Variation in Finnish students' understanding of Lutheranism and its implications for religious education: a phenomenographic study

This article contains the results of how a selected group of Finnish upper secondary students understand Lutheranism. The data consisted of 63 students' responses to a writing task together with complementary interviews of 11 students. The outcomes of phenomenographic analysis of variation in the students' understanding of Lutheranism are presented in five hierarchically ordered categories. The implications for religious education are discussed in terms of what teachers could learn from differences in students' understandings of the subject matter in order to enhance their learning of it.     

A phenomenographic study of students' conceptions of quality in learning in higher education in Rwanda

The aim of this study is to understand the different ways that university students conceptualise quality in learning by drawing on a phenomenographic approach. A total of 20 students in higher education in Rwanda were interviewed and analysis of the interviews generated an outcome space of conceptions of quality in learning as transformation, practice, knowledge durability and employability. The findings illustrate the importance of the relationship between education and work as an important aspect of conceptions of quality in learning. This relationship connects to the discourse of employability in which graduates are expected to become flexible and adaptable to changes in context and over the course of time.     

Through a glass darkly: A naturalistic study of students' understanding of mathematical word problems

A father is now 20 years older than his son. In 8 years, the father's age will be 5 years more than twice the son's age. Find their present age.Word problems, such as this one, are a perennial source of difficulty for students of school mathematics. Unfortunately, very little is known about why they are problematic, mainly because so little is known about how students understand such problems or the strategies they use in their efforts to solve them. Traditional research into word problems has shed precious little light on this question owing, in no small part, to its almost singular preoccupation with results of pupils' activities—as expressed in some sort of test score, and to its tendency to all but ignore what students actually do when confronted with problems of this kind.This study was carried out as one facet of a larger research project designed to gain more insight into some of the ways in which students understand school mathematics. It focuses on the efforts of one pupil, a twelve-year-old girl in grade seven, to come to terms with solving word problems using an algebraic approach. Strategies associated with both the structured and the unstructured clinical interview were used in order to reveal what was involved in her attempts to make sense of the word problems in her grade seven mathematics textbook.Based on the information gained in the interview, a rational reconstruction of the student's problem-solving strategy is proposed, and compared with the strategies normally prescribed in contemporary school mathematics textbooks. What emerges from this comparison is the finding that, while there appear to be systematic and fundamental differences between the procedures prescribed by the text and those actually used by the pupil in working through certain problems, these differences are undetectable in the finished product; either in the answer itself or in the rough or finished work. What this suggests, among other things, is that if, as educators and/or researchers, we limit our attempts to understand how students go about learning to solve word problems (or how they approach any other part of the school mathematics curriculum, for that matter) to examining what they commit to paper, we are apt to be seriously misled concerning what they genuinely understand and what they fail to understand. In short, if we are to learn more about why pupils experience difficulties with word problems we must begin to pay serious attention to what they say and do as they work their way through them.This study was supported by a Research and Development Grant from the Faculty of Education, Queen's University.     

Sources of Inequity: understanding students' responses to assessment

This article considers some of the implications for assessment practice of current views about the nature of learning, and achievement. Evidence from national surveys is presented that demonstrates some of the different ways, ‘tasks' and responses to them are understood by assessors and students. This is followed by a review of evidence about differential sub‐group performance which is then examined to identify potential sources of inequity in assessment practice.     

Young People's Conceptions of Environment: A phenomenographic analysis

Environmental education in schools is an important strategy in achieving environmental improvement. However, it needs to be based on children's understandings of environment rather than on assumptions of what children know and believe. This paper reports on a research project where school children's answers to a question 'I think the term/word environment means ' were analysed using the qualitative research method of phenomenography. Six distinct conceptions were isolated, ranging from the least sophisticated--environment as a place--to the most inclusive and expansive--environment and people in a relationship of mutual sustainability. An important qualitative difference was found between conceptions that treat the environment as an object and relational conceptions. The implications of these findings for environmental education are discussed.     

Student connections with academic texts: a phenomenographic study of reading

Concerns about the ability of post-secondary students to read scholarly materials are well documented in the literature. A key aspect of reading at the deeper level expected of these students is connecting new information to prior knowledge. This study is based on an activity where students were explicitly required to make such connections as part of an in-class workshop on reading. Phenomenographic analysis of these connections showed that students could establish links between the scholarly article and their personal and academic knowledge. It also showed that students read at both surface and deep levels, making connections to the words in the text or on a deeper level, to the meaning of the text. These insights suggest ways of encouraging students to deepen their engagement with academic texts.     

A self-determination approach to understanding students' motivation in project work

The use of project work (PW) or project-based learning has escalated in Singapore since its inception by the Ministry of Education in the year 2000. There is however little information on students' motivation, and their experience of PW over time. This study sought to identify homogeneous groups of students with distinct perceived locus of causality (PLOC) profiles using a cluster analytic approach, and to examine group differences in their perceived psychological needs, emotions, metacognition, and perceived skills learned in PW over time. Four distinct clusters of students were identified. The “high self-determined/low controlled” group was the most adaptive cluster, and the “low self-determined/high controlled” group was the least adaptive cluster. The study affirms that the self-determination theory (SDT) can provide important insights into the motivational processes in PW. It establishes that students' motivational regulations and their perceived needs satisfaction at the start of PW are related to their experience of and learning in PW.     

An in-depth study of two individual students' understanding of electric and magnetic fields

This paper describes and compares individual students' understanding of a range of concepts associated with electric and magnetic fields. Data are drawn from written tests and detailed interviews of students from a first-year university physics class. The case study approach makes it possible to examine in depth the interaction between conceptions of various related topics in the students' minds. The theoretical framework of the SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) Taxonomy, as elaborated in a previous paper on this topic area by the author, is further advanced here. Using this framework, the paper provides insight into a more detailed view of students' understanding of fields, which in turn casts light on possible teaching strategies for fields and related topics.     

Textbook treatments and students' understanding of acceleration

This paper has been accepted for publication in theJournal of Research in Science Teaching. Copies are available from Gloria Dall'Alba, ERADU, RMIT, GPO Box 2476V, Melbourne. Vic. 3001.     

Textbook treatments and students' understanding of acceleration

A single science textbook often provides the syllabus for courses at upper secondary and tertiary levels, and may be used as a principal source of information or explanation. The research reported in this article challenges such practices. The ways in which the concept, acceleration, is treated in physics textbooks is compared with understandings of the concept demonstrated by final-year secondary (Year 12) and first-year university students. Some students' understandings are shown to be incomplete in ways that parallel misleading or inaccurate textbook treatments of the concept. In addition to misleading or inaccurate statements, the limitations of some textbook treatments of acceleration were found to include: lack of attempts to make explicit relationships with other concepts, failure to point out when it is appropriate to use particular definitions or that an alternative definition might be more appropriate in specific situations, inclusion of operational definitions without conceptual explanations, and a focus on quantitative treatments while overlooking the development of qualitative understanding. Two principal aspects that distinguished the ways in which the students understood acceleration were identified: (a) the relation between acceleration and velocity; and (b) the relation between acceleration and force(s). The results of the study have implications for teaching and, in particular, for the use of textbooks in teaching. These implications are discussed in the article.     

Characterizing undergraduate engineering students' understanding of sustainability

Engineering professionals in Australia and internationally are coming under increased pressure to practise engineering more sustainably. In response to this pressure, the Institution of Engineers, Australia, has updated the procedure for accreditation of the engineering baccalaureate to ensure inclusion of sustainability learning. In order to graduate, Australian engineering students must now 'understand sustainability'. This paper reports on a theoretical synthesis of the literature on sustainability and understanding, and an empirical investigation into sustainability conceptions held by a group of chemical engineering undergraduate students at the University of Sydney. During the theoretical synthesis we examined what it might mean for a student to understand sustainability by deriving a suite of sustainability principles and describing the component parts of an expert-like understanding of sustainability. In the empirical investigation, students' written responses to the question 'In your own words, what is sustainability?' were analysed using a modified version of the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy. The SOLO analysis revealed broad structural variation in the way our students understood sustainability.     

Early learning and awareness of division: A phenomenographic approach

Interviews with 72 pupils in grade 2–6 were used to investigate awareness of the relation between situation and computation in simple quotitive and partitive division problems as informally and formally experienced. The research approach was phenomenographic. Most second graders counted or made drawings, and related these methods to the situation described in the problems. Several of the older children, on the contrary, experienced a conflict between computation and situation in partitive division. Most second graders, but also some third, fourth and sixth graders, could still not carry out repeated addition, the precursor of multiplication. The data are finally viewed from two theoretical perspectives other than phenomenography. It was concluded that formal division, understood as related to everyday situations, only develops in interplay with informal knowledge.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mediating the message: television programme design and students' understanding

The research reported represents a non-standard approach to basic research on educational television, in that it uses qualitative methods to describe learning and to illuminate which programme features are important. It was based on observation, interview and test data from five groups of 20–30 Open University students, each watching a social science television programme as part of their course. A qualitative analysis of students' summaries of the programmes showed that only half achieved the intended learning outcomes. A further analysis of the students' responses to key extracts showed that this is more likely to be because of programme structure than because of presentational quality. The research design and results are related to similar studies on students learning from text, and contrasted with the methodology adopted in other studies of the effects of educational television.     

Economic aspects of citizenship education: an investigation of students' understanding

In 2002 education for citizenship will become a statutory requirement in English secondary schools for the first time. Broad guidelines which have been issued to schools include some elements of economic understanding, although this aspect of citizenship has attracted little attention in public debate. Moreover, relatively little is known about students' current thinking on these aspects of citizenship. Our article addresses this gap in current knowledge through reporting results from a large-scale (over 1000 responses) survey of 15- and 17-year-old students. A draft survey was trialled in May 2000 and revised in the light of students' responses and discussion at a research seminar in July 2000. The questionnaire focuses on students' understanding of, and attitude towards, aspects of taxation, government spending, employment and inflation. These results may usefully inform planning for programmes of citizenship education and they can also provide a point of reference for subsequent evaluation of those programmes.