Att lära sig ett nytt ämnesområde innebär även att lära sig det språk som används inom det området. Tidigare forskning visar att det är nödvändigt att lära sig att skriva inom till exempel de olika naturvetenskapliga genrerna för att bli en kompetent elev inom detta område (se t ex Halliday & Martin 1993, Wignell, 1998).
I denna presentation vill jag närmare diskutera expansioner i texter skrivna av elever i skolår 5 och 8 i NO och SO-ämnena. Genom expansioner byggs semantiska relationer mellan händelser genom satser som definierar (’alltså’, ’med andra ord’), bygger ut (’och’, ’men’) eller specificerar (’sen’, ’för att’) den inledande satsen (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004). Expansioner har diskuterats som en viktig del av den vetenskapliga diskursen, både i sig själva och även som ett uttryck för elevernas förståelse av vad de skriver (Keys 1999). I presentationen diskuterar jag graden av expansioner i texterna i relation till hur eleverna talar om sina texter, deras textrörlighet. Det visar sig bland annat att framför allt högpresterande elever har en högre textrörlighet i de texter som även har en högre grad av expansioner.
Med denna presentation vill jag närmare diskutera olika sätt att definiera och resonera kring kausalitet i texter.
Tidigare analyser av expansionsrelationer i det internationella läsförståelseprovet PIRLS 2006 (ges för 10-åringar) har visat att uttryckta kausala relationer inte är särskilt vanliga i testets informativa texter.
Med exempel ur frågor och bedömningsguide för PIRLS 2006 diskuteras nu till vilken grad frågorna uppmuntrar till kausala resonemang hos eleverna, och till vilken grad dessa frågor hänvisar till delar av texten där uttryckt kausalitet finns. En vidare diskussion blir sedan vilken roll förklaringar och kausala relationer spelar i läromedel och uppgifter i grundskolans mellanår.
I kapitlet diskuteras en undersökning om elevers skrivande i naturorienterande ämnen, hur texterna ser ut och hur eleverna talar om de texter de skrivit. Resultaten diskuteras i relation till sådant som ämnesspråk och förståelse.
Åsa af Geijerstam diskuterar i sin artikel "Skrivande i NO-ämnet" elevers skrivande utifrån olika aspekter. Hon redovisar data från projektet Elevers möte med skolans textvärldar och tar sin utgångspunkt i bland annat kognitiva, konstruktivistiska och sociokulturella perspektiv. Vidare problematiserar af Geijerstam elevers skrivande i NO-ä,mnen utifrån frågor om anknytningar till textkulturer och utifrån frågor om dialogens betydelse i detta sammanhang.
Att uttrycka exempelvis kausalitet, hänvisningar till tid och plats, exemplifieringar eller motsatsförhållanden är något som ofta diskuteras som centralt för en ”lyckad” text. Det visar sig dock att elever gör detta i varierande grad, och att graden av sammanhang i texterna i hög grad varierar med textaktiviteten (af Geijerstam, 2006). Det är också relevant att undersöka hur relationer av detta slag uttrycks i texter elever möter i test. I denna presentation fokuseras de informativa texter som ingår i läsförståelseprovet PIRLS 2006.
Expansionsrelationer som uttrycks i texten samt vilka funktionella relationer som finns mellan satser diskuteras. Analysen av sammanhang i texten utgår från Hallidays system för satskoppling (Halliday 2004), och kompletteras med analys av de funktionella relationerna mellan enheterna (Mann & Thompson 1988, Evensen 2005).
The importance of the usage of artefacts is a central question within sociocultural perspectives on learning. In everyday life people use artefacts to be able do things they would not be able to do otherwise. Learning, in this respect, is a matter of appropriating ways of acting with artefacts. However, the nature of the relationship between artefacts and human action is, from a sociotechnical view, rather confusing. On the one hand we can emphasise the influence of artefacts on action. On the other hand we can emphasise that the meaning of artefacts is constituted in action. A third possibility is to emphasise the process in which individuals act with technology. In this paper I will focus on this confusion in a discussion of the concept of technological closure. The aim is to illustrate and discuss an approach that makes it possible to study the role of artefacts in ongoing meaning making processes. This is done from a sociocultural perspective on learning specified by a sociotechnical perspective on artefacts and inspired by the late writings of Wittgenstein. The approach is illustrated in a few case studies of video recorded educational settings where pupils use information technology.
The use of artefacts is a central part of many human activities. In education, for example, people use them to deal with didactic problems otherwise not possible to solve. However, even though often taken for granted and not explicitly thought of in most practices, the use of artefacts is not given beforehand. In fact, they are constituted in sociocultural contexts where different agents, including the users, may have contributed. Consequently, this is an issue possible to discuss and debate. The aim of this article is to describe an approach in studies of how the use of artefacts is constituted in educational settings. Examples from video recorded classroom situations illustrate how artefacts contribute to meaning making in practice. It is also argued that there is a need for further studies and discussions about the use of artefacts in education.
In this paper, we will compare different discourses about teacher education as expressed by students, departments and alumnae/i at liberal arts colleges in USA, with two contemporary texts about teacher education in Sweden. The studies show (1) that the decision to become a teacher is an active choice made by these students during their time at the college, (2) that education programs in liberal arts institutions in USA stress that teacher education should be intellectually demanding with strong connection between theory and practice, and have a critical focus, and (3) that the graduates found student teaching, the relationships they had with professors and their fieldwork experiences to have had a dramatic impact on their success as teachers. Liberal arts colleges are a central part of the educational system in USA. They provide undergraduate studies in various areas and are often characterized by high ambitions and aims concerning good practices of education. Compared to teacher education in Sweden this is very interesting because it seems as the same issues concerning teaching and research are being discussed in both places.
The overall aim of the article is to present a pragmatic approach for studies of meaning-making used in the articles of this issue. The approach, which is developed within the SMEDgroup (Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses), mainly builds on the writings of John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. A common ambition for the researchers in SMED is to enable studies and discussions on questions concerning how meanings are made in people’s actions. Another ambition is to carry out these studies beyond assumptions of dualism, essentialism, causality and determinism. In this perspective learning and socialization are viewed in a communicative perspective. We argue in the article that our approach makes it possible, and important, to study meaning-making in action in different kinds of educational practices.
During the last decades, researchers from a cognitive science tradition respectively a sociocultural perspective on learning have been discussing students’ mental models of the earth. In the study reported here, we elaborate questions discussed in this debate in relation to meaning making in educational settings. The aim is to develop and use an approach for analysing the role of earlier experiences in students’ meaning-making processes. In video recordings of twenty pairs of 8-11 year olds, we study what they discern as relevant questions, information etc. and what they re-actualise when answering questions. In their work, the children had access to various artefacts, as globes or maps. The analyses take point of departure in pragmatism and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s works. The results show that some of the problems that children have according to previous research do not appear as problems in our material. For example, that people can live on the other side of the earth is not problematic. They rather discuss where the other side is located. Also, our analyses illustrate that the meaning of artefacts is constituted within people’s actions. Differences between our and previous findings can be understood as differences between the situations that the children are working in.
The overall aim of this paper is to present and discuss a pragmatic approach for studies of meaning making in different educational practices. The approach – built on a framework developed within the SMEDgroup (Studies of Meaning making in Educational Discourses) at the universities of Uppsala and Örebro – is illustrated in a number of empirical studies. The main point of departure in the studies is taken in pragmatic curriculum theory and sociocultural perspectives on learning, and is inspired mainly by John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Michel Foucault. A special focus is directed to communication practices and content selection within Physical education, Environmental education and Science education. A common ambition is to offer a language that enables studies and discussions on questions concerning how meanings are made in people’s actions. Another ambition is to make these investigations beyond assumptions of dualisms, essentialism, causality and determinism. In this perspective learning and socialisation is viewed in communicative perspective. Therefore, many of the studies are built on video recorded classroom conversations, but also on analysis of various kinds of written texts. We argue in the paper that this approach makes it possible to study meaning making – learning and socialisation – in different kinds of educational practices.
The relationship between individuals, technology and society increasingly attracts attention within different fields of research. For example, the focus on the interplay between man and technologies has given new and valuable perspectives on how sociocultural patterns penetrate human action. However, there is still much to do in educational research in relation to the ongoing discussion about the politics of technology. In this paper we will especially focus on the ethical and the political dimensions of technology within educational contexts. Taking the point of departure in our previous research on curricula, textbooks and videorecorded classroom situations, it is shown how a sociotechnical perspective can be used to give a deeper understanding of the relation between artefacts, human action and meaning making in educational settings.
The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that can be used in addressing the issue of the use of information technology and its importance in human meaning making. By using a combination of Wittgenstein’s work method, a sociocultural perspective on learning, and a sociotechnical perspective on artifacts a specific focus for analyses was discerned: the relation between the use-of-technology in meaning-making on one hand and the circumstances for this meaning-making on the other hand. The conversations of six groups of children, who worked with an assignment, that required that they doubted information they encountered, were video recorded and analyzed. The analyses were done in three interrelated steps. (a) The students use-of-technology in meaning making, (b) the meaning patterns that the students encounter on the web, and (c) students’ intentions and habits. Our findings show that, while the mode of reinforcement of the texts used by the students may have provided little opportunity for doubt or learning how to doubt, the students’ habits and intentions with their work determined the result of the interaction, namely copying information from the web. Taking our point of departure in this empirical illustration we discuss theoretical and methodological questions concerning the understanding of the use of information technology in educational settings.
Syftet med den här uppsatsen är att undersöka om erfarna lärare följer läroplanens intentioner om att använda sig av olika arbetssätt och arbetsformer för att främja elevernas kunskapsutveckling i matematik.
För att nå detta syfte använde jag en etnografisk inspirerad fallstudie som vetenskaplig metod. De datainsamlingsmetoder som har använts är observationer och intervjuer med fyra erfarna lärare från två skolor.
Resultatet visade att lärarnas undervisning innehöll en rad gemensamma nämnare. De betonade alla en undervisning som innebär gemensamma genomgångar, repetition av kunskaper, sifferträning, utantillinlärning och gemensamma samtal i matematik i helklass och i mindre grupper. Lärarna var överens om att ordning och reda i klassrummet var viktigt för elevens inlärning. Möbleringen i klassrummen var liknande i klassrummen. Eleverna satt i par vända mot skrivtavlan.
Denna undersökning har visat att lärarna är väl medvetna om läroplanens intentioner, då det visade sig att de använder sig av ett arbetssätt präglat av variation och att deras erfarenhet har varit av stor betydelse för hur de har valt att arbeta i sina klasser.
When viewed on the internet, the waterslides and pools at Amman Waves look deserted, but when paying a visit they are filled with children, women and men in various kinds of swim wear. At Amman Waves women’s swim wear fashion ranges from small bikinis to swim-suits that cover every part of a woman’s body except the face, hands and feet. In this article these differences in covering are discussed and categorized in relation to Islamic law. It is argued that this variation in swim wear also has relevance for European societies since it shows possibilities for negotiations (agreement) between traditional Islamic ideals and ideals in modern Western societies.