Sensemaking in chemistry at upper secondary school

In chemistry education, student learning difficulties involve connecting theory and phenomena to make sense of chemistry, as well as utilising and understanding the language of chemistry. In this thesis, I examine the relationships among student language use, previous achievement level, and sensemaking in chemistry, as well as how experienced teachers help students make sense of chemistry as part of dialogic interaction during practical work. The aim of the thesis is to gain insights into how sensemaking in chemistry can be achieved at upper secondary school.For this thesis, data in the form of student-produced concept maps, student surveys, grade data, video recordings of practical work and teacher interviews were collected from students and teachers conducting practical work in a wide range of school contexts and two school systems (Swedish and International Baccalaureate). Student and teacher–student sensemaking were examined qualitatively using content analysis of concept maps and conversation analysis of teacher–student dialogues. In order to examine the relationship between language use, sensemaking and dialogic interaction in chemistry, sensemaking in chemistry was framed from a Vygotskian perspective.I found a relationship between previous assessed achievement level in chemistry and scientific language use, as well as student language use and sensemaking defined as connecting scientific theory and experience. However, no connection was found between previously assessed achievement level and sensemaking according to the cultural practice of chemistry, which is defined as the structuring of and connection between chemistry knowledge domains in student-produced concept maps. When examined further, the less structured concept maps were noted to contain signs of surface approaches to learning, indicating a possible connection between approaches to learning and chemistry sensemaking as a cultural practice. Finally, it was revealed that all of the experienced teachers involved in the study managed a balancing act in the classroom between (a) cueing sensemaking through exposing students’ knowledge gaps, connecting theory and experience, and introducing alternative concepts for thinking; and (b) presenting the students as competent contributors in the interaction. Through this thesis, I propose that students struggle to learn chemistry because they struggle to use psychological tools (such as scientific words and symbols) on their own to form concepts and mediate concept development in chemistry. I also propose, based on the data, that sensemaking in chemistry can be connected to both language use and approaches to learning, and that sensemaking according to the cultural practice of chemistry is not always assessed as part of grading in Sweden. Finally, I offer some suggestions for how chemistry teachers can work toward promoting sensemaking and concept development in their classrooms. The work of this thesis provides a novel framework from which to view language use and chemistry sensemaking as cornerstones of chemistry learning. The framework can be used by researchers who wish to study the role of language in chemistry learning. The results of the thesis can also be used by teachers as a basis for their planning to promote optimal sensemaking classroom environments

LEARNING STATISTICS THROUGH GUIDED BLOCK PLAY: A PRE-CURRICULUM IN STATISTICAL LITERACY

Learning to use data to investigate the world and make decisions has become an essential skill for all citizens. Play and curiosity are powerful motivators for learning. Inquiry – the process of asking questions and seeking answers – can engage the natural curiosity of young learners and motivate early learning. Recent research in statistics education has shown that children as young as 4 and 5 years old can learn to collect, organize, and interpret data they acquire through observation, counting, and measuring in a process of guided inquiry. Guided block play has been used for over 100 years to enable children to interact with mathematical structures paving the way for abstract understanding. Jerome Bruner conjectured that playing with a concept in concrete form prepares the mind for later abstract understanding and can begin at any age. Interaction with an embodied concept engages sensorimotor faculties and initiates neuronal activity that leads to useable knowledge grounded in experience. The frequency distribution is a core concept of statistics. Simple wooden cubes can be arranged on a ruler in the form of an embodied frequency distribution. This multiple case study explores how interaction with concrete representations of data structures in guided block play vii can engage learners in grades K-2 and lay a foundation for understanding a data set as an aggregate with emergent properties of shape, spread, and center. Activity Theory provides a flexible theoretical framework for describing the interactions and explaining the outcomes of a series of exploratory tutorial sessions. It is further conjectured that this early experience with embodied learning enjoyed in the first years of formal schooling may prevent statistics anxiety and misconceptions in later years

Biocultural learning - beyond ecological knowledge transfer

Education sciences research has showed that learning is a complex interaction between individuals and their surrounding world. The simplification of learning complexity has been commonly assumed in local and traditional ecological knowledge (LEK/TEK) research. Based on a modern learning theory, this article describes learning complexity behind the LEK/TEK held by fishers and farmers in Sweden. It leads to the introduction of the concept of biocultural learning that contributes to this field by giving details to this complexity. From a biographic approach, this research combines case studies, in-depth biographical narrative interviews, participant observations and the analysis of personal blogs and family pictures as data collection methods. This combination reveals the interconnection between professional knowledge about nature, identity construction and emotional bonds to nature. This article highlights the value of giving professional status to LEK/TEK and discusses the need to promote and strengthen biocultural learning in different society sectors

Curriculum Making for Social Learning : Exploring Policy and Practice in Norwegian Lower Secondary Education

This thesis explores the concept of social learning in international policy and research, and curriculum making for social learning in Norwegian policy and practice. The main purpose of the study is to investigate how students social learning is influenced by curriculum making at the national policy level and by curriculum making in subjects at the classroom level in Norwegian lower secondary education. The study has a theoretical grounding in critical realism (Bhaskar, 2008a; Danermark, Ekström, Jakobsen, & Karlsson, 2011) that emphasizes social phenomena as complex and emergent from the interactions of agents, structures and mechanisms at multiple layers of reality. Wenger’s social theory of learning (Wenger, 1999) is used to analyse collective outcomes of students and teachers’ social interactions. Curriculum theory (Deng, 2017; Englund, 2015; Reid, 2016) is used to analyse teachers practices of curriculum making in subjects as instructional events in the classroom, and to analyse curriculum making at the national policy level (Chan, 2012; Hopmann, 2003; Lundgren, 2012) as negotiated practices of educational governance and control. The study has a qualitative design building on data from policy, research and classroom interaction. Policy and literature reviews have been conducted using critical research review methodology (Suri, 2013), and methods of contents and bibliometric analysis (Bowen, 2009; Weber, 1990) to generate data on curriculum making at the national and international levels. Qualitative interviews (Brinkmann & Kvale, 2015) with students and teachers and participant observation (Heath, Brooks, Cleaver, & Ireland, 2009; Okely, 2013) of their interactions has been used to generate data on curriculum making at the classroom level. The study identifies two main understandings of social learning as; the development of skills, and the development of community, in international policy and research. The study finds that Norwegian policymakers draw on both understandings in a compromised concept of social learning in the newly revised core curriculum. The study also identifies how students’ social learning is influenced by mechanism of personalization, peering, grouping and identification in subject teaching. Overall, these findings indicate that students’ social learning is influenced by a dual dialectic of curriculum making in policy and practice, and of social structures and students’ and teachers’ agency in the classroom

Using learning analytics to understand esports students

Electronic sports (esports) has advanced to become a media giant and an arena for competitions and career development. Due to this growth, more focus has been given to esports research, implementation of esports throughout the world, and development of esports curriculum. Introducing esports into schools has created huge opportunities for deeper analysis of esport and learning data to provide insight into the learning processes. By applying learning analytics methods, this research analyzes data that originate from students (N=149) in Swedish high schools. The data was divided between activity data and performance data. The analysis is guided by the learning theory concept self-regulation to analyze differences between user groups. Through exploratory analysis, multiple user groups were identified and then compared in their trends and results to measure the impact of self-regulated learning concepts. Furthermore, the student data was used in the design of a mid-fidelity prototype for a student-facing dashboard to provide feedback and recommendations. Findings reveal that concepts of self-regulated learning have a positive impact in terms of higher curriculum interaction, and also higher performance results in game matches. While the research finds that focus on features promoting self-regulated learning concepts is important, it is challenging to generalize the findings to recommend actions such as suggested session lengths. Future work should include a larger population sample and focus on the implementation of a student-facing dashboard tool to test its reception and usage.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF

Leading Between the Lines: Exploring the Development of Identity Among Literacy Specialists

This dissertation study addresses the phenomenon of literacy leadership through a multiple case study of four practicing veteran literacy specialists in elementary schools in different New England cities. Using qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, namely extensive interviews and the Voice Centered Relational Method, respectively, narrative portraits were created that suggest themes related to their role, preparation, and ongoing development as well as models of leadership in their schools. In addition, the portraits suggested how the social context of their schools impacted the development of their identity, particularly in the relationships they built among colleagues and principals. With a theoretical framework of social learning theory, cultural relational theory, and transformational learning theory, the study implies that when a school expands its concept of leadership and validates distributed models that value relationships and interpersonal interaction, literacy specialists are able to develop identities as leaders, experience both a professional and personal transformation, and make an impact on the teachers and children in their communities. Recommendations for further study and future practice are made to address the formation of literacy specialists through a more in depth study of leadership and participation collaborative networks of colleagues

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF WRITERS WORKSHOP AS A PROCESS WRITING TO ENHANCE STUDENTS WRITING ABILITIES AND VOCABULARY LEARNING IN A KINDERGARTEN SETTING

This thesis is an exploratory case study concerning the impact of the implementation of writer’s workshop as an early literacy activity on students’ writing abilities and vocabulary learning in a kindergarten setting in South Jakarta, Indonesia. The study explores the implementation of mini lessons or the basic principles of process writing, teachers, and students’ interaction, students’ and peers’ interactions in contributing to students’ writing abilities and vocabulary learning. The study employs a qualitative research design method by using documents analysis as the principal instrument. Other sources such as transcripts from conversations and students’ drawings are analyzed to strengthen the data. Subsequently,data from eleven kindergarten-2 students’ writings are analyzed by using the concept of social constructivist theory for earl childhood learning (Dyson, 1999, 2006, 2010) and TEYL in Indonesia (Musthafa, 2010). The study reveals students’ dependence on their phonemic awareness resulted in numerous incorrect written orthographies of English words in their writings. The implementation of writer’s workshop allows teachers to integrate activities such as storytelling, field trip, wordlist and references to assist students in developing their vocabulary in their writing. Therefore, from the findings, it can be concluded that writer’s workshop benefits students’ writing abilities and vocabulary learning. Thus, it is recommended that writer’s workshop be taught at a kindergarten level.;--

A discursive approach to understanding the role of educators' possible selves in widening students' participation in classroom interaction: Language teachers' sense making as 'acts of imagination'

This chapter takes a small-lens approach to widening participation by focusing on opportunities for student participation in classroom discourse and on the role of language educators’ possible selves in creating such opportunities. Research into additional language (L2) learning motivation has firmly embraced the construct of possible selves (Markus and Nurius, 1986) – that is, L2 learners’ vivid and realistic images of their successful L2 speaking future selves – as one of the most powerful forces that shape their engagement in the language learning process and in intercultural interaction more generally (Dörnyei and Kubanyiova, 2014; Dörnyei and Ushioda, 2009). Parallel to this research, however, is a growing awareness of the crucial role that the possible selves of educators play in creating learning spaces in which meaningful intercultural encounters are facilitated (Kubanyiova, 2016; Ogawa, 2017). In this chapter, I examine empirical data from a grounded theory ethnographic study of language educators’ lives as a basis for building a theoretical and methodological case for a new approach to conceptualizing and researching the concept of possible selves in language education research

An exploratory study of how a Korean chaebol’s learning culture facilitates customer service

This paper explains how the organizational learning concept is used by managers in a global Korean company to promote group work, information sharing and an open communication style in order to produce a high level of customer service. Previously collected data from a set of in-depth personal interviews undertaken with three senior managers in a Korean electronics company were analyzed and interpreted using the grounded theory approach, and a number of propositions are put forward. The research findings show that managers in a chaebol deploy organizational learning to identify skilled and knowledgeable staff, and improve the organization’s capability by placing emphasis on developing harmonious, mutually oriented relationships that permeate throughout the organization. Top management demand that staff identify with government economic objectives and align the organization’s strategy accordingly so that the products produced are marketable. To achieve this, the organization fosters continual interaction among managers throughout the organization’s hierarchy. The chaebol’s organizational learning model encapsulates a “corollary” (continual communication) and “tools” (cultural influence and relationship management), and manifests in a unique strategy that allows management systems to evolve naturally

Az önmeghatározás elmélet alkalmazása a tanulási motiváció vizsgálatára

The paper describes and analyzes motivation of student based on the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). SDT is used in the paper as a basic concept because it can be considered a universal motivation and learning theory. SDT is a process theory of motivation which can be interpreted as a cognitive learning theory. The self-determination theory is a human-specific macro theory with its examination focused on the interaction of external and internal motivational factors. This model makes it possible to analyze the work, learning process, sports and other activities. (Deci, Olafsen, Ryan, 2017). The empirical research based on the framework of Self-Determination-Theory and it examines the motivation of the students of a Central European University by a questionnaire (N=471) from Vallerand et. al. (1992). The data is analyzed by SPSS software for correlation and correspondence analyze. Results and conclusions are shown at the end of the paper