Directional Factors in Group Work. A Study of Two School Groups 1

Stymne, I. 1982. Directional Factors in Group Work. A Study of Two School Groups. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 26, 77‐94. A conceptual scheme of directional factors was sought in two work groups of teenage school children. The occurrence of exploratory sequences related to the different directional factors was also analysed. The two groups were videotaped, one while making a poster for a youth organization and the other while discussing the outline for a play. The utterances of each group were analysed and categorised into directional factors according to a simple model. Stimuli which initiated exploratory sequences were found for all directional factors when there was a problem to be solved or a decision to be made in relation to that factor. However, a good deal of behaviour could be seen as rule‐governed or routinised in relation to various directional factors rather than to exploratory sequences. The consequences of a lack of exploratory sequences in group work are briefly discussed.

     

The Development of Word‐decoding Skills in Young Readers

Most of the research on the acquisition of word‐decoding skills has almost exclusively focused on the ability to read words in isolation. The purpose of this article is to extend our knowledge to the independent role of phonological and orthographic word‐decoding skills in the reading tasks which children encounter in school. The data were quite consistent with the general core of models suggesting that children first become proficient in phonological decoding then gradually shift towards a more direct orthographic‐decoding strategy. As such, these findings have helped to generalize models of the acquisition of word‐decoding skills to reading comprehension.     

How Simple is the Simple View of Reading?

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided into sub-components, and the contribution from non-verbal ability and general processing speed was also studied. The results demonstrated that decoding made the largest contribution to reading ability for children with reading difficulties, while language comprehension contributed the most for children with typical reading ability. The contribution of non-verbal ability was not significant, and general processing speed only made a significant contribution to decoding for typical children. The two factors in the Simple View of Reading, decoding and comprehension, together explained less of the variance in reading ability for children with reading difficulties than for children with typical reading ability.     

Group size and organisational conditions for children’s learning in preschool: a teacher perspective

Background:?There is a limited amount of research about group size in preschool, and how it impacts on teachers’ working conditions and their ability to support children’s learning and knowledge development in line with curriculum intentions.

Purpose:?From a perspective on quality, this article examines the organisational conditions for children’s learning in preschool in relation to group size. The questions at issue are: how do teachers explain how they organise the child group and the learning environment in preschool, and why?

Sample:?The sample consists of 12 preschools from different parts of Sweden. The preschools selected for the study are stratified in order to represent small and large group sizes in Swedish preschools as defined by the Swedish National Agency for Education. The sample contains both urban and rural regions and represents districts that differ geographically, demographically, ethnically, and which include varied socioeconomic structures. The 12 preschools had children in three age groupings: 1–3, 3–5 or 1–5. The number of children in the participating preschools ranged from 12 children to 45 children, with seven of the preschools having more than 30 children in their groups.

Design and method:?The article is based on interactionist perspectives, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, a critical ecology of the early childhood profession, theories of children’s learning, and four dimensions of pedagogical quality. Together, these theoretical perspectives contribute to an understanding of the relationships between policy issues, educational goals, group size and teachers’ competence in organising and creating conditions for children’s learning. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with two teachers from each of the 12 preschools. The interviews lasted between 40–60 minutes and were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The analytical process was conducted in three steps and can be described as an analytical process of abduction. The four dimensions of pedagogical quality were used as analytical lenses to discern and understand critical aspects related to the teachers’ understanding of group size.

Result: Irrespective of group size, most of the children participate in different group constellations throughout the day, some organised by the teachers and some by the children themselves. Teachers’ competence to organise the children in such ways that good conditions for learning were created, differed between preschools, and depended on the teachers’ approach, which can be described as either intentional or unintentional learning.

Conclusion: Teachers’ organisational approaches influence the quality of the preschool and conditions for children’s learning in distinct ways.     

Learning arithmetic outdoors in junior high school – influence on performance and self-regulating skills

This study aims to explore the influence of outdoor teaching among students, aged 13, on arithmetic performance and self-regulation skills as previous research concerning outdoor mathematics learning is limited. This study had a quasi-experimental design. An outdoor and a traditional group answered a test and a self-regulation skills questionnaire before and after a 10 weeks unit in arithmetic. Findings suggest differences in changes in academic performance between the groups in favour of the outdoor group and no significant changes in self-regulation skills, apart from a decrease in intrinsic motivation in the traditional group.     

“What Say these Young Ones”: Students’ Responses to Shakespeare—An Icon of Englishness

Challenging the taken-for-granted status of canonical authors, especially Shakespeare, is difficult, but not impossible. This research offers a glimpse into the inferential processes of a group of grade ten students from diverse backgrounds who read unfamiliar passages from Shakespeare. The findings reveal a complex picture of meaning-making, involving a variety of factors that play role in the students’ reading comprehension. The most crucial insight is the finding that subjective interpretations seem to hinder independent understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare’s texts beyond the literal level. Our research, conducted in a large, urban, culturally-diverse high school in Western Canada, shows that students tend to rely on uncritically absorbed bits and pieces of background information or popular culture references, as well as overgeneralized understanding of previously read Shakespearean texts, to form opinions about the author, which often carve an interpretive lens, colouring the reconstruction of the characters’ experiences in subsequent encounters with his works. The study juxtaposes actual experiences of students reading Shakespeare to culturally endorsed attitudes informing curriculum decisions and policies, as well as prevalent teaching practices in the high school classroom. Finally, it asks if teachers need to look at personal connections not as a strategy that leads to an analytic engagement, but as a form of analytic engagement, affirming that critical reflection is a competence that requires careful nurturing and guidance.     

Is the frequency of dyslexic problems among prison inmates higher than in a normal population?

The primary objective of this study was to compare a sample ofprison inmates with the norms obtained for large samples of 12year-old students on tests measuring word decoding skills,reading and spelling abilities. Theoretically, we assumed thatphonological processing deficits are a strong predictor ofdyslexic problems, and thus, only those inmates who did not seemto possess appropriate levels of phonological decoding skillsshould be defined as dyslexics. The results showed that theinmates performed better or at the same level as 12 year-oldstudents on all tasks measuring reading, spelling, and worddecoding skills, and that 4 out of 35 inmates (11%) with Swedishas their native language exhibited phonological decoding skillssubstantially below the average of grade 6 students. Thus, bycomparing the group of inmates with 12 year-old students, and byusing phonological decoding skills as an indicator of reading andwriting disabilities, our conclusion was that the frequency ofpossible dyslexic problems found in a group of prison inmateslooks very much like comparable incidence figures from a generalpopulation.     

Persuasion strategies and Naïve Representations

European Journal of Psychology of Education -     

Tora und Vernunft

Unter Verwendung neuen Quellenmaterials wird in ideen-und sozialgeschichtlicher Perspektive der Prozess bürgerlicher Modernisierung in der preu?ischen Judenschaft zur Zeit der Sp?taufkl?rung in Berlin beleuchtet. Im Zentrum der Darstellung stehen zun?chst die durch ?nderung des Rechtsstatus entstandene, neue ?konomische Elite als Tr?ger der jüdischen Aufkl?rung sowie Aspekte der um 1800 zu verzeichnenden S?kularisierungskrise. Sodann werden die zeitgen?ssischen ideologischen Auseinandersetzungen um die Interpretation der heiligen Schriften und die richtige Art der religi?sen Unterweisung umrissen, ferner die Akzentverschiebungen aufgezeigt, die jüdische Aufkl?rer hier im Sinne einer P?dagogisierung bewirkten. Dabei bezieht sich die Darstellung verschiedentlich auf den Schulkampf, der zwischen etwa 1780 und 1830 Schauplatz für und wider Modernisierung und S?kularisierung war.     

'I just sit there': shyness as an emotional and behavioural problem in school

Shyness is not unlike many psychological constructs in that it connotes a rich cluster of behaviours, cognitions, feelings and bodily reactions. But when adolescents' shyness creates keen sensitivity to cues of being rejected, preventing them from speaking up for their rights and expressing their own opinions, thereby encouraging self-consciousness and excessive preoccupation with their emotions, it becomes a problem for both these adolescents and their surroundings. This paper presents 10 adolescents' experiences of being shy in a school context to such a degree that it is regarded as being a behavioural and emotional problem. In light of elements from an existential-phenomenological understanding, challenges and remedial measures for these adolescents as well as their peers and teachers are discussed. Finally, focus will be placed on how teachers can promote good relationships and working environments and in this manner prevent shyness from becoming a behavioural and emotional problem in school.