Vad behöver eleverna undervisning i för att utveckla sitt skrivande? Förväntningsnormer och didaktiska beslut i svensklärares bedömningssamtal

I studien samtalar tre lärargrupper om elevers skrivande och skrivundervisning i ämnet svenska på gymnasiet. Det teoretiska perspektiv som läggs på dessa samtal är didaktiskt och inriktas på hur lärare formulerar och använder bedömningsinformation om elevers skrivande för beslut om skrivundervisningens innehåll. Resultatet visar att lärares bedömningar av elevers skrivande behandlar fler och delvis andra aspekter av skrivförmåga än vad deras didaktiska beslut sedan omfattar. De kvalitetsuppfattningar och förväntningsnormer som lärarna uttrycker i sina bedömningar av elevers skrivande inriktas huvudsakligen på texters kommunikativa kvaliteter, den stilistiska utformningen och textuppbyggnaden, följt av ämnesinnehåll och källanvändning. De didaktiska beslut som fattas utifrån bedömningen av elevers texter inriktas däremot i stort sett enbart på att eleverna behöver skrivundervisning i att disponera text och att använda källor. Detta gör att överensstämmelsen är låg mellan lärarnas beslut om skrivundervisningens inriktning och deras förväntningar på vad eleverna ska kunna. De didaktiska besluten omfattar i begränsad utsträckning den bedömningsinformation som lärarna själva har formulera

Kunskapsprodukter för lärarprofessionen – Skolforskningsinstitutets projekt 2016 och 2017

Syftet med denna artikel är att beskriva och diskutera vilka, för lärare, användbara och relevanta kunskapsprodukter som har genererats i 11 forskningsprojekt, finansierade av Skolforskningsinstitutet och beviljade år 2016 och 2017. Forskningsfrågorna är: Vad i resultaten kan ses som kunskapsprodukter och vilken karaktär har dessa? På vilka sätt har lärare medverkat i processen att ta fram dessa kunskapsprodukter? Sammantaget har 55 öppet tillgängliga granskade publikationer analyserats. Sex kvalitativt skilda kategorier av kunskapsprodukter har identifierats: 1) Kunnanden och förmågor, 2) Undervisnings- och lektionsdesign, 3) Didaktiska exempel, 4) Redskap, 5) Processer och metaperspektiv och 6) Generella eller kontextuella förutsättningar. Graden av medverkan från lärares sida har varierat avsevärt; från en aktiv medverkan, där lärare och forskare samarbetar på likvärdiga villkor, till en låg grad, där lärare primärt fungerar som bollplank eller forskningsobjekt. ENGLISH: Knowledge products for the teaching profession – Projects 2016 and 2017 funded by the Swedish Institute for Educational Research   This article examines the knowledge products of relevance to the teaching profession from eleven research projects funded by the Swedish Institute for Educational Research. A total of 55 openly accessible reviewed publications have been analysed. The aim is to describe and discuss which, for teachers, useful and relevant knowledge products that the research projects (granted 2016 and 2017) have yielded. The research questions are: What in the results can be interpreted as knowledge products and what is the characteristic of these? In what ways have teachers participated in the process of producing these knowledge products? Six qualitatively different categories of knowledge products have been identified as descriptions of: 1) Knowings and capabilities, 2) Teaching/lesson design, 3) Didactical examples, 4) Tools, 5) Processes and meta-perspectives, and 6) General or contextual preconditions. The degree of involvement of teachers has varied considerably, ranging from a high degree of active involvement, where teachers and researchers collaborate on equal terms, to a low degree of involvement where teachers primarily act as informants. Keywords: Knowledge products, Swedish Institute for Educational Research, practice-based research, teacher profession, teaching developmen

A national cohort study of parental socioeconomic status and non-fatal suicidal behaviour-the mediating role of school performance

Background: A link between low parental socioeconomic status and mental health problems in offspring is well established in previous research. The mechanisms that explain this link are largely unknown. The present study investigated whether school performance was a mediating and/or moderating factor in the path between parental socioeconomic status and the risk of hospital admission for non-fatal suicidal behaviour. Methods: A national cohort of 447 929 children born during 1973-1977 was followed prospectively in the National Patient Discharge Register from the end of their ninth and final year of compulsory school until 2001. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards and linear regression analyses were performed to test whether the association between parental socioeconomic status and non-fatal suicidal behaviour was mediated or moderated by school performance. Results: The results of a series of multiple regression analyses, adjusted for demographic variables, revealed that school performance was as an important mediator in the relationship between parental socioeconomic status and risk of non-fatal suicidal behaviour, accounting for 60% of the variance. The hypothesized moderation of parental socioeconomic status-non-fatal suicidal behaviour relationship by school performance was not supported. Conclusions: School performance is an important mediator through which parental socioeconomic status translates into a risk for non-fatal suicidal behaviour. Prevention efforts aimed to reduce socioeconomic inequalities in non-fatal suicidal behaviour among young people will need to consider socioeconomic inequalities in school performance

Hesitation in vocational learning situations – opportunities for learning

The purpose of this paper is to analyse empirical situations from a previous project on vocational learning in Swedish upper secondary vocational education, in order to identify ‘critical aspects’ of vocational knowing. The vocational areas for the programs were textile respective wood work.  The research design was ethnographically inspired: in each school, initial data were a series of collective remembering sessions with all teachers in each of the two participating schools and programs, followed by a sequence of video-recorded teaching/learning in schools,  focusing on a few students in each program while they were working with their assignments. Complementary to the video-recordings, teachers were audio-recorded for the purpose of documentation of their conversations with these students during their work. On several occasions, students showed hesitation in their work, but also the pattern observed for these students was similar. All examples analysed for this paper concern students’ hesitation while working with different assignments in school workshops or classrooms.  The theoretical framework for the project is activity theory. The assignments, the communication between the students and their teacher, the tools they use and the material they were working with were analysed, focusing the ‘critical aspects’ – aspects that seems difficult for students to discern and therefor a didactic challenge since a common aspect of the result they seem crucial with regards to vocational knowing.

Vocational education in change : A study of learning practices and knowledge transformations

The purpose of the thesis was to explore what students within vocational education are expected to learn and the practices that constitute vocational education in Swedish upper secondary school. The empirical basis for the thesis is two studies, both of which have been reported separately. In the first study, twelve vocational teachers were interviewed sequentially. Classroom observations were made of the tasks their students worked with and these supplemented the interviews. The second study consists of case studies of five teachers in academic subjects within vocational education. Here sequential interviews of the teachers and classroom observations of the tasks their students worked with were supplemented with group interviews of their students and, in two cases, of collaborating vocational teachers. A social perspective on knowing and learning was used for analysing data. The results from the interviews with the vocational teachers show that what they wanted their students to learn in vocational education (their object) is related to vocational knowing but is not the same thing. Knowing in school can be regarded as preparation for work within the respective vocational area, as preparation for further learning and as preparation for citizenship. The first category relates to vocational knowing, whereas the latter two relate to a broader commission of education in late modernity – the risk and uncertainty of the future work situation that the students are likely to encounter. The tasks were analysed regarding their content, form, and the tools used for completing the tasks. Three categories of tasks were construed: school tasks, simulated tasks and vocational tasks. School tasks are characterised by that they employ the practice of school, whereas the vocational tasks employ the practice of the respective vocation. Simulated tasks are specific in that they allow a testing and correction of the result before the job is done. Through school tasks the students were introduced into a new content. Vocational tasks were used in bridging school and work. Besides the obvious tools of the respective vocation, texts were also used as tools in the work with the tasks. Most texts were vocational texts, i.e. texts that were used in similar ways in school as within the vocation. The second study, case studies of five teachers in academic subjects within vocational education, focused the infused tasks their students worked with. These results showed that the teachers used three different steering documents for planning their work: the national curriculum for upper secondary school, the objectives of the respective programme, and the syllabuses for their subject. By using all three documents, they were able to construct infused tasks. These tasks made it possible for the students to see other aspects of their respective vocational area than within the vocational subjects, e.g. the environmental work, historical aspects etc. The texts the academic teachers used were not the same as those used by vocational teachers. These texts were texts ‘imposed by others’ (e.g. local authorities) but also used for work within the vocation. The ‘theorisation’ of vocational education, that has been claimed to be a consequence of the academic subjects, can be seen rather as a change within the vocations from an oral to a literate culture. In completing many of the tasks observed, theoretical knowledge from different domains, as well as skills were needed. Vocational education as a purely ‘practical’ education is therefore a myth. A variety of texts were used within vocational education for the work, mostly as tools. The literate practices of vocational education are similar to the literate practices of the vocations rather than to those of school. New tools seem to change working life and vocational education as well. This implies that a different kind of vocational knowing is needed. When employers control or simulate production processes instead of doing the manual work, vocational knowing becomes something else. This new kind of work is dependent on a different kind of experience. Thus the theorisation of the vocational education is a theorisation – or rather an abstraction – on many levels. Some of them have been developed within the vocations, others are imposed from the outside. Three social practices, vocational education, working life and academic education, formally have a joint responsibility for the vocational education. Depending on if and to what extent they collaborate, the learning practices offered to the students will differ. With collaboration, as in these two studies, the students encounter learning practices where the content from each of the three contexts can be experienced as reembedded into new contexts.Därtill 4 uppsatser</p

Subject-Integrated Teaching for Expanded Vocational Knowing and Everyday Situations in a Swedish Upper Secondary Health and Social Care Program

The aim of this study was to explore what subject-integrated teaching of vocational subjects, ethics and health care, contributed with in terms of vocational knowing. The case study was ethnographically inspired and followed a group of students (16 +) and their teachers in a Swedish Health and Social Care Program while they worked with a theme unit called Death for two weeks in autumn 2012. Data comprised observations, field notes, and audio recordings of the planning and teaching of the theme unit, informal discussions with teachers and students, handouts, a theme booklet, and student assignments. Analysis was based on concepts related to cultural historical activity theory, especially emphasizing rules, tools, actions, operations, and contradictions. Results showed three major objects emphasized in the teacher–student interaction and the tools chosen to support the subject-integrated teaching activity: vocational knowing related to vocational ethics, to everyday ethics, and argumentative skills. Manifestations of contradictions in the form of dilemmas related to the examples that teachers copied from a textbook. As these examples were mainly contextualized in everyday situations, and there are no formal ethical guidelines for nursing assistants on which teachers could rely on, teachers’ narratives were used to complement these examples. Students’ argumentative skills were emphasized and related to personal situations, in which ethical arguments for justification in vocationally relevant situations were made unclear

Bedömningshandlingar i två klassrum : Likartat kemiinnehåll men skilda inramningar

I den här delstudien analyseras två lärares introduktion samt uppföljning till ett moment i grundskolans kemi som berör det periodiska systemet och kemiska bindningar med särskilt fokus på lärarnas frågor, elevernas svar och den feedback lärare ger. Vi kommer i det följande att fokusera den aspekt av två lärares bedömningsarbete som är relaterad till klassrumskommunikationen – bedömningshandlingar på mikronivå under två lektioner. Det vi särskilt studerar är frågornas och svarens form och innehåll, samt lärarnas feedback till eleverna. Tidigare studier av lärares frågor till eleverna har huvudsakligen fokuserat formaspekter och visat att den typ av frågor som dominerar är sådana som enbart kräver ett kort och givet svar: ”Both in questioning and written work, teachers’ assessment focuses on low-level aims, mainly recall” (Black &amp; Wiliam 1998a, s. 13, kursiv i originaltext). Vidare visar studierna att lärarnas respons – bedömning – av elevernas svar är kortfattad, antingen accepteras svaret eller så avvisas det. Även om forskning inriktat på klassrumskommunkation (jfr t.ex. Sahlström, 2008) har ett annat fokus, förstärker dessa studier citatet av Black och Wiliam. Ett återkommande resultat inom klassrumsforskning pekar på formen för kommunikationen, IR-E mönstret (Initiering, Respons, Evaluering), medan man sällan haft fokus på innehållsliga aspekter av kommunikationen (Carlgren, 2009). I det här kapitlet undersöker vi vilka slags frågor kemilärare i svenska och finlandssvenska ställer till sina elever, vilket innehåll som fokuseras i frågorna, vilka slags svar eleverna förväntas ge och vilken feedback lärarna ger på elevernas svar. På ett övergripande plan är vårt syfte att analysera vad som framstår som viktigt att kunna i ett specifikt moment av grundskolans kemi men också att belysa aspekter av formativ bedömning relaterad till lärares klassrumsarbete. Vi har tidigare presenterat en analys av 55 frågor (två lektioner) i ett av de finlandssvenska klassrummen, en vanlig lektion och en laborationslektion (Lindberg &amp; Löfgren, 2010). I det kapitlet utvecklade vi den analysmetod vi nu använder som utgångspunkt samt en kompletterande jämförelse av de två lärarnas frågor, svar och feedback. Det vi avser att bidra med är kunskap om är vad som blir tillgängligt för eleverna att lära och vilket  kemikunnande som stöds i de olika klassrummen. Vi inleder med att introducera begreppen formativ bedömning och feedback och efter detta kommer ett avsnitt som behandlar naturvetenskapliga ämnespraktiker. Sedan följer det som är kapitlets huvudinnehåll – ett preciserat syfte, en presentation av hur vi gått tillväga metodiskt i analysarbetet och därefter följer resultat och diskussion