The aim of this article is to analyse the aspects that teachers intend to focus on in teaching mathematics and the students' needs, i.e. what is critical for student learning. The article develops an argument for the importance of identifying the “critical aspects” as a basis for the teachers to promote student learning of Mathematics from preschool to upper secondary school. The article concludes that what teachers believe that students need to be offered concerning a specific content of Mathematics does not correspond to students' needs. Gaps between the intended and the enacted object of learning show that both the way the object of learning is offered and the way this is communicated in a teaching situation could be improved.

This study investigates variable positioning of adverbs in compound verb tenses in vernacular Quebec French using the sociolinguistic framework of Variation Theory (Weinreich et al. 1968; Labov 1969). While variable adverb placement is addressed in both the prescriptive and linguistic literature, whether their explanations for it hold in practice remains to be determined; quantitative research of this phenomenon in usage-based corpora is limited, and rare in French. The research objectives are therefore to determine the productivity of variable adverb placement in French in these verbal contexts, to uncover the linguistic and/or social factors which constrain it, and to evaluate the extent to which current treatments of this variable in the literature accurately reflect what occurs in speech. Data is thus extracted from a corpus of spontaneous discourse, is coded for several linguistic and social factors, and is quantitatively analysed using standard variationist methodology (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001). Overall rates of variant use suggest that variable adverb placement is robust, with adverbs occurring just slightly more frequently after the past participle than between the auxiliary and the participle; placement at the beginning of the sentence is rare. The results of the distributional and multivariate analyses largely confirm the purported conditioning effects of the tested linguistic factors, suggesting that prescriptive and theoretical linguistic approaches are generally correct in their accounts of this phenomenon. However, closer investigation reveals these effects to be sensitive to the lexical identity of the adverb, namely, their particular placement preferences; once these positioning predilections are taken into consideration, the conditioning effects of the linguistic factors essentially disappear. Sociodemographic factors are also found to be mildly implicated in variable adverb placement, and these too are sensitive to the influence of the lexical identity of the adverb. Ultimately, it is argued that this variable is primarily lexically-constrained, a finding which can be only minimally and indirectly inferred from the relevant literature. Taken together, the results of this study provide new and vital insight into the mechanisms underlying variable adverb placement in French, and also highlight the importance of quantitatively investigating such variable language phenomena in corpora of vernacular speech.

This study investigates variable positioning of adverbs in compound verb tenses in vernacular Quebec French using the sociolinguistic framework of Variation Theory (Weinreich et al. 1968; Labov 1969). While variable adverb placement is addressed in both the prescriptive and linguistic literature, whether their explanations for it hold in practice remains to be determined; quantitative research of this phenomenon in usage-based corpora is limited, and rare in French. The research objectives are therefore to determine the productivity of variable adverb placement in French in these verbal contexts, to uncover the linguistic and/or social factors which constrain it, and to evaluate the extent to which current treatments of this variable in the literature accurately reflect what occurs in speech. Data is thus extracted from a corpus of spontaneous discourse, is coded for several linguistic and social factors, and is quantitatively analysed using standard variationist methodology (Poplack & Tagliamonte 2001). Overall rates of variant use suggest that variable adverb placement is robust, with adverbs occurring just slightly more frequently after the past participle than between the auxiliary and the participle; placement at the beginning of the sentence is rare. The results of the distributional and multivariate analyses largely confirm the purported conditioning effects of the tested linguistic factors, suggesting that prescriptive and theoretical linguistic approaches are generally correct in their accounts of this phenomenon. However, closer investigation reveals these effects to be sensitive to the lexical identity of the adverb, namely, their particular placement preferences; once these positioning predilections are taken into consideration, the conditioning effects of the linguistic factors essentially disappear. Sociodemographic factors are also found to be mildly implicated in variable adverb placement, and these too are sensitive to the influence of the lexical identity of the adverb. Ultimately, it is argued that this variable is primarily lexically-constrained, a finding which can be only minimally and indirectly inferred from the relevant literature. Taken together, the results of this study provide new and vital insight into the mechanisms underlying variable adverb placement in French, and also highlight the importance of quantitatively investigating such variable language phenomena in corpora of vernacular speech.

The supervision offered at universities today is to some degree being questioned, while the situation of doctoral students is undergoing changes. The supervision students get nowadays is very different from what was available when today’s supervisors were doctoral students. The present study relies on thirty-one in-depth interviews with experienced research supervisors from all faculties at the one university. The Swedish governing documents regarding supervision have mostly been phrased in very general terms on the assumption that certain disciplines have several traits in common. Other documents describe the requirements for supervisors more sweepingly; everybody is expected to work according to the same lines. There is no question that supervision could be anything but good and no attempt at defining the task is made. Previous studies show that supervisors are unaware of what is really expected of them. The aim of this thesis is partly to investigate whether there are any communal traits in the accounts, at individual or group level, and partly to demonstrate how research supervisors’ views on research supervision can vary. The objective is also to highlight qualitative differences in the descriptions by the supervisors as to how and why they supervise. Results show that it is not easy to articulate knowledge about ones own actions. The supervisors under study have not previously reflected too much on the question of supervising. They have neither received nor requested feedback and do not expect to get honest verdicts from their students. They profess themselves to have developed a mode of supervision on their own, without assistance or any form of training. The thesis is based on a theory of variation, tacit knowledge and reflection and that supervisors will be shaped by connections to certain Communities of practice. It draws on the silent or unarticulated knowledge of what supervision is about, how and why supervision is carried out in a specific way, at group level or individually. At group level some similarities to other investigations can be found. Traditions regarding the form of the thesis are usually compliant with faculty norms. At the individual level, however, the study presents new findings in pointing out the existence of three different styles of supervision: researcher, leader and official. These can not be traced back to any specific disciplines. The three styles differ from each other mainly in their attitude to the doctoral students and in their outlook on the question of power and responsibility. The most important conclusion is to draw attention to the significance of having an individual perspective. In order to be able to improve the art of supervision, getting interaction and feedback from doctoral students and the organisation is not sufficient. A prerequisite for development is to gain an awareness of ones own actions. In order to become conscious about ones doings it is necessary to give and take feedback about oneself, achieved through self-reflection. / <p>AKADEMISK AVHANDLING som med tillstånd av utbildningsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Göteborgs universitet för vinnande av doktorsexamen framläggs till offentlig granskning fredagen den 20 april 2007, klockan 13.00 i sal M202 Sandgärdet, Högskolan i Borås. Fakultetsopponent: Professor Leif Lindberg, Växjö universitet</p>

This study sought to address two connections that are fundamental to studies of science teaching and learning in classroom settings. The first one is the connection between classroom instruction and student learning outcomes, and the second one is the relationship between theoretical choice and analytical results. In this study, two theoretical perspectives were employed in parallel to examine a sequence of nine lessons on the topic of “Matter” in a Year 7 science classroom. These two theoretical perspectives are: Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995) and Variation Theory (Marton and Tsui, 2004). The results of each analysis were compared and contrasted in an attempt to identify their similarities and differences in describing and explaining the classroom practice documented.The analyses from both theoretical lenses pointed to several issues underlying student difficulties identified in this classroom, including the problematic macroscopic-microscopic relationship, the lack of attention to “substance”, and the taken-for-granted temperature conditions. However, the two theoretical perspectives differed in their capacity to accommodate learning at different levels, to address the connection between instruction and learning, and to identify and advocate the likely benefits of particular instructional approaches. Distributed Cognition unfolded the connection between teaching and learning by a careful examination of social interactions and the utilization of artefacts in these interactions. It speculated learning occurring in different types of social configurations and interactions found in a science classroom (e.g. collaborative activities). From the perspective of Distributed Cognition, the inappropriate employment or coordination of resources was the key factor contributing to the limited success in establishing shared understanding among the participants in the classroom. Variation Theory explicitly modelled the connection between instruction and learning through the idea of patterns of variation, and it provided some general principles to evaluate the teaching of a specific topic. From the perspective of Variation Theory, it was the lack of appropriate variation in the key attributes of the object of learning that contributed to the limited success in developing student capability to make differentiations between critical and uncritical aspects of a scientific concept. But current applications of Variation Theory do not include learning occurring in the private domain of the classroom (e.g. student-student interaction) and are silent on the role of collaborative activity (e.g. group work) in learning.The juxtaposition of the parallel analyses showed that the two theories are complementary and mutually informing in their explanations of the documented classroom practice. But their assumptions about what constitutes learning and what contributes to that learning differed from each other. This study suggested that we should focus our attention on the identification of the contingencies of compatibilities in our efforts to combine or synthesize elements of different theories. In this study, the local combination of the results generated from the parallel analyses contributed to a more complete understanding of science learning as it occurred in the classroom.The findings of this study should inform science teaching, curriculum development, and instructional design of science classrooms. It also generated implications for research into science classrooms and suggested the need for the science education community to examine the role of theory and the relationship between theoretical choice and analytical results obtained through the employment of a particular theory.

This study sought to address two connections that are fundamental to studies of science teaching and learning in classroom settings. The first one is the connection between classroom instruction and student learning outcomes, and the second one is the relationship between theoretical choice and analytical results. In this study, two theoretical perspectives were employed in parallel to examine a sequence of nine lessons on the topic of “Matter” in a Year 7 science classroom. These two theoretical perspectives are: Distributed Cognition (Hutchins, 1995) and Variation Theory (Marton and Tsui, 2004). The results of each analysis were compared and contrasted in an attempt to identify their similarities and differences in describing and explaining the classroom practice documented.The analyses from both theoretical lenses pointed to several issues underlying student difficulties identified in this classroom, including the problematic macroscopic-microscopic relationship, the lack of attention to “substance”, and the taken-for-granted temperature conditions. However, the two theoretical perspectives differed in their capacity to accommodate learning at different levels, to address the connection between instruction and learning, and to identify and advocate the likely benefits of particular instructional approaches. Distributed Cognition unfolded the connection between teaching and learning by a careful examination of social interactions and the utilization of artefacts in these interactions. It speculated learning occurring in different types of social configurations and interactions found in a science classroom (e.g. collaborative activities). From the perspective of Distributed Cognition, the inappropriate employment or coordination of resources was the key factor contributing to the limited success in establishing shared understanding among the participants in the classroom. Variation Theory explicitly modelled the connection between instruction and learning through the idea of patterns of variation, and it provided some general principles to evaluate the teaching of a specific topic. From the perspective of Variation Theory, it was the lack of appropriate variation in the key attributes of the object of learning that contributed to the limited success in developing student capability to make differentiations between critical and uncritical aspects of a scientific concept. But current applications of Variation Theory do not include learning occurring in the private domain of the classroom (e.g. student-student interaction) and are silent on the role of collaborative activity (e.g. group work) in learning.The juxtaposition of the parallel analyses showed that the two theories are complementary and mutually informing in their explanations of the documented classroom practice. But their assumptions about what constitutes learning and what contributes to that learning differed from each other. This study suggested that we should focus our attention on the identification of the contingencies of compatibilities in our efforts to combine or synthesize elements of different theories. In this study, the local combination of the results generated from the parallel analyses contributed to a more complete understanding of science learning as it occurred in the classroom.The findings of this study should inform science teaching, curriculum development, and instructional design of science classrooms. It also generated implications for research into science classrooms and suggested the need for the science education community to examine the role of theory and the relationship between theoretical choice and analytical results obtained through the employment of a particular theory.

The gap between practise and theory is often described in negative words in teachers’ professional lives. Learning study is a model for teachers´ professional development where a theoretical framework is used to enhance practice. The theoretical framework used by teachers in learning study is variation theory. In this study the research object is variation theory and the aim is to present how variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning processes. Two questions are in focus in this study: In which different ways do teachers understand variation theory? Which are the critical aspects of understanding the variation theory for these teachers? Seven teachers with different experiences of learning study and variation theory have been interviewed. A fenomenographic approach was used to describe different understandings of the phenomena variation theory. To understand and to analyze the data, variation theory also has been used. As a result of the analysis three qualitative different ways in understanding the theory was found; variation is related to teaching activities, variation is related to pupils understanding and variation is related to an object of learning. Through these three categories, critical aspects of understanding variation theory were identified and these aspects point out two learning processes. The implication of this work shows that variation theory becomes a guiding principle to understand teaching and learning, when teachers relate variation to an object of learning, its critical aspects and pupils´ understanding in focus at the same time. The theory becomes a framework for analyzing and for developing teaching and learning when the theory is used in practice. When teachers use the theory in practice, they create knowledge about what is necessary for pupils´ learning. In this way practice create knowledge about the theory just as teachers are learning more about variation theory. The findings can be seen as a contribution to the discussion about theories relevance for teachers´ professional development.

The aim of the study is to describe the ways in which contrast of critical aspects of the object of learning is used to improve children’s ways of discerning the concept twice as found by analysing a learning study process in Swedish preschool. By that, the attempt is to contribute to an expanded understanding of application of learning study and variation theory in preschool educational practice. One researcher, five preschool teachers and 44 preschool children (6 year olds) participated in the project. The empirical material consists of verbatim transcriptions of three video documented interventions and 132 individual test forms (pre-, post- and delayed post-test). The preschool learning study process analysed in this study has been built up by a joint reflection on the use of contrast of critical aspects related to the intended object of learning. The study suggests that a developed use of contrast of critical aspects of the object of learning seem to have bearing on children’s ways of discerning aspects of their surrounding world short- as well as long term. Main principles found seemingly emerging the children’s ways of discerning the intended object of learning is discussed in terms of separation, contrast and generalisation. However, the study indicates the need of additional complementary learning study projects to further expand the knowledge of what it means and entails to take critical aspects of the intended object of learning into account when dealing with content focus in preschool educational practice.

This study investigates variation in IT professionals' experience of ethics with a view to enhancing their formation and support. This is explored through an examination of the experience of IT, IT professional ethics and IT professional ethics education. The study's principal contribution is the empirical study and description of IT professionals' experience of ethics. The empirical phase is preceded by a review of conceptions of IT and followed by an application of the findings to IT education. The study's empirical findings are based on 30 semi-structured interviews with IT professionals who represent a wide demographic, experience and IT sub-discipline range. Their experience of ethics is depicted as five citizenships: Citizenship of my world, Citizenship of the corporate world, Citizenship of a shared world, Citizenship of the client's world and Citizenship of the wider world. These signify an expanding awareness, which progressively accords rights to others and defines responsibility in terms of others. The empirical findings inform a Model of Ethical IT. This maps an IT professional space increasingly oriented towards others. Such a model provides a conceptual tool, available to prompt discussion and reflection, and which may be employed in pursuing formation aimed at experiential change. Its usefulness for the education of IT professionals with respect to ethics is explored. The research approach employed in this study is phenomenography. This method seeks to elicit and represent variation of experience. It understands experience as a relationship between a subject (IT professionals) and an object (ethics), and describes this relationship in terms of its foci and boundaries. The study's findings culminate in three observations, that change is indicated in the formation and support of IT professionals in: 1. IT professionals' experience of their discipline, moving towards a focus on information users; 2. IT professionals' experience of professional ethics, moving towards the adoption of other-centred attitudes; and 3. IT professionals' experience of professional development, moving towards an emphasis on a change in lived experience. Based on these results, employers, educators and professional bodies may want to evaluate how they approach professional formation and support, if they aim to promote a comprehensive awareness of ethics in IT professionals.

I denna studie undersöktes i vilken utsträckning variationsteori används i matematikläroböcker. Specifikt studerades det avsnitt som i gymnasiekursen Matematik 1c handlar om potenslagar – ett ytterst viktigt område; både i sig själv och som grund för framtida matematikstudier. Tre matematikläromedel användes vid analysen; inte främst i jämförande syfte, utan för att få ett större dataunderlag. I studien identifierades de aspekter som är kritiska för att förstå detta avsnitt, i vilken utsträckning dessa aspekter tilläts variera, samt i vilken utsträckning denna variation skedde genom att hålla övriga aspekter konstanta.  I studien identifierades totalt sju aspekter, och de flesta av dessa aspekter tilläts variera i relativt stor utsträckning (inte för alla dock). Vid förändring från en uppgift till en annan tillåts oftast fler än en aspekt att variera i taget, även om det fanns exempel på progressioner där endast en aspekt varierade från uppgift till uppgift.  Förhoppningen med detta arbete är att det, förutom resultaten, kan leda till framtida forskning inom området, samt att inspirera lärare till att börja inkorporera variationsteori i undervisningen.