Transdisciplinary teaching for sustainable development in a whole school project

The study investigates the transdisciplinary teaching of education for sustainable development (ESD) with a global dimension at an upper secondary school in Sweden. The purpose was to analyse and describe variations in how nine teachers in different subject matters experienced collaborative teaching in the context of a whole school educational development project. A total of 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted and analysed using phenomenographic method and contextual analysis. Two main approaches to transdisciplinary teaching were identified among the teachers: one where teachers contributed but struggled with transdisciplinarity, and the other where they displayed ownership and were able to reconceptualise the project as a whole. Overall, teachers worked in the project with deep-level processing for learning ESD in an integrated manner in the transdisciplinary framework. However, they also experienced tensions between their resources and capabilities, and the challenges they faced in the project.     

Teachers’ and principals’ reflections on student participation in a school science and technology competition

Background The European Union asks for renewed pedagogies in schools according to teaching strategies and necessary competences for the twenty-first century, instead of the often-used transmissive pedagogies. The national Swedish competition in science and technology for grade eight, The Technology Eight, provides an opportunity for teachers to work with instructional strategies in line with suggested pedagogies.

Purpose To investigate teachers’ and principals’ reflections on the competition in schools.

Sample Seventeen secondary school teachers and three principals from districts in the south-western part of Sweden participated in the study. All teachers had long experience of the competition, and their classes had reached at least the regional finals during the last year.

Design and methods Semi-structured interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and then analysed using content analysis. Focus was put on why the teachers decided to participate, how the teachers integrated the competition in their education and roles of the principals.

Results There were various reasons for participating in the competition. Teachers reported development of twenty-first-century skills such as better cooperation between the students. They also noticed an increased interest in science and technology and how learning in the subjects was stimulated. Furthermore, the teachers found participation in the competition to be positive for them too. They integrated the competition in ordinary education and gained teaching ideas as well as found connections to the curriculum. Participating in the competition seemed to be a tradition in most of the schools. The principals’ role was to facilitate the organisation around the competition and to provide social support.

Conclusions Participation in a school competition was considered as an instructional strategy with several positive outcomes. Use of this strategy can be supported by earlier suggestions to use pedagogies that are opposite to transmissive methods, enhancing students’ development of important skills for the future.     

Enhancing primary science: an exploration of teachers’ own ideas of solutions to challenges in inquiry- and context-based teaching

ABSTRACT

Studies of inquiry- and context-based science education (IC-BaSE) have shown that teachers find these approaches problematic. In this study, 12 primary school teachers’ reflections on challenges related to IC-BaSE are explored. The aim of the study was to investigate which challenges primary teachers experience when working with IC-BaSE and how these may be solved. Group discussions and individual portfolios were used for data collection. Content analysis showed that the challenges teachers experienced were mainly practical relating to: how to find contexts, lack of time, handling big classes, students working at different paces, handling materials, and the teachers' need of control. The teachers also presented their own ideas of solutions to the challenges.     

ADHD and reading disability in male adults: is there a connection?

The present study examined the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and reading disability (RD) in male adults. Participants were 120 men, of whom 24 were classified as having ADHD. The basis for the diagnosis was two self-report scales validated by interviews and background data. An extensive battery was used to assess phonological abilities and various aspects of reading skills. No differences were obtained between adults with and without ADHD on measures of either phonological processing skills or word decoding, indicating a low comorbidity with RD. This finding was valid even when different criteria were used to diagnose RD. However, the two groups differed in reading comprehension, with individuals with ADHD performing poorly in tests of reading comprehension. These results are compatible with the view that reading comprehension involves many of the higher cognitive control functions assumed to be impaired in ADHD. However, these attentional control functions are not critical to word recognition, which is determined by a more encapsulated phonological processing module. The pattern of associations between ADHD and RD observed in the present study is explained with reference to the differential attentional demands of the two aspects of reading.     

The Connection Between the Body and the Environment: a Changing View

Science & Education -     

The game within the game: girls' underperforming position in Physical Education

Since 1980 the Swedish compulsory school curriculum has stipulated that Physical Education (PE) should be taught co-ed and schools are legally required to promote gender equality. The latest evaluation of PE in Sweden shows that more boys than girls ranked the subject highly and that they had a higher level of activity during the PE lessons. Drawing on a case study, the aim of this article is to illuminate how games placed girls and boys in different subject positions. The logic governing the observed lessons was ‘proper game’, i.e. playing according to the official rules. Combined with hegemonic masculinity and the passivity of the teacher, this kind of logic resulted in the game being dominated by several dominant boys and by the ball-playing girls either being positioned or allowing themselves to be placed in situations in which they consistently underperformed. A gender category in late modernity, resting on hegemonic masculinity, can be seen as a cultural flashpoint that reflects problems in society rather than problems in the gym.     

Case-based learning in virtual groups – collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes in a virtual professional training course

This article analyzes the collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes of five groups that worked on two different complex cases in a virtual professional training course. In this asynchronous virtual learning environment, all knowledge management content was delivered virtually and collaboration took place through forums. To measure the effects of the problem solving activities, learners' contributions were analyzed with respect to four different problem solving activities: Two content-specific problem solving activities, namely gathering information and developing a solution, and two coordination-specific problem solving activities, namely planning the common approach and steering the interaction process. Results indicated that the learning process was dominated by two central activities: developing a solution and steering the interaction process. Furthermore, the results indicated that the groups with the more complex case used more overall problem solving activities than the groups with the less complex case. There was also a greater range of learning outcomes for learners with the more complex case than for learners with the less complex case. Finally, the number of overall problem solving activities for most of the successful groups was higher than for the less successful groups. Additionally, the more successful groups used more coordination-specific activities than content-specific activities during the problem solving process.     

Emotional anchoring and objectification in the media reporting on climate change

Using the framework of social representations theory--more precisely the concepts of anchoring and objectification--this article analyses the emotions on which the media reporting on climate change draws. Emotions are thereby regarded as discursive phenomena. A qualitative analysis of two series in Swedish media on climate change, one in a tabloid newspaper and one in public service television news, is presented showing how the verbal and visual representations are attached to emotions of fear, hope, guilt, compassion and nostalgia. It is further argued that emotional representations of climate change may on the one hand enhance public engagement in the issue, but on the other hand may draw attention away from climate change as the abstract, long-term phenomenon of a statistical character that it is.     

Correction to: The Connection Between the Body and the Environment: a Changing View

Science & Education - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-021-00195-1