Children’s Perspective on Learning: An International Study in Denmark,Estonia, Germany and Sweden

This article explores how some children in Denmark, Estonia, Germany and Sweden describe their perspective on learning. The aim of the international study is to gain knowledge of how preschool children in Sweden, Denmark, Estonia and Germany reflect and perceive their learning in preschool and other surrounding social contexts. The results are based on 51 focus group interviews from 181 children. The results indicate that, in general, children from all four countries seem to be aware of their own learning. One can conclude that encouraging children to think about what they are doing and why they are doing it makes the activities more goal-oriented from the children’s perspective and thus more conscious. Children are able to describe their own perspectives on learning.     

Reframing the field of gender and nursing education

The aim of this article is to explore how male students learn to practice nursing and the role of technology in their training process. The study is inspired by Bruno Latour's understanding of social interaction as an interplay between humans and technology. The students' use of the washcloth and the stethoscope, two significant nursing tools, is examined. Data were gathered using participant observation and informal conversation with a group of male Norwegian nursing students and their male teacher in a skills laboratory at University College. The article contributes a renewed understanding of gender and nursing education as well as a deepened understanding of how men adjust to a historically female profession such as nursing.     

Club Foot for football – on the (re)construction of meanings of music and football through a television title sequence

Abstract

This paper explores how music contributes to actualizing meaning potentials in a case of televised football. From the perspective of textual analysis – informed by multimodal discourse analysis and semiotics of music – the paper specifically focusses on the title music and demonstrates how the music contributes to offering impressions of 1) the characteristics of the editorial production of the programme, 2) the type and quality of content of the programme, and 3) for whom the programme and football are particularly relevant. The examination furthermore illustrates how a textual examination of title music should include an exploration of how the title music relates to music from outside the title sequence (transtextuality) as well as how the music relates to non-musical elements throughout the audio-visual sequence (cotextuality). In this respect, the paper presents a text analytical framework applicable to other examples of title music for football and sports programming.     

Evolution 2.0. The Unexpected Learning Experience of Making a Digital Archive

Studies in the history of science and education have documented that the reception and understanding of evolutionary theory is highly contingent on local factors such as school systems, cultural traditions, religious beliefs, and language. This has important implications for teaching evolution in primary and secondary schools. No universal strategy can be applied in overcoming the barriers of learning that exist and that are part of the practical and daily life in classrooms all over the world. In light of this, a huge challenge is to make high standard teaching materials fit to specific target audiences readily available. As more and more schools require teachers to use low cost or free web-based materials, in the research community we need to take seriously how to facilitate that demand in communication strategies on evolution. This article addresses this challenge by presenting the learning experience of making a digital archive of Danish Darwin editions that marked the beginnings of a series of public engagement and teaching initiatives including, among other things, comprehensive new websites, exhibits, lecture series, television documentaries, and a computer game.     

Physics knowledge of first semester physics students in Germany: a comparison of 1978 and 2013 cohorts

ABSTRACT

Over the last decades, the percentage of the age group choosing to pursue university studies has increased significantly across the world. At the same time, there are university teachers who believe that the standards have fallen. There is little research on whether students nowadays demonstrate knowledge or abilities similar to that of the preceding cohorts. However, in times of educational expansion, empirical evidence on student test performance is extremely helpful in evaluating how well educational systems cope with the increasing numbers of students. In this study, we compared a sample of 2322 physics freshmen from 2013 with another sample of 2718 physics freshmen from 1978 at universities in Germany with regard to their physics knowledge based on their results in the same entrance test. Previous results on mathematics knowledge and abilities in the same sample of students indicated that there was no severe decline in their average achievement. This paper compares the physics knowledge of the same two samples of students. Contrary to their mathematics results, their physics results showed a substantial decrease in physics knowledge as measured by the test.     

Producing curious affects: visual methodology as an affecting and conflictual wunderkammer

Digital video cameras, smartphones, internet and iPads are increasingly used as visual research methods with the purpose of creating an affective corpus of data. Such visual methods are often combined with interviews or observations. Not only are visual methods part of the used research methods, the visual products are used as requisites in interviews when interviewees are watching the recordings and share their reflections on these. The purpose of this article is to critically interrogate how such research apparatus, on the one hand, privilege a visual sense and, on the other hand, how the visual may turn into a multisensory knowledge situation, in which tense situations, un/expected and perhaps conflicting senses and un/comfortable affects are evoked. The article takes its point of departure in our analysis of a research apparatus we invented and used in the research project Schooling identities. In this project, 60 pupil review conversations with 13–15-year-old pupils were videotaped with the purpose of exploring the management of self-management. In 20 follow-up interviews with the pupils, the videos were played on an old television and used as memory triggers and initiators of reflection upon the affective experience of their own pupils’ review conversation. We argue that methods can be analytically scrutinised as affective “wunderkammers”, in which different realities are juxtaposed. In so doing, our ways of experiencing research and processes of subjectification are affected and complicated. We interrogate the intensification of this “wunderkammer” and the particularity of it, when a television is part of the apparatus. As Lisa Blackman reminds us, television may be a technology of intimacy, a medium of telepresence which makes certain mental touch and affective transfer processes such as empathy and suggestion possible. During the television-watching, the peer-review conversations were not only represented or memorised but the very experience of the conversation, the people and the tasks involved were revitalised. In the interviews, former lived reality, videotaped reality and presence were conflated. These moments of a new reality affected both pupils and ourselves as researchers intensely. The television-initiated loops of reflection worked as an affective and inventive trigger creating an intense situation. It may also affect the everyday life of school.     

When bodies matter: significance of the body in gender constructions in physiotherapy education

This article examines which bodily performances indicate the significance of gender in the skills training of physiotherapy students. It is based on a qualitative study of first-year students' skills training in a Norwegian physiotherapy education programme. The study draws inspiration from Paechter's theory of the communities of masculinities and femininities, which argues that the material body is significant in gender construction. These findings indicate how, both historically and contemporarily, gender norms are strongly interwoven into students' bodily performances during their professional training. This bodily performance conforms to heteronormativity. Based on these findings, we argue that within critical educational studies of gender there is a need for theoretical frameworks that include a focus on the material body as a site of gender performance.     

Teacher students’ dilemmas when teaching science through inquiry

Background: Inquiry-based science education (IBSE) is suitable to teach scientific contents as well as to foster scientific skills. Similar conclusions are drawn by studies with respect to scientific literacy, motivational aspects, vocabulary knowledge, conceptual understandings, critical thinking, and attitudes toward science. Nevertheless, IBSE is rarely adopted in schools. Often barriers for teachers account for this lack, with the result that even good teachers struggle to teach science as inquiry. More importantly, studies indicate that several barriers and constraints could be ascribed to problems teacher students have at the university stage.

Purpose: The purpose of this explorative investigation is to examine the problems teacher students have when teaching science through inquiry. In order to draw a holistic picture of these problems, we identified problems from three different points of view leading to the research question: What problems regarding IBSE do teacher students have from an objective, a subjective, and a self-reflective perspective?

Design &; method: Using video analysis and observation tools as well as qualitative content analysis and open questionnaires we identified problems from each perspective.

Results: The objectively stated problems comprise the lack of essential features of IBSE especially concerning ‘Supporting pupils’ own investigations’ and ‘Guiding analysis and conclusions.’ The subjectively perceived problems comprise concerns about ‘Teachers’ abilities’ and ‘Pupils’ abilities,’ ‘Differentiated instruction’ and institutional frame ‘Conditions’ while the self-reflectively noticed problems mainly comprise concerns about ‘Allowing inquiry,’ ‘Instructional Aspects,’ and ‘Pupils’ behavior.’

Conclusions: Each of the three different perspectives provides plenty of problems, partially overlapping, partially complementing one another, and partially revealing completely new problems. Consequently, teacher educators have to consider these three perspectives.     

Engineering students’ experiences from physics group work in learning labs

The development and validation of a test of biology‐related attitudes (TOBRA) is described. This instrument was developed for science students in grades 10‐12 in Indonesia; however, the procedures for validation of the instrument will be of general interest to science educators. These procedures included the use of latent partition analysis to examine the conceptual structure of TOBRA.     

CURRENT ARTICLES

In the post-pillarized society of the Netherlands, formal religious education still is structured according to religious dividing lines. “Religion” in confessional schools is a compulsory subject; in public schools, taking a so-called neutral position with regard to religious traditions, “Religion” is an optional subject (Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Islamic religious education or Humanistic World View Education), taught to pupils on parents’ request. Nowadays, due to processes of modernization, globalization, and individualization, the position of religion in society has changed and subsequently the position of “Religion” as a subject in classes has changed. These days for principals and teachers in public schools it is urgent to reflect on their positionality regarding (religious and secular) worldview education. In this contribution we present our findings from document analysis and from (focus group) interviews with principals, and from observations in public schools, resulting in a plea for “Life Orientation for all” as a compulsory subject in all schools for all pupils.