Fragments of an economic habitus. Conceptions of economic phenomena in freshmen and seniors

The article reports on parts of an empirical longitudinal study. Students of engineering, business administration, medicine and psychology have been interviewed at the beginning and at the end of their education. The focus in the present article is on the students of business administration. Two of the questions in the interview asked for the student’s conceptions about the most prominent contemporary economic problem and the cause of famine in the underdeveloped countries. The results show that the students of business administration to a large extent seem to change form an initially held political, distributionoriented perspective on the two questions to a more depoliticized efficiency perspective. This change means, in the case of the more general question about the most prominent economic problem that the initial emphasis on the uneven distribution of economic resources either in an international or in a national perspective in many cases was replaced by a stress on a more efficient utilization of resources or the necessity of more incentives for individual or collective initiatives. This tendency is not found among the students of medicine. In the second question the initially fragmented reasons for famine in terms of the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries decreased in frequency leading to a stress on unfavorable conditions for food production or the new Maltusian notion of the different rates of population growth and increase in food production.     

PHR in health and social care for older people – regional development through learning within and across organisations

The study draws on findings from a series of seven participatory action research projects in community care for older people carried out over a period of eight years in 20 municipalities in southern Sweden. The analysis here looks at social impact across administrative levels and geographical scales. Different professional groups and care workers in community care participated, crossing divides between social work and health care. The participatory methods all involved a phase of individual reflection, a phase of reflection in practice with colleagues and mixed groups at the regional level, including unit managers and directors in some stages. Impacts concerned interprofessional learning and improved conditions for collaboration in care for older people across institutional boundaries as well as organisational learning across the municipalities. The action research approach was characterised by intensive work with values, empowering low-status professional groups. Social impacts were achieved beyond each project by benefitting from the multi-stakeholder design, using the structure of the organisations and the regional R&D department of the Association of Local Authorities. Over time, the different projects thus contributed to regional development ‘from below’. Nevertheless, employer perspectives tended to determine which conclusions from the projects were eventually implemented and prioritised. Continued reflective dialogue meetings between professional groups are therefore, needed as part of regular work processes. Local and regional structures need forms of autonomy that allow them to implement recommendations from participatory projects. Finally, employee perspectives need to be reflected in decision-making at all levels, particularly including low-status groups of care staff.     

Portraits of PBL: students' experiences of the characteristics of problem-based learning in physiotherapy,computer engineering and psychology

The present study is part of acomprehensive research project with the generalaims of comparing how problem-based learning isrealised in three different professionaleducational programmes. The specific aims ofthis study are to describe and analyse howstudents in the three different programmesconceive of the meaning of problem-basedlearning and how they experience their studieswithin a problem-based learning programme. ThePBL programmes are a Bachelor's programme inPhysiotherapy, a Master's programme inPsychology, and a Master's programme inComputer Engineering. Data were analysedqualitatively. The results reveal differencesin how the students in the three programmesconceive of their autonomy as learners,co-operation with their counterparts and theauthenticity of the learning task. The findingspossibly also reflect the taken-for-grantedperspectives of knowledge, embedded in thecultures of the professional practices and thescientific disciplines to which the programmespertain.     

Changes in Mentor Efficacy and Perceptions Following Participation in a Youth Mentoring Program

Although mentoring programs are increasing in popularity as a preventative intervention strategy for youth, little is known about the experience from the mentor’s perspective. In this study, we describe a longitudinal assessment of 41 mentors, including 13 men and 28 women (M_age?=?21.93?years, SD?=?3.21) working with at-risk youth in a school-based mentoring program. Before starting the program, mentor perceptions, motives, and efficacy were assessed and again after three and six months of mentoring to measure change across time. At the end of the program, mentors evaluated the relationship and rated perceived benefits. Mentors experienced significant changes in perceptions and efficacy across time and changes predicted relationship satisfaction and perceived benefits. Recommendations to support mentors and develop sustainable and satisfying mentoring relationships are provided.     

DESIGN, DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MODEL OF PROBLEM SOLVING FOR EGYPTIAN SCIENCE CLASSES

Educators and policymakers envision the future of education in Egypt as enabling learners to acquire scientific inquiry and problem-solving skills. In this article, we describe the validation of a model for problem solving and the design of instruments for evaluating new teaching methods in Egyptian science classes. The instruments were based on an established model for problem solving and were designed to assess seventh grade students’ problem solving, experimental strategy knowledge, achievement and motivation towards science. The test for assessing students’ knowledge has been developed based on the topic, density and buoyancy which will be taught in seventh grade in a later intervention study. The instruments were partly self-developed and partly adapted from newly performed studies on strategy knowledge and problem solving in Germany. All instruments were translated into Arabic; the translation process and quality control are described. In order to determine the quality of the instruments, 44 students in Egypt completed the questionnaires and tests. The study’s aim to develop and validate the instruments did require an ad hoc and typical sample which was drawn from an accessible population. Accordingly, the characteristics of the sample are described. Data were analysed according to the classical test theory, but to underpin the results, the instruments were additionally analysed using the even stronger Rasch model. The findings demonstrated the reliability of the items and aspects of validity. In addition, this study showed how test items can be successfully developed and adapted in an international study and applied in a different language.     

Healing, Mental Energy in the Physics Classroom: Energy Conceptions and Trust in Complementary and Alternative Medicine in Grade 10–12 Students

Lay conceptions of energy often conflict with scientific knowledge, hinder science learning and scientific literacy, and provide a basis for ungrounded beliefs. In a sample of Finnish upper secondary school students, energy was attributed with features of living and animate beings and thought of as a mental property. These ontologically confused conceptions (OCC) were associated with trust in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), and independent of scientifically valid conceptions. Substance-based energy conceptions followed the correlational pattern of OCC, rather than scientific conceptions. OCC and CAM decreased both during the regular school physics curriculum and after a lesson targeted at the ontological confusions. OCC and CAM were slightly less common among students with high actively open-minded thinking, low trust in intuition and high need for cognition. The findings are discussed in relation to the goals of scientific education.     

Multilingual students’ use of translanguaging in science classrooms

ABSTRACT

This study describes multilingual students’ authentic use of their first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom, from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were documented by four video cameras and four audio recorders, while field notes and different types of students’ texts and other teaching materials were also collected. In order investigate how language operates, and to realise the meaning semantically, we analysed the students’ use of both first and second language to tie paradigmatic relations, and how they move in linguistic loops between languages and discourses. The results illustrate the ways in which a translanguaging science classroom constitutes a resource in joint negotiations of the scientific content and its related language for multilingual students, and benefits the students’ ability to relate and contextualise the science content to prior experience. The creation of translanguaging science classrooms, in which students’ experiences and diverse cultural and linguistic resources interweave with school science, and in which multilingual students are enabled and encouraged to use all available language resources, has important implications for science education.     

Students as learners through the eyes of their teachers in Rwandan higher education

In this study, we aim to explore and thematically analyze higher education teachers’ notions about the most important problems related to students’ learning, including the teachers’ notions about the approaches to learning adopted by students. The study was carried out in Rwanda with 25 university teachers engaged in group interviews. Inspired by the concepts of metaphors for learning and approaches to learning, five main categories of students’ learning problems were identified: dependence, physical and economic resources, experience of a deep approach to learning, reading culture, and previous preparation for higher education. These problems are interrelated and point to the need to understand study levels in education systems as interdependent.     

Regulated childhood: equivalence with variation

The overriding aim of this article is to make a contribution to the discussion on individual development plans (IDPs) in Sweden as an expression of a regulated childhood and institutional practice. Individual development plans are seen as a phenomenon linked to the emergence of an auditing society. In sum, children are studied as subjects in relation to content, form and assessment in the individual development plans. The IDP material was collected in October 2006 in three urban municipalities and one rural municipality in southern Sweden. The three urban municipalities comprised municipal areas that were ethnically relatively homogenous and heterogenous, respectively. The data consist of 82 randomly chosen plans for children in preschool and preschool classes, and the method is based on textual analysis. An overall picture of a multicontextual regulation of childhood and institutional practice gradually emerges. The analysis can be summarized in distinctive principal tracks, or normalities, marked by equivalence with variation     

Learning for professional life: Student teachers' and graduated teachers' views of learning,responsibility and collaboration

The focus of this study is on how final-semester students and newly-graduated teachers experience the formal objectives of teacher education, with a particular view of the concepts of learning, responsibility and collaboration. The ways of experiencing these concepts varied from conceptions in which only one dimension is discerned from in the student teachers group to conceptions in which several dimensions of the phenomena are discerned in the graduate teachers group.