The aim of the study was to investigate classroom discourse among high school natural science students in Swaziland. The research problem was: Can student interactions tell us something about the negotiation of understanding during natural science teaching? A qualitative approach was used, specifically, the observational case study style. The population comprised three Form 4 students and their natural science teacher, purposely selected. Data was collected using the non-participant observation and the standardised open-ended interview methods. The collected data was analysed using the discourse analysis approach. The analysed data indicated that prevailing discourse patterns were teacher and student talk, as well as written work. A conclusion was that student classroom discourse in the natural sciences should be encouraged among all students for improved understanding and meaning making. / Science and Technology Education / M. Ed. (Natural Science Education)

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur F-3 lärare beskriver att de arbetar för att utveckla de matematiska förmågorna hos elever. Detta tog vi oss an genom att besvara följande forskningsfrågor: Hur beskriver lärare i F-3 att de arbetar för att ge elever möjlighet att utveckla de fem matematiska förmågorna? och Vilka utmaningar beskriver lärarna att de upplever i att ge eleverna möjlighet att utveckla de fem matematiska förmågorna? Vi har intervjuat åtta lärare från olika skolor, kommuner och årskurser för att besvara studiens forskningsfråga. Vi använde oss av en kvalitativ ansats med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Vi har valt att använda oss av de matematiska förmågorna som teoretiskt ramverk för att analysera studiens resultat. Resultatet visar att flera lärare beskriver att de fokuserar på arbete i läroboken för att utveckla de fem matematiska förmågorna. Resultatet visade också att lärarna upplever att det inte finns tillräckligt med förutsättningar och tid för att arbeta med alla förmågor. Det finns ambitioner hos lärare att nå alla elever för att utveckla förmågorna, däremot finns det utmaningar som gör det svårt och därför förblir det ibland ett önskemål. / The purpose of this study was to gain more knowledge of how primary school teachers work to develop pupils’ five mathematical competencies. We addressed the purpose by answering the following research questions: How do primary school teachers describe that they teach to give pupils the opportunity to develop the five mathematical competencies? and What challenges do primary school teachers describe that they experience in giving the pupils opportunities to develop the five mathematical competencies? We have interviewed eight teachers from different schools, municipalities and grades to answer our research question. We used a qualitative approach with semi structured interviews. We have chosen to use the mathematical competencies as a theoretical framework to analyze the results of the study. The result shows that many of the teachers describe that they focus on working in the mathematics textbook to develop pupils’ five mathematical competencies. The result also showed that the teachers experience that there are no prerequisites nor enough time to be able to work with all the competencies. There are ambitions among the teachers to reach all pupils to develop their competencies, however, there are challenges that makes it hard and so their ambitions sometimes remain as a wish.

Föreliggande systematiska litteraturstudie presenterar tidigare forskning om litteratursamtal och introverta elever. Syftet är att undersöka hur lärare kan genomföra litteratursamtal med introverta elever. Studien inkluderar 14 publikationer där doktorsavhandlingar, vetenskapliga artiklar och facklitteratur ingår. Mycket av forskningen utgår från det sociokulturella perspektivet. Materialet har bearbetats genom en innehållsanalys och kategoriserats efter tre teman; introverta elever, litteratursamtal samt strukturerade samtal med tystlåtna elever.  Studiens resultat visar att introverta elever ofta har en tystlåten framtoning. De har behov av en trygg lärmiljö med möjlighet till återhämtning. Introverta elever föredrar enskilt eller omsorgsfullt strukturerat arbete i mindre grupper. I och med införandet av läroplanen lgr 22 kommer strukturerade samtal, såsom litteratursamtal ges ett större utrymme i svenskundervisningen. Forskning visar att elever förhåller sig positiva till litteratursamtal. Det finns dock didaktiska fallgropar med litteratursamtal då de ibland används mer som förhör än som ett dialogiskt textsamtal. Forskningsresultat beträffande elevers lärande i samband med samtal går isär. Viss forskning menar att mindre verbalt aktiva elever löper en risk att klara sig sämre i skolan, medan annan forskning visar att muntligt deltagande inte nödvändigtvis måste vara en förutsättning för lärande.

Syftet med denna kvalitativa studie är att undersöka hur svensklärare i årskurs 4–6 arbetar med boksamtal i sin undervisning. Kvalitativa data har samlats in genom semistrukturerade intervjuer med fyra verksamma svensklärare för årskurs 4–6. Därefter har intervjuerna transkriberats och analyserats och sedan har resultatet presenterats utifrån studiens forskningsfrågor. Studiens teoretiska ram grundar sig i det sociokulturella perspektivet eftersom studien syftar till att analysera och beskriva hur boksamtal används i undervisningen. Det sociokulturella perspektivet stärks av Langers sätt att se på hur kommunikation av tankar och idéer med andra utvecklar ens egna föreställningsvärldar. I intervjuerna framkommer det att de fyra lärarna som blivit intervjuade använder sig av liknande metoder under boksamtal, däremot skiljer det sig hur lärarna planerar upp sina boksamtal på grund av olika anledningar. I studien diskuteras likheter och skillnader om hur frågor i boksamtalen används samt vad som kan påverka valet av frågor och strukturen i samtalen. Resultatet av studien visar på att boksamtal är en bra metod att använda för att utveckla elevernas läsförståelse men även för att få eleverna att vilja läsa skönlitterära texter och böcker.

This is an empirical study that aims to contribute to knowledge about the opportunities the career counselling conversation offers young migrants in shaping their future. Conversations play a central role in career counselling activities in Swedish schools; furthermore, the question of how the Swedish society promotes the inclusion of its immigrants has become an increasingly urgent issue. The study draws on a dialogical framework on interaction and meaning making and seeks to gain insight into how meaning about the future is formed in career counselling conversations. The following questions were formulated: How is the interaction between migrant students and their counsellors formed in counselling conversations? How can the interaction be understood in relation to the participants and their contexts? What seems to enable or constrain students’ meaning making about the future in these conversations? The study was conducted in an introductory course for newly arrived immigrants at the upper secondary level. Researcher followed a series of two career counselling conversations between five students and five counsellors, respectively. The empirical material comprises three parts: audio-recordings of conversations, observations of these conversations and audio-recorded interviews with counsellors and students. The students, three men and two women, have a non-European background and had been in Sweden between one and three years. All except one can be considered a refugee. The material was transcribed, and the conversations were analysed with the concepts of communicative projects and strategies. The conversations are the primary empirical material. The results show that the counsellors’ and the students’ communicative projects primarily are complementary. Both the counsellor and the conversations appear as crucial for students learning about Swedish opportunity structures and meaning making about the future. The analysis also elucidated interactional patterns and interplay that seem to constrain the students’ possibilities to shape a future with their own conditions within the conversations. The conversations focused on Swedish career opportunities and lacked a transnational perspective. Furthermore, the students’ migrant background was not made relevant in the conversations; hence, the conversations risk contributing to students’ stigmatisation. The counsellors’ methods also seem at risk of individualising issues related to institutional preconditions and structural constraints. However, the analysis also displayed how the counsellor can counteract these constraining effects. The result implicates, in alignment with other studies, that the responsibility for the students’ career processes cannot be put on counselling conversations alone; more comprehensive and integrated activities for career learning in the schools are necessary to provide immigrant students with reasonable possibilities for shaping a future. Moreover, the conclusion is drawn that counsellor’s conversation skills are important for the students meaning making about the future but that counsellors also must have, among other things, the ability to comprehend migrants’ feelings and existential issues regarding the future and, not least, knowledge about the conditions of migrants and the ability to both comprehend and actively recognize injustices and different expressions of power. There are seldom others advocating for the rights of migrants. / Vägledning mellan erkännande, rättvisa och skillnadsskapande

Corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), as an opposite of corporate social responsibility (CSR), refers to corporation’s failure to act responsibly. To address the actions connected to CSR and CSI, corporations need to overcome the challenges of communicating to their stakeholders and to be transparent. Stakeholders have become more skeptical regarding if the corporations are actually living up to the communicated standards. In other words, if corporations are ‘doing as they say’ and if they are ‘walking the talk’.  Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how top-listed corporations communicate CSR, as compared with what is communicated in media.  Method: This study used a qualitative content analysis method, by studying sustainability reports from 12 corporations over a five-year period. The study also examined media reports concerning the chosen corporations in order to get another view of the corporation’s CSR activities.  Findings: The findings showed that most of the corporation’s reports regarding CSR were in line with what media reports. There were some corporations, however, which were more aligned with media than others. This differences might be due to the fact that the corporations are acting in different industries which can affect how the corporations are focusing their CSR activities. Practical Implementations: This study can aid the understanding of how well corporations are communicating its CSR activities. It can help the corporations included in the study to understand how well its communication is perceived, as well as, to help stakeholders see if the corporations are ‘doing as they say’.

The paper starts by providing the overview of the Eurovision Song Contest, its participant countries and the audience. The aim of the research is to find out how everyday political talk takes place on non-political platforms. For this study, a blog dedicated to the Eurovision Song Contest was chosen. The research is netnographic, and the conclusions are drawn based on content analysis (the comments left on the Eurovision news blog - Wiwibloggs.com) and interviews with the journalists of the blog. The paper approaches the blog as anon-institutionalized space, also known as “the third space.” It covers issues such as nation branding, communication in an anonymous setting and deliberative democracy. The paper further analyses different characteristics of the content shared on the blog and answers a question on whether such content is agonistic or antagonistic by nature.

The Smartphone is a technological innovation that has transformed for the better how billions of people live by enabling them to transcend time and space to remain socially connected to potentially millions of others despite being thousands of miles apart. Although smartphones help people connect from a distance, there has been much concern about how they affect face-to-face interactions. This study explored, drawing on Goffmanian concepts, how and why smartphones affect face-to-face encounters. The findings show there are three types of smartphone cross-talk: exclusive, semi-exclusive, and collaborative. With the addition of smartphone play and solo smartphone activity, interactants can engage in five different types of smartphone use during a social encounter. Smartphones can both disrupt and facilitate face-to-face encounters at any given time. A theory of cross-talk was created as an extension of Goffman’s work to help explain the phenomenon.

This doctoral dissertation reports on results from case studies of how text-talks in a Swedish upper secondary school vocational programme, function as a zone of proximal development for reading. The aim was to investigate how text-talks function as a basis for discussion about the text content and thereby have a potential for developing understanding for the subject-specific text content in the subjects of Carpentry Technology, Welding Technology and Swedish in one class in the first year of the Industrial Technology Programme. The study is qualitative with an explorative approach (Burns 2011). Ordinary teaching and learning contexts were observed. The theorectical frame work is based on sociocultural (Säljö 2000) and sociosemiotic perspectives (Halliday 1978), a hermeneutical frame consisting mainly of the concepts of the zone of proximal development (Vygotskij 1934/2001), scaffolding (Wood, Bruner &amp; Ross 1976), dialogicity (Bachtin 1986), and pedagogical codes (Bernstein 2000), as well as an analytical frame deriving from systemic-functional linguistics (Halliday &amp; Matthiessen 2004) and reception theory (Langer 1995, 2011a, 2011b). Three research questions were posed: How do the teachers organise and conduct the text-talks? What linguistic connections with the text are constructed when text content is introduced and developed in the text-talk? In what ways does movement in the text manifest in the text-talk? Data were collected through class-room observations and interviews. Field notes and recordings were made of eight text-talks, and three teacher interviews. Analyses of intertextual cohesion (Eggins 2004), and activity sequences (Martin &amp; Rose 2007) were conducted. Analyses of text-based, associative and interactive text-movability (Liberg et al. 2012b) show the collaborative meeting with the text as expressed in the text-talk. The results indicate that built-out cohesion and progressive text-movability can widen the discourse around the text and thereby scaffold reading development. / <p>Delfinansierat av Ovanåkers kommun.</p>

Background: Joint attention (JA) is selectively and pervasively impaired in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and has been found to link to later outcomes in language, theory of mind, play and social development. This study investigated the effectiveness of a social interactive intervention to improve initiating JA skills in children with ASD. The intervention was based on the mirror neuron hypothesis, in that techniques used encouraged the children to take on their communication partners’ perspective through a process of embodied simulation. Method: Three participants diagnosed with ASD, under the age of 5, were recruited as well as 3 typically developing children for the setting of training criteria. A multiple-baseline design across participants was implemented. Results: All three participants displayed improvements in their ability to initiate JA. Skills generalized to other settings and communication partners. Improvements were observed by both trained and naïve observers. Conclusions: A social interactive model, based on the mirror neuron hypothesis, utilizing specific techniques which follow the child’s lead may be used to effectively improve initiating joint attention (IJA) in some children with ASD.