Editorial

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Editorial

     

Variety of attitudes towards the comprehensive university

Higher education policy-making may attempt far-reaching reform of the post-secondary system and its inherited institutions. It may be oriented towards the replacement of distinctions between the academic and the non-academic as well as the transformation of the traditional university concept by means of a new conception of the organization of the post-secondary sector, the comprehensive university. Higher education policy-making may display not only great ambition but also policy extravagance. Maybe the Swedish 1977 higher education reform is the most ambitious attempt so far to implement the notions inherent in the comprehensive university. Maybe the element of policy extravagance was at times most conspicuous in the extended period of policy-making in Sweden culminating in the 1977 reform bill as it was even suggested that the universities of Uppsala (1477) and Lund (1668) were to be officially designated Högskolan i Uppsala and Högskolan i Lund-Malmö respectively. It may be interesting to find out the attitudes of those responsible for the day-to-day operations of the universities and colleges. This article presents the results of the first national survey of Swedish teachers and researchers in so far as they pertain to the evaluation of the 1977 reform.     

Relational competence in teacher education. Concept analysis and report from a pilot study

A supportive relationship between teachers and students has been shown to have positive effects on students’ performance and social development. Preservice teachers’ relational competence is, however, an unexplored area. The purpose of this study is to contribute to educational research about relational competence in teacher education by introducing a Swedish project which focuses on interpersonal aspects. The study has three parts. In the theoretical part, a conceptualization of teachers’ relational competence using Thomas Scheff’s theory of interpersonal relationships is outlined. In the empirical (pilot) part, a methodology for prompting preservice teachers’ analyses of teacher–student relationships is described, as well as a thematic analysis of their responses. The theoretical conceptualization is then used together with the empirical data in the third part, in order to identify development needs of preservice teachers in terms of relational competence. According to the conceptualization, relational competence includes three sub-concepts: communicative, differentiation, and socio-emotional competence. From the analysis of preservice students’ texts, the article identifies development needs in relation to the three sub-concepts. The concluding discussion focuses on lessons learned from the study regarding how to promote teacher students’ relational competence.     

Achievement goals and classroom goal structures: Do they need to match?

Abstract

It is often assumed that students’ personal achievement goals are most beneficial when they match the goal structures of the classroom, but interaction between achievement goals and goal structures is not well researched. In this study, we aim at providing a nuanced picture of the direct, interaction, and nonlinear effects of achievement goals and goal structures on test performance and autonomous motivation. We used multiple linear regressions, including interaction and quadratic terms, in combination with response surface methodology to analyze questionnaire data from students in Grades 6-10. We found no evidence for a general match effect, and only weak indications of interactions between achievement goals and goal structures. Thus, the match between classroom goal structures and students’ personal goals may be less important for students’ motivation and achievement than previously assumed. Still, based on our results we recommend a focus on mastery structures in the classroom.     

Accuracy of metacognitive judgments as a moderator of learner control effectiveness in problem-solving tasks

A possible explanation for why students do not benefit from learner-controlled instruction is that they are not able to accurately monitor their own performance. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how the accuracy of metacognitive judgments made during training moderates the effect of learner control on performance when solving genetics tasks. Eighty-six undergraduate students solved self-selected genetics tasks using either a full learner control or a restricted learner control. Results indicated that learner control effectiveness was moderated by the absolute accuracy (i.e., absolute bias) of metacognitive judgments, and this accuracy was a better predictor of learning performance for full learner control than for restricted learner control. Furthermore, students’ prior knowledge predicted absolute accuracy of both ease-of-learning judgments (EOLs) and retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs) during training, with higher prior knowledge resulting in a better absolute accuracy. Overall, monitoring guided control, that is, EOLs predicted time-on-task and invested mental effort regardless of the degree of learner control, whereas RCJs predicted the total training time, but not the number of tasks selected during training. These results suggest that monitoring accuracy plays an important role in effective regulation of learning from problem-solving tasks, and provide further evidence that metacognitive judgments affect study time allocation in problem solving context.     

“Shut up and calculate”: the available discursive positions in quantum physics courses

Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum physics courses at two Swedish universities, we instead ask what it means to become a physicist, and whether certain ways of becoming a physicist and doing physics is privileged in this process. Asking the question of what discursive positions are made accessible to students, we use observations of lectures and problem solving sessions together with interviews with students to characterize the discourse in the courses. Many students seem to have high expectations for the quantum physics course and generally express that they appreciate the course more than other courses. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the ways of being a “good quantum physics student” are limited by the dominating focus on calculating quantum physics in the courses. We argue that this could have negative consequences both for the education of future physicists and the discipline of physics itself, in that it may reproduce an instrumental “shut up and calculate”-culture of physics, as well as an elitist physics education. Additionally, many students who take the courses are not future physicists, and the limitation of discursive positions may also affect these students significantly.     

Akute Exazerbation bei COPD

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Scientific Study of Expert Levels of Performance: general implications for optimal learning and creativity 1

Recent research in many different domains of expertise has shown that the large differences in performance between experts and novices are frequently reproducible under standardized conditions and can often be captured with representative tasks in the laboratory. Furthermore, these differences in performance are predominantly mediated by complex skills acquired over a decade, as a result of high daily levels of activities which are specially designed'to improve performance (deliberate practice). The effects of extended deliberate practice are remarkably far‐reaching and include physiological adaptations and qualitative changes in performance mediated by acquired cognitive skills. Most importantly, expert performers have acquired mental representations that allow them to plan and reason about potential courses of action and these representations also allow experts to monitor their performance, thus providing critical feedback for continued complex learning. The study of elite performance also reveals how acquired representation and skills provide the necessary tools for the ultimate eminent achievement, namely the generation of creative innovations to the domain.

     

A Review of Practical Reasoning in Child and Youth Research

The purpose of the review is to investigate various relations between the concepts of competence and participation found within child and youth research with the aim of identifying differences in practical reasoning of the various kinds of child research. The search identified 260 articles, and an in-depth analysis of 39 articles was conducted, elaborating the conceptual differences inherent in the different child research fields. Based on a philosophy of practice, the analysis identified 3 different causal connections between the concepts of competence and participation, indicating 3 different ways of understanding means and ends in child research. The review thereby offers an understanding of how and why interdisciplinary problems sometimes occur in education and child care.