Academics’ Strategies and Obstacles in Achieving Collaboration between Universities and SMEs

There is an ongoing debate both in the United States and Europe about the need to develop a broader view of scholarship and the different activities connected with it, including ‘service to the community’. This empirical study reveals that researchers who are engaged in collaboration with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) encounter many hindrances within the academic structure and obstacles due cultural differences that needs to be overcome. But it is also evident that they are creative and learn different strategies in accomplishing their goals and they also bring back useful experiences and knowledge from their cooperation into their research and teaching within the academic organization. We suggest that attention should be paid to the broader and more elaborate view of collaborative knowledge production that we present in the article if university structures are to provide better support for their academic staff to interact profitably with the community, and thereby create a ‘win-win situation’ for everyone involved.

     

Introducing teachers to new semiotic tools for writing instruction and writing assessment: consequences for students’ writing proficiency

This article reports consequences for student writing quality based on a long-term professional learning project. Project teachers, representing all school subjects in grades 3–7, were presented with a writing construct, ‘Wheel of Writing’, and norms of expectation for writing proficiency. Participating teachers used the writing construct and norms as a basis for writing instruction and writing assessment. The project was conducted in 24 schools across Norway. 3088 students from 20 project schools participated. Two hundred and thirty three students from 4 schools were used as a comparison group. The investigation showed that students in primary school improved their writing quality significantly. Students in lower secondary school did not. However, there was substantial variation in writing quality effects between schools, classes, and individual students. For instance at a number of schools, project students from lower secondary school improved their writing quality significantly. The article discusses potential explanations of the effects.     

An idealistic view of teaching: teacher students’ personal practical theories

Personal practical theories (PPTs) are built based on underlying beliefs, experiences, values and conceptions regarding ‘good teaching’. Having a vision of teaching and valuing the work may have a strong effect on one’s sense of identity, resilience and commitment. This study focused on Finnish teacher students’ (N = 84) PPTs constructed during the middle or at the end of their studies, on average during their fourth year of a five-year MA programme. All of the PPTs, written as statements (N = 647), were combined, and a unified conception of the theories was formed using inductive content analysis. The three main categories found were the foundations of good teaching, the teacher and the teacher’s daily work. The analysis of the statements shows that the notions of good teaching are very idealistic: they emphasise abstract ideologies and high standards for the teacher, but also everyday matters of teaching, although also here the ideology of the pupil’s individuality is at the centre. The paper concludes by arguing that it is good to have high aims and values for teaching, although in reality some of them might be difficult to achieve.     

Teacher–student interaction in contemporary science classrooms: is participation still a question of gender?†

We show that boys still have a greater access to the space for interaction in science classrooms, which is unexpected since in Sweden today girls perform better in these subjects than boys. Results from video-recorded verbal communication, referred to here as interaction, show that the distribution of teacher–student interaction in the final year of lower secondary school follows the same patterns as in the 1980s. The interaction space for all kinds of talk continues to be distributed according to the two-thirds rule for communication in science classrooms as described by previous research. We also show that the overall interaction space in science classrooms has increased for both boys and girls when talk about science alone is considered. Another finding which follows old patterns is that male teachers still address boys more often than girls. This holds true both for general talk and for talk about science. If a more even distribution of teacher–student interaction is desirable, these results once again need to be considered. More research needs to be undertaken before the association between girls’ attitudes and interest in science in terms of future career choice and the opportunity to participate in teacher–student interaction is more clearly understood.     

From trust to control – the Swedish first teacher reform

In this study, the implementation of the Swedish first teacher reform, where especially skilled teachers get an opportunity to advance in their careers, is examined. The scene is an upper secondary school, Baxter High, in the southwest of Sweden. In this particular school, a new system with first teachers replaces an old system of so-called head teachers. The teachers’ response to this is multilayered: at the same time as it reveals an unwillingness to change everyday work rhythms, it is also a response to cultural change, and to change in the discourse of political life in Baxter High. The implementation of the first teacher reform results not only in a change in administrative categories, but also in a change in ideology, intertwined with and embedded in the cultural and social life of the school. In this article, the authors connect the first teacher reform to the neoliberal transformation process that the Swedish educational system has undergone over the last three decades.     

Creativity:What Is It? Can You Assess It? Can It Be Taught?

This article takes the subject of visual arts in Sweden as the point of departure in a discussion of how, with the help of portfolios, assessments may extend to include both the unpredictable and the ambiguous. The notion that assessments of learning outcomes must be either limited to superficial knowledge or completely arbitrary is shown to be a misconception. The author has made a study of the progression of young people's creativity in the visual arts from preschool to upper secondary school. The assessment was based on both product criteria and process criteria (investigative work, inventiveness, ability to use models, capacity for self‐assessment). The materials assessed were portfolios of work containing sketches, drafts and finished works, log books, sources of inspiration and videotaped interviews with the students. Is there any progression in students' visual design, in their ability to work independently and assess their work? What is the degree of correlation in the assessments of different judges of student portfolios? These are some of the questions that this article attempts to answer, which concludes with a discussion of how schools can build a culture of learning that fosters the creative powers of young people.     

Development of Adjustment Problems in Girls: What Syndromes Emerge?

The development of a broad spectrum of adjustment problems in girls was studied longitudinally from late childhood to early adulthood. A specific interest concerned how well the externalizing-internalizing distinction could explain the data. The sample consisted of about 500 Swedish girls, reasonably representative of the general population. Variable-oriented methods were complemented with person-oriented methods to study syndrome formation at the level of the individual. The results suggested a rather diversified pattern of multi-problem syndromes in late childhood, whereas the syndrome structure in early adolescence was organized around a differentiation between girls with externalizing adjustment problems and girls with peer problems. An externalizing syndrome was found to be stable between late childhood and early adolescence, increasing the risk of severe maladjustment in adulthood. Internalizing problems showed no clear-cut continuity with adult maladjustment. Results are discussed in relation to the externalizing-internalizing distinction, which to some extent is called in question.     

Differential Influence of Same- and Cross-Ethnic Friends on Ethnic-Racial Identity Development in Early Adolescence

Recent research has shown that peers influence ethnic-racial identity (ERI) development during early adolescence. Arguments based on social identity theory, however, suggest that only same-ethnic but not cross-ethnic friends are important for ERI development. Using longitudinal social network analysis, we examined peer influence of both same- and cross-ethnic friends on ERI attachment and private regard. Data were drawn from six ethnically diverse schools in Western Germany (N = 1,349; M_age = 13.3). Our results provide empirical evidence for early adolescents’ ERI being influenced by same- but less by cross-ethnic friends. Considering peers’ ethnicity therefore is crucial for understanding peer influence on ERI development.     

Time Spent Gaming and Social Competence in Children: Reciprocal Effects Across Childhood

Electronic games are popular and many children spend much time on this activity. Here we investigate whether the quantity of time children spend on gaming is related to their social development, making this the first study to examine this relationship in children. We examine prospective relations between time spent gaming and social competence in a community sample of Norwegian 6 year olds (n = 873) followed up at ages 8, 10, and 12, controlling for socioeconomic status, body mass index, and time spent gaming together with friends. Results revealed that greater social competence at both 8 and 10 years predicted less gaming 2 years later and that more age-10 gaming predicted less social competence at age 12 but only among girls.     

Facilitators in ambivalence

This is part of a larger ethnographical study concerning how school development in a local educational context sets cultural and social life in motion. The main data in this article consists of semi-structural interviews with teachers (facilitators) who have the responsibility of carrying out a project about formative assessment in upper secondary schools in the south of Sweden. The focus of the study is how the teachers make meaning of their position as facilitators and leaders, how they handle their fellow teachers’ criticism and resistance, how power transforms professional and human relationships, and how complex and weakly articulated power results in conflicting and ambivalent possibilities for action. From our perspective, the resistance the facilitators meet, although the project makes use of a concept that has proved to be successful, reveals an ambivalent structure where the facilitators have to face contradictory demands from different stakeholders.