The purspose of this study is to investigate how teachers are working to individualize mathemathics education relative to high-performing students and how they define the therm individualization. According to the Swedish curriculum the teaching process should be based on the students prevoius knowledge and experiences. The teachers should in their preperation take every student in to consideration. To be able to investigate these subjets I prepared following questions: What does the concept of individualization in mathematics mean for the teachers? What does it mean to work with an individualized mathematics teaching? How does teachers individualizes teaching mathematics relative to high performing students? This study is based on a qualitative method with both interviews and observations. The theoratical approaches I have used refers to the term invidualization and how to implement an idvidualized education in matematics to stimulate high-performing students. The results of the study shows that invidualization is a complex concept and for the teachers it is about finding out the students level of development to be able to give them tasks at a level which is challenging. The high-performing student either gets more advanced tasks or get paired up with other high-performing students where they get to solve problems at a level which is challenging.

Detta examensarbete är en explorativ fallstudie som utgår från intervjuer med fyra naturvetenskapligt högpresterande gymnasieelever. Eleverna uppvisar ”särskild begåvning” enligt en definition av Bruhner (2018b). Syftet med arbetet är att ge förslag på hur framtida forskning om särskilt begåvade elever kan tänkas fortlöpa, för att fördjupa kunskapen kring hur särskilt begåvade elever samspelar med andra elever, i klassrumssammanhang där stora skillnader i motivation och prestation föreligger. Uppsatsen begränsar sig till att undersöka matematisk-logisk intelligens. Intervjuerna tar upp vad eleverna själva tycker är ”bra” undervisning i naturvetenskapliga ämnen genom att lyssna till berättelser då de tyckt att skolan har undervisat dem väl, men undersöker även vissa karaktärsdrag hos eleverna som är av betydelse för inom vilka områden framtida forskning, om hur särskilt begåvade elever bäst bör undervisas, hade kunnat tänkas fokuseras. / This thesis is an explorative case-study that emanates from interviews with four Swedish secondary education students, highly proficient in the natural sciences. The students are ”gifted” according to a definition from Bruhner (2018b). The aim of the study is to give suggestions on how future research in the field of such gifted students could proceed, in order to deepen our knowledge of how such gifted students interact in classroom situations where there are big differences in motivation and performance. The study is limited to investigate mathematical-logicical intelligence. The interviews are centered around what the students themselves think is ”good” education, by listening to the students’ testimonies of in which situations they believe that the educational system has been capable of educating them, but it also explores certain traits found in these students, that are important to take into account, in order to establish in which areas future research on teaching gifted students best can be focused.

This study is about high-performing students in mathematics. The purpose of the study was to increase the knowledge about teachers view of adaptions for the high-performing students and how teaching mathematic and its content adapts to these children. The method used in the study was semi-structured in- terviews with 10 teachers in the early years of compulsory school. Data was an- alyzed using Shulmans theory of teacher knowledge base. The result shows three variations of lessons that the participating teachers use. The difference between these lessons was the mindset of how adaptions should be made to the high- performing students in mathematics. It also shows that teachers’ mindset and what guides them in general differs in the three different lessons, also how to work in mathematics. Even though, most teachers wants their students in the same subject area but in different levels of difficulty. The teachers in the study adapts mathematics to the high-performing students’ so the teaching is stimulated and challenging, but how the teachers dose it dif- fers. / Studien handlar om högpresterande elever i matematik. Studiens syfte var att öka kunskaperna om lärares syn på anpassningar för högpresterande elever samt hur matematikundervisningen och dess innehåll anpassades. Studiens undersökningsmetod var kvalitativa semi-strukturerade intervjuer och riktade sig till 10 lärare i grundskolans tidiga år. Den data som samlats in analyserades med hjälp av Shulmans ramverk om lärarkompetens. Resultaten visar tre olika lektionsvarianter som har olika tankesätt om hur anpassningar sker i undervis- ningen till högpresterande elever. Det visar även att det föreligger stora variat- ioner i hur lärare tänker och vad som styr dem i undervisningen, dessutom råder det skillnad i val av arbetssätt. De flesta lärare förespråkar att de vill ha alla ele- ver inom samma ämnesområde men på olika nivåer. Sammantaget gör lärarna anpassningar för att de högpresterande eleverna ska få en stimulerande och utmanade undervisning, men hur anpassningarna sker skiljer sig mellan lärarna.

Recent international surveys reveal a decline in reading performance among Swedish students during the past decade. In the light of these results, this thesis describes the reading literacy of a class of high-performing students in the Swedish upper secondary school, in order to discern characteristics of successful readers. More specifically, the aim is to describe these students’ reading literacy in terms of their reading habits, approaches to texts, reading strategies, as well as reading positions. The study is framed within a socio-cultural perspective and is based on qualitative methods such as case studies, classroom observations and a group discussion, in combination with a partly quantitative survey. A methodological contribution to the research field is the attempt to develop a method for analyzing students’ reading positions, mainly based on the concept of text movability, as used by af Geijerstam, Liberg et al. The results reveal a deep reading position towards non-fiction texts among a majority of these high-performing students. In comparison with students who adopt a surface-oriented position, these students tend to show greater textual awareness and interactive text movability, and seem to use a wider repertoire of reading strategies in order to attain reading success. This study identifies the most prominent features of high-performing students as their textual awareness, i.e. an ability to comment on content, form, function and potential readers of texts, genre awareness, i.e. an ability to identify various text genres, and metacognitive awareness, i.e. knowing what strategies to use and when to use them. These features can be related to the students’ descriptions of their reading habits which imply that they read a great variety of texts, including both fiction and non-fiction. Most of these students report that they read daily and of their own accord. Having broad textual experience helps when it comes to reading texts in specialized domains that require inferencing and/or field knowledge. There also appears to be a match between the literacy supported in school and the literacy sustained in the students’ home environment. The pedagogical implications are the need for continuous work with students’ reading development and reading strategies, making students aware of different text genres and their specific features, and the importance for students to be challenged in their reading, but naturally in combination with appropriate scaffolding methods.

Denna studie baseras på elevers skrivande av berättande texter i ämnet svenska från årskurs 5 och 6. Syftet var att undersöka hur lärare kan arbeta stöttande för både låg- och högpresterande elever i arbetet med skrivande av genretexter. Vidare ville vi undersöka vilka utmärkande drag vi kunde finna i låg- respektive högpresterande elevers berättande texter och hur lärare beskriver sin undervisning i förhållande till begreppen inkludering samt differentiering. I studien analyserades 16 elevtexter från de utvalda elevgrupperna, Fyra lärare till dessa elever har intervjuats för att få ta del av deras tankar om undervisningen. Studien baseras på genrepedagogiken med tillhörande bakomliggande teorier, inklusive den sociokulturella teorins scaffolding- och ZPD-begrepp samt systemisk funktionell grammatik. Intervjun undersöks även i relation till begreppen inkluderande och differentierande undervisning samt hur det används i arbetet med eleverna. I resultatet från textanalysen kunde vi se att den största skillnaden mellan de två elevgrupperna var berättelsens händelseförlopp vilket bidrog till diskussionen om grammatiska orsaker. I intervjun beskrev lärarna att de använder sig av explicit undervisning och formativ feedback med ZPD som utgångsläge, vilka utgjorde deövergripande teman som var mest jämförbara med genrepedagogikens stöttning. Lärarna strävade efter att eleverna skulle kunna arbeta med samma uppgifter så långt som möjligt och fokuserade på att anpassa kraven efter elevernas förmågor. Det visade sig att lärarna undervisade något mer differentierande än de själva var medvetna om då vissa av deras kommentarer om inkluderande undervisning även kan kopplas till differentierad undervisning.