| 1. |
- 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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| 2. |
- Lindahl, Britt
(författare)
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Lust att lära naturvetenskap och teknik? : en longitudinell studie om vägen till gymnasiet
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study was to follow a group of pupils from the age of twelve until they leave lower secondary school at the age of sixteen to describe and analyse how their attitudes towards and interest in science and technology develop and change but also how this and other factors such as ability, understanding of scientific concepts, gender and home background influenced their choice for upper secondary school. The sample consists of 80 pupils, the whole age group in a school. Data was collected using observations, interviews and questionnaires. The analysis built on the theory of planned behaviour and conceptions research. Many pupils have a positive attitude towards science but often a more positive attitude towards other subjects. They have duties to their parents but these are not strongly expressed. Their self-efficacy for science follows the same pattern as their attitude; they think they are good in science but not as good as in other subjects. For most pupils it seems as if attitude together with self-efficacy are the strongest determinant for their choice. These determinants are influenced by different factors. Girls and boys perceive science teaching differently but it seems as if the boys are on their way to developing the same critical attitude as the girls have had since long ago. The social background is important as many of the pupils who choose science are from well educated homes but even this group is loosing interest. Good ability is a necessary factor but does not guarantee science will be chosen. Neither has good conceptual understanding a crucial importance but on the other hand there are many pupils who say that they would not choose science as they do not understand science in the way it is taught. Another finding is that many pupils even at Grade 5 have an idea of their future career which later on is the same as their choice for upper secondary. If science shall have a chance in their lives the pupils must have a positive experience of science from the beginning of primary school through all years. Once they have lost their interest it is very difficult to get them back. The competition for their attention is intensive and the older they get the more difficult it will be to catch their interest and allegiance.
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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- Sotevik, Lena, 1981
(författare)
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Barbiebröllop och Homohundar. Barn och barndomar i relation till queerhet och (hetero)normativa livslinjer
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation investigates relations between sexualities, children and childhoods by examining the following questions: How are heteronormativity and normative life courses repeated, negotiated and challenged by children? How are norms of age, children and childhood given significance in relation to heteronormativity and queerness? How is the child featured in contemporary discourses regarding sexualities, normative life courses and possible futures? The study is based on the discourse analysis methodology of Foucault (1972, 1980, 1993, 2002) and inspired by Marcus’ (1995, 1998) ’multi-sited ethnography.’ Children’s play and meaning-making during the school day are studied using participatory observations. Preschool policy documents are analyzed to investigate in what way ‘sexual orientation’ is discussed in relation to discrimination and equal treatment, and teachers are interviewed on the subject of working with lgbtq certification and norm criticism in preschool. Sources within children’s culture, showing representations of same-sex love, provide another entrance for investigating how queerness is presented, and how this is discussed among adults. Critical perspectives from queer theory and childhood studies, where sexuality and age are considered simultaneously discursive, material and performative (Butler, 1990, 1993; Castaneda, 2003, Foucault, 2002; Lee, 2001), are combined theoretically. How age (childhood) norms and sexuality norms interact is investigated using queer-temporal theories (Ahmed, 2006; Dyer, 2014; Edelman, 2004; Halberstam, 2005; Stockton, 2009). The results of the included articles indicate that children normalize heterosexuality by (re)producing heteronormative family and couple discourses in their family play and wedding play. This emerges as age-coded heteronormativity, where norms of children and adults become visible through the way in which heteronormativity is repeated. At preschool, representations of ‘sexual orientation’ are primarily focused on families and family constellations, rarely mentioning interactions among the children. Queerness in relation to childhood emerges, at the same time, as something that is demanded and questioned. The child is used as a space for negotiation of society values, disguised as the question of what is good or bad for children. A conditional queerness emerges, at the intersection of lgbtq+ questions, as an increasingly desirable symbol of a democratic, modern and urban society, and as the expected absence of childhood sexuality, particularly queer sexuality. Queerness is made conditional through, for instance, desexualized love and family discourses. Age norms, in this case norms of children and childhoods, are significant for how, when and with which arguments queerness is represented.
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| 6. |
- 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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| 7. |
- 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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| 8. |
- 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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| 10. |
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