(författare)
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Dimensionality and Predictive validity of school grades : the relative influence of cognitive and social-behavioral aspects
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the relative influence of cognitive and social-behavioral aspects on compulsory school grades and the importance of the different dimensions for the predictive validity of grades. Data is retrieved from the Gothenburg Educational Longitudinal Database (GOLD) and the Evaluation Through Follow-up (ETF) database. The sample in Study I consisted of three cohorts each of about 100 000 students in Grade 9, in Study II of about 4000 students in Grade 9, and in Study III of about 9000 students who were followed-up through compulsory school. All analyses were conducted using structural equation modelling (SEM). Both criterion-referenced and norm-referenced compulsory school grades were found to be multidimensional, reflecting both subject-specific dimensions and a common-grade dimension, cutting across grades and teachers. The common-grade dimension, which in previous research has been found to be related to social-behavioral aspects, contributed to predict study success in upper secondary school, indicating that social-behavioral aspects partly contribute to explain the predictive power of school grades. The influence of cognitive aspects was substantial. Fluid abilities had a continuous direct influence on the development of knowledge and skills throughout compulsory school, which is in line with the predictions from Cattell's (1987) Investment theory. Substantial indirect effects of fluid abilities on school grades were found, although no direct effects. In sum the results in the present thesis show that both cognitive and social-behavioral aspects contribute to explain the predictive validity of school grades.
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| 31. |
- Tyrén, Lena
(författare)
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"Vi får ju inte riktigt förutsättningarna för att genomföra det som vi vill" : en studie om lärare möjligheter och hinder till förändring och förbättring i praktiken
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Initially the overall aim of this thesis was to describe and analyse what was happening in the educational activities when teachers at a school that I have called Tower School introduced the computer as a tool for helping pupils who were learning to write and read. Key questions concerned the issue of improvement. Did introducing the computer as a tool in the teaching and learning process help the pupils with their learning or not and, if so, in what ways. The research approach chosen was an action research approach. Action research is concerned with professional practice and improvement. It is contextual and oriented toward action processes and change. The initial phase of the research went more or less according to plan. I followed the development process of the introduction and use of the computer as a learning tool, met regularly with the teachers and together with them developed a good working relationship. After about a year things changed. With the restructuring that was taking place in the region changes began to take place also at Tower School and this had effects on the research. In addition to the initial aim to research changes related to student learning a second purpose developed. This purpose was to describe and analyse how political governance and underlying societal forces might influence what happens in school development. There were two reasons for this new extra dimension. One was a methodological interest in relation to planning action research projects at times of political change in the education sector. The other was an educational theoretical interest connected to the school as a policy-driven organization. My interest here was for changes in the political economy at the macro level and how the network of macro-political and economic relations affected the micropolitical level of the school, its classrooms, participating teachers in these classrooms, their students and me as a researcher?
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| 32. |
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| 33. |
- Hellman, Annika
(författare)
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Visuella möjlighetsrum : gymnasieelevers subjektsskapande i bild och medieundervisnin
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis examines upper secondary school pupils’ processes of subjectivation, resistance and creative becomings in visual art and media education. By using visual methodologies, pupils’ subjectivity is explored as relational and transformative, and as distributed in networks of power and desire. The empirical material was produced through pupils’ video diaries and a visual ethnographic classroom study. The aim of the study is addressed through the following research questions: What subject positions are enabled and made available for pupils in media education at upper secondary school? How is gender produced and negotiated in the visual art and media classroom? What educational human and non-human assemblages emerge, and with what effect for pupils’ becoming? The dissertation consists of three studies based on two empirical productions. The first is the licentiate thesis in which pupils’ becomings were highlighted as rhizomatic and as situated in relational, interlaced processes of learning with gender, affect, materiality, visual culture and informal learning. In the two following studies, visual ethnographic classroom observations were investigated in one study with masculinity as a theoretical lens, and in the other with a posthumanist perspective where the subject is considered an element in a pedagogical assemblage. In these studies, resistance against the pupil position is made visible, and so is the agency of materiality that created lines of flight away from the momentarily locked positions. The result shows that visual art and media education has democratic and pedagogical potentialities. Pupils’ perspectives can be differentiated, and creativity and informal competences can be highlighted through visual art and media education.
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| 34. |
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| 35. |
- Magnusson, Maria, 1960
(författare)
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Skylta med kunskap. En studie av hur barn urskiljer grafiska symboler i hem och förskola.
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Abstract Title: Signing with knowledge: A study of how children discern graphical symbols at home and in preschool Author: Maria Magnusson Language: Swedish with an English summary ISBN: 978-91-7346-767-4 (print) ISBN: 978-91-7346-768-1 (pdf) ISSN: 0436-1121 Keywords: Graphical symbols, learning, children, conceptual development, variation theory, Vygotsky The topic of this study is to generate knowledge about children’s understanding of graphical symbols. These forms of knowledge are prevalent in contemporary societies, for example, in the form of letters, numbers, road signs, maps, and computer icons. More specifically, in this thesis is scrutinized in detail how children develop symbolic skills and how this can be supported through educational activities. The theoretical basis of the study is variation theory (Marton & Tsui, 2004). This theory conceptualizes learning in terms of differentiation and integration. Two empirical studies are reported. The first is about two children, Olle and Lasse, who both are in the age span four to five years. How these children handle graphical symbols in the form of producing signs that they put up in their homes are followed over time. Hence, the children’s own make and use of symbols in their everyday life are studied. In the second empirical study, the findings from the first study and theoretical insight from variation theory are orchestrated in a preschool center with two teachers and twelve children, to see if these principles can be functional in supporting children’s development of symbolic understanding. Both studies are based on video data. The findings are that a particular pattern of variation entitled, ‘contrast’ is functional in developing such insight, while another pattern of variation entitled, ‘induction’ is not. In addition, meta-communication is argued to be important not only for the researcher to gain access to the child’s understanding but also to the child’s development as such. The theoretical distinction made by Vygotsky between ‘pseudo concepts’ and ‘concepts (proper)’ is used to discuss the findings.
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| 36. |
- Alvestad, Torgeir, 1960
(författare)
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Barnehagens relasjonelle verden - små barn som kompetente aktører i produktive forhandlinger
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study investigates the negotiations that take place in play among the youngest children in preschool. What are their negotiations about? How do they negotiate? What kinds of strategies do they use during their negotiations? The study has its focus on learning about fellowship through practice and experience in the negotiations that take place among the youngest preschool children. The study’s relevance also relates to the development of pedagogical practice among the youngest children in preschools. The theoretical platform is comprised of the perspectives of childhood psychology (Sommer, 2004) and childhood sociology (Corsaro, 2002). In both perspectives children are regarded as competent active in producing their own culture and active in calling on information and learning. The main concepts used in the analysis of the empirical data are ‘inter-subjectivity’ and ’the role of others’. The concepts are based on the theoretical frameworks of Daniel Stern (1991) and George Herbert Mead (1962). A group of twenty four children, thirteen girls and eleven boys, aged between two to three, were regularly video recorded. The children were enrolled in day-care groups in two of the biggest cities in Norway. The study reveals that the negotiations that take place among the children are mainly about their relationships, play materials, and the content of their play. They negotiate both verbally and nonverbally. They express their intentions towards each other with words and through gestures, glances, laughter and smiles. They use different strategies in their negotiations that relate to content and intentions. They also seem to develop or change their strategy if, for example, an initial strategy is not successful. Their strategies can be both emotional and connected to solving problems. In addition, they often use humour as a strategy. The study shows that the children who play the most with others and who know each other best, are those who are most successful in their negotiations. They often have a common focus and common intentions, as well as sharing emotional conditions in their play and negotiations. It seems that those children who are the most competent playmates are also those who are most competent in negotiations. The reason for this might be the connection between play and negotiations. To be able to play successfully demands that those sharing the play are prepared for negotiations about relations, play materials and the content of the play. However, the children’s negotiations depend on their previous experiences in this field. The more experienced the youngest children are in negotiations, the more complex and flexible their negotiations might be. A pedagogical consequence of this study is that staff in preschools should support the smallest children by giving them more time to meet and play together. This can give the children extended possibilities to develop their own strategies of negotiations in play. This in turn will support children’s learning in becoming creative, seeking and reflective individuals who create their own space of action. The experiences children are gaining through negotiations in play might also be important for other situations of negotiation, contributions and democratic practice.
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| 37. |
- Andishmand, Catarina, 1963
(författare)
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Fritidshem eller servicehem? En etnografisk studie av fritidshem i tre socioekonomiskt skilda områden
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In recent decades there has been decreased resources and larger groups of children in the leisure-time centres. Statistics show major differences between leisure-time centres in terms of staff education, group size, staffing levels and the number of children enrolled at each leisure-time centre. The overall aim of the thesis is to study social practices in leisure-time centres providing after-school care. Based on Anthony Giddens' theory of structuration, an ethnographic study was conducted of everyday life at leisure-time centres in three socio-economically diverse areas. Fieldwork was conducted at each leisure-time centre over the course of one semester. The study shows how children and adults talk about their neighbourhoods and schools. It also shows the actors notions about the mission of the leisure-time centres, expressed through the actors' talk and interactions, their day-to-day routines and everyday social encounters. In conclusion, the study shows that the geographic location, resources, staff skills, group sizes and children's socio-economic backgrounds together play major roles in the social practices and activities organised at the leisure-time centres. The social changes and developments of recent decades are noticeable in all leisure-time centres. Housing segregation along with freedom of school choice all had consequences for the leisure-time centres. For children attending the same leisure-time centres, the groups become increasingly homogeneous in line with the children's ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. The results also show that leisure-time centres with large groups of children have reduced opportunities to provide a good learning environment. It becomes evident that the social practices in the leisure-time centres reproduce the contextual conditions, and risk reproducing structural differences in children's lives.
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| 38. |
- Arvidsson, Elin
(författare)
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Physiological responses to acute physical and psychosocial stress- relation to aerobic capacity and exercise training.
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Exercise training is an effective method to promote health and to prevent development of disease. Both physical and mental health have been shown to benefit from exercise training. It has also been speculated that physical exercise might affect responses to acute psychosocial stress. In an acute stress situation, several physiological systems respond to ensure survival and it is suggested that exercise training may influence these stress systems. The main purpose of this thesis was to study physiological responses to acute physical and psychosocial stress and possible associations with aerobic capacity and exercise training. The thesis is based on four papers analysing data from a randomized controlled trial (RCT). The participants were healthy individuals who reported themselves as untrained at screening. The RCT included testing of acute physical and psychosocial stress. Before and after the tests, hormonal and autonomic responses were assessed. After initial testing, the participants were randomized to either an intervention- or a control group. The intervention consisted of regular aerobic exercise training conducted for six months. At follow-up, the same tests were repeated for both groups. The main findings were that most participants showed an increase in the studied variables in response to acute stress. Aerobic capacity did not seem to have any relation to hormonal or blood pressure responses to acute psychosocial stress. Neither did the subjective perception of stress at the psychosocial stress test correlate with the actual physiological response. Due to methodological issues, it was not possible to evaluate the effects of exercise training. Thus, in healthy individuals, the stress systems seem to respond adequately to acute stress, irrespective of level of aerobic capacity or type of stressor.
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| 39. |
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| 40. |
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| 41. |
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| 42. |
- Bennerstedt, Ulrika, 1979
(författare)
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Knowledge at play. Studies of games as members’ matters : Kunskap genom spelande. Studier av digitala spel och spelande som kunskapsdomän
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- On a general level, this thesis seeks some answers to the broad question of what one can learn from digital games. With an analytical approach informed by ethnomethodology, the main thrust of the work is an exploration of members’ matters in the area of games and gaming. In response to prevailing discussions about how, where and what gamers learn, the aim is to examine emerging forms of knowledge embedded in practices in and around digital games. The first part of the thesis addresses three themes: the question of whether leisure gaming could be understood to have transfer effects; how games are positioned in a state of restlessness and multistableness; and how the domain encompassing gaming and game development is advancing in terms of professionalization and institutionalization. The second part is comprised of three empirical studies based on two sets of video recordings: collaborative gaming in The Lord of the Rings Online, and assessment practices in game development education. The studies begin to unravel the elusive phenomena of gaming by making some gameplay practices and conventions visible. For instance, the findings suggest that there are specialized coordination practices, developed through long-term engagement with the online game. Furthermore, from the perspective of the institutional framing, it is argued that understandings from other media are not applicable in a straightforward manner, but must be carefully calibrated to matters such as game genre conventions and control over gameplay conduct. By describing the reasoning and knowledge displayed by gamers and game developers, the thesis contributes to interrelated discussions about knowledge development, currently carried out in educational science, interaction studies and game studies. In conclusion, it is suggested that digital games are establishing autonomy from other forms of entertainment media and software industries as a result of the ways games and gaming as multistable objects of knowledge have become deeply embedded in society.
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| 43. |
- Bergentoft, Helene, 1964
(författare)
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Lärande av rörelseförmåga i idrott och hälsa ur ett praktikutvecklande perspektiv : Movement capability. Development of teaching practice in physical education and health
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this investigation was to explore how the connections between teaching and learning about movement capability in the school subject physical education and health can be developed and transferred through research in practice development. Three research questions guided the investigation (1) What areas regarding teaching of movement capability in the school subject physical education and health have been studied in relation to teachers’ teaching assignment? (2) What necessary prerequisites are required to systematize and transfer research in practice development on movement capability between educational contexts? (3) What linkages are made visible between the treatment of learning content, the teaching design and students’ learning through variation in lesson design? Cultural-historical perspective and variation theory were used as frameworks and the methodology, mixed method research. The empirical data consists of published articles, video-observed lessons, recorded meetings with teachers and students, pre- and post-tests. The findings position the thesis in a guided teaching perspective. Moreover, findings show how the connection between teaching and learning about movement capability systematically can be developed and transferred between teaching contexts through iterative processes with revised lessons based on students’ knowledge. By the use of variation theory, understanding of the meaning of movement capability became more nuanced and itemized. The results also illustrate how the collaboration between teachers and researchers generated development of science-based teaching of movement capability.
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| 44. |
- Bergviken Rensfeldt, Annika, 1969
(författare)
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Opening Higher Education: Discursive transformations of distance and higher education government
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes as its starting point the 1990s and early 2000s political arguments for a more open and flexible Swedish higher education system. At this time, the issues of accessibility and participation were also brought into the debate by revitalized ideals of distance education. In this study, the aim has been to denaturalize and render discursive shifts visible by examining the assumptions and reasonings of “opening higher education.” The empirical material is Swedish distance and higher education policies; Government bills, Government official reports, and replies from universities and university colleges, from 1992 to 2005. The thesis draws on a Foucauldian, post-structural understanding and approach of governmentality, focusing on how discourses take part in a governing that constitutes certain problems, solutions, and rationalities, made visible in policy. The overall purpose has been to analyze how discourses suggesting widened, flexible, and democratic participation involve regulations and orderings of students, institutions, and higher education systems. The thesis includes four studies that demonstrate how discourses of openness become parts of governing distance and higher education; how rationalities of expansion and flexibility are aligned to securing higher education systems and populations, and how institutions and individuals should adjust to flexible and personalized higher education. The first study examines how a post-war, nation-based higher education expansion is re-configured in scale, into regional, IT-based, European and global spatialities. The second study examines flexible distance education in terms of gendered spatial orderings, problematically intended for female populations. The third study explores how a certain ideal subjectivity and self-technology of personalization is embedded in the notions of IT-based Learning management systems. The last study examines the discursive shift from distance education to flexible learning and how a spatial politics and polarizations of study modes (distance/flexible), university localizations (distance/campus), and ideals of distance education (distance/closeness) are produced. The analyses reveal how liberal rationalities and self-organization of individuals, populations and spatialities take part of the governing and how orderings; differentiation of systems and exclusion of populations through spatial affiliation, gender, distance and IT study modes, market and performance logics, are produced.
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| 45. |
- 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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| 46. |
- Bjervås, Lise-Lotte, 1960
(författare)
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Samtal om barn och pedagogisk dokumentation som bedömningspraktik i förskolan - En diskursanalys
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The preschool, nowadays an intergral part of the educational system, is to be found within a welfare state and a knowledge economy, within a society characterized by the idea of lifelong learning. As a conse-quence of this, the preschool is also a part of a strong culture of assessment and measurement of children’s development and learning, and for this purpose there are different tools which may be used by teachers. In Swedish preschools, it is common that teachers carry out pedagogical documentations where they try to capture what is happening in pedagogical practice by video recording, taking photos and writing down what children express during selected moments. The overall aim of this study is to investigate how teachers talk about children during their planning meetings when they are trying to understand together the children in relation to the documentation they have made. Two different teams of teachers in preschool, in total ten teachers, have been followed during planning meetings, each team in the course of about half a year. Data has been constructed through taperecording when the teachers were talking about the children during these planning meetings. The teachers’ utterances have been interpreted in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of communication, including his thoughts about the dialogical voice, and with analytical tools derived from Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis. The results of the thesis show that the teachers’ conversations about the preschool children are multifaceted. Discourses coexist in the utterances. Sometimes discourses are involved in hegemonic struggles, and sometimes they work together. The teachers talk about preschool children both as children with an essential identity and as children who take the subject positions which the context offers. When the teachers talk about the children they go back and forth between these images of children’s identity but in spite of this, above all the teachers talk about the preschool children in a manner which describes the children as children with a lot of competence. In the utterances the teachers primarily are discussing the competencies of the children. The teachers look upon the pedagogical documentation as a tool which supports the children’s possibilities to show themselves as competent children, a tool which may help the children to use compe-tencies they already have but also to cross boundaries and become even more competent. In the utterances the teachers also agree with each other about the idea that preschool children may be limited by their age. The teachers seem to talk about the preschool children in a manner that show that they are searching for the point where the children’s capacities reach their limit, and there is nothing in the context that may help the children to cross this border. The teachers also emphasize the responsibility they have to create favourable conditions for the children’s development and learning. The children are assessed by the teachers in relation to the preschool program they take part of. The moment when the teachers document the children’s activities stands out as a critical moment when the teachers may disturb the children in their processes. In the teachers’ utterances they express that the use of pedagogical documentation in preschool offers many advantages for the preschool children and these advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
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| 47. |
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| 48. |
- Borgfeldt, Eva, 1961
(författare)
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”Det kan vara svårt att förklara på rader”. Perspektiv på analys och bedömning av multimodal textproduktion i årskurs 3.
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Drawing and coloring have been part of young students text making as long as the writing system has been used, but with the increased use of digital tools and an enlarged focus on accountability of today there is a reinforced educational interest to understand what constitutes multimodal student texts in the context of classroom practice. This thesis project overall aim is to highlight and discuss the opportunities and difficulties in the assessment of language and knowledge-developing multimodal text work in a multilingual educational context. Conceptually the study is grounded in sociocultural theories, in sociosemiotic theory and in multiliteracies research. The methods used consist of qualitative multimodal text analysis and semi-structured interviews with students and their teacher. The three empirical studies were carried out, each having a different perspective. The first study looks at the text production of students in an integrated work of drawing, coloring and writing. The second study focuses how students reason when they choose to draw, write or both draw and write when they report to their teacher what they have learned. The third study discusses what the teacher highlights when assessing her students’ multimodal text productions. Overall, the results show that the semiotic resources, images and color, dominate students’ text productions and that the teacher attaches great importance to the illustrations, but that she, despite the best intentions, has trouble using multimodal criteria when assessing the students’ different ways of expressions and semiotic resources into a whole. It seems to be problematic for the teacher to allow students to freely interpret and independently design the task while she at the same time intends to make an overall assessment of how the content is presented. The results also indicate that it is difficult for the students to verbalize their thoughts on the assessment and in practice; the teacher more often is focused on assessing abilities relating to how thoroughly the students carry out the process of documenting rather than encouraging the students to develop and express their knowledge. Finally, the thesis concludes with discussing the content of an ongoing need for research, especially regarding the consequences it may have for younger students, whatever language background they have.
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| 49. |
- Bradley, Linda, 1961
(författare)
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Language learning and technology. Student activities in web-based environments
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The impact of the web as a communicative arena, based on the use of social software, has changed conditions for communication on all levels of society; privately, at work and in education. This has opened up for multicultural communication, frequently with English as the lingua franca. Exploring how the web and web-based technologies afford learning activities is something that is related to practical and theoretical interests in the field of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL). These interests are also the foundation for this thesis. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of how web-based environments can change the conditions for language learning. Within a socio-cultural framework, the thesis explores activities and student interaction in web-based learning environments in language learning for engineering students in higher education in Sweden. The main research question is how web-based language learning activities contribute to the development of language competences. There are four more specific questions: How are web-based technologies situated in language learning environments? What forms of activities and student interaction evolve? How can web-based peer reviewing contribute to language learning? How can intercultural exchanges contribute to language learning? The empirical foundation of the thesis comprises four case studies of educational designs including student activities in blogs and wikis. Data consists of logs of student driven web-based activities and interviews. The first study investigates how students use a wiki as their joint workspace. The results show that the students either use the web page or the discussion forum on the wiki, entailing both a form-based and a content-based focus. Three types of activity patterns emerge: contributing and writing together; evaluating and peer reviewing; and arguing and discussing. The second study explores rationalities of student co-production of texts on a wiki. The patterns of interaction in groups can be characterized either as co-operation or collaboration. The results show that the collaborating groups are more frequent in giving peer response. When writing together,collaboration with contributions from diverse perspectives changes the dynamics not only of text production but the text in itself. This has potential for language learning since the students become involved in many levels of text production, from very detailed linguistic aspects to discursive and semantic aspects. The third study investigates student interaction in a poetry blog exchange with native-English speaking students from the US. In the blogging activity, the students share their interpretation of poems by a Swedish poet. The analysis of the blog postings uncovers four themes of student interaction: blogging in an educational environment; displaying cultural belonging; forming threads that thematize content and meaning of poems; and discussions of language and translation issues in an intercultural environment. Study four investigates an intercultural exchange, targeting student peer-reviewing in a wiki. The procedure of giving comments to and receiving comments from peer students from another culture offers diversity to text revision processes. Being engaged in an intercultural peer review exchange offers opportunities in getting an insight into different ways of expression, conditions of giving and receiving feedback, cultural differences when meeting someone from outside of one’s own disciplinary field and from another country and with another language background. This is in line with core issues of intercultural exchanges that concern mastering expressions of other cultures than one’s own. The four studies contribute to the understanding of how web-based environments can be used in language learning. They display a range of productive student interaction such as discussing, collaborating, and responding through text. In conclusion, they demonstrate that educational designs utilizing web-based writing technologies offer a space to develop discursive, linguistic and cultural competences.
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| 50. |
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