How digital activities become (im)possible in Swedish school-age educare centres

This study explores how digital tools play a part in the practices of Swedish school-age educare centres (SAEC). The aim is to contribute knowledge about opportunities and/or obstacles in and with digital activities in SAEC practices. Data is produced using observations and conversations at five SAEC centres. The SAEC practice is found to be characterized by three different approaches to digital tools and their use: 1) A permeating practice, where digital tools are an integrated part of the whole day, 2) A happening practice, where digital tools are present on special occasions, and 3) A neglecting practice, where digital tools are absent. These differences can be connected to how teachers interpret their assignment but also to differences in competence, access, and interest in relation to digital tools. This entails that SAEC pupils are given unequal opportunities to develop digital skills

Posthuman Data Production in Classroom Studies – A Research Machine put to Work

This paper describes a methodological inquiry that explores ways of performing classroom studies, where posthuman theory and data production are plugged in to each other from the very outset of this effort. Posthuman theory insists on research practices that demand attention to materialities, research practices that seek to detach the investigations from human concerns and positionality, research practices that consider how data and researcher(s) are entangled producing each other and by that try to operationalize the ‘unself’ of the researcher(s). Hence, a research machine was constructed and put to work in one Physics classroom in an upper secondary school. Five researchers focused on various multiparty interactions, whilst attempting to background the interpersonal interactions. Subsequently, the research machine was plugged into different concepts and turned into workshops where changes in configurations became significant for emergences in the classroom. In this process the concept affraction emerged as an effort to map how material-semiotic processes become observable in classrooms. The work of the research machine points to possible ways of avoiding commonly privileged perspectives in classroom observations. This attempt to deconstruct boundaries between human and non-human and the human as a bounded non-porous subject may affect possibilities to produce research that aids what otherwise might be shadowed actions in classrooms

Visual storytelling interagerar i skolan : Lärandevillkor i klassrum med samhällsorienterad undervisning

The aim of this compilation thesis is to understand how technology for visual storytelling can be shaped and used in relation to social science education in primary school, but also how social dimensions, technical and other matters create emerging learning conditions in such an educational setting. The visual storytelling technology introduced and used in the study is ‘the Statistics eXplorer platform, a geovisual analytics. The choice of theoretical perspectives to inform and guide the study is a socio-cultural view of human action, but also actor network theory is used to take account also of activities of technology and other matters. The study builds on three empirical materials that generate data from 16 social science teachers, and 126 students from five social science classrooms, in three Swedish primary schools. It contains field notes from the introduction of the technology; focusgroup interviews with teachers; think-aloud interviews with students and two kinds of video recordings from the classrooms (with an ordinary video camera and with software that capture activities at the computer screen, students’ activities and the audio as well). The analysis shows that the visual storytelling technology is shaped in relevant ways for social science teachers. The analysis also illustrates that the visual educational material are usable for primary school students in their social science education. They illustrate further how teachers, students, technology, information, tasks, data types, etc. together and in in close relation create highly complex learning conditions. The technology can therefore be seen as appropriate for the educational practice, but the complexity together with students’ apprehension of how to announce knowledge distribute severe problem spaces in the learning activities. The technology can therefore be assumed as a catalyst for educational change, but to achieve its potentials, reflections on didactic design and knowledge formation is requested to support the quality of students’ knowledge in relation to visual analysis.Syftet i denna avhandling är, att förstå hur teknik för visual storytelling kan vara utformad och användas i relation till samhällsorienterande undervisning i grundskolan (årskurs 4 – 6), men också hur sociala dimensioner, tekniska och andra faktorer skapar villkor för lärande i ett sådant undervisningssammanhang. I studien introduceras datavisualiseringsteknik för visual storytelling: ‘the Statistics eXplorer platform’, ett geovisual analytics. Den teoretiska referensramen har sin grund i ett social konstruktionistiskt synsätt Ett socio-kulturellt perspektiv används för att analysera social aktivitet, men även aktörnätverks teori används för att analysera både sociala och materiella aktörer. Avhandlingen bygger på tre empiriska material som genereras med hjälp av 16 lärare i samhällsorienterande ämnen, och 126 elever tillhörande fem olika klassrum i tre olika svenska grundskolor. Materialet innehåller: fältanteckningar ifrån introduktion av tekniken, fokusgrupps-intervjuer med lärare, ‘tänka högt’-intervjuer med elever och två sorters videoinspelningar ifrån klassrum (dels med vanlig videokamera och dels med mjukvara som spelar in aktiviteter på datorskärmen och elevernas aktiviteter vid datorn, liksom ljudet). Analysen visar hur lärare, elever, teknik, information, uppgifter, data-typer, etc. tillsammans, i nära samarbete i de studerade klassrummen, skapar mycket komplexa villkor för lärande. De läraktiviteter som uppstår i klassrummen där teknik för visuell analys inkluderas, erbjuder elever support att: hantera stora datamängder, bli delaktiga i olika läraktiviteter och uppnå olika utbildningsmål, men även andra sorters elevrelaterade mål. Därför kan tekniken sägas vara relevant för denna sorts undervisning. Vidare visar analysen hur komplexiteten tillsammans med elevernas uppfattningar av hur kunskap skall visas, skapar påtagliga ‘problem spaces’ i läraktiviteterna. Lärandevillkoren kan därför förstås som en klassrumspraktik som inte fullt ut överensstämmer med den introducerade teknikens erbjudanden för visuell analys. Därför efterfrågas en förändrad syn på didaktisk design och elevers kunskapsformering, vilket blir betydelsefullt för kunskapens kvalitet i förhållande till visuell analys

Understanding education involving geovisual analytics

Handling the vast amounts of data and information available in contemporary society is a chal-lenge. Geovisual Analytics provides technology designed to increase the effectiveness of infor-mation interpretation and analytical task solving. To date, little attention has been paid to the rolesuch tools can play in education and to the extent to which they can process actionable data for students. The aim of this paper is to examine students’ learning activities involving a GeovisualAnalytics tool in order to understand education in such settings. The paper builds on a study con-ducted in three public primary schools in grades 4 through 6. The implemented technology wasused in four different social science classes, each for a period of two to four weeks. Empiricaldata were collected via video observations and speak-aloud interviews conducted using softwarethat allows recordings by computer webcams and captures the actions on the computer screen.The interactions were analyzed, applying constructs and metaphors developed by Latour. Theresults indicate that, together, the data-rich setting and the students create intelligibility, whereknowledge emerges from heterogeneously constructed networks. These show that learning iscomplex in character, continuously ongoing in an intertwined, multimodal, multiple, and content-focused mode

Students multimodal knowledge sharing in school : Spatial repertoires and semiotic assemblages

In a world flooded with data, students in school need adequate tools as Visual Analytics (VA), that easily process mass data, give support in drawing advanced conclusions and help to make informed predictions in relation to societal circumstances. Methods for how the students insights may be reformulated and presented in appropriate modes are required as well. Therefore, the aim in this study is to analyse elementary school students practices of communicating visual discoveries, their insights, as the final stage in the knowledge-building process with an VA-application for interactive data visualization. A design-based intervention study is conducted in one social science classroom to explore modes for students presentation of insights, constructed from the interactive data visualizations. Video captures are used to document 30 students multifaceted presentations. The analyses are based on concepts from Pennycook (2018) and Deleuze and Guattari (1987). To account for how different modes interact, when students present their findings, one significant empirical sequence is described in detail. The emerging communicative dimensions (visual-, bodily- and verbal-) are embedded within broad spatial repertoires distributing flexible semiotic assemblages. These assemblages provide an incentive for the possibilities of teachers assessments of their students knowledge outcomes.Funding Agencies|Linkoping University</p

Visualized Statistics and Students’ Reasoning Processes in A Post Truth Era

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface (with a dynalinked view of an interactive map together with interactive graphs) and students interact to solve tasks in secondary schools’ social-science classrooms. Teachers are probably better able to support their students if they know more about the translations and the patterns that emerge when students try to engage in interactive graph reading. We have distinguished three patterns that emerge in the interactions. These patterns, decoding, manoeuvring and incorporation of prior knowledge, is supportive in elucidating the students’ visual and analytical reasoning processes. Insights about those reasoning processes is important since earlier research has highlighted the centrality of considering the problems of the complexity of interactive graph reading and thus dealing with issues concerning students’ abilities to read and interpret such graphs, when presented as part of interactive information visualization technology

Closer to the senses in post-pandemic teacher training – Reclaiming the body in online educational encounters

This study qualitatively examines synchronous online encounters in Swedish teacher education, learning from the distance and hybrid mode triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, conceptualized as emergency remote teaching. The separation of bodies in such online teacher education challenges participants’ sensory involvement and how they can be “present” to one another. The aim of this study is to scrutinize body-sensory dimensions of presence to enlighten online encounters in teacher training in circumstances of emergency remote teaching, as well as in contemporary and future online teacher education, generally. Online encounters were documented by video recordings during online seminars and lectures, and by diary entries and focus groups with eight teacher educators and their students. With inspiration from a posthumanist problematization of communication and post-qualitative methodology, the analytical process puts the concepts alterity and attunement to work with the data. Results show that online teaching encounters provides an altered body-sensory situation to which participants sensorily attune in different ways, bringing both positive, and troublesome affects. Different sensory attunements further involve exploiting some body-sensory dimensions (i.e. vision) when others are concealed. When performing teacher training of all levels through emergency remote teaching/online teacher education, awareness of how the material setting of online encounters affects the body and thus the didactic conditions for building meaningful relationships in the study environment, is important. Since the lived body has a key role in teachers’ professional becoming, the study suggests a critical, creative consideration of its full sensory, along with further, qualitative expansion of online teacher education

Visualized Statistics and Students’ Reasoning Processes in A Post Truth Era

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface (with a dynalinked view of an interactive map together with interactive graphs) and students interact to solve tasks in secondary schools’ social-science classrooms. Teachers are probably better able to support their students if they know more about the translations and the patterns that emerge when students try to engage in interactive graph reading. We have distinguished three patterns that emerge in the interactions. These patterns, decoding, manoeuvring and incorporation of prior knowledge, is supportive in elucidating the students’ visual and analytical reasoning processes. Insights about those reasoning processes is important since earlier research has highlighted the centrality of considering the problems of the complexity of interactive graph reading and thus dealing with issues concerning students’ abilities to read and interpret such graphs, when presented as part of interactive information visualization technology