A follow-up study of the effect of pedagogical training on teaching in higher education

The present follow-up study examines the effect of university teachers’ pedagogical training on approaches to teaching and self-efficacy beliefs measured by Approaches to Teaching Inventory and an additional part measuring motivational strategies. The effect of pedagogical training on teaching is analysed among 35 teachers who had not participated in pedagogical courses after the first measurement in 2004 as well as among 45 teachers who had acquired more pedagogical training after the first measurement. The results showed that there were more positive changes in the measured scales among teachers who had acquired more credits of pedagogical courses since the year 2004 than among teachers who had not acquired more credits. The results of the first and second measurements are compared.     

Agents and subjects: schooling and conceptions of citizenship in early nineteenth-century Sweden

This article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two levels. The first is the national level, focusing the national debate on education, and the second is the local level, investigating the local schools and the school setting. The main result is that the conceptions of citizenship in the school context were formed along two major lines: an inclusive social and civil citizenship and an exclusive, active and political citizenship. Consequently, the emerging Swedish school system simultaneously fostered these two citizenship conceptions, which coexisted in an educational system that was able to cast pupils as either subjects (comprehensive citizenship) or agents (designated citizenship).     

The Diversity of Value Meanings among University Students

The aim of the current study was to tap implicit theories of a set of values selected from Schwartz's value model. The associations to seven value items (helpful, broad‐minded, social justice, unity with nature, authority, ambitious and successful) were examined by a sample of 130 university students from three different fields of study (social science, business and technology). The findings suggest that the value items in Schwartz's value survey have relatively consistent meanings. The results mainly support Schwartz's theory by showing that most of the associations given to the value items could be located on the same value domain to which the item belonged or on the adjacent values. The influence of respondents' own value priorities and professional orientation on the associations was also evident in the results. From the standpoint of Holland's taxonomy of work environments, especially social science students' conceptions of Schwartz's value items are explainable to a large extent by their social interest, but business students do not exclusively represent the enterprising type and preferences to enhance selfish interest.     

Neural Correlates of Coherence-Break Detection During Reading of Narratives

This functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined the neural correlates of coherence-break detection during reading in the context of a contradiction paradigm. Young adults (N = 31, ages 19–27) read short narratives (half contained a break in coherence) that were presented sentence by sentence in a self-paced, slow event-related design. Reading times were longer for incoherent compared to coherent target sentences, and coherence-break detection was associated with activation in a large network of brain regions that were more active in response to incoherent than to coherent information. Some regions seemed exclusively associated with processing of incoherent information. In addition, activation in the precuneus was negatively correlated with working-memory capacity. Together, these findings shed light on the functional contributions of these brain regions to coherence-monitoring processes during reading and help bridge cognitive and neurobiological accounts of the cognitive processes involved in the construction of coherent mental representations of narrative texts.     

Supporting Pupils in Finnish and Swedish Schools—Teachers’ Views

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the different support systems used by teachers in compulsory education. Class and subject teachers and special educators from Finland (N?=?57) and Sweden (N?=?57) participated in the study, in which both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Participants completed an electronic questionnaire to identify the supports and methods they use when working with pupils who have special educational needs. The findings indicate both similarities and differences between the two countries. One of the most common forms of support was individualisation, including pedagogical modifications. Methods of supporting academic skills such as reading differed from those used to support behavioral issues. Positive pedagogy and structuring the environment were used ways of supporting pupils with behavioral challenges. Results for both countries are compared and support needs are discussed.     

Comparison of Peer,Teacher and Self-Assessments on Adolescent Direct and Indirect Aggression

This study examined the relationships between peer, teacher and self-assessments on adolescent direct and indirect aggressive behaviour taking place at school. Subjects, a total of 2002, numbered 725 early, 575 middle and 702 late adolescent girls and boys. Measures on direct aggression included bullying, fighting and arguing, and measures on indirect aggression focused on backbiting and intriguing. The results revealed that, as a rule, the correlation between the peers and the teachers was higher than the agreement between the teachers and the self, which, in turn, was higher than that between the peers and the self. Consistency was also found to be higher with direct than with indirect aggression. Regarding age differences, the teacher-peer agreement was higher for the early and middle adolescents than for the late adolescents, while the teacher-self and the peer-self consistencies showed curvilinear relationships. Examining gender-related variance revealed that the peer-teacher correlation on direct aggression was higher for boys than for girls. No gender differences were found in assessments of indirect aggression. The results suggest, firstly, that self-ratings are not well interchangeable with peer or teacher assessments, which, in turn, are in line with each other, and, secondly, that there is a higher concordance in assessing direct than indirect aggression.     

Education in management of innovation and technology

The engineering education is mainly directed towards finding “right” solutions by using analytical models. The management education on the other hand is mainly directed towards formulating problems, creating alternative solutions and evaluating several possible alternatives. The thinking models within the two fields of education are different in many respects. This has been observed as a problem in the industrial management education at the universities of technology in Sweden.     

Beginning student teachers’ teacher identities based on their practical theories

In this article, we investigate first-year student teachers’ teacher identities through their practical theories and ask what these practical theories reveal about their emerging teacher identities? This study approaches teacher identity from a dialogical viewpoint where identity is constructed through various positions. The empirical part of this study analysed the practical theories of 71 first-year student teachers in order to determine what kinds of positions are involved in their teacher identity at the beginning of their teacher education and what positions are emphasised. The results showed that when student teachers begin their teacher education, the majority of positions concern didactical issues, that is, how to promote pupils’ studying and learning processes. In addition, student teachers’ teacher identities as teachers strongly emphasise the moral nature of teaching. Contextual issues about school and society and matters related to content, such as the curriculum, had little representation in first-year student teacher identities. On the basis of the results, the role of teacher education is considered in the process of promoting development of student teachers’ teacher identity during their studies.