Undergraduate students’ actorship in studying an educational sciences course in a Swedish context

The study aimed to investigate how students in an introductory educational sciences course experienced and understood their own actorship during the course, in relation to conditions for learning created by the teachers. The analyses were based on students’ answers to an evaluation questionnaire that produced both quantitative and qualitative data. Those students who experienced opportunities to influence the course activities also stated that they had contributed to the development of the course to a greater extent than did those who experienced no such opportunities. There was no correlation between not feeling informed about the conditions for the course and seeking complementary information. The analysis also generated five different categories based on how the students viewed their own actorship, varying from ‘no actorship since it is not meaningful’ to ‘Real actorship exists’. The results are discussed in relation to methodological reflections and as implications for increasing students’ actorship.     

“Whatever Happened to the Social Dimension?” Aspects of Learning in a Distance-based Teacher Training Programme

In this article we discuss distance-based teacher trainees' understandings of learning and education in a computerised learning environment. Educational research today often stresses the importance of a social dimension in learning and education and computerised learning environments are said to create and fulfil the social dimension in on-campus education as well as in distance education. This social dimension of learning and education is investigated, in a Swedish distance-based teacher training programme supported by ICT, through semi-structured interviews with 19 teacher trainees. The study shows that there is a complex relationship between the use of the computerised learning environment and the physical meetings in the programme. One conclusion is that, even though theories emphasise the social dimension of learning through participation, teacher trainees view participation with others as important primarily in relation to social aspects of well-being and not in relation to learning. The use of ICT for creating a community of learners through participation seems to individualise the students' learning rather than bringing them together in their learning.     

Rhetorical meta-language to promote the development of students’ writing skills and subject matter understanding

Background: Feedback is one of the most significant factors for students’ development of writing skills. For feedback to be successful, however, students and teachers need a common language – a meta-language – for discussing texts. Not least because in science education such a meta-language might contribute to improve writing training and feedback-giving.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore students’ perception of teachers’ feedback given on their texts in two genres, and to suggest how writing training and feedback-giving could become more efficient.

Sample: In this study were included 44 degree project students in biology and molecular biology, and 21 supervising teachers at a Swedish university.

Design and methods: The study concerned students’ writing about their degree projects in two genres: scientific writing and popular science writing. The data consisted of documented teacher feedback on the students’ popular science texts. It also included students’ and teachers’ answers to questionnaires about writing and feedback. All data were collected during the spring of 2012. Teachers’ feedback, actual and recalled – by students and teachers, respectively – was analysed and compared using the so-called Canons of rhetoric.

Results: While the teachers recalled the given feedback as mainly positive, most students recalled only negative feedback. According to the teachers, suggested improvements concerned firstly the content, and secondly the structure of the text. In contrast, the students mentioned language style first, followed by content.

Conclusions: The disagreement between students and teachers regarding how and what feedback was given on the students texts confirm the need of improved strategies for writing training and feedback-giving in science education. We suggest that the rhetorical meta-language might play a crucial role in overcoming the difficulties observed in this study. We also discuss how training of writing skills may contribute to students’ understanding of their subject matter.     

Structural and Process Quality of Danish Preschools: Direct and Indirect Associations With Children’s Growth in Language and Preliteracy Skills

Structural quality in childcare centers is considered a precondition for process quality, which in turn is related to children’s outcomes. However, the evidence on relations between structural and process quality is mixed. Moreover, despite strong theoretical claims, empirical evidence supporting the indirect relation of structural features through process quality on child outcomes is scarce. The current study contributes to the knowledge by (a) investigating the direct relations of structural teacher and classroom features with growth in children’s language and preliteracy skills in a sample of more than 3,000 children, (b) studying the associations of process quality with children’s outcomes using the widely used Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K observational measure among more than 400 teachers, and (c) testing indirect effects of structural quality through process quality on growth in children’s skills. Process quality was generally directly positively associated with gains in children’s language and preliteracy skills, whereas structural quality showed few direct relations. In addition, the average level of children’s initial language and preliteracy skills were positively related to gains, as was classrooms’ proportion of non-Danish children (indirectly through process quality). The results illustrate the complexities of relations between structural and process quality and children’s outcomes and warrant further research.     

Exploring the interplay between the motivational climate and goal orientation in predicting maximal oxygen uptake

Drawing upon achievement goal theory, this study explored the interplay between the perceived motivational climate, achievement goals and objective measurements of maximal oxygen uptake (VO_2max). The results of a study of 123 individuals from three Norwegian military academies revealed that under the condition of a high-performance orientation there is a stronger positive relationship between performance climate and VO_2max for individuals reporting a low (rather than high)-mastery orientation. Furthermore, we found that for individuals with a high-mastery orientation there is a stronger positive relationship between mastery climate and VO_2max for individuals reporting a low (rather than high)-performance orientation. These findings contribute to achievement goal theory by providing support for an interactionist person–environment fit perspective. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Negotiating Intelligence,Nerdiness, and Status in Physics Master’s studies

Research in Science Education - Motivated by widespread concerns for representation and equity in physics education, this study investigates negotiations of identity positions of master’s...     

Sex differences in achievement goals: do school subjects matter?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Many studies have already found differences between male and female students in various motivational variables. With regard to the stereotypes...     

Diversifying Likes

News sharing and commenting are arguably some of the most interesting aspects of how news is consumed and interacted with online. Finding answers to questions regarding who engages in these ways, what type of content gets engaged with, and why certain items are shared and commented upon but not others, are of the utmost importance for those who want to navigate the complex echo system of online news flows. The paper at hand addresses the latter two of the three posed questions—what gets shared or commented on, and why—in the context of the social networking site Facebook. Detailing the influences of Reactions, an expansion of the “Like” button, launched during the spring of 2016, the presented analysis finds that Reactions such as “Love”, “Haha”, “Wow”, “Sad” and “Angry” emerge as somewhat unpopular compared to the original “Like” functionality. Moreover, while more positive forms of Reactions appear to have a hampering effect on the willingness of news consumers on Facebook to engage by means of sharing and commenting, more negative varieties of Facebook Reactions appear to yield adverse influences.     

Education in the Sudan: the privileging of an Islamic discourse

This article examines the educational discourse in the part of the Sudan administered by the Government of the Sudan. It first analyses the value system upon which the Sudanese education is based by focusing on the nature of Islamism. Such a discussion is necessary because the dominant discourse is a discourse where power and Islamic theocracy legitimise each other and spill over into the educational discourse. Given the ethnic and religious complexity in the Sudan the imposition of a fundamentalist Islamic discourse is fiercely contested. The second part of the article, therefore, discusses the educational discourse of the government and relates it to the oppositional discourses in the country. It pays particular attention to the homogenising efforts of the dominant discourse to eradicate difference as a constituting factor in the Sudanese education system. The attempts to recognise difference have not led to a fundamental negotiation of the consequences of Islamism in the official school system.     

The continuity of learning in a translanguaging science classroom

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This article aims to explore and clarify how students’ use of first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom (TSC) may affect the...