| 1. |
- Strömberg Jämsvi, Susanne
(författare)
-
Unpacking dominant discourses in higher education language policy : A critical study of language policy in Swedish higher education
- 2019
-
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.
|
|
| 2. |
- Risenfors, Signild, 1957-
(författare)
-
Gymnasieungdomars livstolkande
- 2011
-
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.
|
|
| 3. |
- Henry, Alastair, 1963-
(författare)
-
L3 Motivation
- 2012
-
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
|
|
| 4. |
- Olsson, Eva, 1960
(författare)
-
On the impact of extramural English and CLIL on productive vocabulary
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis, the possible impact of English encountered and used in two different contexts – in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and through extramural English (EE) – on students’ writing proficiency is investigated. More specifically, students’ vocabulary use when writing different text types is explored; in particular, attention is drawn to progress in productive academic vocabulary. Three empirical studies were conducted: a cross-sectional study involving 37 students in grade 9 (aged 15–16), and two longitudinal studies, involving 230 students (146 CLIL/84 non-CLIL) in upper secondary school in Sweden. The nature and frequency of students’ use of EE were investigated using two different surveys. Students’ texts, covering different registers, were analysed, mainly by corpus-based methods. In the cross sectional study, the focus of text analyses was on register variation, whereas students’ use of academic vocabulary was analysed in the longitudinal studies. Findings suggest that effects of EE may be greater at lower proficiency levels than at higher. The results also indicated that register variation was greater among those students in grade 9 who frequently used English in their spare time than among those with infrequent exposure to EE. At upper secondary level, the frequency of EE correlated with productive academic vocabulary only in the first year; for progress over time, high exposure to EE did not predict a more positive development. CLIL students used academic vocabulary to a larger extent than non-CLIL students already when they started their CLIL education, but they did not progress more; the gap between CLIL and non-CLIL students did not widen over three years.
|
|
| 5. |
- Carlsson, David
(författare)
-
Vad är religionslärarkunskap? : En diskursanalys av trepartssamtal i lärarutbildningen
- 2016
-
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.
|
|
| 6. |
- Borgfeldt, Eva, 1961
(författare)
-
”Det kan vara svårt att förklara på rader”. Perspektiv på analys och bedömning av multimodal textproduktion i årskurs 3.
- 2017
-
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.
|
|
| 7. |
- Bylund, Jasmine, 1982
(författare)
-
Everyday Language Practices and the Interplay of Ideologies, Investment and Identities – Language Use and Dispositions among Young Adolescents in Multilingual Urban Settings in Sweden
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sweden is a multilingual country, and an increasing number of children and adolescents grow up using one or more languages in additions to Swedish. This has purred an interest in multilingual practices and the educational needs of minority language children and youths. While this group of children and adolescents has increased, the traditional monolingual language practices and ideologies of the education system has continued to dominate, creating a linguistic diverge between home and school. The systematic knowledge about the out-of-school language practices and encounters among this group of students is limited, particularly with regards to the interrelationship between language practices, ideologies, and identity constructions. This thesis explores the reported out-of-school language practices and ideological positions among young adolescents in relation to language ideologies, investment, and identities. The study was conducted between 2019–2021 with young adolescents (aged 11–14) attending schools located in linguistically diverse urban neighborhoods in the three largest cities in Sweden: Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Employing an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, the study included a questionnaire, language diaries and interviews.
|
|
| 8. |
- Dragemark Oscarson, Anne, 1953
(författare)
-
Self-Assessment of Writing in Learning English as a Foreign Language. A Study at the Upper Secondary School Level
- 2009
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main aim of this study is to explore the role of self-assessment in EFL learning in developing lifelong language learning skills and in furthering the development of more comprehensive and thereby fairer assessment practices. The study explores how upper secondary school students perceived their own general and specific writing abilities in relation to syllabus goals and whether these perceptions are affected by self-assessment practices. It also explores students’ and teachers’ experiences of integrating self-assessment into everyday classroom practice. The study is based on the theory that metacognitive skills such as self-regulation and self-monitoring are important for the development of autonomous learning skills. Two teachers and four groups of Swedish upper secondary students participated in the study during one school year. Using grades, students self-assessed the results of two written assignments, namely a classroom writing assignment and a written test task. The classroom writing assignment was also analyzed linguistically by the researcher. The two teachers and eight student focus groups were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the study. The results of the study showed that at the group level students were well able to assess their general writing results in relation to the criterion (the teachers’ grades). At the individual level the results were more variable, partly depending on the type of writing activity assessed and on the amount of practice students had had of self-assessment. Students’ assessments of their writing ability in general showed a stronger relationship with teachers’ grades than did students’ assessments of their results in a particular classroom writing assignment. Students’ assessments tended to become more realistic with practice. The results also showed that the specific writing skills that students at upper secondary school focused on in their writing are spelling and grammar, rather than other skills such as sentence structure, vocabulary, paragraphing and punctuation skills. Students were self-critical with regard to these skills and tended to underestimate their performance in relation to the researchers’ assessment of the same. Students and teachers were positive to the incorporation of self-assessment activities in the EFL writing classroom and saw it as a transferable skill that underpins lifelong learning in other subject areas. The method used in a classroom assignment, where the writing process approach was coupled to self-assessment questions and non-corrective feedback from the teacher, was found to be a practical way of helping students become more aware of their language skills and language levels. Both teachers and students considered student self-assessments as contributing valuable additional information to ordinary tutoring and testing. The implications for EFL writing are that syllabus goals that encourage student responsibility and autonomy are viable and realistic, but students need to practice self-assessment, preferably from an early age, to become adept at employing the approach effectively on a regular basis.
|
|
| 9. |
- Lymer, Gustav, 1978
(författare)
-
The work of critique in architectural education
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The research reported here is an investigation of instruction and assessment in architectural education. The focus is on the practice of critique, an educational activity in which instructors and professional architects give students feedback on their finished projects. Taking an ethnomethodologically informed approach, the interests of the thesis revolve around questions of how critique is done as an occasioned instructional practice. The empirical material consists of video recordings of critique sessions at a Swedish school of architecture. The core of the thesis consists of four empirical studies. Study 1 deals with issues of professional vision and the ways in which the graphical surface of the presentation is seen. Study 2 addresses the significance of intentions in the setting. The study examines how the relation between students’ stated intentions and the presented designs is treated by participants. Study 3 deals with the use of precedents and references, analyzing how critics respond to students’ ways of handling intertextual aspects of architectural design. Study 4 focuses on the material and spatial set-up of critique—the differing affordances of digital slideshows and posters for presentation and discussion. Critique is found to be a site where architectural proposals are treated for the purposes of instruction as provisional and improvable, and where their significances are detailed in exhibitions of architectural reasoning and judgment. Such exhibiting involves identifying and elaborating on problems and qualities, and articulating values that are visible in the envisaged buildings and their graphical representations. These interpretations may be juxtaposed with the expressed intentions of students, as these appear in verbal presentations or in textual accounts. Their interrelations are inspected and discrepancies are noted and discussed. On the basis of the analyses in the thesis, the function of critique is argued to centre on the juxtaposition of student-produced objects with professional competences for seeing, articulating, assessing, and contextualizing these objects. In organizing the educational program around cycles of production and critique, architecture is provided with a powerful means through which design competences, and the assessment practices that lie at their core, can be made massively present within, and constitutive of, the developmental processes through which students acquire the intellectual, aesthetic, and discursive repertoires necessary for competent architectural work.
|
|
| 10. |
- Ohlsson, Elisabeth
(författare)
-
Den synliggjorda vokabulären och praktiken. Gymnasieelevers akademiska skrivande på svenska.
- 2021
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avhandlingen syftar till att bidra med nya kunskaper om hur akademiskt skrivande kan synliggöras och därmed användas didaktiskt genom dialogisk, metaspråklig undervisning. Avhandlingen syftar också till att bidra med nya kunskaper om vad ett annat undervisningsspråk än svenska kan ha för betydelse för gymnasieelevers skrivande på svenska. Avhandlingen består av tre studier där kappan är avsedd att bilda en inramning av de tre studierna med den didaktiska triangelns tre delar, eleven, läraren och innehållet som viktiga komponenter (Hopmann 2007). Dessa relateras till avhandlingens delar, undervisningskontexten, som utgörs av gymnasieklasser där några undervisats på svenska, andra på engelska, till akademiskt skrivande, som fokuseras i de elevskrivna texterna, samt till skrivdidaktik, där resultaten från analyser av de skrivna texterna leder vidare till en interventionsstudie med gymnasieelever. Vokabulären i elevtexterna (N=520) har i studie 1 och 2 undersökts med kvantitativa ytstrukturella mätningar, kvantitativa ämnesrelaterade mätningar samt med lexikala profiler för att synliggöra användningsgraden av olika textlingvistiska variabler (Anthony 2021, Biber et al. 2006 m.fl.). Materialet samlades in på tre skolor, A, B och C, i en longitudinell storskalig studie där gymnasieelevers produktiva och receptiva förmåga avseende akademiskt skolspråk undersöktes. Åtta klasser deltog; fem med engelska som undervisningsspråk i flera ämnen genom så kallad språk- och innehållsintegrerad undervisning/CLIL, tre kontrollklasser med svenska som huvudsakligt undervisningsspråk. I studie 2 jämförs texterna (N=306) mellan CLIL-klasserna på de tre skolorna då omfattningen av deras undervisning på engelska skiljer sig åt. Denna typ av undervisning är inte reglerad på gymnasienivå i Sverige, vilket den är i flera andra länder (Sylvén 2013, 2018, Skolverket 2018). Resultaten i studierna indikerar att elevernas undervisning på engelska inte sker på bekostnad av deras produktiva svenska i de texter som har undersökts. I studie 3 prövas den didaktiska potentialen i att synliggöra textlingvistiska variabler genom en interventionsstudie på en av de tidigare deltagande skolorna. Fem klasser skrev för- och eftertest (N=148), därefter deltog två av klasserna i en intervention där modelltexter och lexikala profiler användes för att uppmärksamma vokabulärval (Anthony 2021, Myhill et al. 2018, 2020 m.fl.) Resultaten visar statistiskt signifikanta skillnader mellan interventionsgruppen och kontrollgruppen avseende flera av variablerna som analyserades.
|
|
