Making sense of iconic symbols: a study of preschool children conducting a refuse-sorting task

This article is part of a larger project focusing upon explanatory illustrations that children encounter in pre- and primary school education. The research questions concerned (a) how preschool children make sense of iconic symbols when placing items of refuse on illustrations of refuse bins in a sorting task and (b) what stumbling blocks they encounter when interpreting these symbols. Video data were collected with 30 children between four and five?years of age. From the children’s verbal and non-verbal interactions, four different categories of sense-making were constructed: by material, by object type, by appearance and by function. Three stumbling blocks were identified. The first had to do with giving the symbols a different logical meaning to the intended one; the second related to what materials the different refuse items were made of; the third was being able to stick to one correct way of interpreting each symbol.     

Premises,Promises: Connection,community, and communion in online education

This paper is an essay on the discursive politics of education. Data from a small study, combined with a review of the related literature, suggest that the overarching concept “community” lacks coherence when used in online education. At least three contrasting forms of connection can be discerned: communion among participants, exchange between participants, and attachment to an ideal. In turn, we believe that this incoherence is not a trivial semantic problem, but rather a central concern in current efforts to remodel, reform and globalize distance education.     

A teachable-agent-based game affording collaboration and competition: evaluating math comprehension and motivation

This paper presents an educational game in mathematics based on an apprenticeship model using a teachable agent, as well as an evaluative study of how the game affects (1) conceptual understanding and (2) attitudes towards mathematics. In addition, we discuss how collaborative and competitive affordances of the game may affect understanding and motivation. 19 students played the game in pairs once a week during math lessons for 7?weeks (the game-playing group) while another 19 students followed the regular curriculum (the control group). Math comprehension scores increased significantly for the game-playing group but not the control group (p?<?0.05). However, there was no significant difference in attitude change between the two groups. Post hoc analyses indicated that game-playing primarily affected students?? confidence in explaining math to a peer, but not their enjoyment of doing so. Collaborative and competitive activities seem to carry a strong motivational influence for students to play the game.     

To Play or Not to Play—That Is the Question: Computer Use Within Three Swedish Preschools

Research Findings: This article is about computer use in 3 Swedish preschools with a specific focus on the preschool teacher's way of managing this use. Data were collected in 3 preschools serving children from 3 to 5 years of age. The data consisted of approximately 13 hr of video-documented observations and interviews with 9 teachers. The study is an example of a situated evaluation, which is an evaluation that takes place within an institutional practice such as a preschool. A key question is how this new artifact should be used in preschool activities. Practice or Policy: The study revealed how political and theoretical visions may be realized in everyday preschool practices. The teacher's approach to computer use was shown to be determined by a combination of the teacher's assumptions about the possibilities of computers and the dominant underlying principle or rationale at work in the preschool. It is argued that the computer is treated differently depending on whether a caring, nurturing, or teaching rationale dominates. It is also argued that the dominant rationale produces three different meaning-shaping practices; in the study, these are labeled protective, supporting, and guiding. These environments afford quite different possibilities for children to learn about and from the computer.     

Internet-Based Guidance in Quasi-Markets for Education in Sweden

This paper presents some recentSwedish experiences of how publicly financedInternet portals are used as a means ofproviding guidance on educational issues. Thepaper analyses the role of technology,information and further forms of support toguidance seekers, with special reference totheir role in the development of quasi-marketsin education in Sweden. The author concludesthat in quasi-markets Internet-based guidancecan assume a twofold role: first as a tool forproviding guidance according to moretraditional views; and secondly, as anelectronic intermediary and market-maker. Thequasi-market arrangements in Sweden coverprimary, lower and upper secondary forms ofeducation, which gives the Swedish experienceparticular value as a basis for discussing therole of Internet-based guidance inquasi-markets.     

Learning from and Reacting to School Inspection – Two Swedish Case Narratives

Throughout Europe, school inspection has become a visible means of governing education. This education and inspection policy is mediated, brokered, interpreted, and learned through networked activities where the global/European meet the national/local, giving national and local “uptake” a variety of characteristics. We explore the local features of this “uptake” as processes of learning in the interaction between schools and inspectors in Sweden. Drawing theoretically on Jacobsson’s notion of governing as increasingly done through meditative activities and on Leontiev’s activity theory, we suggest that school actors learn compliance through diverse emotions provoked by inspection processes in different local settings. Based on observations of inspections, interviews with teachers, head teachers and inspectors, documents, reports, and decisions, we portray how governing education is done through inspection processes in two Swedish schools. The case narratives underscore the importance of local context in these governing and learning processes.     

The lesson as a pedagogic text: A case study of lesson designs

In the 19th century, a shift in classroom technology from monitoring to recitation was staged in several European countries. The analysis draws on late 19th- and early 20th century lesson plans that were produced as part of the final teacher examination by students at two Swedish teacher training colleges, in order to explore how the lesson was restructured as a pedagogic text in the course of this transformation. The argument focuses upon the structure and transformation of the lesson designs, the discursive pattern of the text, the narrative involved, and the message or moral reflected in the text. The inquiry demonstrates that a classroom technology originally advocated in order to enhance the teacher's control of pupils and to influence children's minds, thoughts and morality became one instrument in the creation of a school for symbolic representation and meaning-making in a rapidly changing world of modernity.     

Spatially Oriented and Person Oriented Thinking—Implications for User Interface Design

Identifying aspects of individual cognitive variation of relevance for the design of instructional multimedia is argued to be an important research task. A study is presented in which two candidates, person oriented thinking and spatially oriented thinking, were explored. Two different user interfaces to an application, one with a person related format and the other with a spatial format, were used, and participants were asked to choose between the two versions and to motivate their choice. Two main tendencies appeared. Interface preferences tended to correlate with style of thought as well as with gender.     

Dynamics and control of the shape and size of a sitting drop-like meniscus, occurring in single-crystal growth

This paper concerns the following topics: dependence of shape and size of a static meniscus sitting like a drop on the controllable part of pressure difference across the free surface; stability of static menisci; procedure for creation of a stable static meniscus, appropriate for the growth of a rod with constant radius; temperature gradients and crystallization front displacement; equation for crystal dimension change rate; evolution of crystal radius and of the level of crystallization front; and control of cross-section during growth. This kind of problems appears in semiconductor single-crystal rod growth from a melt by edge-defined film-fed growth (EFG) technique. The novel case where the upper radius of the meniscus is larger than the shaper radius and the meniscus is sitting like a drop is analyzed. For some of the topics numerical illustrations are given. The obtained results can be useful in experiment planning and technology design of single-crystal rod growth by the EFG method. With this aim this study was undertaken.