From activity to transdisciplinarity and back again – preschool teachers’ reasoning about pedagogical goals

This study presents an analysis of preschool teachers’ reasoning about pedagogical goals. Of specific interest is how teachers in a Swedish and a Finnish context describe goals for children’s learning and how they describe them implementing these goals into their practice. The research question is thus: How are pedagogical goals perceived and enacted, in the thematic-oriented and play-based pedagogical practice of preschool? In-depth interviews were conducted with six preschool teachers, of which three expressed learning goals guiding their pedagogical work. The Variation Theory of learning is the guiding principle throughout the analysis, and reveals indirect and direct objects of learning and content for learning described by the three teachers. A deeper analysis of the features of these provides a comprehensive picture of pedagogical goals that are intertwined and move between activity goals, working goals and transdisciplinary goals. These results contribute to our understanding of the characteristics of preschool pedagogy and the complex pedagogical practice preschool entails.     

Swedes Can’t Swear: Making Fun at a Multiethnic Secondary School

During the last decade, Sweden has witnessed a significant increase in public attention concerning the following interrelated linguistic phenomena: (a) a linguistic style labelled “Rinkeby Swedish,” (b) specific “Rinkeby Swedish words” that have been perceived as disparaging in Swedish public debate, and (c) a specific young male immigrant identity indexed by this linguistic style. Drawing on ethnographically collected data and naturally occurring talk in a multi-ethnic Swedish upper secondary school, this article examines a possible shift in language ideology, whereby tabooed words and urban youth styles are not dismissed by the school institution but are incorporated in teaching activities. Furthermore, it is argued that there are reasons to look for other interactional accomplishments than solely identity in the use of urban youth styles. The article shows how identity may be used as a resource in the construction of social hierarchies as well as interactional enjoyment among some male students.     

Vision and Embodied Knowing: The Making of Floral Design

This article focuses on assessment actions in floristry education, addressing how interaction with flowers influences and mediates vocational knowing. Using video recordings from floristry education for adults, the article explores the interaction between teacher and student when assessing on-going work and performance as a way to frame the teacher’s seeing in situ. Influenced by conversation analysis and moment-by-moment methods ─ including talk, gestures, and flowers as resources ─ the findings contribute to a holistic perspective on vocational floristry knowing. Different features of vocational floristry knowing are detected as part of the content in assessment actions: (i) aesthetic standards reflected in suggestions made by the teacher and student, (ii) financial awareness as a way of seeing flowers, and (iii) the use of context and change of perspective to take the customer into account. The findings demonstrate situated floristry knowing in action, which is displayed when the teacher enables the student to visualise and understand professional vision of flowers, traditions, and standards.     

The case for investing in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): challenges and opportunities

Over the next two decades, sub-Saharan Africa will face substantial pressure to expand its secondary education system. This is driven by the current low development of secondary education compared to other world regions, continued rapid population growth, the increase in the enrolment and completion rates at the primary education level, and the upsurge in the demand for skills. This paper suggests that in order to help countries respond to these pressures, external partners should now increase their support for secondary education, in terms of academic as well as technical and vocational skills training. Given the attributes of the African economies and the continuing need for foundation skills, this paper argues that in the current situation, particularly the lower secondary level will have to be strengthened, in many cases through a longer basic education cycle for all. The necessary rapid expansion of secondary education will require substantial investments, and this paper discusses how aid allocation can be made more evidence-based and used in a more strategic way to make these investments more effective and sustainable. While aid will continue to have a role to play over the next decade especially in fragile states, in the long run it is African countries’ capacity to achieve sustained economic growth which will be the single most important factor determining their ability to meet the financing needs.     

Differential growth patterns in emerging reading skills of Turkish-German bilingual and German monolingual primary school students

Students from Turkish-speaking families are the largest minority language group in Germany. Yet, little is known about this group’s literacy development. Using data from a 3-year longitudinal study, we examined whether the same base reading skills are involved in early reading comprehension of 100 Turkish-German bilingual and 69 German monolingual children. We applied a basic theoretical model of reading development to examine how emerging literacy develops for monolingual compared to bilingual children. Both the bilingual and monolingual children in this sample developed the investigated base reading skills at the same rate. However, the relations among phonological awareness, German vocabulary, and word decoding showed differential patterns in the development of German reading comprehension skills for the two groups: monolingual children appeared to make use of their phonological awareness skills more, whereas reading comprehension depended more on vocabulary skills for bilingual readers. Our findings indicate that bilingual emerging readers require specialized models of reading development to account for their unique routes into reading comprehension. The results of the study point to a need for increased attention to vocabulary building in the early phases of literacy acquisition for bilingual children.     

Ambiguity as a motor for communication—Differences between hearing and deaf students’ ways of reasoning about energy

Ambiguity in group discussions as a resource for communication is studied. How students, aged 13–15 years, elaborate on the concept energy through dialogue is described. Group interviews were conducted with 15 hearing and 20 deaf students. Three probes were used to initiate discussions on different meanings of energy. The results show that the dialogues are less elaborated for deaf learners compared with hearing learners. It is argued that dialogues between hearing students have a greater chance of becoming ‘joint productive activity’, since the ambiguity of the word energy in Swedish lays the ground for shared meaning-making. To deaf learners, the ambiguity between the Swedish word and the signs used produces uncertainty and puts an end to further dialogue.     

Approaches to teaching in thematic work: early childhood teachers’ integration of mathematics and art

Thematic work that integrates different knowledge areas is considered suitable for developing young children’s knowledge and skills in early childhood education. This paper reports evidence from a survey of early childhood teachers’ work with mathematics and art integrated in thematic work. In this study, we aim to explore how teachers perceive mathematics learning and teaching integrated with art. Data for analysis were collected from a questionnaire answered by 27 early childhood teachers from Finland and Sweden. Influenced by a sociocultural theoretical framework, the analysis concerns the teachers’ expressed goals for learning and their strategies for achieving these goals. The analysis reveals qualitatively different approaches to the learning goals addressed by the teachers – process-oriented, product-oriented, development-oriented and providing awareness – which, respectively, seem to generate different meanings of mathematical learning integrated with art. This study offers an overview of teachers’ approaches to teaching mathematics and art in thematic work, and of how different approaches may influence what mathematical meaning is offered to children to explore.     

Flow biosensing and sampling in indirect electrochemical detection

Miniaturization in biological analyses has several advantages, such as sample volume reduction and fast response time. The integration of miniaturized biosensors within lab-on-a-chip setups under flow conditions is highly desirable, not only because it simplifies process handling but also because measurements become more robust and operator-independent. In this work, we study the integration of flow amperometric biosensors within a microfluidic platform when analyte concentration is indirectly measured. As a case study, we used a platinum miniaturized glucose biosensor, where glucose is enzymatically converted to [Formula: see text] that is oxidized at the electrode. The experimental results produced are strongly coupled to a theoretical analysis of fluid dynamic conditions affecting the electrochemical response of the sensor. We verified that the choice of the inlet flow rate is a critical parameter in flow biosensors, because it affects both glucose and [Formula: see text] transport, to and from the electrode. We identify optimal flow rate conditions for accurate sensing at high time resolution. A dimensionless theoretical analysis allows the extension of the results to other sensing systems according to fluid dynamic similarity principles. Furthermore, we developed a microfluidic design that connects a sampling unit to the biosensor, in order to decouple the sampling flow rate from that of the actual measurement.