In this thesis, I explore how design scaffolds, or (i.e., intellectual supports) can assist learners engaging with computational making processes. Computational making combines programming with artifact production. Due to the complexity of tasks involved in computational making, there is an increasing need to explore and develop support systems for learners engaging with computational making. With $3,000 funding from Utah State University’s College of Education and Human Services, an undergraduate researcher and I, who both have experience with youth and computational making research, explored how design scaffolds impact youth engaging with computational making processes. To do so, we held a workshop where 11 learners (11 female, ages 11-16) used ARIS, a platform designed for non-programmers to create mobile games. In addition, we interviewed five ARIS designers who were able to evaluate our design scaffolds. We provide insights for improving the use of design scaffolds in computational making with ARIS specifically that also apply broadly to computational making processes. Moreover, we developed an ARIS course that teaches educators to use a design scaffold tool for ARIS. This research provides immediate benefits for educators who access the ARIS course and researchers seeking to improve upon design scaffold research for computational making processes.

This thesis reports on aspects of a large observational study of writing lessons in a range of ACT primary classrooms. The observational study followed students at risk of failure, who had made literacy gains through the Scaffolding Literacy pedagogy developed at the Schools and Community Centre, with a view to investigating their subsequent interactions in mainstream writing classrooms. This thesis is concerned with the extent to which teaching in these classrooms supported the children?s access to literate discourse. In order to ascertain the pedagogic antecedents of the lessons, this study focuses on the section of the lessons prior to children being asked to write. It explores two areas of preparation for writing: the first regarding building of the field of enquiry (what to write about); the second, the extent to which children are shown how to write an appropriate text. The study proposes a level of explicitness that delivers a fine degree of knowledge about language while supporting students who might otherwise be disadvantaged in the classroom. The analysis in this study attempts to categorise the different kinds of interactions within the discourse of representative lessons by applying a framework for the pedagogic register of writing lessons proposed by Christie (1991, 2002) with particular reference to convergence of instructional and regulative registers. It was found that convergence alone was insufficient to ?Patricia Bennett 4 provide explicitness in teaching. However, when convergence was combined with a particular form of classroom interaction as developed in Scaffolding Literacy pedagogy a high degree of explicitness was made available to promote learning. Little effective preparation for writing was found in classrooms dominated by ?whole language? orientations, especially where writing lessons were based on personal experience. However, use of literate texts provided more powerful access than personal experience to effective writing. The most productive classroom teaching resulted from building shared experience based on a model text which itself provided the resources for the teaching of writing. The study raises questions about the importance of access to literate language when teaching writing and the role of constructive, purposeful questioning to build the knowledge of field as well as modelling features of language necessary for children to produce their own written texts.

<p>This essay presents and discusses a study that was performed in a multicultural school, where the teachers, since August 2004, have obtained internal training in how to work with language development. The objective with this essay is to investigate how the connection between language development and the development of knowledge can be understood and apprehended by teachers working in this school, and furthermore, to show how a language developing way of work can be accomplished in the teachers daily work.</p><p>Moreover, I have studied which objectives and strategies, the three language developers in charge of the training of the teachers, have concerning this work, furthermore I have looked into if these objectives and strategies differ from what the teachers understand and practically perform.</p><p>Pauline Gibbons book, <em>Stärk språket, stärk lärandet </em>(2006), has become a base for this school’s work when it comes to language development. Gibbons presents theories and practical exercises which have their origin from Vygotskij, Halliday and Cummins. Their theories have also become my theoretical base in this study.</p><p>I have made qualitative interviews with four teachers working in this school, and with one of the language developers. The results, from the teacher’s views and opinions in this subject, are presented individually. The spread between the teacher’s thoughts, when it comes to the connection between language development and knowledge, is quite extensive and so are the methods they choose, consciously or unconsciously, to work in a language developing way. The most important result, drawn from this study, is that all four teachers give examples of how to work in a language developing way, but only one presents a more well-thought-out method of how to work, and also explains why these methods develops the students knowledge and not only the language development.</p><p>Consequently, there is a gap between the awareness of how important language development is in the process of developing ones knowledge, and how this is performed in the teachers’ daily work with the students’. This could be of interest for the school to investigate further.</p>

While an infant is learning to grasp, there are two key processes that she uses for leading a successful development. In the first process, infants use an intuitional approach where the hand is moved towards the object to create an initial contact regardless of the object properties. The contact is followed by a tactile grasping phase where the object is enclosed by the hand. This intuitive grasping behavior leads an grasping mechanism, which utilizes visual input and incorporates this into the grasp plan. The second process is called scaffolding, a guidance by stating how to accomplish the task or modifying its behaviors by interference. Infants pay attention to such guidance and understand the indication of important features of an object from 9 months of age. This supervision mechanism plays an important role for learning how to grasp certain objects in a proper way. To simulate these behavioral findings, a reaching and a tactile grasping controller was implemented on iCub humanoid robot which allowed it to reach an object from different directions, and enclose its fingers to cover the object. With these, a human-like grasp learning for iCub is proposed. Namely, the first step is an unsupervised learning where the robot is experimenting how to grasp objects. The second step is supervised learning phase where a caregiver modifies the end-effectors position when the robot is mistaken. By doing several experiments for two different grasping styles, we observe that the proposed methodology shows a better learning rate comparing to the scaffolding-only learning mechanism.

College students rarely engage model-based epistemological reasoning about scientific data and evidence. The purpose of this study was to (1) investigate how scaffolding treatments influenced college students' epistemological reasoning about how data are used as evidence, (2) describe students' epistemological reasoning practice over the course of the study, (3) learn more about relationships among students' domain knowledge, epistemological beliefs about scientific knowledge, and epistemological reasoning, and (4) investigate how scaffolding for epistemological reasoning influences knowledge gain. Participants in this study consisted of three-hundred fifteen undergraduate students; all were juniors and seniors and all students were enrolled in one of two introductory genetics laboratory courses. Study participants included non-majors (Experiment 1, N =143) and majors (Experiment 2, N = 172). A partially mixed-methods sequential research design was used in this study; qualitative and quantitative phases were mixed during data analysis. A distributed scaffolding system was used in this study. All participants from each laboratory section were randomly assigned to one of three treatments; no scaffolds, domain-general scaffolds, or domain specific scaffolds. Study variables included domain knowledge, epistemological beliefs about the nature of scientific knowledge, and epistemological reasoning, scaffolding treatment was the manipulated variable. Findings were: (1) Chi square analysis indicated no statistically significant differences in epistemological reasoning by scaffolding treatment; model-based reasoning was not observed in students' explanations; (2) Spearman rho indicated no change in epistemological reasoning over the course of the study, however, statistical significance was not reached, however, a repeated measures ANOVA with Greenhouse-Geisser correction indicated a statistically significant within subjects change in epistemological reasoning, implications are discussed; (3) statistically significant bivariate correlations were found and (4) ANCOVA indicated pretest domain knowledge was a statistically significant covariate for posttest domain knowledge and a statistically significant main effect for scaffolding treatment was reached by Experiment 1 participants but not by Experiment 2 participants. Implications for instructional design and future research are discussed.

The aim of this thesis is to explore school classes with a higher level of achievement in reading than could be expected, with regard to socio-economic background factors and language background. What do those classes practice? Which attitudes towards reading and schooling do those children and their teachers display? The teacher and the classroom environment are in particular focus. The thesis is based on three studies. Firstly, over-achieving and underachieving grade three-classes in reading are compared in a large-scale statistical study. Reading tests, student questionnaires and teacher questionnaires provided data. The results indicate that a positive classroom climate, frequent voluntary reading, the use of authentic literature and many years of teaching experience characterise the over-achieving classes. In a second study eight over-achieving classes, in the same data material were in focus. The schools were located in a low-income, low-education multicultural suburban area. In-depth interviews were performed with adults active in those classes at the time of the data collection. The joint analyses of quantitative and qualitative data indicate that teachers’ ways of relating to their students is important as the Deficit Discourse is replaced by future oriented pedagogy with features such as aesthetic activities, dynamic assessment, strong raming, abundant reading of fiction and a lot of writing. In a third smaller, qualitative study five young university students, former students in one of the targeted classes in the second study, were interviewed in-depth about their school experiences and their Future Time Perspective. The informants emphasize the importance of being acknowledged in school, reading competency and knowledge of oral and written Swedish as factors for success. / Syftet med avhandlingen är att utforska de faktorer som bidrar till att vissa skolklasser presterar på högre nivåer i läsning än vad man skulle kunna förvänta med hänsyn till socioekonomiska bakgrundsfaktorer och språkbakgrund. Hur arbetar dessa klasser? Vilka uppfattningar och attityder visavi läsning och skola kännetecknar dessa barn och deras lärare? Framför allt fokuseras läraren och undervisningen. Avhandlingen baserar sig på tre studier. I en första storskalig statistisk studie jämförs över- och underpresterande klasser i läsning i skolår tre. Lästester, lärarenkäter och elevenkäter låg till grund för analyserna. Resultaten indikerar ett positivt klassrumsklimat, höga frekvenser av fritidsläsning, autentisk litteratur i undervisningen samt lärares långa yrkeserfarenhet som karaktäristika. I en andra uppföljande studie, fokuserades åtta överpresterande klasser i samma datamaterial, i ett multikulturellt förortsområde med låga utbildnings- och inkomstnivåer. I denna studie djupintervjuades även vuxna som varit aktiva i de överpresterande klasserna under tiden för datainsamlingen. De samlade analyserna av kvalitativa och kvantitativa data indikerar att lärares förhållningssätt intar en nyckelroll, då ett brist-synsätt ersatts av framtidsorienterad pedagogik, med inslag som estetisk verksamhet, dynamisk utvärdering, fasta strukturer, riklig läsning av skönlitteratur och eget skrivande. I en tredje, mindre, kvalitativ studie djupintervjuas tidigare elever från en av de undersökta klasserna, nu unga vuxna i början av sin akademiska karriär, om sin skolgång och sitt framtidsperspektiv. Informanterna betonar värdet av att få lyckas, att bli sedd och uppskattad för den man är, samt hemtamhet med litteratur och svenska språket i tal och skrift som framgångsfaktorer.

The subject matter of this dissertation is children’s use and development of emotive expressions. While prior studies have either focused on facial expressions of emotions or on emotions in the social mechanisms of in situ interactions, this thesis opts to merge two traditions by applying an interactional approach to the interpretation of child–child and child–adult encounters. This approach is further supplemented with an interpretational frame stemming from studies on child development, sociology and psychology. In order to depict the multi-leveled process of socialization, a number of sub-areas are investigated such as the emotive expressions per se; how and when these expressions are used in interaction with parents and siblings; the kinds of responses the children get after using an emotive expression; parental acts (verbal or nonverbal) that bear on children’s conduct and their choice of such expressions. Finally, the relation between nonverbal displays and language as expressive means for emotions is analyzed from a developmental perspective. The data consists of video-recordings of five sibling groups in the ages between 1 ½ and 5 ½ who were followed for 2 ½ years in their home environment. In all, 19 recordings (15 h) were transcribed and analyzed. The results from the study lead to several different taxonomies previously not discussed in the pertinent literature: (i) the nonverbal, vocal and verbal emotive expressions used by children; (ii) the different means these expressions were put to in child–parent encounters; (iii) the ways relations to siblings can be seen as creating and shaping certain emotive processes. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that parental responses are of vital importance for the outcome of specific child expressions. As parents reprimand, comfort, praise and mediate in their interaction with their children, they create paths later used by the child as she practices and acquires her own expressive means for handling emotions in interactional contexts. Finally, a developmental frame of language and nonverbal acts is elaborated and suggested as a tool for discovering the paths of linguistic and emotional socialization. / För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se

This essay presents and discusses a study that was performed in a multicultural school, where the teachers, since August 2004, have obtained internal training in how to work with language development. The objective with this essay is to investigate how the connection between language development and the development of knowledge can be understood and apprehended by teachers working in this school, and furthermore, to show how a language developing way of work can be accomplished in the teachers daily work. Moreover, I have studied which objectives and strategies, the three language developers in charge of the training of the teachers, have concerning this work, furthermore I have looked into if these objectives and strategies differ from what the teachers understand and practically perform. Pauline Gibbons book, Stärk språket, stärk lärandet (2006), has become a base for this school’s work when it comes to language development. Gibbons presents theories and practical exercises which have their origin from Vygotskij, Halliday and Cummins. Their theories have also become my theoretical base in this study. I have made qualitative interviews with four teachers working in this school, and with one of the language developers. The results, from the teacher’s views and opinions in this subject, are presented individually. The spread between the teacher’s thoughts, when it comes to the connection between language development and knowledge, is quite extensive and so are the methods they choose, consciously or unconsciously, to work in a language developing way. The most important result, drawn from this study, is that all four teachers give examples of how to work in a language developing way, but only one presents a more well-thought-out method of how to work, and also explains why these methods develops the students knowledge and not only the language development. Consequently, there is a gap between the awareness of how important language development is in the process of developing ones knowledge, and how this is performed in the teachers’ daily work with the students’. This could be of interest for the school to investigate further.

Despite numerous studies of the development of theory of mind, how children express their understanding of mind in less structured, play settings has gone largely unstudied. Many developmental accounts, regardless of disagreement on other theoretical issues, agree that the child’s engagement within social contexts is crucial to the development of understanding of mind. Our goals were to collect a detailed account of how children use their understanding of mind and how mothers align their support to the child’s capabilities within social interactions. In this longitudinal study, typically developing preschoolers (N = 52) engaged in a hiding game with their mothers in a semi-structured play setting when the children were 42-, 54-, and 66-months old. Aspects of children’s understanding of mind were rated including understanding of knowledge access, deception, false belief, and emotional response to false belief, as well as, affective charge and engagement with the task. Mothers’ utterances were coded for various characteristics, particularly role and content. Children’s understanding of mind increased across visits and positively correlated with false belief task performance at the 42- and 54-month visits, rs = .35 and .39, p < .05, but not the 66-month visit, rs = –.25, p = .10. Children’s enthusiasm was positively related to their understanding of mind at the first and second visits, but not the last. Mothers tailored the content of their utterances to the child’s growing expertise, but whether mothers adjusted the role of their utterances to children’s understanding of mind remains unclear. Observing children’s playful use of their emerging understanding of mind in social interactions allowed for the capture of subtle variations in how children express and caregivers support their understanding.

In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood indirectly exposes frightening and undemocratic traits in societies of our time when she applies them to a fictive future in which these factors have caused horrible consequences. A group of men has formed a new state, “Gilead”, in which they ruthlessly control the population. This essay studies how this dictating power gains and, essentially, maintains power in the fictive society. The essay argues, and comes to the conclusion, that by surveilling the population and by restricting its means of communication the dictatorship is able to control the people and keep them docile.