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This study aims to explore Swedish upper secondary students’ attitudes toward first language (L1) use in a second language (L2) English learning environment. In addition, it aims to explore the functions of L1 use. Through a qualitative approach with both observations and interviews, a pattern of L1 use was noticed. The results corroborate prior research on student attitudes and show that students are positive toward L1 use. Swedish students tend to use their L1 through translanguaging and codeswitching as a tool for understanding, and as a way to establish relationships. In other words, L1 use needs to be considered a natural part of their L2 learning environment, even though they also understand the importance of exposure to and use of English in the classroom in order to become proficient in it. The students’ attitudes thus challenge the monolingual approach that is predominantly used in Swedish upper secondary schools today.

Vad gör att vissa lärare lyckas bättre än andra? Lärare ser ofta skiljt på rollen de innefattar och ansvaret de har. Syftet med denna studie är att visa på modern forskning inom hur en lärare-elev relation inom skolan för vuxna och gymnasieelever påverkar och förändrar lärande och lärmiljön. Denna studie har genomförts som en systematisk litteraturstudie. Resultat är uppdelat i fyra underkategorier: relation, motivation, känslor och beteende. Diskussionen utgår ifrån huvudresultatet att lärare-elev relationen är till stor vikt i elevernas utveckling, kognitivt, behavioristiskt samt för akademiska resultat. / What makes some teachers succeed in their role better than others? Teachers often view the role they are in and the responsibility they have differently, this study hopes to show a facet of modern research in the field of student-teacher relationships and their effect on factors like motivation and results. This study has been modeled as a systematic literature review. Results are divided into four categories: relationship, motivation, emotion and behavior. The discussion is based on the main results that teacher-student relationship is of great importance in students' development of cognitive and behavioral faculties as well as academic achievement.

Research has shown that interest in science often decreases in the middle-school grades for both boys and girls, but that more boys continue on the science track in high school and college, leading to males dominating the fields of science and engineering in the work place. The interpersonal interaction between teachers and students, as both individuals and as a group, comprises a large part of the classroom learning environment. Though these interactions last only a school year, they can influence student attitudes and achievement in the long term. Past research has suggested that a key factor in improving student achievement and attitudes is to create learning environments which emphasize characteristics that have been found to be linked empirically with achievement and attitudes. The purpose of this study was to use quantitative methods to validate a learning environment questionnaire (Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction, QTI), to investigate outcome-environment associations, and to compare male and female students in terms of their attitudes, classroom environment perceptions and achievement. An attitude scale, based on items from the Test of Science Related Attitudes (TOSRA), and a 48-item eight-scale version of the QTI were administered to 1228 science students in Grades 6, 7 and 8 at one middle school in South Florida. Student achievement was measured using the students’ quarterly (nine-week) science grade. / The results revealed satisfactory internal consistency reliability for the QTI, with alpha reliability coefficients ranging from 0.51 to 0.83 for different scales with the student as the unit of analysis and from 0.54 to 0.96 for class means. For the 10-item attitude scale, the alpha coefficient was above 0.80 for both the student and the class mean as the unit of analysis, demonstrating high internal consistency reliability. Overall, the results of the statistical analyses supported that the QTI questionnaire and the attitude scale are valid and reliable instruments for use with secondary science students in South Florida. A strong relationship was found between student outcomes (attitudes and achievement) and many of the eight QTI scales with either the individual or the class mean as the unit of analysis. For example, students’ attitudes towards science were more positive when teachers exhibited more leadership and understanding behaviors and science achievement was higher when teachers were friendlier and less uncertain. The use of MANOVA tentatively revealed gender differences in students’ perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior, attitudes towards science, and science achievement. However, the differences between males and females were statistically significant only for the Helping/Friendly, Dissatisfied, and Admonishing scales of the QTI and for achievement. In general, relative to males, female students had more positive perceptions of teacher interpersonal behavior and higher academic achievement.

The purpose of this study is to outline students’ attitudes towards ICT in the learning of English. The research was carried out as action research at a vocational high school in Sweden. The study aims at giving answers to the questions what the students’ attitudes towards ICT are, to what extent they think that ICT affects their learning and if ICT use changes their attitudes towards English. The students had little or no previous experience of ICT. For a period of two months, they used ICT in their English studies. This work was organized according to Svensson’s (2008) definitions ICT as a tutor, ICT as a tool and ICT as an arena, which are connected to behavioristic, cognitive/constructive and social constructivist/socio-cultural learning perspectives, respectively. For example, the students read and listened to texts online, wrote their own dialogues for a movie and maintained their own blogs. After each module, they evaluated the method and at the end of the project they were interviewed. The study shows that most of the students were positive towards ICT in learning English. They were most positive towards ICT as a tutor, which was interesting given that behavioristic ways of learning are often criticized by today’s scholars. Furthermore, the students claimed that ICT gives them new opportunities to learn. Not surprisingly, to learn in a way that suits the individual learner was seen as positive. They stated that it was difficult to comment on the impact that ICT might have had on their performance after such a limited period of time, but they indicated that they thought that they had improved at least a little. During the interviews, a few students claimed to have changed their attitudes towards English a little, in a positive way, but it was difficult to confirm this after such short time.

<p>The purpose of this study is to outline students’ attitudes towards ICT in the learning of English. The research was carried out as action research at a vocational high school in Sweden. The study aims at giving answers to the questions what the students’ attitudes towards ICT are, to what extent they think that ICT affects their learning and if ICT use changes their attitudes towards English. The students had little or no previous experience of ICT. For a period of two months, they used ICT in their English studies. This work was organized according to Svensson’s (2008) definitions <em>ICT as a tutor</em>,<em> ICT as a tool </em>and<em> ICT as an arena</em>, which are connected to behavioristic, cognitive/constructive and social constructivist/socio-cultural learning perspectives, respectively. For example, the students read and listened to texts online, wrote their own dialogues for a movie and maintained their own blogs. After each module, they evaluated the method and at the end of the project they were interviewed. The study shows that most of the students were positive towards ICT in learning English. They were most positive towards ICT as a tutor, which was interesting given that behavioristic ways of learning are often criticized by today’s scholars. Furthermore, the students claimed that ICT gives them new opportunities to learn. Not surprisingly, to learn in a way that suits the individual learner was seen as positive. They stated that it was difficult to comment on the impact that ICT might have had on their performance after such a limited period of time, but they indicated that they thought that they had improved at least a little. During the interviews, a few students claimed to have changed their attitudes towards English a little, in a positive way, but it was difficult to confirm this after such short time.</p>

Previous studies have successfully demonstrated that there are variations in attitudes towards blended synchronous learning among students in higher education, but few have studied underlying factors. In an attempt to fill this gap, this study aims to investigate the relationship between personality traits and attitudes among students in blended synchronous learning environments. The research question asked in this paper was: What type of relationships are there between personality traits and students’ attitudes towards their education in blended synchronous learning environments? This was done by deploying a web based survey to 352 students at Mid Sweden University in Sweden which in the end had a response rate of 25%. Further, a quantitative approach was chosen as the most suitable way to test these relationships and both bivariate and multivariate regressions was used. The findings in the study indicates that personality traits are linked to a different set of attitudes among the students. The conclusions were that there exist significant relationships between Conscientiousness and Neuroticism and students estimated study achievement. There was also a positive significant correlation between Extraversion and that students prefer to study in groups and significant correlations between Extraversion and Conscientiousness and that students prefer to study independently was also found. Finally, there exist significant relationships between Conscientiousness and Neuroticism and students' perceived learning ability through blended synchronous learning environments. / Undervisningsmetoderna har förändrats de senaste åren och att universitet och högskolor erbjuder distansundervisning blir allt vanligare i Sverige såväl som globalt. Hybrida lärmiljöer syftar till kombinationen av klassrumsundervisning och distansutbildning i realtid. Studenters attityder i dessa lärmiljöer har tidigare studerats, men få studier har undersökt bakomliggande faktorer. Studenters attityder i hybrida lärmiljöer är viktiga att undersöka då exempelvis en viss personlighetstyp kan korrelera med en viss attityd, vilket i sin tur skulle kunna skapa klyftor och olika syn på utbildningen och undervisningsmetoden. Denna studie har besvarat forskningsfrågan: Vilka samband finns mellan personlighetsdrag och studenters attityder till sin utbildning i hybrida lärmiljöer? Forskningsfrågan besvarades utifrån en kvantitativ ansats där en enkätundersökning användes som forskningsstrategi och datainsamlingsmetod. Ett webbaserat frågeformulär distribuerades till 352 studenter som studerade i en hybrid lärmiljö vid Mittuniversitetet. Svarsfrekvensen uppgick till 25% och för att analysera resultatet användes bivariata och multivariata regressioner. Resultaten indikerade på att personlighetsdrag i vissa fall var kopplade till attityder hos studenterna. De slutsatser som denna studie resulterade i tyder på att det fanns signifikanta samband mellan Samvetsgrannhet samt Neuroticism och studenternas uppskattade studieprestation. Det fanns även ett positivt signifikant samband mellan Extraversion och att studenterna föredrar att studera i grupp och det fanns även signifikanta samband mellan Extraversion samt Samvetsgrannhet och att studenterna föredrar att studera självständigt. Avslutningsvis fanns det även signifikanta samband mellan Samvetsgrannhet samt Neuroticism och studenternas upplevda inlärningsförmåga via hybrida lärmiljöer.

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Economics as a subject is one of the sciences that is required for any nation's development, but its teaching and learning has not being easy, which has resulted in poor student achievement. In search of solutions, this study has considered the reflective-reciprocal teaching technique and investigates its effectiveness on student teachers' academic achievement and attitude in the subject. Four Null hypotheses were formulated to guide this study. The study adopted the quantitative method of inquiry, using specifically a pre-test, post-test quasi-experimental design. Three Colleges of Education out of 22 federal Colleges of Education in Nigeria were purposively selected based on certain criteria to be the sites for the study. The sample for the study consisted of 178 second year Economics student teachers; the participants were randomly assigned to an experimental group or a control group. The pre-test scores of the participants was obtained using achievement test, numerical ability test questionnaire. Participants in the experimental group were exposed to six weeks of teaching using the reflective-reciprocal teaching strategy while participants in the control group were exposed to the traditional method of teaching. The quantitative data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics in the form of proportions, frequencies, means and standard deviations, independent t- tests and paired t-tests to compare differences between two groups, Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and ANOVA for repeated measures. The Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) aspect of ANCOVA was used to determine the magnitude of the performance of the groups. The findings of the study show that there exists a significant difference in the achievement of student-teachers in Economics when taught using reflective-reciprocal teaching strategies compared to the conventional method. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that Economics student teachers should make effective use of reflective-reciprocal teaching strategies in the classroom in order to further enhance the achievement of their students in the subject. In addition, the Federal and States Ministries of Education should encourage the use of the reflective-reciprocal teaching strategies by organizing workshops for educational trainers and teachers to better equip them in the use of the reflective-reciprocal teaching strategy. The use of reflective-reciprocal teaching strategies should be encouraged in other teaching subjects as well. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / M. Ed. (Didactics)