The main purpose of this thesis was to clarify whether there would be difficulties in using constructivistic learning in distance education in which interactive video was used. Other purposes of the thesis were to study the quality of learning in distance education compared to conventional education, and to study the quality of learning in constructivistic education compared to traditional education. The thesis consists of five studies in which three treat distance education and constructivistic learning. The first study treats distance education on its own, and the last study treats constuctivistic learning in conventional study groups. The methods in all studies were questionnaires for all participans, complemented with interviews in three studies. In the studies about constructivistic learning, the questionnaire contained questions to measure the extent of the constructivistic learning environment. The questionnaire in the first study contained questions to find out the participants' opinions about the course. The main hypothesis was that it would be more difficult to introduce constructivistic learning in distance education using interactive media, compared to conventional education. The findings from the studies could by no means verify this hypothesis. All the findings showed that the difficulties in distance education did not influence the possibilities to introduce constructivistic learning negatively. As to the quality of the distance students' learning there were some conflicting results. One group when tested achieved lower results than its reference group and the other groups did just as well as their reference groups. In the questionnaire the students claimed that the use of interactive video did not mean that the quality of learning was affected in negative ways. The findings in the last study showed that the students' opinions about the quality was much higher for the constructivistic group than its reference group. When tested the constructivistic group achieved better results in three out of four tests, but the differences were too small to be of any significance. / digitalisering@umu

The aim of this thesis has been to describe and analyse the students'views on the effects of constructivistic indicators in a learning environment of vocational training. The indicators concerned here were activity, authenticity, holism, context and multiple perspectives. The thesis focuses futher on the differences between traditional and constructivistic vocational training in its practice-of-skills aspect. The work consists of two sections, of which the first is a theoretical survey of cognitive constructivistic learning in which the views of various researchers are presented, analysed and compared. By designing a learning method with the highest possible number of constructivistic indicators, it has been possible to record students opinions of these in three different ways, by using questionnaires, interviews and video recordings. The pupils' experiences of various learning situations have then been described and analysed. Data have also been gathered using a fourth method, by recording spontaneous comments from the teachers concerned. The information has then been collated, and the results compared with the views of those researchers already presented. The results indicate that the effects of cognitive constructivistic indicators are felt as favourable by the pupils, who make it clear that it is of great value to be able to "think for oneself' as they put it, in the course of acquiring professional skills. Among other things, what the pupils consider specially valuable for the learning process is the personal activity and authenticity involved in creating usable products. No noticeably unfavourable pupil experiences of the constructivistic learning have emerged, while the spontaneous comments of the teachers express both advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include increased motivation on the part of pupils as a consequence of learning through creating usable products; pupils feel that what they do is more meaningful than would be the case in traditional vocational training. They also become independent learners more quickly: the teachers feel that the pupils learn more efficiently, and that the training period for some of them could be reduced by one-third. The major disadvantage is that the teacher has to learn to play a partly new role, since the teaching material does not consist of rigidly specific written instructions. Initially a greater amount of work is demanded of the teacher until pupils have become accustomed to the mainly constructivistic learning method. The learning environment that is presented in conclusion includes among other things features of business economics, product design and innovation, as well as certain conditions for the establishment of small-scale industry. Judging from the results, these components may be considered as further reinforcing the learning effect from a cognitive-constructivistic point of view. Vocational training thus acquires a new qualitative dimension when constructivistic indicators integrate instruction with the subsequent situation of working and earning a living, instead of concentrating simply on the content of the syllabus with no relation to the situation of pupils after completion of their training. / digitalisering@umu

In dem Beitrag wird von der Frage ausgegangen, ob oder wie in den zur näheren Betrachtung zur Verfügung gestellten Musikunterrichtsstunden ‚Musik gelernt‘ wird. Dabei wird zunächst entfaltet, auf welchen Begriff von Lernen und von Bildung Bezug genommen wird, bevor vor diesem Hintergrund Beobachtungen an zwei Schulstunden gefasst werden. Ansatzpunkte sind dabei musikalische oder musikbezogene Handlungen, z.B. das Einüben von instrumental-musikalischen Fertigkeiten, sprachliche Einbettungen musikalischen Tuns, die Verwendung von Begriffen, Interaktion, Selbststeuerung und Selbstbezüglichkeit der Lernenden sowie Reflexivität als Teil des Lernens. Gezeigt wird, dass aus musikalischem und musikbezogenem Handeln Bildungspraxis werden kann, wenn dabei musikalische und musikbezogene Vorstellungen und Bedeutungen hervorgebracht werden. / The article is based on the question, if or how music is learned in those music lessons which were available for closer analysis. In order to observe this, the specific meaning of learning and education is explored, before the descriptions of two schoollessons are being made. Starting point for the observations are the musical actions and the activites related to music, e.g. practicing instrumental skills, the verbal embedding of it, the use of terms, interaction, self-monitoring, self-organisation, self-referentiality or reflexivity as part of learning-situations. The observations indicate that actions in or on music could become part of education and culture, if ideas, connotations, meanings and significances were generated.

In dem Beitrag wird von der Frage ausgegangen, ob oder wie in den zur näheren Betrachtung zur Verfügung gestellten Musikunterrichtsstunden ‚Musik gelernt‘ wird. Dabei wird zunächst entfaltet, auf welchen Begriff von Lernen und von Bildung Bezug genommen wird, bevor vor diesem Hintergrund Beobachtungen an zwei Schulstunden gefasst werden. Ansatzpunkte sind dabei musikalische oder musikbezogene Handlungen, z.B. das Einüben von instrumental-musikalischen Fertigkeiten, sprachliche Einbettungen musikalischen Tuns, die Verwendung von Begriffen, Interaktion, Selbststeuerung und Selbstbezüglichkeit der Lernenden sowie Reflexivität als Teil des Lernens. Gezeigt wird, dass aus musikalischem und musikbezogenem Handeln Bildungspraxis werden kann, wenn dabei musikalische und musikbezogene Vorstellungen und Bedeutungen hervorgebracht werden. / The article is based on the question, if or how music is learned in those music lessons which were available for closer analysis. In order to observe this, the specific meaning of learning and education is explored, before the descriptions of two schoollessons are being made. Starting point for the observations are the musical actions and the activites related to music, e.g. practicing instrumental skills, the verbal embedding of it, the use of terms, interaction, self-monitoring, self-organisation, self-referentiality or reflexivity as part of learning-situations. The observations indicate that actions in or on music could become part of education and culture, if ideas, connotations, meanings and significances were generated.

Nowadays we can meet instead of the traditional approach to teaching math also Hejný method in schools. The aim of this thesis is to compare two groups of students (traditionally lead and lead by Hejný method) and their strategies for solving problems of the type of equation, and to compare how successful their solutions are. For the group which is taught traditionally, there were chosen the pupils in the 4th and 5th grade of primary school, who used to use the textbook of the series Alter. In the other group there were chosen pupils who use the textbooks by Hejný et al. Before the experiment there had been selected and formulated tasks for the experiment itself. A part of the experiment are also interviews with selected students. KEYWORDS strategy, successful strategy, non-successful strategy, transmisive and constructivistic way of teaching, the type of equation tasks, pupil's solution of the problem