Entering the European Information Society: Four Rural Development Projects

This article compares four European information and communication technologies (ICT) development projects spawned by national and EU initiatives to create the “European information society.” These projects, which sought to support learning and better use of ICT, were all the result of opportunities opened up by political initiatives. The analysis indicates that the main problems that afflict these projects stem from varied expectations and interests of the major actors. These problems can be mitigated considerably if a feeling of ownership is generated among the participants. This sense of belonging, however, is difficult to foster in a “top-down” project. Hence there is a need for a better balance between the “top-down” and “bottom-up” influences in the development of such projects.     

Musical make-believe playing: three preschoolers collaboratively initiating play ‘in-between’

This study presents an analysis of a video observation of three six-year-olds interacting in front of a synthesizer in a Swedish preschool and using a new music technology (MIROR-Impro). It investigates how a musical role-play unfolds as an intermediate activity when there is a malfunction with the set-up of the technology and how it recommences when the technology is again functioning. The study is informed by a sociocultural perspective on playing and learning and analyses how the children communicate and negotiate in and about this activity. The analysis shows how they make use of this gap to develop mutual make-believe play and how they actualize and use some of their out-of-school experiences. How the children establish coordination into a joint activity and scaffold each other’s musical performance is also shown. The study relates to children’s music experiences in contemporary childhood and how early childhood music education can respond to these.     

From lesson plan to new comprehension: exploring student teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in learning about teaching

The research reported in this paper is based on an exploration of the ways in which student teachers learn about the issues and concerns that shape their own professional learning. Shulman’s process of pedagogical reasoning and action was used as a conceptual framework to systematically elucidate different critical incidents that student teachers experienced and to then apply it as an analytic framework for developing deeper understandings of the complex task of learning to teach primary science. Primary science student teacher participants (n = 22) were stimulated to reflect upon critical incidents in order to facilitate identifying their teaching concerns and teaching needs. The results indicate that by helping student teachers to focus on critical incidents in their learning to teach, they come to question their practice more deeply and, through such reflection, gain new insights into teaching as being problematic.     

Catching the moments – coteaching to stimulate science in the preschool context

An important task for the preschool teacher is to create meaningful learning situations where children have opportunities to experience science. However, many teachers have both weak subject knowledge and a lack of confidence to teach science. The aim of the project presented in this article was to capture how nine preschool teachers developed their learning of and self-confidence in teaching science during a two-year professional development (PD) project while coplanning, coteaching, and coreflecting on their teaching activities. During the project, the preschool teachers’ self-confidence and attitudes played an important role for the their approach to science activities. Their collaborative learning and reflection became important for their PD and for the way science phenomena were included in the preschool context. As such, the project is based on opportunities for preschool teachers to develop their ideas about science and to reframe their work with the aim to stimulate children’s curiosity for science.     

Coteaching with senior students – a way to refine teachers’ PCK for teaching chemical bonding in upper secondary school

During the last decade there has been on-going discussions about students’ declining interest and low achievement in science. One of the reasons suggested for this decline is that teachers and students have different frames of reference, whereby teachers sometimes communicate science in the classroom in a way that is not accessible to the students. There is a lack of research investigating the effects of coteaching with senior students in science in upper secondary schools. To improve teaching and to narrow the gap between teachers’ and students’ different frames of references, this study investigates how an experienced chemistry teacher gains and refines her pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by cooperating with two grade 12 students (age 18) as coteachers. The teacher and the two coteachers coplanned, cotaught and coevaluated lessons in chemical bonding in a grade 10 upper secondary class. Findings indicate that the coteachers contributed with their own learning experiences to help the teacher understand how students perceive difficult concepts. In such way, the coteachers were mediating between the teacher and the students, thus bridging the gap between the teacher and the students’ frames of references. The teachers’ PCK was refined which in turn lead to improved teaching strategies.     

Development of phonological awareness during the preschool year: the influence of gender and socio-economic status

Phonological awareness is a critical enabling skill in learning to read, often developed outside the context of formal reading instruction. More than 2,000 6-year-old children were tested on phonological awareness at two occasions during the preschool year in two cohorts. Between the assessments, a training program was implemented. A two-level path model was applied. More frequent training sessions were connected to higher gains of test scores especially for children with low initial scores in the first cohort. A clear gender effect was also observed. There were more boys with very low initial scores and more girls among the top scorers. A clear SES-effect indicated the influence of early language stimulation. Children who already at the beginning of the preschool year had grasped the alphabetic code had the highest initial scores on the test.