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This study utilises a phenomenographic approach to investigate teacher conceptions of student engagement in learning. The research question asks: “What are the qualitatively different conceptions of student engagement in learning held by secondary English teachers in Central Queensland?” The research aims to contribute to knowledge about student engagement by investigating the teacher perspectives generally ignored in the research literature. This thesis begins with a review of academic research, scholarship, and government documents where multiple and conflicting understandings of engagement are identified. Phenomenography has been chosen as the empirical research approach because it is designed to map variation in understandings. Standard phenomenographic analysis is used in conjunction with two frameworks congruent with phenomenography. The first framework is based on understandings of intentionality and the second on understandings of awareness. Together these frameworks allow for in-depth analysis of conceptions by identifying the parts and contexts of conceptions and differentiating between the participant’s understanding and his or her conception of how this understanding is facilitated. The empirical component of the research involves semi-structured interviews with 20 Central Queensland secondary English teachers about their classroom experiences with student engagement. These data are transcribed and analysed as per phenomenographic protocol. This study identifies six conceptions within the what aspect, teacher conceptions of student engagement. These correspond with three conceptions comprising the how aspect, teacher conceptions of how to facilitate student engagement. The findings of the empirical research and scholarly review of literature build conceptual knowledge about student engagement. This research indicates that educational stakeholders do not hold similar understandings of student engagement. If the concept of student engagement is to become educationally fruitful, the term must be more explicitly defined in educational research and government policy documents to promote shared understandings among stakeholder groups.

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This thesis attempt to uncover the qualitative different ways that Taiwanese workers experienced health. Workers' health is important to a country's economic, cultural and social development. Both Taiwanese government and health professionals acknowledgement the importance of health. A considerable amount of literature has been released over the past two decades in Taiwan around related issues. Most published research has reported investigation into occupational disease diagnosis, disease prevention, safety behaviours and health-related intervention for behaviour change. None has addressed the health experiences of workers. To address this gap in knowledge and literature, phenomenographic research has been completed to identify and describe the ways in which Taiwanese workers in an industrial complex experience health. In-depth interview was undertaken with eighteen participants. The interview was tape-recorded and then transcribed verbatim. Data was collected in Mandarin or Taiwanese and analysed in Chinese. This avoids the loss or change of original meaning during the translation process. Significant quotations were then translated to English by the principal researcher. Discussions between the researcher and supervisor, and between researcher and another native English speaker who is be able to read Chinese were continuous through the analysis process to ensure that the English translation is as close possible as to the original meaning. The outcomes of the research have been the identification of five conceptions of health which together represent understanding of the experience and the meaning of health. The five distinct conceptions are: health is absence of disease; health is a holistic view of the body function; health is a reward of doing 'good' deeds; health as living a healthy lifestyle; and health as a consequence of stress management. All conceptions combined constitute an outcome space that represents the referential and structural relationship between conceptions. The research outcomes contribute to an understanding of how a group of Taiwanese workers were aware of their health experience and have significant implications for health professionals in developing and conducting health intervention, for policy makers in planning occupational health policies, for describing health with a cultural context and for educators of health professionals. Furthermore, this research provides the basis for further research into specific aspects of health and its meaning in different work settings.

The ways that physics students’ conceptualize – the way they experience – the use of algebraic signs in vector-kinematics has not been extensively studied. The most comprehensive of these few studies was carried out in South Africa 15 years ago. This study found that the variation in the ways that students experience the use of algebraic signs could be characterized by five qualitatively different categories. The consistency of the nature of this experience across either the same or different educational settings has never given further consideration. This project sets out to do this using two educational settings; one similar to the original South African one, and one at the natural science preparatory programme known as basåret at Uppsala University in Sweden. The study was carried out under the auspices of the Division of Physics Education Research at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University in collaboration with Nadaraj Govender, University of KwaZulu-Natal, who performed the original study while completing his PhD at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. This study is situated in the kinematics section of introductory physics with participants drawn from the natural science preparatory programme at Uppsala University and physical science preservice teachers’ programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The participating students completed a specially designed questionnaire on the use of signs in kinematics problem solving. A sub-group of these students was also purposefully selected to take part in semi-structured interviews that aimed at further exploring their experiences of algebraic signs. The students’ descriptions and answers were categorized using Nadaraj Govender’s set of categories, which had been constructed using the phenomenographic research approach. This approach is designed to enable finding the variation of ways people experience a phenomenon. The process of sorting the data was grounded in this phenomenographic perspective. From this categorization it was possible to identify four of the original five categories amongst the participating students. The results suggest that these four categories remain educationally relevant today even if the context is not the same as the one for the original findings. Although one of the original five categories was not found, the analysis cannot be taken to definitely eliminate this from the original outcome space of results. A more extensive study would be needed for this and thus a proposal is made that further studies be undertaken around this issue. The study ends by suggesting that physics teachers at the introductory level need to obtain a broader understanding of their students’ difficulties and develop their teaching to better deal with the challenges that become more visible in this broader understanding. / På vilka sätt fysikstudenter föreställer sig och förstår användandet av algebraiska tecken i vektorkinematik har endast studerats i mindre utsträckning. Den mest omfattande av dessa få studier genomfördes i Sydafrika för 15 år sedan. Denna studie upptäckte att variationen av de sätt studenter upplever användandet av algebraiska tecken på kunde karaktäriseras genom fem kvalitativt olika kategorier. Hur solida dessa upplevelser är i en liknande eller helt annan utbildningsmiljö har däremot inte studerats vidare. Detta projekt ämnar till att göra detta genom att använda två olika studentgrupper; en liknande den ursprungliga gruppen i Sydafrika, samt det tekniskt-naturvetenskapliga basåret vid Uppsala universitet, Sverige. Studien har genomförts med stöd från avdelningen för fysikens didaktik vid institutionen för fysik och astronomi vid Uppsala universitet i samarbete med Nadaraj Govender, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Sydafrika, som genomförde den ursprungliga studien under sin doktorandutbildning vid University of the Westen Cape, Sydafrika. Denna studie är begränsad till den del av den grundläggande fysiken som behandlar kinematik och innefattade deltagare från det tekniskt-naturvetenskapliga basåret vid Uppsala universitet samt tredje års studenter vid physical science preservice teachers’ programme, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Sydafrika. De deltagande studenterna genomförde ett specialdesignat frågeformulär kring användandet av algebraiska tecken för att lösa kinematiska problem. En del av dessa studenter valdes sedan ut för att delta i semi-strukturerade intervjuer som syftade till att vidare utforska deras upplevelser kring algebraiska tecken. Studenternas beskrivningar och svar kategoriserades med hjälp av Nadaraj Govenders fem kategorier som tagits fram genom ett fenomenografiskt tillvägagångssätt. Detta tillvägagångssätt är framtaget för att kunna hitta variationen av hur människor upplever ett fenomen. Sorteringsprocessen grundades i detta fenomenografiska perspektiv. Från denna kategorisering var det möjligt att identifiera fyra av de fem ursprungliga kategorierna bland de deltagande studenterna. Fyra av de fem ursprungliga kategorierna som föreslagits av Govender återfanns genom denna studie varför dessa kategorier föreslås förbli relevanta idag även om utbildningsmiljön skiljer sig från den ursprungliga. Trots att den femte kategorin inte hittades kan denna inte definitivt exkluderas från det outcome space som beskriver studenters upplevelser för algebraiska tecken. Det föreslås att vidare studier undersöker förekomsten av denna kategori. Studien avslutas med att föreslå att fysik lärare på grundnivå behöver få en bättre förståelse för sina studenters svårigheter samt att de behöver utveckla sin undervisning för att bättre kunna hantera dessa svårigheter och på så sätt göra undervisningen mer anpassad för mångfalden av studenterna.

This study investigates the ways young people experience information. Having an understanding of what information means to young people is important for educators and library and information science (LIS) professionals if they are to develop information literacy skills in young people. To date the literature has revealed that scant attention has been paid to this area. This research study addresses a gap in the knowledge. The study used a phenomenographic research approach to elicit and describe the qualitatively different ways in which young people experienced information. A purposeful sample of forty one young people aged eleven to eighteen years participated in the study. The data, which were gathered through drawings and semi structured interviews, were subjected to a rigorous process of phenomenographic analysis. The outcome of phenomenographic analysis is an outcome space consisting of a finite set of categories of description which, with their relationships, explain the different ways people experience phenomena in the world. In this study six ways of experiencing information were identified: knowledge of sources of information; receiving information; process of finding information; store of unprocessed information; processing information; and use of information. The findings highlighted the fact that young people thought about information to a degree that has not always been acknowledged. In addition the findings challenged a number of commonly held assumptions, which have in the past invited criticism, for instance young people's attitude to ‘cutting and pasting' information and their poor evaluation of academic information. The findings also revealed a previously unrecognised type of information behaviour described in sub-category A of Category Two, ‘receiving information knowingly'. As a result of this research a more comprehensive picture of the way young people experience information to that currently available has been revealed, however the research also revealed the incompleteness of this picture and suggests the need for further research.

The aim of this essay is to examine parents and teachers perception of parental participation in a Swedish preschool. The aim was further to find variations in teachers and parents view of the matter, to find similarities and/or differences in the statements. The method used in this essay is a qualitative research method with surveys to collect data. The questions in the survey had a low degree of structuring to get extensive answers. For the results and analysis a phenomenographic approach was used to find variations in the data. The results show that there are variations in the views on parental participation between teachers and parents. Teachers to a higher extent emphasises the whole group, and pedagogical documentation as a way to reach higher parental participation, while parents emphasises information about their own child and the daily contact with the teachers to feel as participants in the preschool. The results have similarities to previous research of teachers and parents views on parental participation in the Swedish preschool. Conclusions that can be drawn from this paper is that parents and teachers in certain areas have a different view of what makes parents feel as participants in the preschool.

<p>The aim of this study is to describe what teachers and principals experience in schools regarding threats, violence and harassment towards teachers. A phenomenographical inspired approach has been used to describe and analyse the conceptions of five teachers and five principals. The findings of the study indicate that there is no impending risk for teachers to suffer from violence, threats or harassment. However, it does occasionally happen, and the findings of the study indicate that there are some factors that increase the risk. The major three factors are: fear, personality and inexperience. The conceptions also indicate that media can have a negative effect concerning violence in schools.</p><p> In order to prevent violence in schools, the findings of the study suggest three preventive measures: active relationship building, increased information, as well as increased authority for teachers. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of support where teachers have been violated. This support is required from principals and supporting authorities, and it is important that school violence is reported to the police to discourage the threat of future violent conduct in schools. The findings of our study indicate that the school of education needs to be reorganised, and new methods developed, in order to prepare teachers for their coming profession.</p>

This study is about students’ work with writing as an activity for learning in year 4, 5 and 6 in compulsory school. The methodology used is inspired by phenomenography and the overall frame of analysis is sociocultural. The purpose of the study is to describe what five students experience they learn when writing and on the basis of that problematize students’ work with writing in school. The study includes five students, three boys and two girls, as well as five different writing assignments. The five writing assignments are of different character; argumentative, reflective, structured, narrative and communicative, and they aim to include several of the functions writing can have in school. The main material of the study consists of 25 interviews, five with each student, which have been conducted as closely as possible to the students’ work with the five different writing assignments. The study shows that students experience they learn differently depending on what type of writing assignment they are working with. In order for the students to perceive that they are learning a subject matter, which they are writing about, it seems the writing assignments need to be designed in a way that challenges the students’ thinking. Challenges of the type reflect, take a stand, motivate and compare seem to be effective for this purpose, even though they do not always seem to be sufficient for all students. Several students express uncertainty. They say that they learned something in general terms instead of giving clear examples, they ponder a long time, answer that ""you" can learn", that they perhaps learned something or they don’t know. The students seem to be unfamiliar with reflection around writing and learning and appear to need support, not only in their learning, but also to conceive that they learn something when they write. Teachers can not take for granted that students experience that they learn when they are writing or that students know why they are writing in school. It appears that conscious and structured work with writing, and with the students’ experience of writing, is needed.

The aim of this study is to describe what teachers and principals experience in schools regarding threats, violence and harassment towards teachers. A phenomenographical inspired approach has been used to describe and analyse the conceptions of five teachers and five principals. The findings of the study indicate that there is no impending risk for teachers to suffer from violence, threats or harassment. However, it does occasionally happen, and the findings of the study indicate that there are some factors that increase the risk. The major three factors are: fear, personality and inexperience. The conceptions also indicate that media can have a negative effect concerning violence in schools. In order to prevent violence in schools, the findings of the study suggest three preventive measures: active relationship building, increased information, as well as increased authority for teachers. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of support where teachers have been violated. This support is required from principals and supporting authorities, and it is important that school violence is reported to the police to discourage the threat of future violent conduct in schools. The findings of our study indicate that the school of education needs to be reorganised, and new methods developed, in order to prepare teachers for their coming profession.