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 article describes and discusses a group of newly trained vocational teachers' experiences of outcomes of their teacher education in terms of professional skills. Seven students participated in focus group discussions concering one of the professional teacher training national objectives. The results show that the newly trained vocational teachers acquired a new vision of the teaching profession and that they have strengthened both their professional identity and their self confidence. They have new, broader and more improved tools to use in teaching. and they see the importance of having a vocational teacher education. Skills that are considered important in new vocational teachers' profession are for example to able to see the individual students and reach out o them with a message, and to make just assessment and set fair grades.
The degree project represents an important part of higher education since it will examine the student´s knowledge in relation to the degree goals and the student´s ability to work independently under supervision. The supervision that is requested and given constitutes a central part of the student´s working process and depending on the supervision´s character it can also impact on the student´s possibilities to independence. Using as a point of departure the intention to make visible and to problematize our students’ ability to be independent, the aim of the study presented here is to identify the specific features of the written supervision which we as supervisors give to students in the form of comments. The attempt is auto-ethnographic, which means that we reflect over our own way to supervise. As support for the analysis parts of Bernstein´s theory have been used. The article describes and problematizes how we as supervisors have used comments in form of demands, exhortations and questions, the motives for the different kinds of comments and how different comments impact on the student´s possibility to use and show his/her ability to work independently. The article contributes with knowledge about what is happening during the supervision, it can be used as foundation for discussion about supervision in relation to the student´s independence and gives an example on self-reflection over one´s supervision.
This article illustrates different communicative contents based on children’s motivation and intention that through the puppet play speak and act linguistically. In the empirical section, the puppet consists and functions as a starting point for children’s interaction and narratives. The research interest is directed towards children’s ways of expressing the meaning of the puppet and motives that are generated in the interaction between the puppet and the children in their mutual play. The study result shows that children in interaction with the puppet broaden the linguistic environment in the preschool when they express their knowledge and experience belonging to other contexts than preschool.
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.
Reflective supervision in higher education means that students, continuously and systematically (according to a given model), together with teachers who supervise them, process experiences from work-based education and the university-based part of education. In two early studies of nursing students’ and teachers’ experiences of critical reflection as part of the reflective supervision, we have identified signs of existence of shared learning community. The purpose of the present study is to investigate teachers’ and students’ expressions of shared learning community, in light of the teaching form reflective supervision. The data consist of interviews from the two previous studies. The result of the analysis shows how students and supervising teachers express common experiences from the reflective supervision. The result shows a shared learning community as structured processing of vocational knowledge, challenging perspective meeting and exchange of perspectives, openness to each other's experiences and learning processes and interaction between the common and the individual. The study shows how the model reflective supervision contributes to a creative common environment for learning for both students and teachers in higher education.