Högskolan i Skövde

Projektrapport från ett samverkansprojekt mellan Högskolan i Skövde, AB Skövdebostäder och Skövde kommun.

Participation as a pedagogy and democratic value turns out to be a critical element in students’ completion of school. Completed education is a regional development project in which a survey has been conducted in order to identify successful strategies to promote completed education in school. In an analysis, in the context of the survey, with an emphasis on school and participation as a pedagogy and democratic value, several findings are shown. It turns out that the importance of participation manifests itself through an emphasis on the societal and democratic mission of school; school ethos; the value praxis of school; pedagogical approach; and viewing the pupil as capable. It is, in more detail, shown that it is particularly crucial to understand the completion of school as a pedagogical problem; create sustainable institutional structures not bound to one person; and to make sure that students are participants in their own studies.

This study is about what contents students should work with in biology during grade 4-5 (Swedish nine-year compulsory school system) according to teachers in theese grades and teachers in secondary school (grade 6-9). It also shows if there is, or if the teachers whant, a cooperation regarding the contents in biology. The study is following a qulitative method and the resault shows that human body, knowledge about subjects like species and the environment are central contents in biology. Some of the teachers also agree that it´s important that biology is fun and based on experiences. Teachers from the different grades, however, does not agree in how wide the content should be. The teachers in secondary school (grade 6-9) feel that they have to start all over when teaching biology. In the diskussion it is clear that the teachers want cooperation concerning relevant contents in biology. Some of the teachers say that they want better definitions on what contents i biology the pupils should work with in different grades. One teacher want cooperation between different schools concerning biology contents.

Kursen Externredovisning I är en grundkurs som normalt ingår i en kandidatexamen i företagsekonomi. Den läses av första terminens programstudenter. Traditionellt kännetecknas grundkurser i externredovisning världen över av stora föreläsningsgrupper, knappa resurser, låg genomströmning och en uppfattning hos studenterna att kursen är svår (Springer Sargent, Borthick, & Lederberg, 2011). Motsvarande kurs i externredovisning ingår normalt i en ekonomexamen oavsett var du läser och upplever även liknande utmaningar.

Januari 2021 sammanfattades kursens utmaningar i i) låg genomströmning som försämrats ytterligare den första pandemihösten, ii) indikationer från lärarna att studenterna börjar läsa och arbeta med materialet alldeles för sent, iii) ej tillfredställande närvaro vid undervisningsmomenten. Tillsammans startade lärarlaget en resa mot att göra om kursen för att möta utmaningarna. Målet med förändringen var att hjälpa förstaårsstudenterna att börja studera i tid och som ett resultat uppnå högre genomströmning på kursen.

Kursens tidigare upplägg var föreläsningar, övningar och handledningstillfällen. Inga tillfällen har varit obligatoriska. Kursen innehöll en inlämningsuppgift som examinerade ett lärandemål. Övriga fyra lärandemål examinerades via salstentamen vid kursavslut. Efter ändringen justerades lärandemålen i kursplanen för att lättare kunna examinera studenterna löpande. Innehållsmässigt är det små ändringar som skett. Undervisningens upplägg har ändrats och strukturerats till fyra moduler. Modul ett respektive två avslutas med en digital examination. De två sista modulerna examineras med hjälp av två separata salstentamen (samma dag). Förutom föreläsningar, övningar och handledning, har ett seminarium tillkommit där frågor diskuteras som senare kommer examineras vid salstentamen.

Förändringsarbetat har tagit avstamp från Warren & Youngs (2012) tankar kring lärandemål och läraktiviteter, respektive Springer Sargent, Borthick, & Lederbergs (2011) och Hiralaals (2012) studier kring blandat lärande. Fr o m 2023 har kursen även kompletterats med erfarenheter från att behålla studenter (se t ex Williams & Roberts, 2023).

Studien baseras på en kvantitativ metod där enkäter har distribuerats manuellt till studenterna efter avslutad kurs. Enkäten har innehållit frågor om kursupplägg, kursinstruktioner och kursens olika examinationer. 91 studenter av 201 registrerade studenter (2022) har besvarat enkäten. Samma enkät kommer distribueras till studenter som läser kursen HT 2023. Samtidigt har undervisande lärare skattat antal studenter vid samtliga undervisningsmoment.

Resultatet från enkäterna visar att det framförallt är examinationerna som driver studenterna till att börja studera i tid. Likaså uppfattas kursupplägget på hela kursen mer positivt om studenterna har klarat de digitala examinationsmomenten på första försöket. Slutligen, det nya upplägget har inneburit färre studenter som inte klarat något av kursens moment.

Referenser

Hiralaal, A. 2012. ”Students’ experiences of blended learning in Accounting Education at the Durban University of Technology”. South African Journal of Higher Education, Vol 26, No 2: 316-328. https://hdl.handle.net/10520/EJC123986

Springer Sargent, C., Borthick, A.F. & Lederberg, A.R. 2011. ”Improving Retention for Principles of Accounting Students: Ultra-Short Online Tutorials for Motivating Effort and Improving Performance”. Issues in Accounting Education, Vol 26, No 4: 657-679. https://doi.org/10.2308/iace-50001

Warren, D.L. & Young, M.N. 2012. ”Integrated Accounting Principles: A Best Practices Course for Introductory Accounting”. Issues in Accounting Education, Vol 27, No 1: 247-266. https://doi.org/10.2308/iace-50106

Williams, H. & Roberts, N. 2023. “’I just think it’s really awkward’: transitioning to higher education and the implication for student retention”. Higher Education, 85: 1125-1141. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00881-1

The purpose of this study is to contribute with insights into how oral examination can be used to support students’ active learning. Oral examination is the oldest form of knowledge assessment, but is today most often used when assessing presentations of joint work also reported in writing. The article is based on a concrete course development project where the overall goal was to support active learning. An individual oral exam, decisive for the course grade, was introduced together with a new teaching structure. The study suggests that oral examination can contribute to active learning, provided that it is individual and that the teaching structure recognizes the advantages of collaboration between students. Furthermore, the study indicates that the oral examination should be given significant weight in the course grade and supplemented with a structure that prepares the students well. Future studies are suggested to focus on following students individually to shed light on their possibilities of active learning at the course start, what happens to them during the course, and what results they achieve in different parts of the examination.

This paper describes an approach for assessment in a large software engineering project course. We propose an approach for continuously collecting information from a source code repository and collaboration tool, and using this information for assessing student contributions and also for assessing the course as a whole from the teacher's standpoint. We present how we display metrics for how the students perform in relation to some of the requirements of the course. We argue that continuous summative assessment feedback to the students on how they are performing in the project is a suitable strategy for ensuring active participation from the students for the duration of the project course. 

The vocational education in upper secondary school contains general and vocational subjects.Its aim is to give the students relevant vocational competence and employability. This study investigates the nature of didactical choices in vocational subjects as described bystudent teachers (future vocational teachers). Social cultural approach and pedagogic content knowledge (PCK) are used as theoretical perspective and analysing model, respectively. The analysis shows that the choice of content in vocational subjects is the specialised vocational content as it relates to the general content. Teaching also focuses on silent knowledge as a useful competence. In the pedagogical practice the student and the students’ needs are central for teachers´ choices of methods and also the approach. The vocational teacher emphasises that the students develop relevant and useful vocational competence. Employability is related to the student´s possibility to succeed in the coming profession.

This case study reports results from interactive research within the development project CompLETE, a Swedish project granted equivalent to USD 3 million, aimed at enhancing use of ICT in teacher education. The research project rationale is that teachers and teacher students belong to a different generation than K12 students; grown-ups are “Digital Immigrants” while K12students are “Digital Natives”. A problem is that teachers know about MS Office, which is expressed as a high priority to learn. Students are into a different culture that teachers know little about. Teachers believe in learning the Office package first, before learning about K12 student’s use of ICT. New applications, such as chatting or podcasting, has to become part of the culture of teachers in order to teach students of the 21st Century. One conclusion is that relying on teachers participating through “bottom-up processes” may not be sufficient for extensive changes in teachers’ practice.

Aim

To describe and compare the clinical learning environment in community-based home care and primary health care in postgraduate district nursing students' education.

Design

Cross-sectional study design.

Methods

A convenience sample of postgraduate district nursing students was derived from five Swedish universities in 2016 and 2017.

Results

The postgraduate district nursing students were generally satisfied with the clinical learning environment in their clinical placement. In clinical placement, several factors affected the students' opportunities to learn, such as sufficiently meaningful learning situations with multidimensional content. A working environment that imposed psychosocial strain and high levels of stress among the staff negatively affected the students' learning. To further improve their learning from clinical practices, the students need preceptors who have the skills and competence required to support more advanced reflections and critical thinking on caring situations.

Background

Implementation of digital technology has been suggested as a potential solution to future healthcare challenges. Healthcare personnel’s attitudes are important in the acceptance and implementation of digital technologies.

Aim

The aims of this study were to (1) translate and validate two different questionnaires to Norwegian and Swedish respectively, and then (2) use these to examine nursing students’ attitudes towards digital technology in healthcare, as well as their attitudes towards older adults’ abilities to use digital technology.

Design

Cross-sectional.

Methods

A web-based questionnaire was distributed in first year nursing students in a Norwegian and a Swedish university college, respectively. The questionnaire consisted of the short form of the ‘Information Technology Attitude Scales for Health (ITASH)’ and the ‘Attitudes Towards Older Adults Using Digital technology (ATOAUT-11)’ questionnaire. The questionnaires were translated and validated in both countries. Frequencies, Student’s t-test, and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data.

Results

In total 236 students responded to the questionnaire in the period September 2022 to April 2023. Students mainly reported positive attitudes towards digital technology use in general. They most agreed with the items ‘Using digital technology devices makes my communication with other health professionals faster’, ‘The sort of information I can get from the digital technology devices helps me give better care to patient’, and ‘Digital technology skills are becoming more and more necessary for healthcare professionals’. However, they reported more negative attitudes towards older adults using digital technology. They most agreed with the items ‘One needs a lot of patience to explain to an older adult how to use digital technologies’, ‘It’s hard to explain to older adults how to use digital technology’, ‘Using digital technology is harder for most older adults’, and ‘Most older adults fear using digital technology because they fear of being scammed or cheated’.

Conclusion

The ITASH and the ATOAUT-11 is appropriate for use in a Norwegian and Swedish setting. Even if nursing students are positive to digital technology in healthcare in general, they are sceptical to older adults using digital technology. This may impact on their attitudes to using digital technology in the healthcare of older adults. These aspects need emphasis when revising nursing education curricula focusing on developing technological competencies in nursing, and gaining knowledge regarding older adults’ use of digital technology.

I den här texten lyfter jag fram den nya ämnesplanen i religionskunskap på gymnasiet. Syftet med detta är att sätta denna ämnesplan i relation till religionslärarens medborgarbildande uppgift. Med utgångspunkt i bildningsbegreppet diskuteras denna uppgift som en fråga om att se till religionslärarens frirum. Diskussionen utmynnar i ett resone-mang om betydelsen av att läraren inte ensidigt ser till vissa bildningsmål i ämnesundervisningen på bekostnad av andra.

Equivalence is regarded as a central concept in contemporary Swedish education policy.  One important aspect in the education policy is to describe and determine the Swedish schools' assignment to bring up democratic citizens. The concept of equivalence, hence, plays an important role in this policy-making practice. In the 1990s equivalence is challenged by another concept: 'freedom of choice'. Here some possible outcomes of a changed conceptual framework in the education policy are tried out, regarding the political understanding of a democratic citizenship. Three questions are pulled forth in order to carry out this aim. The challenge of 'freedom of choice' on equivalence contributes to a change in the political understanding of a democratic citizenship in Swedish education policy. A phenomenon that occurs in at least three aspects: the political participation (from co-acting to re-acting), the political activity (from directing to voting) and the political role of the citizen in society (from being a designer to a consumer).

We live in times of search for an education that can transcend national, ethnical, religious and cultural borders. As it seems, contemporary education is to be found in despair. Or at least found to be unsatisfactory in relation to new challenges in the contemporary world. The aim of this text is to deepen the prospect of the potential of education, regarding what might seem almost like a visionary educational objective - to provide for a global democratic citizenship. The core issue in the text is to surface what appears as insufficiencies in present democratic citizenship education. The urge is to draw upon some feasible features of an alternative to these insufficiencies. Drawing on Stanley Cavell-s notion of voicing and language, I will suggest an altered understanding of democracy and of a democratic citizenship that may direct the mission of democratic education in another way. What is needed for a compelling democratic education, I will argue, is an existential orientation. In order to make my argument, I will use Swedish Education policy as a case in point.

Among the different meanings of equivalence in Swedish Education policy in the 1990ies, one can be related to the concept of -freedom of choice-. Even though this relation doesn't contribute to a replacement of the historically more unambiguous meaning of equivalence, it coexists with it and represents a constant tension to it. This tension can be described in terms of a -freedom of choice challenge- on equivalence. In this text I aim to highlight this tension in relation to the Swedish schools-assignment to bring up democratic citizens in the early 1990ies. The question I try to answer is how can the freedom of choice challenge be considered to stand out in the political understanding of the schools- up bringing of democratic citizens in Sweden in the early 1990ies? I take my point of departure in some nationally encompassing Education policy texts.

The aim of this article is to forecast the present situation of citizenship formation in the field of Swedish education. In highlighting trends and tendencies in the educational assignment to provide for democratic citizenship in the first decade of the 21st century, which can be characterised as lacking collective visions for change, three depictions of citizenship are prevailing: citizenship formation for deliberation, for entrepreneurship and for therapeutic intervention. These depictions are analysed in terms of the direction for action taking and attention that they stress and produce as concerns citizenship in the making. The first one, citizenship formation for deliberation, stresses an inward-looking and inward-feeling citizenship. The second one, citizenship formation for entrepreneurship, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship, and the third one, citizenship formation for therapeutic intervention, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship. Taking on this forecast, which actualises democracy as something that is already achieved as a consequence of an assumedly post political situation, we argue that citizenship as well as society itself risks being pictured as apolitical and democratically “saturated.” This situation is hazardous, we argue, as it does not open up for change to come into question as desirable or even possible. Put differently, it leaves us with the notion that things have to be as they are, as we are living in the best of worlds. 

Citizenship in the making for a new millenium – education and citizen formation in 21st century Sweden. The aim of this article is to analyse citizenship formation in Swedish education. In highlighting trends regarding the assignment of the educational system to provide for democratic citizenship there are certain depictions of citizenship prevail- ing. The first stresses an inward-looking and inward-feeling citizenship, characterizing the citizen as deliberative and emotional. The second stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship, characterizing the citizen as entrepreneurial and willing. Here, democracy is portrayed as already achieved. This, we argue, is hazardous as society risk being pictured as apolitical and democratically ‘saturated’. This situation does not open up for democratic change to come into question as desirable or even possible. Put differently, it leaves us with the notion that things have to be as they are, as we are living in the best of worlds.

Focusing on the potentiality of students’ ways of treating a mathematicalmaterial this thesis aims to investigate how students use their conceptualunderstanding when working with mathematical tasks in calculus. Two casestudies were carried out to explore students’ understanding of thresholdconcepts. The first study, an interview study, explored engineering students’understanding of limit and integral. The second study, a problem solvingstudy, involved students within a mathematics programme, working on achallenging task including the concepts function and derivative, requiringproof by induction. Drawing on a theory of contextualisation data wereanalysed within a constructivist research framework following the principlesof intentional analysis. The results reveal that the students in themathematics programme expressed their understanding in a formal contextin which also intuitive ideas played an important role. They used intuitiveideas and formal reasoning in a dynamic interplay with several functions:to control intuitive ideas, to offer a new basis of reasoning, to reduce thecomplexity of the problem and to push the problem solving process forward.The engineering students expressed their conceptions in an algorithmiccontext, in which procedural knowledge was predominant and the operationsof the concepts were seen as defining features and a basis for understanding.However, faced with probing questions, the students appeared to shift to acontextualisation foregrounding ideas relating to conceptual dimensions ofcalculus. These contextual shifts display the transformative aspect ofthreshold concepts allowing the development of conceptions and students’awareness of ways of thinking and practising in mathematics.

Situated learning theories are largely based on the idea that the knower cannot be separated from the known, i.e. the individual, its context, and its activity in the environment mutually constitute each other. This way of attending the issues of cognition and learning has been heavily criticised by many researchers since sociocultural aspects such as social interaction and tool use are not believed to explain the issues of transfer and generality. The approach developed by Russian psychologist Piotr Galperin (1902–1988), on the other hand, provides substantial support for situated learning theories and should, thus, be considered a valuable complement to the theoretical framework of situated learning.

Background

Previous research on inclusive physical education (PE) has often focused on pupils with visible physical disabilities and how best to facilitate and adapt PE so that they can play an active role in the educational situation. Many lessons about inclusion have emerged from this important field. However, less is known about more ‘invisible’ variations. In Sweden, many pupils who are diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD), such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), are integrated into mainstream classes. These pupils are often more sensitive to demands and stressful situations and struggle to decode social interactions. When it comes to lessons in PE, little is known about how pupils with NDD experience the educational situation and what they need to do to be successful in PE.

Purpose

The aim of this article is to explore what PE practices become in classes in which pupils with NDD are integrated in terms of inclusion or exclusion processes. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, we suggest a transactional perspective on inclusion. This facilitates a non-dualistic exploration of inclusive PE and makes it possible to take the experiences of pupils with NDD and their peers into account.

Methods

In the article we use a transactional framework with a focus on experience, meaning-making and habits using the following analytical questions: (i) What are the experiences of integrated PE? (ii) How do these events appear as inclusive? (iii) How do they appear as exclusive? The data generation consisted of 9 field observations and 13 individual interviews with pupils aged between 10 and 11 years in three classes in two different schools in one municipality. The municipality was awarded a grant by the Swedish authorities to work towards the creation of more favourable school situations for pupils with NDD. Three classes in which pupils with NDD diagnoses were integrated in PE were selected.

Findings

The study identified four PE practices in which inclusion and exclusion processes were prominent: (i) to organise, (ii) to cooperate, (iii) to sweat and (iv) to win. ‘To organise’ is a comprehensive practice that is transactionally identified and foregrounded by teachers’ actions. The other three are embedded in the practice ‘to organise’, which foregrounds pupils’ actions. The study shows that pupils are included in a certain kind of PE practice when it becomes an organised practice of sweating, competing and cooperating.

Conclusion

The study reveals that some of the inclusive practices that are designed to support pupils with NDD exclude other pupils with or without NDD. Accordingly, working in an integrated way can be both inclusive and exclusive. It would thus seem that successful inclusive education in PE is as much about group dynamics as about ‘individual pupils with problems’. In order to achieve inclusion, teachers need to focus on actively communicating with pupils, colleagues and parents, on how and what to teach and on what students are supposed to learn.