A teachable-agent-based game affording collaboration and competition: evaluating math comprehension and motivation

This paper presents an educational game in mathematics based on an apprenticeship model using a teachable agent, as well as an evaluative study of how the game affects (1) conceptual understanding and (2) attitudes towards mathematics. In addition, we discuss how collaborative and competitive affordances of the game may affect understanding and motivation. 19 students played the game in pairs once a week during math lessons for 7?weeks (the game-playing group) while another 19 students followed the regular curriculum (the control group). Math comprehension scores increased significantly for the game-playing group but not the control group (p?<?0.05). However, there was no significant difference in attitude change between the two groups. Post hoc analyses indicated that game-playing primarily affected students?? confidence in explaining math to a peer, but not their enjoyment of doing so. Collaborative and competitive activities seem to carry a strong motivational influence for students to play the game.     

Engaging students in higher education through mobile learning: lessons learnt in a Chinese entrepreneurship course

This evaluative?Cexploratory case study reports pedagogical experiences with using mobiles phones, wikis, and other mobile learning approaches such as podcasts and walking tours as educational tools in the context of an undergraduate course on Chinese Entrepreneurship and Asian Business Networks taught at a university in Singapore. Conceptualized as mobile learning, the paper argues that information and communication technologies (ICT) devices used by Gen Y students as part of their everyday life such as hand phones in combination with social media platforms such as course wikis and other proven pedagogical methods such as mini lectures, field visits, and walking tours can greatly enrich learners?? experience and produce valuable learning outcomes on the basis of blended learning provided their usage is easy and effectively integrated into the respective instructional strategy.     

Functional centrality and innovation intensity: Employee-level analysis of the Telenor group

Recent research on employee-level innovation focuses on scientists’ ability to source advanced knowledge and use it to create new ideas and innovation within a firm. The present paper introduces a new dimension to this literature: functional departments. We argue that functional centrality, namely the extent to which a functional department is central in the intra-organizational network, affects employees’ innovation intensity. We make use of a rich novel dataset at the employee-level for the Telenor Group, based on a large-scale survey among nearly 16,000 employees in all business units and functions of the company. The empirical results point out that employees’ innovation intensity is higher in departments that are centrally positioned in the company’s internal network. Task characteristics such as quality orientation, entrepreneurial attitude and result pressure moderate the relationship between centrality and innovation.     

Temporal pattern analysis and its applicability in sport: an explanation and exemplar data

Quantitative analysis of sports performance has been shown to produce information that coaches can use within the coaching process to enhance performance. Traditional methods for quantifying sport performances are limited in their capacity to describe the complex interactions of events that occur within a performance over time. In this paper, we outline a new approach to the analysis of time-based event records and real-time behaviour records on sport performance known as T-pattern detection. The relevant elements of the T-pattern detection process are explained and exemplar data from the analysis of 13 soccer matches are presented to highlight the potential of this form of analysis. The results from soccer suggest that it is possible to identify new profiles for both individuals and teams based on the analysis of temporal behavioural patterns detected within the performances.     

Futures in line? Occupational choice among migrant adult students in Sweden

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to analyse the ways in which migration plays out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future, focusing on three individual narratives of adult students with various experiences of migration to Sweden. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s conception of orientation, our results show how the adult students’ narratives on their future occupations are formed on the basis of migration, pertaining to their particular experiences of being recognised as migrant Others. Among the three students, similar challenges emerge in terms of their claims for belonging. One the one hand, the students do claim belonging to the Swedish social community. On the other hand, they are – as ‘migrants’ – repeatedly reminded of their non-belonging to this community. In various ways, they feel out of place. Although migration, in the narratives, is not played out one and the same way, but in various ways, engagement in adult education as a means of finding a job appear as the main orientation guiding the futures of the adult students, as being an important way of finding a future and claim one’s belonging to the Swedish social community.     

Performative Technology Intensity and Teacher Subjectivities

Critical educational literature suggests that an increased reliance upon neoliberally inspired management technologies transforms the very foundations from which images of the ideal teacher are constructed. The purpose of this paper is to add to this literature by (i) identifying and analysing a number of theoretical qualities associated with performative technologies, and (ii) discussing how such qualities contribute to the emergence of performative teacher subjectivities. Drawing upon the findings from a qualitative interview study into the extensive use of performative technologies in a Swedish upper-secondary school, we discuss four key roles of performative technologies—referred to as territorializing, mediating, adjudicating, and subjectivizing—and the intensity by which they play out such roles. A key conclusion is that the intensity by which performative technologies territorialize, mediate, and adjudicate educational practices affects self-reflection and internalization among teachers and, hence, is important for understanding the subjectivizing role of performative technologies.     

Individualisation in Swedish Adult Education and the Shaping of Neo-liberal Subjectivities

In this article we have analysed the ways a discourse on individualisation is taking shape within adult education in Sweden, how it operates, and what effects it has in terms of shaping student subjectivity. Drawing on a post-structural theorisation we analyse interviews with teachers and students in municipal adult education and folk high schools (FHS). The analysis illustrates how both institutions contribute to the shaping of individualised subjectivities, although differently. At the end, a general question is raised about what happens with the democratic function of adult education in general when a discourse on individualisation operates in the ways described and, more specifically, asks what is happening to FHS as an educational practice that upholds its self-image as a last bastion of a collective notion of learning and subjectivity and nurturing an educational practice of learning democracy?     

Dissonant futures: occupational trajectories,gender and class in contemporary municipal adult education in Sweden

The aim of this article is to problematize the ways class and gender are played out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs, we analyse how students think about future occupations, what motivates them towards these and how they are able to form their future in relation to them. Taking on Sweden as a case, our results show that students’ narratives on their future occupations are classed as well as gendered. In their vision of future occupations, working-class students tend to focus on occupations helping and caring for others, while middle-class students tend to focus on work more as a means of fulfilling themselves as individuals. These differences are also gendered. Female students are more likely than their male counterparts to picture their future occupations in relation to having children and a family. This tells us that in the female students’ narratives, there tends to be a strong focus on caring – for their families as well as in future occupations.