<p>Students’ use of superficial reasoning seems to be a main reason for learning difficulties in mathematics. It is therefore important to investigate the reasons for this use and the components that may affect students’ mathematical reasoning development. Assessments have been claimed to be a component that significantly may influence students’ learning.</p><p>The purpose of the study in Paper 1 was to investigate the kind of mathematical reasoning that is required to successfully solve tasks in the written tests students encounter in their learning environment. This study showed that a majority of the tasks in teacher-made assessment could be solved successfully by using only imitative reasoning. The national tests however required creative mathematically founded reasoning to a much higher extent.</p><p>The question about what kind of reasoning the students really use, regardless of what theoretically has been claimed to be required on these tests, still remains. This question is investigated in Paper 2.</p><p>Here is also the relation between the theoretically established reasoning requirements, i.e. the kind of reasoning the students have to use in order to successfully solve included tasks, and the reasoning actually used by students studied. The results showed that the students to large extent did apply the same reasoning as were required, which means that the framework and analysis procedure can be valuable tools when developing tests. It also strengthens many of the results throughout this thesis. A consequence of this concordance is that as in the case with national tests with high demands regarding reasoning also resulted in a higher use of such reasoning, i.e. creative mathematically founded reasoning. Paper 2 can thus be seen to have validated the used framework and the analysis procedure for establishing these requirements.</p><p>Paper 3 investigates the reasons for why the teacher-made tests emphasises low-quality reasoning found in paper I. In short the study showed that the high degree of tasks solvable by imitative reasoning in teacher-made tests seems explainable by amalgamating the following</p><p>factors: (i) Limited awareness of differences in reasoning requirements, (ii) low expectations of students abilities and (iii) the desire to get students passing the tests, which was believed easier when excluding creative reasoning from the tests.</p><p>Information about these reasons is decisive for the possibilities of changing this emphasis. Results from this study can also be used heuristically to explain some of the results found in paper 4, concerning those teachers that did not seem to be influenced by the national tests.</p><p>There are many suggestions in the literature that high-stake tests affect practice in the classroom. Therefore, the national tests may influence teachers in their development of classroom tests. Findings from paper I suggests that this proposed impact seem to have had a limited effect, at least regarding the kind of reasoning required to solve included tasks. What about other competencies described in the policy documents?</p><p>Paper 4 investigates if the Swedish national tests have had such an impact on teacher-made classroom assessment. Results showed that impact in terms of similar distribution of tested competences is very limited. The study however showed the existence of impact from the national tests on teachers test development and how this impact may operate.</p>

Students’ use of superficial reasoning seems to be a main reason for learning difficulties in mathematics. It is therefore important to investigate the reasons for this use and the components that may affect students’ mathematical reasoning development. Assessments have been claimed to be a component that significantly may influence students’ learning. The purpose of the study in Paper 1 was to investigate the kind of mathematical reasoning that is required to successfully solve tasks in the written tests students encounter in their learning environment. This study showed that a majority of the tasks in teacher-made assessment could be solved successfully by using only imitative reasoning. The national tests however required creative mathematically founded reasoning to a much higher extent. The question about what kind of reasoning the students really use, regardless of what theoretically has been claimed to be required on these tests, still remains. This question is investigated in Paper 2. Here is also the relation between the theoretically established reasoning requirements, i.e. the kind of reasoning the students have to use in order to successfully solve included tasks, and the reasoning actually used by students studied. The results showed that the students to large extent did apply the same reasoning as were required, which means that the framework and analysis procedure can be valuable tools when developing tests. It also strengthens many of the results throughout this thesis. A consequence of this concordance is that as in the case with national tests with high demands regarding reasoning also resulted in a higher use of such reasoning, i.e. creative mathematically founded reasoning. Paper 2 can thus be seen to have validated the used framework and the analysis procedure for establishing these requirements. Paper 3 investigates the reasons for why the teacher-made tests emphasises low-quality reasoning found in paper I. In short the study showed that the high degree of tasks solvable by imitative reasoning in teacher-made tests seems explainable by amalgamating the following factors: (i) Limited awareness of differences in reasoning requirements, (ii) low expectations of students abilities and (iii) the desire to get students passing the tests, which was believed easier when excluding creative reasoning from the tests. Information about these reasons is decisive for the possibilities of changing this emphasis. Results from this study can also be used heuristically to explain some of the results found in paper 4, concerning those teachers that did not seem to be influenced by the national tests. There are many suggestions in the literature that high-stake tests affect practice in the classroom. Therefore, the national tests may influence teachers in their development of classroom tests. Findings from paper I suggests that this proposed impact seem to have had a limited effect, at least regarding the kind of reasoning required to solve included tasks. What about other competencies described in the policy documents? Paper 4 investigates if the Swedish national tests have had such an impact on teacher-made classroom assessment. Results showed that impact in terms of similar distribution of tested competences is very limited. The study however showed the existence of impact from the national tests on teachers test development and how this impact may operate.

La psychopathie est souvent associée à tort comme un trouble se retrouvant exclusivement chez des criminels alors que jusqu’à 8 % de la population générale pourrait présenter des traits psychopathiques élevés. Récemment, nous observons un essor de recherches tentant d’appliquer des théories évolutionnistes, telles que la sélection naturelle, à des processus psychologiques et à la personnalité. Des théoriciens de la psychologie évolutionniste se sont penchés sur la prévalence considérable de la psychopathie dans la population générale et tentent de l’expliquer par le caractère adaptatif de ses traits chez ses individus. Les caractéristiques de la psychopathie comme une faible empathie, une tendance à la manipulation, aux mensonges et à l’impulsivité pourraient leur permettre de profiter du reste de la société et ainsi s’approprier différentes ressources. De plus, leur capacité à faire abstraction des émotions pourrait leur conférer un avantage quant à la détection du mensonge, notamment dans des situations à haute teneur émotionnelle. Cette thèse vise à présenter une revue de la littérature à jour des différentes théories évolutionnistes expliquant la psychopathie comme étant une forme d’adaptation à l’environnement. En outre, elle cherche à évaluer la relation entre la détection du mensonge et les traits psychopathiques, en remédiant à plusieurs lacunes méthodologiques des études précédentes. En nous inspirant des différentes théories évolutionnistes explicatives de la psychopathie et de Lyons et al. (2013), nous avons émis l’hypothèse que les traits psychopathiques permettraient une meilleure détection du mensonge à haute teneur émotionnelle et que cette relation serait plus marquée chez les hommes que chez les femmes. Pour tester ces hypothèses, nous avons recueilli les réponses de 504 participants, composés de 333 femmes (65,9 %) et de 163 hommes (32,4 %) provenant de la population générale. Les résultats indiquent qu’il n’y avait pas de lien entre l’intensité des traits psychopathiques et la capacité à détecter un mensonge lorsque l’âge ainsi que le genre des participants étaient contrôlés. Cependant, les traits psychopathiques étaient associés à une meilleure détection spécifique du mensonge et à une moins bonne détection spécifique de la vérité. En d’autres termes, les traits psychopathiques semblent être liés à une perception accrue de mensonge de façon générale. Aucun effet modérateur n’a été identifié en fonction du genre des participants. Toutefois, une relation négative entre la détection du mensonge et les traits psychopathiques a été observée chez les femmes, tandis qu’aucune relation n’a été constatée chez les hommes. Nos résultats ne contredisent pas les théories évolutionnistes sous-tendant nos hypothèses initiales. Au contraire, la perception d’autrui comme étant malhonnête et menaçant peut être considéré comme un avantage lorsqu’elle est associée aux caractéristiques propres à la psychopathie. Cette thèse contribue à éclaircir le lien entre la psychopathie et la détection du mensonge, tout en permettant de contribuer empiriquement à différentes théories évolutionnistes. / Psychopathy is often mistakenly associated with criminality, while up to 8 % of the general population may exhibit elevated psychopathic traits. Recently, there has been a surge in research attempting to apply evolutionary theories, such as natural selection, to psychological processes and personality. Evolutionary psychologists seek to explain the prevalence of psychopathy in the general population through the adaptative nature of its traits in individuals. Characteristics of psychopathy such as low empathy, a tendency for manipulation, lying, and impulsivity may enable individuals to exploit the rest of society and appropriate various resources. Additionally, their ability to disregard emotions could provide an advantage in detecting deception, particularly in high-emotion situations. The present thesis aims to provide an up-to-date literature review on different evolutionary theories explaining psychopathy as an adaptation to the environment. Furthermore, it seeks to demystify the relationship between deception detection and psychopathic traits by addressing several methodological limitations of previous studies. Drawing inspiration from evolutionary theories of psychopathy and Lyons et al. (2013), we hypothesized that psychopathic traits would facilitate detection of high-emotion deception, with this relationship being more pronounced in men than in women. To test these hypotheses, we collected data from 504 participants, consisting of 333 females (65.9 %) and 163 males (32.4 %) from the general population. The results indicate no association between the intensity of psychopathic traits and the ability to detect deception when controlling for age and gender of participants. However, psychopathic traits were associated with better specific deception detection and poorer specific truth detection. In other words, psychopathic traits appear to be linked to an overall heightened perception of deception. No moderating effects were identified based on participants' gender. However, a negative relationship between deception detection and psychopathic traits was observed among women, while no relationship was found among men. Our results are not contradictory to the evolutionary theories underlying our initial hypotheses. Rather, perceiving others as dishonest and threatening can be considered an advantage when combined with characteristics inherent to psychopathy. This thesis contributes to a better understanding of the link between psychopathy and deception detection, while empirically contributing to various evolutionary theories.

This study offers insight into washback processes via interactions between the national test, teachers and students as well as raises questions about contemporary educational politics and standardized testing in EFL classrooms. Washback is a term for the effects a test has on teaching and learning. Standardized tests are given increased weight in Sweden and globally, risking an increase of washback. This development puts various properties of education at risk of being undermined. In Sweden, the national tests in ninth grade can be considered high-stake standardized tests since they should be particularly considered in grading. The oral subtest in English may involve specific issues due to socio-affective aspects and challenges of assessing foreign language speech. Through qualitative interviews with six English teachers in Sweden, this study explored their perceptions of washback effects of the oral subtest of English in the national tests in ninth grade. The results indicate substantial washback on teaching practices and learning behaviors, and that socio-affective aspects play a major role in teachers’ choices. Also, some teachers exhibit ambivalence to the content of the test and whether the test results should impact the grades.

In recent years, advanced machine learning (ML) models have revolutionized industries ranging from the healthcare sector to retail and E-commerce. However, these models have become increasingly complex, making it difficult for even domain experts to understand and retrace the model's decision-making process. To address this challenge, several frameworks for explainable AI have been proposed and developed. This thesis focuses on counterfactual explanations (CFEs), which provide actionable insights by informing users how to modify inputs to achieve desired outputs. However, computing CFEs for a general black-box ML model is computationally expensive since it hinges on solving a challenging optimization problem. To efficiently solve this optimization problem, we propose using Bayesian optimization (BO), and introduce the novel algorithm Separated Bayesian Optimization (SBO). SBO exploits the formulation of the counterfactual function as a composite function. Additionally, we propose warm-starting SBO, which addresses the computational challenges associated with computing multiple CFEs. By decoupling the generation of a surrogate model for the black-box model and the computation of specific CFEs, warm-starting SBO allows us to reuse previous data and computations, resulting in computational discounts and improved efficiency for large-scale applications. Through numerical experiments, we demonstrate that BO is a viable optimization scheme for computing CFEs for black-box ML models. BO achieves computational efficiency while maintaining good accuracy. SBO improves upon this by requiring fewer evaluations while achieving accuracies comparable to the best conventional optimizer tested. Both BO and SBO exhibit improved capabilities in handling various classes of ML decision models compared to the tested baseline optimizers. Finally, Warm-starting SBO significantly enhances the performance of SBO, reducing function evaluations and errors when computing multiple sequential CFEs. The results indicate a strong potential for large-scale industry applications. / Avancerade maskininlärningsmodeller (ML-modeller) har på senaste åren haft stora framgångar inom flera delar av näringslivet, med allt ifrån hälso- och sjukvårdssektorn till detaljhandel och e-handel. I jämn takt med denna utveckling har det dock även kommit en ökad komplexitet av dessa ML-modeller vilket nu lett till att även domänexperter har svårigheter med att förstå och tolka modellernas beslutsprocesser. För att bemöta detta problem har flertalet förklarbar AI ramverk utvecklats. Denna avhandling fokuserar på kontrafaktuella förklaringar (CFEs). Detta är en förklaringstyp som anger för användaren hur denne bör modifiera sin indata för att uppnå ett visst modellbeslut. För en generell svarta-låda ML-modell är dock beräkningsmässigt kostsamt att beräkna CFEs då det krävs att man löser ett utmanande optimeringsproblem. För att lösa optimeringsproblemet föreslår vi användningen av Bayesiansk Optimering (BO), samt presenterar den nya algoritmen Separated Bayesian Optimization (SBO). SBO utnyttjar kompositionsformuleringen av den kontrafaktuella funktionen. Vidare, utforskar vi beräkningen av flera sekventiella CFEs för vilket vi presenterar varm-startad SBO. Varm-startad SBO lyckas återanvända data samt beräkningar från tidigare CFEs tack vare en separation av surrogat-modellen för svarta-låda ML-modellen och beräkningen av enskilda CFEs. Denna egenskap leder till en minskad beräkningskostnad samt ökad effektivitet för storskaliga tillämpningar.  I de genomförda experimenten visar vi att BO är en lämplig optimeringsmetod för att beräkna CFEs för svarta-låda ML-modeller tack vare en god beräknings effektivitet kombinerat med hög noggrannhet. SBO presterade ännu bättre med i snitt färre funktionsutvärderingar och med fel nivåer jämförbara med den bästa testade konventionella optimeringsmetoden. Både BO och SBO visade på bättre kapacitet att hantera olika klasser av ML-modeller än de andra testade metoderna. Slutligen observerade vi att varm-startad SBO gav ytterligare prestandaökningar med både minskade funktionsutvärderingar och fel när flera CFEs beräknades. Dessa resultat pekar på stor potential för storskaliga tillämpningar inom näringslivet.