This design experiment research introduces a mathematical inquiry titled Pattern Math. The Pattern Math activities create an atmosphere where students can think mathematically, communicate mathematically and make connections between different mathematical concepts. Based on simple patterns with complex explanations, the Pattern Math activities provide students with the opportunity to develop their conceptual understanding of mathematics. Through reflections on the activities, students are able to reexamine their views of learning mathematics. This design experiment research has a narrative approach and incorporates the teaching and research technique of interactive writing. The research highlights the power of inquiry. By providing students with the opportunity to work within their zone of proximal development, the Pattern Math activities provide students with the opportunity to make mathematical discoveries and come to understand algebra and arithmetic with conceptual understanding.

This design experiment research introduces a mathematical inquiry titled Pattern Math. The Pattern Math activities create an atmosphere where students can think mathematically, communicate mathematically and make connections between different mathematical concepts. Based on simple patterns with complex explanations, the Pattern Math activities provide students with the opportunity to develop their conceptual understanding of mathematics. Through reflections on the activities, students are able to reexamine their views of learning mathematics. This design experiment research has a narrative approach and incorporates the teaching and research technique of interactive writing. The research highlights the power of inquiry. By providing students with the opportunity to work within their zone of proximal development, the Pattern Math activities provide students with the opportunity to make mathematical discoveries and come to understand algebra and arithmetic with conceptual understanding.

Language can be seen as a bridge between the way we think and our actions. From a social semiotic, language becomes a resource with which collective knowledge can be distributed. The way we talk about an artefact is a reflection of our conceptual understanding thereof. Often, we use conceptual metaphors to communicate abstract concepts in abstract reasoning domains such as computer science. Conceptual metaphors are formed in relation to primary metaphors and are grounded in sensorimotor experience. Primary metaphors can be used to analyse how we embody our conceptual understanding of specific concepts. The aims of this study are threefold: Firstly, to explore how conceptual metaphors are used by students and teachers while engaging in conversations about computer programming; secondly, to analyse the emergent conceptual metaphors to identify how teachers and students understand abstract aspects about computer programming and thirdly, to identify the sensorimotor experiences that contribute to shaping the conceptual metaphors used by the students and the teachers. Two teachers and three students from two different upper-secondary schools engaged in informal conversations regarding aspects of computer programming. The conversations were audiorecorded, and excerpts were transcribed verbatim and translated into English. The excerpts were analysed by adopting a methodological framework based on Grady’s theory of primary metaphor. Results suggest that teachers and students have a multi-faceted conceptual understanding of computer science that involves concepts such as spatial relations, similarities between objects and computer code. Other emergent aspects concerned interpersonal relationships, in relation to customer service and social skills. The findings imply that expanding the number of available conceptual metaphors could lead to a more diverse set of didactic tools in computer science education, thus increasing overall conceptual understanding. / Vårt språk kan ses som en brygga mellan det sätt vi tänker och det sätt vi agerar. Ur ett socialsemiotiskt perspektiv blir språket ett verktyg med vilket kollektiv kunskap kan distribueras. Detta gör det rimligt att säga att det sätt varpå vi talar en spegling av vår möjlighet att förstå. Vi använder ofta konceptuella metaforer för att kommunicera abstrakta koncept som exempelvis datavetenskap. Konceptuella metaforer formas i relation till primärmetaforer, grundade i sensomotoriska erfarenheter. Primärmetaforer kan användas för att analysera hur vi kroppsligt befäster och förstår specifika koncept. Syftet med denna studie är att: i, undersöka hur konceptuella metaforer används av lärare och elever vid samtal rörande programmering, ii, använda de uppkomna konceptuella metaforerna för att identifiera lärares och elevers förståelse för abstrakta aspekter av programmering och iii, identifiera de sensomotoriska upplevelser som formar de konceptuella metaforer lärarna och eleverna använder sig av. Informella samtal kring olika aspekter av programmering genomfördes med två lärare och tre elever vid två svenska gymnasieskolor. Samtalen spelades in, varefter kortare utdrag transkriberades och översattes till engelska. Utdragen har analyserats med en metod baserad på Gradys teori om primärmetaforer. Studiens resultat visar att lärare och elever har en mångfacetterad förståelse för programmering. Deras konceptuella förståelse baseras på bland annat rumsliga relationer mellan olika objekt, skillnader och olika objekt samt relationen till kod. Andra identifierade aspekter berör interpersonella förhållanden, kundservice och social kompetens. Resultaten indikerar att en vidgad uppsättning didaktiska verktyg inom programmeringsundervisning skulle kunna öka antalet tillgängliga konceptuella metaforer relaterade till programmering och således öka den generella konceptuella förståelsen för programmering.

Mathematics is a subject that contains many different concepts that are ultimately important for students to have knowledge of in order to cope with the subject, but also everyday situations. The teaching of mathematics often means that the students get to meet mathematics by working through the mathematics textbook, where an alternative could be to let the students meet mathematics and its concepts through play. Play is especially important as a teaching method in preschool class, because preschool class is expected to use the playful pedagogy from preschool to prepare students for the school years to come. The purpose of this study is therefore to gain more knowledge in how preschool class teachers can promote students´ concept development in mathematics, by using play as a teaching method. The following research questions are addressed:  ·       What kinds of games are presented by teachers on social media to develop students´ mathematical conceptual ability in mathematics?  ·       What aspects of the teacher´s role are displayed on social media when it comes to students´ mathematical concept development through play? Posts on social media were collected, to see how active teachers in preschool class work with play in the subject of mathematics. The prevailing pandemic that took place at the time the work was written, influenced the choice of method. Social media is a collective name for a number of different platforms and for this work, 4 different platforms were selected to see how teachers use play in their mathematics lessons. To help analyzing the various posts, an analysis protocol was developed with various aspects around, among other things, the teacher´s role in the play. The results show that play in many posts is used in concept development. The results also show that teachers let their students work with different pedagogically materials and play to attach many of all the concepts of mathematics.

The purpose of the study is to incrase knowledge about the support available in teaching materials in biology, physics and chemistry for grades 1-3, to strengthen students who have Swedish as a second language. In the Swedish school, there are many students who have a mother tongue other than Swedish. Based on the study criteria, the selection landed on two teaching materials, the Book of NO and the Pulse NO book. These two teaching materials have been analyzed with a qauntitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis. In the quantitative content analysis, a frequency table was produced that contains subject-specific words and concepts. In the qualitative text analysis, lookups were analyzed from a multimodal perspective with the support of a framework. The framework is based on compositions of text, image, colors, signs and symbols to make visible how a textbook is structured. The content was analyzed from a second language perspective regarding the students´understanding. In the quantitative frequency table, there were many subject-specific words, concepts, explanatory text and pictures, which indicates that there are explanations to support second language students. The results show that the multiomodal aspects of textbooks, which aim to help and clarify subject-specific words and concepts for second language students in their understanding, do not always do so. It turned out that there were gaps in the interaction between text and image. The study shows that there is a difference between the textbooks. One textbook clarifies the understanding of the concept more through better interaction with images, while the other textbook does not make it as clear. / Syftet med studien är att öka kunskapen om vilket stöd det finns i läromedel i biologi, fysik och kemi för årskurs 1-3, för att stärka elever som har svenska som andraspråk. I den svenska skolan finns det många elever som har ett annat modersmål än svenska. Baserat på studiens kriterier landade urvalet på två läromedel, Boken om NO och Puls NO-boken.Dessa två läromedel har analyserats med en kvantitativ innehållsanalys och en kvalitativ textanalys. I den kvantitativa innehållsanalysen producerades en frekvenstabell som innehåller ämnesspecifika ord och begrepp. I den kvalitativa textanalysen analyserades uppslag ur ett multimodalt perspektiv med stöd av ett ramverk. Ramverket bygger på kompositioner av text, bild, färg tecken och symboler för att synliggöra hur en lärobok är uppbyggt. Innehållet analyserades ut ett andraspråksperspektiv med hänsyn till elevernas förförståelse. I den kvantitativa frekvenstabellen fanns det många ämnesspecifika ord, begrepp, förklarande text oh bilder, vilket tyder på att det finns förklaringar för att stödja andraspråksstudenter. Resultaten visar att de multimodala aspekten av läroböcker, som syftar till att hjälpa och förtydliga ämnesspecifika ord och begrepp för andraspråkselever i deras försåelse, inte alltid gör det. Det visade sig att det fanns luckor i interaktionen mellan text och bild. Studien visar att det finns en skillnad mellan läroböckerna. En lärobok klargör förståelsen av begreppen mer genom bättre interaktion med bilder, medan den andra läroboken inte gör det lika tydligt.

In this essay, we have investigated how students in year 2 of primary school understand, perceive and think about the phenomenon of gravity. We have used semi-structured interviews, individually and in pairs, and let the students make their thoughts visible with graphic representation in the form of drawn arrows before and after a practical activity. The current syllabus states that students at the end of year 3 should be able to talk about the phenomenon of gravity (Skolverket, 2019). The results from our study show that students in the early years of primary school have varying perceptions and understandings of gravity. It is not uncommon for students to have misconceptions about such an abstract physical phenomenon as gravity. Our study has shown that students' graphic representation reflects and clarifies students' understanding of gravity. Furthermore, the study confirms that all students who participated in the study can talk about gravity, but that a couple of students needed supportive teaching first. Another result is that students' graphical representation of gravity follows movement direction. We want to recommend teachers of younger students in primary school to emphasize and talk about concepts in physics. We also recommend to use semiotic resources such as drawing arrows and artifacts, in our study we used a solder, to make the phenomenon of gravity visible and thus improve students' understanding. The essay was conducted at a primary school in a medium-sized city in Sweden. The participants were 12 students, divided into 6 couples, who participated after we received the parents' and students' consent. / I det här examensarbetet har vi undersökt hur elever i grundskolans årskurs 2 förstår, uppfattar och tänker om fenomenet tyngdkraft. Vi har använt semistrukturerade intervjuer, individuellt och parvis, samt låtit eleverna synliggöra sina tankar med grafisk representation i form av ritade pilar före och efter laborativ undervisning. Aktuell kursplan säger att elever i slutet av årskurs 3 ska kunna samtala om fenomenet tyngdkraft. Av resultatet från vår studie framgår att elever i grundskolans tidiga år har varierande uppfattning och förståelse om tyngdkraft. Det är inte ovanligt att eleverna har felaktiga föreställningar eller missuppfattningar om ett, för yngre elever, så abstrakt fysikaliskt fenomen som tyngdkraft. Det har i vår studie visats sig att elevers grafiska representation speglar och förtydligar elevernas förståelse av tyngdkraft. Vidare bekräftar studien att alla elever som deltagit i studien kan samtala om tyngdkraft men att ett par elever behövde stödjande undervisning först. Ytterligare ett resultat är att eleverna genomgående ritar tyngdkraftens riktning pilar, åt samma håll som föremålets rörelseriktning. Vi vill rekommendera lärare till yngre elever i grundskolan att lyfta och samtala om begrepp inom fysiken och nyttja semiotiska resurser som ritade pilar och artefakt, i vår studie använde vi ett lod, för att synliggöra fenomenet tyngdkraft och på så sätt förbättra elevernas förståelse. Undersökningen genomfördes på en grundskola i en medelstor stad i Sverige. Deltagarna var 12 elever, indelade i 6 par, som deltog efter att vi fått föräldrarnas och elevernas medgivande.

The study is based on action resarch where four Concept cartoons have been constructed through careful resarch into the structure of the concept. 16 year 2 students in groups of four participated in a survey with the aim of providing knowledge about how students in grades of 1-3 in primary school understand the concept of friction and how their understanding can be developed through the use of Concept cartoons. The students' discussions where recorded on audio files and analyzed thematically. The sociocultural learning perspective emerged both in terms of knowledge that the students showed and through the group discussions, but also traits of construcivism can be seen through the proveneance of concept and the coginition that occurs among the students through the encounter with the conceptual images. The results show that the students in the study are able to relate friction to movment and speed and that friction is a characteristic that can affect speed as well as understanding that fricton is linked to materials.  The result also show that by allowing students to talk about a Concept cartoon together, a consensus is reached and they can trigger each other to reach and show knowledge as well as deepen and expend knowledge. A striking result shows that Concept cartoons can make misconsistent around the concept of friction visible. By allowing active teachers to at the schools' lower ages to work early on Concept cartoons, misconceptions in science can be detected early and turned into good concetual understanding.

The background of this study is that the study results in science subject for many multilingual students are heading in a downward trend. Research has shown that many multilingual students are having a hard time adjusting to the advanced language used in the classroom. Which contains difficulties for students in understanding the content of science and assimilate to the teaching. The first aim of this study has been to research how scientific concepts in the subject of biology are being introduced through textbooks. The scientific concepts that were being analyzed are species, ecosystem, food chain, photosynthesis, and circulations in nature. The second aim is to research how multilingual students are getting support by the textbooks. The study´s aim and research questions have been executed through qualitative and quantitative analysis of two science textbooks in biology. Something that was identified in the result was the certain concepts were not mentioned at all and that one of the textbooks many times did not mention the scientific concepts by their scientific name. A conclusion of the study is the importance of combining the scientific language with the everyday language in education as to the subject of science with multilingual students. The textbooks contain different kinds of scaffolding strategies to introduce scientific concepts as for support by illustrations and photographs, short pieces of text and connections to other concepts.

The Premier Technical College of Qatar (PTC-Q) has seen high failure rates among students taking a college statistics course. The students are English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in business studies and health sciences. Course delivery has involved conventional content/curriculum-centered instruction with minimal to no interactive components. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study was to assess the effectiveness of an interactive approach to teaching and learning statistics used in North America and the United Kingdom when used with EFL students in the Middle East. Guided by von Glasersfeld's constructivist framework, this study compared conceptual understanding between a convenience sample of 42 students whose learning experience included a hands-on, interactive component and 38 students whose learning experience did not. ANCOVA was used to analyze posttest scores on the Comprehensive Assessment of Outcomes in Statistics (CAOS) as the dependent variable, the course placement (hands-on versus no hands-on component) as the independent variable, and the pretest score on CAOS as the covariate. Students who were exposed to the hands-on learning demonstrated greater conceptual understanding than students who were not. Based on these results, a 3-day workshop was designed to create a learning community to enable statistics instructors to address the problem of high failure, to introduce delivery methods that involve place-based examples, and to devise hands-on activities designed to reflect authentic research. This study has implications for positive social change in Qatar, in that application of the findings may result in producing trained graduates capable of filling the shortage of qualified researchers, thereby supporting the nation's goal of being a leader in research as stated in the Qatar National Vision 2030.

Sammanfattning Syftet med vår studie är att bidra med kunskap om hur eleverna i lågstadiet tillägnar sig begreppskunskaper och förmåga att genomföra systematiska undersökningar när de undervisas genom NTA i ämnet kemi. Studien genomfördes i en årskurs 3 med NTA-uppdraget färgerna i färgen. Vi valde att genomföra en kvalitativ interventionsstudie med strategin designbaserad studie. Vid två lektionstillfällen agerade vi själva lärare och observatör. Lektion A planerades efter NTA’s lärarhandledning. Efter analys av lektion A genomfördes en förändring till lektion B. Förändringarna av lektionen var visuellt stöd och tydligare muntlig stöttning från läraren. Den sociokulturella synen på lärande genomsyrar den aktuella studien och det insamlade resultatet. Resultatet visar att NTA-uppdraget färgerna i färgen bidrar till viss begreppsförståelse för begreppet separera och förmåga att genomföra systematiska undersökningar. Med de förändringar som gjordes till lektion B visade insamlat resultat på en ökad förståelse för begreppet separera och förmåga att genomföra systematiska undersökningar. Därmed dras en möjlig slutsats att verksamma och blivande F-3 lärare kan tillägga visuellt stöd och mer muntlig stöttning i sin undervisning när de använder sig av NTA uppdraget färgerna i färgen. / AbstractThe purpose of our study is to contribute knowledge about how primary school students acquire conceptual knowledge and the ability to conduct systematic investigations when taught through NTA in the subject of chemistry. The study was conducted in a grade 3 through the NTA assignment färgerna i färgen.We chose to conduct a qualitative intervention study with the strategy of design-based study. On two occasions we acted as teachers and observers. In lesson A, the assignment was planned straight from the NTA’s pedagogical plan. After analysis of lesson A we made a change for lesson B. The changes we did to lesson B were adding visual support and more oral support from the teacher. The sociocultural view of learning permeates the current study and the collected results. The results show that the NTA assignment färgerna i färgen contributes to some conceptual understanding of the concept of separation and the ability to conduct systematic investigations. With the changes that were made from the collected results the students showed an increased understanding of the concept of separation and the ability to carry out systematic investigations. Thus, it is concluded that active and prospective F-3 teachers should add visual support and more oral support in their teaching when using NTA assignment färgerna i färgen.