Uppsatsen behandlar ämnet laborationer i naturorienterande undervisning i årskurserna 4-6 och mer specifikt den undervisning med laborationer som fem lärare beskriver. Detta sätts sedan i relation till lärarnas syfte med arbetssättet samt vilka problem de upplever i samband med att arbeta med laborationer. Genom att få en inblick i den verklighet lärarna upplever är syftet att kunna ta del av deras erfarenheter för att kunna bidra till en så effektiv undervisning med laborationer som möjligt. Med effektiv menas att maximera elevernas kunskapsutveckling. För att analysera den praktik som lärarna berättar om används konstruktivistiska perspektiv från Piaget och Vygotskij, det är med hjälp av deras teorier som resultatet granskas. Undersökningens datainsamling sker genom kvalitativa intervjuer på distans med avidentifierade yrkesverksamma lärare. De resultat som nås är att intervjupersonerna till stor del beskriver en återhållsam form av laborationer i klassrummet där graden av frihet är låg på grund av rädsla att förlora kontrollen över klassen. Trots detta finns dock en önskan att involvera elever mer aktivt med motiv såsom att utveckla det vetenskapliga tänkandet, att öka motivation, synliggöra något naturvetenskapligt fenomen och att utveckla språket. De svårigheter som stöts på i arbetet med laborationer är främst stora elevgrupper, bristande möjlighet till samverkan inom personalen samt lokaler som inte passar för syftet.

see document / Master of Science

The goal of the thesis was to describe protests against ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) that took place in Czech Republic in the first half of year 2012. The research consists in analysis of individual protests. While writing this thesis I've focused on describing the role of civil sector organizations, what frames their organizers used and also what was the role of new medias in organizing and dispersing these protests.

The goal of the thesis was to describe protests against ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) that took place in Czech Republic in the first half of year 2012. The research consists in analysis of individual protests. While writing this thesis I've focused on describing the role of civil sector organizations, what frames their organizers used and also what was the role of new medias in organizing and dispersing these protests.

With this paper I intend to contribute to the ongoing research on political participation through the participation of foreign-born demonstration participants in Sweden. Research on political participation of immigrants show that they generally participate less than natives. One theory is that recruitment networks and organization membership have more importance for immigrants than for natives due to higher thresholds for political participation. Research has also indicated differences in participation of immigrants depending on country of origin, such that participants from non-western repressive regimes tend to participate less than participants from western non-repressive regimes. The results of the study are based on survey data from 1748 participants in two types of demonstrations, May day marches and climate change demonstrations. Analysis led to three main findings. First, participants not born in Sweden participate less in both demonstration types than the those born in the country. Second, there are few, if any, differences between the groups in the same type of demonstration and also often between the two demonstration types when it comes to factors that favor political participation. Finally, the group not born in Sweden is not representative of the group in the population, based on country of birth.

Early childhood programs enhance children's knowledge and skills when teachers intentionally engage with children during free play. Preschool teachers' ability to notice and capitalize on teachable moments has been questioned in the literature. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to examine the efficacy of professional development designed to increase teachers' awareness of teachable moments in their informal interactions with young children during independent play, and teachers' intentionality in responding to those opportunities. The study was grounded in Vygotsky's principles of socially constructed learning, including teachers adjusting their intentional interactions to accommodate the thinking of learners. Qualitative data were collected using reflective journals kept before and after the vignette-based professional development sessions and focus group responses by 11 preschool teachers in the Southwestern United States. Chi square analysis of qualitative findings revealed significant positive change in teacher intentionality for the themes of daily schedule, awareness, and scaffolding. Vignette-based professional development coupled with reflective journaling appears to be an effective method to increase teacher awareness of intentional teaching, which may positively influence the education of preschool children.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of video modeling on skill acquisition in learning the golf swing. One-hundred-eight college students participated in this study. All participants were pre-tested via videotaping to determine initial skill level. The pre-test videotaping was analyzed using DartTrainer software. Each participant was randomly assigned to one of three groups (1) control (2) single-view or (3) multi-view. Participants in the control group viewed a compact disc (CD) with a putting demonstration repeated 40 times. The participants in the single-view group viewed a CD with a front view only demonstration repeated 40 times of the golf swing with a driver. Participants in the multi-view group viewed a CD with a multi-view (front, back, left, and right) demonstration of the golf swing using a driver. The demonstration was performed by a golf professional and each view was repeated 10 times for a total of 40 repetitions. After five weeks of CD viewing, practice, and class instruction, participants were video-taped to determine the level of improvement. Factorial ANOVA (3 groups x 2 trials) indicated significant within group pretest to posttest differences (F (1, 105) = 295.93, p<0.001). Between group differences were also noted (F, (2,105) = 18.33, p<0.001). Post hoc analysis indicated significantly fewer posttest deviations in the MV group than in the control group (p<0.001). The single-view group also had fewer posttest deviations than did the control group (p<0.001). There were no significant differences between the multi-view and single-view groups. The current study suggests that video modeling provided on a CD, which a learner can access on their own, may significantly increase skill acquisition rate and performance in learning the golf swing.

Arbetet syftar till att ge exempel på hur konstruktivismen kan användas praktiskt genom olika arbetssätt inom fysikundervisningen i den svenska gymnasieskolan. Arbetssätten som tas upp är demonstrationsexperimentet, den induktiva och den deduktiva klassrumslaborationen, hemlaborationen samt problemlösningen. För vart och ett av dessa arbetssätt ges ett exempel i konstruktivistisk anda, som så vitt upphovsmännen vet, inte tidigare har använts i detta sammanhang. Några av arbetssätten har testats i undervisning av upphovsmännen och därefter utvärderats.

Robots exhibit flexible behavior largely in proportion to their degree of semantic knowledge about the world. Such knowledge is often meticulously hand-coded for a narrow class of tasks, limiting the scope of possible robot competencies. Thus, the primary limiting factor of robot capabilities is often not the physical attributes of the robot, but the limited time and skill of expert programmers. One way to deal with the vast number of situations and environments that robots face outside the laboratory is to provide users with simple methods for programming robots that do not require the skill of an expert. For this reason, learning from demonstration (LfD) has become a popular alternative to traditional robot programming methods, aiming to provide a natural mechanism for quickly teaching robots. By simply showing a robot how to perform a task, users can easily demonstrate new tasks as needed, without any special knowledge about the robot. Unfortunately, LfD often yields little semantic knowledge about the world, and thus lacks robust generalization capabilities, especially for complex, multi-step tasks. To address this shortcoming of LfD, we present a series of algorithms that draw from recent advances in Bayesian nonparametric statistics and control theory to automatically detect and leverage repeated structure at multiple levels of abstraction in demonstration data. The discovery of repeated structure provides critical insights into task invariants, features of importance, high-level task structure, and appropriate skills for the task. This culminates in the discovery of semantically meaningful skills that are flexible and reusable, providing robust generalization and transfer in complex, multi-step robotic tasks. These algorithms are tested and evaluated using a PR2 mobile manipulator, showing success on several complex real-world tasks, such as furniture assembly.

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